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Listen, I just want to know what machinery someone makes that could possibly last centuries. This was engineering curiosity. Hundreds of billions were spent to

Listen, I just want to know what machinery someone makes that could possibly last centuries. This was engineering curiosity. Hundreds of billions were spent to develop nuclear reactors & spacecraft, and you're lucky if you make it 50 years on any of that, under ideal operating conditions. None of that text answers that. > Halliburton and Bechtel do amazing things, but they also >do a bunch of things I personally think are significantly less amazing, like grab serious asset and business from the post iraq war teardown, where the US forces basically said "fuck you" to european companies and awarded contracts directly to the beltway. Wait, you think it's less than amazing that Halliburton & Bechtel profited from the war and didn't give a chance to the Europeans to also profit off the war? This is a new one.

ggm 8y ago
I did make the centuries claim. Its Hyperbole. So, I don't feel I can answer. because its unprovable. I'd edit the centuries out, but thats sort of cheating so I acknowledge that was hyperbole. I am also skeptical, since nobody makes engineering product that differently: we're all conforming to DIN and ANSI standards which tend to converge. The concrete problems in reactor a in country b wind up reflecting concrete issues in countries c, d, e and don't actually reflect US vs EU much. I don't think its amazing in a trade war, people leveraged war to achieve trade profit. I think its naieve to think there is any systemic "better" here between nation A and nation B and company Aa and company Bb: there is war, and there is trade war, and morals don't come into it. But thanks for validating my underlying theory: the key thing is profit. "Just war" didn't enter into it. Nobody really believes it was about liberation. It was geopolitics and money. GDPR is beneficial to european citizens, but also beneficial to european companies facing offshore data warehousing, and facing US corporates like google who do embrace-extend of US law as google see it, to apply to anyone worldwide. If american corporates wind up opposing GDPR because it disfavours them in business terms, we're net losers not net gainers from some competition outcome. What would be better would be for the FTC (who regulate data privacy) and the DoC to agree we need higher norms here, and some recognition the SCOTUS has arms which reach to the US border but no further.

ggm 8y ago

I did make the centuries claim. Its Hyperbole. So, I don't feel I can answer. because its unprovable. I'd edit the centuries out, but thats sort of cheating so I acknowledge that was hyperbole. I am also skeptical, since nobody makes engineering product that differently: we're all conforming to DIN and ANSI standards which tend to converge. The concrete problems in reactor a in country b wind up reflecting concrete issues in countries c, d, e and don't actually reflect US vs EU much. I don't think its amazing in a trade war, people leveraged war to achieve trade profit. I think its naieve to think there is any systemic "better" here between nation A and nation B and company Aa and company Bb: there is war, and there is trade war, and morals don't come into it. But thanks for validating my underlying theory: the key thing is profit. "Just war" didn't enter into it. Nobody really believes it was about liberation. It was geopolitics and money. GDPR is beneficial to european citizens, but also beneficial to european companies facing offshore data warehousing, and facing US corporates like google who do embrace-extend of US law as google see it, to apply to anyone worldwide. If american corporates wind up opposing GDPR because it disfavours them in business terms, we're net losers not net gainers from some competition outcome. What would be better would be for the FTC (who regulate data privacy) and the DoC to agree we need higher norms here, and some recognition the SCOTUS has arms which reach to the US border but no further.