Me as a European software engineer, understanding tech stuff well, but not American politics, what's the problem with the Republicans? Why would you prefer the other party, Democrats (right?) do the origin research instead?
The main reason is that the Republicans are the relatively right wing party in the country and wacky conspiracy theories about COVID have become more popular in right wing media here. So that’s the partisan reason.
But also, since a Republican was in charge when COVID became a problem, it would make more sense to have the then-opposition do the investigation, right? Let’s not ask people who have an incentive to hide uncomfortable failures to investigate!
The simple question about the origin was considered a conspiracy theory not that long ago. And you won't find any democrats speaking up about it, no they were busy covering it up just because that's what the "bad side" were claiming.
Why is memory so short in politics? The question you should ask instead is why do they suddenly care?
I wonder what it would mean if Republicans conclusively proved that China did covid (whatever that means). Do you think the Republicans would have been/will be more likely to wear masks or get vaccines?
I wouldn't know I'm not from the US. But you sure seem very personally invested in those kinds of decisions. Maybe that should be Bidens strategy? Claim masks are terrible and get the Republicans to wear them?
Seems to be how both sides reason over there. Exhausting but entertaining to follow. I'm leftist (real "hang the bankers" kind of left not Teslas and Iphones left) and even to me the Republicans often seem like the reasonable bunch in the gang, and that says a lot...
Both sides would benefit from some serious self-examination.
I don't know that I'm very personally invested in these kinds of decisions, but it's certainly possible. No one ever held a gun to my head and made me wear a mask or get a vaccine or anything, but I did them anyway because they seemed like the best ways to avoid dying from coronavirus or getting long covid, neither of which I particularly desired, and I do know people to whom those things happened.
What I wonder is how laying the blame on some country or other would change other peoples' calculations on those decisions.
You make assumptions on what the other side wants and build your arguments on that. It's not about blaming China, you're already doing that. If you ask me Fauci and Dazsak are much more interesting as culprits. The Chinese are completely irrelevant.
My conclusions by looking at the facts are very sinister. If I told you you were going to vaccinate 5-year olds with new tech for flu-like symptoms 5 years ago you'd call me crazy. But here we are, and you're asking me about masks.
Masks are the last thing on my mind, but that doesn't mean I don't wash my hands and run around coughing on old people. I care about some people answering difficult questions and getting jail time, but we'll see their friends asking fluffy cute questions.
The greatest trick they pulled was to politisize it and get normal people fighting eachother over facemasks while they're swimming in profits.
We've long given vaccines to children 5 and younger, and yes, people made money from that. I'd love to see some structural changes to for profit healthcare in the US, but if it's a problem, then it's hardly limited to vaccines. I suppose I am just not all that bothered in retrospect by the pandemic response of the US. If anything, I wonder how it could have been improved so that the 1 million Americans who died would not have, but I also learned that living through a pandemic is still not something we have all that much control over even with modern technology.
The difference is we used to care what was in those vaccines and their effects, not just that everyone got them no matter the cost/benefit ratio. I don't mind smallpox vaccines but putting kids on subscription vaccines for a disease that has no risk for them is just brain dead. And this was known before they were rolled out in that age group. It was entirely political at that point.
I'm not really aware of the risk/reward levels of different vaccines for different age groups, but to imply that we used to care about what got put into vaccines but no longer do seems quite silly - the "vaccines cause autism" idea got going in the early 90's. But low as the risks of either may be, I wonder - did more children die of covid or of covid vaccination?
Almost no children died of covid, a rounding error. It wasn't a problem for them and shouldn't have been made out to be. Old people died from the flu before covid but we didn't vaccinate kids to protect them back then, what changed?
The problem is we really don't know what effects mRNA can have and anyone who claims they do are lying. So why was it pushed so hard?
I've gotten an annual flu shot since adolescence and I'd recommend that everyone of every age do so as well, mostly because of the consequences I suffered when I failed to do so.
Again, I'm far from an expert, but I've been told that RNA vaccines have been studied for a couple decades now, but the recent vaccines were the first widespread use. But won't a virus deliver several orders of magnitude more RNA to you anyway? Speaking for myself, I've personally known many people including myself who have gotten a variety of vaccines with zero long term consequences, though I did have one friend who gets knocked on his ass for a day or two by them. It's those that chose to forgo the vaccine who have suffered life altering consequences as a result. I actually was talking to a friend yesterday who's thinking about applying for disability since he's tried several times to return to his job as a waiter and been too weak to do the job.
Of course, new technologies will always have the risk of novel effects I suppose. Frankly if I had kids, I'd be more concerned about their constant attachment to phones/tablets and social media like Tiktok or the like. It's hard for me to tell if that's just me getting old and grumpy about technology or if these are in fact new and novel risks, but it's impossible not to notice all the children being carted around with their faces essentially attached to some screen or other.
Interesting, I know that some middle-aged people do get flu shots but never met one. To me it's something the elderly need. I'm raised with the notion that a little bacteria now and then is only good for me. My vaccine is the disease.
But don't get me wrong, I don't blame anyone who got the shot, I'm questioning those in power who had the same data I did but still claimed it was so necessary for everyone and their mother to get vaccinated or the world would go to shit.
If you looked at the numbers it was just a bad flu season. They definitely knew because I knew, from their own official data. And to my knowledge no other country than the US is pushing it to kids below 12.
But I've let it go, it's no longer a thing and I was lucky enough to dodge any mandates. This thread started with me pointing out the revisionism in claiming democrats are the right people to get to the bottom of the origin. I'm not getting into the details of if/when mRNA started testing and roll-outs.
I had not had occasion to look into it, but the US CDC recommends flu shots starting at 6 months. From a quick search, it looks like EU guidelines differ a bit but some do encourage that children and the elderly get it. To me it was always just one of those things responsible members of society do - pay for your car registration, go to the dentist, keep your area clean, get your shots, etc... I'm far from 100% on all that stuff, but the vaccines never struck me as being all that far out of line - maintaining my car is more expense and trouble than that at least, and I hate going to the dentist. But I fail to see how my flu vaccination needs would change if it turned out that the flu had been somehow a creation of a foreign nation.
I don't know who "the right people" are to get to the bottom of the origin of Covid, but if it is Republicans, then I doubt their motives are for a blameless post-mortem style investigation that ends with a list of plausible recommendations for improvements in response to future pandemics. That skepticism was were I got started.
Still with blaming a foreign nation. I already answered that. Look into Fauci and Daszak, gain-of-function and everything related. It's a rabbit hole I know but you have to ask the question to understand where the other side comes from.
Dazsak himself even mentioned his conflicting interest when he was appointed by the WHO to investigate if his own lab was the source of the leak. And the democrats did everything they could to suppress this and calling anyone curious a conspiracy theorists. All because the bad evil Republicans made the claims first. The same conspiracies that are now pretty mainstream and many people backing down from earlier claims.
Try to be less partisan and get to the bottom of the truth. My conclusions as I mentioned are sinister, and very ugly. And the entire world media dancing to the same tune just reinforces that. I don't want to believe this but it's the only explanation I see, I don't believe they're incompetent, they're evil...
For many it was just the right-thing-to-do™ (how many times has that been used throughout history), but those pulling the strings are different. And they're not partisan, they play both sides.
Let's say I cast aside all partisan and national interests sufficiently and actually get to the bottom of the truth - how would I live my life any differently in response to this truth?
That's a question much bigger than covid. I would like our elected to fix the accountability for us, but they don't since the accountable are their donors and friends. So the last resort was added to your constitution.
We all want to avoid it but how long are we going to stay occupied fighting over bullshit reasons while some live like gods on everyone's expense without even a slap on the wrist?
Oh this dictator likes Putin to much we have to replace him with this other guy. For centuries it's been like this. Is it ever going to change? Probably not, one can hope though.
If you're asking me what you can do today? Put higher standards on truth from your allies than your enemies is a good first step. A lot of people today just regurgitate whatever is the topic of the month making the exact same points never questioning the source.
Orange man bad, Biden is senile, bla bla bla. You're the most powerful nation in the world start acting like it instead of bullying any country that opposes your truth into submission.
My question is pretty specific to covid, as is this HN post, so that's pretty much what I was focused on. Beyond that is pretty grandiose, but you may have some misconceptions about political power in America and how it works, particularly if you are exclusively deriving those from our media.
It's all connected though. Cause a mortgage crisis and crash the world economy? Just a hickup and the responsible still get millions while normal people lose their homes.
What you can do regarding covid is ask "how does this help me and society?" instead of just rolling up your sleeve when someone asks you. You need to start asking questions, all the time. They don't have your interests in mind. Neither does my own government so I'm not acting like we're any better.
Demand answers. Why was Fauci smirking behind Trump on press meetings knowing full well that the US was funding research on covid virues in fucking Wuhan? Textbook James Bond villain. How people are not outraged is a mystery.
To be honest, I'm not particularly interested in Fauci or outraged about him myself. I don't know what his motivations would be for smirking or anything else. I was in a state where our governor quite literally said that the old should be willing to sacrifice their lives for the economy, so he wasn't too fond of Fauci either. I will say that I spoke with my grandmother on that one and she decided that she'd prefer to live lol.
What a cute anecdote as response to the head of NIAD conducting gain-of-function research and covering it up when it "leaks". I'm sorry about my tone but it's incredible to see the denial.
He's the biggest reason your grandmother was even at risk and you go out of your way to ignore it because "Republicans" I assume? I don't know. I will never understand people.
Taiwan is well-run. Norway does well, it's easy to point to their resource wealth but plenty of other countries have similar yet aren't run nearly as well.
Or I just have higher standards and expect more than too big to fail, nepotism and endless fucking wars between east and west? There are pros in many countries I can cherry pick here and there but nothing lives up to the standards we should have and the potential of humanity. We're wasting it, I'm happy for you that you seem content though, wish I could be too.
> Americans view politics like sportsball, I.e "our team good everyone else bad"
it doesn't take a lot of effort to discover that plenty of power-structures and political regimes around the world aside from the United States eventually simplify down to basic adversarialism.
It goes from 'RED/BLUE' all the way to 'GreatLeader/Dictator', but the United States doesn't have 'us versus them' to ourselves.
That's politics everywhere. Politics is the nonviolent contestation of power and typically political parties cater to a set of specific people with peculiar interests and beliefs. Sometimes polarization splits people into two equally self-interested groups fighting a zero-sum game, but sometimes polarization is literally over good and evil, where one side wants to enslave, exterminate, or oppress people, or they want to exploit or invade other countries, or they want to neglect their poor, sick, or unfortunate neighbors, or they want to undermine the democratic intitutions to permanently ensconce themselves in power. Enlightened centrism is just intellectual sloth.
"specifically military operation" was the name the Russian Federation used when it was hoping for quick and glorious little war. RF is using it now because it dares not call it what it really is as it has all sorts of unpleasant implication.
Are you really asking which countries are at war in Europe at the moment?
> Are you really asking which countries are at war in Europe at the moment?
Perhaps it was a worldwide question, not only Europe.
Also war has become too formal and require a lot of paperwork, so countries have been using weird names while bombing other countries. I guess the GP didn't care about the exact name.
For me it does make tones of sense as I, as a European, have understood that NATO is not a peace bringing organization. They _are_ interested and motivated by war. NATO is not my friend.
you are putting NATO in a very nice light, which to my eyes it doesn't deserve. there are many example for it of breaking international laws, i.e. in Cosovo.
it helps breaking down the world in black and white to understand complex matters, but I wouldn't exactly paint the NATO white.
For Sweden I have no idea. But after playing a Risk-like game with ships for too many years while I was young, I think that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland is a nice place.
Valid reasons! What alternative however could they consider to NATO? So to protect their own interests, Sweden's and Finland's, they need to join a, to my eyes, warmongering organization.
Where does NSA get the money from to hire thousands (=multiple 1000s) of big tech workers? How comes big tech is laying them off but NSA can afford to hiring them, in the thousands?
Snapshots are valueless. The deficit shot up to 3T in 2020, though I'm not really sure why (;. Then, in 2022 it was cut in half. It looks like we're on track to hit pre-Iraq War levels of deficit in another few years.
We haven't run a surplus since 2001, and I'd be very surprised if we continue to see the deficit decline. You can think of 2020/2021 as outliers because of all the pandemic spending assistance, and then taking them out, we're back on the same trendline since 2015, i.e. up. Likely will be even steeper if we get a recession later this year or next.
In the past, the government workers got unpaid time off. Then Congress quietly voted to reinstate all of lost pay so it turned into extra paid time off that didn't count toward the vacation allowance.
It's not guaranteed, but I would guess that Congress would do the same thing again.
Blurb in the article: "The NSA declined to say how much taxpayer money is allotted for the hiring effort. Total spending on the intelligence community for fiscal 2022 was $89.8 billion."
Government budgets tend to be stable so I suspect they have always been hiring this many positions, but have had severe difficulties retaining talent with the lower salaries.
The gravy train isn’t running as well as it used too, and even during the glory days it’s not like every FAANG employee was on a half a mil+ total comp… and not ever tech worker worked for FAANG.
You can get a very decent salary with amazing benefits and job security working for the government, living in a far lower cost area than SF or Seattle and retire early on a very generous retirement plan.
Ok but like 80-90% of FB engineers are E5s making ~300k+. That’s a lot more than an upper limit of 160-185k (sibling comments). And cost of living in Seattle is not substantially higher than DC.
> That’s a lot more than an upper limit of 160-185k (sibling comments).
The GS upper limit is on base pay. Just as with FAANG, you'd have to look at bonus structures too.
It's definitely not the same as FAANG upper limits, but it's also going to be a more stable and steady-paced job that still pays more than the median developer salary.
There are a lot of burned out ex-FAANG employees out there who will gladly take a pay cut to work at a different pace. Not all of the FAANG jobs are like the "I only work 3 hours per day and make $300K per year" anecdotes that get posted here all the time.
I'd be keen to hear from anyone familiar with GS compensation about typical bonuses you might expect in any given year. I suspect it's a lot less than $100k.
NSA is part of the DoD - the DoD's annual budget at this point is north of $700 billion. While NSA's exact slice of the overall DoD budget is classified - they're by far the largest intelligence agency in U.S government. Many times larger than even the CIA. It's safe to say they have the funds to hire 1000s of tech workers.
All kinds of source I'm sure—for example, the CIA has financed all sorts of black operations with drug trafficking since at least WWII. Now, that money would not be used to hire the rank and file, but it does relieve pressure on the budget.
Ransomware attacks come to mind. It wouldn't be hard to subcontract that out and keep even the hackers themselves from knowing who they're working for.
> It doesn’t need any New World Order conspiracy either.
NWO is not a conspiracy theory any longer. This exact terminology is openly used by many politicians now, demanding for a NWO. Depending which bubble you live in, you have not seen any or only too little such speeches.
The term New World Order has been used for over a century by politicians. It’s hardly believable that Woodrow Wilson was using a secret code word to communicate a plan to do evil things in the 21st century when he was advocating for the League of Nations.
It never was. Conspiracy nutheads just took it for them, and gave it their own evil twist. They always take something and see the evil option in it, and sell it as some fact which never was there. A similar thing happened recently with the term "Great Reset".
But the simple truth is, we always strive for a better world, so aiming for a new world order is something totally normal happening. Nobody thinks the world today is flawless.
Example, even though I don't believe many of the conspiracy theories regarding them, here's the WEF calling for everyone to literally build a "New World Order."
If your main data source is a relational data model, that is tables with relations to each other, I give a strong yes: GraphQL is a very good option. Alternatively consider supabase which provides similar time savers when mainly dealing with relational data.
This is what "technocracy" is, right? And "corporatism"?