Apparently only when china does it. Imagine the hypocritical hysteria if this was about the chinese government. Not just from the social media propagandists but also our elected leaders - many of them in congress supporting this "aid".
The internet was a government project. Silicon Valley is a government creation. The internet nor silicon valley exists without government funding. Government investment can be a good thing as long as they allow space for the private sector.
The EU should also look into subsidizing their tech stack ( hardware and software ) like they did with Airbus. Hopefully india will follow soon after and eventually ASEAN and africa. The more competition and diversity of options, the better.
Killing old.reddit.com would probably be their final Digg moment for me. Maybe they'll manage to keep the bulk of their users and keep some husk of it's former self going for a long time, but I'm gone. I suspect many others will join. The quality of content has been plummeting for years anyway.
Yes the discourse and content quality is quite poor, so much so that I quit using the site completely in the last few months. To be honest I don't miss it at all, so...
> The area they ruled (from England to Syria and Egypt) had never been under a unified rule before the Romans.
To be fair, you can say that about almost every empire - mongol, greek, british, ottoman, persian, babylonian, etc. I doubt the mongol empire stretching from vietnam to korea and moscow to baghdad will ever be unified under a single empire.
> If you consider how many different countries and cultures occupy that space today
To be fair, most of the countries and cultures that occupy that space today weren't ruled by the romans. Rome never ruled england as england came into existence after the anglo-saxons conquered roman britannia. As for syria and egypt, the romans never ruled the arabs who dominate the region.
> it really puts the magnitude of their empire into perspective.
Rather than the magnitude, I think the legacy of the roman empire is what separates it from others.
> and letting private companies suppress speech, which is what happens in America.
Considering that private companies are now becoming more powerful than many governments/countries, maybe this is something we should take another look at.
> When the government does it, you can't express that idea anywhere.
Can't you argue that you can always move to another country, just like you can use another company?
> When private companies do it, you can still express those ideas somewhere else.
Depends on the private company and its scale/monopolistic position.
Full context: "English started out as German. Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, really is a foreign language, and requires serious study. I don't think an anglophone can learn to read it with mere tricks."
> Can we not do better than this?
Can you just stop copying and pasting things out of context?
> But this is like saying that "Spanish started out as French" or "Romanian started out as Italian"
It's more like saying spanish started as latin given the context.
> English is descendended from the Anglo-Saxon dialects
German and English started from a common ancestor yes. About at least 2500 years ago, probably. But English did not start out as German any more than German started out as English. They are cousins. The ancestor they share in common is/was not called German. By anybody.
"Full context: "English started out as German. Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, really is a foreign language, and requires serious study. I don't think an anglophone can learn to read it with mere tricks."
> Did you even read what I wrote?
Yes, I even responded on a point by point basis. Did you read what I wrote?
> German and English started from a common ancestor yes
It is clear the author was talking about german as in germanic. Hence why he referred to old english and anglo-saxon. Nobody is saying that english came from the modern german language.
You sneakily copied one sentence out of context to argue nonsense - that the author claimed english came from modern german. You built up a silly straw man and you got called out.
Once again. The author wasn't claiming the modern english language came from modern german. But the language that english descended from was german. Just like the anglo-saxon people were german. As in germanic. Okay?
It's not my fault you have a "sneaky" reading where somehow "German" = "Germanic". Don't accuse me of being the sneaky one. You're distorting what I wrote _and_ what the original article author wrote. That's not in the article at all. And yes, I read the full context.
So you either misunderstand what Germanic is, or you're choosing to read the author's sentence substituting "Germanic" for German, or you're being deliberately hostile.
... Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, socrates is mortal... but not all men are socrates.
"English started out as German. Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, really is a foreign language, and requires serious study. I don't think an anglophone can learn to read it with mere tricks."
I can only copy and paste the full context so many times...
> So you either misunderstand what Germanic is, or you're choosing to read the author's sentence substituting "Germanic" for German, or you're being deliberately hostile.
No you are being intentionally obtuse. You knew fully what the author meant but you intentionally cherrypicked one sentence and misrepresented his entire point.
The author CLEARLY stated :
"English started out as German. Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, really is a foreign language, and requires serious study. I don't think an anglophone can learn to read it with mere tricks."
> ... Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, socrates is mortal... but not all men are socrates.
You might want to look up what a syllogism is.
The easiest way to end your nonsense. Lets end it once and for all. So you are claiming that the author is saying that english came from the modern german language right?
"English started out as German. Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, really is a foreign language, and requires serious study. I don't think an anglophone can learn to read it with mere tricks."
To you, the author is saying english came from the modern german language with the statements above? Of course not. You are so full of shit, I don't know why you keep pushing your nonsense. Of course you won't answer but go off on a tangent. People can see through your nonsense. Have a nice day.
I'll just say it one more time: the common ancestor of English and modern German was never and is still not called German. By anybody. And I did not claim that the author claimed that English came from modern German. I took issue with his statement that "English started out as German". Because it didn't. It started out as _a_ Germanic (or Teutonic, or whatever) language. Not a thing called German.
The word German means something else. Something different than the author implies, and what you imply as well.
Why does this matter? Because this history is actually fascinating and beautiful for both German and English. And the common ancestry is a lovely story in and of itself. And in many ways a reader could be led astray by thinking of English as a form of German when it is in fact its own lineage... many words have entirely different forms and meanings, and in fact English preserves things that were changed entirely in continental Germanic and vice versa.
Not to mention the influence of Old Norse, Norman French, and Brittonic languages on English as well. It's a lovely and poetic mix.
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines, such as with flamewar and personal attacks, and ignoring our requests to stop.
Please stop creating accounts to break HN's rules with. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
> Solar panels are much cheaper than when the film was made. It's this reduction in cost that's driving the energy disruption, not increase in efficiency (although that helps).
Solar is a nonfactor in energy. It counts for absolutely nothing.
And what reference did you provide? Other than your supposed ability to predict the future?
> Four years is FOREVER in the energy business now.
It isn't. Also, considering solar subsidies have collapsed throughout the world, especially since 2016, it's far more likely solar has lost ground. Going from insignificant to worthless. But that's probably why you haven't posted any sources right? So you should be thanking me for using 2016 data because solar has taken a beating since 2016.
> PV costs fell by a factor of 5 in the last decade, you know.
5 times nothing is still nothing. You know.
Solar was a nonfactor in 2016. Solar is a nonfactor today. Solar will be a nonfactor in the future. Mindless zealotry won't change the facts on the ground.
Global installed PV capacity has more than doubled since 2016, and now accounts for 3% of total electricity consumption.
> It isn't
It obviously is. PV costs fell by a factor of 5 in a decade; that's about a factor of 2 in four years. You would have us believe that dropping the cost of PV by a factor of ~2 would make no difference. But this is clearly not true. We are seeing record low PV bids from all over the world. The most recent eye opener was from Abu Dhabi, where are 22 km^2 project was bid to deliver unsubsidized energy at $0.0135/kWh. This is many times cheaper than the power from the new nuclear plants being constructed in the Gulf region, and is perhaps the cheapest source of electrical energy on the planet.
You seem to be another person who doesn't understand how exponential growth works. Solar is 3% of world electric consumption now; we are just 5 doubling times away from dominance. That's 20 years at the current rate of doubling. With demonstrated experience curves that will drive the cost of PV energy below $0.01/kWh in much of the world.
Ultimately, to legitimately gaslight you, your cognitive failure is to assume that things can't change quickly, and that your prejudices from a few years ago remain valid, even as the facts that underpinned them have vanished.
> and in other ways the manifestations of lobotomy and morphine are similar enough to lead some researchers to describe the action of morphine (and some barbiturates) as ‘reversible pharmacological leucotomy [lobotomy]’.
Interesting. Wonder if they did brain scans on people taking morphine to see if the same areas were affected. If so, couldn't we narrow "mindfulness of pain" to that section of the brain?
Agreed. There are a fixed number of PhD spots. What sense is there to give that spot to a 66 year old senior rather than someone younger who will actually do something productive with the expertise and credentials?
I'm all for continued learning but can't that be done in a non-credentialed manner that doesn't disadvantage young people?
- There are a fixed number of funded PhD spots but there's really no limit to the number of PhD spots in a faculty. I don't know if this was the case but if you can fund your own PhD, very few universities will refuse your admission. Anyway, PhDs are extremely cheap labor - most of the research money is spent on materials/hardware and travel expenses for PIs.
- The vast majority of PhDs don't do anything productive with their research topic or work in their research field later on. Doing a PhD is about advancing human knowledge and a lot of personal growth - it has very little to do with productivity. The current trend is that you get burned out and sick of your research area and decide to do something totally different. There are very few areas where you do a PhD for credentials or to advance in your career.
The amount of possible PhD positions in a department is limited by the number of faculty, because each student needs a supervisor. A supervisor can only supervise so many students at once before he or she feels overworked, and each PhD student to supervise may distract from that scholar's own research.
Sure it's a finite number but it's not uncommon for a faculty member to have 5+ PhD students. It all depends on the number of post-docs or senior PhDs they have in the group. The major limiting factor is really money - if a faculty member gets a $5M grant, they will hire as many PhDs as they want or even get some faculty hire for the project.
Mate, most people live to grow old. What fulfillment in life would one have if many productive and/or desierable tasks were reserved for the young? Wouldn't it make the later years even harder for them?
For some reason, my comment seems to have come across to you with an unintended tone. I was only trying to gently urge you to consider that even the relatively old have some years of life left and we draw the line at different places for different things. For instance, at that age, it is practically impossible that someone can start studying medicine and become a surgeon. In the places where I have lived, there is a small window of time in one's youth where one can study to become a doctor. So, in those societies, they drew a line in a way where for some professions, they did indeed delineate like you suggest. However, in many places the Ph.D doesn't fall on the side of the line where you prefer. However, it is ultimately, just that people draw the line at different places and there will be no decision that will keep everyone happy. So, in this case, perhaps you and I can not come to an agreement given the brief exchange we have had. And with that, mate, I wish you a good day.
Is she a journalist or a social/political activist? Shouldn't she pretend to have a bit of objectivity and not become part of the news itself?
Twitter has been the greatest tool to expose the news industry and journalists for what they are. Propagandists and political activists with an agenda.
That said, I agree with those recommendations. I'll add one more. Police departments should almost exclusively hire from the communities they "serve" and/or require police officers to live in the community that they "serve".
The idea that the corporate press has ever been different is a myth. Do you really think the corporate press gave Reagan a fair shake? Do you know the history of the bull shit William Randolph Hearst pulled? It's always been like this. It's just before we didn't have social media where they could be called out on their bull shit in real time. Coaston is biased but she's open about that bias and makes a noticable effort to be fair to her opposition.
> Global warming skepticism is exactly the kind of thing that often occurs when people trust their own judgement more than that of subject matter experts.
Except that the "subject matter experts" have a horrible track record. Also, global warming proponents misrepresent the skepticism. Nobody is really questioning the warming of the earth. People are questioning how much man is responsible for it. After all, the "globe" has been warming for thousands of years before industrialization. There are "subject matter experts" who believe the warming is mostly a natural phenomenon. There are even fringe "subject matter experts" who believe the earth will cool. You aren't a cynic, you are just agenda driven.
> Want to get good medical advice? Find two highly regarded medical specialists and ask them independently for a diagnosis and treatment plan.
Where and which ones? The one's that say you don't need to wear masks or the one's that say you need to wear masks?
I won't bother with the rest. All you are saying is believe and trust authority. But the problem with that was a time when "experts" believed in global cooling, medical experts believed in blood letting, political experts believe in racism, financial experts believe in subprime loan derivatives, etc. Blindly believing authority also tends to cause a lot of problem. The problem with the "experts" in your list is that it has become so politicized and corporaticized that one has to be skeptical by default.
The internet was a government project. Silicon Valley is a government creation. The internet nor silicon valley exists without government funding. Government investment can be a good thing as long as they allow space for the private sector.
The EU should also look into subsidizing their tech stack ( hardware and software ) like they did with Airbus. Hopefully india will follow soon after and eventually ASEAN and africa. The more competition and diversity of options, the better.