Free Modern JavaScript Course (webpack, nodejs, es6, typescriptt) - <AUTHOR> http://courses.angularclass.com/courses/modern-javascript <comment><AUTHOR> if anyone has any questions about the course or what we covered feel free to ask them here</comment>


Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Summary being: study multiple times, spaced out, in different locations, and work on multiple related topics in a time period rather than finishing one before starting the next.

That multiple _locations_ works better than a single one is pretty counter to everything people parrot, but makes sense in retrospect: everything in your mind is associated with everything else. If you teach it something in only one location, it's not as easy to recall it in another location. More locations break that location-centric quality.

And: hard tests teach better than easier ones. They make you examine your knowledge more thoroughly, meaning you're more likely to retain it (Duh, but it's nice to hear it scientifically supported). _So why do we keep catering to the lowest common denominator_?

<comment><USER3> _That multiple locations works better than a single one is pretty counter to everything people parrot,_

Do people really parrot that? I've spent my fair share of time in the educational system myself, my wife is a teacher, and I've got a number of children in school, and I've never _once_ heard anyone recommend that pupils study in a single location.

<comment><USER2> _Every_ suggestion I've heard from any school system has been to set up a single, quiet "homework space". And essentially anyone who's gone through said system says the same thing, without examining it - it's what they were told, it _effectively_ worked for them, why look into it more?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's what I was told growing up, and now I'm wondering if studying in a variety of locations might not help one to acquire better focusing skills.

To be able to do some quick studying or review no matter where your (provided you have the material) seems an epic win. Stuck on a bus? Do some studying. In a boring class? Study for another one.

It's sort of like writers who say they have a schedule they stick to, no matter what; they don't wait for the magic inspiration, they sit their ass down and get to work. Likewise, if you insist on waiting until you have the Just So study environment, you may never get to studying, or will do a lot less of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wrote the following to the article's author:

While your article attacks the advice that one should study in a consistent, distraction-free environment, it only pays lip service to the importance of motivation and focus. Yet most educators will tell you that motivation and focus are prerequisites for effective learning. Students ignore this conventional wisdom at their peril -- sporadic, effort-free "study" in novel contexts is assuredly less effective than genuine, effortful undistracted study, irrespective of other factors.

If you had reviewed the literature[1] on the effects of distractions on learning, you might have realized that the conventional wisdom on focused study is, in fact, extremely valuable. Instead, I worry your article will see hundreds of students studying even more poorly than they already do, filled with a sophmoric confidence that what they are doing is scientifically superior to the more challenging alternative.

[1] E.g., a quick search turned up Helene Hembrooke and Geri Gay "The laptop and the lecture: The effects of multitasking in learning environments" 10.1007/BF02940852

<comment><USER5> Actually, if you had read the article to the end, or in a different location, you might have noticed and remembered where the article says:

"None of which is to suggest that these techniques...will turn a grade-A slacker into a grade-A student. Motivation matters."

That is hardly "lip service". It is an explicit declaration that there are no silver bullets when it comes to successful studying except for hard work and discipline.

<comment><USER4> Well, did read it to the end. "Lip service" means that those things got mentioned, but not elaborated upon or strongly stressed.

<comment><USER5> Not to belabour the point or be pedantic but as far as I am aware, "Lip service" implies a lack of conviction not elaboration.

[http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&oq=&langpair=e...](http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&oq=&langpair=en|en&q=lip%20service&hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Relevant:

[http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak)

I'd guess that the closer your study pattern follows this optimal spaced repetition pattern, the faster and better you learn stuff. This is related to the result on mixing things up during each study session.

<comment><USER7> Are there any free tools that help with this?

<comment><USER8> Anki: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki> and Mnemosyne <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemosyne_(software)>

I like both... and spaced repetition will change the way you learn forever

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This isn't studying, but memorizing. Studying is when you have to think critically about a subject and understand it, whereas with memorizing you just have to remember the magic phrase or word that get's you points on a test.

I find that having a single, clean, quiet place is the best for me.

<comment><USER10> I don't think there's anything in that article that suggests that the techniques only improved memorizing and not your specific definition of studying. Also, there are definitely things that I have learned and since forgotten that I had to think critically about and understand. I think this article is about techniques to improve the retention of knowledge.

Take, for example, the math students who had to apply formulas to find different properties of prisms. The students who learned and practiced all of the formulas at once (which most likely requires critical thinking to determine what each problem is asking for) did much better than the students who just practiced sets of problems for each formula sequentially (which is more like memorization).

I thought the most interesting part of the article wasn't the findings on varied environments or multiple shorter study sessions, but that studying multiple things in one session improved retention. Speculating as to why, the brain subconsciously makes connections between the different topics, strengthening each concept.

<comment><USER9> I'm not saying memorization has no purpose. On the contrary, it's pretty much required if you don't want to have to re-derive everything every time you go to use it.

Also FTA: _In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room._

This says nothing about studying in the way I defined it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> never! give me my cave or give me death (or inability to think, roughly equal).</comment>


Jonathan Ive design interview quotes - <AUTHOR> http://www.devdaily.com/design/jonathan-ive-ives-design-interview-quotes-apple <comment><USER2> My favorite quote from him, "One of the hallmarks of the team is this sense of looking to be wrong. It's the inquisitiveness, and sense of exploration. It's about being excited to be wrong, because then you've discovered something new."

</comment><comment><USER3> I admit the title is descriptive enough, but, well, that was pretty low in content. Twelve random quotes, many of which are just restatements of the same sane design principles many others would list.

<comment><USER4> More like a list of sentence fragments. I was hoping for something to add to my sig list.

<comment><USER5> Isn't it poignant though? These were quotes with all the cruft removed to reveal the heart of the message. It was minimalist in an almost Ive-esque manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One of the geniuses behind Apple's products. I read its rumored he may be leaving Apple for his native England.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I would argue him leaving would be a bigger loss to Apple than Steve Jobs retiring.</comment></comment>


Film on Salinger Claims More Books Are Coming - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/business/media/film-on-j-d-salinger-claims-more-books-coming.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

<comment><AUTHOR> I read an article a few years before Salinger's death (can't find the article right now) that foretold the publication of these books.

Salinger had kept his writing habit his entire life. He'd simply stopped publishing.

There was a room in his house with several manuscripts in it. Some labeled "publish as is" and some labeled "needs editing."

They were all to be published after his death. This way he could share his works with the world without being around to deal with any of the criticism.

</comment><comment><USER2> One of my college roommates grew up close to Salinger. Many years ago (he told me the story in the mid-90s) he had heard from a local firefighter that after a fire at Salinger's house, it had become apparent that there was a large safe in his house that contained a number of unpublished manuscripts. We had read all of Salinger's work at the time so we had a lot of fun speculating about when and what would eventually be published.

</comment><comment><USER3> this is the equivalent of waiting for the second and third albums of a one-hit wonder. and even that one hit is strikingly overrated and immature.

<comment><USER4> It's a wonder he decided to stop publishing...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will Y Combinator accept you if you don't come from MIT/Stanford/etc... - <AUTHOR>

I have this strange idea that Y-Combinator has a bias towards Ivy Legue applicants. Is this factual? It seems like the majority of startups from them have founders that are all from MIT (look at dropbox for example). Does someone who goes to a regular public university or none at all even have a shot? Any examples? <comment><USER2> OP:

One thing is for sure if you don't try you won't have the chance to find out.

Actually, I am going to apply for the new YC round. Think about it, if you are in the same round as I, then we can be the guys with no college degree. The worst thing they can say is "No." The word "no" should not scare you much.

To make you feel better, I was homeless and hitchhiked to San Francisco, I had a rap sheet (that has since been expunged), I dropped out of high school in 9th grade, went to college but never finished and my father was dead and I hardly knew him. Does any of this stuff make me special? Nope. Not at all. But if I am going to try, with all of that stuff behind me, you better damn try.

If you feel you are a misfit. Join the club. Sometimes life is a bit different for others.

Yes, you have a chance. You won't have one if you sit here and ask about your chances though.

That is my "feel good" inspirational for the day.

<comment><USER3> You have a rock solid point there. IMHO, a very important thing a lot of people don't understand is that there is no 'magic' in real life. Success is not easy to come by. You have to keep working on going from where you are and where you want to be.

Extensive networking. Learning things. Acquiring new skills. And making stuff.

That's it. Even if you do make it to YC, there is no guarantee that you'll succeed. In fact, it's more likely that your startup will fail than not. Start a startup if you truly _have_ to (just _want_ to is not enough). And go start working.

It may seem like a paradox but your chances of getting into YC are higher if you don't need them as bad (ie you already have a product that people love). In plain english, be successful to be successful. Think it through, get a good friend along, brainstorm and make something. Figure out how you'll get past the inertia involved in making things. Talk to people. Network. Iterate.

To be very honest it does help if you are from MIT/Harvard. But, you can always substitute that with a strong portfolio. To re-iterate ewokhead's point: yes, you do have a chance if you create it yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, of course. I analyzed this a few batches ago. I don't remember the exact numbers but elite universities accounted for a minority of founders in that batch.

</comment><comment><USER5> Another aspect could be that founders from the Ivy League schools have a better chance of meeting co-founders at school who are similar in terms of being technically capable, high-achieving, interested in creating startups, etc.

Being from an oil and gas town, I didn't meet anyone in my university classes who dreamed of anything besides a corporate job. I'm very lucky that I had friends with similar goals, or I'd never be able to create a startup.

Besides that, while you're still an unproven entrepreneur, people can only judge you on your resume, portfolio, background, etc. Fair or not, graduating from an Ivy League school does provide you with some credibility.

However, once you have an actual product and traction, where you go to school doesn't matter at all. Just focus on your product and you'll be fine.

</comment><comment><USER6> The 'Ivy League' is an athletic conference which includes Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. While it tends to be associated with top-tier universities, it definitely does NOT include Stanford or Cal Berkeley (both Pac-12), or MIT.

</comment><comment><USER7> Guess, you just be able to show your ability to "hack system" - no matter wich university you have graduated from. Read this very carefully - <http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html> \- and try. It' true that "no" can be the worst case anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a good observation, What is the rough percentage of those who don't attend MIT/Stanford/Berkeley/Harvard who have huge start-ups? Is it the same as presidents not from Yale/Harvard? Major Southern musicians not from Athens,Nashville,Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis...?

</comment><comment><USER9> Not true at all. I know the founders of MixRank and HelloFax had no such background (among others).

<comment><AUTHOR> That is just two... Look at all the others who are from such backgrounds

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Chances are those people are high achievers outside of University as well. If you are really capable and have created cool stuff then I doubt it will matter much.

<comment><USER8> You realize achieving is heavily dependent of connections right?

<comment><USER11> You realize that "connections" can be cultivated right?

<comment><USER8> at will, that easy? please tell me how</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ack shortcuts - <AUTHOR> http://joshbetz.com/2012/07/ack-shortcuts/ <comment><USER2> Looks like you've broken the server. Do you have a mirror of any kind?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome. "Are My Sites Up ?" didn't even know it was down. So... Canceling that.

It's back though. Thanks for attempting to let me know. Maybe if I had push notifications for Hacker News turned on I would have caught this right away. :)</comment></comment>


EU takes ban on plastic up a notch and forbids single-use plastics - <AUTHOR> https://uk.webfg.com/news/international-economic/eu-takes-ban-on-plastic-up-a-notch-and-forbids-single-use-plastics--3316461.html <comment><USER2> duplicate, there is active discussion on an earlier submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17172584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17172584)

(also, misleading headline, since it's only a proposal for such a ban)

</comment><comment><USER3> What about trash bags?

</comment><comment><USER4> What about China, India, and other places that account for 98% of the plastic that makes it's way into the Ocean?</comment>


Writing, Briefly (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html <comment><USER2> One of my philosophy professors told me once, "Remember: you can't edit nothing, but you can edit shit". Advice that's valuable beyond writing.

<comment><USER3> This is an excellent quote. I'd like to attribute it properly -- would you mind naming this professor?

<comment><USER2> Out of respect for his privacy I'll reach out to him and ask.

<comment><USER3> That's very admirable behavior. If he assents, please do share his identity -- even if privately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> +1 about the need for rewriting. There's a really good quote about that:

        "There is no such thing as good writing,
         only good rewriting."
                                    — Robert Graves

Unfortunately most of the writing we tend to do in the day-to-day is throwaway one-off stuff like emails, which are not worth polishing that much. As soon as you have a 1+ audience though, and especially for marketing and webcopy, investing the time to cleanup the message becomes super worth it.

</comment><comment><USER5> The tips in bullet form:

\- Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can

\- rewrite it over and over

\- cut out everything unnecessary

\- write in a conversational tone

\- develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours

\- imitate writers you like

\- if you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said

\- expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong

\- be confident enough to cut

\- have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag

\- don't (always) make detailed outlines

\- mull ideas over for a few days before writing

\- carry a small notebook or scrap paper with you

\- start writing when you think of the first sentence

\- if a deadline forces you to start before that, just say the most important sentence first

\- write about stuff you like

\- don't try to sound impressive

\- don't hesitate to change the topic on the fly

\- use footnotes to contain digressions

\- use anaphora to knit sentences together

\- read your essays out loud to see (a) where you stumble over awkward phrases and (b) which bits are boring (the paragraphs you dread reading)

\- try to tell the reader something new and useful

\- work in fairly big quanta of time

\- when you restart, begin by rereading what you have so far

\- when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with

\- accumulate notes for topics you plan to cover at the bottom of the file

\- don't feel obliged to cover any of them

\- write for a reader who won't read the essay as carefully as you do, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios

\- if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately

\- ask friends which sentence you'll regret most

\- go back and tone down harsh remarks

\- publish stuff online, because an audience makes you write more, and thus generate more ideas

\- print out drafts instead of just looking at them on the screen

\- use simple, germanic words

\- learn to distinguish surprises from digressions

\- learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it.

<comment><USER6> I think a numbered list works even better for rules. The German translation of this article looks so much more satisfying to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A great book that helped me was "On Writing" by Stephen King.

[https://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir- Craft...](https://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir- Craft/dp/1439156816)

</comment><comment><USER8> A thread from 2008: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=188385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=188385).

</comment><comment><USER9> (Re)read Strunk & White every few years.

<comment><USER10> Although perhaps bear in mind that professional linguists and grammarians consider S&W to be garbage advice.

e.g. [https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15509](https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15509)

> Strunk's dreadful little book of drivel.

> Virtually nothing useful about English grammar can be learned from Strunk.

> the grammatical claims Strunk makes are foolish assertions

You can find many more examples with a quick search.

<comment><USER9> I'd find it more convincing if the writing there was better.

I don't say that S&W is or should be the end-all-be-all of English; by all means, pick and choose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Among the rules for good writing should also be, don't use four thousand semicolons to weld your entire essay into a heaving sea of words which offers the reader not even the life ring of a majuscule here and there.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I can agree; semicolons can come in handy occasionally.

<comment><USER11> Oh, sure! _Occasionally._ In moderation and with care. _Not,_ in other words, the way they're used in the linked farrago.

<comment><USER13> A what the hell? Farrago? That's a bigger sin than semicolons

<comment><USER11> In the days when dictionaries were not yet omnipresent, I heeded complaints about the breadth of my lexicon. Now, when the meaning of every word in the world is nigh instantaneously knowable from every Internet-connected device including the one you used to fuss about "farrago", I no longer worry about it. Congratulations! You learned a new word today.

<comment><USER13> This sounds like I'm on prank show. You talk like this in real life? Why are you using all these big words? Why not keep it simple stupid?

It's way worse to write like you do than to list stuff out with semicolons,</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are humans too aggressive to justify having a Nobel Peace Prize? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2017/10/07/are-humans-too-aggressive-to-justify-having-a-nobel-peace-prize/ <comment><USER2> "...if humans do have a big capacity for peace shouldn't we expect to find more accomplished people on this list?"

Go look at the list of Nobel Peace prize winners:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laureates)

Some of the winners probably didn't deserve the prize and are now disappointing to see on this list (e.g. Obama or Arafat).

Some of the winners are symbols of inspiration rather than people who have accomplished much themselves (e.g. Malala Yousafzai).

However, there are a lot of highly accomplished people on this list who have made a huge impact on the world. Many of them just aren't as famous as some of the disappointments.

Alfred Nobel was a merchant of death. The fact that people striving for peace now feel honored by a Nobel Prize is deeply ironic, but perhaps this also shows that, even among those of us with the most blood on our hands, there exists the yearning for a more peaceful future.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's exactly because there is so much violence that we need to reward actors who work to reduce it.

<comment><USER4> Seriously. If anything that is the stated purpose of the creator of it after contributing to so much violence with dynamite.

For Harvard this is _intensely_ stupid.

<comment><USER5> People always bring up dynamite with Nobel, like dynamite was a significant war-fighting weapon, rather than something that spurred tbe construction of the infrasructure that made modern civilization possible.

It's Bofors, and it's place among the Victorian era heavy arms cartel with Krupp and Armstrong-Vickers that he was ashamed of.

<comment><USER4> The reason people bring it up is Nobel's own writing on the subject.

I think he'd know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, and we have a whole clown show along with the bloody circus.

Always the same prophets at the sideline, wrinkling there noses in disgust- but also condeming those who pacify the situation with a constant surplus as greedy and disgusting human beeings. We have parasites that condemn killing mammoths, but know exactly how to cut it up and redistribute it. We have a whole caste of social controll freaks, who know exactly what is good and bad, unless they predict something completely wrong, like a society of violent gamers, and they can walk away from that defeat and not be ridiculed for eternity.

Not only are we not peacefull. But we are also unable to really understandf what facilitates peace, what actors are actually propelling the process of peacefullness-decay and how to sedate these actors.

Nuclear weapons are the only thing, keeping the sociopathic chieftains of olden times from sending us all to mass slaugther to avoid dealing with society internal pressure. How somebody can be so dumb to argue for removal of this society-implant, basically the pacemaker of 60 years of peace- is beyond me.

<comment><USER7> There was an awful lot of war in your "60 years of peace".

<comment><USER8> Only between nations where one or both didn't have nuclear deterrence.

<comment><USER9> Or internally. Or at the behest of nuclear powers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts#10.2C000_or_more_deaths_in_current_or_past_year)

And I guess those are just 'direct' deaths so it doesn't count all the deaths of refugees or plague or starvation that arose from the conflicts.

<comment><USER10> >And I guess those are just 'direct' deaths so it doesn't count all the deaths of refugees or plague or starvation that arose from the conflicts.

And is there and reason to believe the killed anecdotally to killed in action ratio is different than it was pre-1945?

Starving refugees were a thing before nuclear weapons too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Peace and war aren't intrinsically balanced; it's stupidly easy to make headlines as a bloodthirsty murderer, but it's hard to stand out as a builder or negotiator. There are millions of brilliant people who have devoted their lives to peace, who are shining examples of virtue and altruism and everything else, but their stories aren't seen as being as _dramatic_ as Stephen Paddock's. And thus, instead of thinking about the multitudes of wonderful people around us every day, we dwell on some asshole who decided to shoot an assault rifle out his window. Paddock becomes a nationally recognized symbol while the best of humanity labors in obscurity.

Most of the crudeness of humanity can be attributed to this fascination with terrible things and people, I think. The Nobel Peace Prize can best be seen as a way of turning phenomenon around- of putting the spotlight on _good_ people for once. There is no shortage of excellent candidates. That less-than- sterling examples sometimes win the Peace prize is perhaps a sign that the prize itself is being misused- awarding the prize to Obama was widely seen as an inducement towards, rather than recognition of, good- not it's intended purpose! The rest, the good-but-not-earth-shaking examples, are so just because the work of peace just intrinsically isn't earth-shaking; it's slow, subtle, and ubiquitous.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is why I think that all Nobel Peace Prizes should be awarded only to those already deceased. It removes their ability to mess it up like some of the people from the list now.

</comment><comment><USER13> Relative to what? Are we even considering the environment these humans were raised in?

You know it's no wonder no aliens have come to visit us, we're such a huge bummer we get caught in a knot for even congratulating ourselves for putting forth a good faith effort to improve.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it perhaps not more that all human institutions which keep secrets are emminently corruptible, and that is what has happened here?

The spirit is certainly worthy, the Peace Prize. But perhaps we should have "Peace Makers" supplant "War Makers" in the scheme of things - and recognize more of this strata, first.

Its one thing to have a prize, but the cultures which participate in these sorts of things, have to also be honest and understand their own hubris ..

</comment><comment><USER15> Are humans to scientifically illiterate to justify having a Nobel Prizes for science?

...

</comment><comment><USER16> The implication being that we should have a Nobel War Prize? (after all alfred nobel himself made bombs)

</comment><comment><USER17> There's two reasons why this argument doesn't make any sense.

1\. "Too aggressive" relative to what? There's probably never going to be an absolutely perfect, peaceful human being, simply due to our evolutionary roots. To suggest that this means we should abandon the peace prize is absurd. There's never going to be some perfect embodiment of peace, but that's not what the peace prize is for.

2\. [http://www.icanw.org/pledge/](http://www.icanw.org/pledge/) If this list is "bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping" then please, scrape more of the "bottom of the barrel". Would we rather reward someone for managing 100+ nations to sign a treaty like this, or reward someone who posts indignant and borderline self- righteous rants in an internet blog? Again this is a throwback to the above point of relativity.

Bonus point: The Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Mother Teresa aren't good indicators that this prize has a purpose?

Edit: Added Desmond Tutu above because I'm a big fan

<comment><USER18> > "Too aggressive" relative to what?

Other humans (Homo not Sapiens). Sadly, we'll probably never know for sure, because it looks like we were responsible for wiping most of them out 10,000s years ago.

> Mother Teresa

Usually isn't a good example to bring up ... Mother Teresa has had her fair share of controversy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/25...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/25/why- to-many-critics-mother-teresa-is-still-no-saint/)

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html)

[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/12/19/mother- teresa/](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/12/19/mother-teresa/)

<comment><USER17> Mother Teresa may have been a poor example, I admittedly don't know that much about her. Thank you for the insight. Though I don't think my post has no merit and warrants downvotes

<comment><USER18> Didn't downvote you for the record. If a comment's worth responding to, it doesn't make much sense to me to downvote it (:</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Government Surveillance Poses Cyber-Security Threats, ISPs Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/security/government-surveillance-poses-cyber-security-threats-isps-say.html <comment><AUTHOR> Opening up your customers' traffic to third parties makes things less secure? Whoulda thunk?</comment>


Words Apple doesn't want you to type - <AUTHOR> http://www.canberratimes.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/apple-auto-correct-blindspot-the-words-your-iphone-fails-to-recognise-20130717-2q3bv.html <comment><USER3> I can repro this, but I'm amused that the article thinks it's censorship. It seems transparently like an attempt to avoid common embarrassing autocorrects. See [http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com](http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com)

<comment><USER4> seriously failed attempt then, or it was never there in the first place.. If you mistype a single letter eg _abortiom_ , then how exactly it is embarassing to make _abortion_ out of it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Rape" is probably in order to avoid the things that show up on [http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/tag/rape/](http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/tag/rape/), like "Lol he needs a new hose now. I duct raped it !" ([http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/32070/the-damage-may-be- pe...](http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/32070/the-damage-may-be-permanet/)), an error which you could easily imagine resulting in a call to the police, HR, or someone's spouse under slightly different circumstances.

The others seem less likely to come up by accident, although apparently in [http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/53824/shes-a- mess/](http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/53824/shes-a-mess/) the iPhone autoincorrected "hair" to "abortion". I have no idea how.

I'm curious whether anyone can persuade their current-version iDevice to autocorrect "a nap" to "anal", as it's done in the past.

<comment><USER6> What's the worst that could happen from telling someone that you're "going to take anal"?

<comment><USER5> That's not too bad. But consider "My six-year-old finally got anal. I'm exhausted."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just checked the German iOS, the words mentioned in the article - <USER2> (Abtreibung), rape (Vergewaltigung), virginity (Jungfräulichkeit), ammo (Munition) all work. The correct word is proposed after entering about five letters.

Must be an Anglosaxon/American thing then, unsurprisingly. Any other data points?

<comment><USER5> Maybe it's harder to type a common phrase that gets autocorrected to "Vergewaltigung" than to "rape". "Tape" seems like the most likely candidate: "Can you tape me during my performance?" Suppose you mistype that as "fape".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They state they tested 250,000 words then say 'abortion' isn't corrected as were 150,000 words.

So, unless they've missed something from the article - that means there were 99,999 other words that also failed this test?

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh please.. So much grasping at straws for a story that doesn't exist!

</comment><comment><USER10> I think it makes perfect sense. Imagine if autocorrect gets it wrong (and it often does) and puts "abortion" in the text message unintended. That could have severe consequences.

"Honey, I think we should get the Aburtium(TM) anyways"

</comment><comment><USER11> Can't your add words to your dictionary on iOS?

</comment><comment><USER12> So what part of this is censorship? The iPhone's not preventing you from spelling those words correctly, is it?

</comment><comment><USER13> I've always found it annoying that my iPhone autocorrects "hell" to "he'll."

<comment><USER6> I think that particular case has less to do with it being hell and more to do with noticing a contraction -- it seems to use similar sentence structure heuristics to know whether to correct "its" to "it's".

<comment><USER14> He'll know? Hell no!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And I used to be mad at MS Clippy for trying hard to know better ...</comment>


Why Developers Are Flocking to Amazon's Alexa - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/amazon-alexa-developers-echo-skills <comment><USER2> How much did amazon pay for this article? I know it's a tough market for news out there but this shit is not the answer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are they? The list of skills available is a graveyard of horoscopes and "guess the number" games.

</comment><comment><USER4> This reads like a marketing piece</comment>


Show HN: Use Pinvoke to Speed Up .Net Core - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/samfisher83/Pinvoke.NetCore <comment><USER2> PInvoke is a really nice system to handle native interop, but introduces so much complexity in terms of tool chain and platform specific issues I'm not sure .net core (which is supposed to be cross platform out of the box) is the best use case.

Cool guide though.</comment>


This Is What Winning Looks Like – Afghanistan War Diary - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/vice-news/this-is-what-winning-looks-like-full-length <comment><USER2> I always feel like no matter how well a journalist covers Afghanistan, its only a small slice of the pie, for everything that is going on over there. And that is not to discredit the journalists, they do a great job, there is just so much going on over there, you gotta pick and choose your stories.

For me, one of the greatest tragedies in Afghanistan as a result from the US war is the drug addict problem over ther. I haven't studied the issue in a couple of years, but I remember looking at pictures and statistics of heroin addicts in Afghanistan. As the war destroyed their country citizens turned to drugs and so did leaders, but the latter did so for money. The citizens literally have nothing better to do. And thats not to say they weren't poppy farmers before the war, they were, the majority were just not heroin abusers.

In 2008 I took a seminar about the Afghanistan War, premised on the question, is Afghanistan a failed state? In a room with 12 reasonably bright American students we all were able to point out terrific errors that were causing some big issues. I remember reading that 70-80 percent of the trained Afghani police force was just signed up to get a paycheck. They never showed up for duty or anything.

I do a lot of thinking about Afghanistan, because the situation is unique, yet historically predictable. In my opinion, its hard for me and Americans maybe all westerners, to understand Afghanistan and the people there; and its just as difficult for the people in Afghanistan to understand our way of life, and how to assimilate to what we were setting up.

At present count, 3 people from my high school class have died fighting in Afghanistan, and 5 counting the year ahead of me (0 of my college mates, point for another story..). And this is what counts for me. I like to think that because the situation is complex and can get confusing, the best way to gain an understanding is to study individual stories, stuff that usually gets hidden behind the larger scene.

From the research I have done, the majority of Afghans want peace to the point where they would accept a Taliban strict rule of law over the continued war. Its confusing, but it just shows the war really needs to end.

<comment><USER3> > From the research I have done, the majority of Afghans want peace to the > point where they would accept a Taliban strict rule of law over the > continued war. Its confusing, but it just shows the war really needs to end.

As I looked at US efforts at essentially 'nation building', often on the other side of the world, to try to contribute to US national security, I came up with a simple observation:

In a country with a government and economy that function at all, there has to be and is a 'culture' with social structures, education, economic activity, leadership, laws, government, usually religion, etc. While such a culture has to exist, it may be very different from that in the US.

In Afghanistan and much of the Muslim world, the 'culture' is heavily just Islam: Islam controls social structures, e.g., sex, marriage, child rearing, the role of family, etc. Islam also controls most of education, much of the economic activity, essentially all the laws, the police, the justice system, the government, the foreign policy, and, of course, religion. We can toss in architecture, what people eat, and what they wear. Basically from how people dress, eat, work, etc., its all Islam. So, in an Islamic country, take away Islam, and there's no culture at all and, then, just chaos, e.g., criminals, gangs, civil war, etc. Net, in an Islamic country, for a government leader can have an Islamic king (e.g., Kuwait), Islamic strong man dictator (Saddam, Assad), or Islamic cleric (Iran). That's about it.

One can try to set up a Western, secular government in an Islamic country, but the leader will have no cultural foundation to stand on and, thus, will be trying to sell pie in the sky. Meanwhile the clerics will be working 24 x 7 to get their people up on their hind legs against the guy, and too soon he will lose, maybe his head.

For anything like US democracy, laws, police, secular government, freedom of religion, etc., just f'get about it. We need to understand: In the US, our 'culture' of democracy is much more than just our Constitution and elections. Instead, in addition, nearly all of us have 'bought into' a 'social contract' where we believe in, invest in, and trust in our democracy. So for most significant transgressions against the 'culture', the voters get indignant, outraged, incensed, infuriated, and up on their hind legs and vote! E.g., each member of the House has to stand for election each two years, which is darned short, and keeps him on a very short leash, and if he messes up then likely he's out'a there. To borrow from a Bond movie, getting caught in a motel room with a cheerleader does nicely.

Really the Islamic countries are about 500 years behind the history of Western Europe, e.g., when Western Europe was fighting wars of religion and starting to develop respect for humanism, individual freedom, secular government, and democracy. Moving ahead 500 years is not easy. The rivers of Europe ran red with blood for hundreds of years before we got to 'Western Civilization'. Europe has been the most effectively bloody place on the planet until finally it started to learn to live in peace, recently, hopefully.

Net, Afghanistan is going to be an Islamic country, some version of an Islamic country, but still an Islamic country, likely run by a king, strong man, or cleric. Sorry 'bout that. We won't like such a 'culture': Some of the men use boys for sex. They marry off their daughters at age 7 or 13 or some such. They refuse to educate females. They use Islamic laws and justice. Islam runs essentially everything.

That's just the way it is. That's the reality. We need to face the reality. We don't like it. We see it as a 500 year out of date sh!tpit, and we are correct. Right, it sucks. We know that.

Then, facing that reality, we can look for how to get what we need, e.g., US national security, that is, to keep Afghanistan from being the base of operations of another 9/11 attack on the US.

Okay, then, that's what we really need, our real 'bottom line': Keep Afghanistan from being the base of operations of another 9/11 attack on the US. We need little or nothing more than that from Afghanistan. Can we get that? Sure. How? Two steps. Step 1. Put in place a bunch of INTEL. Step 2\. Leave. [It took the US 12 years to figure this out?] If our INTEL tells us that they are starting to attack the US again, then level them, appropriate places plus some for good measure, from the air. Done.

What will happen after we leave? Mostly we don't give a sh!t. But I'd put my money on a government run by an Islamic cleric, e.g., the Taliban.

Now, US military, welcome home. Well done.

Yes, we can be sure that the Muslim clerics will get their people up on their hind legs shouting "Death to America". Sounds like a declaration of war to me for which some USAF guy in a container room in Nevada should push a button on a drone control and stop that stuff. But if all they do is shout, then we don't always have to push the button.

England was long smart enough to work effectively in that part of the world, in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, India, Burma, Singapore, etc., without getting all bent out of shape trying to bring English culture to those places.

The US needs to quit being so darned simplistic, wise up, learn from the English 150 years ago, update the lessons a little, use our drones, INTEL, etc., do the smart things, and quit bleeding the US white on absurd foreign adventures from just totally unrealistic, head in the sand, simplistic foreign policy nonsense. We will not get what we have wanted in Afghanistan. Instead we will wise up and get what we can and need or just go broke on nonsense.

What's it going to be US, wise up or go broke?

<comment><USER4> Have you ever been to an Islamic country ever? You just made up the whole history like a simplistic comic book story.

> In Afghanistan and much of the Muslim world, the 'culture' is heavily just > Islam: Islam controls social structures, e.g., sex, marriage, child rearing, > the role of family, etc.

I am from Pakistan. Our culture is massive mix of Indian/sub-continental traditions, Islamic values and most recently westerns customs. There is a strong case that our marriage, sex etc. are more inclined towards traditional indian culture than islamic (e.g. second marriages or marrying a divorcee is a taboo in Pakistan while in fact is encouraged in Islam). There is so much diversity in our provinces on how they deal with women (e.g. in Punjab in rural areas, it is very common for women to have jobs, unlike in the Pashtuns) that your claim of sweeping all Islamic countries under one broom is laughable.

> We can toss in architecture, what people eat, and what they wear. Basically > from how people dress, eat, work, etc., its all Islam. No it's not. Sorry > that's just show your lack of research. Again the 'shalwar kameez' we wear > here in Pakistan has more in common with Hindu lineage than Islam with the > urban areas are totally jeans/suits. We have huge interest-based banks since > forever where banks are a total no-no in Islam.

>Afghanistan is going to be an Islamic country, some version of an Islamic country, but still an Islamic country, likely run by a king, strong man, or cleric

Not sure you can lump up kings with clerics and make an argument out of that. The only thing common between then is opportunist. They wanted to be on the throne and they might've used religion in some cases or maybe sheer power in other. In Pakistan, more than half of our history, we've been ruled by dictators but not once we got an Imam or a cleric.

<comment><USER3> > I am from Pakistan. Our culture is massive mix of Indian/sub-continental > traditions, Islamic values and most recently westerns customs

Apparently the main part of Pakistan relevant to Afghanistan is the 'tribal regions' mostly not governed by the rest of Pakistan. There your claims of a "mix" seem to be not correct.

Further, much of the problem the US has had with Pakistan is from the strong role of Islam there and in Afghanistan. For reasons of religion, culture, domestic politics, and foreign policy, Pakistan has been mostly on the side of the Taliban, that is, wants to dominate Afghanistan.

My comments about Islam were focused on Afghanistan. The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq. For Pakistan, sure, it used to be part of India which is wildly mixed from Muslim, Hindu, what it got from the British, and the old cultures from before the British. India is a forbiddingly complicated place, and Pakistan has been influenced by that.

But the main reason for the formation of Pakistan was just Islam -- they wanted an Islamic country. Net, the main culture in Pakistan is just Islam.

Italy is heavily a Roman Catholic country, but the church does not run everything. Turkey is an Islamic country, but the clerics don't run everything. An Islamic country can have a culture more varied than just Islam. No doubt the culture of Pakistan is more varied than that of Afghanistan.

The main interest in this tread is what the heck is the US going to do about Afghanistan and why? The main content of why is just the role of Islam.

The US brought to Afghanistan constitutional government, free elections, roads, schools, hospitals, training and equipment for police and a military, but Afghanistan is about to throw away all of that and return to an 'Islamic state' run by the Taliban. Thus, I and much of the US are losing patience with both Afghanistan and Islam.

<comment><USER5> _The comments also apply a lot to Iran and Iraq_

If you think Salafist Afghanistan, Kohmeinist Iran and Baathist Iraq had anything in common then you know jack shit.

That's like comparing Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and the US colonies in Cotton Mather's time, sticking them all into one big pot because they are all "Christian". Idiocy.

<comment><USER3> You miss the point: It's not that all the versions of Islam and Islamic governments are alike. Instead, it's that in the more backward Islamic countries, Islam is essentially all the culture there is. And Islam is not just a religion but is also into law, government, education, etc. So, in such a country, Islam is about all the culture there is and can block, actively or just passively by default, essentially all progress.

As you point out, there are still some differences. But what is in common is that Islam, in whatever flavors, is so strong, and not just a religion, and essentially all the culture there is, is able to block progress.

Look, to be more clear, the problem is not just Islam. Instead, the Roman Catholics ran everything in Western Europe for hundreds of years, were corrupt, blocked progress, and finally Europe got out of it, after religious wars, etc.

The point is not that Islam is a bad religion, even if it is. Instead the point is that to run a good society, need a good culture, and that culture needs to come from much more than just some religious clerics. A religious state, Roman Catholic, Islamic, or anything else, just will not be a successful state. In the countries where Islam is the only culture, Islam needs to shrink back to being just a religion, hopefully one of several, and let the culture have other inputs besides just religion. Got it now?

<comment><USER5> _Got it now?_

Don't patronize me. You wrote a screed justifying bombing the hell out of civilians because you didn't like their speech. Somewhere in your moral bankruptcy, you wrote

 _So, in an Islamic country, take away Islam, and there's no culture at all and, then, just chaos_

 _This_ was your characterization of Iran and Iraq, which showed that you don't know jack. It also won't work for Turkey or Malaysia.

By the way, "nation building" failed in Germany as well, largely because Americans are hypocrites who SAY "nation building" and DO _war profiteering_ , _corruption_ and _vindictiveness_. The result was Adolf Hitler.

So the US had to fight _another_ World War with Germany, and after getting their asses kicked so badly by the Axis, and coming close to losing in several ways, the US decided in 1945 to do actual nation building in half good faith, hence the Marshall Plan. This time round, it succeeded in Germany and Japan.

Unfortunately, the US forgot this lesson by 9/11, so when it came to Iraq and Afghanistan, they went back to "nation building" by Blackwater XE and Halliburton, with predictable results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The taliban operates like the mafia in Afghanistan. They go from provincial village to village, effectively saying "Hey, nice village you have here...it would be a shame if something were to happen to it"

They do provide legitimate protection. If bandits or unsavory characters harass the village, the taliban will roll up with AKs and rpgs. They also adjudicate local disputes like "he stole my goat" or "he had sex with my daughter". The afghan military and police forces don't spend a lot of time in the poorest regions of the country, so it's usually the taliban that has to make someone give back the goat or marry the daughter.

In return for protection and dispute resolution, the people in poor afghan villages usually grow poppy on their lands to be sold as opium and volunteer military aged males as taliban recruits. When you think of this system at scale, running unchecked, you can see how 9/11 style acts of terrorism happen. The bigger threat is that a well resourced and uncontrolled taliban in Afghanistan could destabilize the whole region by inciting muslim conflicts.

The US response was close to being appropriate for disrupting a protection racket. In the near term, they sent marines to provide protection for poor villages and actively hunt the taliban. In the long term they tried to introduce free democracy to the country, to provide security and rule of law to the poorest people and put the taliban out of business.

The reason it's taken so long to produce results is optimism on the part of western politicians. Afghanistan is a country that's only loosely held together and there are many factions and families in Kabul competing to grab power in a newly formed government. It could still be decades before things are settled enough that they have time to worry about protecting their poorest citizens, and a strong taliban doesn't pose a direct threat to the most lucrative parts of the government.

It's a complicated situation mostly because the taliban is exploiting people who have little to offer to the government that is supposed to protect them. But many democracies start out this way, and ultimately western action may have helped the situation.

<comment><USER7> > When you think of this system at scale, running unchecked, you can see how > 9/11 style acts of terrorism happen.

9/11 hijackers were mostly well educated, middle-class Saudi Arabians. Not Taliban, as you seem to imply.

If anything, what could be argued is that Afghanistan lacking a national police force makes it easy for terrorist groups to establish military training camps there. But that's a whole different thing.

<comment><USER8> Not even, it makes it easy for _warlords_ to train militias, not for terrorists.

Terrorists rarely need combat skills as we think about them. Terrorist training is more about pushing the button - which is all religious, or maybe playing flight-sims and practicing with a knife. They do this in living rooms and garages.

Local warlords though, need places to train troops live ammo, firing RPGs and mortars, practicing attacking and defending against other large local foes.

Not that they shouldn't be stopped - that's a valid question - but we went in after international terrorists, shot local warlords, and claimed victory.

(In the process, killing enough people unjustly to cause much of a generation to have real reason to hate us.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the major problems that occupying forces have had in Afghanistan is that modern military strategy fundamentally isn't designed for taking and holding ground. Outside of the bases in Afghanistan, there is not one square meter of ground that is "owned" by the coalition.

The approach seems to be that transient patrols, haphazardly driving around and visiting villages in giant bomb proof robot trucks, is a substitute for thousands of years old strategies of taking, holding and controlling territory. There's no front lines in the kind of conflict because that's how the new strategy has defined the conflict. The last time a modern military in a major conflict actually took and held ground was probably the Korean War. After that it was endless insurgencies or hit-win-withdraw like in the first Iraq war.

This is opposed to the Taliban which can comfortably move into a village and live there 24/7, becoming "the villagers" as much as anybody who was there before. A robot truck driving up and asking "where are the non-villagers, where are the bad guys?" will get no answer because everybody is a villager, and the guy making bombs in the afternoons is a village elder the rest of the day. There are no bad guys.

Afghanistan isn't a failed state, it's an anti-state, its borders are a reflection of the borders of its neighbors -- extending only so far as they cared to and stopping when the terrain became too difficult to bother. Within this zone are several city-states and otherwise large stretches of lawless territory connected, but not held together, by a network of smugglers and local warlords. The coalition controls none of it save for perhaps the city- state of Kabul.

Of course the ability to take and control territory means lots and lots of manpower, which runs contrary to modern military thinking. This forces military leadership into a state of sustained denial that this or that alternate approach will be the one that opens up the opportunity for Afghanistan to develop into a real state. They're flummoxed that it isn't happening.

But there's sadly only one proven way to accomplish this goal, take, hold and control territory. Put in place a carefully controlled puppet dictator or similar for a couple decades, one who will build up strong institutions of government and industry. Then once these things are in place, kill him or his dynastic line off (or have a quiet democratic revolution) and have the people assume ownership of these institutions and industries. Sure if the timing of these things is off it fucks up and we end up with Iran. But if the timing is good we end up with South Korea.

<comment><USER10> > The last time a modern military in a major conflict actually took and held > ground was probably the Korean War.

Except for ..

Falkland Islands

Grenada

Desert Storm

OIF

<comment><USER11> The Falklands are British. The British forces did not "take and hold ground", the repelled an invasion force.

Desert Storm: The US did not hold any ground for a long period of time. They defeated the Iraqi forces and withdrew.

<comment><USER10> > The British forces did not "take and hold ground", the repelled an invasion > force.

Incorrect. The Argentines surprised the small garrison, had the place in a few hours. The Brits then mobilized an amphibious force and had to take the Falklands back.

> did not hold any ground for a long period of time.

I don't recall there being a qualification for 'time spent on the ground'. And incorrect because we've had forces in Kuwait ever since.

<comment><USER11> You're arguing semantics. In the Falklands, the ground was British in the first place, and the Argentinians did not occupy the entire island; they repelled an invasion force, and saying that "held ground" is like saying the US has "held ground" from the British since the Revolution. Similarly, Kuwait was friendly territory; I was referring to Iraq.

<comment><USER10> > and the Argentinians did not occupy the entire island

One of us needs to review that conflict. And it's not me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Random theory I have (hopefully some HN-ers with actual military knowledge can weigh in): modern militaries need less technology and more manpower. It seems since I was a kid politicians have been saying that armed forces should become smaller and more high-tech. That means less bodies sent home in coffins and also more contracts for BAE Systems, so it's a popular message.

That all works well (very well) when you're invading countries. Doesn't work so well when you decide you need to _build_ a new country out of the ruins. Maybe we'd do better if instead of spending billions on flying robot assassins to fight tribal hill-farmers, we simply enlisted more humans to take command.

The only other option I can see is to start running the American empire British-style - they ran very efficient colonies by exploiting existing tribal divisions, usually by recruiting some existing elite as their colonial administrators. Not trying to implement democracy in tribal regions that don't yet have stable institutions or the rule of law would probably also help.

<comment><USER13> > modern militaries need less technology and more manpower

An interesting thought! One of the most interesting conclusions I drew from this documentary is that the Afghan Military needs both - more technology and more manpower. But the trouble, as shown, is that you need the intelligence to handle so much manpower, the social contracts to retain that manpower and the education to handle that technology.

So what you're saying about the balance might be an interesting point for the US military might work for them, but it doesn't even start to help out with the Afghan forces.

As for going "British-style" - I think that stuff simply doesn't work in the modern, connected world. British colonialism took advantage of isolation and division. Doesn't work so well if the country you invade is reasonably well connected globally.

<comment><USER14> The US has a really bad track record of picking local partners. Mostly because during the Cold War, the "good" local people were more innately socialist, which the Communists exploited, so we got stuck with some pretty horrible people (either ineffective or outright evil) by default.

I don't believe it's feasible to occupy a medium sized country which actively resists using modern militaries. It's certainly not worth it. I'd just focus on keeping a limited presence to rain death from above (like we do in Pakistan, Yemen, etc.) or via limited JSOC strikes (Somalia, Afghanistan before 2007 or so, etc.), and then using armed but civilian organizations to interface with the populace and government.

In a place like Somalia or Afghanistan, foreign organizations should run important infrastructure and logistics services for the local government and population, with the cost subsidized by international donors. i.e. a local Afghan should be able to buy electricity at 0.10/KwH, sell their pomegranates at the world price, and have clean water, Internet, cellphones, etc., without any other focus on building the government (since that's probably hopeless). The organization providing that infrastructure needs self-defense capability, but you don't need much beyond what Blackwater had to do this.

<comment><USER13> > In a place like Somalia or Afghanistan, foreign organizations should run > important infrastructure and logistics services for the local government and > population[...]

That's what I thought as well - The documentary left a pretty bleak picture of the Afghans ability to build, extend or even maintain basic infrastructure, but it's desperately needed if they want to get anywhere with education. The country needs at least a good dozen generations to heal the most serious wounds so it can find its own interest in the kind of social development that makes it resistant to terrorism taking root over and over again.

Hand-holding throughout that time is what is required. But that's probably the most costly thing, I would guess. Then again, those drones and all that ammunition sure don't come cheap either. But the US has sunk far too much money into that failed path to turn around and do the other one now.

And even then - the problem is that the citizens are already tired of conflict and both sides, the international troops and the taliban, are trying to exploit that. Just giving them great infrastructure might make it easier for the international troops, but it would probably do the same for the taliban.

Whatever the solution, it sure won't be a quick one. My best bet would be to exploit the countries natural resources and push all the money made from that into infrastructure and security. But that's just the kind of "socialism" that nobody in the west wants to pick up.

<comment><USER14> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagons_New_Map> from Thomas PM Barnett is probably the "official" version of this -- a small, lethal military designed to win wars, and a "SysAdmin force" designed to build nations after the fact.

I'm not sure how well this theory has held up (it's from 2004...), or how much support it has. I think what happened is we got lucky in Iraq in 2007-2010 using the old British strategy of allying with semi-enemies against real enemies (Sons of Iraq and the other Sunni tribes, and non-aggression with the Shia militias), eked out a borderline draw in Iraq while calling it "a victory for COIN", applied the "COIN" model rather than the "British" model to Afghanistan with the surge and all, and have proceeded to lose from 2009-now in Afghanistan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you liked this video you might also like:

* Armadillo[1] a documentary about a group of Danish soldiers deployed to Helmland. Armadillo is right up there with Restrepo in my opinion.

* The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan[2] if you are curious about the bacha bazi boys.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_%28film%29>

[2] <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/>

<comment><USER14> Restrepo is also pretty amazing in its own right.

My absolute favorite work about the whole war in Afghanistan is First In ([http://www.amazon.com/First-Insiders-Account-Spearheaded- Afg...](http://www.amazon.com/First-Insiders-Account-Spearheaded- Afghanistan/dp/0345496612)) which is how the entire war should have been fought: A CIA man, a couple ODAs (~20 US Army Special Forces soldiers), an old ex-Soviet helicopter, and $30mm in $100 bills, and victory in 2 months. I sent a copy to weev in prison, will be interesting to see what he thinks :)

<comment><USER16> That's kind of you, but horribly naive.

 _Being validated by prison staff as an associate of a prison gang or being in possession of questionable reading material can land an inmate in the SHU for an indefinite amount of time. The UN says more than 15 days in solitary confinement is considered torture. SHU prisoners at Pelican Bay spend an average of 7.5 years there. In 2005 (last released statistics) there were over 80,000 inmates held in solitary confinement in the US. This inhumane treatment is a clear violation of the 8th amendment and must be changed._

[http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2013/04/02/solitary...](http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2013/04/02/solitary- in-iran-nearly-broke-me-why-americas-prisons-are-worse/)

Wise up a little bit, the USG doesn't play nice, and weev has already been subject to "special attention" due to not grokking the simple fact that he is totally powerless in the system now.

The More You Know.

<comment><USER15> How is this questionable reading material? The book got through the CIA's publication review board and there was no funny business like there was with Operation Dark Heart.

Today is the only day of the year that I watch sports (Go Cuse!) so I'm going to try my hardest to ignore that giant leap from >15 days in solitary is torture to everyone in solitary is being treated inhumanely.

<comment><USER16> It is questionable reading material _based on the evaluation of the Prison authorities in his prison_ , __not __any other authority. If you cannot fathom how a book on CIA + Afghanistan + Black OPs could be twisted into "reading up on terrorism" you're incredibly naive, or know nothing about the types of books that have lead to solitary confinement in the US prison system. The latter is obviously the case: I'd urge you to do a little research some time into how the rule is abused. Biographies of Malcom X getting you in solitary, that sort of thing...

As for "giant leap", I'd suggest: _Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement by Stuart Grassian_ (25 yrs Harvard Medical school) for a quick over-sight into the issues. Journal of Law & Policy PDF: <http://law.wustl.edu/journal/22/p325grassian.pdf>

Solitary confinement is one of the leading punishments that is currently used in the US Prison System. Weev has already made himself a "little unpopular" in his stay (less than 3 months: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/weev- soundcloud_n_3...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/weev- soundcloud_n_3093315.html)) and is on the fast track to learning the hard way. He has ~36 months remaining, less _if he behaves_ and doesn't "troll them". Asking publicly about their financial data is __not __cute and __not __smart and will __not __go unnoticed.

Enjoy your sports. Perhaps you should stick with the TeeVee, I was merely suggesting that people _think_ before engaging with a totally foreign (to them) mindset, that of the authoritarian US penal system. Or, at the very least, do the barest minimum of Due Diligence.

Do the research; you might get shock & awed out of your bubble. Lions, Tigers and Bears.

<comment><USER15> I have some experience with cases of excessive force and I am fully aware of the level of discretion that the court affords to the professional judgement of corrections officers (admittedly restricted to NYCRR). I certainly am not under the impression that the metal bars delineate the good people from the bad people.

My "TeeVee" time is long over and I have done a little research into how how reading a book can land one in solitary. I have not been able to find anything concrete. Most of the things that I have found are consistent with my experience with the NYCRR and everything that I have found is consistent with the Furnace case[1] from California (the most notable and recent case). From everything that I have read I have not been able to find any instances of solitary confinement solely due to reading a book. And certainly no instances of solitary confinement for reading a mass market book that is currently #19 in its category on amazon that the prisoner received via mail and therefore screened (where assessment is based on the individual receiving the book).

Could you point me to some source material?

Side Note: Why so passive aggressive with me or the parent comment?

[1] In re Furnace (2010) 185 Cal.App.4th 649

<comment><USER16> I'd suggest your research has little to do with reality, and more to do with the Court room:

 _"Extreme isolation is one of the most extreme forms of punishment one human can force on another, and in New York State it is often a disciplinary tool of first resort," said NYCLU Legal Fellow Scarlet Kim, co-author of the report. "People spend weeks, months and even years cut off from human interaction and rehabilitative services for non-violent, minor misbehavior. The process for determining who is sent to extreme isolation is arbitrary – there is virtually no guidance or limitations on who can be sent to extreme isolation, for what reasons, or for how long."_

[http://www.nyclu.org/files/publications/nyclu_boxedin_FINAL....](http://www.nyclu.org/files/publications/nyclu_boxedin_FINAL.pdf)

 _The practice is theoretically intended to separate violent and dangerous inmates from the rest of the prison population. The New York Civil Liberties Union, however, uncovered that the majority of those in solitary confinement were given the punishment for nonviolent, low-level offenses. Nearly 90 percent of the men placed in solitary confinement between 2007 and 2011 were there for breaking one of the minor prison rules, such as having unauthorized books, disobeying an order or growing their mustaches too long ("an inmate shall not grow a beard or mustache over one inch in length"). Other documented infractions that led to solitary confinement included one man who had gambling chips in his cell and another who received 45 days for tattooing himself._

Took me about 3 minutes. Given that the ACLU report was indeed about New York (NYCRR) and you were _"unable to find any examples of it"_ , I suspect you're a tainted or biased source.

Given the "down votes" (a Reddit term, I think?) on my response that contained decent sources, I'll disengage from this. I wish weev well, but I suspect if he continues he'll be broken, hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is what winning looks like:

From this... [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on- pop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-poppy-a- success-us-aides-say.html)

to this... [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/world/asia/afghanistan- opi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/world/asia/afghanistan-opium- production-increases-for-3rd-year.html?_r=0)

</comment><comment><USER18> Just so we are clear on one thing: the last war that US took a part of that was a war fought in the name of freedom was War War 2 that ended in 1945. Every single War after that date had nothing to do with Americans living on American soil being free, safe, or whatever. You had to have your brain removed to believe that invading Iraq or Afghanistan (and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent, as a by-result of every military conflict) was necessary, because otherwise those nations and their people will come here and violate the US soil.

Both Iraq and Afghan war were carefully crafted by Military Industrial Complex from day one (first step: create problem, like in Iraq WMD's that were never found {glad there are some countries like Switzerland where they still prosecuted war criminals [1]}, step two: offer solution: offer piece by using force, step three: execute - by spending trillions of tax dollars), so you should understand war is nothing more than good business. Bloody but good. Stalin said one person killed that's a murder, millions is only a statistics, and that's how I believe those pulling strings can sleep at night. Oh by the way: as you remember those WMDs were never found (but sure they existed, okay?), but rest assured they moved them somewhere around, conveniently. Never mind 100,000 civilians dead (or some surveys shows 600k, or .. 1 million! [2]).

I have a respect for american soldiers, but I wish they were more educated on what they are really doing. They are NOT protecting american soil or fighting for their own country. Those are gone long time ago, as Chief in Command (President of the USA) is carefully following NATO orders, and US becomes a part of North American Union. Their action, whether successful or not, have nothing to do with us here being safe on american soil. Had they been educated they are just a tool in hands of few with access to the highest standing politicians that grab more tax money and give it into hands of Military Industrial Complex, they would have stopped participating in the war, knowing the real name of the game, like fighting for oil in Iraq.

Just some of my thoughts on this Memorial Day.

[1] [http://www.kulturekritic.com/2013/04/uncategorized/did- you-k...](http://www.kulturekritic.com/2013/04/uncategorized/did-you-know- that-bush-cant-travel-to-switzerland-without-facing-charges-will-obama-have- same-fate/)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War>

<comment><USER19> Thank you for pointing this out! For a second there I couldn't understand how the American population is turning a blind eye to such a pointless war.

Also the new Start trek movie is oddly reminiscent to this. Although the taliban/iraq aren't nearly as powerful as the Klingons.

<comment><USER18> Well, it doesn't matter whether they are turning blind eye or not. America's politics in not in people's hands, but in politician's hands that serve bigger cause (read: serve Military Industrial Complex).

The sad part is, is that not much is gonna change. There is STILL too much money to make off of war, and in case too many civilians stand up, you can always setup another 911, plane bombing (shoe-bomber), another stage shooting, etc, and it will shut everyone up, and open their wallets to even more money being given to MIC.

Its a really sad and disappointing situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Vice is nothing but quality. Wish more people were aware of them, and the really wide variety of excellent documentaries they produce

<comment><USER21> I was thinking the same thing until I watched a documentary about France's Toughest Rappers. And unfortunately I know very well the rape scene and this documentary was nothing but a big joke: Lies, bullshit, ...

So know I'm a bit suspicious.

<comment><USER22> I hope you're referring to the "rap scene"..

Yeah that documentary was slightly exploitative: "oh look, let's send a cute young girl into the ghetto and film a bunch of knuckleheads trying to get in her pants!" Then again, nothing too different from the usual late night TV "documentaries" about the police/the ghettos/the jet-set..

<comment><USER21> Yes I am referring to the rap scene. My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This reminds me so much of being over there. This documentary does such a great job of showing the utter confusion and screwed up nature of fighting counter-insurgencies.

Every day is like choosing between different types of cancer. There is no 'winning' only seemingly less lethal varieties of the same disease. To make it worse, you are choosing which cancer to support through an intermediary, the interpreter. After a short time there you realize how much of a gap the language barrier is and how debilitating it is to not be able to build genuine relationships with your interlocuteur because you have to wait for the interpretation.

There is no 'solution' to Afghanistan and there is no 'winning'. People accuse NATO soldiers of war crimes everyday without even realizing the legitimate war crimes we prevented every single place we went. Afghanistan is still the jungle and the strongest wins. That isn't going to change from one day to the next. At this point, warfare is all that they know. They've been at it for over 30 years.

Unfortunately, you walk away thinking that the only solution is to be the strongest.

<comment><USER8> > People accuse NATO soldiers of war crimes everyday without even realizing > the legitimate war crimes we prevented every single place we went.

Had we gone into Afghanistan in the 90s when various groups of locals were asking us to we might have fought about as much, in the end, but we'd have been there at the request of the people, actually building relationships, instead of continually rebuilding a failed-by-design state for some bullshit 9/11 excuse.

Bin Laden might still have happened because he wasn't depending on Afghanistan, or he might not have, because the allies could have had a better (good) reputation in the area negating much of the terrorist fervor.

But, I (one who criticizes our soldiers for war crimes) do recognize that we often, ultimately, bring some good to the survivors - hospitals, clean water, etc, and often stop many ongoing killings and other horrible practices. But never for the reasons we say we're there and only in doing things that perpetuate the cycle of war such as setting up dictators and selling critical resources and infrastructure.

Even if in their specific case any given soldier may save more lives than they cost, our war overall and our continued ability to wage it via the complicity of our soldiers, will cost far more lives in the end.

Refusing to fight for an unjust cause, or hurt without need, is a duty of all soldiers of modern civilized militaries. Sure, it realistically means jail for those who refuse - but it means death for their victims if they don't.

Afghanistan and Iraq were clearly not justified by 9/11 or implicated by any related evidence. By fighting for the USA and allies despite these lies, without the mandate of the people, soldiers are essentially pissing on the rule of law.

We're showing - through action not words - that no matter what they do we'll just make shit up and bomb them. Why do we expect them to expect anything else?

If our governments couldn't field the army unjustly, our peacekeeping might not only be welcome but might finally work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is unbelievable... I mean what can be done when everyone is just high as f and just basically trippin all day. Afganistan is OK with how things are now, it seems, so I guess the only relevant take away from this, just leave the country ASAP with as few expenditures and casualties as possible.

<comment><USER14> I'd also make sure the Afghans who helped us get out (which is part of the pending comprehensive immigration bill), and that any Afghans who are actually sane are considered fairly for education/refugee status/etc. in the west. But really, Afghanistan itself is essentially doomed, and GTFO is the only way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've never been in the military, so I'm sure there is a _great deal_ that I don't understand- or worse, think I understand when I've got it backwards.

When I watch something like this, I'm absolutely blown away by how utterly incompetent the local military is no matter how much time we put into attempting to train them. Somehow in the US we're able to take (often poor) 17/18 year olds, and in 10 weeks of BCT (Basic) and then in 3 week to 2 years of Advanced Individual Training (AIT) we're able to create pretty damn disciplined soldiers. Yet, how many _years_ did it take for us to try to train troops in Iraq, and it sounds like they still just unloaded entire clips whenever they saw a rabbit in the desert.

When these countries turn over top leadership (Iraq, Afganistan, Egypt, etc) it feels that they completely lose all historical training/ability for the military and go back to square one. Complete anarchy. It sounds like a _huge_ percentage of their people defect seemingly randomly.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't feel like this happens (generally) in European countries when there is a massive leadership change. A post WW1 Germany was able to keep enough military knowledge/discipline together to be a seriously powerful force by WW2- and that certainly didn't have external forces in there trying their hardest to give them all the help possible. Post Russian Revolution USSR was quite a force to be reckoned with as well.

Why is it so damn hard to set up decent military training? Seems like a process we should understand by now, since we've put millions of young people through it. We (americans) initially setup West Point in the middle of a revolution and have been running it since (although it wasn't the United States Military Academy until 1802).

I'm absolutely certain it isn't because westerners are smarter, better, etc (we aren't)... but there is something seriously weird over there at the same time (malnutrition, lack of basic formal education system, cultural differences, too many generations of instability (maybe one generation works ok, but 3 breaks things seriously))

<comment><USER26> >how utterly incompetent the local military is no matter how much time we put into attempting to train them. Somehow in the US we're able to take (often poor) 17/18 year olds, and in 10 weeks of BCT (Basic) and then in 3 week to 2 years of Advanced Individual Training (AIT) we're able to create pretty damn disciplined soldiers

A country's military is a reflection of and limited by the society that spawns it. The USA can keep disciplined and ethical soldiers because it has never suffered civil unrest, never been invaded, enjoys prosperity, freedom, public law and justice. No such thing can be said of Afghanistan or Iraq. Moreover - the "10 weeks of BCT" is not "just" "10 weeks of BCT". There is a logistics and supply train several tho-- million pages long that creates those "just" 10 weeks. Consider the fact that humans are recruited. Recruiters need to be trained, fed, paid, and have offices. That costs money. Afghanistan has no money. Consider the fact that young men need to be transported from and to BCT: this requires roads free of IEDs, requires fuel for trucks, favourable economic conditions to produce or import buses. Consider the fact that a certain percentage of all military trainees quit before completing that training. This is accounted for and expected: there are 300 million humans in the USA and this is acceptable losses. Consider the fact that abiding by the laws of a nation and strict adherence to authority is something these "17/18" year olds have done for two decades by the time their military training is over. It is ingrained into their psyche to follow the law from the earliest age, in the most gentle of methods: by the witnessing of safety and prosperity of Americans abiding by the law. Consider an Afghani youth: what is ignrained into them is an invsion by Russia and now invasion by America. How confident in justice do you think they are? How inclined are they to respect authority? How confortable are they submitting to a national government?

A country's military is fundamentally a reflection of the society it spawns. Afghanistan is a failed state in every respect, for the last several decades, and as such it cannot muster a professional military despite the efforts of the US-led coalition.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the reply.

Toward the end of the doc, it digs a bit more into the 'why', which include many of your points.

I thought a while about the perspective of an Afghani youth vs those views of an American youth. Afghan youth probably realizes even more than the American one that they are simply pawns in the system and no one outside their families cares for them. The Afghani youth are likely illiterate by most standards, and it sounds like the soldiers keep absolutely terrible records accordingly. As much as we trash the American education system (which is flawed), we at least have a pretty decent baseline for education to create soldiers that can read/write/math.

Whereas the American youth probably thinks that they are fighting for their country and doing great good around the world, I'm not entirely sure that the Afghan youth would think of it that way. At best, they are fighting for a paycheck, a gun, and some temporary protection.

As you point out, the basic supply chain of infrastructure is lacking there. We've given them the tools such as solar panels (which they feature in the doc), but if something messes up they have no idea how to fix them. Corruption isn't a bad thing, its being smarter and probably closer to survival than anything. The motivation to stay and fight in a dangerous situation is exceedingly low; whereas an American soldier can at least hope for a memorial, benefits to their spouse, and honors if they are killed in action, there is certainly none of that for the Afghan youth.

I guess to top that off, we're all left holding the question of why we're over there at all. It didn't really make that much sense at first (didn't we learn from Vietnam?), and it makes even less sense now. Nationbuilding doesn't work. Never has, never will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So, notes?

\- Lots of people doing effectively nothing.

\- Low morale.

\- Ad-hoc training of Afghan army/police.

\- Lack of national identity.

\- Poor mobility.

\- Lack of intelligence.

\- Communication problems.

\- No clear strategic objectives or clear plans to achieve desired processes

</comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone else think it would be easier and less bloody to just get the Taliban addicted to heroine and subsidize their cost of living?

<comment><USER14> The Taliban were actually pretty hardcore counter-narcotics in the late 1990s, with western support. They only partnered with the narcotics industry after 9/11 when fighting the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> First off, I didn't watch the whole thing, I got sick of it. So, my comments aren't necessarily about the documentary, but to provide some perspective. The below are notes I took while reading in no particular order, so the argument is a bit disjointed. I spent a year as an embedded advisor in Afghanistan and just returned last month. Prior to that I was in Iraq for a year as an advisor in 2009.

Despite my feelings for the documentary, I commend the crew for the work they did. They did the best they could to report what they saw. However, they let preconceived notions and a minute slice of experience significantly influence their perspective. This is inevitable to some extent, but incredibly dangerous in this case. When it happens with a small news story, not such a big deal. But 99.9% of the population has no experience or knowledge on Afghanistan so their opinions and everything they know is based on what they read (yeah right) and what they watch (the preponderance). This gives those who report on Afghanistan great power, but also great responsibility. We can only hope those who consume this swill are more than sheep.

-There are ANP units of all levels of competency. The one we were with was stellar. Sure, others we worked with left much to be desired, but it wasn't the norm. At times units farther away from the 'flagpole' have less supervision and fewer resources. They resort to what they're used to and what they need to do to survive, which is expected. Lord of the flies anyone? People tend to act that way in such environments, even in the US.

-The documentary was disappointing because it sought to show the Afghans in a bad light. It was unbalanced and failed to explain some of the cultural reasons behind some of the examples. Their culture is fundamentally different from ours and they do the best they can to survive in that environment. Service members are there for between 7-12 months, it's a sprint for us. They've been there and will be there for the long haul. In their past, how many nations have come and gone? What does such turmoil do to a culture, a nation, and its people?

-There is a significant focus on drug use, which is somewhat missing the point. How prevalent is drug use in the United States? If the US had the history of Afghanistan with a fledgling government and security forces, would it be any different? Our culture sees drug use differently than theirs. Our alcohol is their weed. Should a professional force be under the effects of substances while on duty? No, but let's talk more about why things are the way they are. As the force professionalizes, these things will improve.

-Sangin, the region in most of the filming, is one of the worst parts of Afghanistan. What if we made a documentary about the worst parts of the US? The ghettos and slums, homeless, murders, drug use, etc. and named it "This is what America looks like." The US documentaries on these issues pale in comparison to all of the positive coverage. All we see about Afghanistan are the shitty things. Not the progress, not the new schools or education, not the hard working people. When we do, it's drowned out by the bad stuff.

-The same goes for corruption. We can't help but see corruption through our Western lens, but it's seen differently in Afghanistan. Think about how an Afghan documentary would talk about US alcohol consumption, fashion, sex, and other aspects of our culture? It'd probably sound quite similar. It's almost impossible to think of it differently because we've had the luxury of structure, strong government, order, etc. in the land of plenty.

-I'm not an expert in Afghanistan, but the perspective in this documentary is unfair. Sure, some advisor teams were embedded with subpar units lead by completely corrupt, uninvolved commanders but this is not a representation of units or the government as a whole.

-Why does this documentary point out every wrong thing the Afghans do in the course of their day? What about the good things? I'm sure if I held a camera on any of us all day it'd be easy to pick us apart. It's an easy thing to do when you haven't been the one struggling.

-During the year our Afghans made significant progress. They wanted to get better and they did. Now they have their own sustainable training programs and they're getting better all the time. Are they perfect? No. Do they still make mistakes? Yes.

-What was this documentary actually trying to achieve? The reporter is from the UK, what about the UK's history in Afghanistan. Let's talk about their losses in Afghanistan and the general sentiment towards Afghans. After spending some time at the MOB in Lashkar Gah, it's quite disappointing to see how Afghans (even our interpreters) are treated at times by British military personnel. Let's get a crew and film that. Are the UK forces bad? Not at all, they're great, they're our brothers and we rely heavily on each other. But if you're filming 24/7 it's easy to point out every time someone stumbles, because we all do it. At the very least, acknowledge your biases as a source of news.

-This documentary is one-sided. The unfortunate thing is that most people look for things that validate their existing arguments. I can only imagine the countless people nodding their heads watching the documentary who can't even find Afghanistan on a map and who've learned everything they know about Afghanistan through the news or shit documentaries like this.

I'm not an expert on Afghanistan and I am speaking from my experiences with multiple Afghan units from all pillars. In my time there I worked with units in Helmand and Nimroz provinces and spent some time in Kabul.

Is Afghanistan doomed? I don't know. But I do know that encouraging negative sentiment based on minimal experience doesn't help and it's a betrayal of the trust people put in those who deliver their news. It's also a disservice to every service member who's spent time or gave their lives to make it work. We all do the best we can, but our 'best' correlates with what's on the line. When you're responsible for shaping opinions on significant issues like this, you need to do a better job of being balanced. Maybe I'm off here because I never watch the news and maybe this is the norm, but it's disappointing nonetheless.

For more context on the Afghan people see this my post in this thread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5557881> It's about interpreters in Afghanistan. Most of our interpreters were local Afghans. Some used to be (or easily could have been) Afghan police or Army. The Afghans are a great people who were just dealt a shitty hand.

<comment><USER30> > First off, I didn't watch the whole thing

> It was unbalanced and failed to ...

How do you know what it failed to do? You didn't watch the whole thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Search for: A new law signed by President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan requires Shiite women to ask their husband's permission before leaving the home and forces them to have sexual intercourse. ... Human rights activists say the new law grants even fewer rights to women than when the Islamist Taliban held sway.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Try to find a police chief who doesn't fuck young boys."

Ouch.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there an easy way to download this video for later?

<comment><USER34> Legally? Not sure.

Illegally, a search for [panorama mission accomplished] probably returns relevant results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> At first, as the movie started and one of the US troops was trying to teach those Afghan troops not to shit, eat, and clean themselves in the same spot, gauging by the response of the Afghan in-charge, I figured it was a pointless and insulting thing to do...

Than as I watched more of the movie, I realized that more than likely that Afghan group was doing exactly that - and there was probably some type of hazard going among them.

I'm about 30 minutes into the movie, and I really can't make sense of the buffoonery and self-destructive behavior displayed by the Afghan side. Is a product of nature, culture, situation ... what is it?

Though what I can make sense of, is why historically the only successful means of controlling and stabilizing that region of the world was -> strong-rule <\- (like the Taliban's). Because it must of cut right through all that bullshit.

I'm not sure how the US troops must put up with all the crap.

<comment><USER36> Its the product of growing up in a destabalized war torn country. Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to fight a proxy war with America. Most of the Afghan population since has had to etch our some kind of post-war anarhic life.

Is it no surprise that you think their lifestyles/societies are backwards when you write your comments from a first world country that hasnt seen occupation and invasion in however many years (assuming you're from a western country that is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think the problem is that the enemy changed the rules and the generals unlike the foot soldiers took a lot of time to understand it (if they even have). [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general- failure/309148/)

There are no military objectives or territory worth holding for them. Their goal is to just inflict as much pain as possible on the US troops knowing that they can outlast them. The US has army that can deal with any conventional threat (from which there are few) or properly defined objective, but seems unprepared for country occupation/building mission (and with good reason, the Army as a foreign policy tool is not wise).

</comment><comment><USER38> Afghanistan: a graveyard of empires.

</comment><comment><USER39> It was a stupid idea and a waste of time.</comment>


Do Software Code Smell Checkers Smell Themselves?: A Self Reflection - <AUTHOR> http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:1458340 <comment><USER2> Interesting! For those of who might skip reading the source -- The authors ran various code quality tools on the source of the code quality tools themselves. The results were not great.

> These tools display a number of code smells despite the fact that their main > goal is to help developers get rid of the extra effort needed to find code > smells. Therefore, these implements could be perceived as having > questionable quality, and as a result, inadequate trustworthiness. > > > Nevertheless, all of the detection tools did have an accuracy-rate of at > least 50%, with three out of the total seven tools exhibiting an accuracy- > rate as high as 70% according to our tests.</comment>


Delete hidden photos/videos with tinder like interface to free up space[Android] - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pilanites.duster <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Guys, I have seen many people struggling to get rid of the photos and videos occupying their precious mobile storage. To make the process simpler and faster, I have made an android app which digs out all the hidden/visible photos and videos to get some free space back. Please give it a try and provide some feedback. :) Link to the app - [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pilanites....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pilanites.duster)</comment>


Introducing Mercury OS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jasonyuan/introducing-mercury-os-f4de45a04289 <comment><USER2> This is a very well-done _design_ mock-up for a GUI desktop environment. The depth of the visualization and interaction design seems to me to have taken months of refinement.

Not an "OS", an interaction design.

This is not an implementation of running example code, but it could be.

I would love this.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Mercury is designed, first and foremost, to be an experience inclusive of > people with limited executive function and cognitive load. People living > with ASD, ADHD, and other neurological differences who are frequently > overwhelmed by the flood of sensory information we have all come to expect > in conventional operating systems.</comment>


Show HN: Instant Search for 850+ Mixergy Interviews - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/all-interviews/ <comment><USER2> P.S Andrew is asking for feedback here:

A GIANT, searchable list with every single Mixergy interview. You like???

[http://mixergy.com/a-giant-searchable-list-with-every- single...](http://mixergy.com/a-giant-searchable-list-with-every-single- mixergy-interview-you-like/)

<comment><USER3> Looks like it's consistently the most popular page on the site. That's pretty good feedback on its own.</comment></comment>