pdabbadabba

> Cryptographically signed to you.

That's a bit of an oversimplification that makes this sound more concerning than it is. Not that it's 100% un-concerning, but I suggest that anyone concerned about this read the linked docs. It really was designed to be quite privacy preserving, though it's obviously a difficult challenge in this context.

As an American, I also find this repulsive.

You seem to be confusing Chile and Argentina. Milei is president of Argentina, not Chile. The new president of Chile is José Kast. I suspect the substance of your comment is unaffected by this, however.

Agreed. I was disappointed at the overall lack of engineering content in this piece. Lots of general talk about how there were issues and that they were overcome. But what? And how? I feel like most of the content could apply to almost any project.

Because it will eat their world either way?

It is an important legal concept under the GDPR and other data governance frameworks.

The more I read this thread the more it boggles my mind. How is it not completely obvious that part of your job, as an employee, is to not make life more difficult for your manager? (The reverse, of course, is true as well.) Managers cost money and tend to be there for a reason. If an employee makes their manager's job harder, that is a bad thing for the company.

Of course, that's not to say that making their manager's job easier is their only responsibility, or that they should ways do what makes their manager's life easier at any margin. Bot those are things I never said in the first place.

I think this is right. Of course, the trade-off has always been there for all to see between "work" and "life," but greater ability to WFH has rightly cause people to reassess the sacrifices they are willing to make for their careers. I hope I've been clear that, while I think there are real reasons RTO is valuable, they are not necessarily decisive at every margin.

Of course, another side of this is that some people like their workplaces and like to social aspect of going into the office. Not everyone has to, of course, but it also takes a certain critical mass of people in the office in order for anyone to get those benefits. So, on a certain level, this is also just about competing preferences.

And you as someone I would never hire!

Though the truth is probably just that we're not seeing eye-to-eye because we're communicating through an imperfect medium that doesn't encourage a nuanced discussion.

The relationship is reciprocal. I lay the tracks so my supervisees can do their job (and, indeed, have a job to do!). They help me produce far more work for clients than I ever could myself.

That's not at all what I mean. What I mean is that I am responsible for the output of my team. If someone I am supervising does a bad job, is hard to communicate with, etc. it means that one way or another I have to do more work, which reduces the total output of my team. It can also lead to inferior service, angry clients, adverse outcomes, etc.

> we're not here to please you or make your job easier

I don't mean to be a jerk but ... if you are one of the people I manage, you literally are employed (at least in part) to make my job easier. That's not the only thing that matters -- which is why we (like many employers) do still allow some remote work. But making management more difficult is absolutely an impact that a rational workplace would take into account.

I'm not persuaded that's the only thing going on here, but I'm sure that is part of it. Nonetheless, I think this is why many employers pushed for RTO.

It's worse in the sense that a more senior person has to spend more time fixing it. I guess that's an opportunity in the sense that it allows a firm to bill more hours, but there is generally a reason we wanted that more junior person to do the work originally. (Client cost sensitivity, teal workloads, training, etc.)

I can't speak to your sector, but from the perspective in my management role (in law) the explanation is quite simple: managing remote workers is more difficult and less pleasant than managing workers in the office. I actually hate it. And even granting that remote and in-office workers are "productive" in the sense that they bill hours (though not even this seems true in my anecdotal experience), we find that people with less in-office time tend to have qualitatively worse performance. At least in my field, being in the office, spending time with your co-workers, and getting to know them has value.

Of course, other things have value too. Often, our folks who prefer to work from home do so because they have small children who they want to spend time with, more fully share parental responsibilities with their partner, etc. I'm glad that they have the opportunity to do that, but it does generally seem to come at some professional cost.

I guess I'm getting the dumb one too. I just got this response:

> Walk — it's only 50 meters, which is less than a minute on foot. Driving that distance to a car wash would also be a bit counterproductive, since you'd just be getting the car dirty again on the way there (even if only slightly). Lace up and stroll over!

True. But I did not ask about "pigeon" and "dove." I asked it about "pigeon" and "mourning dove" which are unambiguously different species. Different genuses, even. Zenaida macroura v. Columba livia.

Similarly, it insisted to me that a pigeon is the same thing as a mourning dove. Not true! But your case is even more egregious.

Then why do you think virtually all of the most successful tech startups are U.S. companies? (Excluding Asia, for the purposes of this discussion.) Is it just Silicon Valley network effects?

Here’s one: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/harvard-global-ranking...

Huh. None of that happened on either of my Lufthansa flights between Frankfurt and Berlin last week. YMMV, I guess.

> Try flying Lufthansa (or one of their half dozen subsidiaries created almost entirely to give worse service) anywhere inside of europe. Everything is a money grab and the service and boarding are terrible.

FWIW, I just took such a flight and didn't notice anything that compares unfavorably to a domestic U.S. airline. (To be clear, it certainly wasn't better either.) Is there anything specific you can point to?

> It very much is. No where else in life are people forced to mixed with the general unfiltered public.

I'm baffled by this. Many workplaces? Mass transit? Walking down the sidewalk? At a concert? Buying groceries? True, there don't all expose you to the full sweep of human existence at once but, in aggregate, it seems pretty similar to what you'd encounter at most public schools. What if they want a career in a hospital, or law enforcement, or social services, ... the list goes on.

You might hope that your child will live a privileged existence unbothered by the rabble, but it seems to me they need to be prepared for a future where they encounter all kinds of people. I'm sure this can be compatible with homeschooling but I can't see how it's not generally a disadvantage. (Though perhaps onerous clearly outweighed by other advantages, depending on the situation.)

The executive branch asserts that there is such a zone. But the truth is likely that many, if not all, 4th Amendment rights still apply in many situations within that zone. It's situation dependent, so it's difficult to make a sweeping generalization. But some of the executive branch's most aggressive claims and tactics, at least, may well not hold up in court.

I reread that old thread, and then skimmed the Penn State article (a bit quickly, I admit). I gotta say: I think you're overstating your case here. Certainly, the author of that article is skeptical about the 100-mile zone and makes plenty of good (and, IMO, obvious) points about why it is constitutionally suspect. But, to read your comments, you'd think that some important court somewhere has actually placed meaningful limits on immigration enforcement within that zone (outside the context of an actual border crossing). If so, I don't see where you're getting that. If that's actually in the article, could you tell us where?

To be fair, though, I think it is also true that the ACLU is too eager to talk about the "Constitution-Free Zone" as though it is fact. I also agree that people should not simply accept that the Constitution-Free Zone exists. It is definitely not that simple and what would otherwise be 4th Amendment violations should absolutely still be challenged even if they occur within the zone. There is still every opportunity for more good law on this.

Thanks. This is useful (in English translation):

> Russian factories are working at full speed, producing new tanks and repairing those that have been dusty for years," writes "Le Figaro". The French daily refers to its sources and data from independent study groups. On the other hand, experts also point to the fact that this year the losses of the Russians have decreased - this year it was only 200 tanks. According to the newspaper, this may be due to the fact that the participation of these vehicles in the fighting at the front has been reduced. This, in turn, is the result of greater use of drones.

This actually strikes me as fairly plausible: it suggests that Russia has decided that tanks are not ideally suited for the current drone war in Ukraine. So they're continuing to ramp up production, but aren't (at this point) sending them to the front.

This doesn't necessarily mean that they have a long-term plan to invade NATO, however. I can think of many other scenarios where it would be in Russia's strategic interest to have a large modernized tank force in reserve.

I’ve never heard anyone say this. Source?

We're in peacetime, but the current leadership perceives us to be in a pitched great-power struggle, and perhaps near-term shooting war, with China. Similarly, while we are not literally at war with Russia, we are in a very acute global conflict with them of another type that might be thought to warrant a different pace of military innovation. Perhaps these factors are what GP had in mind.

Got evidence that they supplied weapons? GP’s Wikipedia article does not seem to say that they did (apart from an unclear reference to US military aid, which I don’t think refers to US military aid to Sudan specifically).

Probably so. I imagine the U.K. has laws that make such artifacts the formal property of the state. Was this true for 19th century Egypt?

I think it was true, on some level, at the time the bust of Nefertiti was taken in the 1920s. Supposedly, the Germans nominally followed some sort of legal process for removing the artifact -- though perhaps with less-than-full transparency.

Perhaps there are other reasons to claim that Egyptian artifacts were 'stolen.' But I'm trying to have a conversation about what those might be since the subject is not as obvious to me as others seem to think it is.