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I am wondering how many people are willing to rip their octocat stickers off their shiny new mac books ...

I am pretty sure the "western" auto industry has been doing themselves more harm for a long time, compared to what the Chinese could do.

And as far as State created exploits, there are plenty of these being introduced by "western" governments. I don't really prefer to have either having access to this.

> When prospective business partners meet Mr. Cherkashin, he said, they often ask him if his money is clean.

"Yes of course it's clean, it was just laundered"

I gather because you linked to FactoryGirl, that you are using it, so you might want to take a look at FactoryGirl#attributes_for. This should tidy up the large post body text, and also help the Law Of Demeter issues with variables like @mms_price.

> Let's say someone buys $1B worth of junk, has expenses like salary etc of $1B, does something with it and sells products and services worth $2.2B. Do they pay taxes on $2.2B or on $0.2B? I think we can fix some kinds of tax dodging by taxing the $2.2B.

That does not quite add up .... let's say the tax rate is 20%. The tax on $0.2B is $40m, the tax on $2.2B would be $440m, which would mean the company is making a $220m loss. But not only that, say the salaries are $1B then the government would $200m in double taxation, maybe socialise the loss and take $200 million from the workers salaries.

Then not only that, lets say the $1B of junk is made in the same country as the above company, the government would make another $200m by taxing them. That is a little regressive.

> That's possible as well but if you are US based at least the damage is contained

There have been long standing allegations that the US uses ECHELON to spy on foreign business.

Second to that we all don't live in the US, and many of us are from the "good" side also, but that doesn't mean we are immuned to US eaves dropping.

> Is 30,000 people a lot of troops? I think you seem to be forgetting how large China’s amy is. North Korea has a million man army too.

The US has 6800 nuclear weapons, and it seems that people are getting worried about a country who may not have one single functioning weapon. That's of course if we want to just play this about the numbers.

Of course 30,000 troops is a lot, it's enough to annoy others in the surrounding countries. Imagine the uproar if China put 30,000 troops in Mexico. It isn't just the military threat they pose but also the overall insult to the nations.

Now the size of NK army does not matter, especially when a lot of them do not even have enough food to feed themselves. As far as the size of the Chinese army, if you broke down the differences between the US and China you will see that this isn't just about the size of forces. The US has a huge asymmetric advantage via air.

> At any rate, what are your ideas for solving the problem? We could withdraw the troops from Korea and Japan, since you think that is part of the problem?

Look there is no simple solution, but poking the bear isn't going to work. Diplomatic options will always be better than declaring war on a country like NK. It would be better for China, but other than fuelling the war economy of the US, it is probably in their best favour.

Withdrawing troops, may not be the best idea either but if you leave them there in an aggressive manner you will truly witness more of this disagreement.

NK does not really care about bombing the US, they just want the US to stay out of NK.

> US is still the most powerful democratic country that supports innovation, freedom, etc.

I would like to believe that, but personally I think that the US supports innovation and freedom when it is in their best interests.

> China is supporting a NK dicatorship which terrorizes its own people, closing off and becoming belligerent, electing a dicatatorship, and threatening other countries.

Saddam Hussien Shah of Iran Mohamed Morsi Islam Karimov Manuel Noriega

That is a short list of about 30 leaders in modern history which the US has supported which are dictators (or Authoritarian), all have human rights abuses and are belligerent.

As far as NK threatening other countries NK is still at war with SK. I do not know the last time NK invaded a country but I am pretty sure the US has been involved in several invasions and incursions of many countries over the past 50 odd years.

I wouldn't put it simply down to just being a buffer zone, but I do think it is important for them.

China and North Korea has a shared history of politics and agendas for a long time. In the game of modern geo politics, having a well behaved NK may actually have the effect which they are looking for. A disruptive NK means that SK and the US are kept busy.

But also do not forget that China also has to protect China from NK. US plans may just destabilise the area, and I am quite sure some US Intelligence officials know this and are taking advantage of the situation.

> We need to stop, and punish China

Really ? This might sound like an anti-us rant, but the US has enough weapons to destroy the planet several times over and has a history of using them and invading foreign countries.

I would like to see the fall of NK, but seriously you cannot blame the Chinese for supporting NK in the past and mainly for one reason. That reason is that NK is the buffer zone between China and the 30,000 US troops stationed in SK. Heck what about the 40,000+ troops stationed in Japan.

NK was a pain in the rear end until G W Bush made them a target with the axis of evil thing. The US and international sanctions against NK, all this while trying and some cases disposing leaders in other countries like Libya and Syria.

But if you want to punish China, just send Trump to build a new golf course there.

There is one true way to measure this, you may be offering skills but you are selling your time.

100,000 / (5240) = $48 p/h (8 hours a day) 100,000 / (5260) = $32 p/h (12 hours a day)

You are actually costing yourself $320 ($16600 pa) a week by working and extra 20 hours.

60,000 / (5240) = $28 p/h (8 hours a day) 60,000 / (5260) = $19 p/h (12 hours a day)

You are actually costing yourself $180 ($9360 pa) a week by working and extra 20 hours.

I understand this is a fairly black and white way of looking at it, and you could easily say hey I am earning 100K and happy putting in the time.

Now if you take Gary's V point of view on an 18 hour day

100,000 / (52*126) = $15 p/h (18 hours a day).

You want to make sure you get a return on your investment, and as an employee you probably never will. However a business person, I agree these hours may be beneficial.

“Okay, girls…” offended them ? I am not sure why, after all the startup scene is full of these feel good things like high 5s and free lunches. Would “Okay, ladies…” be offensive, or maybe “Okay, Maams…”.

This is business, get over “Okay, girls…” as there will be a lot more to be offended and agitated about. I have seen men make other men cry in board meetings, and it wasn't as polite as this. If you are offended by the person you have hired then you set boundaries and fire them if they cannot be met. Basically they allowed that person to be in control.

And control was what it was about, they allowed people to control them and then invented a fake persona which they could use. Heck this is something I've done in many meetings ... "Hey John, my CEO is not going to be happy" ... it's not about sexism it is about control.

> “I think because we’re young women, a lot of people looked at what we were doing like, ‘What a cute hobby!’ or ‘That’s a cute idea.'”

How about this happens to just about everyone, male and female.

> I see people attacking him in general terms, calling him a bigot/sexist/etc, but they never mention anything specific he wrote.

You don't need to have any specific valid reason to be offended unfortunately.

> Can anyone point to anything specific that is upsetting so many people?

Also being offended is quite contagious also.

> "He conducted research in computational biology at Harvard, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining a Ph.D. program at Harvard. He dropped out before completing the program."

P.S this is not a quote from James Damore directly

> I guess you haven't heard that folks don't like ads?

Nope they don't and Reddit hasn't really been heavily focused on ads. But they do have a large user base, very focused topics etc etc.

So setting up say a /r/games_of_thrones page, if I was HBO could be very lucrative or marketing my products to the subscribers.

> There's more to compel a person to go to Facebook than there is to Reddit.

Reddit has somewhere north of 200 million users, that is a large audience to ignore. So yes FB maybe king but Reddit has its place.

A valuation of $10 a user I would stay is quite low.