sunbeam60

The point makes sense if you’re inside Putler’s mind I’m sure; if you can’t win the game you’re in, change the rules. He’d rather be feared and no 1 asshole than being a mid tier economy in the western game.

Violator, by Depeche Mode.

I have never had my little mind so fully blown as when I listened to that the first time.

Endless US debt is fine, provided there keeps being interest in the US dollar as a reserve currency. The US national debt is simply the difference between money printed and money collected. As long as the US dollar “disappears” into the global economy (which it does), inflation is kept under check.

Yes, hold on, I’ll go and find my list of every policy reviewed against how many people it will kill.

Of course that doesn’t exist.

My point is that if you make the slightest statistical change, when you multiply it by 65 million, you’ll get something happening.

Change how much fertiliser farmers are allowed to wash into stream by a millionth; give slightly more to councils to fix potholes; change what day of the week pensions are paid out; change the frequency with which airports have to check for moisture in their fuel depots; allow a new type of plastic to be used to reline leaky drainage pipes running under old buildings; change the percentage that side windows in cars are allowed to be darkened etc etc.

I’ll give you a concrete example; in many countries ibuprofen isn’t allowed to be bought over the counter, but only after a consultation with a pharmacist. That’s because if may cause as adverse reaction if your stomach lining is affected by other medicines or illness. This kills people. Yet we happily keep buying it over the counter because it’s convenient and works better than paracetamol.

Should we move ibuprofen behind a pharmacist consultation?

Everything is a trade off when you’re dealing with 65 million people.

Every time the government of a country with 65+ million citizens change any policy, even the most obscure one, people die. Statistically that’s just the way it is with that many people.

I’m not saying 4000 is insignificant, I’m just saying the government can’t be paralysed from making decisions.

I’m right there with you. One of my daughters love drawing and designing clothes and I don’t know what to tell her in terms of the future. Will human designs be more valued? Less valued?

I’m trying to remain positive; when I went into software my parents barely understood that anyone could make a living of that “toy computer”.

But I agree; this one feels different. I’m hoping they all feel different to the older folks (me).

The few times I’ve used AliExpress I’ve had expectations met in terms of product quality, exceeded in terms of customer support and disappointed in terms of promised delivery speed.

I don’t get the sense most people are any different.

Argh, after 25 years in tech I am surprised this keeps surprising you.

We’ve crested for sure. AI isn’t going to solve everything. AI stock will fall. Investor pressure to put AI into everything will subside.

The we will start looking at AI as a cost benefit analysis. We will start applying it where it makes sense. Things will get optimised. Real profit and long term change will happen over 5-10 years. And afterwards, the utter magical will seem mundane while everyone is chasing the next hype cycle.

I’ve literally given you a way to feel more confident, all you have to take it. But no, you’d rather live in ignorance it seems.

lol. I AM the source. DM me with your LinkedIn handle, I’ll connect with you to validate my identity and you can tell anybody else watching that the story is legit. I don’t want to spill too many details in public as I don’t want to involve my old company in it.

And in terms of “state controlled VPN” services, it’s not that the Chinese state runs honeypot VPNs for companies (though they most definitely do for their own citizens), but that to have a license to operate a cloud service in China, you have to enforce CSL and that means they get private companies, western too, to do their bidding. If you encrypt data, you’ll get a stern call (as we did).

Of course China uses encryption. So an obtuse, direct reading of that statement allows you, correctly, to say the commenter is wrong.

But what the commenter probably meant was “China bans the use of encryption that prevents the Chinese state from reading what is being exchanged” and that is confidently right. I’ve operated teams in China where we had a secret category 1 incident when it was discovered a couple of our devs had set up a VPN between a Chinese and a western service that didn’t go through the official Chinese-state controlled VPN services.

They absolutely do not want data they cannot read.

We know that decoupling growth and fossil fuel is possible. The US and EU has had declining fossil emissions since the 2000s yet still achieved growth, also if you include outsourced emission.

It can be done.

Whether it’s done in time, or without large scale impact, is another question. But it’s possible.