decebalus1

Not sure if it's the same thing here. The US didn't attempt to turn Afghanistan or Irak into a US state, have them fly the "Old Glory" and their kids recite the pledge of allegiance when school starts.

For people who don't know the context for this (like I did not), I think this helps: https://medium.com/ethereum-swarm/this-is-book-of-swarm-e7ba...

thanks!

Not sure if you're comment is condescending or I've asked the wrong question. Probably a bit of both. I did read the article but I was asking more along the lines of actual evidence. This being a new and highly publicized phenomenon, I'd expect this to be a goldmine for research clinicians so I'd expect quite a lot of chatter in the form of articles or case studies.

Just the fact that the government seems to bend over backwards to accept this Havana syndrome narrative while in the past being extra skeptical about all sorts of occupational hazards (like the Iraq burn pits or Agent Orange) is enough to make me super-extra skeptical that this condition being nothing other than some psychosomatic freak incident.

Funny enough, I posted 3 comments about this in the span of 8 minutes and Hacker News is saying 'You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.'. Tinfoil hat ON!

Evidence for damage found in the vestibular system found by independent clinicians?

Source for those statements? I've been following this since it appeared in the news cycles but I don't recall any evidence of physical damage. There were some inconclusive physical changes (keyword changes, not damage) but that doesn't really constitute as any form of proof that the condition is not psychosomatic.

> Pichai was asked, in a question that was highly rated by staffers on Google’s internal Dory system, why the company is “nickel-and-diming employees” by slashing travel and swag budgets at a time when “Google has record profits and huge cash reserves,” as it did coming out of the pandemic.

I find it hard to believe that workers of Google caliber can't fathom the golden rule of capitalism.

Nothing spells 'Care for customers' like pulling the plug and allowing 2 whole months to get their data out.

> So, it's not really a surprise that theyve declared open season on nuclear power plants.

So getting butthurt is an unsurprising justification for attacking nuclear power plants?

Don't store materiel inside the nuclear plant. Don't fire missiles from the nuclear plant. Don't use the nuclear plant for cover. Don't invade Ukraine. Problem solved.

I don't understand how any position Russia has in this context, matters at all. Just fucking go away. None of this would have happened if Russia didn't start a war of aggression against its neighbor.

Wait until you hear about Staff engineers.

> Why pay more when a machine can do the same cheaper ? Its pure capitalism.

Why work more when the pay is the same? Its pure capitalism.

> Do you really think Russia will ever pay reperations?

Yes. One way or another, Russia will pay. If only through discounted gas or indirectly after becoming China's puppet.

> Healthcare in the US is definitely not driven by the free market.

You're conflating 'capitalism' with 'free market'. You can have either without the other and OP was calling out 'capitalism' specifically.

It's 'Qui bono' or more accurately and less pretentious: 'who benefits'

Nothing spells 'success' like having to buy ammo from North Korea.

> colleagues quickly became disgruntled towards the person taking mat/pat leave because that meant more workload for them

That's not really a place you'd want to work anyway, as this reeks of both bad management and bad colleagues. Would the same colleagues be disgruntled toward that person if said person had a death in the family? I mean shit happens and management needs to step up with better planning and scaling down the workload to account for the time off of the employee. If colleagues are disgruntled towards the employee taking time off and not at management for making them work more, they're either assholes or idiots.

[Ben rushes up to Paul's room after Jelly throws a hit man off the balcony onto the wedding party]

Boss Paul Vitti : Hey, people get depressed, they jump. But that ain't my fault.

Dr. Ben Sobel : Oh, so you're telling me it was suicide?

Boss Paul Vitti : I don't know, he probably left a note. Jelly, did they find that note?

Jelly : [taking out a pen] Uh no, but they will in a minute.

Dr. Ben Sobel : Oh, and let me guess what it says? "Life is bullshit, I can't fucking take it no more! Signed, the Dead Guy."

Jelly : Hey, that's good, Doc.

Yes, because hiding information is definitely going to slow down the brain drain.

Cut the crap, paganel (lasa vrajeala). You're completely off topic and just wrong. The transition to the market economy for Romania was indeed painful in the 90s but that's primarily because the exact same communist apparatus was still leading the country and they held the reins on Romania's western connections. However, in the long run, I don't think I'm the only person to say it was successful and you can have a decent life in modern day Romania. Way better life than in Russia. And your attempt to blame Washington for how Romania's transition to capitalism unfolded in the 90s is just wrong.

> got sold to Western companies

I'm shaking my head to when reading such obtuse propaganda on hacker news.

> Nobody had asked my parents, or us, who were mere kids and teenagers back then, if we were agreeing to the sacrifices that they were going to impose on us.

They did. Through numerous elections, in which Iliescu and his cronies managed to build a state within a state. But of course, that's also Washington's fault.

> the government's goals are not necessarily aligned with your own.

as opposed to the private sector?

> But if the government is also providing the healthcare services "for free" to individuals, then there is an incentive to downplay testing for rare or expensive to treat diseases due to the cost/benefit ratio.

Which is what current private insurers often do. The government's incentives aren't just to cut costs and run more efficiently. It mostly cares about staying 'the government' and having people live long enough to pay taxes. I want to hear the same argument when you're talking about the government's incentives to be more cost effective when it comes to funding the armed forces.

I think the gist of it is that as an individual, in theory, you have leverage over the government via your votes or representatives. You have none of that when dealing with the private sector. So in this case, if I'm bothered by what the government publicizes about diseases and such, I have several tools at my disposal to deal with it (FOIA requests to track down who's responsible, town halls, writing to the representatives, lobby, voting etc..). If a private company does it, what am I going to do? Write a bad review?

Fair enough.

Based on Zbigniew Brzezinski and Carl Friedrich, totalitarianism has 6 characteristics which makes it a particular extreme form of authoritarianism. The definitions relate to state level politics, so I agree it's a bit of a stretch to extrapolate it to how a modern corporation is run, but here we go:

- all-encompassing ideology

I think this pretty much rolls up to a core mission (which everyone needs to work on pushing forward. You also don't get to pick the core mission, it is a top-down approach) and what people call 'culture'. Some companies are more hardcore when it comes to enforcing and maintaining the culture and mission by hiring based on 'culture fit' and by weeding out renegades. This is also something often brought up during conflicts: 'what is our mission? what are we working towards?' and used in contexts when it's less appropriate. For example a company using stack ranking for employee performance, using the same philosophy when dealing with external vendors. I will not bring up other divisive aspects of corporate ideologies which cross boundaries into wedge politics. The ideology has a great way of self-enforcing, but having people police each other.

- a single party

Well, there are no parties per se in megacorp. Maybe factions? This doesn't really fit well here as there's no direct correspondence so I agree this would be a total stretch.

- a terroristic police

Well, not really. But the oppression is still there and you'd know if you ever crossed the line when it comes to compliance. Nobody is waking you up in the middle of the night to push you inside a black Volga car and execute you in a back alley. But someone can schedule a random meeting out of the blue to tell you that your services are no longer needed. The company will always put on a friendly face until shit hits the fan. I remember once I got an email from a department I didn't even knew existed that I'll be terminated by the end of the day if I didn't provide a photocopy of some document. This is a very successful approach as most people during regular work don't even know it exists. Also, hands up anyone who's been walked out with security after getting fired. I think it's also fair to remind everyone of how Facebook handles whistleblowers or how Amazon handles union efforts (they're even hiring Pinkertons. Pinkertons!!).

- a communications monopoly

Again, it's not like you're not free to read news. But I bet all company news discussed OFFICIALLY at work comes from one source and one source only. And with current events (say the company is going through something bad) you'll be notified about exactly what to say going forward relative to the events.

- a weapons monopoly

This doesn't really apply as weapons are off-topic when it comes to workplaces. BUT let's extrapolate it to trade tools/software/equipment. Except for when I was a contractor (and even then I had limits), I always had a list of 'approved' tools or list of stuff I was never ever supposed to use on premise (usually stuff from the competition).

- a centrally directed economy

This one is obvious. Nobody can deny that most companies use some form of central planning.

Now of course, there is a spectrum here. It's never binary and some states are taking it further to the extreme. For example dissidents can be just ousted from positions of power but still be able to live a normal life all the way to getting shot in the back of the head. That's why fascist Italy is different than Putin's Russia or North Korea under Jong-il or under Jong-un. Not all aspects of totalitarianism are enforced using violence. Some are enforced by social norms or by people explicitly drinking the kool-aid to have a better life. Believe it or not, some people actually want totalitarianism. This is why I'm saying that some comparisons may be more extreme.

I know and understand that 'totalitarianism' sends people directly into the violent oppression mindset. But oppression is not always violent and most of the times it doesn't even feel like oppression.

Is there something I'm missing? I think we don't have to go over authoritarianism as I see people agree on that and most had a problem with 'totalitarianism' as a term.

> You're the one claiming "totalitarian". But when someone brings in real totalitarian, you say "hey, that's too extreme".

I was referring to the comparison itself to be extreme. There's a difference.

Can you define your view on what totalitarianism means? And please don't use countries as examples. I think there's a disconnect here and people are arguing semantics and language accuracy while missing the original point, which still stands.

There's no point in getting defensive, that's not my favorite book and nobody expects you or anyone to actually read it, let alone before replying. It's just a reference to the ideas I mentioned, put in a more academic format.

> maybe you genuinely think that working at Google and living in Egypt under President Mubarak is a good comparison

Nice way of picking two extremes to make a point. Also, not sure what you're comparing here. Nobody is gonna kill you at Google. You can get fired though (which is more or less like some sort of corporate execution or something) and if you're at the wrong end of a recession you're gonna have a bad time.

Fine then, it seems I struck a nerve here. How about authoritarian? Is that better? And maybe Russia instead of Egypt. Would that be more palatable?

I did live under a totalitarian government myself. And to be honest, I see a lot of the behaviors I grew up with, in the current corporate culture (at least in the US). Do I live a better life? Sure, of course, there's no doubt about it. But that's solely because I submit to that culture. But I will be kicked off the gravy train at the first sign of dissent (same as under said dictatorship).

Do you have any say in employee compensation?

Do you have any say in employee perks/benefits? I mean a real say, not preferences which are allowed by some benevolent analyst from HR.

If the CEO goes rogue and the company is private, can rank-and-file employees oust them?

Can you vote out your manager or your manager's manager? Is there even a process in place to do that?

Do you follow orders from management? What happens if you don't?

What happens if you disobey your manager in a public setting?

Can you get fired without notice? How about laid off?

Can you get fired because you said something?

Do you have a dresscode? What would happen to your employment if you dressed like a clown in customer meetings?

Do you risk getting fired if you start talking about unionizing?

Do you get fired if you sue the company?

Can you bring a gun to work?

Does your employee handbook say something about how your run your personal life? Does your employer have rights over IP created outside of working hours? Can you get fired over a DUI outside of company hours? Can you get fired for smoking cigarettes in your free time?

etc..

Some literature for you: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32889465-private-governm...

I find it funny when people who spend most of their waking hours under a de facto totalitarian leadership (the workspace) expect that companies extend the same rights to their userbase as the US constitution.

I agree with you. Avid Stephenson fan, I read all of his works but 'The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.' was the last novel I actually enjoyed..

Unfortunately that's not what he did. I also can't FOIA the documents he took, can I?

Wow, didn't know John Bolton was on hackernews!

Ugh.. I personally hate these lists. Absolutely no value added, nobody is going to remember these, they're gonna learn them the hard way and most importantly, if they don't work directly with the timekeeping infrastructure, probably never. And if they do work on the timekeeping infra, they likely know all of this.

Sure, you might run into some quirk at some point in your career but they will end up being just another weird war story.

I worked directly with NTP. The nitty-gritty details and the leap second smears and all of that, for an absolutely huge network and I find this list patronizing, smug and worthless. It's some sort of intellectual masturbation or just another instance of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335165.