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I think this is still important. How do you define a system? By boundary of communication, where inside system communication is fast, communication with outside is slow and limited. Think ( ( ((CPU) Memory) ((GPU) memory) PC ) Internet ). Your PC is a hierarchy of systems split on boundaries of communication speed. So, it would be proper that a brain identifies what's "inside" the brain in similar way.

So, ping>1 = that part is outside.


> but it is unlikely to bring down an entire electric grid

Unless you happen to drive a forklift in a power plant.

> expose millions to fraud and theft

You can if you drive forklift in a bank.

> put innocent people in prison

You can use forklift to put several innocent people in prison with one trip, they have pretty high capacity.

> jeopardize the institutions of government.

It's pretty easy with a forklift, just try driving through main gate.

> There is more than one kind of leverage at play here.

Forklifts typically have several axes of travel.


The level of pettiness in this comment is through the roof. I love it.

And thus "question-bait" was born.

My wife enjoys her job as a cleaner. But she cleans much more than just toilets. But she cleans the toilets too. The world needs such people.

Fortunately Russia in their benevolence tries to limit the damage, so that we don't feel the destruction all at once. This means some people will be annoyed for day or two and everyone is reminded to increase security pretty constantly. Just recently we got news about ONE furnace (from several in that heating plant) being probably hacked. The furnace shut down. Operator didn't notice, because the display on furnace was already malfunctioning and operator just restarted it. They checked everything only after our "cybersecurity" forces notified them.

That was in local news this weekend. I know about it because I'm responsible for another city heating network, we take security pretty seriously. All devices are in vpn and if someone outside needs to login remotely, he is granted access only for the time needed, so window for actually worming the network through vendors is very small. All staff accessing the system has computer security training. But not every heat provider operates like this, some small ones (like the one affected) are a little more sloppy.


Someone at Davos commented "It took you 7 years to negotiate your way out, it will take you 7 years to regret and then 7 years to negotiate back in".

All while losing all goodies and setting the economy back a decade.

But the remaining wealth of the country has successfully been extracted in the form of overpriced and not-fit-for-purpose utilities, transport companies, taxes, and so on and given to corporate interests. From their perspective it's a resounding success.

Didn’t need Brexit for that - it’s been going on for decades.

with most of the privatisations triggered by EU law!

I wouldn't strictly put all of them at the feet of the EU. While what you say is true, the Conservatives were frothing to privatise whatever they could. Labour just went along with the process (and I'm no Labour supporter either).

The one I won't forgive was our water. I believe we're the only developed country to have privatised our water, with disastrous consequences.

And that one can be squarely laid at the feet of Margaret 'Fucking" Thatcher (real name).


> The one I won't forgive was our water. I believe we're the only developed country to have privatised our water, with disastrous consequences.

100% agreed

there's no market or competition at any level (even RAIL had somewhat competitive bidding for franchises)

they're just Henry VIII style granted monopolies, with the results are the same as they were 800 years ago

(well, other than the civil war bit)

> And that one can be squarely laid at the feet of Margaret 'Fucking" Thatcher (real name).

water was another EU triggered one: the EU (EEC) kept writing new water directives, and the government couldn't figure out another way to fund their implementation


This is wrong.

A large chunk of the “classic” UK sell-offs were 1980s to early 1990s: BT (1984), British Gas (1986), British Airways (1987), and by 1991 regional electricity and water companies had been privatised.

A lot of EU single-market liberalisation in network industries ramped up later (late 1980s/1990s, and beyond). For example, telecoms EU “competition” directives begin in 1988/1990 and are amended through the 1990s. Meanwhile, the UK government had already announced plans to sell major chunks of BT by 1982, and BT’s privatization was implemented through UK legislation. England/Wales water privatization was created by Water Act 1989.


If the government couldn't figure out a way to fund their implementation, then either the government was insufficiently-wily (in which case, they could've hired wily consultants), or it was genuinely impossible without taking money from another pot. If the latter, then selling to a for-profit corporate structure was the worst possible decision they could've made.

I'm absolutely certain mountains of useless consultants were involved

You must have forgotten Thatcher

she was certainly a fan, but the spark for the match for almost all of the privatisations was EU/EEC directives

if the UK had never joined the EEC those industries would likely still be under government ownership

(for better or worse, water certainly was a disaster, but telecoms and airlines seem to have gone reasonably well)

and rail was done post Thatcher, with her on record as saying it is "a step too far"


As a regular user I see rail privatisation as successful.

In fact the only failure is water, as it was just privitised regional monopolies with no competition.

Electicty/gas? Tell me you’d be happy with British Gas when you aren’t allowed to use Octopus

Phone? Of course that’s a success, both mobile and also wires.

Airline? Freight?

Busses are too fragmented in regional areas, but the services tend to be better than they were under council run.


> > consumers get stable and somewhat realistic prices [...] while farmers also get stable income.

> Which? You can't have both

Maybe not in USA. Looks like another problem that only one developed country says is impossible to solve.


> Maybe not in USA.

Maybe not. I grew up on a Canadian dairy farm, and have continued to farm in Canada ever since, so that is beyond my expertise. I have not participated in US-based farming. I can only meaningfully speak to Canadian agriculture.

A connection to the USA is interesting, but what you are trying to get across is not entirely understood on my end. Perhaps not having ties to the USA means I don't have an implied context? Fill me in. I am curious.


You said "You can't have both" on "consumers get stable and somewhat realistic prices [...] while farmers also get stable income."

So, you say a country can't have stable income for farmers and realistic prices for consumers? Allowing to waste some produce and subsidizing farmers seems to be working in Europe (and probably in Canada). We have stable (but higher) prices. When you said we can't have that, I thought you are from USA, they are famous for having problems that are solved everywhere (like universal healthcare and gun violence) and it's a very known meme[0][1][2].

[0] https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1116082388344422400

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/l55sv4...

[2] https://images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED206/66c508dbb70...


> So, you say a country can't have stable income for farmers and realistic prices for consumers?

The topic is supply management. Supply management cannot offer both consumer price stability and stable incomes for farmers at the same time, as was explained in more detail in the previous comment. At least not in a world where the non-supply managed markets aren't also stable. Of course, if non-supply managed markets are also stable, then this whole thing is moot. The original premise was that non-supply managed markets cannot be stable, thus why it was said supply management is necessary.

> subsidizing farmers seems to be working in Europe (and probably in Canada)

The whole idea behind supply management is that there isn't a (direct) subsidy. Technically the government compelling consumers to buy from an organized monopoly is still an indirect subsidy, granted, but indirect subsidies lose the control that direct subsidies have. You are right that in theory a direct subsidy scheme could allow both stable incomes and stable consumer prices at the same time, but that is not the system Canada uses here.

> I thought you are from USA

Why? What would someone from the USA know about Canadian agriculture? I expect most Canadians don't even know anything about this topic. If I weren't a Canadian farmer, I sincerely doubt I would have been able to contribute anything.


But it is solved here, its whats happening.

Food prices are mostly stable (relatively speaking)


If you give every idiot a worldwide heard voice, you will hear every idiot from the whole world. If you give every idiot a tool to make programs, you will see a lot of programs made by idiots.

Steve Yegge is not an idiot or a bad programmer. Possibly just hypomanic at most. And a good, entertaining writer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Yegge

Gas Town is ridiculous and I had to uninstall Beads after seeing it only confuse my agents, but he's not completely insane or a moron. There may be some kernels of good ideas inside of Gas Town which could be extracted out into a better system.


> Steve Yegge is not an idiot or a bad programmer.

I don't think he's an idiot, there are almost no actual idiots here on HN in my opinion and they don't write such articles or make systems like Steve Yegge. I'm only commenting about giving more tools to idiots. Even tools made by geniuses will give you idiotic results when used by actual idiots, but a lot of smart people want to lower barriers of entry so that idiots can use more tools. And there are a lot of idiots who were inactive just because they didn't have the tools. Famous quote from a famous Polish essayist/futurist Stanisław Lem: "I didn't know there are so many idiots in this world until I got internet".


The problem is that if no one responds to such idiots, even more idiots might be swayed into their direction.

They are either being paid, or they are so lost in propaganda that they're willing to do it >for free. They have more time that they are willing to waste on propaganda than you, unless you decide to dedicate every waking moment to a rebuttable you are behind the eight ball. Even then, they're probably in dozens of communities and threads at the same time, repeating the same garbage.

The only way this sort of rhetoric can be fought is at the level of moderation. This site has user-driven moderation, which in theory means that you can fight the tide this way, but in practice the authoritarians and fascists have access to these tools as well, and bad faith use is rarely punished, so these tools are less of a panacea and more of a race to who can down-vote who first.

The only other alternative is for the paid moderation of this site to put their foot down and say "We are not okay with fascists and authoritarian apologists on our site" and ban them. The admins of Hacker News are another on a very long list of social media site hosts who have decided to wash their hands of the responsibility. They don't care.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. If you decide you still want to engage, I recommend viewing the interaction through the lens of an attention economy; spend less time on a rebuttle than they did on their post, and only in places where you think it will actually be seen.


Correct, it's literally their main job to spew propaganda. As demonstrated repeatedly by power outages in st. petersburg, moscow and most recently iran.

Unless one verifies every single user by ID, there needs to be at least a platform-level detection of user jurisdiction and the application of appropriate penalties and limits to their activity.


You don't have to go that far, there's a lot easier solution - prefer socializing in spaces that actually vet their users to some degree and have humans who have an active hand in moderation.

It's the old way that social spaces on the internet used to work, and you don't need ID verification for that, you just need spaces that are conducive to that style of community-building. Think Discord, not Instagram. Think (invite-only) Mastodon, not Twitter. Think lobsters, not HN. Think Tildes, not Reddit.


> They have more time that they are willing to waste on propaganda than you

Yes, that's why I need others to help. There are actually less of them (bots) than us. There is one pretty strange "tiktok-like" site, that has the worst kind of people and memes out there showing up regularly, something like 4chan but for images, but somehow most trolls (there are trolls from many different groups operating there) still can't hold on and every such trolling post is pretty fast met with a big wave of downvotes and counter-comments.

> The only other alternative is for the paid moderation of this site to put their foot down and say "We are not okay with fascists and authoritarian apologists on our site" and ban them

The owners of that site can't manage such a big firehose of hate and most users say that they are racist degenerates (and they say they don't care if you are black or white racist, if you are racist they like you).

> The admins of Hacker News are another on a very long list of social media site hosts who have decided to wash their hands of the responsibility. They don't care.

They DO care and a lot of users here also care. Every stupid comment that I've seen could be from troll was very quickly downvoted and counter-commented. We didn't see a lot of them, because they are deleted pretty fast and often and trolls just can't get easy foothold here.


You are not going to change somebody's opinion if they submit to Twitter discourse. Not even getting screwed personally would change their opinion. Hard right wingers at any time in history learn in only one way.

Hard right wingers are a small minority. There also exist people that can change their opinion. If you don't engage with hard right wingers, a lot of people won't see ant counter-arguments and will be convinced that hard-right way is the majority view, is the right way, and will flock to that way of thinking. Engaging with right wingers on public forum is necessary, so that their voice is not the only one heard.

We're all underestimating the sheer number of people in russia who have a "career" in a while-collar job in some propaganda unit. It's a good way to work at the army but not having to actually fight at the front.

They pose as citizens of European, African, Asian or American countries online and try to steer discussion to subvert the local society. The Twitter location reveal showcases that it has an immense scale.

There are many examples such as Scottish independence movement going offline when iran goes offline.

On websites like HN and reddit you cannot even see where someone is originating from. But you can ALWAYS detect them by the cognitive biases they're using to drive their propaganda: false equivalency biase, false choice dilemmas, and so on.


> We're all underestimating the sheer number of people in russia who have a "career" in a while-collar job in some propaganda unit.

Yes, and there are more Russians than Ukrainians, yet somehow they can't overcome a smaller country in 4 years. Trolls want you to give up in countering them. Their work is about pushing propaganda AND demoralising people so that they give up fighting. When you think "why bother", they won.


Well, if you didn't, you SHOULD try sleeping more. Like, do try to sleep for a whole day. No TV, no music, no mobile phone. Only go to bathroom and eat some quick to make meals, schedule away ALL chores. Everyone I know told me I should walk out more, be more active, but what REALLY helped me regain mental health when I had mental breakdown was a full day of sleeping.

Of course it won't help you just by itself, it's not the only trick you need, but please do try it.

> If someone neurotypical gives you advice, just smile and nod, and ignore it.

Neurotypicals gave me "do not sleep so much, go out in nature or do something". This advice is good for depression, not for ADHD.

> The reality is that there is no single thing that will help. You'll have to try shit and see what works for you. What one person swears "fixed" them might do nothing for you.

Yes, but you have to try different approaches. If you don't try all of them (including sleeping for a day) you won't know.


How often do you sleep for an entire day?

I did it only once, but it helped me a lot. Otherwise, there is too much to do. Doctor declared that I'm overworked several years ago, before I built a house and got a second job. YMMV.

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