ruggeri

I don’t know how much responsibility should flow upward to Coca Cola, but “suppressed union activity” is excessively euphemistic.

I don’t agree with the assessment, but in terms of a great power being very interested in the interests of a small country, consider Serbia and Russia before WWI.

You’ve been downvoted by others because this is lazy stereotyping.

I think you can't directly acknowledge the guidelines because you know you are willfully violating them.

The guidelines are the rules of the road for the community. The moral obligation to follow the guidelines is not conditional on whether you think the community is a mob. Even if you thought you have no obligation to the community, your behavior is still disrespectful to the intentions of the moderators.

The way you write makes it seem like you hold both the community and the guidelines in contempt. What is the purpose for you in participating in this community? Would it not be better for you and the community both if you stop posting like this?

You might be downvoted regardless, as you suggest, but the guidelines are still the social contract of HN.

What you call "less than apologetically polite" I would call "not kind" and "snarky." Did you feel kindness toward the gp when you replied?

If you think you're actually following the guidelines, then you must carry on.

I believe you are being downvoted because your comment violates the guidelines ("Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously... Edit out swipes."); anyway, that's why I downvoted.

Your later comment that enforcement might benefit from latitude to be reasonable and accommodate nuance is not invalid, and you could have just said that rather than call the gp's aspiration "perverted." The expressed norm of guidelines is that your belief that the gp's logic is circular does not justify your derision.

Anyway, you will probably be more convincing to others by being less insulting.

If you don't want to contribute in adherence to the guidelines, what is the point of posting here at all?

Not contradicting your point, but adding tangential interesting information.

Blu-Ray UHD discs can no longer be played on modern computers as Intel has removed the trusted execution environment needed to decrypt them. Blu-Ray UHD players do a handshake that verifies the use of Intel SGX.

One might have always been skeptical of these discs, especially as AMD had never implemented those TEE instructions.

But I believe the interesting takeaway is that even physical media is becoming something you can’t count on using without the continued permission/assistance of some outside party.

Without regulation I would expect that all new media will eventually require players to be always-online.

First, I believe you are right that the CCP believes that "giving Hong Kong the freedom to operate does not work." I believe you are right that the CCP believes that "the same applies to Taiwan." I believe you are right that the CCP does not see the multiparty democratic system in Taiwan as a positive thing.

If Taiwanese people really care about retaining multiparty democracy, then everything you said is a good reason for Taiwan to be wary of PRC attempts to gain more control over Taiwan.

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Second, I don't know what the average person on the street in mainland China thinks about the HK protest movement or Taiwanese democracy. Today, when the successes of the PRC are more salient to most people than its failures, the average person in mainland China may well look down on the perceived disorder of democracy.

What comes up may come down. Mainland China has had some incredible decades as it industrialized and caught up. That is a typical phenomenon (not a uniquely Chinese one) when an authoritarian country introduces liberalization to their economy. It is harder for authoritarian countries to maintain growth when they are already mostly caught up with peers, because decentralized economic decision making becomes much more effective than centralized decision making. Decentralized economic decision making is a form of decentralized political power, and the authoritarian country is eventually forced to choose between maintaining a monopoly of authority or pursuing further growth.

At least, that's the thesis of economists like Daron Acemoglu. And the PRC is currently trending away from economic decentralization and toward a re-centralization of decision making.

Mainland China now faces some severe economic and geopolitical headwinds; maybe the PRC will navigate them wisely and earn yet more prestige. Or maybe the PRC will fail to respond adequately to new challenges because of the weaknesses of its authoritarian model. And since the PRC's authoritarian system relies almost solely on efficacy as a source of legitimacy, its legitimacy may prove extremely fragile in the face of a downturn in fortune.

Whatever comes to pass, it will not be a result of a Chinese exceptionalism. Perhaps centralized, one-party states without elections and with limited free speech will prove the dominant governmental model in the next era of history. But, historically, states like that seem to have been mostly outlasted by more liberal peers.

> So was everything with Taiwan hunky dory when they were a murderous military dictatorship for all those decades[1]?

It's good to remember that Taiwan's adoption of multiparty democracy is very recent, and that a one-party dictatorship preceded it.

And of course the PRC has always had lots of reasons to want to take back Taiwan, regardless whether it fears that mainland Chinese might see the Taiwanese system as preferable to their own.

But the gp's statement that Taiwan's example today threatens the raison d'être of PRC authoritarianism is also quite valid. PRC's authority does not rest alone on a monopoly of force and surveillance, but also reputation for stability and for organizing economic growth. Now PRC population is aging, growth is slowing and suffering from serious structural problems, economic management is becoming more centralized/ideological/less effective.

A successful, freer counter-example of what a Chinese nation might look like is actually quite dangerous to the PRC. Likewise, I think this is exactly why the PRC has kneecapped democracy in Hong Kong.

May I ask what high school? We did not have a linear algebra course in my New York high school. I would have liked to have been able to take linear algebra then.

Oh, another suggestion: show the country and let them name the capital!

I didn’t read the comment as trying to denigrate wind turbines. It says 20yr operation with 7-8mo payback which sounds excellent.

If anything, I think the understated way the grandparent comment presented the facts added to the impact of the final result.