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Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

381 pointsposted 3 days ago

241 Comments

haunter

3 days ago

TRON wasn’t just an OS but a whole integrated system, it was meant to be used with different parts working together. There was a whole TRON house tech demo built in Tokyo back in 1989 https://youtu.be/7jPKEyM44GU

If you want to try here is the BTRON 4.5 media, should work in modern VMs https://archive.org/details/chokanji

https://youtu.be/yYfoCe6q28A

https://social.tchncs.de/@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt/111885034...

a-french-anon

2 days ago

> You can video-conference while pooping without touching a switch

｢ＴＨＥＦＵＴＵＲＥ｣

RealityVoid

3 days ago

Hah, I realize I actually encountered this family in the form of a T-kernel offshoot that I evaluated for some automotive safety relevant application.

pseudohadamard

2 days ago

TRON didn't need a conspiracy theory to kill it, it was one of many overambitious computer projects that aimed too high and failed, the IBM Stretch being possibly the best-known example.

The OS is still around as uITRON. It's... very Japanese, which is why you'll find it inside a ton of Japanese IT gear and very little else. For most people the closest they'll get to it is in printers from Japanese companies. I've seen a derivative, NORTi, in a few products made in places like Brazil but that's about it.

ColdStream

3 days ago

I think it is like most software, especially in the OS space. The technology doesn't have to be the best, it just needs to get lucky enough to become a standard and build a moat with that.

And by the mid 80's the moats were already very deep.

Amiga couldn't over come the PC. IBM couldn't over come the moat of Windows with OS2. Intel couldn't overcome x86 with the i432 or Itanium. Luck and market forces from said luck played a huge part in determining who won.

specproc

3 days ago

> The report stated that the US had concerns about Japanese government market intervention to support the TRON OS and identified two specific markets where TRON was receiving government advantage.

The US government is one hell of a moat.

childintime

3 days ago

The financial center of the world selects its winners nearby. As simple as that. Businesses outside of the US have never had much of a chance.

China does the same now, as the engineering center of the world. And they have to because the financial center is hyping them as a threat.

conductr

2 days ago

It’s also just less risky and easier to work with people that you are near, speak your language, etc. more so back in the 80s before most people were even using email, we Americans had virtually no contact with people on other continents even was limited in the business world.

childintime

2 days ago

I wholeheartedly agree. Even China integrated. It's not where the rift comes from.

expedition32

2 days ago

[flagged]

bulbar

3 days ago

A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance.

That's not "hype".

roenxi

2 days ago

On the other hand, we can't tell if the US has a goal or not in the middle east or if destabilising countries is the geostrategy unto itself.

People really need to dial down the hype, engage with the real world where large countries get to have a sphere of influence and start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable. I still haven't heard anyone make a case for why we keep hitting the Russians given what acceptable US foreign policy looks like. One of the two is worse and it isn't the policies written in Cyrillic.

pjc50

2 days ago

> why we keep hitting the Russians

1) "we" (the US) are not hitting the Russians, "we" (Europe including the UK) are providing them with weapons for their self-defence, since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. I am no longer clear what, if any, assistance the US is providing. It is also very important in this that no NATO or EU forces are engaged directly with Russian forces yet, despite persistent incursions into EU airspace and occasional sabotage operations in Western Europe.

The UK is developing special US ITAR-free missiles for this purpose: https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Lo...

2) "start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable": I think we're past the point of pretending that international law applies evenly, and back to Mao's "power comes out of the barrel of a gun".

If we go back to a Cold War multipolar world between China, the US, Europe, and Russia, the only one of those which hasn't made public statements threatening European territorial integrity is China.

(at this point I would expect India to start asking whether they get to be a world power or not and what they're going to do with that, too)

Lumich

2 days ago

[flagged]

r2_pilot

2 days ago

>>« occasional sabotage operations in Western Europe » – You mean like when the US (plus allies) sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline?

When is the last time you refreshed your knowledge about this? It's my current understanding that Ukrainians performed this sabotage.

smallstepforman

2 days ago

*It's my current understanding that Ukrainians performed this sabotage.*

If that were vaguely true, Germany which owned 51% of NordStream would have sued UKR immediately and abolished diplomatic relationship. The fact they didn’t tells you everything you need to know about the absurdity of your claim.

ben_w

2 days ago

> It's my current understanding that Ukrainians performed this sabotage.

I believe there are one or two trials, but they have not yet been found guilty.

It would have been crazily irresponsible of them if they are guilty, but then I can't figure out who wouldn't have been crazy to do it.

BTW, a quick search suggests that it is a Russian government talking point to blame the USA for this.

somenameforme

2 days ago

Things being a talking point doesn't mean they're untrue. The US is and was the only party that made any logical sense, to say nothing of also being one of only a handful of nations with the technical expertise to do so as well. The US was against the Nord Stream from the beginning because we felt it could deepen ties between Germany and Russia, unilaterally sanctioned companies involved in it, and of course Biden publicly alluded to threats of blowing it up: "If Russia invades ... then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." "How will you do that, since the project is under Germany's control?" "We will, uh, I promise you, we will, uh, be able to do that *smirking*." [1]

With it blown up we're able to make Europe completely dependent upon US gas sold at a high premium. Well, at least that was probably the goal. Technically the attack failed and at least one of the pipelines was/is still viable, but the US probably was hedging their bets because there was no way to anticipate exactly how enthusiastic Europe would be about setting aside their own self interests for the sake of US geopolitics. It also helps ensure less chance of a reconciliation between Russia and Europe which is probably seen as a reasonable way of weakening both.

Reading "Rebuilding America's Defense" [2] by the typical names that show up in basically every US presidency, Democrat and Republican alike, is crucial to understanding US geopolitics. And one thing we obsess over is/was the prevention of the emergence of new superpowers. This is even mentioned quite explicitly in the text, "[Deploying US forces to Europe] is especially important in light of the nascent European moves toward an independent defense "identity" and policy; it is important that NATO not be replaced by the European Union, leaving the United States without a voice in European security affairs."

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8

[2] - https://governamerica.com/documents/RebuildingAmericasDefens...

ben_w

2 days ago

> Things being a talking point doesn't mean they're untrue.

Obviously, but hence the other things I put in the comment.

> The US is and was the only party that made any logical sense,

I aver none make sense, including the USA. The USA has limited capacity to transport LNG, most already being in use. Not really a growth opportunity.

Also, whoever does this, US or otherwise, runs the risk of getting caught; if it was the USA, the scandal of it would likely push Europe much closer to China.

So far as I can tell, the only apparently-involved nation who wouldn't care about the political fallout of getting caught would be Russia, but it was their gas so why would they attack it?

> to say nothing of also being one of only a handful of nations with the technical expertise to do so as well.

I find that many people over-estimate what can be done by a small motivated team. I understand it is well accepted that human divers capable of this are relatively rare, and there wasn't e.g. really enough time for the accused Ukrainian team to have done so, and the ship they were known to be on was very poorly suited to such a task.

However, the Ukrainians have demonstrated significant skill with remote control vehicles. Hell, the only reason I'd rule out anyone like say Greenpeace is that they didn't claim responsibility, such groups would be whom I'd say have the smallest required dose of sudden insanity to mistake this for a good idea.

> and of course Biden publicly alluded to threats of blowing it up: "If Russia invades ... then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." "How will you do that, since the project is under Germany's control?" "We will, uh, I promise you, we will, uh, be able to do that smirking."

The problem with this, is that Germany had already brought an end to it, before it was blown up. One thing Germany is very skilled at, putting red tape around things.

The explosion turned an indefinite suspension into a kinetic suspension.

> Europe would be about setting aside their own self interests for the sake of US geopolitics. It also helps ensure less chance of a reconciliation between Russia and Europe which is probably seen as a reasonable way of weakening both.

If the US sees the European reaction this way, then the US has misunderstood the European thought process.

It was, and is, in the self-interest of Europe to end the threat posed by Russia.

> And one thing we obsess over is/was the prevention of the emergence of new superpowers. This is even mentioned quite explicitly in the text, "[Deploying US forces to Europe] is especially important in light of the nascent European moves toward an independent defense "identity" and policy; it is important that NATO not be replaced by the European Union, leaving the United States without a voice in European security affairs."

That is indeed something I have heard from other sources.

Unrelated to Ukraine, it is interesting to see how Trump is doing the exact opposite of US interests in this regard.

Lumich

2 days ago

« Germany had already brought an end to it » – Wrong. And of course refusal to start pipeline operation and the ridiculous legal shenanigans (at EU level) were down to US pressure.

« It was, and is, in the self-interest of Europe » – Where are you talking from, geographically? What European languages do you speak so as to be able to know "the self-interest of Europe"?

There's quite a bit of smugness and hypocrisy in your response. Because I don't believe you're as dumb as your responses suggest.

ben_w

2 days ago

> Wrong. And of course refusal to start pipeline operation and the ridiculous legal shenanigans (at EU level) were down to US pressure.

Sounds like you're agreeing with me that they did in fact refuse to start pipeline operation. Regardless of who put what pressure where, that it was not started is by itself sufficient to make the destruction pointless for basically everyone.

> Where are you talking from, geographically? What European languages do you speak so as to be able to know "the self-interest of Europe"?

Ich spreche Deutsch, ik spreek een beetje Nederlands, hablo un poco de español, μιλάω λίγα ελληνικά. I have visited roughly half of EU member states, and live here too.

None of this is relevant to learning about national self-interests, as these are widely reported, taking quotations from politicians and military leadership across the continent, because news sites have actual translators and they're rather better at these languages than me. Even if they didn't, Google translate exists and works across the continent.

In this case, Russia started this war of aggression on our doorsteps, has been engaged in assassinations and sabotage in our countries, and some of their weapons keep ending up landing in our territory. The two largest armies in Europe right now are the Ukrainian and Russian armies, and the transformative nature of drone warfare during this conflict means that even though the rest of Europe has more money than Ukraine, it is not yet ready to defend itself from the kind of threat Russia would be immediately if Ukraine gave up, as we are all set up for elite forces, i.e. small quantities of high value systems, not mass forces, i.e. deploying 7,000 FPV drones per day every day for years.

> hypocrisy

I don't think you know what this word means. I assume from this random attempted insult and your quotation style that English is not your first language.

Lumich

2 days ago

« national self-interests … are widely reported » – What's “widely reported” by the propaganda apparatus is often at odds with “national interest”, which is at least something that makes sense, whereas “the self-interest of Europe” is a highly questionable concept. Still, cheap gas from Russia would fit the bill, expensive wars on behalf of the US and the UK do not. Rich people making lots of money from it does not equate to “national interest”.

« assassinations and sabotage in our countries » – They did assassinate a Georgian terrorist, murderer and war criminal in Berlin in 2019 (whom Germany refused to hand over to justice), and a Russian traitor in Spain, and maybe others I'm not aware of. Compare these to the mass murder via US cyber-attack (true one), on March 24, 2015, of 150 people (mostly from Germany and Spain) by crashing an airliner into a mountain, and then ridiculously claiming (via NYT) “pilot suicide” (as they did with Egypt Air 990 on Oct 31, 1999). I ignore the exact motive, but I suspect it had sth to do with Merkel's trips to Moscow earlier that year.

English is indeed not my first language, and yet I know exactly what “hypocrisy” means. You can see an example of it by looking at the top of your reply, where you slyly pretend not to understand that the US had ample motive to destroy the pipeline for geopolitical reasons. It is absolutely not meant as an insult, just an analysis of the rhetorics you're using. After all, such rhetorics and styles of twisted reasoning are often unconsciously absorbed and reproduced due to exposure to propaganda (“free press”).

So you're German?

AlexeyBelov

15 hours ago

> Compare these to

No need. Bad things are bad, I'm sure we can agree on that. It does not require whataboutism.

Take your pills asap.

somenameforme

2 days ago

You can see data on US LNG imports to the EU here. [1] After the invasion they more than tripled with the US now accounting for more than 58% of EU imports. Gas prices are up more than 10x relative to their lowest lowest in the 2020 before the war. [2] The EU was most certainly a growth market, if Russian supplies to the EU could be disrupted.

I think the threat from Russia is questionable. This war was predictable after 2014, much in the same way that an eventual war with Moldova over Transnistria seems quite predictable today. However, war with e.g. Germany seems entirely nonsensical. But let's just assume there is a threat for the sake of discussion. How does escalating this conflict, most recently with highly provocative attacks explicitly targeting civilian infrastructure [3], aim to reduce such? And how would aiming for reconciliation and de-escalation not be a much more reasonable way to achieve such?

Even if we again assume reconciliation is not possible, which is also very questionable, you end up with the point that [3] not only serves no viable military purpose, but actively escalates the conflict in a likely self destructive way. Ukraine's attacks made some catchy headlines in the information war, but now they've been predictably been met in kind, putting Ukrainians in an even worse situation, increasing food scarcity and such, all with winter on the horizon. I haven't seen so many headlines about that, however. Go figure. Are these escalations making the EU more or less safe?

US interests in Europe are ensuring we maintain the dominant force in their geopolitical positioning. I think that is probably now more true than ever before. The EU showed some basic degree of self interest and defiance by staying out of Iran, but I'd hope and assume that would also be the case even if the US had a more reasonable President. That was just a particularly stupid war to start. Curiously, something Trump himself acknowledged before becoming president.

[1] - https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_poe2_a_epg0_eng_mmcf_a.h...

[2] - https://www.elexys.be/en/insights/eex-ttf-gas-spot

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildberries#Ukrainian_drone_at...

ben_w

a day ago

> You can see data on US LNG imports to the EU here. [1] After the invasion they more than tripled with the US now accounting for more than 58% of EU imports. Gas prices are up more than 10x relative to their lowest lowest in the 2020 before the war. [2] The EU was most certainly a growth market, if Russian supplies to the EU could be disrupted.

Pointing at the wrong thing: consider not EU imports but US exports, which went from 3,865,643 in 2022 to 4,343,027 in 2023.

Those gas prices surged very quickly, but the spike was very short-lived. The change in longer-term averages was much smaller than the spike; from your own link, the US total from 2020-2025, in dollars per thousand cubic feet: 5.64, 7.62, 12.24, 7.57, 6.41, 7.92.

> However, war with e.g. Germany seems entirely nonsensical.

To us (I mean, their troops are bogged down within a few tens of kilometres of their own borders), but the media rhetoric is that kind of revanchism.

> But let's just assume there is a threat for the sake of discussion. How does escalating this conflict, …, aim to reduce such? And how would aiming for reconciliation and de-escalation not be a much more reasonable way to achieve such?

First, the soft-touch approach was already tried with Crimea.

Second, consider Russia's stated aims with their "special military operation", which they still do not officially call a war. They invaded with words translated as "de-Nazification", but their use of the term means something very different to how it is understood in the west: ~"the enemy of Moscow". Consider that Ukraine was not actually threat, yet they invaded anyway under the pretence that they might at some unspecified time in the future join NATO: the Russian leadership today (not always) sees NATO as a threat, treats NATO membership as being a signal of being in the sphere of influence of the USA rather than voluntary mutual self-defence. Putin does not recognise the sovereignty of any nation that is not a "great power", regards Ukrainian nationality as fiction.

And third, we know that civilians in the occupied territories get conscripted and sent into war against the rest of Ukraine. Documented in Crimea as well as the more recently occupied parts Ukraine. So, the more Ukraine loses, the more of its own people and infrastructure becomes the tool of the invading forces to take more. Losing all of Ukraine means that all of Ukraine gets pointed at wherever Putin wants Russia to invade next.

> explicitly targeting civilian infrastructure [3],

> you end up with the point that [3] not only serves no viable military purpose,

Dual-use. It's not great that it is a target, but I think Amazon warehouses would probably get targeted similarly if e.g. the US tries this with Canada, given https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bullet+proof+vest+mens (no comment if any of this is good for more than cosplay, I wouldn't know).

(Edit: But also, consider that strikes by Ukraine against targets inside Russia were restricted by the Biden administration. The end of direct support by the USA coincided with Ukraine feeling free to make such attacks, so to the extent that the US can be seen as supporting Ukraine in this conflict, it was the exact force of moderation, holding Ukraine back, as is now called for.)

> putting Ukrainians in an even worse situation, increasing food scarcity and such, all with winter on the horizon

Not really "worse": in this regard they are in a bad position every winter, because Russia has never had a problem attacking Ukrainian food, power, or other civilian assets.

Also, these strikes against Wildberries make it much harder for civilians to directly supply their conscripted families (and those civilians kinda have to, given the military often doesn't bother with even the basics to the extent a new Russian soldier's average life expectancy on the front line is measured in minutes).

> US interests in Europe are ensuring we maintain the dominant force in their geopolitical positioning. I think that is probably now more true than ever before.

If we are clear "US interests" != "Trump's personal interest", yes. Trump is throwing away that position of dominant force in European geopolitical positioning.

somenameforme

a day ago

On gas prices, US volume, relative to 2020, is up by 120%, and it's being sold for 40% more. That's less than the spike, but it's still the US relentlessly milking the EU for everything she's worth, all thanks to severing Russian and EU gas relations. There was never any soft touch approach with Crimea. The territory annexation was never recognized in spite of there being little doubt it was the will of the people there. Just prior to the invasion, Ukraine had passed a measure seeking to 'de-occupy' Ukraine using all measures, including military. [1] The West was actively indulging of such bravado.

---

I think you know the dual use arguments around Wildberries are farcical. Ukrainian propaganda didn't even try to pretend it would have a military effect, but instead cheered about trying to make life for the average Russian less comfortable. The exact phrase used in most Western messaging was "bring the war home" along with some broader argument of economic damage. Why they would want to make that a goal and can't see the mirror response incoming, is quite stupefying. Why the US/EU indulge such things is even more stupefying.

Russia in the past had not been directly targeting civilian infrastructure being used for civilian purposes. What damage had happened was a mixture of Ukrainian anti-air/ECM weaponry resulting in downed drones/missiles detonating on civilian infrastructure, or targeting of civilian infrastructure that was being used for overtly military purposes. You could see things like video of a 'shopping center' being targeted, followed by large immediate and then smaller ongoing secondary detonations - it was storing weapons.

Completely destroying civilian infrastructure, on a very wide scale, is not difficult, because such tends to be completely unfortified and unguarded - the exact reason Ukraine was able to destroy the Wildberries facilities so easily. And Ukraine has started an escalation where this is now exactly what is happening in Ukraine as well. I don't know what the outcome of this will be, but this is not, by any sort of logic, making Europe safer or Russia less of a threat. It's also likely to result in a much weaker Ukraine after all is said and done.

---

As for the US - EU. The EU is now completely dependent upon the US for both military and energy. In its current state the EU lacks the ability to be an independent power, and they have tied themselves to the US to an unprecedented degree while also accepting an unprecedented degree of abuse from the US. You might argue I should say Trump, and not the US, but watch - the DNC will win 2028, and the tariffs will continue until morale improves.

[1] - https://ppu.gov.ua/en/press-center/today-president-of-ukrain...

Lumich

a day ago

The EU does not serve Europe but US interests, origins go back to the “American Committee on United Europe”, where only one or two Europeans were represented (who were already aligned with “globalism”).

You might already know this, but as for US intentions in this war, here's the 2015 Friedman video about US involvement in the Ukraine and the “drumbeats of the future” (very unsavoury person, dishing out quite some lies to a naïve American audience, but also quite revealing):

George Friedman, "Europe: Destined for Conflict?" – Chicago Council on Global Affairs, February 2015

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QeLu_yyz3tc&t=43m46s

ben_w

2 days ago

> The US is providing the bulk of the weapons

Not anymore, and even during the earlier period this has caveats. https://app.23degrees.io/view/j4luMuv8fnpO2frL-bar-grouped-v...

> massive new military bases in Eastern Europe

Trump said he would, then cancelled it; what was actually done was reduce troop numbers. As you yourself note, he's not honest, so look at what he did not what he said.

Even if they did though, so what? Deployment in a nation whose borders are around 550 km from the closest bit of the fighting are not a serious threat.

> You mean like when the US (plus allies) sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline?

Nobody except those responsible knows for sure who did that. There's some trials for Ukrainians accused of involvement, which would have been a crazy move if they were guilty because if they were caught and flagged as Ukrainian at the time, the act of destruction would have risked immediate loss of support from EU nations they were critically dependent on. Then again, as the thing wasn't actually delivering fuel because its certification had been suspended because of the Russian annexation of even more of Ukraine, I find myself unable to name anyone who had non-crazy motivations to attack it.

> There's been no other sabotage operations in Europe of comparable scale by at least two orders of magnitude.

In real warfare, single big strikes are seldom the most relevant. There have been many smaller acts of sabotage, which are fairly easy to attribute to Russia, and the EU response has been to downplay these acts because we actually would rather not take Russia seriously unless forced to.

soco

2 days ago

[flagged]

roenxi

2 days ago

> since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border.

If your argument is preventing trouble on the Polish border, why is the strategy dumping billions and billions of dollars in weapons into the most corrupt country in Europe, who happens to be on the Polish border? Keeping a conflict worthy of WWII smouldering in the area for more than 4 years now?

The sensible thing to do would have been to encourage a Ukrainian surrender early on and send them some food/whatnot in a care package, then fortify the Polish border. This strategy actually employed seems like the most direct way to trigger a humanitarian catastrophe on the Polish border. It looks very destabilising. It is also one of the very few paths that could reasonably see Poland or countries in that general region getting nuked.

Can we please be honest about our motivations here? We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity.

Oranguru

2 days ago

> We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity.

As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. I believe they have made that choice clear through democratic means, something Russians have not experienced in a long time. If Russia is allowed to take Ukraine, it will move on to Poland next, and then to claim the remaining former Soviet states. A line must be drawn somewhere.

roenxi

2 days ago

> As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity.

Much like Iran. And yet we took out their leadership just this year (again) because we think they picked the wrong flag.

Apparently such behaviour is tolerable. If it is tolerable, we should tolerate the Russians doing it too, even if it is on their own border instead of the other side of the world.

ben_w

2 days ago

> Apparently such behaviour is tolerable.

No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this. It wasn't even a good idea in Iraq with Saddam Hussein (second time, the first at least was to stop him invading Kuwait), probably not even Afghanistan.

rbanffy

2 days ago

> No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this

And yet there are no sanctions against the US for its obviously reckless interference in other countries.

Lumich

11 hours ago

« no sanctions against the US for its obviously reckless interference in other countries » – Definitely not enough, not even remotely. But there have been sanctions (though not labeled such) against the US under the guise of grounding the Boeing 737 MAX (21 months, sufficient to deal a blow to Boeing).

Allegedly this was in reaction to the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on March 10, 2019, near Addis Abeba, killing all 157 people on board. The factuality of the incidence is, however, questionable. I haven't seen a single convincing photo of the crash site. The 737's large modern turbofan engines are said to have been buried in a crater 10 m deep, which is totally implausible and reminiscent of the Shanksville part of the 9/11 hoax. Well, it's just mirroring brazen US lies, basically any BS will do.

https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo-contest/202...

The story goes that a UN delegation was among the victims of the alleged crash. I read somewhere that this was, basically, “world leaders uniting in protest” against the wave of airline terrorism perpetrated by the US (CIA/NSA/wtf) via cyber attacks, one of which was GermanWings 9525 which was crashed into a mountain via remote cyber hijack (remote control system compromised, probably industrial espionnage) on March 24, 2015, shredding to pieces all 150 people on board, mostly from Germany and Spain. The perpetrators had the NYT announce it was “wilful pilot action”, which is factually correct, but they blamed it (via French investigative authorities) on Andreas Lubitz instead of on the CIA or whatever US agency was responsible.

Not sure to what extent US cyber terrorism has been “covered” by HN, probably close to zero, although it couldn't be more “on topic” for US “Hacker News”.

ben_w

2 days ago

No disagreement there, if you look at "sanctions" then yes, there have been none of relevance for a very long time.

I guess "tolerable" has more than one meaning, so I should have checked which one was intended before starting my previous comment with just plain "No", but before reading your reply I hadn't considered that.

The lack of sanctions is due to how power works rather than anyone else agreeing with them in any specific case: the USA has got too much of the money that everyone else wants, and too many weapons which everyone else wants pointed in the right direction rather than to find they're now standing in a position to read the sign saying "front towards enemy" with a wire trailing off to a nearby bush.

This does not change that it was incredibly stupid for the US to attack Iran in particular, so stupid that it cost the US a significant part of its own matériel, made the remaining matériel less scary as a threat, and reduced the economic relevance of the USA's money, all at the same time.

Every US leader before Trump made sure to not damage those things, and thus retained both hard and soft power. Trump's throwing both away rapidly, at such a pace that it's no longer inconceivable that the rest of the world will be able to sanction the US without fear of what retaliation may result. Consider that Trump's poor choices mean in particular that the EU got away with telling Trump to take a hike over Greenland, and China got away with telling Trump to take a hike over tariffs. With the kind of damage he's doing to the USA's power, this shift may be shockingly sudden when it does happen, with nobody being able to see exactly how close the transition is even 12 months before the world order changes. (I am not saying this is 12 months away today, I'm saying nobody will know even when it is 12 months away).

So, stuff is shifting today specifically because of the USA's "reckless interference in other countries", with emphasis on the "reckless" part. There is a degree of governmental tolerance for the "interference" part, out of fear, meaning the condemnation (such as it is) is somewhere between "toothless" and simply not joining in with the misadventures. Trump appears to be trying to punish every nation who didn't help him attack Iran, but between them and all the nations the US failed to defend from Iranian counterstrikes are rather a lot of nations who are all now looking to each other for military and economic collaborations.

It may not look much on paper; it remains to be seen if it is much in practice. China will of course be happy to substitute for the USA everywhere, but for the rest of us this changes which hyperpower we find ourselves forced to kowtow to, this time less metaphorically and more literally. Reasonable chance a lot of nations make their own nuclear deterrents either way, with all the extra risk that comes with. I didn't want to predict anything past 2031 even before all this geopolitical rifting started.

def_true_false

2 days ago

Why do you only care about being fair to the Russians? It's not a two player game. This is not the cold war. Russia is a borderline failed state, not a superpower. Yes, they have nukes, but so does Pakistan and I don't see Americans talking about Pakistan's sphere of influence.

smallstepforman

2 days ago

By what metric do you consider them a failed state?

You’re on HackerNews, this website attracts free thinkers, we’re not the group that our influenced easily by propaganda, open your mind, read some data, visit the country and then form an opinion. Dont parrot the propaganda of non-free media.

def_true_false

2 days ago

This website has nearly no moderation and attracts tankies, the alt-right and various contrarians, not to mention Chinese, Russian and Iranian bots.

I don't need to read our media (that's perfectly free, thanks for your concern), to have an opinion about Russia. Especially on this very day.

goatlover

2 days ago

How about visit Ukraine, the country that was invaded who doesn't want to be absorbed by Russia. The country whose civilian population is deliberately targeted. Russia is run by a cold war dictator who doesn't care how many lives he wastes.

justsomehnguy

2 days ago

> As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. I believe they have made that choice clear through democratic means

It's always amusing to hear this and point out what some Ukrainians are... not equal to other Ukrainians and therefore are not allowed to have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity.

Somehow it's always only one flag what is 'right' and anything other is 'not right'.

ben_w

2 days ago

Most nations do not allow regions to become independent. The USA famously had a kerfuffle over this.

And that's even without statements like "it's really obvious that Russia fakes votes".

somenameforme

2 days ago

If you're not aware of Crimean demographics, it's never been majority Ukrainian. It was majority Tatar but then they got exiled by Stalin for allegedly colluding with the Nazis. After that it became and remained majority Russian. [1] The reason for the exceptionally high approval is that the demographics made the poll largely a formality - everybody knew it would pass, and so those that opposed secession chose to boycott it, in part on principle, and in part to undermine the poll numbers. But exit polling and various Western polls showed similarly overwhelming support for joining Russia.

As for the US - you could say we had two kerfuffles along these lines, or we'd still be Brits. Win some, lose some. And notably we probably would have also lost against the Brits if not for the French. Granted they didn't then try to take us under their wing as part of France, so the similarities end somewhere - but on the other hand that might have indeed been the exact outcome had we been majority ethnic French. Kind of an amusing parallel timeline to imagine.

[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26598832

justsomehnguy

2 days ago

> After that it became and remained majority Russian

It became 'majority Russian' 50 years before that, pay attention to the bar labeled 10. Don't use BBC as a source of anything.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea

justsomehnguy

2 days ago

It's even more amusing to anyone who knows the history of 28th state. "Really obvious, ya 'now".

pjc50

2 days ago

Eh, I think there's lots of valid cases for secession.

In the case of the South though, I believe they could have had a peaceful secession had they not fallen victim to their own version of the "sphere of influence" argument: they refused to tolerate a free North to which slaves could escape, resulting in opening fire on Fort Sumter.

p_j_w

2 days ago

That you think it’s valid for the South to break away so they could continue to treat black people as property says a lot of things, none of them good.

pjc50

2 days ago

That is of course not what I said; "valid" a complicated question, depending on whether we want to get all land acknowledgement and question whether any of the US should have existed at all, including but not limited to the slave states.

An example of "valid" secession is the split of Czechoslovakia.

"Peaceful" is introducing a what-if about whether and why the Confederacy started the actual armed conflict part of the secession.

I have introduced a line break into the original comment as a demilitarized zone.

(we can also see the sort of "historical sliding window" effect as to legitimacy here. At what point does de facto line on the ground become baked in to legitimacy? Does California have a right to exist? Clearly more so than the occupation of Crimea, but is it just time that makes it so?)

ben_w

2 days ago

> That you think it’s valid for the South to break away so they could continue to treat black people as property says a lot of things, none of them good.

They didn't actually say that, though I can see how one might read it that way.

  valid cases for secession. In the case of the South though

Is two things. I wrote a thing and an example, he's replied to both the thing and the example.

It's like Al Gore "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" being taken as "I invented" rather than "This was invented, I took the initiative in supporting it when that happened".

Lumich

2 days ago

« Ukrainians have the right to decide » – Well, they did decide, but the U.S. didn't appreciate, so overthrew their government back in 2014, remember? “The most blatant coup in history”, see Nuland/Pyatt intercept. Instead, the U.S. (and UK) decided there would be a war, as simple as that. Good for business (“make America great again”).

rbanffy

a day ago

In Brazil, 2014, President Dilma Rousseff was reelected and the US intensified their effort, resulting in a coup that opened the way to Bolsonaro, which is kind of not what the US wanted (they usually prefer more moderate and controllable authoritarians) but still happened because the only credible opposition to him was the party they ousted in 2015/16

edgyquant

2 days ago

Sovereignty is contingent on the ability to prevent others from telling you what to do. Ukraine has not yet proven this ability

ben_w

2 days ago

I would argue that the continuation of the war is Ukraine preventing Russia from telling Ukraine what to do.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, Russia is still strong enough to count as a sovereign nation, Russia is not yet weak enough that it is unable to prevent others (Ukraine) from telling them (Russia) to stop throwing high velocity explosives over the border. That had too many negatives in a row, I hope I phrased that right.

lovich

2 days ago

That’s crazy. I guess Ukraine must have fallen in the 3 day operation and definitely hasn’t stalemated the larger country. Might as well pack it up and go home since they’ve lost all their territory and resources.

bulbar

2 days ago

You don't achieve peace by surrendering to the people with the guns.

edgyquant

2 days ago

That is one of two ways, the other is to beat them with more guns. For peace to happen somebody has to surrender or you have to both lose so bad you reach a deal

Lumich

2 days ago

« getting nuked » – If that were a real possibility it would have happened in March '22 when the (not very sharp) Russian leadership understood they'd entered a bear trap and couldn't see a way to get out. This idea has always been a hoax, and if you read the propaganda that accompanied its introduction in 1945 (“Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”) you can see it was linked to ideas of (literally) world government (because “too grave a danger” etc, mafioso posing as policeman). Russia is the only country still clinging to the idea because geopolitically they feel very insecure, so the illusion is “comforting” (a tranquilizer), but still dumb (like most tranquilizers), and not to be confounded with a stable framework of international order (there is none, chiefly due to the one particular actor who has several hundred military bases abroad).

watwut

2 days ago

Most corrupt country in Europe is Belarus tied with Russia, depending on whether you count Russia as European.

Everything Russia touches becomes more corrupt. That includes Hungary btw. And speaking about it, that includes Ukraine - anti Russians politics was also the anti-corruption politics.

myko

2 days ago

No, the sensible thing to do would have been to enforce a no fly zone and tell Putin to get the fuck out. This is horrific and downplaying Russia's invasion is abhorrent.

bulbar

2 days ago

I can't believe how many fall for the Russian propaganda while it's pretty clear who's the attacker and who is being attacked. And yet, some people still get it wrong. "Just surrender" to have peace... I can't believe it, as if an invading force comes in peace. How about "just stop attacking" instead.

pjc50

2 days ago

The Russians ended up with a no fly zone of their own (shooting down an airliner full of civilians)

pjc50

2 days ago

> "sensible"

According to what idea of "sensible"?

> encourage a Ukrainian surrender early on and send them some food/whatnot in a care package, then fortify the Polish border.

This would still have resulted in millions of refugees, plus some unknown number of people killed by Russian forces exterminating any local pro-Europe political supporters. Remember Euromaidan. It also snuffs out a democracy, which is not a good precedent to set.

The second motivation is the belief that the invasion, if permitted, will not stop at Ukraine. This is why Finland and Sweden joined NATO after it happened.

> Keeping a conflict worthy of WWII smouldering in the area for more than 4 years now?

Russia can retreat into their internationally recognized borders at any time.

> Can we please be honest about our motivations here?

Can we be honest about the motivations of Russia in capturing and annexing other countries, something forbidden by both the post-WW2 international order and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum (which also justifies Europe's security provision to Ukraine)?

Lumich

2 days ago

« Russia can retreat into their internationally recognized borders at any time. »

The US has around 900 military bases abroad. Far more than all other countries combined. These bases are a constant source of threats and bullying, deploying and projecting a GDP largely based on death and destruction. Why don't the US retreat into their internationally recognized borders?

pjc50

2 days ago

The simple answer is that those bases aren't considered US territory and do not constitute annexation, and in most cases are there by invitation, such as to defend against the other, worse, hegemon.

(Some exceptions apply for e.g. the Chagossians)

leonidasrup

2 days ago

If those bases aren't considered US territory whose territory are they?

In case of United States Army installations in Germany:

" The legal status of Americans stationed in Germany is governed by special international agreements including the NATO Status of Forces Agreement.

People stationed at overseas bases or posts must remember German laws apply to them, too. To protect yourself, know what rights you have as an American. Whether German authorities exercise their right of jurisdiction depends on the circumstances of the case. "

https://www.ramstein.af.mil/About/Fact-Sheets/Display/Articl...

In case of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base:

"At the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2013, Cuba's Foreign Minister demanded the U.S. return the base to Cuba."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base#Cold...

pjc50

2 days ago

Guantanamo is leased like Hong Kong used to be, and has been since the Spanish-American war. It is an exception because the US refuses to normalize relations with Cuba. That is not the case for Ramstein and the European bases, which are generally just there by agreement which does not convey sovereignty.

Another special case is the UK sovereign bases in Cyprus, which really are UK territory; I only know about those because during Brexit they kept getting mentioned in the treaty documents.

Bonus pull out sovereignty section: to whom does Transnistria belong? How about Nagorno-Karabakh?

bulbar

a day ago

It's German territory where we granted an ally special rights to enforce their own rules to some large degree.

ben_w

2 days ago

> Why don't the US retreat into their internationally recognized borders?

Mostly they were allowed there by the government of the place.

They are criticised for the exceptions.

> GDP largely based on death and destruction

For all the flaws of the USA, this is not really what their GDP is "based on", though perhaps one could say that functionally they hide conscription by giving many unemployed men a Hobson's choice of signing up vs. going hungry.

bulbar

a day ago

Crazy comparison, military bases based on political agreements has nothing to do with invading a country.

leonidasrup

2 days ago

As the current situation in Middle East shows, these military bases loose their military function very fast in 21st century.

Lumich

a day ago

Yes, the increased effectiveness of cheap weapons is positive for the global underdogs. And the enormous military network the US entertains is costly. Which is why they have vassals (to foot the bills, at least in part). We'll see how this is going to develop – development of effective counter-measures shouldn't be ruled out.

If “nukes” existed many of these bases, being somewhat removed from human settlements, could be destroyed much more effectively and without much “collateral damage”. As the US and NATO hide behind Ukraine, other “players” could hide behind just any type of “terrorist”, just as the US/UK have done again and again.

roenxi

2 days ago

[flagged]

ben_w

2 days ago

> Which, with 20/20 hindsight, we now know was wild paranoia. The Russians weren't even geared up to properly invade Ukraine, they were as shocked as the rest of us when the Ukrainians decided a land war in Asia was a better idea than surrender. They spent something like 2 years back in 2022-2024 retooling for a real war. They weren't preparing to take Poland, they were trying to preserve a sphere of influence in Ukraine.

Them being idiots and thinking they could take Ukraine does not preclude that they were also idiots who thought they could take Poland.

> we embarked on this poorly advised policy of war.

We, the people who are supplying Ukraine with support, and I want to emphasise this, have not embarked on this poorly advised policy of war. We are not at war, our soldiers are not fighting. We are selling (and giving) weapons to someone who wants to defend themselves, which is a standard thing for weapon-exporting nations to do.

Russia has embarked on this poorly advised policy of war.

> It isn't normal for a major to break international law and it ends up in a million-casualty war where we sponsor bombing runs on their capital.

Russia did bombing runs on the Ukrainian capital before Ukraine was able to respond.

Can you give Ukrainians a reason why they should not develop nuclear weapons? The Polish? The Lithuanians?

> We're just pushing the global centre of power towards Asia.

Only if "we" is "the Russian government".

The things which the rest of NATO is doing that can be described as "pushing the global centre of power towards Asia" are 75% Trump being a chaos monkey undermining both the USA itself and all the USA's alliances, and 25% the EU member-states bike-shedding union-wide economic-industrial policy.

pjc50

2 days ago

> The Polish? The Lithuanians?

I for one welcome the re-establishment of a nuclear armed Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Just as long as we don't get the Hapsburgs back again.

(nb to audience and mods: this is a joke, which probably doesn't belong at the bottom of a serious thread about the Ukraine war and definitely not on a discussion of Japanese operating systems, yet here we are)

ben_w

2 days ago

> Just as long as we don't get the Hapsburgs back again.

Don't worry, if anyone can't tell their arse from their elbows long enough to gain power, it's the line so inbred that neither can anyone else.

pjc50

2 days ago

> there doesn't seem to be any reason to be provoking and sustaining it. It has been disastrous policy. We shouldn't have done it, we shouldn't have continued it and we should stop it now

Stopping the Iran war via total withdrawal might work like that. Western surrender in the Ukraine war (which, we need to keep reminding you, the first actual shots were in all cases fired by Russia) results in a situation far worse.

The bombing runs on Moscow will continue as long as the bombing runs on Kyiv continue. It is absurd to pretend that Russia are somehow agencyless dupes of US policy because you don't like the idea that Putin doesn't care how many Russians are killed so long as he retains power.

ben_w

2 days ago

> Keeping a conflict worthy of WWII smouldering in the area for more than 4 years now?

> The sensible thing to do would have been to encourage a Ukrainian surrender early on and send them some food/whatnot in a care package, then fortify the Polish border.

Imagine if the British had responded this way to the invasion of Poland in WW2.

Worse: which side of the border is Auschwitz located?

> It is also one of the very few paths that could reasonably see Poland or countries in that general region getting nuked.

Ukraine had nukes, gave them up. Was probably sensible at the time, but the observed behaviour is now "having nukes means you don't get invaded, giving them up means you do". Russia invading at all is pushing nations more in the direction of getting their own nuclear arsenals to deter Russia.

(Also, but entirely separately, Trump's USA sabre-rattling over Canada, Greenland, war with Iran, and disengagement from previous allies everywhere, is pushing nations the same way but to deter the USA(!) or China).

Lumich

2 days ago

« Imagine if the British had responded this way to the invasion of Poland in WW2. » – What exactly was the British “response” when the Soviet Union invaded “Eastern Poland” on Sep 17, 1939? And what was their “response” when confronted with reports of Polish atrocities against Germans in “Western/Northern Poland” during the August crisis?

« getting their own nuclear arsenals to deter Russia » – Stuck in the 20th century? Everyone can see that nukes don't work, else Russia would have used them in March '22, on military objects, and to draw a line; not “democratically” on women and children as the US did, of course (in truth the US used a kind of napalm, poison gas, pumpkin bombs, flash bombs, and coloured smoke bombs, see “Hiroshima revisited” by Michael Palmer). “Nukes” are just an elaborate deception created from 1945 through the 1950s, basically in maintenance mode ever since.

ben_w

2 days ago

> What exactly was the British “response” when the Soviet Union invaded “Eastern Poland” on Sep 17, 1939?

Other than being at war with the nation who had allied themselves with the USSR's joint invasion of Poland?

Also, why even ask? It's not like the post-WW2 international order was good for the Polish. Failing to defend Poland from the USSR, regardless of how this can be attributed to war exhaustion or foolishly believing Stalin's word, doesn't make that failure good.

Failing to defend Ukraine now, would be like failing to defend Poland then.

> And what was their “response” when confronted with reports of Polish atrocities against Germans in “Western/Northern Poland” during the August crisis?

I had to look this up. I think I know what you are now. Someone in the modern age who has the benefit of hindsight calling what was actually done an "atrocity", using the framing of the invader which we now know to have been exaggerated for propaganda to create a casus belli, says something very specific about their worldview.

> Stuck in the 20th century? Everyone can see that nukes don't work, else Russia would have used them in March '22, on military objects

Tell that to Russia. They keep threatening the use of them against everyone who aids Ukraine.

Their nukes may or may not work. But they're definitely afraid of other people's nukes.

And also definitely, the USA is afraid of other people's nukes.

> see “Hiroshima revisited” by Michael Palmer

Jesus, you're also a conspiracy theorist?

We have film footage of plenty of nukes past the 50s, the physics isn't particularly fancy, and with that era's stealth technology Japan would have been unable to avoid noticing the kind of airforce capable of delivering that kind of destruction by conventional means.

Lumich

2 days ago

« they're definitely afraid of other people's nukes » – They know 100 % no nukes work at all and never have anywhere.

« USA is afraid of other people's nukes » – And of extraterrestrians, too. It's all just propaganda playing back in people's minds.

« conspiracy theorist? » – The book I referenced has lots of hard empirical facts, notably the medical details, which the author is professionally qualified to assess.

« film footage » – Huge quantities of explosives, WWII production kept going. As for Japan, their gov had to collaborate somehow, and eventually resigned themselves to do so because the US wouldn't accept their capitulation and instead kept democratically napalming women and children.

Lio

2 days ago

> One of the two is worse and it isn't the policies written in Cyrillic.

I can't tell if you're a tankie or a bot but Russia is right now conducting an unprovoked war against a democracy with no foreign policy goal other than to destroy Ukraine and seize its assets.

Where Russia has been forced out of Ukraine it's left behind war crimes and mass civilian graves. So experience shows, there is no safe surrender for Ukraine, they have to fight until they win.

There is no world where Putin's Russia is the good guys.

Remember, Putin is the only person with the luxury of stopping the war any time he likes.

pjc50

2 days ago

roenxi is a moderately prolific poster who can post reasonably but is clearly also plugged into the rightwing political and news ecosystem resulting in this kind of "rightwing tankie" take. I believe they're actually from one of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, which would correlate with the timezone of this argument (it's 7am in NY and I would expect most of America to be asleep)

selimthegrim

2 days ago

There are a couple others in here - thriftwy and another who posts often about China but is shadowbanned whose name escapes me atm

dismalaf

2 days ago

Horseshoe theory still undefeated. Both right-wingers who consume certain content as well as left-wingers in the pro-Palestine/Iran camp tend to be sympathetic to the Russian cause, as the Russians and Iranians fund specific influencers/political parties on both sides of the spectrum.

Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) are way more anti-Russia than the ones in the US.

pjc50

2 days ago

Negative polarization is incredibly powerful. You can see all over the place how "X is bad" leads to people defining themselves as "anti-X" and then supporting the most extreme position against X rather than a moderate one, often leading them into supporting atrocities in the other direction. This is how we get people in the English Green Party (who I would like to support if they could be 10% less nutty fruitcake) ended up posting pro-Iran propaganda.

You also do have to keep track of internal factions. We're all, me included, using "country name" in this thread as a synechdoche as if all of a country had a unified political axis of action, when we know that's an oversimplification.

This is how we get Israel/Likud and Iran/IGRC who are practically co-evolved to escalate against each other, to which the only reasonable response of third parties is to acknowledge that both are bad and attempt to de-escalate, as in e.g. the Camp David Accords era, before either of those factions came to power.

> Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia)

I don't think enough was made of https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-v... - the amount of money involved was a significant fraction of the Hungarian budget.

fc417fc802

2 days ago

This is a bizarre take. Despite propaganda to the contrary most "pro-palestine" takes are actually just anti-genocide and pro-human-rights. Similarly at least in the US this "iranian camp" you refer to is by and large an anti-getting-involved camp. Is it really pro-iranian to ask why the government is burning billions of dollars to destabilize the global economy?

Also I've yet to meet a single person who was "pro-palestine" and simultaneously sympathetic to russia. Quite the opposite.

pjc50

2 days ago

Most, yes, but there is a noisy lunatic fringe on social media whose existence we must acknowledge. Recent example is Eleanora Folan, a minor politician in a minor UK party.

Of course as you say there's also people trying to lump the many "we should stop mass murder of civilians" people into the same bucket as the negatively polarized "we hate Israel therefore we're going to support Iran" few. Discourse is exhaustingly stupid.

dismalaf

2 days ago

You need to pay attention then.

https://kyivindependent.com/pro-palestinian-activists-destro...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7x68jrdmlo

https://time.com/6589923/nancy-pelosi-pro-palestinian-protes...

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/russias-...

And this isn't counting the countless TikTok influencers, trade unions, etc... that are all anti-"war" and have pro-IRGC and pro-China views.

And while you're kind of right that few are outright carrying water for Russia, at least publicly, they all conveniently support what Russia supports.

fc417fc802

2 days ago

This ranges from propaganda to entirely unsurprising. Propagandists work to hamper causes that are inconvenient for their side. Meanwhile of course our geopolitical adversaries will offer support to otherwise seemingly unrelated causes if it somehow indirectly serves their ends.

The average joe in the US (and presumably the west more generally) does not care one whit about the causes of russia or iran.

dismalaf

2 days ago

> The average joe in the US (and presumably the west more generally) does not care one whit about the causes of russia or iran.

It's not about caring about Russia or Iran specifically. It's about the fact they're swayed by propaganda so the end result is they end up unwittingly adopting the worldview pushed by enemy propagandists and helping to destroy western civilization.

fc417fc802

2 days ago

At this point you've completely shifted the goal posts and are no longer arguing your original position.

Sure, my wondering "why are we burning billions in iran" happens to align with iran's interests. It's also directly representative of my own interests. The fact that some subset of people will be swayed by propaganda does not constitute a valid argument against a given position.

If we uniformly apply the same standard you're demonstrating here then your own position would be attributed to being swayed by state propaganda and thus your actions interpreted as helping american propagandists destroy civil society.

tl;dr You're espousing anti-intellectual BS that has no place on HN. Kindly take your braindead political takes back to twitter or wherever the hell they came from.

dismalaf

2 days ago

> You're espousing anti-intellectual BS that has no place on HN.

ChatGPT write this?

> Sure, my wondering "why are we burning billions in iran" happens to align with iran's interests

So naturally you're against lots of other programs that waste billions? Or just this one?

> your own position would be attributed to being swayed by state propaganda and thus your actions interpreted as helping american propagandists destroy civil society

Except my position is pro-west and anti-terrorist supporting dictatorships. It's the old duck test: if it walks like a duck...

And for the record, I'm against both sides of the horseshoe who are bought by enemy propaganda...

fc417fc802

2 days ago

> I still haven't heard anyone make a case for why we keep hitting the Russians given what acceptable US foreign policy looks like.

Somewhat cynically it's entirely to do with which country they attacked. Had they moved on one farther away from mainland europe I doubt we'd have heard nearly as much about it.

That said it would still be wrong just as much of US (and yes Chinese) foreign policy is morally wrong. Such should be called out rather than engaging in whataboutism.

lovich

2 days ago

We already saw that happened when Russia invaded Georgia in ~2008. Which I’ll also point out to the people in this thread who are incredulous at the idea that Russia would go on to invade another country if Ukraine had folded as fast as they expected, is already proof that they had no real intentions on just Ukraine.

roenxi

20 hours ago

[dead]

roenxi

2 days ago

That goes to the heart of it though. If we approach this cynically there are some massive downsides - we're destabilising the leadership circle that controls the largest nuclear weapons cache in the world and pushing one of the major resource-rich countries away from Europe towards Asia.

The moral arguments for doing that appear to all be rank hypocrisy given what we tolerate of ourselves. So if we go back and accept a certain level of cynicism when asking "why?" what exactly is the upside for us in Ukraine? The downsides seem to be enormous and when pushed for what the actual reasons are the best people have seems flimsy and poorly thought out in relation to the risks. This war could have been approached as though it was the US or China who had instigating it and ended with a call-out as opposed to millions of casualties.

The winning strategy in these things seems to me to be much more of the Chinese approach where you sit tight, set up an impressive defensive perimeter and grow your economy until all your opponents bankrupt themselves in stupid wars.

cpursley

2 days ago

What do you mean “we can’t tell”? For those who aren’t aware, the war against Iran (direct, they don’t have nukes yet) and Russia (via Ukraine proxy, Russia has nukes) as well as Venezuela (infiltrate their power structure and bribe off) are actually the same war: they are multi front (financial, energy, technical; ranging from soft to kinetic) geopolitical “containment” strategies. The US/UK/EU think tank and others influencing policy have written about it non-stop since forever, it’s not like a grand conspiracy - it’s all out in the public if you lift back the on the surface news narrative. You can literally pull down and read the policy papers, read the transcripts of those (in power and adjacent to power) pushing this “primacy” view of US led hegemony.

pjc50

2 days ago

Russia is the odd one out here, in that it was started by Russian incursions as far back as 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea

The think tank argument is very valid though. You can no longer find "Project for the new American Century" online, but they laid out the invasion of Iraq before 9/11 (the pretext) even happened.

cpursley

2 days ago

Gosh, now I wonder why they would have possibly intervened at that particular time. No geopolitical analysts anywhere could have ever predicted the reaction of Russia to the possibility of Sevastopol becoming a NATO Naval base and US forward strike forces and missile base setting up shop just 250 miles away from Moscow...

pjc50

2 days ago

The "buffer zone" argument works in reverse: gee, I wonder why Europe got worried given that annexation of Ukraine would put Russian forces right next to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary (Orban era), Romania, and Moldova (which is already partly occupied in Transnistria).

user

2 days ago

[deleted]

soco

2 days ago

[flagged]

leonidasrup

2 days ago

Distance between Sevastopol and Moscow is 1284 km, 798.31 mi or 693.71 nmi.

On the other hand distance from Kaliningrad to Berlin is just 618 km, 384 mi or 333.94 nmi.

cpursley

2 days ago

Chernihiv is 280 miles, I was off my a bit. Kaliningrad is not the concern. Sevastopol is a different type of concern (navy power). Russia has a long insecurity about its western boarder going back way before Putin, no leadership there unless in the pocket of the US was going to allow that in the same way China ain’t building an alliance with Mexico. This is geopolitics 101, day 1 material.

leonidasrup

2 days ago

Exactly the same way the Russians are uneasy about Chernihiv, Western countries are uneasy about Kaliningrad with it's nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles.

https://metro.co.uk/2025/06/17/russia-upgrades-nuclear-sites...

Geopolitics 101 also says that in a war between countries armed with ICBMs delivering nuclear weapons, distance doesn't matter, everyone dies. Especially with second-strike capability like Dead Hand (Sistema "Perimetr").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_hand

def_true_false

2 days ago

There are already NATO bases within 250 miles of St Petersburg. Pray tell, what's so special about Moscow?

cpursley

2 days ago

Really? Hum, maybe it’s the political and economic capital? What’s so special about Kiev, Paris?

watwut

2 days ago

> why we keep hitting the Russian

US was basically supporting Russian invasion in negotiations. What are you on about here.

EU is supporting Ukraine in their self defense. Eu also know they are the next if Ukraine falls. USA did the right thing in the beginning, but as Trump gained power, his admiration to autocrats made him switch the sides.

0dayz

2 days ago

Right, so genocide is better than diplomacy?

kshri24

2 days ago

I don't like China for how it is behaving with my country but it is rich to talk about "invasions" when all the invading in the past half a century has been done by a Sole Democratic Superpower and its lackeys. Cannot believe I am having to defend China here but here we are!

Paradigma11

2 days ago

[dead]

chabska

2 days ago

Democracy is when you drop a ballot every two/four years, and the elected officers ignore you while they take millions of donation from wealthy donors. Dictatorship is when the unelected representatives work their ass off to better the lives of the average citizens, because they're afraid of a revolution.

(P.S.: Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister, but I don't see people calling the UK a dictatorship.)

Lio

2 days ago

That's because in the time since Xi took over China there's been 7 different UK Prime Ministers, most of whom were kicked out of office before their term ended.

In that same period Xi has changed the rules so that he can hold on to power indefinitely.

chabska

2 days ago

Why are we using British PM count like it means anything. Meanwhile, Angela Merkel served longer as Kanzler than Xi has served as President. Is Germany a dictatorship?

(Neither Britain nor Germany have term limits for their head of government, so China removing its term limit is just bringing it at par with the two most prominent European democracies)

Lio

a day ago

The point is that PM count proves it was possible for other people to remove serving PMs from power.

They were not able to ignore public opinion indefinitely and could be removed from power without the need for term limits.

No one can remove Xi from power if they don't like the way he performs. No one in China can even publicly discuss his performance except to praise him.

That's what makes China a dictatorship and the UK a democracy.

user

2 days ago

[deleted]

Nursie

2 days ago

> Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister

The British PM was elected, what on earth are you talking about? He won an election to his seat in Parliament just a few weeks ago.

chabska

2 days ago

He was not elected by the general public to the position of Prime Minister. He was elected, by a small number of UK citizens in his constituency, to the Parliament seat.

British law doesn't even require the Prime Minister to be an MP, technically Parliament could elect any random bozo from the street to be PM.

implements

2 days ago

“Has no personal mandate from the entire electorate” - I suspect they mean.

But that’s not necessary or expected under the British system, being an MP and Party Leader is enough. If Burnham radically departed from Labour’s manifesto you could then argue he call a general election to establish legitimacy for that, but it isn’t required.

pjc50

2 days ago

The UK PM change happened indirectly as a result of poor performance in the local elections. It does actually matter that the UK has multiple parties that effectively compete, even if some of them are blatantly sockpuppets for overseas millionaires.

leonidasrup

2 days ago

The two-term limit for president of China and vice president of China have be eliminated been abolished in 2018. Now President Xi Jinping can rule for life.

"Deng Xiaoping put the limits in place in the 1980s as part of his effort to ensure that China was never again subjected to a crushing dictatorship like that of Chairman Mao and the turmoil it occasioned. China’s Communist system not accepting the Western notion of formal checks and balances, Deng instituted a system with Chinese characteristics designed to prevent return of one-man rule or a cult of personality by preventing leaders from staying indefinitely in power."

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/7-things-you-need-to-know...

Similar in Russia, 2020 constitutional amendment gave Vladimir Putin legal authority to stay in office until 2036.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_limits_in_Russia#Russia_u...

chabska

a day ago

There's no term limit for the British Prime Minister and Germany Kanzler. What do you think about that?

ben_w

2 days ago

> A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance.

I think it's a safe bet that China will invade precisely when they think this won't cause them severe negative losses.

This will likely be when Taiwan finds itself no longer a close ally of the USA, nor of global geostrategic importance.

Of course, "safe bet" doesn't mean "in all possible timelines"; they may end up echoing the Bay of Pigs, Hormuz, or stumble against the hubris that turned the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand into a world war where all belligerents had the mistaken belief they would win.

juusto

2 days ago

The "dicatorship" of China never implemented such a thing in my country. USA "democracy" did.

otabdeveloper4

3 days ago

You're confusing "ally" and "vassal". Allies are countries that send troops to help you in war.

specproc

2 days ago

So many dead lads from both my countries fighting American wars, for zero gain to our peoples. That's vassalship, not an alliance.

OroPla

2 days ago

Allies will only help you if you are winning the war. Vassals will also help if you are losing.

tremon

3 days ago

Whereas vassals are countries that you draft to help you in war?

mr_toad

2 days ago

Yes, by definition, a vassal owes allegiance to their lord, which includes military service.

But you can’t really take a feudal term and apply it to modern politics. Taiwan doesn’t resemble a vassal in any meaningful way.

Calazon

2 days ago

I think the idea is that a vassal state (operates as though it) owes allegiance to a stronger state, while governing itself (more or less) independently.

And the stronger state exercises a lot of influence on the weaker state, especially in terms of foreign policy, and potentially provides it with protection from other strong states.

Not sure exactly how much this would apply to Taiwan in particular, but I think the idea in general can be meaningful in modern politics.

Calazon

2 days ago

There's certainly a spectrum between allies, vassals, and directly controlled territories, but it doesn't necessarily need to be about sending troops to help in war.

user

2 days ago

[deleted]

moregrist

2 days ago

> And by the mid 80's the moats were already very deep.

You raise some good points, but I don’t think the idea of moats from the 80s really holds up. None of the obvious moats in the mid-80s are still dominant players. In the mid-80s the PC market was still pretty new. Business was still run on IBM mainframes, DEC VAX, and other systems that were overtaken by forces in the late-80s and early 90s. These seemed unstoppable until they weren’t.

I think the strongest counter example, though, is probably Linux. If your thesis was correct, an early-90s hobby operating system by some kid at a uni in Finland would never be dominant in cloud server spaces by the 2000s.

> Amiga couldn't over come the PC.

This is probably your best example. I would add BeOS to this.

On the other hand, Apple managed to attract a core audience and stay alive (even if barely) through the 90s. Sometimes you don’t have to overtake; you just need to have a solid niche.

> IBM couldn't over come the moat of Windows with OS2.

OS/2 originally lost to Windows as a successor to DOS due to execution, not because Windows had a huge moat. OS/2 Warp was a bit later.

The story of OS/2 failing is sad and as much about IBM internal politics as about Microsoft succeeding.

> Intel couldn't overcome x86 with the i432 or Itanium.

Intel bet on compilers being far smarter than they were in the 2000s (and possibly today) and didn’t seem to understand that most business applications at the time were limited by branching and integer computations. That stuff doesn’t vectorize well. The arch might be better-received today, although moving pipeline concerns to the compiler still seems like a bad choice to me.

As a counterpoint, consider the rise of ARM in the 2010s. An arch known mostly in the embedded world has become a real player in the desktop and server environment. All because of the rise of phones, reasonable licensing, and better perf/watt at low power than x86.

rbanffy

a day ago

> Intel bet on compilers being far smarter than they were in the 2000s

Funny Intel didn’t just fell for this once, but twice. I wonder what was Microsoft’s role on Itanium’s failure - it would be in their best interest for it to succeed with Windows running on it.

krige

3 days ago

> Amiga couldn't over come the PC.

For reasons that had nothing to do with OS. Swap Steve Jobs with Irving Gould and Apple would be dead in under a decade too.

kalleboo

3 days ago

Tramiel left Commodore in 1984 after battling Gould and Jobs left Apple in 1985 after battling Sculley. Apple then went on to have terrible management for over a decade, with people like Michael Spindler trying their best to run the company into the ground.

Apple only survived as long as they did since they had really fat margins on their machines so e.g. the Apple II could subsidize the Macintosh for years. Commodore's focus on low cost made it a lot more difficult for them to e.g. fund the evolution of the Amiga properly.

decide1000

2 days ago

I wouldn't describe it as luck, it's politics. The mother of Bill Gates had access to the board of IBM. She was also the co-founder of Microsoft.

close04

3 days ago

> it just needs to get lucky enough to

To not compete with something from a country which sees its interests threatened and has the power to squeeze you dry.

The US intervention to apply pressure handed a weapon to an internal player, Masayoshi Son who just happened to make money selling US software. He used that weapon against his and US' competition. It's a playbook that the US used again and again when it saw its interests threatened by competition: hit the enemy hard below the belt while handing weapons to another internal player who will also hit the enemy below the belt.

Every other example you gave came from inside the US, even from the same company with multiple products. The market played the defining role there and pushed for survival of the fittest. In TRON's case "market forces" turned out to be US intervention.

ghaff

2 days ago

I was (and am again) an IT industry analyst for quite a few years. At the risk of stereotyping (and realizing they didn't have a corner on this approach), Japan long liked marching to their own drummer with designs that were out of the mainstream to a greater or lesser degree.western

bell-cot

2 days ago

I don't know Amiga well, but IBM's OS/2 efforts were plagued by several Big Blue Blunders. And both the i432 and Itanium were sounded-great ideas - for which Intel could not ship even expensive and mediocre-performance hardware in any reasonable time.

tonyhart7

3 days ago

apparently China decision to ban US tech company and build their own counterpart is seen as Genius after 20 years

arkh

3 days ago

One of the advantages of an autocracy: you don't need people's approval every 5 years so you can plan for decades. When you're right it is awesome. When you're wrong, well that's what the army is for.

SiempreViernes

3 days ago

The actual reality of how China works is much more complicated than this "select from a dropdown menu" system you are implying.

For one thing it's made up of fairly autonomous provinces that all compete between each others, for another the actual strategy has been heavily relying on extensive local experimentation to find growth models that can be applied nationally.

corimaith

3 days ago

Nah he's correct, local government compete on implementation details, not overall strategy that is monopolize by the central government. Which has the same pitfalls (-see zero-covid or the debt crisis owing to gdp targets)

whatever1

2 days ago

Also if any of the local governors / entrepreneurs cross a line they just disappear to focus on reading. Some of them might reappear after a decade having thoroughly understood the textbooks.

For example Jack Ma reappeared after his successful re-education.

tonyhart7

2 days ago

China is the only country that can control their billionaire while US is the other way around

mono442

2 days ago

China doesn't have a debt crisis.

thaumasiotes

3 days ago

> One of the advantages of an autocracy: you don't need people's approval every 5 years so you can plan for decades.

This is a funny thing to say about a system known for its regular issuance of 5-year plans. They have festivals and everything.

lava_pidgeon

3 days ago

That's selection bias. China was "lucky" to had the best strategy. But what about the dictatorships who stocked to the wrong strategy.

Though it is still interesting to research about Industry politics. In Europe almost all economics looked trapped into the capitalism Vs socialism trap.

tonyhart7

3 days ago

You can badmouth about China all you want but at least they are consistent where they stand

while US flip flopping about invading middle east (like usual) or Greenland

hvb2

3 days ago

I don't think he was badmouthing China at all. He's basically using different words to make the exact same point you're trying to make.

When there's no real accountability, in a reasonable timeframe, it's much easier to plan long term.

It's the same within companies. When the CEO assumes he'll be around for 5 years, should he shoot for the 10 year goal and reduce outcomes in the early years? Or does he just optimize for the next 5 years, thereby neglecting the long term goal?

tonyhart7

3 days ago

"When you're wrong, well that's what the army is for."

he is implying that China bad action can be solved by PL red Army

fc417fc802

2 days ago

He's not implying, he stated it directly.

If you think he's wrong then tell me - what do you believe would happen there in the event of widespread social unrest or grievances against the sitting government?

tonyhart7

2 days ago

They used to be, but after millions of people died, they realized that they had to do better. The rest is history.

close04

3 days ago

GP isn't "badmouthing" China, that description applies to every non-democratic country, one leader with the power, not the people.

Autocracies are great in the hands of a competent leader who plans the economy long term, and the grows of the country for the benefit of the country and society (look up "benevolent dictators"). They are not afraid of long term plans, or pleasing the population in the short term. He can break some eggs now to feed the whole country tomorrow. This is not something a democratic leader can afford. They live in 4-5 years cycles to please an electorate who looks for immediate benefits.

In the hands of an incompetent and abusive leader autocracy is a nightmare that's supported only by fear and violence against the people. These are most dictatorships. Society suffers but can't do anything for fear of being steamrolled by the army.

China is straddling a middle ground where the country grew by leaps and bounds, faster than anything else in history probably, but they also use a heavy hand to do this.

touristtam

3 days ago

I don't think this democratic vs autocratic framing is entirely correct; most of the commenters here fail to mention the political ideology of capitalism. Pre-2000 several European nation had long term plans despite being democracies. The move to further integrate into the EU meant added political pressure to adopt more liberal postures like breaking state ownership of essential industries and that meant also no more of those medium to long term plans for those states.

This isn't China vs the rest, this is US Capitalist view of the world vs the rest. China in this present conversation is only an example of a country that has not succumbed to the desiderata of the unrestrained Capitalist.

close04

2 days ago

Good point but the scale and success rate of the way China does it compared to any other democracy, or any country, in the past puts them in a different league entirely. They are on their 15th 5 year plan and look at the results.

A successful planned economy needs an autocratic leader, or a majority of people with foresight and willingness to delay gratification working together. There were very few moments in time when this intersection happened.

The last time someone had real planned economy in Europe was in communism time, with the 5-year plans and those were a joke, paper exercises to please the leaders. Those economies slowly failed. The planning you talk about post-'90 was relatively minor, more like a few ongoing projects.

Populists and corruption invaded the scene and promised the world now, making realists/idealists look even worse. Promise of short term gain is such an easy sell that it organically became the tool of choice for would-be leaders. Worse even, once the former opposition got to power they tore down what was built by the predecessor, started over to shape it in their image, brought in their cronies. This is human nature, the US didn't invent short sightedness or gullibility, they just exploited and monetized these common flaws in people.

Hikikomori

3 days ago

Or you get trump, autocrat corruption without the planning.

close04

3 days ago

> Or you get

That "or" is described one paragraph down. It's the most common type of autocracy actually because it's the easiest to pull off. Incompetent and corrupt leader, access to an army, biggest temptation is for easy profit.

Democracies are very susceptible to this type of leader in the short term. They start as populists and for a while it's easy to fool people into electing them. Until pockets and bellies start to stay empty. When popular support vanishes the army might step in to take that role and it turns into an autocracy.

Successful planned economies need first and foremost a competent leader who's not tempted by short term personal gain but mainly long term gains for the country. They're rare as hen's teeth.

Hikikomori

3 days ago

>Democracies are very susceptible

Some democracies for sure, having a US style president makes it much easier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerial_rule

ithkuil

3 days ago

You can get those in a democracy too!

The real difference is how can you get rid of those

villish

3 days ago

Did you forget about what happened with Hong Kong?

throw4r53w4

2 days ago

(throwaway for this comment)

I see this question a lot and as someone who has traveled to and sometimes lived in Hong Kong for the past 20 years, the truth is on a day-to-day level, there isn’t really much change.

I’m sure if you’re an activist there are huge changes. But as a regular person, life feels the same (even my local and expat friends feel this way).

Also one thing to be clear about is Hong Kong never had a democracy. The governor was always appointed by the UK. It was only when the handover was certain, the UK tried to introduce voting. The UK also tried to pressure Portugal to stop giving citizenship to the people of Macau, because the UK didn’t want to do the same for Hongkongers.

pepperoni_pizza

3 days ago

He's probably forbidden from speaking about it.

pjc50

2 days ago

The eradication of democracy in HK is extremely sad, but unfortunately it was only ever leased from China and the UK did not have a sound basis in international law for not handing it back.

Lio

2 days ago

> it was only ever leased from China

Only part of Hong Kong, the New Territories, was leased from China. Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were ceded to the UK in perpetuality.

The UK didn't have to give them back but it also didn't have a reliable fresh water supply for such a large city that didn't depend on mainland China.

throw4r53w4

2 days ago

Ceded at gunpoint. When might makes right, it makes sense China would try to get it back when strong enough.

Lio

a day ago

The same is true for Vladivostok but Xi seems pretty relaxed about that.

HexDecOctBin

2 days ago

Ah, so international law matters? In that case, surely China will follow the verdict of the South China Sea Arbitration?

maxglute

2 days ago

No, because PCA ruling is lawfare and not international law.

PRC is legally fully compliant with her UNCLOS accession obligations.

m4rtink

3 days ago

It also makes feedback illegal, so corruption and bad decisions get unfixed, untill both not only eat any gains but make the whole thing collapse.

accurrent

2 days ago

Its complicated... You can't function without feedback. Imagine you have a pothole, a 0 feedback society would tell you that the contractor the government selected is perfect and there are no pot holes in ba sing se. If you actually go to china you would find that roads are genuinely pothole-free. Obviously there are feedback channels. You can't run a country with zero feedback. China knows this and they monitor a lot of things. There are channels (like they have online petition platforms, 12345 hotline - organised demonstrations are not allowed). Theres also a whole industry around gathering metrics from citizen surveys and online studies. Every government program is measured carefully and methodically. Is it democratic in the western sense? no. Will you get killed for reporting a pothole or flaw? Absolutely not.

tonyhart7

3 days ago

Yeah but China have death penalty for corruption while Trump literally selling subscription for faster tweet access

accurrent

2 days ago

Government ban is part of the reason, but cultural differences are also important. There are other countries where Google is not the defacto search engine: South Korea, Japan, Russia, etc.

Similarly if your were to look into food delivery companies/ridehailing you would also find many countries where Uber has completely failed.

OroPla

2 days ago

Google results have gotten so bad, I have to wonder if it is still the defacto search engine anywhere or whether the numbers are simply made up.

fc417fc802

2 days ago

At least speaking for myself I haven't interacted with traditional google results for a while because their AI is similarly free on the front page and does a remarkably good job of filtering and summarizing the search results I would otherwise have had to spend 30 minutes trawling through.

matheusmoreira

2 days ago

I envy China's ability to not only plan but actually execute plans greater than 4 years. It makes democracies look bad.

ang_cire

2 days ago

Unfortunately, imo this is one issue masquerading as another: the real barrier to much of the US' societal progress is that we're an incredibly low trust society.

When you talk to e.g. Republicans about policies like universal healthcare or mass transit, what you realize is that they're not opposed to the policies themselves, they're just convinced that it will benefit others more than themselves. A lot of people chock that up as them being hateful (which is an easy and sometimes true explanation, as right-wing politicians and media stoke this to capture them as voters), but the core of the problem is that they are often convinced that any system structured like this will be denied to them when they try to access it (and if you've been obtaining medical care via patient-hostile private insurance your entire, it's probably hard to imagine otherwise).

And it sucks because this low-trust social system ruins things even in low-level shitty ways, like people cutting in line, or destroying free neighborhood food pantries or libraries, or driving like assholes.

"Someone else will exploit it if I don't" is both a justification used by some people for their own shitty behavior, AND something that turns people against anything not being forcibly controlled or structured to prevent that exploitation (I.e. anything communal or democratized). This is why the myth of the "welfare queen" was so easy for Fox to sell.

Authoritarianism also heavily degrades societal trust, though it's certainly not the only thing that does this. Capitalism does as well, because it offers the same incentives to exploit (the aforementioned "do it or have it be done to you").

They're both systems that live and die on the Prisoner's Dilemma.

alansaber

3 days ago

Certain fundamental technologies are national security. If you proport to be a superpower you can't have your nation be fully reliant on say the Mac OS. Same with agricultural imports, IC development, dot dot dot

corimaith

3 days ago

No it's more of the US tolerating asymmetric trade. The whole point of that trade article was that Japan couldn't afford to loose the US market.

rbanffy

a day ago

> Amiga couldn't over come the PC

Amiga was too tightly designed around its chips, which were too tightly designed around NTSC timings. The more modular architecture of the PC allowed hardware to evolve at a far lower cost.

shevy-java

3 days ago

> The technology doesn't have to be the best, it just needs to get lucky enough to become a standard and build a moat with that.

I don't know about that.

Top 500 supercomputers running Linux. I use both Linux and Win10, for instance (won't switch to Win11 no matter what), but whenever I have to use Windows, I wonder how this garbage could ever become so dominating in the first place. Inefficiency is very clearly a work culture at Microsoft; I notice this every time I copy data. And then wingers for Windows babble about how Microsoft does so much more behind the scenes - all of which is totally pointless. It is such an utter trash operating system, so I can not agree with "it it is ok to suck" statements. I much prefer solid engineering at all times.

unleaded

2 days ago

Windows sucks but Linux is not a very good operating system either. Everything is a bodge to cover up the assumption that it thinks its a multi-user PDP11 system from the 70s, nobody can agree on which set of bodges to use for the same thing, and it's a miracle it even works at all. But it's better than the alternatives and nobody wants to try again so we got used to it. (That also applies to why Windows is used in corporate environments too)

jdw64

3 days ago

But the idea that Windows is a "better OS" really seems accurate for people in the Third World. This is because Korean language support on Linux is terrible, and since all the commands are in English, it takes quite a bit of time to get used to it. Not only that, but there are so many distributions that you do not even know what to configure, and rather than doing RTFM, I just want to get my "work" done.

In that regard, I honestly think Linux is better once you master it, but realistically, Windows is much more casual and practical. You might disagree, but for people outside the Anglosphere, Windows is far more casual.

To be completely honest, the vast majority of people do not even like looking at PowerShell or terminal windows. It is familiar to programmers like us, but honestly, I do not like looking at terminal windows either. I would much rather look at an IDE. In the English speaking Linux world, you just map ASCII, but we need things like ibus or fcitx. On top of that, there have been CJK input method fragmentation and conflict issues for over 20 years. I think this gap exists because they cannot understand a situation where you have to debug an "input method config file" just because you want to type some text.

Windows is a black box platform where multilingual rendering and the Office ecosystem are perfectly integrated. Only a very small fraction of its API is exposed. However, for the vast majority of applications, that is more than enough. The idea that Linux is great applies mostly to English speaking developers or those who want to fit into that English speaking development culture, but from a pure usability standpoint, I believe Windows is better.

Linux is technically a glass box, but honestly, no one can understand every single part of it, meaning it practically functions as a cognitive black box anyway.

Furthermore, Windows supports true plug and play where hardware just works the moment you connect it. Linux does not. Debating whether Linux or Windows is technically superior is meaningless, but I absolutely do not agree with the claim that Windows is terrible. Many Americans argue that Linux is better once you learn how to use it properly, but the moment you step outside the US, Linux becomes a flawed system where nothing works as it should.

thaumasiotes

3 days ago

> But the idea that Windows is a "better OS" really seems accurate for people in the Third World. This is because Korean language support on Linux is terrible

Who in the third world is supposed to speak Korean?

jdw64

3 days ago

In this case, I'd appreciate it if you could understand it as my 'native language.' When you input a language that isn't English into a computer, it often doesn't work well with ASCII—it frequently breaks in many places.

Because the standards for computer work are mostly set by the US, people in Asia often call the ASCII system 'the privilege of one byte.' A single hardware switch maps directly to one byte of memory. You don't need an IME—Linux requires programmers to configure that manually.

For native languages like Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic, you can't just type characters onto the screen directly. IME daemons like ibus or fcitx run in the background, intercept key events, and compose them in buffers. In that regard, Windows is much better. And this ties in well with the topic of this post

Using Linux outside the English speaking world means you have to study encoding history and filesystem structures just to open a document. It practically becomes a hobby. It's awful.

But Windows solves that problem first, because it wants to sell Windows in those countries. NTFS stores filenames in UTF-16, so multilingual input is standard. When you open a terminal in Linux, you get the horrible experience of seeing your native language rendered as broken characters. I do use Linux, of course. I think its lightweight nature is a plus, but in my work environment, Linux is hard to use properly except on servers

OroPla

2 days ago

What gave you the impression that you can't just type all utf-8 characters in existence in a Linux terminal? It even takes emojis.

jdw64

2 days ago

No, it's not an issue with all UTF-8 character input—it's a crash that happens in specific situations. In other words, it's intermittent. For example, there were cases where accidentally typing Korean characters while opening a terminal or editor would cause a crash. (This was about 4 years ago, so I'm not sure how it is now.)

Anyway, it's been mostly fixed now, but if I remember correctly, there were cases where edge cases caused crashes because the input standards were inconsistent

potwinkle

2 days ago

> Furthermore, Windows supports true plug and play where hardware just works the moment you connect it. Linux does not.

This hasn't been my experience for the last 5 years or so. Obscure old printers and scanners, Bluetooth headphones with modern codecs like LDAC and SBC-XQ, RGB gaming mice all "just work" on Linux, where on Windows I have to install an app from the Microsoft Store to get functionality.

I think this was probably pretty accurate in the early 2010s and before.

Aperocky

3 days ago

Is it luck or bold product and marketing decision?

Being first could be luck, or it can be foresight.

msephton

3 days ago

Great to see these screenshots. Thanks for posting! Nintendo joy cons run a version of micro TRON. And the software IntelligentPad used a lot of TRON concepts. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/05/17/intelligentpad-co...

MomsAVoxell

2 days ago

There are bits of TRON all over the electronic musical instruments segment, as well ..

lkirkwood

3 days ago

Youre kidding! That's a great fact. Do you have a source for that joycon part?

msephton

3 days ago

Here we go! Press release.

2017.06.22 Nintendo Switch Game Console Adopts eSOL µITRON 4.0-Compliant RTOS and exFAT File System https://www.esol.com/news/news_57.html

AdamConwayIE

2 days ago

Oh wow! Article writer here, can't believe I didn't come across this when I was researching. Kicking myself haha

msephton

2 days ago

There were a handful of reportedly great pixel drawing apps for TRON, which I'm going to try when I'm back from vacation. So thanks for the info about TRON VMs.

numpad0

2 days ago

uITRON isn't rare on microcontrollers, especially in automotive. A lot of uC has official BSPs based on it.

donatj

2 days ago

I think this really overplays the "US intervening" angle for clickbait. The US mentioned it in an official document. That is all.

It was a weird interesting OS that failed to take off largely because of how engrained systems already were. Did I mention it was weird and its benefits non-obvious particularly to businesses.

max979

3 days ago

The TRON house demo from 1989 was genuinely ahead of its time. Hard to compete on technology when your competitor has the US trade office backing them.

skeledrew

3 days ago

Of course. Why would the US allow what's essentially their colony in all but name to control that much stack for a critical tech?

readthenotes1

3 days ago

And we can blame greed of a Japanese man for actually causing the failure

waterTanuki

3 days ago

If you're referring to Masayoshi Son he's Korean by ethnicity, Japanese by nationality.

lmz

2 days ago

It's not polite to point this out to liberals who believe that only your passport matters.

skeledrew

3 days ago

Was it greed? Or was it a unified vision?

eloisant

2 days ago

One interesting thing is it's encoding system. Unlike Unicode that unified Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, TRON had a different code points for characters that have the same root but are written differently in the different languages.

Unicode claim it's the same character and you need to use different fonts for different languages.

So TRON made it much easier to mix Japanese and Chinese, for example have a citation in Chinese in a book otherwise in Japanese.

It also had a lot more characters. Unicode dropped some of the older or rare characters, meaning some people can't write their last name with the correct character on a computer with Unicode. They have to use a similar but different character. With TRON, they could.

That said, this might be an example of why TRON didn't succeed (rather than this bullshit about the US government). They remade everything, which wasn't great for interoperability and compatibility with other systems.

unscaled

2 days ago

You can mix Japanese and Chinese with modern document authoring standards or with HTML, but the fact is that most people are too lazy to do that. It's a pet peeve of mine when a document gets displayed with a Japanese font but then falls back to another Chinese font when it encounters characters that are missing in the Japanese font. Even when the fonts look the same (or when you're using a unified CJK font like Noto), things will still look bad if the language is not specified, since some characters are written different in each language (or even different variants of Chinese), but still got unified[1].

I laud what TRON tried to do, but I don't think they had it right. They made the encoding too complex (especially for the 1990s) while Unicode offered a single Basic Multilingual Plane. Unicode quickly got complex too (mostly due to the mistake of adopting UCS2 and then repurposing that as UTF16 and adding surrogates, and later getting a little bit over the top with combining emojis), but TRON was complex in other ways. If you mixed both Chinese and Japanese in a single documents, you had a multiple encodings to care about and control characters to switch between them. Suddenly, the character encoding is not stateless anymore. You can say the same about Unicode, but the statefulness of UTF-8 or UTF-16 is local and easily recoverable. Same goes for the statefulness combining diacritics, and bidirectional markers (which are rarely used) only affect the display. TRON code plane switches, as far as I understand, mean that even a simple text search or regex search would stop working and need to be completely redesigned, since it now has to be aware of which language we're reading right now! That's a big break, as you say.

> It also had a lot more characters. Unicode dropped some of the older or rare characters, meaning some people can't write their last name with the correct character on a computer with Unicode.

Only if they're very old and born before or during the war or its not their legal name. The Japanese government restricts the Kanji that can be used in names to Jōyō kanji (regular use kanji) and Jinmeiyō kanji (personal name kanji). Together they add up to roughly 3000 kanji. The list was back in 1991 when Unicode 1.0 was released, but it did include all of them, and many more, as did previous Japanese standards that predated TRON like JIS X 0208. I feel like the "people can't write their name" was always a bit of cope. Japan is still the country of "the nail that sticks out gets hammered". If your name falls outside of the legally allowed list of Kanji, you'll suffer even if you're running BTRON.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Examples_of_la...

ktallett

3 days ago

This is a tricky one as it's similar to Amiga OS and Be OS where it's obviously so forward thinking but as other comments state that doesn't automatically lead to uptake.

Of a similar ilk, I always felt the MSX base deserved a higher usage rate in the rest of the world, PC engine as a console too. Neither really took off elsewhere.

rbanffy

a day ago

> obviously so forward thinking but as other comments state that doesn't automatically lead to uptake.

There are numerous examples for that. Plan9 is another interesting one - they wanted to improve on Unix (and did, in many ways), but the software market just wasn’t that enthusiastic about it.

lproven

2 days ago

The GUI looks a bit similar at a trivial level, but underneath, BeOS and AmigaOS were both far more mainstream and conventional than TRON.

PlunderBunny

3 days ago

Some of the ideas for BTRON sound (to my naive understanding) like OpenDoc. Can anyone familiar with OpenDoc comment?

sharpshadow

2 days ago

Just found out that Nikon cameras run this ITRON RTOS, probably part of why they haven’t been reversed engineered yet.

the_interloper

2 days ago

Some context for what was happening in the US at the time:

Anatomy of a Scare: Yellow Peril Politics in America, 1980–1993

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40464347

conartist6

2 days ago

The article tells a very different story than the headline suggests

Uptrenda

2 days ago

Can any hardware and OS experts here comment on whether the design envisioned here was a good idea? It's definitely not my field but I'm curious.

quickthrowman

2 days ago

A Japanese OS never had any chance of being adopted by any place that isn’t Japan due (mostly) their non-alphabetic writing system.

Japan is full of weird Japan only technologies that were adopted nowhere else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galápagos_syndrome

cassepipe

2 days ago

> Files can exist in multiple locations without duplication, linked by the system rather than by symlinks or shortcuts,

I always think about linux hard-links and always though they were pretty cool but I don't think I have encountered any in the wild so far (I am not a sysadmin though)

jdw64

3 days ago

Because the final consumers are ultimately Americans with purchasing power, this structure inherently makes it easy for the US to dominate the standards. As a result, it is extremely difficult for economically lower tier countries to preemptively establish new standards. Furthermore, the profits taken by those who bring American products into local regions present another issue.

In reality, under this system, those who bring back American advancements through avenues like studying abroad profit by exploiting the technological gap between the US and their home country. (Masayoshi Son from the article is no different.) And the people who go to study in the US are predominantly from upper class families. Within this structure, countries that are heavily dependent on exports to the US are particularly vulnerable.

At such a juncture, no matter how much academic curiosity drives the effort, attempting to destroy the established standard might be technically correct, but it was a politically incorrect judgment.

krautburglar

2 days ago

From the demos & article, looks & sounds more like proto-web hypermedia than operating system. Even if it had succeeded, it would have grown the same way WHATWG grew (i.e. like cancer).

IMHO, seems like a terminal case of NIH.

charcircuit

3 days ago

By 1989 MS-DOS was already dominant in Japan. Without being able to run DOS applications I struggle to see it actually take off. Microsoft on the other hand released Windows 95 with compatibility with DOS applications and it took off.

user

3 days ago

[deleted]

user

3 days ago

[deleted]

readthenotes1

3 days ago

The description at the beginning makes it sound a lot like The Analyst that shipped with smalltalk-80, a Hypertext active dictionary.

What could have been...

JKCalhoun

2 days ago

"BTRON's desktop was decades ahead of where computing actually went"

Trying to mentally parse this… I had to laugh, what does that even mean?

rbanffy

a day ago

I love this phrase. It implies they were years ahead of the market, predicting the future in depth, but it’s just that it wasn’t the future that actually materialised.

vkaku

2 days ago

One can *ACTUALLY* do things if they stop listening to lobbyists and prioritize locally developed products over lobbied products, just saying.

Given the current US debt situation, Japan is in a position to dictate its local manufacturing terms and actually do what it wants to do.

Meanwhile, in the US, the products being sold are highly lobbied and relies on the government moat to be protected in order for things to work. The side effect of that also means that some of the companies really don't lead to innovative outcomes in the long run, and are in positions of lucky power. This leads to poorer customer experiences, poorer technical outcomes and non competitiveness in the long run, like manufacturing. This trend needs to be reversed and the US leaders should be held responsible for doing the right thing here.

I'm well aware of TRON and its capabilities. I really think Japan can develop this and market it locally, without requiring all the bloat the current OS world comes with; It might actually turn into a speed and security advantage if they did this right.

glimshe

2 days ago

Japan has an even more severe debt problem than the US, with a rapidly aging and declining population making it a much tougher hurdle to overcome.

vkaku

2 days ago

They don't seem to have a shortage of corporations across the world, really. They simply need to implement it.

Today, most people can vibe code their own OSes and emulators within a day or two. You're telling me an entire country can't do it? That is so defeatist.

Plus, there are some young people who are seemingly bored and have an economy not plagued by the same lobby issues as the US. They might be able to get cracking on it.

rbanffy

a day ago

> most people can vibe code their own OSes

That’s very much not something that can be vibed unless we are talking at an extremely simple embedded with minimal functionality.

shevy-java

3 days ago

> designed at the University of Tokyo in 1984

The USA is acting very hostile and selfish. Their own mega-corporations were protected and integrated into the military apparatus; currently we see this with Facebook forcing its slaves to use spyglasses. One can also see this with the USA attacking Iran - suddenly the promise "we will protect you" has been revealed to have been a lie. It's all about selfish powerplay. I think the biggest shifts we see here is that more countries will build up a nuclear arsenal (in most cases just defensive, to increase the cost of an invasion; in particular Taiwan needs that since the USA will not do much at all once dictator Xi will invade; we also saw that with Putin starting his genocide against Ukraine. That would not happen if Ukraine would have had a nuclear arsenal).

jmorenoamor

2 days ago

We usually point conspiration theories with fun (with a reason) but it's also surprising how some "success" narratives are based on a government killing competition.

unscaled

2 days ago

I don't know how much the USTR campaign against TRON affected the success of BTRON, but I feel like we should be careful about this explanation. This is a classic example of American exceptionalism, but it seems like the USTR mandate just created a certain amount of FUD around TRON at best. You can see that it targets both BTRON (The desktop version TRON) and CTRON (the telco version of TRON), but unlike BTRON, CTRON did see real adoption and even dominance in the 1990s.

I think the main reasons behind BTRON failure like in the domestic market. I really don't know much about this period but here is my understanding. BTRON was never an OS, but rather a specification, a set of standards for how BTRON-compatible operating systems should behave. This is quite similar to POSIX, but the standard covered significantly more than POSIX (e.g. HMI guidelines and character encoding) and the BTRON standard came _before_ the implementations. But just like POSIX, there was no guaranteed ABI compatibility. And to make things worse, every implementation had to be rewritten from scratch, while most Unix distributions before GNU traced their code all the way back to AT&T Unix.

The other issue is that with BTRON1, the OS implementation seem to have been expected to be developed by the hardware vendor - they were not envisioned as highly portable operating systems yet.

The different OSs were supposed to be developed by OEM vendors and interated directly into their hardware (especially with BTRON1). From what I could find, only 3 vendors have signed up for BTRON: Matsushita (Panasonic), Toshiba and OKI[1]. As far as I can tell, out of the three, only Panasonic ended up releasing BTRON-based computers. Panasonic went quite heavy on TRON and released multiple BTRON products, but Panasonic was a minor player in the home PC market in 1990[2].

Another small company that picked up BTRON was Personal Media. They released a sizable variety of BTRON-based hardware during the years and eventually started releasing it as a software package. In fact, they're still active today, rleasing it as chokanji, running inside a VM on Windows[3]. They basically took BTRONs impressive Kanji support and pivoted to an IME allowing inputting Kanji characters outside of Unicode.

The names that are missing from this story are all the big players in the PC industry in Japan in the 1990s. It's obvious why IBM Japan wasn't onboard, but NEC had its own monopoly to protect and Fujitsu and EPSON were clearly not interested[4]. CTRON, on the other hand, was picked up by NTT, which is probably the only company that mattered in Japanese telecommunications back in the early 1990s. BTRON had a window of opportunity in 1990, since Japan (or the rest of the world for that matter) did not have a dominant GUI platform yet. But in a market where the OS came with the hardware, lackluster vendor supported kinda sealed the deal.

[1] https://qiita.com/ko1nksm/items/243865903ae48c2c2c29

[2] AFAIK it was heavily dominated by NEC, with the smaller players bein Toshiba, Fujitsu and Epson. In 1990, when the first BTRON implementations were released, the dominant standard was PC-98, which was developed by NEC, with Toshiba and Epson making PC-98 clones. Even though all these computers were running x86 and usually ran on MS-DOS, they were NOT compatible with IBM PCs. This is mostly due to IBM PC not having enough RAM to display Kanji, so the which Japanese PC manufacturers in the 1980s solved with custom Kanji ROM chips. Getting Kanji support throughout the stack also meant heavily modifying MS-DOS and producing a different software stack that is tied to the custom hardware.

1990 is also the year that both DOS/V (a localized version of DOS that had built-in Kanji support) and Windows 3.0 were released, and both of them eventually lead to the death of domestic Japanese PC standards, since they could sufficiently support Kanji in software. 286 and 386 based PCs with extended memory were also powerful enough now to support Kanji in software, and DOS/V and Windows provided a standard application runtime environment for that. But this eventual standardization took time and back in 1990, PC-98 dominated the home market, while IBM managed to get some corporate market share with its PS/55 (an IBM PC variant with a custom display adapter with its own Kanji ROM).

[3] https://www.chokanji.com/

[4] OP happily mentions NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Fujitsu, but it fails to mention that they joined other TRON initiatives (ITRON, CTRON and The TRON chip) and explicitly declined to join BTRON.

julio89u

3 days ago

[dead]

Lagoon3384_SWE

2 days ago

[flagged]

Varelion

2 days ago

[flagged]

hiherer

3 days ago

[dead]

socalgal2

3 days ago

Feels like clickbait to me. There were lots of OSes.

Things like GEM, OS/2, Next, BeOS, GeOS, MSX, ... they didn't succeed and I'm sure you can write some clickbait article about why with conspiratorial anecdotes.

Zecc

3 days ago

The title is certainly clickbait-y. But the content is still interesting. And not sloppy.

eloisant

2 days ago

It is, but claiming that it was "killed by the US government", and suggest it would have became the dominant OS is dubious at best.

So it's not just clickbait-y, it misleading at best if not just a lie.

WillAdams

2 days ago

At a minimum, it was set by the Japanese Ministry of Education to be used on all computers in schools from primary through college --- if implemented there would have been an entire generation of Japanese students who grew up with that OS.

quickthrowman

2 days ago

There was an entire generation that grew up in Japan that used Japan-only cell phones that were used nowhere else. The same thing would’ve happened with this OS, it would be used in Japan but nowhere else.

mark_something

2 days ago

The title says that the US government /intervened/. As the article explains that happened, but also that that intervention wasn't the only reason why TRON didn't succeed.

The title should have been "Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened although it quickly changed its mind, but a Japanese Windows PC seller used that intervention to boycott it". Or maybe just "Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, here's why it failed".