IMO, the value in TUIs lie in 1) Composability: we've got really good tools for manipulating terminal windows like tmux, :term in vim, etc, whereas the same can't really be said for OS-level windows and 2) As a shibboleth: They implicitly state that they're built by and for keyboard-centric technical users, and thus the wants and needs of keyboard-centric technical users are going to be the valued over the wants and needs of the lowest common denominator. 3) They look cool.
1. if you use some external window manager tool, what workflow does tmux/term provide you that OS-level windows with that tool do not?
2. specifically for "keyboard-centric tech users" that's a big fail since the terminal platform is not capable of supporting advanced keybindings presisely because all they do is "target the lowest common denominator" (as defined in 1965) of keybinding support!!!
So your cool setup from a GUI code editor is simply not transferrable.
3. this is very rare, I mean, just look at the screenshots, a lot of them couldn't even add non-gapped borders=== ---!
Microcenter has a pretty good reputation for having knowledgeable enough staff. Plus, discovery tends to be a lot better in a curated brick and mortar than online. And sometimes you just want to see and buy cool stuff that you didn't know you wanted.
Except (?) that it's not like you can do more than look at shrink-wrapped boxes.
Even record stores generally let you play albums on a private turntable before you buy them.
It's just so weird to me that someone looking to buy a significant component for their desktop machine or whatever wouldn't do loads of research first. Buying a GPU, for example, during window shopping seems almost unhinged. But everyone's experience is different, and that's a good thing.
Not a great comparison, record stores sell exactly that, just records and each record uses the same player to play. They're not going to let you unwrap a $2000 graphics card, but they might let you touch a mouse you're looking to buy. There are clear differences here where not everything at these stores is just their shrink wrapped boxes, but are often on display, its all all black and white.
There's nothing stopping people from doing all of their Youtube research then walking into their Microcenter and buying it in person.
Its not like PC gamers who often use online stores have just forgotten to do any prior research when buying in store as opposed to online. So yeah I would do loads of research, then I'd go instore and buy it and look at what else they have on offer.
The Cambridge, MA location still has an aisle of keyboards and mice outside of their packaging. It's very nice to be able to hold and feel those peripherals as part of the shopping experience.
Frankly, the key takeaway to most problems people run into with Unicode is that there are very, very few operations that are universally well-defined for arbitrary user-provided text. Pretty much the moment you step outside the realm of "receive, copy, save, regurgitate", you're probably going to run into edge cases.
You equate "housing" and "rent". In a world where consumers had unlimited access to capital, the free market rate for housing would converge on the interest rate + shared costs (think condo fees, property taxes, etc) -/+ appreciation/depreciation of the housing, because consumers would always have the option of taking a loan to buy the property, then re-selling when they want to move, paying off the loan and receiving back whatever they paid on the principal.
Comparing to the real world, the cost of rent is greater than that, because people are paying a premium for their inaccess to capital. Looking at where I live, the hypothetical value is approximately the condo fees (5.5% interest, 1% property tax, 6-and-change% appreciation), which for a 2b2b apartment around around $600 bucks a month. Rent for an equivalent apartment literally next door is $2700 a month. That suggests that more than 75% of the value of rent is paying for inaccess to capital, i.e., textbook rentseeking.
Free childcare for low income families is extremely common, even in the United States. Subsidizing childcare is even more common. And it's not that expensive, because spending tends to get offset by increased tax income and reduced consumption of other wellfare benefits (from parents who choose to re-enter the workforce).
As for universal free childcare, I'm aware of it's existence in a number of places in Germany (Berlin, in particular), driven by having been an extremely popular public benefit in East Germany.
Frankly, the Democrats have done nothing but pander to people who hate them, who will never vote for them, and fucking LOVE their opposition for years now. If there is one thing to take away from the Trump campaigns, it's that pandering to an imaginary moderate is not nearly as effective as being really exciting to your base. All ceding ground to the opposition does is lead to disillusionment and apathy amongst the people who might vote for you. You win over no one with morally bankrupt, least common denominator bullshit.
What you are advocating for is the same bullshit that cost the Democrats the election in 2016, and in 2024. We've tried it your way and it is nothing but a losing strategy. People want progress, people want change. If a candidate can't at least have balls to lie about wanting that too, then they are unfit to win an election.
In that case, the base of the Democrats, as you seem to define it, is destined to be a permanent minority in national elections.
And maybe you are right. I'd love to see America move to 4 or more major parties. With the far-left and far-right of each separated out into their own parties. Would even settle for 3 parties.
They're really not a permanent minority, though. Obama's campaign promises (not to be confused with his actual politics once in office) demonstrate that positive, progressive change is a perfectly popular political position.
And frankly, that's all besides the point: The reason exciting candidates do so well (Trump, Obama) is because voter turnout in the US is abysmal. It's gotten better (because the Fascists are excited for Trump, and everyone else is at least a bit energized by "oh god we can't have the fascists win"), but it's still very true that if you could convince at a quarter of the nonvoters (half of the half that might vote for you) to show up to the polls, you'd have a blowout victory the likes of which haven't been seen since the Bill Clinton campaigns.
The Democrats have been playing a strategy that tries to win over the rational fringe of the Republican party, but it's becoming increasingly obvious to apparently everyone but the DNC that those people don't exist. The kind of person who can be convinced to vote for Trump (ESPECIALLY TWICE) are not the kinds of people the Democrats will ever win over without royally pissing off most of their voter base.
> Obama's campaign promises (not to be confused with his actual politics once in office) demonstrate that positive, progressive change is a perfectly popular political position.
But as you said, Obama didn’t govern the way he was perceived to have campaigned. And up and down this thread people express their disillusionment with him. Including you.
So I’m not sure how Obama campaigning to the left of how he governed makes the case that without Democrats moving to the center they can successfully turn out the number of supporters needs to win national elections. Unless we keep electing people then throwing them out next cycle because they didn’t govern like they campaigned (which is which I think we’re going to see for the foreseeable future)
Also this was almost 20 years ago. The country has gotten significantly more polarized since then. I’d make the case that since Obama the democratic part has failed to move to the center, but instead clung to identify politics. And in the case of presidential elections anointed the nominees rather than give citizens a real chance to choose them.
Hope I’m wrong, since Democrats don’t seem to be moving to the center and I also don’t want federal governments like this one. But I’m not convinced I am.
Obama won off his campaign. That suggests that enough people agreed with his platform to vote for him. He didn't win additional votes by shifting to the center: he shifted to the center after already having received said votes.
And polarization of the voter base helps that argument: people want real, radical change. On both sides of the political spectrum. The right is having their demands heard through the rise of Trump's fascist tendencies. The Democrats need to notice that the "moderate" Rebuplicans were more willing to vote for a fascist than for a moderate Democrat, and re-evaluate their platform.
But the change many people want is not immediately achievable, at least not without a period of intense suffering as a result of drastic upheaval (read: war). It defies basic laws of humanity.
You seem to suggest that politicians like Obama failed to achieve all their campaign promises, even though they could have. I suggest that they could not have. that it wasn't a bait and switch, but rather laying out an aspirational vision and then trying to achieve as much of that vision as reality allows for given the many needs and competing interests that co-exist in the world at any given time.
> pandering to an imaginary moderate is not nearly as effective as being really exciting to your base
The takeaway should be there is no one size fits all.
Under Biden, donors pushed climate and identity politics that don’t work outside far-left Democrat strongholds. Then Kamala clumsily tried finding a centre in a multidimensional policy space which may not have a definable centre.
Mamdani won New York. But “moderates,” i.e. politicians who spoke to economic populism and don’t get distracted by the base, kept Pennsylvania, Virginia and New Jersey. If we want to control national politics, we have to concede that West Virginia and Arizona voters don’t care about the same things as folks in Manhattan and San Francisco. That’s okay. We can embrace that diversity. But it also means we have to respect it and cut out the name calling because a promising candidate on the other side of the country doesn’t embrace your pet issue or identity language.
(Obama campaigned for Mamdani and Spannberger and Prop 50.)
> If we want to control national politics, we have to concede that West Virginia and Arizona voters don’t care about the same things as folks in Manhattan and San Francisco. That’s okay. We can embrace that diversity. But it also means we have to respect it and cut out the name calling because a promising candidate on the other side of the country doesn’t embrace your pet issue or identity language.
Singapore is an odd country. The only country, to my knowledge, that had independence thrust upon it without its consent. Extremely prosperous compared to its neighbors. An autocratic, single party state where the government is so popular that they need to rig their elections against themselves to get dissenting voices. One of the most militarized countries (#3 by military spending per capita) in the world, yet their military has barely been used.
What would you even call their socioeconomic system? They're not exactly doing neoliberal capitalism, their government is far too involved for that. They're not socialist, they've got free enterprise galore. The autocracy+militarization+heavily meddled with big business thing most resembles fascist states, but without the typical racist scapegoating (on the contrary, they've put a frankly inordinate amount of effort into preventing racial infighting).
In most countries "The country also passed a new law earlier this year that would allow the police to control the bank accounts of individuals who they suspect to be scam targets and limit what transactions they can do." would probably set off alarm bells, but it does seem like business as usual in Singapore.
>that they need to rig their elections against themselves to get dissenting voices
I don't believe this is true. If you're talking about Non-Constituency Members of Parliament, they are consolation prizes given to best losers, and there are many things they cannot vote on. Moreover, the ruling party almost never lifts the party whip, i.e. members of the party CANNOT vote against the party line (without being kicked out of the party, which results in them being kicked out of parliament). In other words, since the ruling party already has a majority, any opposing votes literally do not matter.
If you aren't talking about the NCMP scheme, then I do not know what you're talking about, as the ruling party does institute policies that are beneficial for the incumbent party.
That's really interesting, because the Disney comparison could only be considered positive, and the death penalty thing is strictly speaking a fact and public knowledge.
They are famous for having a lot of rules, but the instances where they really go wild are when someone has been particularly egregious.
For the most part it is just insanely materialistic as the main downside.
Most of the "harsh" rules make a tremendous amount of sense when you actually go there. Yeah, gum and spitting are illegal, and that is a good thing in a city as crowded as that with a significant population from countries where spitting is customary. Take an overnight train in China, and you will come to discover that you too appreciate a place where people can't just hork one up at will.
To put it into perspective, SG is one of the rare tier 1 cities where you can get a Michelin meal from a street vendor (literally), after engaging the services of a prostitute, and drinking a beer in public. It isn't nearly as uptight as an HOA.
If you haven't, go read "The Singapore Story" https://annas-archive.org/md5/6578558e0416e264a39da0448003ec... If you're bored, skip to the Japanese invasion Chapter and then read on. Many unique things happened in Singapore to make Singapore, Singapore.
No freedom of press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, government owns/operates roughly ⅓ of the economy that features many state monopolies, the PAP maintains a gerrymandered control over the electorate, criticizing the government lands you in court for defamation and conveniently bankrupts can't run for parliament.
Singapore is many things but not none of what you've written.
Singaporeans have insanely high quality of life and high pride in their system and people. They have an immense number of negative freedoms that the average person across the world could only dream of: freedom from violence, freedom from the devastating effects of drug addiction on families and society, freedom from poverty, freedom from corruption, freedom from instability. For the average person looking to raise a family, build a quality life, and just live well, Singapore is the perfect social contract. Don't like it? They have the most powerful or second most powerful passport in the world and can move anywhere else they see fit, yet they see their country as the best place they could be
Singaporeans have chosen economic security and social authoritarianism over the freedoms we enjoy in the West. That's their choice.
A powerful passport doesn't mean they can move anywhere to live permanently and if they choose to become a citizen of the country they do move to then they will lose their Singaporean citizenship.
My point is they see themselves as having more freedoms than the west does in places that matter to their daily life: freedom from poverty, violent crime, the devastating effects of drugs on families, social chaos, and corruption. To Singaporeans, these are real freedoms. They’d much rather have that quality of life than live in homeless-infested cities with drugs where they can at least criticize the government.
I don’t agree with that assessment at all. I’m free to criticise my government in the UK in any way I wish to. I would have no such freedom in Singapore.
The proscribing of Palestine Action as a 'terrorist group" is an absolute farce but that doesn't prevent you criticising the governments position on Palestine.
> What would you even call their socioeconomic system?
China economically functions similarly to Singapore, with long documented connections and explicit emulation. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping already began this and hundreds of thousands of Chinese officials and leaders were trained there and in industrial parks with the explicit goal of knowledge sharing with the dream of "planting 1000 Singapores". [0, 1, 2, 3]
> fascist states, but without the typical racist scapegoating
Tangential, but Hitler added racism; Mussolini, Salazar, Franco/de Rivera (who used large Arab and Berber forces fighting the Republicans in Spain) etc. had none of that (until Hitler forced Mussolini's hand in 1938). Brazilian integralists and many other fascisms also weren't racially based.
I'm not defending any of those people. Mussolini was a monster who used gas in Ethiopia and many other things, yes. But that wasn't the topic. Fascist Italy didn't do "racist scapegoating" and blame internal problems on people of other races.
Then deliver the news and have constructive discussions.
For what it's worth is well accepted among most fascism historians that racism, at least in the sense of adopting racial laws and such came late, and mostly as a byproduct of the German alliance.
As for what did Italy do itself before that, if you're referring to the wars in Africa, that has nothing to do with fascism, and the two biggest colonial powers at the time were both very sane democracies.
As best I understand it fascism originally described a sort of reverse socialism, I mean realistically it was socialist, it was after the same end goals as socialist policy, but it achieved them in the opposite manner, Where socialism seeks to balance corporate power usually by increased regulation and control of the corporations which has the side effect of incorporating them into the state. fascism seeks to balance state power by having corporations run the state. Which is the same end result, the corporations are incorporated into the state.
But any way you swing it fascism did not stand for that very long and now days usually is intended to mean a police or military state. Or more often because nobody knows what fascism is but everyone knows that it is objectively bad it is what you call your political opponent. case closed, argument won.
You can't have any authoritarian government labeled as fascist if:
- it lacks the reactionary qualities of fascism: ideological rejections of liberal democracy, rationalism, and it's equal distance from capitalism and socialism.
- it lacks the revolutionary qualities: the centrality of the creation of a new man, the overthrowing of institutions through total mobilization (not just military, but the entire society)
- it lacks the expansionist, colonialist, ethnic-and-cultural focuses of fascisms
Under this light, there is one, and only one other government that chased the same revolutionary and reactionary ideologies, nazi Germany, with a distant second one being imperial Japan.
Spain, Chile, Argentina, Portugal are (very, very) distant thirds.
And even the distant thirds often lack the fascist qualities:
- Pinochet's came from a coup, not from a movement. It had none of the revolutionary or reactionary qualities of fascism.
- Spain's Franco outright rejected overt fascism starting already since ww2 and purged its own party from fascist elements, instead embracing a more classical combination of nationalism-monarchy-religion authoritarian regime.
- Argentina's Peronism allowed both for elections, dissent and lacked any expansionist or totalitarian ambitions.
- Salazar's Portugal outright refused mass-mobilization and the revolutionary dynamism of fascism. It exalted obedience and order, not conquest and transformation.
> But any way you swing it fascism did not stand for that very long
It absolutely did, from start to the end of the regimes in all of Italy, Germany and Japan.
That has nothing to do with fascism as you may not be aware but Italy started fighting colonial wars well before WW1 and the other hard on colonialists were all democracies.
And this is why I can't take anyone's fascism definition seriously. Those definitions are contradictory, and include and exclude governments that don't deserve it. Especially when they try to imply that X = fascist = bad guy. If I heard about Umberto Eco one more time!!
> An autocratic, single party state where the government is so popular that they need to rig their elections against themselves to get dissenting voices.
It's not a single party state. Over 1/3rd of Singaporeans vote for the non-PAP candidates.
The reason you find it odd is because you really can't find another country that the citizen have such a high trust towards the government and let the government do (almost) anything they wanted, yet the government doesn't abuse this power (mostly, at least) and continue focus on long term benefits of the country (rather than short term gains because the political party need to survive the next election in few years time)
> One of the most militarized countries (#3 by military spending per capita) in the world, yet their military has barely been used.
Ther reason is quite simple: Singapore is a very small country and it is very easily to be invaded. The high military spending is more of a deterent.
> What would you even call their socioeconomic system?
It is very much a free market capitalism with some state intervention, similar to many other countries. If anything, I would say Singapore is more free market than many western countries due to the fact that the government is very pro-business as the country is heavily rely on foreign businesses to survive.
Hmm, a clean, safe, prosperous country with world class education, top medical facilities, a technocratic highly competent government, reasonable taxes, and a place that people like to come for vacation…I can see how this would offend people
> What would you even call their socioeconomic system? They're not exactly doing neoliberal capitalism, their government is far too involved for that. They're not socialist, they've got free enterprise galore. The autocracy+militarization+heavily meddled with big business thing most resembles fascist states
It's just State Capitalism, isn't it? Like China. A market-based economy with free enterprise, but no illusions of egalitarianism or democracy, enables the state to step in and manage and direct the market with effective regulation. In a democracy the state can manage this for a time, but eventually a private entity or group of entities leverages their power to influence law and co-opt democratic power, so the market starts steering its own regulation and you end up with fascism as a means of population control or a Russia-style cleptocratic oligarchy. We have not yet figured out how to sustain democracy + capitalism, if it's even possible.
I worry that most will see the rise of countries like Singapore and China and the relative decline of the US/EU and conclude that democracy is a failed project all together.
I'm not saying democracy is a failed project all together, but something that has been on my mind a lot recently is that democracy is quite inefficient - where I'm from anyway (New Zealand). We are a small country, with general elections every four years. So most of the decisions our government takes a less bold, and optimized for short term interests and to get the next cycle vote. And when we have had times a government has made plans for a large infrastructure project, a successive government will come in and undo all of that planning.
For example, Auckland, our major economic hub, doesn't even have proper public transportation, and now citizens are battling with issues commuting to and from work.
I think part of Singapore's success has been it's ability to make bold decisions and see it through without worrying about short term election cycles.
You're pinning a people problem on democracy. If the people of New Zealand are happy being a little out of the way island that is a nice place for a holiday then that is what they'll be. If they want to be as economically prosperous as Singapore then they have to argue it out and get a critical mass of people to decide that they want to be wealthier in a take-concrete-actions sort of way. They can do that if they want and they don't need long term government projects to achieve it. There aren't that many people on the islands, it is a pretty homogeneous place and they don't need any help coordinating themselves.
You can come up with a government that does less well at giving people what they want (surprisingly easy to do) but the obvious downside of that is people will be getting less of what they want. For example I have little doubt New Zealanders would be incensed if government spending dropped to Singaporian levels.
But most New Zealander's aren't happy with the way things are. That's the point. That's why I used public transport as an example. Most working New Zealander's are unhappy about the public transport system, and always compare it to other major cities (Sydney, London, etc) and how we massively fall short. But the times where a government has tried to carry out the major work, it either gets reversed when a successive govt takes over, or the cost is too high for it to be palatable to decrease spending elsewhere to fund it.
You may say, well, democracy brings in the next government, and they're carrying out the policies that they campaigned for. But my point isn't that democracy is failing, it's the mechanisms. The 4 year term means even governments that do think a massive public transport overhaul is needed won't do it because cutting costs elsewhere to fund it will lead to losing the next term.
So I do partially agree with you in that it is ultimately a people problem. But short election cycles shape how those people's preferences are expressed and acted upon.
> The 4 year term means even governments that do think a massive public transport overhaul is needed won't do it because cutting costs elsewhere to fund it will lead to losing the next term.
Good? The point of democracy is for the government to do things that there is a consensus that it ought. No consensus, no action. If people would not vote for the policy then they government shouldn't do it.
You're describing a situation where most New Zealanders seem to be happy with the status quo. If they're going to vote out a government that spends money on public transport then the right thing for the government to do is not start tilting at expensive windmills. The issue with a place as small as New Zealand is that democracy just does a pretty good job of implementing the policies that most people want. The smaller the polity, the more the failures of the polity are just a reflection of its own desires. Election cycle length doesn't change that, it takes ideological change and persuasion.
China does have illusions of egalitarianism, though. They don't call themselves the "Communist" party without reason. And enterprise, to my understanding, is much, much freer in Singapore than it is in China.
> What would you even call their socioeconomic system? They're not exactly doing neoliberal capitalism, their government is far too involved for that. They're not socialist, they've got free enterprise galore.
What you’re describing is state capitalism, which is largely what the economic system is in China, Russia, and to some degree in the US. It’s where the government intervenes in the economy and controls critical corporations and industries
> "The country also passed a new law earlier this year that would allow the police to control the bank accounts of individuals who they suspect to be scam targets and limit what transactions they can do."
This is crazy to me. How far are we willing to go in terms of restricting freedoms for safety?
But this is just part of how Singapore is different than America and Europe. China has even stricter controls in terms of limiting what individuals can do with their bank accounts (you can't transfer money to non-Chinese-citizens at all!).
Western countries put enormous value on personal liberty — America probably the most so, but even EU countries are extremely liberal in a liberty sense compared to historical norms, and even compared to some well-functioning economies today like China and Singapore. It's interesting, since I think the idea of personal liberty is so deeply engrained in many of our consciousnesses that we couldn't conceive of living like that. But... plenty of people do, and they're happy about it.
Plenty of people seem to be quite supportive of the idea that visa holders (ie not citizens), or simply brown people, should NOT be allowed to criticize the standing president, so I don't know that the idea of personal liberty is as strong as I believed it was growing up.
you can't transfer money to non-Chinese-citizens at all!
that's not true. you just have to document and explain the transfer, if it is a foreign bank account. if it is a local one then the citizenship of the account holder does not even matter.
Western countries put enormous value on personal liberty
in everyday life the limits on personal liberty in china are hardly noticeable. and they are contrasted with safety even when walking through dark neighborhoods at 3am in the morning.
A democratically elected government is demanding to see papers on the street, and this is celebrated by millions, so your claim about putting "enormous value on personal liberty" has been proven false.
It’s practically a one party state, no? And I’ve heard lots of stories of protesters getting disappeared after the police arrest them. Easy to say these things.
They are a one party state, but not for lack of trying. It just turns out that turning a country from a fishing village to a world-class economy in a couple decades buys you a lot of good will from the voters.
a one party state is not the problem. you don't need multiple parties to allow multiple opinions and dissent. all they would need to do is to allow dissenting votes within the party (which, as another commenter noted, the don't, so that's hardly lack of trying), and allow everyone to join the party without requiring any allegiance to party rules that go beyond allegiance to the country itself.
china could do the same btw. china also, as far as i heard, does allow dissent within the party.
I did indeed have exactly these sorts of things in mind - but I should have spent more time iterating on my comment, the end result possibly being not to post any comment at all, because it didn't end up coming out as intended. I'll refer you to my other reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818568
The erosion of freedom is everyone's problem. Normalizing government control over personal bank accounts is a dangerous precedent. Today it's scam prevention, tomorrow it's freezing accounts of political opponents.
Thank you for this good response to my shit comment. It was intended to make some point along these lines, but, reading it again, it completely didn't.
What definition of "sufficiently transformative" doesn't include "a book about wizards" by some process being used to make "a machine that spits out text"? A magazine publisher has a more legitimate claim against the person making a ransom letter: at least the fonts are copied verbatim.
There are legitimate arguments to be made about whether or not AI training should be allowed, but it should take the form of new legislation, not wild reinterpretations of copyright law. Copyright law is already overreaching, just imagine how goddawful companies could be if they're given more power to screw you for ever having interacted with their "creative works".
We did have that. In some EU countries, during the cassette tape and Sony Walkman era, private individuals were allowed to make around 5 copies for friends from a legitimate source.
Companies were not allowed to make 5 trillion copies.
FOSS code can absolutely be stolen, if it's usage is in violation of the contract that it is shared under. In the case of the GPL, that means granting your users the same freedoms you were granted, which last I checked "Open"AI absolutely is not doing.
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