Given the predatory pricing model the "cloud" has become, this makes perfect sense.
Azure and AWS have become practically a racket. I haven't seen a single "cloud native" company yet that is not leaking hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to the US digital monopolists.
An alternative to levelling entire cities to the ground to find tunnels, would be to stop the expanding of the settlers, stop the apartheid within Israel, stop the blockade and starving on Gaza, and try to actually foster peace instead of constant conflict, pain and misery in order to retain power.
This is despicable, inhumane. It is generational trauma that started with the Nazis, now propagated to the poor souls around the new western colony of Israel.
> An alternative to levelling entire cities to the ground to find tunnels, would be to stop the expanding of the settlers, stop the apartheid within Israel, stop the blockade and starving on Gaza, and try to actually foster peace instead of constant conflict, pain and misery in order to retain power.
Israel left Gaza back in 2005 after forcibly expelling all Jews and only later on only blockaded Gaza due to weapons being smuggled in, so they tried that and it clearly didn't work. It seems unilateral disengagement is simply not a strategy that can be succesful here.
This is such a spin. A 20 year blockade (and allowing Qatar to fund Hamas) leading to the Oct. 7 attack - the justification - for the ongoing atrocities, framed as "unilateral disengagement" that was not successful. Therefore it is the Palestinian's at fault.
It is clear that Israel is the source of violence. Which makes sense, as it is a new Western colony occupying (and constantly expanding) land where people lived for thousands of years, under the justification THAT IT'S IN THE BIBLE.
A religious fundamentalist colony, funded and armed by the west.
> A 20 year blockade (and allowing Qatar to fund Hamas)
The blockade only started after Hamas was elected into power, to reduce their access to more missiles and weapons. The money from Qatar was still allowed in for humanitarian reasons. But no matter what Israel does it is accused of being evil - both allowing the money through and blocking it would be considered wrong by the haters.
> a new Western colony occupying (and constantly expanding) land
The total land under control by Israel has shrunk by more than 50% over the past 50 years (with the return of Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace).
Millions of Arabs have migrated to the West, but only when Jews migrate East are they “vile colonizers”.
> The blockade only started after Hamas was elected into power
Israel has been restricting Gaza's economic viability since the 90s, much before the official blockade. (source: UN, wikileaks about Gaza economic policy)
> The money from Qatar was still allowed in for humanitarian reasons
Is this a joke ? The humanitarian Israel that does not let international flotillas with aid reach Gaza ? Or the humanitarian Israel that kills children ?
> The total land under control by Israel has shrunk by more than 50% over the past 50 years
The spin of the century. They gave back uninhabitable desert, while continuing expansion all over Palestine.
> Millions of Arabs have migrated to the West, but only when Jews migrate East are they “vile colonizers”.
Firstly, it has nothing to do with religion. Secondly, migration is quite different than a formation of a military state that constantly occupies land and expands, attacking its neighbours that has been there for millennia.
What they blocked was a sailboat carrying a bag of oranges and anti-Israel activists trying to carry out a media stunt for attention and virtue-signalling.
You obviously have an agenda here and are being disingenuous. I will disengage and leave you spewing your lies.
You have to be very careful when looking at this sort of data, from my understanding UN data only tracks UN 2720 Mechanism aid deliveries. I think you need to look at COGAT data to see total aid deliveries as there are non-UN aid deliveries as well that won't show up in the UN data.
> An Israeli military unit (COGAT) is not a trustworthy source of data for the aid they provide to an area they are actively blockading and starving.
From my understanding no organization other than COGAT even has the ability to track the total aid deliveries, there is no evidence of mass starvation or that COGAT data is unreliable from what I've seen.
> No but it is like taking Russia's word for how many troops they lost.
Russia mostly just doesn't publish those figures at all last I checked. OSINT researchers however following the Russia/Ukraine war will typically use data from Russian, Ukrainian and independent sources where available however so it also wouldn't be advisable to completely ignore the Russian data either. Even extremely biased/limited data can sometimes be used to identify trends, at least for cases where the bias factor tends to be consistent.
Israel also isn't a dictatorship and has what most would consider to be a relatively free press that is not afraid to criticize the government(i.e. Haaretz) so it would be rather difficult for Israel to deliberately publish outright fabricated data on a large scale without getting caught doing so.
I'm also not saying you should blindly trust any specific sources, however much of the COGAT data can also be corroborated via independent sources such as satellite imagery.
Keep in mind it's also not the case that the UN data meaningfully contradicts the COGAT data either, it's entirely possible for both to be reasonably accurate. In general I would say both COGAT and UN data are both likely reasonably accurate once factoring in the published limitations on that data.
The reason the numbers are different is simply because they are measuring different things. In the case of COGAT they generally measure total aid going through border crossings while the UN measures aid reaching only a subset of distributions points within Gaza.
So if you want to estimate per capita food aid going into Gaza you would want to use the COGAT figures since that data is collected at all border crossings and can be used to get a rough per capita figure on aid entering Gaza. On the other hand if you want to measure something like aid reaching UN system aid distribution points within Gaza then you would want to use the UN data.
Attempting to use UN data to calculate per capita food aid going into Gaza would clearly be wrong as the UN's own published data collection methodology clearly shows they are not measuring total aid entering Gaza.
The UN often seems to publish reports analyzing their own data while clearly failing factor in their own published data limitations into their calculations which results in inaccurate conclusions in their analysis. Usually these sort of analysis mistakes are very obvious as the UN generally publishes the math behind their calculations.
You shouldn't blindly discard data simply because you think the source might be biased in one direction, rather you should try to understand the limitations of the data and corroborate it against secondary sources where possibly while also trying to factor in bias where feasible.
Essentially it's not the raw data where there is disagreement, it's the various interpretations of what the data actually means.
> How is comparing a state that is conducting a genocide to another group that did so too against the Jewish people ?
A war is not the same thing as a genocide. The Jews did not start a war with the Nazi's. Hamas started a war with Israel with openly genocidal goals, Hamas simply did not have the military capability to accomplish their genocidal goals.
We've banned this account because it has been using HN primarily (even exclusively?) for political/national/etc. battle for many months. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're for or against. (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...)
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
(and I suppose I'd better add: (1) yes, this would be the same if the person were arguing exactly the opposite; and (2) yes, I'm sure there are others doing just as badly which we haven't banned yet. If so, the reason is that we haven't seen them yet. We read HN pretty randomly, and can't come close to seeing everything.)
> What about that jameshilliard guy that has tens of flagged dead comments about Israel ?
I think overall most of my comments are positive. Some people seem to flag comments as a way of disagreeing I guess.
> Since 2024, 99% of his comments are political and about Israel.
I don't think that's really an accurate characterization, it's certainly not 99%, are comments correcting factual inaccuracies/misinformation in threads related to Israel considered political just because the surrounding topic is politically contentious?
Most of my comments on threads involving Israel are me just correcting some of the more obvious misinformation/conspiracy theories and/or trying to provide more factual background context/nuance to the discussions. I try not to push a specific political agenda/ideology for the most part. It's not like I'm trying to start political/ideological discussions either, there just seems to be more factual misinformation around topics involving Israel and that happens to be something where I know a lot of the history.
I don't feel comfortable with "what about that X guy" responses to moderation comments, but in fairness the GP has a point: your account has overwhelmingly been posting in political flamewars for quite some time, and that's not allowed here.
I had to go back 79 days and what felt like hundreds of posts to find any exception (something about heat pumps I think!), but then scrolling further back just led through reams more of the same. That means your account is definitely on the wrong side of the "primarily" test (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...)
To say that you're simply correcting inaccuracies and misinformation doesn't really work because the question of what counts as accurate vs. misinformation is hotly disputed. It is basically the entirety of the battle.
On the other hand, your comments have mostly (though not entirely) been avoiding the more degraded forms of guidelines breakage that people resort to in these threads - things like snark, name-calling, and from there into personal attacks, slurs, and so on. That's good, but it's not enough—if you want to keep posting on HN we need you not to use the site primarily for political battle (broadly construed).
Why ban the other account and not yours? The primary difference is that your account does have a history of using HN as intended. I had to go (too) far back to find it, but it was there. In such a case we prefer to warn first, not ban outright. The other difference is that I saw a lot more cases of the other account breaking the site guidelines egregiously. That combination (no history of using HN as intended + breaking the guidelines egregiously) is what tends to push us across the warn/ban line.
But no—to address the question that people often wonder about—this is not about either person's views about the underlying topic. Moderation would be exactly the same if the positions were flipped, and indeed often has been.
It's okay to have an agenda, just be honest about it please. Anti-Zionists tend to be pretty open about their agenda: opposing colonialism, ethno-states, genocide etc. It's telling that modern Zionists often seem less willing to express theirs.
Indeed. I'll never forget setting out to find out the origins of terrorism thinking it was Iranian, and finding out it was mostly British and Zionist... and I worked in anti-terrorism and hadn't been taught much of that history...
> Your work will be used against innocent civilians in far away lands.
For now. I think this administration will absolutely have no compunction about using this against innocent civilians in THIS land as soon as they feel the need to to retain power.
Not sure about the downvotes, this is correct even if not pleasant to read (people need to be heroes of their little bullshit life story and all that).
It may be an afterthought for US citizens living in US, but its a deadly weapon pointing to 95% of the mankind and people wielding it are often shit to be polite. We the rest do care.
I mean, this site is full of people that develop the weapons used to commit atrocities and genocides (both physical and digital ones) so I am not surprised about the downvotes..
that's why we outsource to other countries our software development, so you don't get blood on your hands violating the... essence of the constitution. i'm missing a word here.
hiring foreign data scientists and web developers.
The answer is not to avoid engaging with a corrupt institution. US is a democracy: vote, be active politically, go into organizations that need change.
So you are suggesting that you can change the US military industrial complex by.. working for the NSA or Lockheed Martin ?
Also it is quite questionable how much of a democracy the US is nowadays.
Gerrymandering aside, the populace does not get to choose the presidential candidates. And the whole two party thing ? Or the fact that to have a chance you need a super PAC with hundreds of millions ?
Yes, that's what I'm suggesting. If you feel that the problem is higher up or lower down in the institutional hierarchy, then go higher up or lower down. That's the civil approach, as I understand it.
Apart from the fact the if you stay true to your morals you will be incapable of rising to a position of power in such corrupt institutions, the degree of institutionalisation necessary to do so will definitely erode your ethics, turning you into another cog.
In my opinion, you underestimate the power of an individual. I'm not saying you have to be Gandhi, but he was one person. A problem with your assessment, is that if you're right, or, if everyone believes you're right, you'll have to wait for some external force to come in and change things, like a calamity or desperate revolt. By the time USSR broke apart, bread riots were happening, and, tragically, 30 years later we still have the same authoritarian, corrupt regime (in all but name) wrecking havoc at home and abroad. That's what a people get for believing in the story of disempowerment. That's my take, at least.
I agree in principle, but also agree with gp that in practice the things one has to do to rise to a position of power in corrupt institutions make it virtually impossible to be a credible agent of change, especially private/secretive institutions like military, intelligence, military-industrial corps. I guess politicians are the one role that is supposed to be able to operate without those institutional constraints but of course, (in the US) given corporate capture of political speech, political hyper-polarization, etc, in most cases they are just as or more constrained. It is a hard problem.
The Brits were bankrupting themselves with war spending, which culminated in WW2. After its conclusion, they started liberating every territory that wasn't directly profitable, including some that did not even want to be liberated. WW2 ended in 1945, India was liberated in 1947 alongside numerous other territories. Without WW2, India would likely have remained a British territory well past 1947. Beyond that, Gandhi wasn't one man - but the leader of a movement of millions.
As for Russia, I think your perception there is also driven by 'messaging'. There's a million videos of people streaming walking tours and the like in Russia. Here [1] is one done 4 days ago. That's a country that in the 90s was on the verge of collapse and was extremely dangerous. You can find similar stuff on e.g. Twitch because there's this somewhat odd subculture of delivery drivers, taxi drivers, and others streaming their days. Perhaps in part out of bemusement from this Western perspective paired against reality.
Snowden and other whistleblowers, of whom there have been many (many of which paid arguably a dearer price than Snowden did), made it plain obvious to everyone that US intelligence services are doing illegal things abroad and at home. Before that, only tinfoil-hat-types thought so: now everyone knows it. They moved the Overton window a tremendous amount.
I don't think actual change comes from people lobbying for some bill or whatever. It comes from a far more imperceptible shift in the zeitgeist of society, that is then eventually formally reflected in some way or another. For instance the Civil Rights Movement only succeeded because society had already largely shifted, before it had even begun, in a way that made it viable. A Civil Rights Movement in Saudi Arabia isn't going to succeed, because it needs the widespread desire for such to already exist.
And in this regard I think Snowden had a bigger influence on society than anybody or anything in my living memory. Prior to him there was a belief by many that government conspiracies couldn't happen because somehow if there were enough people involved, it'd show up on News at 9 or whatever. He made it clear that such conspiracies, far beyond the bounds of what even the absurd conspiracy theorist might propose, can and do exist. The NSA has friggin spies in World of Warcraft!
That sort of skepticism played a key role in fueling an anti-establishment mindset. And that mindset is what fueled the rise of everything from Trump to the DSA. I'm certainly not claiming those are good outcomes, but merely part of an increasingly visible shift away from the old establishment. And I think this shift will be, in the longrun, good for America. And I think in hindsight, it will be clear that a lot of this change started happening with Snowden.
I'm probably too focused on the Afghanistan war but I don't think that voting differently would have extended or shortened the war.
Both republicans and democrats wanted the war in Afghanistan back when 9/11 happened and they needed to get revenge on the scapegoat. Meanwhile the end of the war was initiated by Trump, then slowly concluded by Joe Biden.
So both the start and the end of the war had bipartisan support. Nothing against democracy but war doesn't follow the election cycle. It might start in one though.
And so it is with written words; you might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their sayings, they always say only one and the same thing.
And now imagine that the only one and same thing the LLMs say is not only fixed, but intentionally steered as the biggest and most inflexible propaganda mechanism we have ever seen.
Especially given the lack of competition in the space, and people mostly using models from 2 or 3 providers.
The only reason you enjoy cheap food is because of the free market.
Housing in many countries is not part of a free market but part of a monopoly where the government decides how much, how many, the what and the when the houses can be built. If it was a real free market, the issue would have been long solved.
Housing should be a commodity. Commodities are fungible, plentiful, and easily tradable.
Housing right now is the opposite of a commodity: it's a boutique investment for individuals whose price is propped up by regulations that artificially limit supply.
Surely, if we are decommodifying basic needs, our first priority should be food, not housing, right? How has nationalization of agriculture worked in the past?
Who builds all those bridges, roads, power plants, and other public works projects? Maybe them?
Also government formed co-ops. Find people who want a flat and agree on rent before you build it. As the loan is paid off rent becomes substantially cheaper. The second best time to plant a tree is today.
It also doesn't need to be the entire housing stock, just enough to help keep rent low (see Vienna).
Governments directly, cooperatives or non-profit organizations. The Churches used to be pretty active in that space as well to invest tithes, with rents paying for common-welfare projects.
> The Chinese and Russians are in no mood to slow down relative to the US.
Typical boogeyman fearmongering to justify the existence and expansion of the US military industrial complex.
Out of all these three (US, China, Russia), a simple count of who has started more wars and conflicts is a clear indicator of who is the one initiating the vicious cycle of aggression and "defense" budgets.
Azure and AWS have become practically a racket. I haven't seen a single "cloud native" company yet that is not leaking hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to the US digital monopolists.
Cloud capitalism at its finest..
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