For a layman's introduction to how (pardon the hyperbole) soul-crushingly difficult this problem is, have a look at this amateur attempt to process language inputted by players into a video game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff6V1yFafW4
> Once a country has a nuclear bomb or two, there is not much other governments can do to stop it from making more, says Ilan Goldenberg, a former head of the Iran team at the Pentagon. Plenty of states want such capabilities.
You may not agree with it, but I don't think the disbelief is warranted. There may be other less pure motivations but there is a pretty simple moral case - proliferation will all lead to an increased likelihood of nuclear war
- because more states have them. Increasing risk proportionately (?).
- because more unstable/nefarious states have them, which are more likely to use them. This is of course somewhat debateable, but nevertheless plenty of people believe this and they're not flatearthists.
Taking an entitlement point of view just seems to be missing the point. It does however explain why these other states want them and resent the US/the West.
> proliferation will all lead to an increased likelihood of nuclear war
Again, the unstated implication is that the US has a moral right to shepherd the rest of the world to the correct moral conclusion to this situation. The rest of the world is just too damn ignorant to figure out how to not murder everyone with nukes, so the US has to have the hard job of controlling the nuclear stockpiles of the world. It's tough having that moral high ground, but someone's got to do it.
The fact of the matter is that knowledge cannot be suppressed. The ability to create and operate nuclear weapons is not something that is going to be a controlled secrete for very long - if it is at all. The current policy of the US asserting its power over the rest of the world is only going to ensure that when this knowledge is common, it will most certainly be used to ensure the end of the US power.
There are a few issues with your assumption that, and this is coming from an immigrant of former USSR.
1. It's not the nation-states that posses nuclear weapons that are the most dangerous, it is a possibility of an extremist group getting nuclear weapons. Countries has something to fear, a small criminal/terrorist organization does not.
2. US and Russia has similar nuclear stockpiles, how come economic distribution is different between the two? Nuclear weapons does not make you a "super-power", economy does.
Example: Germany has no nuclear weapons yet are an economic power.
It occurs to me that there are (crude) parallels between guns and atomic weapons. It seems inconsistent to be in favor of gun control (because too many people are proving to be irresponsible with them), but against nuclear weapons control (because surely those people will be responsible, right?)
But why are we not at zero? Because there is some kind of value in possessing nuclear weapons. There were so many nuclear weapons that it didn't really hurt to get rid of a lot of them, the really meaningful steps are getting rid of the last hundred, the last ten and of course the last one. So as long as the nuclear powers keep a couple of them they keep most of the value of being a nuclear power while denying that value to all other countries seeking this power. The USA could really strengthen their position by just getting rid of all its nuclear weapons. And even then they would still be in a better position because there is still the knowledge to build new ones.
What is wrong with acquiring nuclear weapons is that it increases the threat of nuclear war which nobody wants. This applies to both US and non-US states. Non-US states acquiring nuclear weapons is as bad as US acquiring new nuclear weapons.
Hmm, China and Russia are not what most people would consider US allies and Russia has roughly the same number as the US (~46% of world's stockpile) and the US has opposed proliferation to other allies I would question your reasoning to the 'unstated implication'.
It isn't brazen arrogance. Limiting the number of countries that have nuclear weapons is a clear (though not explicitly stated) foreign policy goal. The U.S. wants to preserve the current balance of power, and prevent big wars that could disrupt its interests in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Keeping one state from getting nukes and forcing other neighboring states to do the same, or raising tensions like has happened between India and Pakistan fits right into that goal. So does stationing troops in Germany, Japan, Korea, and keeping a fleet ready in the Middle East. And it's not really about ultimatums, as much as using every tool it can to change the cost/benefit analysis of nukes to keep most countries from going for them. No one wants to be the next North Korea, and that's one big reason why the embargo against Iran helped to bring them to the negotiating table.
The U.S. policy on Israel has probably done more to irritate other states than the nuclear policy as alot of states hate Israel, but most don't care as much about getting nuclear weapons. Japan and a number of other big countries could get them if they wanted. OTOH, a number of countries "hate" the U.S. but wouldn't want to take over the cost of playing policeman all the time, and overall like the stability policy brings.
> ...The problem isn't that Iran (et al) pursues nuclear weapons. The problem is that they lied to the international community to get assistance from others in developing them...
That's only technically correct. Iran signed on to the NPT under the Shah. The post revolutionary government never signed or ratified the treaty, so saying 'they' lied when signing up for it is a somewhat contorted interpretation of event. Yes they inherited treaty obligations from the Shah's government, and the international community hold them to those treaties according to international law, but it's quite possible the post-revolutionary government don't quite see the moral dimensions of the situation the way you do.
So you are implying that if Iran had handed in the correct forms everybody would be okay with them building nuclear weapons, STUXNET would not have happened and so on?
If you consider the miserable schmuck who barely gets by in his job by playing games to be "successful in life," you're... well, you shouldn't.
Find something you ENJOY doing with your time 40+ hours a week, and do THAT. That is the person who has won at life.
What value does the cheater actually gain? Almost nothing.
I mean, if that job is the only job he can possibly do to survive, and he is genuinely incapable of doing it properly (because doing it properly would, in practice, give him much more actual job security), he has gained a value... but that is a very false hypothetical.
On other discussion boards, I'd assume you were trolling. There is enough good faith on HN that I'll reply honestly.
> miserable schmuck
> barely gets by in his job
People who are miserable schmucks barely getting by in their jobs are the very antithesis of the manipulative human I described above. A manipulative person is usually the director of sales. A manipulative person is someone who spends 20-30 hours in the office at the most, and the rest of it with his/her family or vacationing.
You need to understand that manipulation of human beings isn't a character flaw, or something done for its own sake. It is done with a laser-focus on the results. Either you have manipulated the dev/ops team to work unreasonable hours to meet a promise to a major client that will net you alone a 20k benefit at the end of the month or ... you are going to be "just" the sales guy.
People like "us" here on HN are cannon fodder for people who operate at this level. Manipulation, persuasion, sales, negotiation - people who excel at this eat people who "ENJOY" their 40hr jobs.
I - I'm writing honestly here. It's difficult for me to believe you are not trolling. It's a very thin line for me to believe you are writing honestly here.
> cheater actually gain? Almost nothing.
The ability to demand a salary equivalent and easily surpassing that of a 20+ year engineer for ... the ability to sell things? Do you realize this human has no academic expertise whatsoever? They are PAID to manipulate and persuade.
You can call that "cheating". You can find it detestable. You can cry about it in eloquent and persuasive language as you have attempted to do above.
I sincerely do not mean this as an insult but: either you will adapt to the fact that 'success = manipulation' in life, or you will become one of the deluded schmucks in a dead end job because your skills with rails/js are obsolete in 20 years. The ability to manipulate people has infinite job security, and infinite earning potential.
The sales folks I know are all very hard workers who often get yelled at for flaws in the software that the engineers didn't care much about. They have an overall view of the product that many engineers should but don't have. They travel a lot additionally to their actual work time which is much bigger than 20 or 30 hours. Also, I have seen engineers being as much guilty of feature creep, if not more than sales. Sales usually want the feature they need for their current customer - fair game (product management must prioritize for the greater good), and they would like the features to be implemented well.
Of course their job doesn't scale that well, but they are still very important for major contracts.
Maybe if your sales team is not working this way, you should consider a new employer, the same way many are advocating when the engineering team is broken. Product management, engineering, marketing and sales should work together.
Yep. Geeks really need to appreciate that sales, marketing, etc. are special skills, every bit as much as understanding computers is, and you need these people every bit as much as they need you.
They are actually much more difficult, as are all soft skills that are poorly codifiable. Learning to code is much easier than learning to sell, if only because you can do it alone in a basement with a PC and a book. The reason we engineers often don't get this is because under "natural conditions" more people without special training possess these skills (which means they're widely applicable in everyday life) and almost nobody has to reinvent computer science to survive.
> Either you have manipulated the dev/ops team to work unreasonable hours to meet a promise to a major client that will net you alone a 20k benefit at the end of the month or ... you are going to be "just" the sales guy.
That is a failure on the dev/ops teamlead though, in my book. Outside of a technical emergency, teams shouldn't do overtime and their leads should make that happen.
If the work is too much, additional people are required. Otherwise or if no other people are acquired, the work gets done as fast as it gets done and that's apparently sufficient.
(And yes, I am aware of the abhorrent 'culture' of startups that engineers and workers are hired for N hours and expected to work for 2*N hours at least to be 'loyal' to the company)
"People who are miserable schmucks barely getting by in their jobs are the very antithesis of the manipulative human I described above"
In three sentences following a several screens of article? Perhaps we will be discussing that?
Manipulative (and skilled) director of sales is good for him. But that wasn't the point.
Manipulative (while skilless) software developer is miserable unless he is able to move into management and do it quick, before he is uncovered and booted. That's what we learned from the article.
Remember these days cheating is called 'Smart Work'! People who work hard are considered fools, who inevitably do all the work for some one who can exploit their work to his/her benefit. In our society financial worth is the sole measure of success, and unless you get caught doing something illegal the more manipulative you are, the more you are considered smart.
Unfortunately if you take a real hard look at it, much of that is true. I know great programmers who do great work, only to find some one at the top levels take all the credit, and make the programmer look like a replaceable cog in the wheel. Fat bonuses, promotions, foreign travel, big pay slips et al are taken for things like 'nurturing innovation', 'demonstration of leadership' which is basically making somebody else to the job, while not moving a finger towards the goal yourself, then just blanket claiming the credit for the all work and in the meanwhile making it look like it would have been impossible for anything to get done in their absence.
There is an entire mass populace of people that makes fortunes doing things this way. And such people as I said are considered 'smart'.
In many ways I feel Ayn Rand said was very right. The progress of the world depends on a select few prime movers, then there is always a crowd which makes it big by merely begging, cheating, leeching, stealing and sycophancy.
It's pretty common for these 'cheaters' to become promoted and get positions with higher pay and power, while people that are technically competent but are not good at self-promotion don't and have to deal with being managed by these incompetent people.
"Success" is such a nebulous term that it's silly to consider the manipulator who enjoys "gaming the system" to be less successful than a worker who enjoys being productive. To assume the person playing games is struggling to stay afloat is to misread the entire workplace environment that allows and rewards manipulating behavior.
Sadly, middle management in large companies is full of miserable schmucks like this. They tend to get promoted, have pretty good salaries and rather small work-time.
It is sad, because good middle management tend to make huge difference. It is exactly the position where these do the most damage.
Moreover, would the meditation participants behave compassionately in other situations? A waiting room forms an implicit assumption that the present humans will have further interaction. What of compassion shown to stranger where the subject can be reasonably expected to assume a lack of interaction after the place?
Still further: what of the gender bias? A forty person study seems hardly likely to account for the gender bias inherent in compassionate activities. I would suspect that a male would be more inclined to give up his seat to an attractive female than any other, even regardless of the circumstances (broken foot, lack of chairs, etc.)
This "study" warrants some careful reading.
>how utterly incompetent the local military is no matter how much time we put into attempting to train them. Somehow in the US we're able to take (often poor) 17/18 year olds, and in 10 weeks of BCT (Basic) and then in 3 week to 2 years of Advanced Individual Training (AIT) we're able to create pretty damn disciplined soldiers
A country's military is a reflection of and limited by the society that spawns it. The USA can keep disciplined and ethical soldiers because it has never suffered civil unrest, never been invaded, enjoys prosperity, freedom, public law and justice. No such thing can be said of Afghanistan or Iraq.
Moreover - the "10 weeks of BCT" is not "just" "10 weeks of BCT". There is a logistics and supply train several tho-- million pages long that creates those "just" 10 weeks.
Consider the fact that humans are recruited. Recruiters need to be trained, fed, paid, and have offices. That costs money. Afghanistan has no money.
Consider the fact that young men need to be transported from and to BCT: this requires roads free of IEDs, requires fuel for trucks, favourable economic conditions to produce or import buses.
Consider the fact that a certain percentage of all military trainees quit before completing that training. This is accounted for and expected: there are 300 million humans in the USA and this is acceptable losses.
Consider the fact that abiding by the laws of a nation and strict adherence to authority is something these "17/18" year olds have done for two decades by the time their military training is over. It is ingrained into their psyche to follow the law from the earliest age, in the most gentle of methods: by the witnessing of safety and prosperity of Americans abiding by the law.
Consider an Afghani youth: what is ignrained into them is an invsion by Russia and now invasion by America. How confident in justice do you think they are? How inclined are they to respect authority? How confortable are they submitting to a national government?
A country's military is fundamentally a reflection of the society it spawns. Afghanistan is a failed state in every respect, for the last several decades, and as such it cannot muster a professional military despite the efforts of the US-led coalition.
Toward the end of the doc, it digs a bit more into the 'why', which include many of your points.
I thought a while about the perspective of an Afghani youth vs those views of an American youth. Afghan youth probably realizes even more than the American one that they are simply pawns in the system and no one outside their families cares for them. The Afghani youth are likely illiterate by most standards, and it sounds like the soldiers keep absolutely terrible records accordingly. As much as we trash the American education system (which is flawed), we at least have a pretty decent baseline for education to create soldiers that can read/write/math.
Whereas the American youth probably thinks that they are fighting for their country and doing great good around the world, I'm not entirely sure that the Afghan youth would think of it that way. At best, they are fighting for a paycheck, a gun, and some temporary protection.
As you point out, the basic supply chain of infrastructure is lacking there. We've given them the tools such as solar panels (which they feature in the doc), but if something messes up they have no idea how to fix them. Corruption isn't a bad thing, its being smarter and probably closer to survival than anything. The motivation to stay and fight in a dangerous situation is exceedingly low; whereas an American soldier can at least hope for a memorial, benefits to their spouse, and honors if they are killed in action, there is certainly none of that for the Afghan youth.
I guess to top that off, we're all left holding the question of why we're over there at all. It didn't really make that much sense at first (didn't we learn from Vietnam?), and it makes even less sense now. Nationbuilding doesn't work. Never has, never will.
While the American army might be mostly disciplined and ethical, but there have been notable and terrible exceptions to this. The repercussions of these colossal lapses have been to further alienate a skeptical population of an occupied country. If your invading with a overriding mission statement that claims the moral high ground, scrutiny is going to be intense - the occupiers have been found wanting.
I wouldn't go so far as to say "nobody." There can be a small number of people that genuinely care about you. Most people won't. But that's what makes that small number of people special.
RapGenius is also a big factor in the meritocratic rise of quality hip-hop. A track like Kendrick Lamar's Keisha's Song[1] would have been inaccessible and quickly discarded by a human like myself had it not been for the RapGenius page[2] for that track.
Can HNers recommend a good personal finance management software solution?
I'd like something that connects to my bank account and allows me to keep track of incoming vs outgoing money.
Ideally, I'd like to tag every outgoing dollar as belonging to one of several labels, things like "groceries", "rent", etc.
I'm sure something like this must exist - anyone have a decent recommendation?
I found that the automated solutions never kept me on track, so I started tracking every penny with Ledger[1], a command line accounting program. I've written extensively about how I use it and the software I've written around it at my blog[2]
I used to use GNUCash religiously, but it was a lot of busy work. I'm sure if I put more thought into it, I could have automated just about everything (it imports from a lot of formats and can be extended with scheme). The "tagging" came in the form of every transaction coming from one account and going to another "account" which were really categories like rent and groceries.
I would recommend against buying this on steam. Buy it direct from the developers, it's DRM free. Yes, updates, blah blah blah, but launching steam is physically painful. You don't want that in the way of working on your budget.
>My favorite writers get to the point quickly and effectively.
It's not so simple. If the reader is interested in comprehending a large amount of technical or objective information quickly, then yes, by all means, start with the point, hold no cards above the table, and get to it.
But even this article demonstrates that sometimes, a different approach is appropriate. "When I was a 25 year old editor" -- what the hell is a 25-year old doing being an editor of a paper? What kind of a paper is this anyway?
That - strikes my interest. That makes me want to continue reading. It draws me in. This is why I read - to shed the dust of everyday life - to be drawn in and whisked away to a fantasy world much more exciting than my own life.
The way to start a chunk of text is to be keenly aware of who your audience is, and what they want. And, equally, the way to begin reading a chunk of text is to either adapt to the the mold of the intended audience or simply reject the writing. It's not valid to say that starting a book in a coy, crafty, inviting way is somehow illegitimate because it doesn't get to the point right away. Some people prefer and enjoy that type of opening.
takeoff, landing and cruise are nicely handled by autopilot.
But I do not want to be on a plane with remote pilot.
If the plane has a technical problem (which occurs very often, even if passengers are not aware of most of them), I want the pilot to do his best to save his life.
well, the liability is still there. but, the operator on the ground can stay clear headed. far less adrenaline rushing through you.
also do not forget that a lot of catastrophes are happening due to pilot error. see the air france crash off of brazil. inexperienced co-pilot pulled the stick through a stall.
smoke in the cockpit and other shit does not impair an operator. you can have 15 operators rotate in and out of a flight - but only the pilots you have onboard. one medical issue with them and flight is over. operator? send him/her home.
Is it possible to ensure a reliable connection to the plane, even when things go wrong?
Or are there some physical limiting factors, like electromagnetic disturbances that could cut the link?
Indeed, but the specification for unmanned planes carrying 300+ people will probably be much harsher than the spec for military drones... I think that first thing we will witness is freight done by huge drones.
Well, I have worked in nuclear domain and I am now working in aircraft domain. In nuclear, the machine has to protect from human mistakes. In aircraft, the human has to recover from machine failure. The way of thinking is completely opposite even if the purpose is the same: prevent accidents.
All the aviation (and space) experience is full of stories where unforeseen events have been well handled by creative humans in hopeless situations (maybe thanks to adrenaline). When you are remote, you are dependant of all the associated issues (communication failure, instruments failure), you may be obliged to follow procedures even if you think they are not adapted to the unforeseen circumstance. When you are in the plane, you can feel acceleration, see outside, and do the best to save your live.
Perhaps, I am wrong and your analogy with elevator is the correct one.
I think there is a long way before remote piloting. The first experiences with drones were far from crash proof.
actually pilots are being actively trained to ignore their senses and trust the instruments. instrument-rated pilots do exactly that (=all commercial pilots).
the human eyes do not work in fog, night, rain, etc. the human ear does not help at all in trying to distinguish between acceleration and climbing - both press you into your seat. the classic stall is exactly that, the pilot does not realize the angle of the plane.
you can see something similar at play in modern surgery. robotic instruments are taking over as they will not shake, ever. and surgeons can suddenly rotate in and out easily, even remotely. no one does LASIK manually...
and don't forget, the heroic anecdotes of human intervention might be strong survivor bias. maybe the problem would not have been there in the first place. or do not counterweigh all the fuck ups human pilots have caused.
