The MTA costs only $162/28d full fare and seniors and others get it for half that. I conveniently pay by swiping my Apple Watch. This is for transfers throughout the entire system. Compare with the price of Washington DC, a far, far smaller system than NYC and compared with other US cities. Moreover, the NYC subways do not stop at night like almost all world subway systems.
Palestinians were given opportunities for self-determination in 1948, 2000 (Camp David), 2008, and 2006 in Gaza (blockaded by Egypt because of Hamas elected to run Gaza). In 1948, they along with 5 invading Arab countries tried to destroy Israel, resulting in their own destruction of their Arab state. In 2000, Arafat turned down a peace agreement with Bill Clinton starting terrorism that resulted in 3000 Palestinian and 1000 Jewish and Israeli Arab deaths, in 2008 Abbas turned down a peace agreement.
After 10/7 almost every Israeli knows that the Palestinians are not interested in their own state.
Of the 32,000 Hamas stated deaths, 13,000 are terrorists, thus resulting in a far lower civilian-to-combatant death ratio than in other urban conflicts such as Mosul.
The lesson learned with Japan in Germany in WW II is that total military defeat is necessary. The AI technology enables the targeting of all terrorists, not only senior-level terrorists as before, resulting in a quicker end to the conflict than otherwise and thus resulting in fewer civilian deaths.
As we know these terrorists hide among civilians including in and under hospitals, making these legitimate targets. The high number of civilian deaths occur from the terrorists hiding among civilians.
> Of the 32,000 Hamas stated deaths, 13,000 are terrorists
13k out of 32k is around 40%. The estimates for the number of murdered children and women have been about 70% [1] for months, so the "40% are terrorist" claim already does not match that unless women and children are counted as terrorists. Anyway, even going with only 60% of those murdered being women and children, that still implies that every single killed male person is a terrorist. Now, I am sure that IDF already presents this as true in order to justify the murders, but that will not pass basic logical scrutiny of any critically-thinking person.
"according to the Gaza Health Ministry" i.e. according to Hamas. The actual truth is nobody knows. There are a lot of children in Gaza.
To be crystal clear, the below isn't attempting to justify targeting children but it's important that those who are blindingly critical of Israel understand the complex realities.
Hamas does employ combatants under 18yo (which is what counts as children in those counts):
"There have been reports of children below 15 years of age in Hamas, with the lowest recorded age being 12, but the process of selection for the Izz al-Deen Al-Qassem Brigades is reportedly long and rigorous and has not to date included children." - https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/cscoal/2001/...
"Amnesty International is gravely concerned about reports that earlier today a 16-year-old Palestinian child
was found to be carrying explosives when attempting to pass through the Israeli army checkpoint at Huwara,
at the entrance of the West Bank town of Nablus"
...
"a 17-year-old Palestinian detonated an explosive belt he was wearing as he was being tracked down by Israeli soldiers,"
- https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/mde150...
"However, children receive military training and are used as messengers and couriers, and in some cases as fighters and suicide bombers in attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.21 All the main political groups involve children in this way, including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.22
>Throughout four wars and numerous bloody skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, U.N. agencies have cited the Health Ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
>In the aftermath of war, the U.N. humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records.
>In all cases the U.N.’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza Health Ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
>2008 war: The ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 1,385.
>2014 war: The ministry reported 2,310 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 2,251.
>2021 war: The ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 256.
It's perfectly reasonable to question data from an organization known for propaganda and terrorism. But please also try to find answers to your doubts.
You bring out a statistic of 9 children carrying out suicide attacks in 4 years when a 1,000 times that were deliberately killed by Israel in 4 months?
You do realise that statistically that argument is insane by several orders of magnitude?
There is no rationale, or sane, argument for killing this number of children indescriminately. Never mind the tens of thousands that have been disabled and maimed.
This isn't about statistics. This is simple fact that Hamas has used children, including young children. It definitely uses 17yo and 16yo. If they used 9 (out of?) back then this simply means they don't care about using children in war.
I think it's important to understand this to know who Israel is dealing with.
On Israel's side of this I think it's clear Israel has been using fairly indiscriminate force at times. However even if Israel used has the most discriminate use of force a lot of children would get killed.
What do you propose Israel can do against Hamas? What would you do when 30,000 combatants are sitting on your border, embedded with civilians, in civilian clothing, want you to kill as many civilians as possible, use them as shield while launching attacks at you? Half of the population is younger than 18yo. What do you do when thousands of rockets are launched at you from densely populated places? Let's reset to Oct 8th, how do you wage this war?
Until you understand that for a very large number of Israelis Palestinians are sub-human you will waste your efforts trying to argue with Israelis based on rationality or ethics. They are racists full stop.
The reason is simple: it’s the combination of forced military and being the descendants of a generation that migrated and ethnically cleansed Palestine are overwhelmingly potent sources of indoctrination. Most people tend to assimilate and therefore they will blend into the Israeli military (and you see what kind of ethics they have) and most people find it difficult to condemn their parents and grandparents as genocidal monsters so instead they will favor whatever narrative absolves their lineage.
This is nonsense. Palestinians live in Israel too. There is less racism in Israel towards Palestinians than racism towards minorities or blacks in the US.
You just don't get it.
The hatred Israelis feel towards Gazans right now is not driven by racism. In general Israel's feelings towards Palestinians is related to the violence Palestinians have inflicted on Israelis and the violent conflict in general. Israelis think Gazans want to murder all of them and that feeling has support reality.
I agree there's some amount of indoctrination but that's also a simplistic world view.
Really? Less racism than towards blacks? You must never have heard Israelis speak about Palestinians.
I really wonder, if you think this is what Israelis think, what do you think Palestinians think? You know, the ones that have been murdered by the tens of thousands. The ones that have been made refugees in their own country.
"There are a lot of children in Gaza" tickles the Bayesian probabilities that Israel is mostly killing children in Gaza.
Overall it still points to "what is the right response to guerilla warfare?" Or, "if even children want to kill you for what you're doing, what makes you so sure you're in the right?"
It's important to note that Hamas' suicide bombers were in general manipulated. I.e. this is not some grass roots child that decided they want to "kill you". This is cold blooded recruiting, conditioning, sending people to blow themselves up. I recommend you read up on that a little bit, there's a fair bit of material.
This (the start of the wave of suicide bombings) was also during somewhat euphoric time in Israeli-Palestinian relationships with the peace process happening, it wasn't a time of extreme repression.
You should also look a little at the textbooks and curriculum taught to those children.
No, Israel has never seriously been open to palestinian self-determination. Netanyahu brags about it, because he knows that it has been the mainstream position among israeli politicians so he has to project an image of being especially valuable in that regard.
It's not hiding when you are on your own territory. It's not a shield if your enemy kills non-combatants with impunity. It's also very hard to discern "terrorists" from resistance fighters when you're an occupier operating in occupied territory, which Israel doesn't even try to do.
Thought experiment: Let's assume the vast majority of Palestinians genuinely despise Israel and would be willing to sacrifice their own community's existence to exterminate Israel.
Do you think that's a genetic inclination? My guess is you don't.
So if it's a cultural inclination, do you think it can be changed? Seemingly no, so why not? Why wouldn't goodwill and nation-building be able to change Palestinian minds?
Taking lessons from the final acts of WWII is extraordinarily myopic and foolish. It seems to assume that whatever did happen must have happened - why would we believe that? It's contradicted by the simple and undeniable fact that humans make errors in judgment. People chose to cause suffering. People chose to respond to suffering with war. People chose to pursue war to "total military defeat" (I would say that is actually a fiction but we can go along with it as it's close enough to the truth for our purposes here).
I agree but I'm sure this comment will be met by backlash from the anti-Israeli crowd. Nobody actually knows for sure how many are dead, how many are combatants, or anything else about the casualties.
The right wing in Israel now refers to Oslo as the "Oslo Disaster" due to the large number of Israelis killed in what they claim is a result of giving the Palestinians control over some of the land, arming their police force, and letting Palestinian leaders from abroad (Tunisia) return to the region.
The left (whatever is left of it) says Oslo never had (EDIT: never was given) a chance to succeed and wasn't implemented properly.
Just a total mess like it always is in this region.
---
I do agree Israel has just cause to "remove" Hamas from Gaza post 10/7 (for some definition of remove). I also think Israel has been waging this war very poorly. I agree Palestinians don't want peace. They want Israel erased (which they sometimes put in different words but with the same end result). They say so out loud (see street interviews with Palestinians e.g. on YT, even before this war, and surveys etc.). I also know this from talking to a small sample of Palestinians myself. But, as we say in Hebrew, wise people don't get themselves into a situation that a smart people knows how to get out of, and unfortunately post Oct 7th even smart people have a hard time getting anywhere. That said, the blame lies on the Palestinians. They are responsible for the public in Israel moving right. Which in turn created this pathetic excuse of a government and general erosion of Israeli society. Which in turn is resulting in Israel's heavy handedness in Gaza (though even the less heavy handed version would be not that different in scope). They are doing that because they think that's how they'll get what they want. Hamas (supported by the majority of Palestinians) thinks that right now they're actually getting what they want. I think it's unlikely they'll get what they want. Israel is bound to take ever more aggressive approaches and nobody is going to help the Palestinians. Stopping the violent struggle, accepting Israel is a fact, and talking to Israel, is the only way Palestinians will get anything, but they're not willing to do that for various reasons (and when I say they I mean the vast majority + a way of imposing its will on the minority, i.e. if Palestinians can't get Hamas to stop killing Israelis then it doesn't even matter).
Is Israel moving right meaningful? Before moving right, israeli's as a voting block weren't particularly worried about how colonization of the west bank was going, and wasn't going to prioritize decolonizing the west bank over other local needs.
Can you point to policies of removing west bank settlements to show that before the horrific attack, accepting Israel was going well in the west bank? If anything, the not-being-kicked-out-of-your-home was going better in the violent Gaza strip, and they overstepped their hand
I think it's extremely significant. There was a majority of Israelis around the time of the Oslo accords that would have supported dismantling all the settlements (+/- or land exchange in some specific cases) and handing over the entirety of the west bank to Palestinians. This was a given, had major support, and the only reason that flipped was Hamas' campaign of suicide bombings, which also led to Rabin's assaination. I lived there at the time and I think I have the right perspective here.
You're also wrong about Israelis at the time not worried about the west bank. The Israeli left was extremely worried about the occupation of the west bank. I would say resolving the status of that territory was an important thing since 1967 (though I was born in 1968 so I don't have the entire experience in my head) but for some of that time the state of war with the surrounding Arab countries was a show stopper to that. The peace with Egypt was one of the factors that enabled the start of the peace process with the Palestinians.
Today you'll maybe find 5% of Israelis are agreeable to that two state solution, at best.
I'm not quite following your second question here. Settlements in the west bank have occasionally been removed but before the Oct 7th attack we're in a process of the right wing getting more embedded in the west bank and the extremists more emboldened which is sort of the process I'm alluding to here. I'm not sure if you're referring to violence forcing Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 here as some sort of benchmark for the west bank? Supposedly Arik Sharon's plan was to follow the withdrawal from Gaza with a unilateral withdrawal from most of the west bank.
My point is the Palestinians could have gotten all the West Bank and Gaza through peaceful negotiations within the Oslo framework. It is true that what pushed Israel to even talk was the first intifadah though I'm convinced there was no need for violence even then.
A complete treatment of this topic would require a lot more time and effort. But anyways, the move right is again extremely significant for Palestinians, in a bad way. (EDIT: It's pretty bad for Isrealis a way in many ways)
Israel uses AI to detect targets with all of their intelligence gathering. It uses precision weaponry. It drops pamphlets (which the US did in Iraq), calls apartments before bombing, has 4 hours of quiet the same time each day for civilian evacuations -- these are Israeli innovations.
Meanwhile Hamas hides in tunnels that are under hospitals, schools, mosques, residences making them military targets. They don't wear uniforms. They captured hostages.
Rooting terrorists out of tunnels is a very complicated task. Most cases of Urban combat such as Mosul don't involve tunnels, yet have much greater civilian to combatant ratio of casualties (3:1 in the case of Mosul).
Hamas never built bomb shelters for its civilians, unlike Israel. They had plenty of concrete to build tunnels for themselves.
The war would have been over by now except other nations have been slowing Israel down. These nations claim that they want the conflict to end but it won't unless Hamas surrenders or Israel finishes the job.
447 occurred from a design flaw in Airbus aircraft that have independent joysticks instead of the Yoke available on Boeing fly-by-wire.
The first officer who had more experience than the pilot flying the plane was unaware that the pilot was pulling back on the joystick. If the plane were properly designed as Boeing fly-by-wire craft were designed, eg, 777 at the time, then the accident wouldn't have happened because the first officer would have realized the pilot was pulling back on the yoke for the stall.
A principle in safety is that you want things encoded in the "hardware", eg, you can't put your car in reverse without putting your foot on the brake, even though you are taught this in driver's ed.
The Airbus designers forgot this major principle by using independent joysticks, a lesson not forgotten by the Boeing fly-by-wire craft.
Sure it was a design flaw but again the captain wasn't at the controls.
The first officer and the relief first officer were the ones who were at the controls. The relief first officer (who was the most experienced with that airplane of the pilots) wasn't aware the first officer (the most junior of the pilots) was pulling up on the stick because of the independent inputs.
You can absolutely try switching to reverse at 200km/h in a manual transmission. car at cost of your tranmission and potentially your bones in you hand. If you do it while rolling forward it will make funny sounds.
Apart from that the pilot flying the aircraft was totally confused and pulled the nose up while having stall warning and actually stalling. That is quite some remarkable screw up not understanding to stall and thinking having your nose at an high attack angle while having 100% engine thrust will solve anything in this situation. Sure with non-independent joysticks the other might have called the non nonsensical maneuvers earlier and prevented it. But the lack of awareness in instrument flight of that pilot is quite remarkable.
Can and should be able to are different things. I would imagine on a manual transmission they want things to be simpler so they have to make trade-offs and can't encode certain things without adding hardware.
But it's still not something anyone except the "I like direct control of the machine" types actually want, average users would probably prefer the safeguards.
Thing is, pulling the nose up silenced the stall warning. In the end, the flying crew was, wastly over-simplyfied, convinced to get out of a stall by pulling up. That alert behavior was changed by Airbus.
Blaming the pilots, or flatout stating that one design pholosophy is better than the other, is just ignorant. That's worse than all those soccer coaches knowing everything better on subdays, or whatever the US equivalent is, because at sport no lives depend on it.
And regardless of the latest Boeing fuck ups, everyone in aerospace knows that. And the people designing those planes and systems are fully aware of that, and know what they do.
Edit: The Vanity Fair piece also focuses on the stick behaviour and fly-by-wire systems. I cannot emphasize it enough, that pullong up silenced the stall alarm. The issue was that flight crew never realized that they were still in a stall. Pilot training aroubd that particular edga case, including simulator training, was ammended. As was the stall alarm behaviour. Fly-by-wire and stick behaviour had not much to do with it.
On a different note, for everyone blaming the pilots for being clueless amateurs (I exagerate, but I do get the impression): they died too on that flight. Inclusing the family of one of those pilots. Flight crew had as much skin in the game as possible. And before people start crying for remote controlled planes, how much risk does a pilot sitting in cubicle hubdreds of miles away from the plane actually take?
"Blaming the pilots, or flatout stating that one design pholosophy is better than the other, is just ignorant."
I work with safety, I study it.
The Airbus was poorly designed. You want to have forcing functions in the hardware, not depend of operator training, the "software" in safety terminology.
Airbus should have had the proper design philosophy so that the forcing function was in the "hardware", eg, the yoke of Boeing.
The poor choice of having independent joysticks brought the plane down.
Not certain why the FAA, which does know better, approved of the Airbus design.
That alone is worthy of a study. Was it politics?
In summary, safety guidelines mandate putting safety in the "hardware" of real forcing functions and not "software" -- training. That is the reality. 447 crash occurred because of poor Airbus design and the FAA for approving this design that goes against safety principles.
On physically connected controls this can happen as well.
It is why some flight instructors actually carried a hefty stick into cockpit - sometimes the best solution was to physically hit the trainee pilot to get them out of nervous hold on controls that you couldn't always overpower.
> you can't put your car in reverse without putting your foot on the brake
I rarely put a car in reverse while putting a foot on the brake. Handbrake on sure, but my foot is almost always on the accelerator when reverse engages, same as with forward gear
Certainly it was a design flaw, but also a major fault in training. Any properly trained pilot should have been able to detect a stall situation and pushed stick forward.
I live in NYC and subways (with both express as well as local) are very time efficient, especially during the few hours of rush hour. My iPhone appointments would tell me to leave 45 mins early since it assumed I as using a car, but the real transit time including walking was 15 mins using subways.
Changing zoning laws so that there is more density would shift demand to mass transit.
Actually, the fact that Gazans are far better off than Syrians and other Arabs in other conflicts is rarely discussed. Israel is required to destroy Hamas in Gaza as the US was required to destroy Germany and Japan. But Israel has been using hi-tech weaponry rarely discussed even on HN, a tech website.
For example, Iron Sting, a mortar guided by both GPS and laser is used even at night so that when a Hamas terrorist emerges from tunnels, they are immediately blown up. This helps to preserve Gazan civilian lives but not discussed in the media.
I yearly upgrade on the iPhone for the better modem support. I always buy Apple leather case, also a yearly upgrade, to protect the phone. A number of years ago I had a screen break and I mentioned at the Genius Bar how I did the best I could using the Apple Cases, and they ended up replacing the screen, a $150 charge, for free. This is Apple.
You may have had a firmware incompatibility problem. That is what had happened to me when a few month-old AirPod Pro v2 earbud battery lost charge. I have AppleCare+ (I recommend that for all AirPod purchasers because the batteries wear out after 2 years of use). I used the Apple Support app, selecting my device, and selected for Apple to call, which they immediately did. Apple did the CC hold sending out a replacement. When I received it, it did not work, and the reason was that the firmware on the case and airpod earbuds was recently updated and the earpiece sent to me was not. It is a kind of race condition that occurs whenever Apple updates firmware.
In the process of trying to get things to work initially with the replacement earbud, I disconnected my AirPods from the phone, following instructions. When I could not get it to reconnect, I tried to contact AppleCare+ for the AirPod Pro with the Apple support app as I had done 2 days earlier, and this time my device was not showing up in the device list, even though I still owned the device. This is an Apple bug.
So, I called 800-APL-CARE, but had to wait on hold to talk with someone a couple of minutes. Then I asked to be escalated to 2nd tier tech support. I explained the firmware incompatibility problem to the advisor. I expressed my annoyance since Apple has known about this problem since shipping Airpods, yet never fixed it. The tech rep had me go through a couple of more steps, including the 30 minute charge of the case with the earbuds (they called me back after 30 minutes).
Then they resolved the issue for me.
So, Apple had 2 repeatable bugs.
1. Firmware incompatibility with parts replacements.
2. Even though I still owned the AirPods Pro with AppleCare+ support associated with my AppleID, when disconnected the phone, it no longer showed up on my device list.
But overall, Apple has been great at support.
With AppleCare+, you don't have to go to the store for replacements. They send it to you with a CC hold and then have a prepaid label for Fedex Pickup returns. Call Fedex for the pickup, and that is that.
I use my iPhone and cellular iPad for 80 GB tethering per month used outside of home and work, for instance in a NYC cafe or outside during the summer. I don't like relying on public WiFi for security reasons. I also bring a nice large powercell for additional charge. It adds about an extra pound, but gives me a full recharge on the 16" MacBook Pro.
Using fast.com (Netflix server) I get 56 Mbps down and 24 Mbps up on Verizon with my iPhone 15 Pro Max in Manhattan which is another reason to use WiFi.
In large part because with the iPhone Pro (Max) you can run 10 Gps data rates with the proper USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4 cable.
I have the 15 Pro Max. I yearly upgrade because the modems and RF electronics are substantial annual upgrades. I live in NYC with skyscrapers, subways, underground parking garages, cell tower congestion during certain parts of the day. Also, I attend busy conferences, drive on highways, and take trains. In each of these cases one can encounter weak signals. The X70 Qualcomm modem and RF electronics are a substantial upgrade over the iPhone 14 Pro Max. The iPhone 15 Pro (Max) does better in weak signal conditions than the new 2023 Samsung s23.
"The iPhone 15 Pro Max also performed better in low-signal regions, measuring speeds of 21Mbps down and 14Mbps up compared with the S23 Ultra's 17Mbps down and 9.3Mbps up in the same spot."
"The phone did well when tested at the Wi-Fi network's edge, where it peaked at 8.1Mbps down against the S23's 6.35Mbps."
Billions of dollars are being spent on health care for illegal residents instead of spending the money for California residents at California Universities.
There is plenty of money in California. The problem is that the leadership doesn't prioritize affordable university education, preferring instead to fund people living in the country illegally. California residents are taking out student loans to subsidize people living in the country illegally.
It is tremendously unfair.
