All recent wars are about energy (oil, gas, etc.) This is all very ridiculous as we're living in an endless ocean of energy. Not to mention the toll on our environment that those primitive energy sources cause. Instead of putting efforts into super volcano event prediction, meteor shields, and other things that can help us prevent the plethora of possibilities for an extinction event, little people with shortsighted and pathologically egoistic vision are controlling this planet. We need people like Elon Musk in charge - people who want to take our civilization to the next level, not because of some personal agenda, but because this is how they find happiness, and not let us rot in wars, diseases, and poverty, which hasn't improved much in the last century. A new order is needed, the so-called "democracy" is defunct and it only promotes populist politicians that promise to the dumber majority things just to get elected and shortly after election they forget their promises. Look at Obama - he promised GMO labeling and other things, which completely forgot about. I think all politicians should face criminal charges if they don't follow their pre-election promises. This way, they will be very careful to promise things they truly believe in and that can really happen. I really like Jacque Fresco's vision about the next level of society that has scientific advancement as the leading goal. Conveniently, the America's leading goal for the past decade has been "War on Terror", which is a convenient vicious circle as with all wars for oil and enforcing petrodollar hegemony, all America does is fuel terrorism! It's like being a firefighter and an arsonist at the same time - you'll never be out of a job. I think some people in Washington got too afraid that Russia was becoming a good guy, and gaining momentum, and spurred the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine to keep the convenient Cold War going on.
My opinion is that the US should have "won" any kind of war they had in mind with the Arab world by putting the trillions spent on Iraq and Afghanistan into energy research.
That would have been far more damaging to their targets and immensely beneficial to the world at large.
Exactly. Thus we have get what we deserve, less scientific advancements and quality of life. If only we could get rid of his perpetual self-damaging instinct.
And if Ukraine stops fighting now ... all will be solved. Oh wait.
Besides if we got rid of "self-damaging instincts", there'd be other, equally horrible problems we'd hit. Competing, of course, is why evolution works, and thus if life, as a whole, got rid of this "self-damaging instincts" we'd be nothing but simple bacteria, if that.
And the problem with statements like this is that they're not really moral. Neutrality is nothing more than a vote that says the strongest party can do whatever it wants.
Does anyone know why the MH17 story was kept off HN yesterday?
I kept seeing it appear in new and then on the front page and then it would vanish. I guess admins were deleting it? Is there a policy reason why it isn't something 'good hackers would find interesting' ?
IIRC when the other Malaysian Airlines plane went missing that went up on HN, and that was before all the 'hacker friendly' tracking technique stories.
But it was heavily flagged. After an hour, it was at a far lower position than other stories with a fraction of the votes of the same age (e.g. the Nimrod link).
It is a political mess as well as a tragedy. Malaysia is still dealing with the extra negative press because it's a Malaysian Airlines flight. The plane fell on Ukraine despite it being shot down by pro-Russian separatists and now Putin is juggling the responsibility to the Ukraine because that is where the plane fell.
The plane fell on the pro-russian "independent" part of Ukraine self-proclaimed as Donetsk People's Republic[1]. If the Kiev government wanted to get where the plane fell, as it stands now, it'd have to be a military incursion into enemy territory.
Excuse my ignorance but I would have thought that the Ukrainian airspace would be restricted due to the ongoing 'conflict'. Surely they could have used a different route no?
The European air traffic control body, Eurocontrol, said Ukrainian authorities had banned aircraft from flying at 32,000ft or below and the doomed aircraft had been cruising above that, at 33,000ft – however this apparently still left it within range of the sophisticated surface-to-air weaponry that pro-Russia forces have been using recently to target Ukrainian military aircraft. All civilian flights have now been barred from the area of eastern Ukraine.
So it didn't occur to either the Ukrainian authorities or Eurocontrol that due to the existence of advanced weaponry and the remote possibility that either faction could gain access to them, civilian flights should be barred from that airspace? Was the economic impact of rerouting flights so high that they were willing to take the risk with civilians?
Though grim but i can't help but wonder about the mythological philosophy "everything happens for the good and for a reason". Extremely uncanny...condolences to the people onboard.
Pretty much any traumatic event gets the conspiracy theories going, which lends credence to the hypothesis that they are at least partially emotional coping mechanisms.
Readit News
There is no chance of that until some Russians who want their country to join the civilized world put a bullet in Putin's head.
Besides if we got rid of "self-damaging instincts", there'd be other, equally horrible problems we'd hit. Competing, of course, is why evolution works, and thus if life, as a whole, got rid of this "self-damaging instincts" we'd be nothing but simple bacteria, if that.
And the problem with statements like this is that they're not really moral. Neutrality is nothing more than a vote that says the strongest party can do whatever it wants.
I kept seeing it appear in new and then on the front page and then it would vanish. I guess admins were deleting it? Is there a policy reason why it isn't something 'good hackers would find interesting' ?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
For me, the "interesting" thing means a deeper knowledge of some facet of the world, not shallow reporting of breaking news.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048083
(doesn't have a reference to MH17, no idea where B772 comes from)
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_People's_Republic
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/mh17-pressure-o...