These are union jobs where hours worked don't extend beyond 50 hours including overtime and with significantly lower barrier to entry compared to software.
Why should American SWEs earn more than Accountants (around $80k), Teachers (around $70k), or Mechanical Engineers (around $80k)?
It's this kind of attitude that makes non-techies feel schadenfreude.
Techies moan and moan, yet in reality we became the capital elite - a median TC of $190K [0] does make you the capital elite in a country where the median household income is $80k [1]. Even investment bankers have a similar TC to SWEs [2] - especially if you don't work for a Bulge Bracket or Elite Boutique.
Also manufacturing. If you know how to code and real engineering skills like circuits, CAD, mechanical design, etc you will land a decent manufacturing role.
That said, why hire a SWE when most MechE programs have been requiring CS courses as well for over a decade now.
> After decades of trying and broadly failing to regulate American tech corps, at what point does the EU...
The crux of the matter is it's a subset of the European Parliament versus a subset of EU member states.
When push comes to shove, EU member states can and already do ignore the EP for anything tangentially related to national security, and national politicans don't and won't give up sovereign power to the EU.
Additonally, the incentives of individual EU states with strong US FDI ties and not as strong domestic champions such as Poland, Ireland, Czechia, Luxembourg, and Romania means they fight tooth and nail to ensure American FDI continues. Member states like Hungary and Spain do this for China and Hungary and Austria for Russia.
There's also the added issue of perception - the EP was historically (and for larger states like France and Germany still is) used as a way to sideline unpopular domestic politicans or as a cushy retirement posting. There's a reason VdL is in Bruxelles and not the Bundeskanzleramt.
Plus, European companies have massive fixed capital investments in the US, especially after the IRA [0], so they don't want to face retaliation from American regulators, and are especially cozy with the Trump admin [1].
Also, European politicos also heavy leverage the revolving door of lobbying like their American peers. The "spend a couple years in Bundestag or Bruxelles and then take a cushy gig at Harvard [2][3]" remains strong. Heck, we'd always organize a fest where the wine would flow and European leaders would network with American and European policymakers studying and working in the US or in Europe [4].
Nope. It gets undue hate on Reddit (and by extension HN) but most people who matter in Bruxelles are heavy Politico consumers and leak to them all the time.
Them, Table Media, and Indigo Publications will give you the best pulse on what's happening in Bruxelles.
Nope. The simple fact that a politician gives any kind of quote, let alone an interview, to politico is a clear sign he/she is on the declining part of a political career. A bit like how using "Bruxelles" in a comment about the EU is a giveaway that your British and/or a (former?) brexiteer.
> like how using "Bruxelles" in a comment about the EU is a giveaway that your British and/or a (former?) brexiteer
It's a very common metonym for the EU - like how I'd use "Berlin" or "Paris" as a metonym for political leadership in Germany and France respectively.
Also, I ain't a Brit and have made that clear in my history on HN.
> The simple fact that a politician gives any kind of quote, let alone an interview, to politico is a clear sign he/she is on the declining part of a political career
In what way? You only give an assertion and no actual reasoning, and appear to be a long-living throwaway account. Meanwhile, I've been very open on HN about my past career in the policy space.
These data centers are CoLoed by AWS but not owned by them - the actual DC is owned and operated by UAE's G42 and Etisalat.
Edit:
I also disagree with the takeaway in this article.
If dual use civilian infrastructure can be viewed as a valid target and compartmentalization of relations is no longer viewed as a justification for neutrality, we have returned to the era of total war.
Iran's argument is that the UAE+Qatar are combatants because they have based American troops despite also allowing IRGC basing and bypassing of sanctions.
If this logic (which imo is very flawed) makes the UAE+Qatar valid targets and combatants, then the US is justified in striking Iran as Iran has been directly aiding and abetting Russia's invasion of Ukraine with troops in Crimea conducting drone strikes [0] and providing ballistic missiles to Russia to strike Ukraine [1].
By extension, this means all foreign relations have to be bipolar, which means admitting we are in a de facto World War (something which Fiona Hill has brought up literally hours before the Iran War began [2]).
Edit: can't reply
> Imagine the degree of fall out if say Estonia allowed Ukraine to use their country to set up a base and they started attacking russian infrastructure or Kaliningrad from there
> And for once I would agree with russia
Does that include the US and EU [3] providing lethal targeting and geoint capabilities to Ukraine as well as rearming Ukraine?
Because to Iran, Ukraine providing defensive capabilities to Gulf States has now made it a direct combatant against Iran [4].
This is why Iran's strikes across West Asia (including Cyprus) was so destabilizing. If providing dual use capabilities means you should be viewed as a combatant despite also abetting Iran well before the US scaled up it's presence in the late 1990s, then we need to accept we are in a World War.
Neutrality in a war is a complex matter. The basic principle is that a neutral country must make a serious attempt to defend their borders from both parties. To convince both parties that nobody is using the territory of the neutral country to attack them. Because if someone is attacking you from another country, you are eventually allowed to fight back, if the other country is not capable of stopping the attacker.
The exact line between neutrality and being a combatant is necessarily vague. If you allow aircraft from one party to fly through your airspace on combat missions against the other party, you are definitely a combatant. If you allow fuel tankers supporting such aircraft in your airspace, you are almost certainly a combatant. If you let surveillance planes from one party to fly through your airspace while supporting offensive operations, you are probably a combatant. If you only provide intelligence and material support to the party you favor, you are probably not a combatant.
> If you allow fuel tankers supporting such aircraft in your airspace, you are almost certainly a combatant. If you let surveillance planes from one party to fly through your airspace while supporting offensive operations, you are probably a combatant.
This is not the norm for a definition of a combatant, and if we adopt the norm Iran has created, then we have to accept that in reality the US and EU have been at war with Russia, Iran, and North Korea since 2022 as the US and EU provide targeting intel and resupply munitions for Ukraine and Iran+NK provide lethal munitions and boots on the ground to Russia for their war in Ukraine.
Edit: cannot reply
> because the attacks do not take place from US and EU territory, but all from Ukrainian territory
This is not the justification Iran is using, as has been seen with the standards they are using with regards to Ukraine [0].
Iran has made a foreign policy decision that any nation that provides dual use, lethal, or defensive capabilities against Iran makes them an active combatant.
It is this implication that is so destabilizing globally.
Compartmentalization of foreign relations and not treating dual use technologies as implying directly aiding in combat are sacrosanct becuase the alternative means total war.
Or, becuase you are Dutch, let me put it this way - if Iran is justified in striking Emirati G42's dual use civilian assets for aiding and abetting the US, then Russia has the precedent to strike the Netherlands for directly aiding and abetting Ukraine's lethal offensive capabilities via dual use technology transfers and fundraising [1].
And if we accept Iran's position to be correct (which I do not think it is), then all of NATO has already been in a state of war with Iran since 2022 when Iran began deploying IRGC boots in Crimea [2] to conduct drone strikes on Ukraine.
> This is not the norm for a definition of a combatant, and if we adopt the norm Iran has created, then we have to accept that in reality the US and EU have been at war with Russia, Iran, and North Korea since 2022 as the US and EU provide targeting intel and resupply munitions for Ukraine and Iran+NK provide lethal munitions and boots on the ground to Russia for their war in Ukraine.
There are no definitions, only established usage. It has been well established, most recently in the Ukraine war, that intelligence and material support do not mean direct involvement in a war. Assassinations, cyberattacks, and sabotage are also allowed to some extent.
Active involvement in combat operations is another story. You can't make your troops immune to counterattacks by placing them in a third country that is nominally neutral. If they are actively involved in the war, they are a legitimate target, as is the infrastructure supporting them.
There is no exact definition of what counts as active involvement. Not the least because wars tend to be situations, where everyone is acting in bad faith.
Not really, because the attacks do not take place from US and EU territory, but all from Ukrainian territory. And they are very careful about never so much as giving the impression that this is not the case.
Imagine the degree of fall out if say Estonia allowed Ukraine to use their country to set up a base and they started attacking russian infrastructure or Kaliningrad from there. I'm fairly sure russia would see that as Estonia having joined the war.
And for once I would agree with russia. So Iran has - in my opinion - a legitimate claim that if the USA uses other countries to launch their aircraft from that those countries have effectively joined the war.
How many times must we trundle underfoot this lazy canard that HN is social media. A link aggregator with comments is not what anyone thinks of for that term.
I mean, there is discussion and a sense of community here. I’m not sure what exactly defines social media, but this is more than just a link aggregator.
Old forums weren't called social media. I think for it to be social media it has to be about your social graph, here on HN I almost never read peoples names and I don't really connect with people so it isn't social media, its just media with comments.
If I could subscribe to peoples feeds and such then it would be social media, but HN doesn't have that feature.
> there is discussion and a sense of community here
That's been true of discussion forums for longer than the Internet has been available to the public. I was on discussion forums over dialup in the 1980s. The term "social media" didn't even exist yet, nor did the business model of trying to monetize people's online data.
There's a massive whitewashing of what "social media" is. I don't feel there's one singular definition but I could be wrong, maybe I am the one who missed the boat. But I'd really love to see it quantified more
eg "Social media leads to addiction!" - ok take Facebook
Are you referring to
a) non-chronological feeds? Who knows what posts you'll actually find? You come back for more. You can't just log off for a week and come back and the most recent posts are there (you don't even see everything, the platforms regularly hides stuff). That's certainly addiction
b) fake notifications? That's fraud, and certainly addiction
c) the corollary of a), you don't know who's seen your posts so your mental model gets shaped. That's certainly addiction
I would say "social media" is a site that is trying to monetize your data, and using convenience as a lure to get you to give it your data to monetize. ("Data" here includes everything you post there.)
I would say social media is any website where the connections between the participants are as important or even more important than the content. As soon as you get 'followers' it is game over.
The first Google search hit for the UK variant of the law[1] says this:
This includes a range of websites, apps and other services, including social media services, consumer file cloud storage and sharing sites, video-sharing platforms, online forums, dating services, and online instant messaging services.
> Was Facebook social media before it started adding ads or not?
AFAIK it's had ads for practically its entire existence, and other than venture capital investments, ads have always been virtually its entire revenue.
Depends on what you consider "practically its entire existence": the same could be said of Google Search if we are looking at how long they did not compared to the rest of the time, but I distinctly remember the period when they did not and when I recommended them to my entire social circle as The Search Engine (compared to Yahoo, Altavista, MSN or whatever else was there at the time) or The Social Network (compared to MySpace, I can't remember anything else that was comparable).
Iranian troops are also in Crimea leading offensive drone operations [0] for Russia, as well as delivering ballistic missiles for Russia to use against Ukraine [1].
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively
This has been the assumption for over a decade now.
> those who can't produce any more drones, lose
Already the norm. Even the Taliban has been operating a drone mass production program for a couple years now [0][1].
> If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat
This abstraction of warfare isn't as peaceful as you make it out to be. Operationally, you still need to take out dual use infra which in a number of cases is civilian in nature.
The reality is, countries have increasingly accepted that civilian casualties will occur and it doesn't matter because they don't impact tactical goals.
Yes, but what you are missing the cost of total elimination of the other side.
For example, in Iraq, Saddam was able to use chemical weapons and wipe out the resistance, this is no longer an accepted solution by majority of people on earth.
So there is no real way to actually win a war. If you can't kill or enslave the other population, and the world is not accepting refugees, if you hit one economy completely you might the global economy. So what do you do? there is actually no real way to win a war as those constraints become strong and stronger. You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down and hope they would resign, by better co-ordinating your drones and managing your economy, which is a video game in the real world.
> You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down
How do you (detest this phrasing, it very glib) null the other side?
Most weapon systems aren't developed in entirely separate supply chains - they use off-the-shelf components that are available for commercial usecases as well.
To successfully take out an opponents operational capacity when they are using dual use technology means the barrier between "civilian" and "military" is nonexistent.
It basically means the return to total war doctrine.
My point is that this assertion is wrong - "they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat".
It is predicated on the assumption that the new (but in reality old) iteration of war would lead to less civilian casualties.
How is it really old when we have completely new AI/Robotics enabled warfare that would allow nations in the not distance future (not today) to engage in a war without human involvement? We never had anything like this before?
How would a war like this look like? what does winning really mean? and if your entire drone army depends on a global economy of suppliers, then you can easily cut off.
How is it that old? we never had wars like this..sorry, this is very stupid argument.
They are. EW and IR C-UAS has been productionized over the past decade in most countries, but there are still supply chain and cost blockers around power electronics and they tend to be treated as a last resort because of their indiscriminate nature.
Only if one understands the different failure modes, but either way the average HN reader shouldn't try this at home or you'll get in trouble with radio spectrum pollution.
Apologies for the sarcasm. I appreciate the drive for renewables the current AI DC buildout brings with it.
I have real fears that building materials will experience the same inflationary pressures computer memory is currently experiencing. The U.S. TSMC and Intel fab construction alone in the last couple years has had an outsized impact on building costs.
The US construction industry does about 3 trillion in revenue per year. Those two fabs are something like 20 billion per year. 2% is a lot but markets can handle that just fine. Local markets will have higher prices.
Those are the voters that matter (unionized, geographically spread out, didn't price everyone else out via remote work) - not SWEs.
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/82c1795b-704a-4da3-82ec-2f9cd52de...
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