Slansitartop

This new American Samoan bank is explicitly modeled after the Bank of North Dakota, and the OP goes quite a bit into its benefits.

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-...)

It talks about what makes a good team, how powerful they can be, and also gives some insight on team dysfunction.

> Forcing your enemy to invest heavily in such key sectors is pretty stupid. Eventually, one way or another, Chinese will master the state-of-the-art. A few good examples here - LCD industry, weapons.

Not if your enemy has a habit of reverse engineering and copying everything they buy.

I recall that China was has a competition for foreign companies to sell them attack helicopters. They had trials and evaluations, and settled on a South African one. You'd assume they made a big order, right? Wrong. They placed an order for a single copy, which the South African company wisely declined.

I can't seem to find a source for the above story, but I think I read it in Wired maybe 5-10 years ago.

> China today is about Gilded Age-type capitalism with a strain of collectivism running through it.

From what I gather, this is unfortunately true.

> The Chinese Communist Party functions the same way Chinese government has functioned for thousands of years. Anyone can join, if he can pass the necessary tests. Passing tests to gain a coveted spot in the government has been a national priority since before Confucius's day, 2.5 millennia ago, and continues to be today.

Nah. I don't think you have to pass any tests. You get into the party if you or your parents have the right connections or are willing to bribe the right people.

> China does not have legally enshrined freedom of speech. But at a societal level, the 'real' freedom of speech is greater than what I've experienced in America. In America, you must very carefully watch your words, lest you offend any of a number of easily offended groups.

China doesn't have "real" freedom of speech because you can voice your personal prejudices with fewer social repercussions. China is literally throwing defense lawyers in jail because they have the temerity to defend their clients against the government prosecutors! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusa... There is no "real" freedom of speech in China in any way.

Try to organize a protest march against Xi Jinping in China and let me know if you still think that "the 'real' freedom of speech is greater in China."

>> Maybe communism vs freedom?

> That’s a false dichotomy. China is ostensibly commmunist but free market is alive and well (with heavy doses of state directed influence, but so as in other western countries, witness the military industrial complex)

"Freedom" does not mean only the "free market." China is certainly against many things Westerners would consider necessary for freedom:

> Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society.

> These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader. The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...

The Chinese communist party literally opposed to constitutional democracy (meaning checks on its power), human rights and accurate, nonpartisan history.

> China isn't some totalitarian dictatorship that some of the west seem to think they are.

You do realize that they're closer to being a dictatorship now than they've been for decades? Xi has purged most of his rivals and has recently abolished term limits for his positions, so he could rule indefinitely.

> I'm still wondering why there should be an economic, political or commercial conflict between China and the rest of the world esp. US. Such conflicts are wasteful with when we all should work together on common goals - space exploration, fighting against diseases, climate change etc.

I know! The US should just resign itself to being a provider or raw materials to the Chinese party-state, so we can focus on China achieving those glorious common goals!

China is rising to fight common perils such as "'Western constitutional democracy'; others included promoting 'universal values' of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation." (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...)

More seriously now: your perspective is embarrassingly naive, and forgets, many, many significant areas of difference between the US and China. China's leadership, now, is committed to am authoritarian, autocratic path. No amount of progress in "space exploration" is worth throwing support behind that kind of government.

> Still, if Oxford disagrees with me about the dictionary then it is probably me who is abusing language. ;)

I'd say so. Esoteric personal definitions for established terms, even if they make a lot of sense to you, don't typically lead to productive discussions. It's probably best not to wade into one, correcting people, unless you actually understand the vocabulary.

> Theology is not present in universities, religious studies is. Theology is taught in special schools, because it fundamentally does not work the same way as other studies

Your comment demonstrates a profound ignorance of what you claim to be talking about. Theology was one of the most prestigious subjects taught in the original medieval universities (many of which are the most prestigious contemporary ones, e.g. Oxford), and continues to be taught in them today.

Theology's existence in universities is easy verify: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listin...

> Her position was that eyes on the street was the key to safety in urban areas.

I'm sure that's true. However, the unbelievable part was the influence you ascribe to yourself. I do not believe that you, personally, set in motion a chain of events "wherever [you] live" that "lowers crime" and causes "healthier plant life."

> In the years I have lived without a car, my example of walking everywhere has tended to popularize walking wherever I lived. (Yes, even when I was homeless.) After seeing an uptick in walking, you could see visible evidence of improved air quality, such as healthier plant life in the area.

> Crime also went down. In the apartment complex where I gave up my car, the cops stopped staking out the entrance on weekend evenings. In another city, helicopter manhunts and similar police activity trended down.

This is a pretty fantastic, and frankly unbelievable claim.

> private military companies...are very effective, for profit, and much less costly than the regular army.

[citation needed] My understanding is that they are more expensive than uniformed soldiers.

> R&D doesn't happen in non-profit government corporations either (atleast not largely). Most R&D comes from the manufacturers where the state (or relevant institution) buys the drugs from.

IIRC, the research typically comes from state-funded academics, and the development comes from the manufacturers.

> The difference is that shareholders lose something (the value of their shares) when they drain a company of its assets.

Not if they sell before the shit hits the fan.

> In general, I don't think I want the government to be in the business of stamping out the best deal that individuals have available.

That's interesting framing. What if the "best deal that individuals have available" is objectively bad for them, exploitative, or one more step down in a "race to the bottom"?

IIRC, The Grapes of Wrath described several "best deal[s] that individuals [had] available."

That's not a bad thing IMHO. I think the world could do with fewer underpaid jobs with no advancement opportunities.

Edit: Looks like some founders looking to create underpaid jobs with no advancement opportunities found my comment /s.

Except this CEO has an engineering/development background, and I'd expect him to be deeply familiar with the criticisms on his company.

Or maybe just spend more time with aides trying to grasp the technical issues?

I'm going to send some letters to my Senators and Representative asking them to work closely with the EFF, EPIC, etc. to formulate any regulation on this, rather than Facebook itself.

> Frankly I think the community will hate it but because it’s really hard to move millions of individual communities, Reddit likely won’t lose too many users.

Is that really true? Didn't Reddit get big because Digg made some ill-advised changes and its userbase picked up and moved en masse to Reddit?

> But I'm finding it more and more the case where mods feel the need to heavily regulate conversations/posting preemptively based on arbitrary personal worldview on what is 'good' content for the subreddit, instead of coming in to help when there's actual problems and situations where downvoting simply isn't enough.

That seems like a fair description of Metafilter as well, which is a poster child of "moderation that works" in some quarters. At some point the moderation drifted to shepherding the conversation in particular directions, though that may be to appease users who'd cause problems if it went any other way.

I agree. The momentum seems to be focused on Facebook mainly because they played it too fast and loose for too long. But many of the issues that apply to Facebook apply to Google as well, but it just hasn't provided as much reason for this level of scrutiny.

> I'm trying to think of what it is, exactly, that Facebook has a monopoly on. The nearest I can come up with is: Facebook has a monopoly on Facebook users.

Perhaps Facebook could be thought of as a monopoly because 1) it has no clear, direct competitors, and 2) it's taken action to buy up anything that could become one [1]?

[1] successfully with Instagram and WhatsApp, and attempted with SnapChat

> The followup question would be: how can that be broken up?

It could be divested of Instagram and WhatsApp, for starters. I think its core facebook.com could also be split up in a way to increase competition further: randomly divide its users between multiple successor networks with a mandate to provide an open API for inter-operation.

> Facebook will be irrelevant in a generation or less. Even if Facebook manages to leverage the network effect of its alternative subsidiaries, there will always be the treadmill of evolving trends, and there’s not such thing as one true mode of electronic social interaction.

Maybe so, but Facebook has shown a willingness to spend the money to acquire control of those evolving trends to maintain its dominance (see: Instagram, Whatsapp, and the failed attempt to buy Snapchat).

At a minimum I think it should be divested of Instagram and WhatsApp.

Looks like this post was buried... currently top on http://hckrnews.com/ but completely missing from the front page (https://news.ycombinator.com/).

> Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) asked whether Facebook had any major competitors. Zuckerberg tried to explain that the company competes across different categories related to Facebook's several main functions—as a tech giant, against Google, as a social media site, against Twitter, and so on—which led Graham to fret about Facebook being a monopoly and thus incapable of self-regulation.

IIRC, Graham had a good point. At his point, Facebook has no real competitors that offer an equivalent service.

To continue the analogy from the question: Zuck's dodge was a lot like a monopolist automaker trying to pass off Sony as a competitor because they both sell products with AM/FM radios.

> so their foreign workforce would not reflect the political views of SV nor the US.

However, at a minimum, the Facebook employees setting the polices those foreign workers follow will be in both the US and SV, so you can't assume their actions will be aloof from American politics.

Isn't this a two day hearing? Maybe they can consult with their aides who actually understand this and pick at the bad answers tomorrow.

>> Mark Zuckerberg does not believe he has a monopoly.

> I tend to agree with him. Facebook just happens to be the most popular Internet social network, right now

And it will remain the most popular one as long as it's allowed to continue buy the up and coming ones. People are fleeing Facebook for Instagram.

> Are there are job offers on Facebook? (That's a genuine question; I don't have an account.)

IIRC, they're trying to become the blue collar linkedin.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/28/facebook-job-posts/

> It's an important discussion but his response would just make FB seem way worse on that specific issue than highlighting how the entire ad network ecosystem works.

Any legislation that comes out of this hearing wouldn't apply only to Facebook. Facebook admitting the extent of its tracking could help clean up the "entire ad network ecosystem."