Take your reasons, which are really more opinions, and insert "free speech" instead of "unions" (after the appropriate changes) and you might understand why people would disagree.
I agree that it is an exaggeration to call it the greatest pieces of engineering of our time. Still there are many technologies that are well liked but haven't developed in many years. There are many technologies that are here today but severely limited. And there are many technologies which promises potential for something better in the future. There are very few pieces of software that are here today and ticks a lot of the boxes of computer science. That are open source, cross-platform, extensible and has a modern stack.
> browser engines (unfortunately)
I often wish it wasn't so but the reality is that a shit ton of development has gone into browsers and in many cases other areas just aren't comparable. Even more so considering most resources go into proprietary technologies.
As as side note reverse engineering hardware can certainly be very hard. It is also something that can gather far more credit than it probably should compared to actually engineering a solution in the first place.
> There are very few pieces of software that are here today and ticks a lot of the boxes of computer science. That are open source, cross-platform, extensible and has a modern stack.
Open source: there’s loads. I’m very surprised to read that comment here of all places. But even if we take your comment at face value, licensing has naff all to do with engineering impressiveness.
Cross platform: again I’d beg to differ there there aren’t many. And again I’d also like to point out that something not being cross platform doesn’t negate it being impressive engineering.
Extensible: this is another metric you’ve added that I disagree is a requirement
Used a modern stack: this absolutely shouldn’t matter when one talks about “of all time” like the GP was. Otherwise you’re intentionally skewing the results to only include recent developments.
> I often wish it wasn't so but the reality is that a shit ton of development has gone into browsers and in many cases other areas just aren't comparable.
The point of the GPs tangent was comparing all software engineering.
Sure, if you say VSCode is the greatest software engineering project of all time then suffix that comment with a dozen footnotes describing a dozen exclusions to the scope, then the claim might be more reasonable. But that wasn’t what the GP said and nor is it then “greatest”.
Frankly though, I wouldn’t even extend that description of his to modern IDEs specifically, let alone the broader context they intended.
South Korea have a fairly direct threat of invasion that at least somewhat limits how dysfunctional the elites can be without the risk of facing consequences themselves. Taiwan, Finland, Israel and so on.
1. American presence in the DMZ is an immediate no-go when it comes to a plausible 'threat of invasion'.
2. Even if the US were not involved - If you think Russia invading Ukraine is a debacle, don't think too much about what North Korea trying to invade South Korea would look like.
Because South Korea is successful at what it does. If South Korea looked like Thailand it would be a different story. And that is part of why it doesn't.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is actually a good example. Just the other way around. What is happening to Russia is exactly what happens when you neglect your industry and population to the point that you no longer have enough of an advantage in equipment or people willing to fight. Something South Korea can't afford.
Ukraine as of the start of 2022 was significantly less developed than Russia. It was the poorest country in Europe, even behind other victims of Russian aggression, like Georgia and Moldova. [1] [2]
It just has the notable advantages of:
1. Being incredibly motivated to fight an existential defensive war.
2. Being the recipient of every surplus NATO armament under the sun. Its industrial capacity for war-making isn't located in within its borders.
It's true that Russia has significantly neglected its industry, but Ukraine has... Done the exact same thing. In a worse way, even - as despite inheriting a lion's share of Soviet industry, it didn't do anything with it.
(And to cycle back to North Korea, I'd like to point out that the economic rot in it is so deep, it's not even capable of feeding itself.)
> American presence in the DMZ is an immediate no-go when it comes to a plausible 'threat of invasion'.
They’ve literally murdered people in DMZ and have sent special forces multiple times to assassinate presidents. Not to mention artillery fire on a village fairly recently.
Nowadays no one thinks NK could invade but it was certainly a plausible threat until 80s.
> People are very skeptical of those that go solo and try to setup their own business in Europe, especially if it doesn't involve some 'well known' field like a trade or retail establishment.
In my experience that is a very European viewpoint. Some Europeans think that Americans are more free because society doesn't care what they do. In reality, as you probably can tell by US politics, that often isn't really the case. To the extent that Americans are more free it is more because they themselves don't care about what others think. Europeans that think American society is more supportive are mostly just saying that they themselves need more support.
This might seem like a weird distinction but it takes it from being a "hard problem" that is forced on you, to a "soft problem" that you can potentially change yourself.
I don't mind the discussion, it is just more or less impossible to have when the premise is faulty. I can tell you exactly why Europeans think the US is better at innovation. It is because when Americans aren't satisfied with something they blame the US but still thinks the US is best country in the world. However when European aren't satisfied with something the blame Europe (or their country) and conclude that the US must be better. This has everything to do with US cultural influence.
The far majority of twitch streamers do not have some illustrious career waiting for them. People in big cities with competitive degrees are underrepresented on twitch relative to other areas.
> Most of the big earners started streaming within the last 5 years
I'm not sure what numbers you are referring to. There was a huge increasing in streaming and watching during the pandemic. Many of the big streamers are in their late 20s or even early 30s. Which is relatively old considering you can start streaming in your teens.
The cost of handling an order of magnitude more cases is significantly expanding the service. Everyone wants excellent public police, health care or education when it affects themselves. But going from average to good to excellent public services take more and more effort. Few countries today are willing to have the long-term public commitment and taxes to make that a reality.
The issue in the UK is that the Police suffers from scope creep. The UK police force has been criticized for expanding its scope to include enforcing anti-hate crime laws and investigating "non-crime hate incidents." (hard to believe that the country that gave us Orwell came up with that phrase). This has diverted resources from more important tasks and led to the allocation of time and money towards activities such as painting their cars in rainbows and raising pride flags in public ceremonies.
Whatever you think of those side-activities, I'm sure fewer people would have any problem with them if they were confident that their possessions would be recovered if stolen (and more important crimes prosecuted).
>The issue in the UK is that the Police suffers from scope creep. The UK police force has been criticized for expanding its scope to include enforcing anti-hate crime laws and investigating "non-crime hate incidents."...
This ^^ People get frustrated with the fact that they report a robbery or a break-in and the police take no action. But then they read about court cases involving 'hate crimes' which consisted of nothing more than someone being called a name they found offensive, or a dog being taught to do a nazi salute.
Obviously these cases are rare [that's why they make headlines], But the fact they happen at all doesn't do the police's reputation any favours, when there are 'actual' crimes being effectively ignored through claimed lack of resources.
None of the things you are complaining about have much of an operational impact on the British police.
You know what does?
The wholesale destruction of the NHS and ambulance services leading to the police being the first response to mental health issues.
Police are the wrong agency to deal with this, but currently in the UK, the police are pretty much always the first (often only) to deal with MH issues and get people into care/section them etc.
There were 34,000 detentions under the act. Of these, only 4,150 were detentions following a Section 135 / 136 place of safety order (the bit of the Mental Health Act that the police can use).
There is no way to recover stolen possessions with a high degree of confidence as there are countless of those types of incidents all the time every day. Most police forces already have less resources than they could use for the more serious cases. Reliably handling lesser serious cases that are even more plentiful would be a large increase in activities and even larger increase in effort. And since a large part of the cost of public services are salaries it would mean a noticeable tax increase. Probably for a long time. Other than that what you are asking isn't really possible.
Somehow the priorities seem to be misplaced. On the London public transport, you're reminded every 3 minutes that you should report "unusual" behaviour to the police, including unwanted staring ("Call 61016 - See it, say it, sorted."), yet they're unable/unwilling to track down a stolen item worth ~£1200 even with accurate GPS coordinates available.
From what I have seen it hasn't been getting much worse. Other than just bounce rate I think far more people are becoming aware that reality is different from The Economist "a thousand words by Friday" writing. Hong Kong being one example.
