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> No they won’t. The lack of a draft and mass domestic casualties dramatically changes the picture

American centrism strikes again.

Plenty of us of the same generation living in countries that didn't fight in Vietnam (with no such draft or casualties) share such ethical views.

Don't make this an American argument.


I think this person might just be seeing Vietnam in a retrospective lens and has not seen the pro vietnam war propaganda from the 1960s which was immensely popular.

I wasn't alive either but I've seen it after the fact. Also the kind of people who thought the Kent State massacre was the right thing to do. The political radicals of that era "won" many culture wars but they were a minority, and the influential, pro-war, pro-establishment people sounded exactly like the ones who were in favor of the Iraq War and who think what's going on in Iran right now makes sense.

There is a reason, for example, that John Fogerty of CCR [of the song "Fortunate Son"] wrote the mid 2000s song "It's like Deja Vu All Over Again" to describe the Iraq war. It's because the war propaganda was all the same, just with a rotating cast.


> Gen-X was making the popular new art at the time. It was a strong reflection of the feelings of our generation.

I posted this in a thread about the 90's film 'Hackers'.....

In the 1990's and for us Gen-X'ers, the worst thing you could do was to sell out; to take the mans money instead of keeping your integrity. Calling people and bands 'sell outs' (sometimes without justification!) was to insult them.

With the rise of 'influencers' the opposite appears to be the case; people go out of their way to sell out and are praised for doing so. This is a massive change in the cultural landscape which perhaps many born in the 2000's aren't aware of. (Being aware of this helps give some perspective to Gen-X media and films like Hackers).

BTW: Remember the 'product scene' in the film Waynes World?


Ethics are easy when you can afford food.

Post 2000s there has been a pretty fundamental change in the US economy. Things like rent and food were far cheaper. There was also a lot of potential income to be made by individuals by connecting buyers and sellers. Typically if you wanted to sell something like a car, you either went to a dealer that screwed you, or you put and ad in the local paper. If you watched around you could quickly buy cheap cars and turn them quickly for more than enough profit to make it worth while.

The internet quickly flattened this. First by pulling all the buyers and sellers on one advertising site it quickly turned into the fastest with the most capital won. Then the sites themselves figured out they should be the middle man keeping buying up the stock and selling it.

There has also been a huge consolidation to just a few players in many markets. This consolidation and many times algorithmic collusion has lead to the general ratcheting of prices higher. When you start adding things in like 'too big to fail' the market becomes horrifically unbalanced to large protected capital with unlimited funds from the money printing machine.

It's no wonder we quickly dropped ethics, most of us would starve to death in the system we've created.


> Post 2000s there has been a pretty fundamental change in the US economy.

American centrism strikes again.

I'm not American.


> I'm not sure I like exposing my home address by providing my callsign with my HN account

Please explain. Surely one simply opts out of having ones address published in your countries call book?


In the US it's a public database, and you don't get to opt out of providing your name and a mailing address (mailing, needs to be valid but doesn't need to be your home address, PO Boxes work).

https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchLicense.jsp


I put my office address for anything where I need to provide a mailing address but I don't want to provide my home address.

Wow!

I know American data protection law is pretty poor, but that really is shocking; such data should not be made public without the users explicit opt-in consent.


They have opt-in consent: it’s a known part of the US ham licensing process that the database is public and searchable, and nobody is forced to get a ham license.

In fact, several of the questions on the ham test involve the fact that you can look up operator info online.


Your amateur radio license is only active when:

A lot of information is out there for a lot of people in the US. Here you can find salary information for GA state employees by name: https://open.ga.gov/openga/salaryTravel/index. If you don't know their name, you can search by organization and get a big list of people and how much they make each year.

> I couldn't care less who rules Ukraine, Taiwan, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iran

Oh you will. You most certainly will.


You're not wrong.

How in gods name this article made it to the front page of HN is a mystery.


Because enough readers upvoted it to cause it to appear there.

Any ideas on that mystery, then? Since you’ve got your finger on the pulse around here.

There's no mystery. The way any story makes the front page is enough users upvote it from the "new" page for it to appear there.

So the answer to the question of "how did it make it there" is exactly what I said, enough upvoted it that it made it to the front page.

As to "why" those folks upvoted it, well, on that I have no idea.


No I already knew you have no idea, that’s no mystery.

16 points in 2 hours?

What can I say, I'm a Billy simp, there's one just behind me as I'm writing this comment and for about a year now I've been forcing myself to buy a new one to put it on the right-side of my current desk (sometimes I'm too lazy for my own good, as in this case). So just seeing Billy in the title and as the actual subject of the blog-post made me upvote the submission, apparently I'm not alone in this.

You <-----> The Point.

Literally today I was thinking about how to organize all my out of date computers in my room, and thinking about building a cabinet or shelves.

Oddly poignant. I can't be the only one.


Bots are in to stuff like this.

Hey at least it's not Yet Another Fucking LLM Article.

I find it rather baffling the USA hasn't mandated cyber resilience for consumer products.

> one of them started to use Gemini as a source

We need a variant of Godwins law to reflect (and prevent) the use of AI being used in internet squabbles.


Cut communication and notify them you dont like speaking with their llm and expected the conversation to be between the two people. Discount their credibility.

> To be fair, at least Android and presumably iOS grant apps by default no access to your files in modern versions.

That's exactly the point!

The file system is hidden from modern users. Kids brought up on this now have no idea or concept of where their data resides.


The alternative being to bend over and grab our ankles with both hands the moment the scummy ad-tech industry requests our data?

Sorry mate, the GDPR is there for a bloody good reason; and legit companies obey the law.


The GDPR is theater. An effective privacy law would have prevented data collection in the first place. Data collected will be abused, and a cute little banner won't change this.

Ummmmm.

The GDPR does outlaw unnecessary collection of personal data without explicit opt-in consent. It's baffling you appear ignorant of this.


The consent is the problem. It should be illegal even with consent, so this whole industry wouldn't exist.

Yet, Facebook and Google have a thriving business in the EU among I’m assuming EU companies.

So you can pretend that the law is effective or you can admit that all it gave the world were cookie banners.


The "cookie banners" allow you to opt out of providing your personal data. That is the entire point!

Blame the parasitic ad-tech industry for their existence. Not the lawmakers who protect all our privacy.


Yes because of the GDPR, there aren’t still two trillion dollar+ market cap ad Tech companies.

But at least we have cookie banners everywhere.


More pity to those who (for some bizarre reason) voluntarily choose to interact with those ad-tech companies.

So you don’t use Google and don’t have an Android phone?

> There needs to be total transparency to people when this is happening

This is why WE have the GDPR. To outlaw and prevent exploitation such as this.


Presumably the 'drive-by' downvotes are coming from the ad-tech industry who would prefer the population to simply bend over and grab ankles with both hands the moment they request our personal data?

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