A lot private schools in the US don't offer transportation services. Many school districts in the US won't do transportation if you're trying to go to any school that you're not originally zoned for. So if you want to send your kids to a nicer private school or if the school you're zoned for is trash, you're in charge of getting them to school.

Yeah, saw them in American movies. I've also heard about the "busing kids in" policy that didn't work, also from the States.

Try to put your 10-year old kid on public transport half-away across the city in any big European city, especially after the sun is out in the winter.

You mean like basically all kids in Munich do, just as an example? Regarding this "better school" thing, that seems to be an almost exclusive US problem.

> that seems to be an almost exclusive US problem

On what basis?

That all the public schools I know in Europe, either directly or indirectly, are pretty much of the same quality (differences for specific teachers not withstanding).

Sending kids to a different school comes down to personal preferences, ranging from available languages to a school being along the commute of a parent or simple preference of tue kid in question. Selecting where to life based on school quality is simply not a thing I know. I do hear a ton of that from the US so.

> That all the public schools I know in Europe, either directly or indirectly, are pretty much of the same quality

That is definitely not the case here in Romania.

One of my personal projects involves mapping the results of Romania's National Exams for pupils at the end of 8th grade (in here [1] are the results for Bucharest), and as you can see on the linked map/link there are definetly better (colored with green, with average school grade higher than the average for Bucharest) and worse schools (colored with red). Going back to 2015, let's say (meaning at this link [2]), one can see that the schools colored green have remained pretty much the same, and the same goes for the red/worst schools.

I have a close friend who's a math highschool teacher in the French Education system and he confirmed to me that a similar situation takes place in France (the Paris area, to be more exact).

[1] https://mihaitc.github.io/scoli/bucuresti/

[2] https://mihaitc.github.io/scoli/2015/bucuresti/

In the UK people move into catchment areas for better schools. How did you measure this equivalent quality of the schools you've assessed?

By doing a very detailed due dilligence of schools in Bavaria, the rest of Germany, Austria, France and Sweden, using the most advanced data science methodologies, including all available for money social studies as summarized by Chat-GPT (which reminds to run that again now that version 4 is out) and having the results put into a picture drawn by Dall-E and vetted by the social science PhD I met as my taxi driver (I don't take Ubers).

Same as in the US.

Could you expand more on your view about the current situation in Ukraine?

I think stuff like how Russian VDV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Airborne_Forces was portrayed before war and what they actually have accomplished example of this.

> That because in the US businesses have functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach

That worked great in the case of PRISM et al

PRISM was not a backdoor into company networks, it was a system by which the companies involved submitted data that was requested through the normal legal channels. You can dispute how valid those legal channels are, but the point is this is widely misunderstood.

Comparing it against the government having "god credentials" to the entire backend is disingenuous.

There are some logical weaknesses there. Do you think the CCP is acting against the wishes of the Chinese government? Obviously what is happening in China is being done through the normal legal channels. The government knows about this and isn't about to prosecute anyone.

The US government is spying on literally everyone. You can't name anyone who has a web presence and isn't caught in the dragnet.

The CCP is the Chinese government. They are one and the same. I don't think you seem to understand much at all about the sophistication of Chinese electronic surveillance.

>>> Do you think the CCP is acting against the wishes of the Chinese government? Obviously what is happening in China is being done through the normal legal channels.

CCP is the Chinese government. They are the law. when you say normal legal channels, it is not the same "normal" as in democratic countries.

No legal channels necessary for non-US citizens. The government just asks and the companies just comply, because why not.

Okay, look. Can we at least recognize that these are not the same? It’s like saying the US has done a bad thing and China has done a bad thing so the US and China have the same number, kind, and quality of oppressions of the public.

This is not true!

An important difference is that the US government doesn't have a "god credential", they have to request the data (and there is a process to request the data involving courts, etc.)

Meanwhile, govt officials in China appear to have unrestricted access

> the US government doesn't have a "god credential"

Why are you so quick to believe they don't, and that China does?

> process to request the data involving courts

Secret courts that rubberstamp agency requests without oversight.

An opaque process of secret courts with secret decisions may be different legally, but in spirit it does not seem that significantly different to me in terms of preventing overreach and abuse.

Especially if you happen to not be a US citizen, in which case there are no actual safeguards anyhow.

IMHO this mirrors nicely the situation of a US citizen being concerned that the Chines govt won't protect their rights. This is how most of the world sees the US "checks" and "balances".

Even though I loathe spying, I must admit that the US (or any country for that matter) does not really have any natural or legal obligations to respect privacy of foreigners abroad.

It is their own business to protect it themselves.

Yeah, but then don't expect people to show much compassion when the same thing happens the other way around and the US immediately cries wolf.

Not an American, and I don't. Big countries throwing tantrums is somewhat ludicrous anyway.

The "secret" part there undoes pretty much your entire contention.

That which doesn't see the light of day may as well not even exist.

How many families are disappeared annually for the wrong political statements in the US?

What's the practical difference between AT&T "god credentials" and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A ?

unless they slap “patriot act” on it.

I’ve lived in Iran, I really don’t see much of a difference in how the US operates. The U.S. just does more paperwork to justify their shit.

To test the hypothesis that China is worse than the US, it doesn't suffice to point out that 'US bad'.

They are obviously talking about public urls.

it’s extremely to share urls needing auth with people who have the same access levels as you, such as in your company

How requiring a Facebook account to use Oculus was their worst mistake? I get it that a few people might be bothered by that, but most people don't care.

You could have just read the article, it explains very clearly what it is about. Or checked the github page linked in the article that provides more information and screenshots.

While the card is not used they can invest the money and the interest earned is a financial revenue.

Humans playing with fire is exacly how we evolved from a primitive society to who we are nowadays.

Well.... we're still a primitive society so.... not sure what you are trying to say.

Well most of his money is in Facebook stocks so he has plenty to lose.

And he'll still have more money than he knows what to do with assuming just about any level of sensible diversification.

or if he never disversifies at all, and FB loses 99% of its value, he'll still have more money than he can spend in a lifetime.