Search politically controversial topics incognito with a VPN on using google vs yandex vs duckduckgo? Ivermectin, January 6th arrests, BLM protest deaths, VAED, mRNA studies before 2020, Robert Malone, Geert Vanden Bossche. I mean there's an endless list of things you can experiment with.
I have a really hard time understanding how we're supposed to stop this kind of thing, not just on the internet in general and not this comment in particular but on this site in particular.
HN has rules against accusations of bad faith, and they work 99% of the time, and I try hard not accuse an individual comment of being in bad faith even if I strongly suspect it. But it seems so obvious by looking at any thread about the Uyghur Genocide on Hacker News that there is a pattern when looking at the whole thread, the whole site, in aggregate. I'm not suggesting 50-cent-army-type astroturfing either -- I don't think it's 1 person with 100 accounts spreading FUD for malicious reasons, I think it's 100 people with 100 accounts spreading FUD about the Uyghur genocide because they are nationalistic and proud of their country for personal reasons.
I think this is bad, and needs to be stopped because the genocide in Xinjiang is too important, but I think that HN's policies about not accusing people of bad faith or astroturfing may actually make it harder to have honest discussions on the topic. It's a conspicuous failure case for a site where normally things don't get this bad. I'm not sure what a better policy would be either, which I suspect might be the reason why nothing has changed.
I apologize is this comment is considered rule-breaking, and I will remove it if it is. I just can't stand watching this kind of thing happen.
I mean anytime someone whataboutisms literal ongoing genocide, it's bad faith, period. Whether it's someone working directly on behalf of the CCP or an individual self-motivated nationalist or even a foreigner that's fallen for CCP global propaganda is irrelevant. It's bad faith, and in my opinion, outright malicious.
I think "bad faith" suggests you are not being honest, like you know you're wrong or making a fallacious argument but you're saying it anyways. In that sense, an individual nationalist, a foreigner who's fallen for the propaganda, both cases would not necessarily be "bad faith". I agree that denying or minimizing an ongoing genocide is pure evil.
It's something I've stated repeatedly: The most dangerous part of China is not its military or nukes (they're actually hardly an offensive threat at all). It's how effective their global propaganda, cultural warfare, and data harvesting techniques are. You don't need nukes when you can destabilize and divide an entire country from within while having everything you need and more to psychologically manipulate the population however you want. Even better because they gave you this information voluntarily
>Haven't there been some recent reports that the U.S. might actually not fare so well against China in direct conflict?
By CCP propagandists and agency leaders trying to retain or increase their funding, sure lol. China has nowhere close to the supply chain, materiel, experience, or quality tech necessary to challenge the US in direct conflict. They have virtually no original military R&D. It's just poorly reverse engineered tech from incomplete stolen plans. Remember China has an interest in trying to convey how "good" its military tech is on the global stage. The US does not. Any time you find out about some "new" scary Chinese military capability, just remember it's decades old stolen garbage from a nation that is better off holding its cards close to its chest.
> China has nowhere close to the supply chain, materiel, experience…
You mean the country that manufacturers virtually everything Americans buy can’t handle supply chain logistics?
> Remember China has an interest in trying to convey how "good" its military tech is on the global stage. The US does not.
You seriously don’t think the US has an interest in impressing the rest of the world with its military might? Why do you imagine we keep building aircraft carriers?
>You mean the country that manufacturers virtually everything Americans buy can’t handle supply chain logistics?
Yes, there's a massive difference in military logistics and shipping the latest knock off kitchen appliance via a third party. Global economic sanctions on China would be far more detrimental to China than the US. There's plenty of alternatives.
>You seriously don’t think the US has an interest in impressing the rest of the world with its military might? Why do you imagine we keep building aircraft carriers?
You're right, we should just declassify everything the second a contract is awarded and it enters development.
I'm talking about new R&D, not aircraft carriers. The US is very slow to unveil military capabilities on the global stage. Meanwhile China unveils their F-35 copy the second they can to try to "beat" the US.
>Shrug. All evidence is that the Chinese have managed to create plenty of military tech. Stolen IP or not.
They really haven't. There's no original R&D. It's just rushed, terrible copies.
Yes, there's a massive difference in military logistics and shipping the latest knock off kitchen appliance.
> This is a hell of a non sequitur.
I don't think this means what you think it means. Most of China's military capabilities presented on the global stage are rushed to the public eye as soon as possible. That's the point. The US has no interest in doing this because of adversarial nations like China. They have no need to prove they're ahead of the game or unveil what they're capable of, it's just accepted that they are and have private capabilities that far exceed what is publicly known (because that's the case).
China has tons of domestic military R&D. For example, for decades the US dismissed hypersonic antiship missiles on the basis that the plasma would hinder terminal guidance.
A few years ago China demonstrated the first hit of a moving target by a ballistic missile, which works out to have been in hypersonic flight during terminal guidance.
A few years later, the Russians are now demonstrating routine strikes of moving targets using hypersonic cruise missiles, which demonstrates that they managed to fix the issue.
A few days ago, some data came out on how exactly they managed to do this - not only did the Chinese managed to get active radar working through hypersonic flight at lower altitudes, they also apparently managed to get optical/infrared sensors working by redirecting airflow and injecting chilled air in order to disrupt plasma formation.
Meanwhile, the US is still trying to figure out sustained hypersonic flight (and failing most tests), while the Chinese and Russians have long since moved on to making guidance more reliable.
If you read various publications from the US Navy, they claim that hypersonic missiles will be defeated by killchain disruption (ie, jamming and staying far enough away). This entire strategy is predicated on the assumption that optical guidance of a missile in hypersonic flight is impossible. Now that the Chinese seem to have demonstrated it, there is no feasible defence.
So while they're not better than the West at building jet engines, they clearly are ahead in multiple technologies, and they are clearly trying to use these novel technologies to seize an advantage without needing to catch up on everything that came before.
Another scenario where this has been done. If the US was indeed somehow able to get legions of 5th generation aircraft close enough to disrupt Chinese operations, conventional doctrine would be to make your own, better, fighter aircraft, and duke it out.
Now the Chinese don't want to do that. It would be expensive, and the US already has a lead. So instead of developing stealthier and better fighters with technology it would take years to achieve, they instead made a fighter that is moreso stealthy from the frontal aspect, but much more superior kinematically - the J-20 flies much higher and faster than the F-35. From this kinematic advantage, it is designed to impart an advantage to an already much better missile, which is then designed to strike EW/AWACS aircraft from afar (300+km) without being detected until it's much too late. And by all accounts this would work.
Once that is done, they are in a position where they have the most advanced air defences on the planet, and in mind-boggling numbers. From there on, the combined advantage from both air defences and competent air forces means that it will be very difficult for anyone else to operate. So by focusing on other technologies, where they have gained an advantage, they can exploit their unique situation (operating near their borders) to nullify US technological advantages in other fields.
Beyond that, the US does have an interest in trying to convey it's military strength. Their are US Generals on public record stating that they are trying to portray US military technology as scarily as possible to intimidate foreign actors and to boost sales.
All in all, this kind of reasoning is stupid, wrong, and is probably exactly what the Chinese would love to hear.
The GP was an unsubstantive flamebait comment, but yours breaks the site guidelines egregiously. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I wasn't trying to argue or debate, I was trying to put your exaggerated comment into context
>You don't need nukes when you can destabilize and divide an entire country from within while having everything you need and more to psychologically manipulate the population however you want.
Your comment seems so silly, when USA has routinely destabilised countries throughout history. It's not even comparable actually.
You think that the existence of some black lives matter activists proves the moral superiority of USA?
It's also possible to have growing economy, increasing inequality, more people entering the middle, upper-middle, and upper class than ever, the poor gaining wealth at the fastest pace on record, and an extremely high quality of life for those in the bottom quintile, which is what's happening.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with wealth inequality (see Denmark), or fundamentally right about wealth equality. How many "rich" countries with extremely low wealth inequality exist? Meanwhile the least wealth unequal countries are also the poorest. It's almost like wealth inequality is highly correlated with overall richness and quality of life of a population.
The rich get richer while the poor get poorer is a myth. Economies are not zero sum. Just because the wealth of the wealthiest is increasing faster than the wealth of the poorest doesn't mean the poorest aren't gaining wealth faster and faster with time too (which they are in basically every first world/rich republic/democracy).
You could put your house up for sale at $20 million but if people aren't buying it, then that's not what it's worth. Then value and price don't match. This isn't the case for cryptocurrencies that are traded on liquid markets, price discovery is happening all the time. Maybe it's worth $100 tomorrow or $5000, it doesn't really matter. It's still what it's worth at the time.
Price and value are not the same. Ponzi schemes require buy in but still have no underlying value.
Also lol at crypto markets being liquid. In stablecoins maybe. Liquidity literally means volume has very limited effects on the price of an underlying. $100 or $5000 tomorrow is definitionally illiquid
I read what you said, please don't assume I didn't read your reply.
Regarding liquidity, that's not really contradictory to the definition. That's only if I meaningfully impact the price by selling, so I would have to personally cause the change to $100 or $5000 for it to be considered illiquid. If Alphabet goes down or up 50% because of a bad report it doesn't make Alphabet illiquid.
You do not understand the definition of liquidity.
Price in the crypto sphere is only dictated by transactions (which is why it's illiquid) because there is no intrinsic value. There is no wealth creation occuring. Volatility is definitionally illiquid.
In the equity sphere, assets have intrinsic value, and their price may be affected by extrinsic factors as well, but if the price tanks overnight because of bad quarterlies it's because the intrinsic value declined. The business's wealth creation potential declined.
The usual way to determine if an exchange is liquid for a particular trading pair is the spread between the buy and the sell. If you can buy or sell it quickly for an agreed upon price it's liquid. That's all there basically is to liquidity. Now lets add the constraint that you want the buying or selling to happen at the intrinsic value. If crypto has no value then everything above it is basically a bonus, so by definition crypto is liquid.
Sure when volatility gets too high on the real stockmarkets, they temporarily pause the share or the exchange and make it, by definition, illiquid. This is however a completely artificial limitation and there is nothing inherently contradictory about having high volatility and high liquidity.
I presume you belong to the school of thought that says if you can't do a cash flow analysis then it doesn't have value. But I don't get that, there are tons of things that have value without being able to do a cash flow analysis on it.
I took the financial definition, there is no special crypto definition. Here's a few paraphrased definitions:
> liquidity describes the degree to which an asset can be quickly bought or sold in the market at a price reflecting its intrinsic value.
> A liquid asset has some or all of the following features: It can be sold rapidly, with minimal loss of value, anytime within market hours. The essential characteristic of a liquid market is that there are always ready and willing buyers and sellers.
Now read the first definition for example and the first paragraph of my previous post, follow the logical structure of my argument and tell me what doesn't add up. You make the assumption that it's worthless, the implicit assumption in the definition is that you don't sell for a loss basically. Since you're always above zero, it fits snugly in there.
I have replied to this before, but I can add some additional info. No regular buyer or seller has the capital to affect the market price in any significant way. Huge orders don't end up on the market, just like on regular exchanges, precisely for this reason.
What do you base this on? I don't see how you can affect the market price of any of the big crypto's in any significant way as a regular buyer or seller, there are simply too many market participants. This is not the case for the smaller ones obviously, although even there you'll likely need a bit of capital (compared to the other market participants for that specific crypto). The smaller ones are basically a drop in the ocean compared to the big ones.
Unions are organizations that transfer value from employer and non-union members (including not-employed-yet employees and customers) to union members.
Long term effects of that transfer are rather unpredictable, because there are too many factors in economy.
No they aren't, they are organizations that utilize collective bargaining in place of productivity or efficiency increases in the labor force, thereby diluting the labor market with an artificial baseline at levels lower than the market would dictate otherwise. They don't transfer any value, they just reduce the overall value of the industry and provide the illusion that union members are receiving a satisfactory portion of this reduced value.
Weird how the IPCC reports have consistently pushed their models' disaster and negative effect predictions further into the future every year for over a decade then.
every few or so year, IPCC picks the best model from hundred in the past few years that predicted the present the best, extrapolate the future, and call it the truth, and people online get flogged for suggesting that maybe the whole process reek of selection bias, since the model in exam are for the most part curve fitting and not derived from first principles, so in a changing environment their long term accuracy is questionable.
