While this is clearly an old post, I'm not sure about the actual date. On the bottom it says 1999, but there's also a citation for an article from 2001.
> For many more details consult the Young Scientists' Network or read the account in the May, 2001 issue of the Washington Monthly.
This reminds me of a somewhat related topic - who won the space race? Growing up in Soviet Union, we were taught that it was the USSR - when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Then I came to the US, and was taught that it was the US, when Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon.
No-one ever really set the goalpost of the Space Race, so it can be whichever you want. I personally like to consider the Apollo–Soyuz mission as the true finish of the space race, where the two nations docked their spacecraft together, and an astronaut and a cosmonaut shook hands in space.
In the end the big winner of the Space Race was humanity, in the massive scientific leap forward that it created.
I think it's pretty obvious in hindsight that the US shifted the goalposts to claim victory here. The real space race, having the ability to nuke any point on earth, was clearly won by the Soviets. Putting a man on the moon showed that America was vastly more capable on a technical level, but that wasn't really the point of the space race.
It's also why governments are carefully watching North Korea's space program, even if they'll never be able to put a man on the moon. Their ability to launch a sattelite into orbit makes them a threat, whether or not they can make a moon lander has little real value beyond vanity.
> The real space race, having the ability to nuke any point on earth, was clearly won by the Soviets.
The US and the Soviets had operational ICBMs at pretty much the same time-- dueling milestones from 1957 to 1959.
Then the Soviets pulled ahead with capabilities in LEO, which showed they also probably had "better" ICBMs.
Then the US caught up and surpassed them.
Then both stagnated; Russia did a slightly better job in choosing priorities for human spaceflight; the US did a better job with probes and unmanned spaceflight.
> Then the Soviets pulled ahead with capabilities in LEO, which showed they also probably had "better" ICBMs.
In the US the story is that because Soviet nukes were more crude than the US versions, which made them heavier and bulkier so the Soviets had to build their rockets bigger to have enough range. When the focus shifted to putting a man in orbit having a larger rocket to start with was an advantage and allowed the Soviets to achieve a number of firsts.
I do agree that declaring the race suddenly over with a man on the moon was a case of taking the ball and going home.
Wouldn't the 'US did a better job with probes and unmanned spaceflight' depend on when you want to plant the flag that the space race ended? If we go with what in the US we define as a man on the moon, the Soviets I believe were putting probes all over the place. The soviets were landing probes first on bodies in the 60s. While the US focused on the moon.
I guess that depends on what you define as the bounds of the space race. If we go to the fall of the Soviet Union, yea, I completely agree with your last statement. After we landed on the moon, we did start getting serious about probes and had a bunch of wins there with voyager and such.
> Wouldn't the 'US did a better job with probes and unmanned spaceflight' depend on when you want to plant the flag that the space race ended?
I was talking about post-1970 stagnation.
Russia basically scaled everything waaaay back post 1970. You have Venera as a significant first/win, parity for a little while on Mars, and then the US unrivaled in the outer solar system.
From what I understand the US outnumbered the soviets in sheer number of missiles though. Early 1960s politicians fearmongered about soviet missile capacity in order to justify a huge expansion in military capabilities while the soviets lagged behind in raw numbers.
Both sides grossly overbuilt their nuclear missile capabilities. The maintenance costs forced them into partial disarmament treaties in the 80s and 90s.
> the US shifted the goalposts to claim victory here
On the one hand, yes absolutely.
On the other hand -- which is more exciting? The "space race" of getting the first man in space and back, or the "moon race" of getting the first man on the moon and back?
I think it's fair to say the "moon race" was a far greater event in human history, to set foot on another world. Yes, the US shifted the goalposts... but at the same time the new goalposts seem like the more momentous event in human history. Think of how people across the world tuned in for live TV footage of the moon landing.
That's not really the full story. The US didn't come up with the moon goal. It was the Soviets' plan already, which is why JFK publicly announced it in a speech: to force them into a public prestige battle. The Soviets had the habit of repeated private failure. If they achieved something, they'd announce it afterwards; if they failed, they kept quiet. The US broadcast launches on TV and pre-announced goals, which was a major propaganda effort and much more effective than post-flight releases.
Growing in the Soviet Union, you should also remember the story that the airplane was invented by Mozhaysky, radio by Popov, lightbulb by Ladygin, and so on. No one in the US disputes who the first man in space was - the narrative rather highlights the US achievements. The soviets (and Russia) take it to the next level. It took me a while to understand why none of my colleagues have ever heard of Ostrogradskiy and Kotelnikov theorems
It was the race that moon the US one. The USSR was the first into space both with a spacecraft orbiting and living beings.
Maybe people interpret what they learned differently but I don’t think they were taught the US won the space race. Of course the goalposts will be moved to claim the glory.
I wasn’t taught that it was Yuri who won but rather Sputnik.
I like to think of it as a contest of one-upmanship.
Eventually the US did something the Soviets could not in the most difficult category of space exploration, which is manned spaceflight. If they'd gotten their manned lunar program done, they would have kept the Space Race going, and the US would have had to find another first. But they didn't.
It's tough to prioritize migrating to a new platform for the engineering blog, without a very good ROI. Airbnb's eng blog was set up on Medium a while ago, it's doing fine, they have no real reason to spend a lot of resources on switching.
Really wish this existed in the 90's when my family moved to the US from eastern europe. A non-exhaustive list of scams my parents fell for:
- Investing money in a friend's company - this was the most painful as it was perpetuated by our family members who lived here for a while that we trusted
- Rainbow vacuum cleaner
- Aqualife water filter
- Hiring someone to take us to another city to buy a car to "help get a good deal" - turned out he was working for the seller, and it was not a good deal at all
- A summer job for me selling Vector cutlery
Unfortunately it's easy to scam new immigrants, this happened for hundred years and still happening now.
> - Investing money in a friend's company - this was the most painful as it was perpetuated by our family members who lived here for a while that we trusted
I don't know your parents' experience, of course, but this method of losing money is one of the most popular for everyone. I once saw an expert who provides finanical education to new professional atheletes (known for being bankrupt soon after retirement despite millions in income). Loans to family/friends' businesses was top of their list of no-no's.
On the other hand, many successful businesses have started that way. Many more legitimate but failed efforts also have begun that way. Not everyone has access to VC capital, personal wealth, or a bank loan.
Yeah, I should've been more clear: it wasn't really investing in a friends company. I agree it can be a source of funding when other sources aren't available, but in this case it was a total scam - the company was specifically designed to accept money and fold.
Here in Singapore there was a plague of such cases when China opened up. The main victims were ethnic Chinese Singaporeans being screwed over by long lost family members in China.
There's so many tele-scammers from China nowadays and old Singaporean Chinese are ripe for the pickings. The usual ones I hear over the phone are MOH, IRAS, or SingPost, or some other authority impersonation.
Most people could probably benefit from someone helping them navigate the car buying process. For a $500 I bet I could talk most buyers through the right lease, payment setup and financing and pre negotiate a decent deal in one of the 3-4 neighboring states and setup an inspection at a good mechanics if buying used. I bet I could bring 1-2k of value into that transaction. If I was doing it as my day job I could probably squeeze out 2-3k or help them tap the auction market directly.
The problem is there's no way to prove that you're doing that and not a scammer; you're almost better off just asking someone who bought one recently what they did.
(What you're suggesting is basically Nothercastle's Used Cars)
Except it’s more like a buyers agent or a doula. Someone that’s navigated the process many times to assist on behalf of a buyer. Upfront payment no commission or kickback could even put that in the contract.
I do think these people exist I’ve seen them advertise services in specialty car forums but it’s very niche.
You see it more frequently in certain luxury vehicles where the price is part of the prestige, usually to where the equation is a bit more managed, e.x. they can set base price higher and have fewer random 'tire kickers' to deal with.
It’s not though because if you can read the book you don’t need help. The thing most people need help understanding is the intricacies of financing, rates, prepayment, insurance, and warranties that’s not something an average can figure understand .The other part is just getting around the upsell and shopping around. You can research all that online the information is there but most either don’t care to understand or it won’t.
I can totally understand that, but I don't want to waste time figuring out how to optimize it by trial and error if there's a an easily digestible guide that gets me within 95%, because that shit is not fun or interesting to me. I'm telling there's an audience for such a book because I'm it, and you're arguing that I don't exist. Then you put a new edition once every 1-2 years, and call it 'Nothercastle's cary buyer's guide 2025'.
Not sure I agree in general. Grinding through hours of research and teaching yourself things from scraps of info is a lot harder than reading it out of a well-structured book. Can't speak for this particular domain but I certainly would appreciate a coherent resource.
Yes but unfortunately things change pretty often so idk how you keep everything up to date in a book. Leases need a calculator to compare and reliability and depreciation estimates are also dynamic. You could have a website with a subscription but people hate paying for those.
I see what you mean, I guess if your friends used it and it worked for them then I could see using it as well.
This place you linked isn’t upfront about their fee structure at all so I’m pretty suspicious. If you aren’t paying for the service your aren’t the customer and this might be the case here.
Just check it visually, kick the tires, and listen carefully how the engine starts up - should be quick and smooth. Pay cash. Now please send me the $500 check.
There was a wave of this in 90s and 00s but in Poland. In my eyes parents signed a loan for "Mercedes of vaccum cleaners" for an amount of over 2k USD. Average salary back then was something below 700 USD. Fuck this American scammers. Eat shit and bankrupt Rainbow. Rest of the above were occuring as well. People were looking at the west with hope and sympathy, while the west came over with smiling brutal extortionist rape fest.
> parents signed a loan for "Mercedes of vaccum cleaners"
Somehow I think the problem is less the 'American scammers' and more the fact that your lot decided it was worth taking out a loan for a vacuum cleaner, of all things.
They were in some lunatic trance agitated by manipulative sales tactics. Any other loan they would have research beforehand and actively apply for.
> fact that your lot decided it was worth taking out a loan
Let's use analogy - currently American elderly are aggressively profiled and targeted by various scams starting from a phone call because they are gullible, lonely, and vulnerable. Perhaps they simply decide it's worth to give away 1000-3000 USD here and there? Maybe they decide that few calls with a guy with Indian accent is worth 2000 USD, of all things. Honestly I feel certain satisfaction that it bites back.
Jehovah's witnesses is another vile scam that hugely spoiled the image of the West in the eyes of the people who just broke free from the Soviet occupation. I don't understand how such evil and disgusting cult is allowed to exist. If a person would hide a list of thousands of child molesters or would endorse killing children by giving fake medical advice to their parents, they would be put straight to jail. How are cults allowed to do the same without any repercussions?
Well it's a nuanced answer. The United States has freedom of Religion, and a large separation of Church and State. It leads to some bad but theoretically some good.
> If a person would hide a list of thousands of child molesters or would endorse killing children by giving fake medical advice to their parents, they would be put straight to jail.
Unfortunately any progress our country has made in this regard has been utterly regressed in the last 5 or so years....
But to better understand the other side of this as far as religion, consider the Catholic sacrament of Confession. A priest is not supposed to divulge confessions to anyone.
Then, let's consider the danger on the other side. Historically, Governments swooping in and grabbing lists of church members, what happened next was not looked well upon.
And so the US has this sometimes almost horrifying level of separation of church and state, where people do have the freedom to worship, however other benefits are abused [0][1] and we even have let folks that infiltrated three letter organizations keep their church status [2]
[0] - I still remember the baptist sermon of "I am not telling you how to vote! I am not telling you how to vote. But the bible says X will go to heaven and Candidate Y does not X"
[1] - Churches do not have nearly the same level of oversight as a normal nonprofit
I used to ignore or look down on them. After they stalked me with some profiling and unwanted weekly visits while I lived abroad, I actively hate Jehovah's Witnesses. They stalk intercoms in the buildings. Another American smiling predators and lunatics.
> How are cults allowed to do the same without any repercussions?
I am not a friend of the JW, but as an adult, you're expected to be your own advocate. You opted in to a system of faith, not science.
Regarding child molesters, any organization that spells out a code of silence in its doctrine is always fun to deal with. The JW are hardly unique with their theocratic warfare, there's also mesirah, deceivers-yet-true, keep sweet, omerta, "snitches get stitches", etc. You can't penetrate such a culture from the outside, so no witnesses testify, hence no repercussions.
In Prague or Budapest about '88 - hazy now as we were moving about a
lot - before the wall came down, but the "thaw" had started. McDonalds
just opened a restaurant, first in the city. Anyway there we were
looking at this enormous queue... the biggest damn queue I ever saw,
It went round the block, and the next block... like how people camp
out for black Friday but thousands and thousands of people. Each
burger was the equivalent of a few weeks wages. But nothing could stop
them, all hungry for a bite of "freedom".
Meantime porn producers and other creeps were swarming Prague and Budapest to "taste the Communism". Hard to find a woman who was in her teens or twenties at that time who wasn't curious if free market penis is as hard as post-Communist one.
> porn producers and other creeps were swarming Prague and Budapest to "taste the Communism"
A significant majority of white sex workers in Western Europe and porn actresses still tend to be from Eastern Europe—Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia.
This scam was popular in post-soviet too. Basically a very annoying salesman who reiterates on all sorts of reality bending pushes once you let them in. You may think it shouldn’t work but it does, on people whom you wouldn’t call idiots. As I understand it, it leverages the tendency to respect authority and avoid conflict, among other sales tricks.
There’s an old joke about it:
Salesman: (enters the room and dumps trash on the floor) If our vacuum cleaner can’t clean this, I will eat this trash!
Dwellers: You can start eating cause electricity is off for three days.
At the end, Lucy tries to make her money back by using the same sales techniques used on her. The vacuum cleaner doesn't work because electricity is turned off because the resident hadn't paid the power bill.
Colleagues in workplace started buying and were receiving commission by referencing next client. Trained salesman visited home and used all dirty sales tricks and pitches. Until now I remember "don't say this vacuum is expensive, this is Mercedes of vacuum cleaners, everyone desires even a substitute of Mercedes", or "a salesman enters someone's home with an attitude that they own him the commission money". You grew up in Communism with an absolute shortage of everything and are unable to evaluate good value in market economy. Fuck this manipulative psychopats.
In novel free market and democratic ways. That was extremely bitter realization. The reward for hardships so far was a new wave of MLMs, cults, sects, scams, and whatnot.
We do still have them right here in the US-of-A but they tend to be more clever in packaging... Mary Kay, Amway [0], people working IT at state colleges known for IT but paid for a weird 'stock tip' ponzi email thing, heck I know between 2007ish-2013ish a couple close friends bought into this weird "I'm a cellular reseller" MLM thing...
[0] - Still remember when some otherwise very bright folks got wrapped up in 'Team of Destiny' which was basically Amway over the internet back in 2001-2002ish times.
>"Really wish this existed in the 90's when my family moved to the US from eastern europe."
I moved to Canada from USSR in the beginning of 90s. The scams were plentiful and unexpected. Lucky for me I've followed that golden rule - if it sounds too good then fuck it. Saved me from lot of troubles. Some of my friends were not so lucky.
Every child, as part of his education, should be required to play some MMO with in-game trading, where noobs are routinely taken advantage of, where scams and betrayals abound, as a preparation for real life.
Isn't Vector just a weird MLM sales channel for Cutco? It is unlikely anyone will make money off it, but from what I understand it is not impossible. You just won't make money selling knives at least.
IDK, it just seemed like overpriced normal knives to me. They aren't bad knives. But I just sharpen my knives before each use anyways. The $2 knife from wal mart works just fine.
Why is that one a scam? We've had one now for over 20 years, my mum still uses it almost daily, as far as I can tell it's built like a tank and will outlast all of us lol.
Rainbow is worth the money in my opinion. I think the one in my family is at least 20 years old, and it's way better than any other because of the mixing-dust-with-water thing. I've used many vacuum cleaners, including some industrial-grade ones, and none of them can hold a candle to Rainbow. Not needing any consumables like paper bags is a nice bonus.
Reminds me, tourists as well. I often traveled to a certain location abroad, and never had trouble with taxis etc. Later, two older female relatives accompanied me on a trip, and the first taxi we went on the driver tried two scams on us!
I'm very happy with my life - my spouse, my kids, my extended family, my small group of friends that's been together for 20+ years, and my career. I have very little interest in socializing / meeting new people, and would much rather spend all my free time improving my existing relationships (see above), or be by myself.
I know how to socialize / meet new people, but never feel comfortable doing that.
I would say, however: I actually love socializing and meeting new people, it's very fun and rewarding. People are awesome! It just so happens that I need to make an effort to go out in the first place, and I need some quality "me time" to recover afterwards. Therefore, I don't do it on most days. I don't shop around for those new opportunities. I invite guests/host at home only infrequently. And it's fine.
I work in a communication-heavy technical role. I'm good at moderating, mediating, coaching. I'm persuasive when I need to be, and I have a knack for adapting to the people I'm talking to. I enjoy the work. But it's definitely work, there's a significant energy expenditure involved.
Like you, I prefer to maintain fewer, deeper friend relationships as a result. Not having to be in touch is how I relax and unwind. I just don't scale to keep up with a large number of social obligations. There's so much other stuff to get done!
That said: I truly appreciate getting invited to things by the stubborn folks who try. I feel bad when I decline. Some time I will take you up on it, and I promise I'll have a fantastic time.
My partner of 9 years is a person I can hang out with for any length of time without strain or requiring recovery time afterwards, so that works smoothly.
"Well, after 30+ years working with Paul, I would never speak for him, but he got to a point where his focus was fractured and he couldn't do justice to any of his competing interests. He stuck it out with us long enough to deliver the story/worldbuilding side and now, as always, he's trusting me and the rest of us to bring it home. Will he be able to return? Unknown. Is he still my best friend? For sure."
Hmm, when I try to change model name to "gpt-4" I get the "The model: `gpt-4` does not exist" error message. We are an API developer with a history of successful payments.. is there anything we need to do on our side to enable this, anyone know?
Man, all these comments from folks who've discovered this site in their youth many many years ago makes me feel old... because I remember when that site was first started.
I was a member of the metal-rules.com forums (RIP) and the founders of Metal Archives came from there. Many hours of my misspent youth were wasted arguing with the people on those forums, now all gone. Back then metal-rules was THE place to talk about metal on the internet, and MA was an upstart who almost nobody knew about.
Unfortunately, in practice that works only most of the time. At least in our experience (and the article says something similar) sometimes ChatGPT would return something completely different when JSON-formatted response would be expected.
> For many more details consult the Young Scientists' Network or read the account in the May, 2001 issue of the Washington Monthly.