Interestingly I did a double take when looking this up as there is also an even worse "1976 Cavalese cable car crash" in the same vicinity 22 years earlier, this time the fault of a car operator and a design weakness.
In a twist of fate, the person partially responsible for the 1976 disaster was named Schweizer. The one partially responsible in 1998 was Schweitzer.
So if we are hoping whatever nationality/occupation pair is gone that is responsible for Cavalese car crashes, you'll be hoping to eject more than just Americans (it is not clear to me whether Schweizer was Italian as the last name seems more Germanic and apparently they were a seasonal worker). Maybe instead it is more specific to eject anyone with the name Schweit?zer ...
I didn't expect AI to write 95%+ of my code, but here we are.
I can't say whether I feel worried or not. I am trying now to gamify manual coding by having to review and edit a random file from my work codebases a day and still do occasional leetcodes and katas.
But overall I enjoy coding less for sure. I can't think of the last time I spent heavy time focusing on a refactor or lower level design abstractions.
I don't think I will be still coding 5 years from now. The joy is just not there.
I think that AI will accelerate an already existing trend that pre dates AI meaning the global regression to the mean we're seeing in any creative field, from design to videogames, from cars to fashion.
I find this similar to when photography was invented and painters moved away from realism trying to find originality and creativity and they produced modern art which for many of us just looks silly.
It's not just about Iran, it's about exposing the effectiveness of asymmetric war.
You can outgun by far your opponents, and yet they can find cheap and effective ways to make you bleed in ways you cannot sustain for long.
This was already visible in Ukraine, where minor investments on Ukrainian side (like sabotaging gas pipelines, oil refineries or production plants) can lead to magnitude of orders outsized impacts on the war economy (and economy in general) for years.
Now Iran's showing how gargantuan has to be the US' and Israeli effort to prevent a major and long lasting choke on world economy that can be threatened by few dudes with a handful of drones/divers or small boats.
That’s when you scale up the weaponry on Iran to make economics based attacks useless.
What good is a cheap drone if the operators aren’t just dead, but wiped from the Earth? Assuming the drone hasn’t been destroyed too, it sits idle. Or redeployed by American forces against the IRGC.
A glassed Iran and $50 oil is more preferred than to have $200 oil and environmentalists backed by Chinese money dictate my life.
Ex-Colleagues are launching a startup right now: No US-Services from the beginning on, only OpenSource and this new EU-Office thingy.
I think more companies will join the train? Esp new & smaller ones, for sure there is no option for bigCorp like ASML to be free of US-cloud, but maybe its gaining traction.
Surprised by this take. Building a startup is already insanely hard. So I wouldn’t like to add more challenge by spending time integrating with non-US services if they are not top just because of my political views.
I feel a better answer is for Europe to build real, competitive alternatives to US services.
This is just one example, but I think worth sharing:
I've been running a new solution in beta for a while and am about to go commercial (Germany). In my solution, it's essential to keep personal data safe and ensuring the customer it's not shared with anybody else.
I used Azure and AWS in the past, but stopped. Using only German data centers & services is a selling point for my customers and builds additional trust. Aside the initial effort, I don't see any big technological disadvantages for my use-case and actually pay less now for operating everything.
Optimal for society? Optimal for the Epstein class? Or do you mean optimal for the owner, personally, in the very short term?
Because that's the choice people are making these days. It's not really "partisan political posturing" to divest from countries running pedo blackmail rings on the world, or arming genocide, or bombing hundreds of schools. Targeting journalists, then lying about them to try and justify it. Pulling the plug on incubators. Targeting entire families with shoddy AI. Bombing civilian power plants and ambulances and hospitals and so on and on.
There's nothing partisan or posturing about saying "fuck all that". That's just your duty as a human being, the basic bare minimum. That duty doesn't get discarded just because you run a company or have evil competitors trying to race you to the bottom.
When companies are complicit with committing heinous atrocities at scale, and screwing up the world economy for their own gain, I find very little 'merit' in that. Is 'meritocracy' a purely financial term in your view? Do 'respect for life' and 'trust' and other nebulous concepts (which don't immediately affect the balance sheet) have merit?
> Optimal for society? Optimal for the Epstein class? Or do you mean optimal for the owner
No. Optimal for employees and customers, which is, in turn, optimal for society.
Making technology choices based on political ideology rather than merit is bad for the interests of both employees and customers.
The hyperbolic statements in your comment suggest your worldview comes from an online echo chamber. With respect, I think you'd benefit from consuming news from a variety of different sources. Think critically about the biases and agendas of the media.
War is an ugly business. Outcomes are rarely so pure that we can single out "good guys" and "bad guys". But hopefully once you've examined the facts objectively you'll see that the Israeli government is more ethical than Hamas, and you'll see that the American government (yes, even Orange Man Bad) is better than the Ayatollahs of Iran and their IRGC.
> The hyperbolic statements in your comment suggest your worldview comes from an online echo chamber.
No, nothing hyperbolic whatsoever. Everything I said is trivial to source.
If you believe otherwise then you might follow your own advice - this is all well documented stuff. You can even see the video of those premature babies that were left to rot by Israel, if you don't believe me.
No, I'm not saying that to shock you; it's an important documented fact. Like the prison rapists being celebrated on national Israeli TV, or the zip-tied teenagers run over by steamrollers, or the ambulances shot up and buried in a shallow grave, or Hind Rajab being used as bait for another ambulance, or any of the other thousands upon thousands of well documented atrocities which the US has helped to arm and enable.
> I suspect none of your favourite media sources mentioned the illegal cluster munitions that Iran used to destroy an Israeli kindergarten (among other civilian buildings) on Saturday
A kindergarten! Wow. That really is atrocious. Were there 100 schoolgirls in it, like the elementary school America blew up? Your source says no, but you seem really incensed by this property damage.
Is that worse though, in your view, than the 498 Iranian schools [0] targeted in the last months? Is it worse than destroying just about every school and hospital in Gaza?
> War is an ugly business
Being at war doesn't excuse war crimes - especially when the war begins because you don't like how well negotiations are going so you bomb a school killing 100 little girls, while killing the leader of a country with his grandchildren and torpedoing an unarmed ship.
> hopefully once you've examined the facts objectively you'll see that the Israeli government is more ethical than Hamas
To say this after the last three years requires something fundamental to be missing within you. I can not help you find it again. I wish I could; I truly do.
> you'll see that the American government (yes, even Orange Man Bad) is better than the Ayatollahs of Iran and their IRGC
Even if that were true, by whatever undefined metric you're defining as 'better', how does that give you the right to commit hundreds of war crimes and atrocities to change their government?
You might want to read up on recent US history btw - and how we're perceived right now [1]. There are many very good reasons why the world considers the US to be the greatest threat to global peace, stability and democracy [2], [3]; not just since "orange man" but since 2003 [4]. Iran never even come close.
Thank you for being honest about where you get your news from (the links at the bottom of the post). This helps explain your worldview.
(non affiliated - not an advert) I would recommend trying Ground News, which helped me understand the biases within sources, and helped showed me the blindspots in news coverage that I'd missed.
I'd like you to cast your mind back to the acts that started these two horrendous wars - Gaza's genocidal invasion of Israeli towns where they massacred teenagers at a music festival, paraded raped women through the streets of Gaza to the cheers of onlookers, and forced young people to watch as their parents and siblings were blown up with hand grenades.
This isn't hyperbole. This isn't a politicised Western interpretation (a la "truthout.org") - this is an account of the videos shared by Hamas themselves, which were shown to Western journalists.
Hamas had to be stopped by force, and I support Israel's right to defend its own existence. If Hamas wishes to use human shields (as it has outright admitted it does), then the tragic collateral civilian deaths are the responsibility of Hamas.
And in Iran, the systematic rape and torture of young people and LGBT people. The massacre of 30,000+ peaceful protesters. And the outright genocidal intent of its leadership ("Death to America, Death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews").
The Ayatollahs had to be stopped before they built nuclear weapons. There will be tragic collateral civilian deaths, but fewer in the long term than if the IRGC are allowed to continue roaming the streets unchecked.
> Thank you for being honest about where you get your news from (the links at the bottom of the post). This helps explain your worldview.
What a weird leap to make. Nope, I just searched to find those; with a search engine.
> I would recommend trying Ground News, which helped me understand the biases within sources, and helped showed me the blindspots in news coverage that I'd missed.
I know Ground News; thanks though. I assume you're unaware how patronizing you're coming across, but trust that my media literacy is not the problem here.
Now, if you can point to where anything I said is falsifiable, great and thank you. Otherwise, maybe drop the insinuations and assumptions.
> I'd like you to cast your mind back to the acts that started these two horrendous wars - Gaza's genocidal invasion of Israeli towns where they massacred teenagers at a music festival, paraded raped women through the streets of Gaza to the cheers of onlookers, and forced young people to watch as their parents and siblings were blown up with hand grenades.
You think everything started on October 7th? ... You think there was evidence of mass rape? You have credible evidence of these young people "forced to watch"?
Do you also still believe in the 40 beheaded babies, the baby in the oven, the boobs being cut off?
... And you are out here questioning the media literacy of others? Physician, heal thyself.
> This isn't hyperbole. This isn't a politicised Western interpretation (a la "truthout.org") - this is an account of the videos shared by Hamas themselves, which were shown to Western journalists.
There is no widely verified reporting that the videos shown to journalists contain:
* Women being paraded through Gaza streets after rape
* Crowds cheering raped victims in public processions
* Families being forced to watch grenade executions of relatives
Yes, there were some videos shared by Hamas of them doing murder and other bad stuff. But that's not what you claimed.
> Hamas had to be stopped by force, and I support Israel's right to defend its own existence.
Very few people thought Israel had no right to respond to October 7th by force.
Responding with genocide? No. No they do not have the right to do that.
> If Hamas wishes to use human shields (as it has outright admitted it does), then the tragic collateral civilian deaths are the responsibility of Hamas.
A, Israel uses human shields too. They have done for years; long before October 7th. Not to mention their long history of mass rape, child abuse, torture, false flags, terrorism etc.
B, Even if human shields are used, the attacking force must still distinguish civilians from targets; avoid disproportionate harm; take precautions to minimize civilian deaths.
There's simply no way to claim that's what Israel has done and believe it without some form of lobotomy.
> And in Iran, the systematic rape and torture of young people and LGBT people. The massacre of 30,000+ peaceful protesters.
The 30,000 figure is widely disputed, and Israel have openly admitted to having had agents there stirring up that specific trouble.
And if you want to bring up systemic torture, you're going to have to explain why that's ok for the US and Israel - but not Iran. Myself, I'm consistently against torture.
> And the outright genocidal intent of its leadership ("Death to America, Death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews").
Calling it “genocidal intent” in a strict legal sense is debatable and probably overstated. However, killing tens of thousands of children and bombing entire cities into rubble; bombing 500 schools in Iran and basically every school and hospital in Gaza, etc - that's more than genocidal intent. It's genocide. So I'm very confused how you think Iran is somehow worse in this comparison.
> The Ayatollahs had to be stopped before they built nuclear weapons. There will be tragic collateral civilian deaths, but fewer in the long term than if the IRGC are allowed to continue roaming the streets unchecked.
A 40 year old claim, with absolutely no evidence. Let's try comparing that to Israel's nukes, and their 'Samson option'. Or, try comparing it to the only country ever to actually use nukes during war. Again, I just don't see how Iran comes off worse in this comparison without massive baseline racism and ignorance of history.
... There's a good chance that I'm wasting my time here, but hey - maybe some of this will stick with you. Try sourcing any of it on Ground News, if you like.
Gaza lost a war it started. The civilian casualties could have been avoided if it hadn't started the war.
Iran is losing a war it started (by attacking Israel with hundreds of missiles, attacking civilian shipping, sponsoring terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis who commit regular attrocities).
These wars are "total wars." Total war is the only option left to Israel and its allies, because as long as Hamas and the Ayatollah regime exists (with their written and well-documented aim to "annihilate" Israel and Jews), then Israeli civilians face an existential threat. The last remaining Jewish nation faces an existential threat. This is a direct consequence of the rabid anti-semitism that's inbuilt into Islamist regimes.
You are not happy for Israel to win its total wars.
Were you happy for the allies to win WW2? From my PoV, 70K UK civilians lost their lives, vs 2M German civilians. The civilian death toll was massively one-sided. But it was Germany that started a total war, and I hope you and I can agree that it was Germany (with its genocidal anti-semitism among other appalling characteristics) that deserved to lose the war.
Defending the idea that large-scale civilian harm is acceptable is where your argument, such as it is, becomes truly dangerous.
Aside from all your debunked claims, and aside from your ahistorical misunderstandings of very recent history... Trying to justify "total war" against a mostly civilian population - ~50% of whom are children - is so, so far beyond the pale that I truly do not know how to reach you. For that reason, I'm out of this conversation.
I'm not defending civilian harm. I'm defending the sovereign rights of a country to defend its civilians from warmongering neighbours.
Gaza doesn't get a free pass to fire rockets at Israeli towns, invade it, and massacre thousands of its civilians on the basis that Gaza's population is allegedly 50% children.
In your world view, at what point would Israel be entitled to fight back against Gaza? How many Nova Festivals before Israel is allowed to defend itself?
And what is Israel allowed to do, bearing in mind Gaza's government urges its civilians to "bare their chests" to Israel (i.e. act as human shields), and Gaza bases military assets in schools and hospitals (well documented)?
I'm interested to know which of my arguments has been "debunked"?
5-eyes, a bit tricky... but yeah anything that isnt a direct data pipeline to US gov and 3-letter agencies is a massive longterm win, in security and economy
I don't think it is. I liked a simpler world we lived without having to worry or look where a company was from.
But since this administration has started to threaten allies and keeps this nonsensical trade balance and tariffs argument (which never accounts for the very bulk of what US really exports: IT and financial services which are never included in the trade balance nonsense) you need to answer in some way.
And with tensions rising staying on US services is becoming a strategic risk.
> which never accounts for the very bulk of what US really exports: IT and financial services
Given the growing demand to move away from US services and towards European alternatives, I wonder what the US will look like in 10 years if this move gains significant momentum.
I of course do not know your specific usage and requirements, but Berlin-based OpenProject might be a suitable and mature Jira-alternative for you - in addition to being outside US jurisdiction their services are available both on-prem/self-hosted and cloud-based.
And very soon, as economics and behavioral sciences suggest, we will have world events directly influenced by people having the incentives to make them happen for financial gains only.
There's a reason we have banned and prosecuted any hint of insider trading or match fixing for centuries. Yet we play dumb on way more serious risks, allowing betting on whether a country will attack another and labeling it "information hedging and price discovery".
I can't but look at the modern world with worry. We live in increasingly Orwellian and dystopic times. The world has never been so rich and evolved, yet, as a society, we're increasingly unhappy, alone and void of purposes that aren't greed and selfishness related.
We're looking at the decadence of a civilization and all we can do, at best, is post about it over the internet, and that's when we're in the aware crowd not falling for bitter insulting and fighting because somebody else holds different ideas.
I would really want to know what can we do, as average Joes, when the most powerful people in the world fall in line and are terrorized to speak their mind. And that's when they're not actively contributing to the very same decadence.
And vote with your wallet. In general, contribute your 2 cents to the good cause. Let your voice be heard, join initiatives that work on solutions. Whatever you do. It does matter.
See how many vile, empathy-void sociopaths are elected across the world because they have the political skills required to make things happen.
What I try in practice is to lead by example, and be a good neighbor/citizen. In my village, 90% of the people would rather bitch about the mayor or public services not cleaning up the park for months or years, when you can simply grab few plastic bags and clean most of it in few hours. I'm glad my initiative has pushed more citizens to actively care and take matters in their hands.
Yet the scope of degeneracy and risks are now at the global stage and I don't think I can do much when people with the wrong incentives are elected in office, if there's elections at all.
The governments are both pretty terrible, but China has been far more violent to it's own citizens in recent times than the US has. The recent non-citizen hunts and unwise involvement in foreign affairs notwithstanding, the US doesn't (currently) have a policy of ethnic cleansing and violating human rights on a massive scale on its own lands.
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