While this seems to be a battle of anecdotes, everyone I know who owns a smartphone uses it as their primary non-work email device, Facebook device, browsing device, LinkedIn device, etc. Many home personal computers no longer get turned on. It isn't a cell "phone" as much as it's simply a portal computing device.
It seems that HN now automatically applies a -1 to my posts. Add this to the cowardly slowban and I'm done with this site: The users have gotten stupider, the administrators are halfwits (I'm talking about you, dang), and its utility is gone.
If they're taking over Paypal accounts or stealing credit card numbers, it can be as simple as buying a lot of capacity at the various VPN provider. We know from the attack on Tor that they had many thousands of google compute instances, and the same may be true on the many, many other providers.
There are certain times of the day when thin content makes a strong showing on HN. Normally that isn't Friday @ 9am, though, so a little surprising to see this. Perhaps it appeals to the "be a better you!" noise that appears following each New Year.
As an unrelated aside, I'm currently suffering under a slow-ban, presumably imposed by dang. A slowban, for those who don't know, is when HN becomes oppressively slow. It is a comically cowardly, ignorant means of suppression, and it helps lead to an HN where a "write your goals" Facebook-style post tops HN.
Indeed, the post you replied to is not based in actual reality. The entire foundation of the adblock industry was an aggressive attention-war plied by the ad business, where soon webpages were an armed conflict of aggressive ads each imposing even more of a tax.
No one expected the cure to be worse than the disease. I couldn't believe it somewhat recently when I had to use an older laptop to find that simply running Chrome was completely untenable if ABP was installed.
Resource conservation is one of the primary justifications that people cite for why they block ads: many ads have high level of animation, auto-play videos, and so on, that it lags down the experience, especially when a single page has a number of them competing for your attention.
I would be surprised if many would agree with accepting a performance hit for what ostensibly is your browser doing much less.
The common narrative is that the US contrived the whole thing to justify an attack. This is how that unfortunate situation gets used to explain all sorts of nefarious conspiracies.
But they really, honestly had reason to believe that Iraq had WMDs (yes there were doubters and skeptics, and of course they get the bulk of the attention after the fact, but many actually believed it).
Aside from defectors and people trying to lie their way to something, add that Saddam himself wanted the world (particularly Iran) to think that the Iraq government had WMDs. Iraq believed that having WMDs was a good defense (a good example since then is North Korea), so they tried to play the middle ground where they could seem to have WMDs hidden away, and could act as if they had that ace in the hole, but they would play along with UN inspectors just enough to try to avoid an attack, adding just enough mystery to the whole thing that there were open doubts. Intelligence is tough when the person you're trying to prove is doing something is also trying to convince you that they're doing something.
The game of chicken didn't turn out well. But the recurring narrative that innocent Iraq was all along say no no no look where you want and the US invented the situation is historical revisionism.
I don't want to get into an argument here but calling it "historical revisionism" is absolutely disrespectful to the rest of the world.
Historical revisionism is polls showing a huge percentage of Americans still think Saddam was involved in 911.
USA had no business invading Iraq (nor practically any other country, for that matter) and using the excuse that "Saddam claimed he had them to look tough" in order to justify so many tragedies (mostly foreign but also American) is egregious.
When someone performs threat assessment they do it based on facts and not on posturing or they'd prosecute every internet troll out there.
ugh. I'm going to stop now because I'm pissed but I'm going to let you know that you're basically apologizing for crimes against humanity with what sounds like kinder garden excuses.
This isn't some lowbrow conspiracy site, and I don't expect the participants to have the sort of superficial, facile understanding of world events that you've so evidently demonstrated. If reality makes you "pissed", you should stick to gentler pastures that conform with your worldview.
I don't think the US should have invaded Iraq for purely pragmatic and financial reasons. That does nothing to change the actual complex, convoluted reality that led to the decisions that were made, and then the long and fruitless, but very intense, search for WMDs after the attack.
You know, we found WMDs after the attack. They were just the wrong ones.
President George W Bush led the US into war in Iraq on the back of assertions that Saddam Hussein had recently-built weapons of mass destruction, supplies that had only increased in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Yet all the chemical weapons found by soldiers were manufactured before 1991, the Times reported. They consisted largely of 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets – not designed for mass destruction, and produced in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.
According to the Times, the reports were embarrassing for the Pentagon because, in five of the six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been “designed in the US, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies”.
They are WMDs by certain standards of international law on the technicality of belonging to a certain class of chemical munitions. The shells they were packaged in were not designed for mass dispersal, however the classification is on the stuff inside the shells.
I'm sorry, acting emotionally offended by reality (and hurling spurious and misplaced claims like "kinder garden excuses") is the domain of the rank imbecile, and has absolutely no place on HN. This sounds hostile, but quite honestly you should take it as such - your reply is outrageous nonsense. It is a crime against any reasonable discourse.
And FWIW, "my government" is the Canadian government. But remarkably I have an ability to see the world as a complex gradient of shades, where there is no simple right, no simple wrong, and where people who pretend that they are should be mocked into silence.
In his evidence, the former Downing Street communications director rejected suggestions that he had been asked to "beef up" the dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and said its purpose had not been "to make a case for war".
But Major General Michael Laurie, who was the Ministry of Defence’s director general, intelligence collection, from 2002 to 2003, told the inquiry that making a case for war was “exactly its purpose”.
Maj Gen Laurie added that he and his colleagues were told that a previous intelligence dossier “did not make a strong enough case” and for months he was “under pressure to find intelligence that could reinforce the case” for war.
His evidence, which is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the Blair government’s official line on the dossier, will restart the row over whether Downing Street “sexed up” the September 2002 document to persuade the public and MPs that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was necessary.
Maj Gen Laurie’s comments were made in private last year and have only now been published by the inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, along with newly-declassified government memos and other evidence heard behind closed doors.
Firstly, what the British government did or didn't do is not really relevant to conversations about the US government.
Secondly, even if the UK government were at all relevant to this conversation, telling someone to "read up" when providing information that doesn't remotely contradict what they're replying to is terribly boorish behavior. Note that I didn't say that the government had compelling evidence -- I said that they read the tea leaves and got the impression that there were WMDs. Yes, this overriding belief will make intelligence that might be a collage of coincidental and second-hand things perhaps seem more consequential than they should have been. But regardless, the overarching belief was that Iraq legitimately had a WMD program and stockpiles, courtesy of the Saddam regime trying to convince everyone that such was exactly the case.
Firstly, what the British government did or didn't do is not really relevant to conversations about the US government.
If you actually think that regarding this subject, then you have not looked into the events leading up to the Iraq war at all, and you definitely should read up on it more.
Regarding the aluminum tubes: the DOE's analysis, which found that they probably weren't used to enrich uranium, was classified. However, the CIA's analysis that it probably was used to enrich uranium wasn't. The two findings were released within a day of each other, back in 2001.
Because the former was classified, when congress decided to go to war, they were not presented with the DOE's findings. Only the CIA's.
If not nefarious, what would you call this? Convenient?
This thread hilariously earned me a glorious slowban. Hacker News literally descends into yet another conspiracy site.
However why don't you contrast your comment with mine. Are you actually countering anything I've said?
No, you actually aren't. But somehow in these sorts of black/white discussions people think they can find one sort-of thing and then say "aha". Hardly.
Yes I am. You claimed there was no nefarious conspiracy. I claimed that hiding information from congress when they're deciding to go to war shows the opposite. I would label anyone doing the same when the consequences are so high (thousands of lives) as such.
Since you seem to disagree, I wanted to know how you classify the hiding and twisting of this, and other pieces, of information.
Also, you need to realize that not everyone viewed the administration in the same light as you apparently did back then. My peer group was split close to 25/25/50 on them being: lying bastards, well intentioned but full of shit, and justified. But we were only in our early 20s. Older people seemed to be more accepting of what they were saying.
I don't know what they were selling you in the US, but that's straight up untrue. UN Inspectors were repeatedly telling the Security Council that Iraq was complying with WMD regulations and that in a matter of months, they'd be able to verify if all claims were true.
As usual, incompetent American intelligence was used instead since it was convenient.
This is a neat turn-around. Historical revisionism. That's good.
I'm starting to realize that quite a few on HN actually have no idea what happened during this period (too young?), and at this point they're just going by what they read on Reddit.
Iraq's cat and mouse game with the UN, which was a condition of the ceasefire from GW I, had been going on for years. The UN had passed resolution after resolution authorizing force, any of which gave the US -- if they even decided that they wanted its mandate -- the legal right to remove Saddam. Yes, when it was apparent the US had had enough, Iraq started complying, but it was too late for the US administration. Tough, but this notion that it was all cooperation and the US just wanted a fight is pure absurdity, and has absolutely no basis in actual reality.
But it does appear in the black/white simplified story that so many tell.
I actually remember this very clearly. In fact, I questioned my own memory of this when I read your comment (since it was so clearly the opposite of what I remember) until I went back and had a look and it looks like I was right.
For what it's worth, it's entirely possible that we were just exposed to different media narratives at the time. My parents remember it the same way too. The news about the reports from Hans Blix and Mohamed AlBaradei saying Iraq was complying with the requests of inspectors after Resolution 1441. Colin Powell's so-called evidence. These were front-and-center in The Hindu in India and there were editorials about it all the time.
Certainly the idea that the doubters were few is not particularly convincing in the face of that.
EDIT: Ah, you edited your comment to contain more than just the first line after I began replying. FWIW, I don't think it's US-Evil Saddam-Good. It's obvious to me that people were questioning the degree to which US military action was justified.
Quoting Resolution 1441 is a bit disingenuous since from the very day the US decided to attack Iraq there were people saying that it did not justify military action. In fact, I recall that they fell back on using it as justification after it became clear that any resolution asking for war would not pass.
I tried in the Halton area (West of Toronto) and had about 40 things from a single individual in Hamilton who continually posted far right conspiracy type things. I suppose this is the issue with the network effect -- right now it looks pretty pathetic in this area.
But the idea is solid. The Internet went global, but really a lot of the activity now is making it local again.
I'm surprised there haven't been kickstarters for little robotic bug killers yet. The processors and sensors are getting powerful enough, and within the right power band, that the premise of having a stabby little anti-bug device (a small roomba that kills) is within reach.
Of course, then we'll make them larger. And larger. And eventually it will spell our doom.
>Of course, then we'll make them larger. And larger. And eventually it will spell our doom. //
I thought that we'd make them smaller and smaller ... and that will spell our doom.
Perhaps the bug killing squads of nanobots mutate - either by a human introduced [computer] virus or for a more ironic twist from a source that would normally be a DNA mutator (cosmic ray radiation say). The bugs will then hunt out not pathogens but something useful like human nerve cells or white blood cells. Caught in an international crisis - war or famine, you choose - humanity will have it's eyes off the ball until too late.
There must be Sci-Fi of this.
Aside: is there a rule akin to Rule 34, perhaps Rule 0100011, that says no matter how outlandish a distopian future scenario is that it is nonetheless already a feature in the plot of a Sci-Fi work?
The banking system functions largely on the choice, application and integration of technology, and banking is more of a technology business than just about any other. And let's be fair here - Schwab is not a bank, and even among investment firms is an outlier with the noted bad practices.
But you don't have to see proof, and it is no one's burden to convince you. The US is not trying to prosecute North Korea in court. This isn't an amendments issue. And despite the ridiculous recurring claims, the US is not using this as a context of war.
"NK which wants to be included in the investigation"
It is incredible that people are actually falling for this. North Korea said "let us in on the investigation or we will attack you". Who is going to say yes to this, even if one were so naive as to think the request were truthful (which it most certainly is not). It amazingly achieved its goal, however.
If this 'event' is used as a pretext for a field test/shakedown of the growing cyber arsenals[sic], i bet we are going to wish we asked for more proof.
It's going to suck if the internet becomes a state sponsored battleground. gods know we fight enough on the grounds of personal preference and loose affiliation.
Why do you decided if I need to see proof? The US is not yet trying to prosecute NK. Of course the US won't prosecute NK for hacking some servers, but it is actively swaying the general opinion on NK. (Not that it was that good anyway)
If anything this is a reason for the US to increase spending by the NSA and make a nation wide firewall. takes off tinfoil hat
The US shouldn't attempt to convince their citizens of anything before attacking another country?
I mean, Obama has straight up said that he plans to attack NK. At least to me that seems a very reasonable interpretation of the fuzzy political language of: "we'll have a response at a time, place and method of our choosing".
I don't dispute that NK comes off loopy. Or that a joint investigation seems unlikely. That doesn't automatically follow that the FBI report is faultless though.
I mean, Obama has straight up said that he plans to attack NK.
He said absolutely no such thing, and it is rather incredible if people think this. The US has warned that they will respond, which will end up being a complaint in the UN.
Just to be clear, North Korea regularly warns the US of nuclear annihilation, imminent attacks, and so on...and people think the thing that will put the US over the top is a minor Sony hack?
North Korea has a history of only threatening violence, but the United States has the history of following through. The last time the US said it would respond "at a time and place of its choosing", I believe it decided to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, did it not?
What honest person interprets "response" as anything but "attack"? Seriously?
I didn't mean to imply that there'd be a body count attached to the "response" BTW. That's (hopefully) far-fetched. But an attack in the same way that hacking some computers and releasing some embarrassing information is an "attack"? Absolutely.
Isn't that the entire point of the quote? (And yes, I reproduced Obama's words pretty faithfully I believe. They were playing on repeat on the radio.)
I mean, if you don't think "response" means "attack" in a gimmicky "cyber-warfare" way, what does it mean? A strongly worded letter?
If I run over my neighbor's cat, and he says to me: "I'll respond all right. At a time, place and method of my choosing." Any rational person would have to interpret that as an explicit threat of an impending attack.
Just because politically it may be weaseled out of does not mean it's in any way ambiguous in delivery or intended reception to Joe the Plumber.
