I wonder how many nations need long range for defence? Of course offensive wars such as invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are different, but most uses for defence should happen relatively near to border.
Defence is not that different from offence. An offensive task such as destroying enemy artillery behind their borders or their service routes is an effective way to defend. If the enemy has nothing to attack with, then defending is a lot easier.
I think that would make sense for some missions like air superiority but not others like a deep strike into enemy territory. For the former we already have AWACs that perform nearly that role while also being big flying radars. For the later I think something like the F-35 might actually be the best solution, though with a number of robotic subordinates.
These are the planes that the military builds when in peacetime controlled by vested interests.
In a real war there would be a much sharper focus on building planes that can fight and win. But that what the enemies of the US are already doing and it’ll be too late for the US when it needs the right planes.
The US is focused on building complex overly technology focused boondoggle machines that take far to long to design and build and cost too much and underperform.
> In a real war there would be a much sharper focus on building planes that can fight and win. But that what the enemies of the US are already doing and it’ll be too late for the US when it needs the right planes.
I think this is partly because if you are not currently at war then you don't know who or when you will be at war with and what exactly the threats will look like so you end up designing for a range of scenarios. If you're currently in the midst of a big war than the requirements are clearer (but certainly not clear!)
Realistically the US is never going to fight a war with an equal adversary.
When they did WW3 simulations in the cold war it always ended with mushroom clouds.
The uttering 'I dont believe them blindly' could be literal (there is always a chance), but/yet it is very much the language that an attemptive manipulator could adopt. Suggesting some kind of animal "adoption of stance through imitation of the acting wise". I was surprised to see, in this context, in the past few years, some clearly absurd pieces of communication that comprised images of ignorance and images of "revealing" knowledge.
This given, q., let us not forget the guidelines, «Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like».
The "political interest" is out of here, this is a place for debate on intellectually relevant topics. The interest here (specifically to these "theoretical suggestions" the new account/member triggered) is in language, response, awareness of the instruments, intellectual processes, intellectual productivity.
And I mean, it's true for a lot of places. When I lived in France and there was some riot, my american friends called me asking how I was, afraid for my life because of the CNN loop, and now that I live in HK, I have german friends, tourists not even residents, who send to american frigging senators worried email asking to sanction our oppressors because of the same kind of news loop.
China over reacted and is not doing the right thing ... yet. It's not finished, the Earth is still rotating, it's still our country too, we'll find another way to express our discontent. What doesn't help is the news loop constantly exciting the debate to irrationality.
I think you dont need a CCP shill to say "they always say the same thing, I dont trust them blindly". This should even be said of Xinhua :D
> we'll find another way to express our discontent
Well xwolfi, in another post you wrote «from the competent bottom towards the rotting top»: Hong Kong is to some statistics a place of the highest concentration for well trained minds, education, competence - it may be really disappointing to those with a "technical" more than "emotional" idea of democracy, that in one of the few places in which people show numbers to really deserve the responsibility of judgement and administration, their participation is limited. For a condition like "you can participate provided you are aligned", strong intellectual skills are probably largely wasted.
I disagree, honestly. Hong Kong is like everywhere and I feel like it's more akin to Italy than Norway here: people are latin or let's say sanguine, the brain concentration is in foreigners who dont care (my child and wife are born here, I kinda want to care now), so the situation is more complicated than "everyone is rational and intelligent so power can be given eyes closed with full confidence the right decisions will be taken".
And anyway, bar northern democracy, I think people are largely unprepared to wield power and the only argument I d present is that we can propose a compromise in exchange for policy buy in. We'll not yet, as a city, naturaly trend to long term benefit, but we should be trained to give a mild opinion, via voting, to the implementation quality of various policies. Just like in France where I was raised, which is an unbearable mess, but a mess we can say we chose.
So democracy why not, but we ll only reach optimum once Chinese people agree and implement the same thing: what s your strategy to actually make them do it ? Boycott the olympics and whine about Xinjian ?
Interesting! Of course, I never stated "everyone is ... so power can": I the idea was that democracy is increasingly fit when populations respect a certain profile according many dimensions, and to the statistics HK peaks in some. But also regarding this juicy info that «people are latin or let's say sanguine»: there is an issue on measurements and it is difficult to get a "complete" idea of a population on quantitative data only, because many fundamental qualities are not measured. Regarding people being "sanguine": it is not a fault ("father Dante [Alighieri]" wrote of the existence of a legitimate state of being rightfully irate), it is not that a warm blooded human has less senses than a posed or "repressed" one: the issue is more with how civilized and cultivated a population is. Failing that, populations do look at the most humble profiles and believe them "a potential saviour of the Fatherland" - we could call that an effect of "ignorance", and it is a frequent phenomenon .
About «democracy why not»: traditional democracy is not "the goal / the end of the path" - but one could suppose it should take an advanced society to achieve its milestone reform, its improved successor, its next perfected form.
For the sanguine part it's really more "more sanguine than where I come from". I come from the North of France and have seen some mediterranean populations... Chinese people in HK top them in term of quickness of aggressivity, violence ramp up, frequency of verbal assault etc. It really feel like the fisherman village it was because the english invasion and I married one so I see how family dynamics are also, provided my wife is representative (poor family).
You can say all you want but when an angry man discovered his gf cheated on him during a vacation in Taiwan, murdered her, went back to HK, triggered an extradition debate with Taiwan, made the other side of the border angry in turn (how dare we isolate Taiwan as a jurisdiction, it's China all the same, they say between expletives), triggering a discussion of extradition to the mainland, making this side of the border angry in turn, triggering big protests, making the police angry in turn etc etc, you wonder: if anger was less prominent in everyone's reaction could they simply compromise ?
Someone lost a daughter in all this, and the murderer is free to roam the streets in HK, so what was the meaning of all that angry jazz...
You mentioned «Italy» and being «sanguine»: I consequently interpreted "sanguine" as "warmer", "brilliant", "extrovert", "emotionally available".
You are now presenting instances in which it seems that for "sanguine" you mean: "a beast".
Do not use the concept of "Italians" for that, because it would be improper factually. Italy (land of Pareto) is extremely composite, first of all, and in general you can easily find the most controlled people even among the most ignorant (probably owing to a very "integrated" societal configuration of the past). This in fact is a characteristic that is noted by visiting foreigners, in general noticing an extremely less violent environment (up to the label of "effeminate"). Note, numerically, that it is a country of moderate wine drinkers, among countries with much more marked habits towards consumption and substance type.
When I used 'sanguine' or 'warm blooded' I - of course - always assumed, "mentally lucid, reflective and controlled" at the same time. Because normal people are lively and with a functioning prefrontal all the times - the two things are not conflictual, they go together.
You have confirmed my statement «there is an issue on measurements and it is difficult to get a "complete" idea of a population on quantitative data only, because many fundamental qualities are not measured» - or, moreover, even when measurable and measured, it seems they are not easily apparent.
The topic though was "democracy deserving populations". Again: if the population is ignorant, they will be poor to disastrous in judgement: they will be unable to distinguish mice from eagles, they will take the first dog and call that dog "a leader that will lead us to years of cheers", they will believe things like "politicians should not receive a salary", they will believe that they have judgement where they do not have it. If the population is highly skilled - on average, median and typical -, democracy has more reasons to be a good idea. If the population is not, there surely is a problem to be fixed.
Hong Kong (e.g. top average IQ worldwide to some informal data, in absence of a "civilization index") projected an image of competence: if the image corresponds to facts, it would be a pity if representation is not extended. If a strong component of the population is competent, they should be empowered. And those who are "beasts", whatever the percentile they are in, majority or minority, and whatever the role they are in, appointed or marginalized, must be a social concern (of everyone, they themselves first) even outside the context of some "right for representation".
Surely we can overlook the whole “give us your damn open source personal projects copyright grab or you’ll be chewing on big legal problems buddy” thing given the companies generosity with cake?
The cake shows that Bumble really are good people.
Reminds me of those famous words “speak softly and carry a big cake”.
The thing about companies past a fairly small size is that you cannot reason about them as a group with characteristics much beyond sharing an employer. Are they good people? Yes. Are they bad people? Yes. Are they vindictive, legalistic people? Yes.
With this in mind, I would say that the cake shows that some part of the org is good people. We might consider being careful about how quickly and how aggressively we generalize this. I know where I've been in companies where parts of engineering were good people while other parts of the company had wonderful and bountiful opportunities to become good people.
Agreed. I recently built an internal application allowing our customer reps to play around with ideas using text-to-speech before sending the "copy" to a studio for a professional human recording, and included both Google WaveNet and Amazon Polly in the available voice synthesis choices. Polly is in its own right plain and simply mediocre for the most part, and in comparison to WaveNet it's just awful.
I've tried both of them and even Microsoft Neural speech and IBM's ones; eventually, Microsoft one has sounded me the most clear and natural amongst these four services.
100% agree. Azure voices are the best. I wish Polly would catch up since most of our stacks are there but we keep going back to azure for this one specific thing.
That plus working with technology I love.