The communist party has conspired to cover up worse, genocides perpetuated by their dictatorship for example. The people who claim it's an outlandish suggestion they might have covered up a lab leak are uninformed or CCP apologists.
It would not be in the least surprising if this was a lab leak, and it is no more "harmful" to speculate that it was than to speculate that it was a wild virus.
Anything less than the latest trend is worthy of condemnation. If we continue at this rate, today's advocates of "insect protein" will be cancelled in a decade.
The willingness to generalize about and castigate meat eaters is telling.
>pretty decent lives for the animals
There is a romanticized vision of nature which isn't entirely accurate. Consider animals in a state of nature. Most will die horrible deaths after suffering sickness or death. Humanely treated domestic animals live charmed lives in comparison. Their health is valued, protected by human incentives.
In this particular case I don't think the market is all that complex. People were valuing bitcoin on the assumption that other people would keep buying it at higher prices before they sell.
People didn't cut nearly half a trillion dollars from the value of bitcoin on the word of a person known for blurting out impulsive and weird things. He didn't reveal any deep new insights into this thing. What Musk said just spooked the herd, that's all.
Paying that much for a tech worker doesn't mean there is a shortage of them, it means FANG companies are gambling on "rockstars" to try get an edge.
Flood the market with very good but not exceptional workers, and the top salaries won't change much.
Flood the market with exceptional workers and it probably won't change much either, FANG will just be even more selective with their top salaries.
Top devs have a lot of bargaining power not because companies need some "X amount" of development work done but can't find anybody who will do it. They have bargaining power because those companies are competing against one another and they're hoping the next billion dollar idea will come from one of _their_ employees first.
If you aren't playing this kind of roulette, I don't understand why you would try to compete in the same job markets. You can get developers for far less. And yes that may mean moving elsewhere, SV is obviously heavily selecting for such developers (people who can get those salaries will tend to move there, those who can't will tend to be pushed out).
If you are playing in that space but you just can't afford to pay for its inputs then it doesn't automatically mean those inputs are in a state of shortage, sometimes it just means your business does not create enough value to to pay for said inputs. This is the market's way of telling you to fold. Capitalism is a harsh mistress.
> If you aren't playing this kind of roulette, I don't understand why you would try to compete in the same job markets.
Ever since Blockbuster failed dramatically, large brick and mortar company execs are worried that SV will take their market. And, for good reasons too, I'd say. Software is eating the world etc.
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do that, as you know. We're trying to have a different quality of discussion than what this sort of thing leads to. Please make your substantive points thoughtfully.
Ahh, you not only detached the subthread but also crippled my ability to reply. Your intentions to swiftly protect the feelings of your user base and shield them from difficult conversations is laudable, though misguided because you inadvertently left the "The “become COVID-19 carriers to own the libs” strategy kinda worked." comment up. Or is that what you mean by different quality of discussion?
It was certainly not my intention to start flamewars so I will make all endeavours to stop doing that (and stop beating my wife etc). From the votes and subsequent productive discussions in the thread you disconnected, it seems like a good number of users agreed with me, and we were able to shut down the conspiracy theory talk while leaving the door open to further discussion of the interesting parts (virus spreading between towns and cities). So I genuinely don't see the problem, but I can hold my nose and try to be gentler with conspiracy theorists if that would help.
Because I will continue to call out baseless conspiracy theorists and hateful / flamewar comments as I see them, while trying to be calm, measured, and proportionate in response. If calling out baseless and harmful conspiracy theories proves too much for fragile users or moderators to cope with, I'm more than happy to move along from your site, and leave you to your "different quality" discussions and conspiracy theories.
I rate limited your account, which is standard practice when an account has been posting too many low-quality comments too quickly. It hasn't crippled your ability to reply; it just means you need to wait a bit. We're happy to take rate limits off when people give us reason to believe that they've taken the intended spirit of the site to heart and will post fewer and more substantive comments in the future. That would be the opposite direction from things like "I will continue to call out" and so on—we're trying to avoid online callout/shaming culture, denunciatory rhetoric, and things like that, because they're so tedious.
But New Zealand not admitting tourists has little to do with whether in California "surrounding towns act as virus reservoirs for the large cities" and even less with there being a “become COVID-19 carriers to own the libs strategy".
Clearly I was not suggesting the concept of a virus reservoir was a conspiracy theory. I don't know if you were being deliberately obtuse, but it does not help the conversation.
The parent made 3 claims, increasingly improbable, with the last seeming to be a hateful conspiracy theory.
>> Except these surrounding towns act as virus reservoirs for the large cities.
The assertion is the towns acts as reservoirs for cities. Is that really true?
>> That limits the effectiveness of restrictions.
Is that really what limits the effectiveness of restrictions in cities?
>> The “become COVID-19 carriers to own the libs” strategy kinda worked.
It's pretty obvious this is the conspiracy theory I was talking about. The suggestion seems to be that conservatives in surrounding towns (but not those in the cities) had conspired to develop a biological warfare strategy based on becoming infected in towns and then traveling to infect nearby cities.
This is one of the most hateful, unhinged paranoid delusion I've ever read about COVID. But this kind of thing doesn't raise many eyebrows on sites like HN because people think it's plausible or even likely ("yes it must be those hateful angry racist divisive conspiracy-theory-believing conservatives who are always out to get us, clearly it's conservatives who are to blame for any and all political failings that occur in liberal-run areas").
This all said, there's a germ of truth in the unhinged paranoia - it's a bit like rolling coal. You heard of rolling coal? It's where people modify their trucks to make them emit toxic black smoke. It's bad for your engine. It's bad for your fuel economy. But, it's also bad for those pussy cyclists and eco-freaks who keep on going on about global warming.
There is a powerful current in politics across the west that is actively, self-destructively antagonistic towards anything an expert says - and it's not based on profound disbelief in the value of expertise, but rather a deep disaffection, a desire to tear down the whole edifice of culture that makes you feel small - and that has carried into coronavirus precautions, where the bogeyman is not the virus, but the intrusive, patronizing and sinister powers of 'public health', a perfect representation of the entire institutional culture that your average NRA member hates.
"Wild conspiracy theory"? Uh, what? It's exactly what happened where I live. At least half of our hospitalizations at peak were from neighboring areas that had no more capacity due to low or non-existent restrictions.
> That sounds like a pretty wild conspiracy theory.
The concept of viral reservoir seems to be pretty basic and well established concept in virology, both in terms of macrobiomes (i.e., populations) and in terms of microbiomes (i.e., microbiotic community in the gut).
A quick googling will show you a huge list of well-research introductions from reputable sources, if you're interested in the topic.
Come on. Did you honestly believe I was referring to the concept of a viral reservoir as a conspiracy theory? This kind of obstructive style of conversation is unhelpful and tiresome. Some other poster above already tried that shtick, you can read my reply to them.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Not really. Fabs don't become obsolete for 20-30 years because there is ample demand for processes that are decades old. Profit margins drop but by the time they drop significantly, the fab investment is generally paid off and it becomes a gravy train. AFAIK Intel's last plant to close was D2 in Santa Clara - it was built in 1989 and closed in 2009 after 30 years. Their earlier Chandler, AZ plant closed after 20 years.
Sure, oversimplification in my question I guess - the returns on older fabs don't go to zero, but their products fetch a margin that's a function of how close to bleeding edge the process is. But the question still stands.
(btw fab site lifecycles don't usually correspond 1:1 to fab equipment generations, they tend to get refitted, this was also the case in Intel's D2 which had an old process by the time of retirement but not 30 years old)
The big costs are the variable costs per chip though, which is why technology shrinks have delivered such great cost savings for the end product despite the fact that every shrink has required ever greater outlays in development costs and capex for the manufacturing plant. The saving in the variable costs are so large that they pay for all that and the price drops.
So even if you have entirely paid off an old fab or bought one outright for ~$0 at a fire sale, you probably won't be able to make DRAM at a hugely lower overall cost. Slightly lower, perhaps.
I could well be wrong, sorry I should not have tried to make such a strong statement I don't actually have much knowledge of recent technology nodes.
In your first link I'm struggling to see it demonstrate what you say. Actually that's more what I'm familiar with.
Obviously it's quite old though. The second link does seem to show the trend going to equipment costs and trending upward indeed. Although it doesn't seem very detailed, I suppose that first graph on the left on page 9 looks like mostly fixed costs in orange. Thanks for the link.
CMOS process scaling is running out of steam which is generally going to make performance/capacity/etc. improvements in things dependent on semiconductors increasingly difficult.
No, that is past, we need to do better. Tolerance has its places but sex and gender not being the same is not controversial any more. It's not like mass vs weight which is mostly of interest to physicist. We are talking about real people. Truly, there's no place for this any more. We need to do better. Tolerance is necessary to accept people not like us and but erasing their very existence by using certain words is not tolerance.
> the gender-reveal phenomenon pulls off a rousing counter-progressive two-for-one: weapons-grade reinforcement of oppressive gender norms (sorry, feminists!) and blunt-force refusal of the idea that sex assigned at birth does not necessarily equate with gender identity (sorry, trans-rights movement!).
I disagree. We need to do better with tolerance and acceptance.
Preaching these things when it benefits a favored point of view and then rejecting them when it comes to others is actually the definition of weaponizing, and it does more harm and causes everyone to be intolerant.
What exactly do you want me to accept? Transphobia? Make no mistake: when you confound sex and gender that's what you are fueling. One half of the USA is busy enacting transphobic laws, we must not fuel that agenda. We can not just accept
behavior singing "tolerance". That's not how this works. Tolerance means we respect every human being equally and it does not mean that any opinion denying that needs to be tolerated.
You can not just go around and redefine words especially when this tolerance hides transphobia. Again, it just doesn't work this way. These words have a meaning, a very specific meaning at that and I don't think transphobic dogwhistling is something worthy of tolerance. You know, sex, gender, same thing, we can mix it up, wink, wink? Even if you didn't intend it that way, even if you think it's still just ignorance/lack of knowledge, time is up for that. This is why I said the vernacular is now obsolete.
What made it obsolete? Obviously, the GOP did by declaring open season on trans people, especially by denying treatment to trans children. This is sheer evil that will lead to suicidal children -- they might as well just shoot them, same result, just less acceptable (although how much is an open question given how American society have normalized school shootings as well but now I really digress). These laws fit the very definition of genocide as defined by the convention. We can not stand for this. We need to fight back. Every day. Every sentence. Every word if need to be. We need to show that aside from a far right fringe, society stands with trans people. It's civil solidarity. And yes, I asked on /r/trumpsupporters what they think is the difference between society and just living next to each other and of course the reply is there's no difference. But there is. We do live in a society. We do care for the next person and if politicians want to erase we will not let that happen. We can not let that happen.
Do you have a workplace policy where people put in pronouns right in their chat name? We do that because we want to normalize that when you introduce yourself, your pronouns are a normal, everyday part of that.
Do I need to quote Niemöller ?
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
So we do speak out because we learned from history what happens when do not. Especially when all it takes is such a tiny thing as getting the words sex and gender right and using the pronouns a person prefers.
If someone uses the n-slur on a black person, are you just going to preach tolerance of their words or are you going to step up, use your white privilege (most of HN readers are white cis het males) and say "that's not okay"?
They elected an openly nazi person to the highest office of the United States and when he rightly got the boot, they attempted a coup to keep him in power. And one of their chief weapons indeed were -- as they called it -- alternative facts. Yeah, there is a certain part of society which does not want to be part of society and does use words and facts rather arbitrarily. Is this what you want me to accept? Because I will not.
I have not started this, I have not wanted this but if history calls us to task, answer we will. And again, right now, in here, we just need to make sure our speech is precise. Not more. It's a small act but it has serious weight.
One certainly can be tolerant of different people with different ideas, and one can practice what they preach about to.
Having a different personal definition of a word, or a different opinion or thought does not automatically make someone a -obic, or mean they are "coming for" others. Try to be inclusive and tolerant rather than hostile and divisive and uninclusive.
Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN, and especially not on classic flamewar topics. It does no good for anyone, and it destroys the curious conversation that this site is supposed to exist for.
Biodiversity is being decimated at an ever increasing rate, oceans are being stripped of life, many minerals will be mined out and become depleted and economically inaccessible within a generation or two, fresh water is running out, antibiotic resistance is increasing, long term chemicals are accumulating in the environment.
That's all before you even talk about greenhouse gasses.
This goes to all politicians and "experts" and journalists.
The slavish subservience to authority and desperate clamor to lick boot sickens me. I mean, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the gun running and drug smuggling and interventions in South and Central America, banking corruption and laundering, the subprime crash, the Panama Papers, Congressional insider trading, corporations paying no taxes while politicians clutch pearls and wring hands about how they're using legal loopholes so there's nothing they can do about it, intelligence agencies spying on congress and on citizens, fabrications of stories about collusion with Putin, the list is endless.
And yet again, like clockwork, once again the "experts" and "journalists" know what is best for us and once again the followers are all falling over themselves to prove their devotion by putting on their big shows of faith, and denouncing and bullying all the heretics and traitors who dare to ask questions.
I have to laugh if it wasn't so sad. For some stupid reason I had some hope, but after seeing it all play out again it seems like old Dick Cheney could come and start talking about Iran and WMDs or denounce the next Gaddafi, and Fox and the NYT and all those other "trusted experts" would duly start regurgitating their lines, and pretty soon everyone would fall in line and anyone who didn't want to go to war (read: send others to war) would be un-American traitors.
> The slavish subservience to authority and desperate clamor to lick boot sickens me.
Have you considered that the "desperate clamor" might just be a clamor to do the best thing ? And just how would we do that?
Your entire attitude seems to be predicated on the idea that nobody actually knows anything, there's no point listening to "experts" (even putting the quotes around the word is intended to be dismissive), and there's no way to spend time learning more about something.
I thoroughly reject that POV.
Look, you've provided a great list of terrible things that the US (and other) governments have done (though it's necessarily incomplete and mostly rather recent). But in the context of your point, so what?
What about the experts that know how to build bridges properly? What about the governmental policies that actually result in positive changes? What about the doctors, engineers, designers, architects, farmers who actually do have a better understanding of their fields than an average person?
I don't disagree with you about the lamentable actions of our government and the processes/structures that allow them to happen. But I reject the implication that this requires me to just be infinitely cynical about everything.
> Have you considered that the "desperate clamor" might just be a clamor to do the best thing ? And just how would we do that?
I have considered that, and rejected it.
I'm not talking about people who don't really know and genuinely get their information from whatever their TV or internet or friends tell them and they just go along with it but generally live and let live in the face of differing opinions.
I'm talking about the hateful bullying mobs going around attacking people, and the people and corporations who actually look into the information which is quite easy to see those "authorities" are hardly a good source of truth, yet they grovel down on their hands and knees to lick boot.
> Your entire attitude seems to be predicated on the idea that nobody actually knows anything, there's no point listening to "experts" (even putting the quotes around the word is intended to be dismissive), and there's no way to spend time learning more about something.
That's not my attitude.
> Look, you've provided a great list of terrible things that the US (and other) governments have done (though it's necessarily incomplete and mostly rather recent). But in the context of your point, so what?
The context of my point is that journalists, politicians, and other self-proclaimed "experts" are not. It is more the rule than the exception that they are self-interested corrupt liars and manipulators.
I'm not talking about, say, the scientist who develops climate models or the medical researcher developing vaccines. I'm not talking about actual experts.
> What about the experts that know how to build bridges properly? What about the governmental policies that actually result in positive changes? What about the doctors, engineers, designers, architects, farmers who actually do have a better understanding of their fields than an average person?
What about them? None of them are manipulating the populace into going to war, or drumming up their throngs of pathetic subservient bootlickers and brownshirts to attack and bully anybody who questions them. So I'm obviously not talking about them.
> I don't disagree with you about the lamentable actions of our government and the processes/structures that allow them to happen. But I reject the implication that this requires me to just be infinitely cynical about everything.
> So how do you distinguish between faux "experts" and actual experts?
It's not always easy, but in the case of COVID there were a lot of obvious shysters who were slavishly worshipped by the mob.
Opening your eyes and thinking for yourself, and not being desperately and pathetically subservient to "authority" or to mob mentality is a good start.
> Do you believe that people who write (long form articles, books) about a subject have nothing useful to say?
And politicians were encouraging people to go out in the streets and gather en masse to celebrate / protest / whatever, denouncing border controls as racism, etc. Putting positive patients into nursing homes ill equipped to cope with it. It was a huge clusterf...
It would not be in the least surprising if this was a lab leak, and it is no more "harmful" to speculate that it was than to speculate that it was a wild virus.