I'll take this opportunity to get on a soapbox and preach: We need to shift our understanding of digital programmatic advertising to basically the pimp/hoe model.

It's population-scale digital pimping. They put your ass on the RTB street to turn tricks. You get mindfucked by--and maybe catch some viruses from--any John who wants to take a crack at you. In return, you get this nice cheap TV/YouTube/Gmail/article.

It's exploitative, dirty, exposes the bitches (i.e. you and your kids) to risks, and on a population scale it poses a serious safety and national security risk to our country. RTB bidstream surveillance means that all the data used in the pimps' matchmaking services can be used by many nefarious actors to physically track and target people, including spies, politicians, and other politically-exposed persons.

Would you let your kid turn tricks for a pimp to get a Gucci handbag? No? Then why would you let Alphabet pimp your kid out to get a YouTube video?

Right, like imagine if the Fed gave you some sort of preferential access and sweetheart low rates. Then you could borrow money from them at a low rate, lend it out at a higher rate, and profit from the difference. It would be like some sort of modern day alchemy: Creating money from thin air.

Of course, if you become very large and there are widespread delinquencies that threaten your solvency, your chums at the Fed will happily give you infinite liquidity for collateral at sweetheart valuations. Or maybe they'll just start buying up debt in market operations to put you in the black again.

Now, getting this kind of special treatment while mom and pop get foreclosed on their ARM and evicted seems a bit unfair. And, with the help of onerous zoning and permitting codes, it would tend to inflate house prices, with the perverse effect of forcing people to take your loans in order to own a home before your scheme inflates their prices even more--effectively becoming a private tax on home purchases.

That's why we've made this obviously corrupt business illegal.

> are you really naive to believe cyclists wouldn't respect traffic lights on a city designed after walk and public transportation? or are you thinking on the minimal cyclists that get killed by tresspasing this rule by vehicles that get a mild scratch? or the light or mild injuries bicycles at 15-25 km/h are gonna cause between each other?

An excellent demonstration of "cyclebrain syndrome", the urban twin to suburbia's "carbrain syndrome".

> are you really naive to believe cyclists wouldn't respect traffic lights on a city designed after walk and public transportation?

Translation: I am aware of cyclists' ubiquitous poor behavior on the roads but will reach for any justification to shift responsibility to someone else. "Drivers wouldn't be running red lights if you just added a couple more lanes, bro."

> or are you thinking on the minimal cyclists that get killed by tresspasing this rule by vehicles that get a mild scratch?

Translation: And when cyclists' poor behavior causes a fatal collision with a car, nobody cares about the damaged property. Or the mental anguish, or the collisions caused by narrowly avoiding killing an errant cyclist (who survives, oblivious, thanks to the driver's quick action choosing a more costly crash over a "mild scratch" that kills the cyclist).

> or the light or mild injuries bicycles at 15-25 km/h are gonna cause between each other?

Translation: I don't give a shit about killing/injuring pedestrians any more than car drivers do. I only care about collisions with things that are about the size of my vehicle or bigger. And if those other things are bigger than my vehicle--I want them banned! That way I reduce the risk to me, which is what I really care about, and who cares what happens to anything smaller than me?

I wish I could upvote this comment more than once. I'm appalled it's got a negative score. Are we not on Hacker News?

What the fuck happened to this community?

To be very honest, I'm not surprised. This has been a growing tendency recently. I have also noticed a few brand new accounts whose entire comments are praises for certain controversial actions by some corporations.

I'm quite impressed with Europeans' entitled attitudes towards the US security umbrella.

First of all, none of this should be "unexpected"--Obama famously announced a pivot to Asia well over a decade ago. What exactly did Europeans think that meant?

Second, European military intransigence has dramatically escalated the risk of a devastating war affecting both US and Europe, and the US is simply overextended. The US cannot bring sufficient military power to bear to defend the Pacific, European, and Arctic theaters simultaneously. European NATO members simply must pull their own weight now; reaffirming European luxury beliefs like "we don't need to prepare for war because Uncle Sam has got us covered" would be doing both US and Europe a dis-service. Many presidents have tried more polite pleading and cajoling in less critical times, with evidently poor results.

Finally, the asymmetry of expectations is remarkable. Europeans clearly expect the US not just to fight Russia with them, but to fight Russia for them. Yet no Americans expect European forces to come to the US's rescue in the Pacific--and European commenters online make very clear that that expectation is correct. Consequently, many Americans are skeptical of the value NATO membership brings, while seeing clearly its risks and costs.

If you want America to remain engaged in European security, y'all need to get much more serious about fielding an effective military force and clearly commit to helping the US against China in every way possible. And if you don't want America to remain engaged in European security, y'all need to get even more serious about fielding an effective military force.

So put your heads down, get to work, and quit it with the hyperbolic butthurt comments about "unexpectedly" being "blown off".

I realize I was probably too oblique before, so let me be more specific.

The US has pivoted from traditional AWACS to the proliferated warfighter space architecture, the idea being hundreds of LEO satellites can provide a cheaper and much more survivable (not to mention persistent) air moving-target indicator capability. There is substantial project risk, but the US is resource constrained and cannot afford to fund everything under the sun.

European NATO nations don't currently need something so fancy and without the US, E-7's per-unit costs would be too high. But the US now prioritizes its needs in the Pacific theater (where those E-7s would not be survivable) over Europe's security interests (cheap, capable traditional AWACS). That's the pivot to Asia in action.

I don't even think that this outcome is bad for Europe. It's a reminder that Europe's needs are not America's priority, which helps to light a sorely-needed fire under European asses. Europe will buy GlobalEye or some Airbus platform, and the US will have a decent alternative available if the PWSA doesn't work out. It's also a potential opportunity for European NATO countries to contribute to PWSA, Starshield, and/or Golden Dome and more visibly and tangibly contribute to NATO's mutual defense.

It is worth pointing out that US' potential adversary in the Pacific region is known for boasting its "robust" anti-satellite capabilities, so it is difficult to see this move as anything but wasteful and potentially dangerous to other LEO satellites.

Dude, it's a joke about Boeing doors getting lost mid flight. You know, the thing that happened recently and made quite some news?

Maaaybe you should introspect a bit about how a single thoughtless sentence on some web forum could possibly inspire you to write an essay about European entitlement. Is this American vulnerability?

You created an account about half an hour ago and have submitted nearly 1/6 of the comments on this post. You're more or less uncritically parroting the talking points of the special interest groups behind this while dismissing real concerns about liberty, censorship, and sexism.

Why are you so invested in this issue? Why did you create a throwaway account just to post on this topic? What relationship do you have to politicians, civil servants, and NGOs who have been involved in this campaign?

The fundamental problem with this logic is that there is no enforcement body here. In a just society, the law defines who is "allowed" to steal from you and the state's enforcement arm punishes those who violate the law. The law binds but also protects.

Creating a global enforcement arm is an obvious non-starter: Which laws shall be enacted and enforced against whom, and how are fundamentally political questions. The answers to those questions necessarily change once you cross into another polity. States can coordinate and agree mutually to enforce a law... but if Poland says that despite their commitments to the contrary they simply aren't gonna extradite that suspected Nord Stream saboteur: Tough nuggets. Such situations expose international "laws" as mere window dressing on powers that emanate from and remain held by individual states.

There is no global enforcement arm and plenty of evidence that if someone starts genociding you, nobody else is gonna do anything about it. You're on your own. Such "laws" bind but do not protect.

Especially in the context of the US as world hegemon: The US fully expects to shoulder the entire burden of deterring or defeating threats to the homeland. Joining the ICC would bring precisely zero extra protection from genocide. Indeed, such a commitment may limit the US's freedom of action, discredit US deterrence, and actually make a devastating war more likely.

Not sure how you expect to be taken seriously while your personal website is a weeaboo homage to anthropomorphized cartoon ponies.

I can believe that in heavily left-leaning social circles unironically using the term "social justice warrior" is grounds for social excommunication.

I hope you can believe that most people outside those circles--in other words, most people--understand it as a more-or-less neutral descriptive term and won't think twice about it.

I can believe it, though I believe it to be untrue. SJW is not a neutral term. In the same way that the word "woke" has been corrupted, SJW now almost exclusively refers to dyed-hair screaming women making mountains out of molehills to try to strongarm people into policing things they don't like. It did not used to mean that, but it is now used primarily pejoratively, not descriptively, like "woke".

What you're missing is that the US's BATNA here is awful.

America relies on Taiwan for more than just advanced-node semiconductors. The island is the linchpin in the US's island chain strategy for the Pacific theater.

Abandoning Taiwan to the CPC would have a domino effect on US relations with the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, etc.; let China run wild in the US backyard and gain a monopoly on some critical supply chains while holding others in peril; and is effectively tantamount to ceding the Pacific to China without a fight.

The US abandoning Taiwan is simply not an option and Taiwan knows it.

And at this point the only question is when Taiwan will announce that they now have nukes and which neighboring countries they invited to join the program.

China owns half Trump's cabinet, but Xi's always wanted to invade Taiwan regardless of the consequences and this isn't a game he can win.

> [W]hen Taiwan will announce that they now have nukes

Doubties. ROC's strategy right now appears to basically be: Give PRC no good reason to invade and lots of good reasons not to.

Anyway PLA's invasion preparations are already nearly ripe and MSS would almost certainly detect nuclear weapons or delivery systems development. Then it's an easy and semi-legitimate casus belli and invasion is an urgent NatSec imperative before ROC manages breakout.

> Your right to something ends were a right of someone else is violated. That's the case here.

Ah yes, that memorable trifecta: Life, Liberty, and the Right to Never Hear Mean Words.

Oral violence also has consequences. From invoking or reinforcing mental diseases over fear and isolation to blackmail and being socially judged on while being innocent. Do you accept random beatings when people feel like it on the street?

Oral violence is an oxymoron. It's dangerous to conflate words and violence because then words quickly become a justification for violence.

Why? How do you define violence? Harming people? Insults and false accusations can have much greater harm to a life then a broken leg.

> violence because then words quickly become a justification for violence

When you don't have a way to fight back and make something stop, without resorting to physical aggression, then your only way is to punch back. When the legal system allows you to fight back, then you can walk away, knowing you can call your lawyer or the police.

Insults cannot have greater harm than just about any physical injury. False accusations already have a legal recourse, as they're defamation.

Have you had a broken leg? When you're young it's an alright thing to deal with, when you're older it can be life altering (it might hurt forever or alter your gait). However most spontaneous violence doesn't result in broken legs but rather hits to the head which can very quickly end up at CTEs or other brain trauma.

In an equal society, you really don't want actual violence to be on the same spectrum as speech of any kind. One problem is that ~50% of the population has a massive natural advantage in the realm of actual violence. Would a husband beating his wife because of "violent words" she inflicted on him be ok under the "speech is violence" rubric?