Hacker News: WitCanStain

New comment by WitCanStain in "Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting"

WitCanStain — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 20:39:50 +0000

Risking American lives? How many Americans have died in the war as a result of US aid?

New comment by WitCanStain in "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)"

WitCanStain — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 09:48:17 +0000

The reason why terms like nazi, racist, sexist etc did not affect Trump's chances is because his voting base _does not care_ that he is those things. The right wing in America, magnitudes more than the left, does not care about the personal qualities of their chosen candidate, only about whether he advances their agenda. Why do so many nominal Christians vote for Trump despite him being a cheater, hoarder, and a person who otherwise embodies so many of the qualities the Bible cautions against? It is, again, because they will cook up any number of excuses and denials to justify their support as long as he hurts those they consider the enemy. The only way to make the application of those terms hurt Trump would have been to make the population care about them in the first place (beyond the thinnest veneer of superficial handwringing) which would have required a much stronger education system than America has.

New comment by WitCanStain in "Why are cancer guidelines stuck in PDFs?"

WitCanStain — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 15:45:37 +0000

Not actively malicious perhaps, but prioritising profits over lives is evil. Either you take care to make sure the systems you sell lead to the best possible outcomes, or you get out of the sector.

New comment by WitCanStain in "Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT"

WitCanStain — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 10:04:49 +0000

Interestingly, according to the report in your link, UPenn pays over 3 billion dollars in salaries, but it has around 1,400 faculty for ~10,000 students. This means that either the instructors are fabulously well paid, or that the vast majority of money is going somewhere else. And indeed according to [0] just 4.64% of salaries are paid to instructional staff, with 23.9% or 2078 of paid employees being management staff. So if I am reading this correctly, they have far more administrators than actual academics, which is rather incredible. Incidentally, according to the same link the median percentage of salaries paid to instructional staff is 30% for similar doctoral universities.

[0] https://datausa.io/profile/university/university-of-pennsylv...

New comment by WitCanStain in "Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at times matching when they broke"

WitCanStain — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:56:16 +0000

Is the US responsible for any crime committed by members of ships that fly the star-spangled banner?

New comment by WitCanStain in "The rise of the U.S., the rise of China"

WitCanStain — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 00:27:40 +0000

What is the difference between propaganda and someone expressing their view?

New comment by WitCanStain in "Support for U.S. TikTok ban continues to decline"

WitCanStain — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 10:54:07 +0000

I think turning a fledgling democracy into a kleptocratic dictatorship and starting an unjust war that has caused 500k casualties is at least on par with the worst the US has done in recent history like Iraq.

New comment by WitCanStain in "Dutch DPA fines Uber €290M because of transfers of drivers’ data to the US"

WitCanStain — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 10:56:42 +0000

Capitalism is a system that inevitably destroys its own guardrails.

New comment by WitCanStain in "EU Council to Vote on Chat Scanning Proposal on Thursday"

WitCanStain — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 09:20:30 +0000

Arguably it is far more authoritarian to enforce private ownership over social ownership.

New comment by WitCanStain in "EU Council to Vote on Chat Scanning Proposal on Thursday"

WitCanStain — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 09:18:45 +0000

Tinfoil? That is where we are headed. To handwave away concerns about where the current trajectory is going is very dismissive.

New comment by WitCanStain in "Taking Risk"

WitCanStain — Wed, 22 May 2024 10:27:22 +0000

Why comment when you have no way of knowing, when the OP is themselves available to answer?

New comment by WitCanStain in "Scandal at America's top science fair"

WitCanStain — Wed, 22 May 2024 10:22:39 +0000

>why don't we have more prestigious universities?

Legacy families need prestigious universities to be rare and exclusive so that them having gone there increases in value. They already know that their kids will get in so making top universities more exclusive only has benefits for them.

New comment by WitCanStain in "Atomic nucleus excited with laser: A breakthrough after decades"

WitCanStain — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 11:28:15 +0000

What could we do with more accurate atomic clocks that we cannot do with current ones?

New comment by WitCanStain in "TSMC Gets $11.6B in US Grants, Loans for Three Chip Fabs"

WitCanStain — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 12:56:16 +0000

US will still have plenty of reason to defend Taiwan, if only because it is a crucial part of America's containment strategy - China would have a much easier time operating in the Pacific if it controls Taiwan, and the US won't allow that. Further, if Taiwan falls a lot of countries will lose faith in America's ability to protect them from China which would thrust the entirety of South-East Asia into China's hands, also something the US can't afford. Though, with recent claims that China can build 1000 cruise missiles a day[0] it might not matter whether US defends them or not.

[0] https://asiatimes.com/2024/03/america-has-no-ukraine-plan-b-...

New comment by WitCanStain in "Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list"

WitCanStain — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 10:51:55 +0000

It's not everyone's cup of tea but Kit Kat is an experience you won't find in many other places.

New comment by WitCanStain in "Apple announces ability to download apps directly from websites in EU"

WitCanStain — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 11:32:00 +0000

I've been using only Linux (Manjaro) for the last six years, and although there's been marked improvement it's still in many ways buggier and clunkier for everyday use than even Windows.

New comment by WitCanStain in "Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll"

WitCanStain — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:26:57 +0000

Perhaps in a near-post-scarcity world, resurrecting dead people is seen as one of the great humanitarian projects of civilization.

New comment by WitCanStain in "Relativistic Spaceship"

WitCanStain — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 05:07:34 +0000

Source?

New comment by WitCanStain in "AlphaFold Found Possible Psychedelics"

WitCanStain — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 09:29:14 +0000

If only you'll have the money to get high after you no longer have a job.

New comment by WitCanStain in "Operation Triangulation: What you get when attack iPhones of researchers"

WitCanStain — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 23:20:26 +0000

Or just covertly tell Apple to hand over its documentation / to knowingly leave gaps in the defenses for NSA to exploit.