There’s a few red flags here on the hiring side too.
I’ve given a lot of interviews, candidates will always try to come up with the best story as an answer to your question because “I can’t think of an example” is not an acceptable answer. It’s a demand you’re placing on them.
Also having experience puffed up on a resume happens around 100% of the time. The point of the interview is to figure out how much real relevant experience the candidate has.
OP was right to end the interview as they were an unprepared candidate and a bad fit, but low-key threatening someone with “word gets around” who’s trying to find a job and probably starting to panic about not having one doesn’t make him the good guy in this story that he thinks it does.
OP could have just told them not to use AI in future, but even that’s unnecessary as the lesson’s already been learned.
(I’ve also noticed that towards the end of the post OP mentions this, but it doesn’t line up with the actual call as described unfortunately)
When doing a technical screen I'll sometimes pick a skill the person claims to have, and ask them the simplest possible non-trivial question I can ask.
For example, let's say you list 'SQL' as one of the skills on your CV. I might show you a SQL statement like:
SELECT id, start_date FROM employees;
(EDIT: I meant SELECT id, start_date FROM employees ORDER BY id;)
I'll tell you id is an auto-increment field, and ask whether the result would show the newest employee at the top or the bottom.
You have a 50/50 chance of getting it right. If you get it wrong, I'll tell you the answer. Getting it wrong wouldn't disqualify you.
Then I'll ask you how to get it in the opposite order.
I am expecting you to immediately say 'add DESC'. If you can't answer that question in under 2 seconds, you probably haven't written enough SQL to justify listing it as a skill on your CV.
You would be surprised at how many people fail simple tests just like this one.
If you’re really good at what you do, there’s no need to embellish. Company is looking for five years of experience in something that’s only been available for four years? Screw ‘em, you don’t want to work at such a stupid place anyway. Good employers know how to find good employees.
I was sharing this story and responding to various comments (here) in my conversations elsewhere on the Internet, and as part of my statements I questioned about quoting/paraphrasing the "word gets around" to determine if this is best way to reference the point, and thought I may as well share it here too. https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_c0378709-b716-48af-8996-a0e4...
Large companies aren’t driven by opinion/ethics/politics except where there’s a branding incentive, so the motivation here is cost/risk.
That these same companies are actively trying to nope right out of the US tech market where they can shows that they’ve priced in very real costs to both Trump’s unpredictability and the very predictable response to tariffs in their domestic markets.
Trump’s second term may end up being a great thing for tech markets outside of the US, as it drives investment into those regions and actively away from the status quo of SV hegemony.
>Large companies aren’t driven by opinion/ethics/politics except where there’s a branding incentive
The USA tech corps are falling in with Trump, presumably so as to get favourable tax situations and such. That makes them subject to his vagaries.
Surely, Trump might rug pull your IT services if you're competing with someone who gave him a bribe is a massive reason to move.
Companies need to operate under the rule of law which is now vacant in USA.
With threats, no matter how stupid, to invade allies. What are European companies going to do when Trump has their compute switched off? Or trade embargoes are put in place because Trump tried to takeover Greenland?
These seem to be real risks to business continuation that arise out of Trump's politics.
Companies operate in these sorts of conditions all the time - always have done.
Buy off the junta that runs the place and you can do what you want. Oil companies, mining companies, clothing companies, all the same.
Normally the company is bigger than the people you’re bribing though, and that makes the USA unique, and more akin to working in North Korea rather than Nigeria.
Its not until we actually see numbers. This guy could be making up/exaggerating ( "everyone" really?) these stories, because thats what ppl do on the internet.
These type of protests usually die down because human beings always choose convenience and lower price.
Also see blm, dei and other "movements" that died down as soon as news cycle changed.
It's not just a consumer movement, it's Europe itself moving to get away from an unreliable schizophrenic ally. You can't make long-term plans when every 4 years you're playing russian (eh) roulette with your partner.
The movement might slow down, but it's fundamentally different from a social movement limited to the US.
> Europe itself moving to get away from an unreliable schizophrenic ally
Are your referring to greenland gaining independence from denmark? good for them .
Why is denmark so hesitant to give up control of greenland if thats what ppl of greenland want. Colonial mindset ? They have king thats changing flags. nothing says allies than "boiling viking blood" OG colonizers still living in middle ages.
BLM, DEI etc are things that people care about, and will continue to care about. The news cycle promotes or rejects such concerns because they're driven by advertising and political favour. If you know about these things because of the news cycle, and your opinions are shaped by the news cycle, then the vested interests of advertising and political favour are cheering.
The news cycle should be orthogonal to your opinions on such matters. It shouldn't form them. A good acid test is to ask yourself if you had an opinion on something before it appeared in the news. If not, be very wary of the opinion that you adopt.
> The news cycle should be orthogonal to your opinions on such matters. It shouldn't form them. A good acid test is to ask yourself if you had an opinion on something before it appeared in the news. If not, be very wary of the opinion that you adopt.
The thing is - a lot of actually very important topics got swept under the rug for a loooong time. Let's just take gay people for example. Up until the late 90s, gays got routinely beaten up by police, called "pedophiles"... hell it took until 2011 until open gays could serve in the military. That all only changed due to widespread outrage (and a few constitutional courts reinterpreting constitutional wording).
I’m admittedly really out of the loop on battery tech developments but I was hopeful the industry was slowly steering towards iron/sodium batteries to replace lithium for reasons of cost and pollution. Did that hit a roadblock or is it just still very early stage?
Now I'm starting to wonder if that guy habitually leaves the door open because he got sick of people winking at him with a wry smile every time he had to go to a job.
Same. I can totally buy the joystick and the robot as I've seen this done in my area, but the rack mounted PCs and the headphones makes it seem awfully like he's telling Tom Cruise which wire to cut.
It’s pretty clear from Macron’s speech that we’re heading into a massive nuclear escalation over the next few years, he has as much as said so.
Since the Cold War, nuclear non-proliferation has been based entirely on the idea that NATO would balance Russia and vice versa.
Given that NATO as it has been understood is now effectively dead, the non-proliferation treaty is essentially dead too.
Europe needs to rapidly increase it’s nuclear weapons stockpile (and realises this), but this also gives other countries around the world an incentive/excuse to do the same.
Canada has no nuclear umbrella of its own, is not part of a mutual defence alliance beyond NATO, and they are being actively threatened with annexation by a Russia-controlled US. They’ll clearly need to build or agree by pact their own nuclear defence as a matter of national emergency. It’s hard to see how anyone will place much trust in such pacts ever again though.
It’s a scarier world we’re entering, and is significantly more dangerous than even the Cuban missile crisis.
I think it is actually a bit worse than that - there are currently troops hostile to Russia in Kursk. So say what you like, it has been demonstrated that it is possible to put hostile troops in a major nuclear power's territory without provoking a nuclear response.
Unless we assume that the Russians are substantially more pacifistic than the rest of the world, that suggests that the concept of a nuclear umbrella doesn't exist. If Kursk appears not to be covered by the Russian nuclear umbrella in practice, what realistically will cause any country to fire off nuclear missiles? It is reasonable to say more than an invasion of a close ally. The entire MAD principle seems to have partially broken down over the last few years. Executing a land invasion of Russia, however symbolic, crossed a major line.
A lot of rhetoric now looks decidedly like bluff and bluster.
Can't resist posting this classic video from "yes minister" that discusses the "zeno's paradox" of MAD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg-UqIIvang (The general idea is that in a slowly escalating conflict may be no clear logical point where it makes sense to "push the button" first).
I don't think it's bluff and bluster. Nuking Ukraine would hurt Russia and the international condemnation would be so much more than just the invasion it isn't worth it.
If a country further away like the US or Turkey tried a land invasion, then they might not be so cautious to react.
If Kursk appears not to be covered by the Russian nuclear umbrella in practice, what realistically will cause any country to fire off nuclear missiles?
Existential threat. An attack like Prigozhin's mutiny; an overwhelming force approaching Moscow, with nothing in the way to stop them. This is a realistic scenario where nuclear weapons could be launched as a final "fuck you". Ukraine was in this kind of final stand when Russian forces were on the outskirts of Kyiv, an attack on the city was expected at any moment, and soldiers were handing out guns and ammo from dump trucks to anyone who wanted them. This is the moment to launch nuclear weapons, if you have any. The final, desperate moment before being overrun.
Kursk is nothing of the sort. Russia attacked Ukraine, Ukraine countered, and pushed Russian forces back by 10 miles into Russian territory - so what? Trying to spin this as a "land invasion of Russia" is ridiculous hyperbole that even Russian military experts don't take seriously. I distinctly remember one of them demonstratively rolling his eyes and sighing when Solovyov tried to push the same narrative with leading questions on his show.
I don’t see it that way. MAD does not really come into play here and no, Russia is not pacifist, albeit reluctant, reserved, and level headed; arguably to a fault.
And then there’s the reality that Kursk has only played into the Russian’s hands in many different ways, including, that it split already inferior forces in an attrition war and on the geopolitical level where it caused Chinese caution and reluctance about the whole Russian operation to essentially immediately fall away due to the insanity and recklessness if the Kursk operation, which only has gotten more solidified due to the atrocities against civilians committed by the Ukrainians.
You appear to see things in a very narrow scope that is predominated by propagandistic perspectives. If land invasion were some kind of cause for launching nukes, then the wholesale invasion and infiltration by Mexico and its cartels that have killed around 1M Americans would have been cause to, e.g., nuke southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
Do you want nuclear exchanges? Would you have preferred for Russia to have nuked its own territory instead of just using it to their advantage to draw in immense resources in a Ukrainian self created kettle?
The fundamental misunderstanding of all the Ukie cheer leaders is that they think this is one type of war, when it’s actually a whole different type of war where Russia is intentionally going it slow. “Russia Is losing their shock and awe, blitz war” they tell you, not knowing Russia is fighting more of a millstone war, grinding up all the Ukrainian men Downing Street and Biden fed into it.
This is simply not a scenario where something as reckless as using nuclear weapons is yet warranted even though the West and people like you keep trying to edge us closer to it in the belief that you can just feet away with these kinds of provocations forever … until humanity finds out that there was a line … and life on earth ends because of recklessness of narcissistic psychopaths with god-complexes.
Sure. But Kursk matters more to Russia than Poland matters to the US.
So if a land invasion by foreign troops is going to be interpreted as no big deal, why would the fall of Poland matter from a nuclear standpoint? You can see it building in the public discourse as people convince themselves that they can push to an absurd distance without Russia being able to respond - we've seen their border integrity violated, strikes on Moscow, British missiles being lobbed in to Russian territories, an explicit US strategy of bleeding them out and fairly credible calls for regime change where it isn't obvious how far the US is acting on the idea.
If we assume by symmetry that the US would take similar abuse before it launched any nukes, what on earth is supposed to happen in Europe to provoke a serious response? I wouldn't chance it, but it looks a lot like they're bluffing a willingness to do anything and some idiot dressed up as a general will one day will do something really stupid. We're exploring for the line where Russia breaks the nuclear taboo here; as far as I remember the game-theoretic response to salami tactics is supposed to be wildly disproportionate aggression. And there is a decent chance that it'll go unpunished since the US is clearly not going to stand up for Ukraine to the point where it risks blowback to the US proper.
I don't think we can say that the nuclear umbrella is illusory until there is direct conflict and invasion across the frontier between what's left of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Ukraine's incursion into Kursk does not realistically threaten the long-term integrity and security of Russia, while Ukraine's self-defense has demonstrated that the cold-war fear of Russia blitzkrieging its way to the Atlantic is not realistic.
Maybe Putin's non-invocation (up to now) of the nuclear umbrella shows he is as eager as anyone to maintain it as the ultimate protection against existential threats. The US's sharp turn away from globalism is a gift to Putin, and, given that the US population is strongly divided over the changes the current administration is making, that might be threatened if Russia were to act more belligerently than it already is.
Personally, I'm more concerned over what will happen if and when the situation becomes one in which Trump realizes he's going to be seen as the president who 'lost' Taiwan.
> Ukraine's incursion into Kursk does not realistically threaten the long-term integrity and security of Russia
The US is claiming 700,000+ Russian killed and wounded so far. Moscow obviously think something here is a threat to the long term integrity and security of Russia. That is serious commitment.
Unless the US is lying. I hope they are, to be honest. Mountains of skulls are fun in D&D but not in real wars.
Neither the commitment nor the losses (and, for the sake of this issue, I'll take the US numbers as realistic) imply that Russia will lose Kursk indefinitely. Even if Ukraine could somehow hold on to it, I don't think it is realistic to think that any party would hold up a resolution of this conflict in an almost-certainly futile attempt to force Russia to cede any territory that it legitimately held prior to its incursions into Ukraine.
I share your feelings about the entirely avoidable horror of it all.
Russia, level headed? The whole war is a big fucking joke in the first place. An utterly cruel and pointless land grab by an ultranationalist with a bruised ego. Now Russians and Ukrainians will curse each other for generations.
> And then there’s the reality that Kursk has only played into the Russian’s hands in many different ways, including, that it split already inferior forces in an attrition war and on the geopolitical level where it caused Chinese caution and reluctance about the whole Russian operation to essentially immediately fall away due to the insanity and recklessness if the Kursk operation, which only has gotten more solidified due to the atrocities against civilians committed by the Ukrainians.
Some sources please (ideally not Russian propaganda, but I would be asking for too much, would I?). I haven't noticed any change in Chinese stance after Kursk incursion. The operation has been a gambit by the Ukraine to divide the attention of weary Russian occupants.
> atrocities against civilians committed by the Ukrainians.
War is hell and everything, but Ukrainians seem to be much more precise when trying to achieve their goals. Did you not notice Russian army targeting schools and hospitals? Bucha massacre?
> You appear to see things in a very narrow scope that is predominated by propagandistic perspectives
As you do.
> If land invasion were some kind of cause for launching nukes, then the wholesale invasion and infiltration by Mexico and its cartels that have killed around 1M Americans would have been cause to, e.g., nuke southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
Are you really comparing military operation to US opioid epidemic?
> Russia is intentionally going it slow
Sources? Russia planned a 2 day special operation. It seems that Ukrainians have been doing most of the grinding, not the other way around.
> … and life on earth ends because of recklessness of narcissistic psychopaths with god-complexes.
Like Putin, Trump and their supporters (yeah, looking at you).
Well, a French nuclear umbrella that can only be used at the direct orders of the French president is quite useless.
If Warsaw is nuked, I do not believe the French would nuke back. DeGaulle believed the same about the US (and I agree), therefore France has nuclear weapons.
Macron makes grand speeches, but could not even keep the French presence in Niger (African country, in case someone misreads).
I agree with your assessment. This is the biggest long-term issue with the less than full support of Ukraine, after they gave up the world's third largest nuke arsenal. Now, the USA signalling that they are not a reliable NATO partner, in general.
In my opinion, this will all lead to nuclear proliferation at levels not seen for decades. This has been my main argument to US folks who don't really care about Ukraine, since 2022. Their argument has been "you are playing with WWIII!" My argument has been that inaction on Ukraine will lead to increased chances of some nuclear exchange in the long-term.
With the winding down of globalism I don’t think anyone in France really believes Niger to be core to their interests. Violently moving EU and NATO borders would be very much attacking their very core interests so I don’t think it’s quite the same situation
France were sort of guests and Niger asked them to leave. You can't easily maintain that presence. He may not nuke Russia because Warsaw is occupied, but that's a different kettle of fish.
>It’s pretty clear from Macron’s speech that we’re heading into a massive nuclear escalation over the next few years, he has as much as said so.
The only reason to expect escalation is that they insist on supporting a war right up to Russia's border. They do need to be prepared to defend themselves but I think they only have to worry if they keep instigating wars with other nuclear powers. Don't you think Russia is similarly concerned about getting nuked? That's why they won't suffer hostile forces putting missile bases only a few miles from their border. That is in fact half of what the Ukraine war is about.
>Canada has no nuclear umbrella of its own, is not part of a mutual defence alliance beyond NATO, and they are being actively threatened with annexation by a Russia-controlled US. They’ll clearly need to build or agree by pact their own nuclear defence as a matter of national emergency. It’s hard to see how anyone will place much trust in such pacts ever again though.
If you think the US is actually going to allow Canada or Mexico to be invaded, you're really out of touch. It's akin to how Russia won't allow Ukraine to become a hostile neighbor without intervening to stop it.
>It’s a scarier world we’re entering, and is significantly more dangerous than even the Cuban missile crisis.
It's not in fact more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis. Cuba had 1500 Soviet nukes (if I recall correctly) on their soil unbeknownst to JFK. War was only averted because the Soviets decided to pull out rather than launch all the nukes. The only sense in which things are more dangerous now is that we've got actual warmongers in charge of some NATO countries who think that they can strategically defeat the most heavily-armed country in the world in its own backyard.
> That's why they won't suffer hostile forces putting missile bases only a few miles from their border.
Nobody put any missiles in Eastern Europe. That's a worn-out Russian talking point that lacks any substance.
And the Cuban missile crisis proves exactly the opposite of what you are trying to argue. I stress the name: MISSILE crisis. After nuclear missiles were removed, Cuba remained an ally of the USSR until its very end and continued to host conventional Soviet forces. The USSR equipped Cuba with weapons such as Koni-class frigates and SA-8 surface-to-air missile systems, gave them hundreds of T-55 and T-62 tanks, stationed Soviet bombers and fighter jets in Cuba, and used Cuban ports to conduct exercises such as sailing missile cruisers like Admiral Isakov within 50 miles of the Mississippi coast in the 1980s. The cooperation, including visits by Russian warships to Cuban ports with exercises 30 miles off the Florida coast, continues to this day: https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/history/2024/06/12/rus...
If Cuba is a blueprint for you, then you have nothing to complain about. Even full members of NATO do not receive this level of support from the alliance.
Cuba is not a blueprint. It's just a vaguely similar situation. Cuba is much smaller than Ukraine and also not on our border. Although Russian ships can visit Cuba, they can also travel in international waters just as close to the US as Cuba. They are also limited to what can be carried on ships, and we can see any surface ships coming from space. Russian involvement with Cuba is not at all the same as, say, Russia hypothetically backing a coup by anti-US politicians in Canada or something (which is essentially equivalent to what we have done in Ukraine for at least a decade). It is common knowledge that the contested Ukrainian election of 2014 pitted pro-US candidates against pro-Russia candidates. You can believe what you want about the outcome. But clearly, both our side and their side were taking a keen interest in controlling Ukraine, and the Russians have more legitimate interest in that than we do considering how close they are culturally and geographically.
>Nobody put any missiles in Eastern Europe. That's a worn-out Russian talking point that lacks any substance.
It doesn't lack substance. They seriously worry about that. And like I said, it is only half the story. Another huge issue for them is that US interests interfered in Ukrainian politics to destabilize relations with Russia, which was set to deprive them of bases that they were set to have in Ukraine. Another issue had to do with the Nazi leadership of Ukraine. Another had to do with shelling of Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbas and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine. The Nazism and attacks on civilians were covered by even the Western press until our side decided they wanted to fight a war in Ukraine. Then all of that information was brushed under the rug so that we could claim we were supporting the good guys.
> Don’t you think Russia is similarly concerned about getting nuked?
No, because they are..
> the most heavily-armed country in the world
Russia threatens nuclear war all the time. They’re not concerned about it at all. Most of what they do as a country is tell other countries how big their nuclear missiles are in a menacing tone.
>Russia threatens nuclear war all the time. They’re not concerned about it at all. Most of what they do as a country is tell other countries how big their nuclear missiles are in a menacing tone.
You misunderstood the situation. If MAD is to remain an effective deterrent, no country can allow another to get the upper hand. That can happen for example through one country putting a missile base 5 minutes away from your border. Russia sees a move like that as a strategic threat and thus they feel justified in waging war to prevent it. That is even more justified when the territory in question is not even belonging to a nuclear-armed country. We too threatened nuclear war when it came to the Soviets putting nukes in Cuba.
The missile thing is just the most extreme example. There are many military advantages conveyed by proximity. We already put nuclear-capable F-16s in Ukraine for example. Those could easily be used in a massive attack.
> We already put nuclear-capable F-16s in Ukraine for example.
So no missiles, no missile bases. The best you can come up with are a bunch of old fighter jets delivered a full decade after Russia invaded, to shoot down cruise missiles and drones launched at Ukrainian cities. Proves the point.
On the other hand. The current world benefits countries like US, Russia and China. A world order where any country cannot be pressured by any super power is interesting.
I agree that NATO is practically dead since USA is now acting on behalf of Russia. It might be easier to remove the MAGAs than rework everything, but in that scenario USA is still untrustworthy and Russia wins. Yikes. Trump has really fucked the entire world and set us in motion toward WWIII ... and we're part of the AXIS. Double yikes.
Look at Biden’s deference to Russia over Ukraine and Israel over its neighbours. (Or Bush and Obama with Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya versus North Korea.) There is a nuclear sovereignty subtly expressed by decades of American Presidents. In part due to realism. But in part because triggering a nuclear war, even a limited one, is presumed punsihable heavily diplomatically and electorally.
Trump, of course, has accelerated this shift. But Le Monde Diplomatique wrote elegantly about it in ‘22 [1].
Pakistan, which some may not realize is a nuclear power, is also one of the best examples. We invaded and occupied Afghanistan for decades under the pretext of it being Bin Laden safe haven.
It turns out Bin Laden was in Pakistan directly adjacent to the premises of Pakistan's top military academy. So we do the most minimal in and out operation imaginable, and then shortly thereafter got back to shipping Pakistan billions of dollars in "aid."
The world going nuclear is only a danger when one nation begins to think they could win a nuclear conflict, or are enticed to play chicken with another nuclear power. Outside of that nukes are almost certainly the reason that the window from ~1945 to today has been, by far, one of the safest in the developed world. Without nukes the Cold War would, with complete certainty, have ended up as WW3.
That works until it doesn’t. Nukes still allow for proxy wars and that’s what we’ve been having, it’s not like the conflicts will go away when you can’t use proxies because they now have nukes of their own.
Trading a lower frequency of war for a more devastating consequence has worked thus far, but when people start to act like such consequences are an impossibility they’ll push risk right up to the edge - and someday someone will eventually go over it. Ironically triggering the thing that was supposed to be impossible.
I completely agree. It's one of many reasons I think becoming a multiplanetary species is important. There's also the unspoken issue. There is approximately a 100% chance that most of every major superpower has classified biological weapons programs, and those could easily end up even worse than nukes. And in the scenario of a 'conventional' WW3, they would likely be unleashed.
Basically, we're screwed if the world doesn't trend towards peace. And even times of peace will always be liminal, because people are people. So I think we should (1) aiming for positive relations, (2) aiming to minimize the scope and scale of the wars that do inevitably happen, and (3) aim to get setup on other planets.
Perhaps the first planet to nuke/virus itself to death can work as a more visible reminder of the dangers for the others. We always learn best by putting our fingers in the fire (and it's no surprise that games of nuclear chicken are arising only once Hiroshima/Nagasaki fall out of living memory), but this is pretty darn close to it at least.
Im more of the opinion that even with world wide nuclear fallout, dangerous viruses, runaway climate change and just about anything else I can think of it’ll still be safer to have colonies on Earth than on Mars. The Marian low density atmosphere alone is enough to kill people. It’s much closer to a vacuum than it is to Earths atmospheric density at which point you might as well build the colony on the moon.
It is much easier to build a long term viable bunker without rocketing the construction materials. If we are to take the extraordinarily optimistic goal of $100kg at face value the price of building anything substantial on Mars is prohibitive. To have a truly independent colony it would require a substantial number of factories.
Mars has vast mineral resources. That's the reason the surface of Mars is red, iron oxide - rust! So the point of a colony is to enable infrastructure to, over time, develop on Mars. For instance another big winner is the Sabatier reaction. CO2 + H2 => methane + water. Starship fuel is, uncoincidentally, methane.
Getting people on Mars will be inspiring and humanity's greatest achievement to date. That it also serves as a 'backup' for humanity, is something that provides a motivation get it done ASAP in times like those that we live in, but is in many ways also largely incidental.
• Colder than Antartica
• Drier than Sahara
• Lower air pressure than top of Mount Everest
• Soil perchlorate concentrations on par with a Superfund cleanup site
• Atmosphere contains negligible oxygen, nitrogen; you need the former, plants need the latter, you need the plants
• No ozone layer (not that you're ever going to be outside, what with the air being unbreathable in two distinct ways)
• No magnetosphere (so CMEs are dangerous rather than being pretty light shows)
• We don't even know yet if the lower gravity is important
I say this as one of the people who finds Mars inspiring, and would even consider being a Martian colonist: The technical capacity to make Earth as uninhabitable as Mars already is, would also threaten Mars.
Nukes? Mars colonies are much more vulnerable. Engineered viruses? If they existed, private companies could already ship them to Mars — etc.
If your goal is a backup for repopulating after a disaster, we can already do hermetically sealed metal boxes isolated from the outside world for long durations at a time, where at least one such box of people is always secreted away in an unknown location at any given moment: nuclear submarines.
I know these things about Mars and am still unconvinced. A fully independent manufacturing pipeline is completely nuts especially at the quality and quantity levels that we are used to. Many materials are not viable except as biproducts of other processes subsidized by the scale of Earth manufacturing. There is no magic wand that we can wave so that if we want it enough we can have it. If humans are indeed capable of such feats then they are capable of the much easier feat of Earth or Moon colonies. Might as well develop an independent manufacturing pipeline on Earth just practice because you wouldn't want to find out the hard way that a critical step doesn't work and it was all for naught. And if the alternative is to stockpile large quantities of chips or rare earth materials then how long are they expected to last, 100s of years?
Ah! The idea is not for people to just go live on Mars as a replacement to Earth. I agree that is unrealistic on anything even remotely reasonable as a timeframe. Rather it's the opposite! Like you mentioned, even in scenarios that kill effectively 100% of people on Earth, it would still be a far more hospitable place than Mars, with very few exceptions.
So the idea of a backup is not that we just go live on Mars, but rather that we have a significant number of people on Mars (and elsewhere ideally) that can return to Earth in such a scenario, help restore order, find/rescue survivors, and generally get society going again. It's simply the planetary equivalent of being able to send in aid to an area after a catastrophic force majeure.
I don't really agree with that at all. You need not only nukes on Mars but multiple advanced and adversarial colonies with nukes for MAD to be a thing. And C&C with a 40 minute round trip latency is not happening. Kind of problematic when the most probable way we get into nuclear war is a country convincing itself it can successfully execute a decapitation strike.
Then you'd also need to know a lot like how nukes would even work on Mars. Dramatically lower atmospheric pressure, amongst other things, will mean nukes will function dramatically differently and be substantially less dangerous. You're looking at dramatically reduced shock/blast waves, less of a threat of fallout (since environmental exposure is already lethal), and so on.
It's another great argument for expansion - each colony will have to deal with different situations, which makes various threats - less threatening. For another example, a directed gamma ray burst could be catastrophic on Earth, and is one hypothesis for the Great Ordovician Extinction, but on Mars it would almost entirely harmless.
The capacity to gently land 150 tons on the surface of Mars, is also the capacity to make 150 tons land at, at least, Martian escape velocity — equivalent to an explosion of 411 tons of TNT.
Doesn't matter if it's RFGs instead of nukes, the people are just as dead. And any belligerents during a nuclear war on Earth will have grounds to presume second-strike capability exists on any affiliated off-planet colony, so will be motivated to attack those colonies as part of the nuclear war on Earth.
> For another example, a directed gamma ray burst could be catastrophic on Earth, and is one hypothesis for the Great Ordovician Extinction, but on Mars it would almost entirely harmless.
Are you sure? I thought even exceptionally focussed GRBs were about 0.1°, and that angle corresponds to maximal Earth-Mars separation at just 0.025 light years, at which point I'd be more worried about the gravitational pull of the GRB star removing both Earth and Mars from Sol orbit.
The biggest threat of things like gamma ray bursts, supervolcanos, asteroid impacts, etc are not the immediate effects. Those effects are dangerous but in a very localized area. The bigger threat is the indirect consequences. For gamma ray bursts, they would deplete the ozone allowing lethal levels of UV through. But on top of this chemical reactions in the atmosphere would produce nitrogen dioxide which itself is poisonous but far more dangerous is that it's basically smog - it would block out the sun driving a massive cooling and potentially impairing photosynthesis resulting in a cycle of death on up the food chain, starting at plants.
On Mars its effect would be largely inconsequential.
Maybe specific Gamma Ray Bursts close by, in general we've already seen at least 16 GRB's in the lifespan of the early Vela satellites and survived those just fine.
I'd venture the biggest threat of a GRB not dampened by distance would be the explosive event that caused a sun to release as much energy in a few seconds as our Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime.
On Mars, where there's no ozone layer in the first place, and the atmosphere is much thinner, and there's no magnetosphere, IIRC just over half the radiation from a GRB reaches the ground.
Given a human cross-sectional area from above is about 0.25 m^2, that means that a human outside during such an event would get 25 kJ almost entirely absorbed by their body.
A lethal dose for a 100 kg human is about 1 kJ absorbed. And when I say "lethal", 1 kJ absorbed is 99%+ lethal within 2-14 days, even with immediate treatment, and the victim suffers rapid incapacitation due to CNS failure.
You'd need to bury everyone under, IIRC, 2-3 meters of regolith to protect against that. You'd also need your crops underground for the same reason. If you're going to all the trouble to have a farm functioning under several meters of soil, you can also do the same things needed for that, on Earth, far more cheaply.
Furthermore, the nitrogen dioxide levels expected in such an event, would reduce Earth surface sunlight levels by 10-60%. Mars, just by being further from the Sun, gets a reduction of 48-64% (varies over the Martian year) relative to Earth — even when there's no planet-spanning dust storms, which it also gets.
This sounds like it came from a chatbot because you're mixing up all sorts of things, some sounding basically nonsensical, full of magic numbers, and then stating it in a plainly defacto and confident fashion. It's nonsensical and completely pointless to engage with.
I gave you a citation, that is about GRBs and interaction with the atmosphere. That's where 100 kJ/m^2 comes from. First page, even, it's in the abstract.
Radiation absorbed dose is measured in Grays, which is Joules/kg, and 8-30 J/kg is the lethal range I gave you, easy to find with trivial search but also so well known you shouldn't need to be told about it if you're serious about rad hazards.
You get from J/kg to J by accounting for mass, and from kJ/m^2 to J by accounting for cross sectional area. Hence 25 kJ actual, and 1 kJ lethal limit.
You can look up radiation mean-free-path shielding constants if you want, but I'm not walking you through what is foundation-level knowledge in this domain. Me, I got that knowledge by having an interest in atomic rockets and fusors back at university, it's not hard to find.
If you can't apply the inverse square law to get Martian sunglight relative to Earth's, or if you don't know about its missing ozone layer or missing magnetosphere, you have no business even thinking about a Mars colony.
At this point, why expect an AI based answer to miss citations when they've got a big friendly button saying "search" right there in the web UI?
In a world with colonies, those colonies become nuclear targets. You may not even have to expend a juke—just ram a ship into it.
My point is that the same logistics that would sustain a Martian colony make striking it easier. Mars isn’t a solution to war on Earth. It’s a long-term insurance policy against planet-wrecking accidents, whether natural or human.
As for viruses, it’s like someone millennia ago arguing that humans expanding to more continents reduces the risk of disease. Yes, for a bit. But the same factors that enable that expansion make global pandemics possible.
Even on Earth colonies would be unlikely to be targeted. Nukes are limited, valuable, and going to be expended on targets in order of priority. For instance Peurto Rico would be extremely unlikely to be a target because it's just a completely worthless target in spite of having millions of Americans. Even from a morale crushing perspective, Americans do not consider Puerto Ricans Americans, in the same way that 'Martian Americans' will not be considered Americans for those living stateside. You'd achieve nothing.
It's because Pakistan has nukes. Nukes essentially make wars unwinnable. This [1] describes the effect of a tiny 0.15Mt nuke going off in NYC. The largest nuke ever detonated was 50+Mt, so more than 300x the yield of what's described there.
And that's one nuke. Pakistan is believed to have hundreds of nukes, and nuclear weapons are also designed such that a single missile will have multiple warheads that will splinter off not only increasing the destruction but also making any sort of missile defense even less viable.
> It's because Pakistan has nukes. Nukes essentially make wars unwinnable
There is no world in which Pakistan could nuke America. I agree on the effect—nukes gave Islamabad cover it wouldn’t have had without them. But the mechanism isn’t military strategic, but something deeper.
There are many ways to deliver nukes other than ICBMs.
Nukes are also the ultimate defensive weapon. Any forces, ships, etc deployed on or near their territory would be toast. One of the many reasons that naval forces are largely obsolete. Aircraft carriers are sitting ducks worth tens of billions of dollars. Pakistan's known nuclear capable missiles have a range of 2750km which means even long distance aerial bombardment is not an answer.
I've heard similar cynical takes on Frances effort, but I don't share them at all.
The US just rug-pulled the framework on which Europe has based it's security guarantees, and European countries have been quietly scrambling for a way to restore a credible deterrence for weeks.
Frances push is essential.
To be fair, European countries have been asleep at the wheel, they should have started preparing after Trumps first term.
France has a credible deterrent that is a valuable asset. It should use it to its advantage.
The US never "protected" Europe out of kindness. France should not, either. It's already given up a lot of things in defense and space in the name of "European unity".
This is how it works. It's just that usually the public is fed nice speeches while the real play happens behind closed door, while Trump has been very undiplomatic and "in your face".
> they should have started preparing after Trumps first term.
They should have started preparing in the 1970s. It takes time to develop an industrial base and a coherent strategy. It was always obvious how relying on a foreign power for sovereignty was short-sighted.
But still it is only grand speeches we are getting from Europe.
And is any one in Europe not skeptical of any increase in defense spending? Things have costs, that money is having to come from somewhere.
Is increasing traditional military spending the way to go in the 21st century? If the decision is left to military leaders,they might spend massive amounts of money preparing to fight yesterday's war.
If you set aside alarmist positions, it may very well possible that Russia has no interests in military conflict with rest of Europe beyond Ukraine. In that case what is the best thing Europeans could do?
But in general, there is lot of fear mongering and fatalism in European leadership. Secondarily, the concept that history can repeat itself is very dubious, the circumstances and events are far too complex for such a simple interpretation.
It is not possible remove a member from the NATO. And we also have for instance Hungary which also acts like a Trump puppet. Each has veto rights. The NATO is broken in more than one way.
I'm far from an expert on French politics, but I decided to do some cursory investigation there because of Macron's often rather radical rhetoric. And I think it comes down to him being a sort of lame duck President. He'll be out of office in 2027 (term limits) and his approval rating is in the 20s-30s, with his party losing its majority in parliament after the 2024 elections.
So he can't do that much. The French President oddly enough does have the power to independently appoint the Prime Minister though which has led to weird things like him (the appointed Prime Minister, after the last one was kicked out by a vote of no confidence) passing things in an undemocratic fashion and then managing to survive multiple votes of confidence thanks to the support of a motley crew of right wing nationalists and left wing socialists.
His Presidency has been generally negative and so I think he's trying to lay out some legacy as framing himself as a sort of hard ass, but it's like a dark barking loudly behind a fence - in large part because there is a fence. Nothing he's proposed will ever happen (and he is well aware of this), so he can be as radical as he wants. It could also be longer term angling to try to eventually play broader role in EU politics, NATO, or whatever else - perhaps especially if the EU does eventually form a multinational military.
You are analysing this from the point of view of the personality of the president. What Macron says is not different from what Sarkozy said, or Chirac, or pretty much all presidents since De Gaulle. The delivery changed, not really the substance. That position is unlikely to change significantly over the long term because it fits the geopolitical interests of the country (and of the EU). There is no significant political movement that is pushing for subservience to a foreign country like there used to be up until the 1990s.
Sarkozy effected a major policy change by rejoining NATO's integrated command. Chirac was aligned on the more traditional policy of independence (including when he carried out nuclear tests).
Since then, the "independence" stance has regressed and weakened to the point that France does not do anything without a German or EU representative by it's side...
> Sarkozy effected a major policy change by rejoining NATO's integrated command.
Macron is not against France being in NATO’s integrated command. Or rather, he would not be if the US were sane.
The issue of the nuclear umbrella and European army are related to NATO, but not mutually exclusive. You cannot understand French recent history if you see it only through the lens of independence with respects to the US.
> Since then, the "independence" stance has regressed and weakened to the point that France does not do anything without a German or EU representative by it's side...
You haven’t been paying attention. The French point of view (well, that of the French government, anyway) is that there is a limit to their economic and military power. They are willing to play nice with their European neighbours because that is a force multiplier and that frees up resources that would otherwise be allocated to European security to do something else* (like international operations about which most other European countries do not care). It is blindingly obvious that France alone would be enough in Ukraine. So of course he’s going to talk to other European governments and try to avoid antagonising them.
* edit: this sounds a by cynical; in reality there are other numerous reasons to be nice with one’s neighbours and it does not boil down only to the military and strategy.
> could also be longer term angling to try to eventually play broader role in EU politics, NATO, or whatever else
He’s trying to preserve the non-proliferation status quo. Either Poland, Finland and Estonia each have nukes or they swap trust from Washington to Paris.
This sentiment is ridiculous and needs to stop. Just because a person's anti-globalist policy choices happen to align with Russia doesn't mean that Russia controls that person.
He has given Russia everything they could ever want in return for nothing, and attacks our allies at every opportunity, if he isn't Russian controlled, he might as well be, for makes no difference.
250% Tariffs on Canada now, does that sound reasonable? Can you think of a single sane reason to even have tarrifs on our close ally Canada? The reason is obvious, to drive a wedge between Canada and the US, and to make both countries poorer for it.
> He has given Russia everything they could ever want in return for nothing
Says someone who doesn't understand anything about Russia. If you actually watched Russian mainstream media you would understand how much they dislike Trump and disagree with him. This sudden overture over Ukraine has even caught them by surprise and they are suspicious, though welcome, of this new development.
To suggest that Trump is Russia-controlled is to expose your complete ignorance of how Russians think. The Russians hated Trump's first term and consider it to be a disaster.
This lie started with Lavrov on Tucker Carlson, where he said the the US is important but Europe cannot be forgiven.
Since the Trump win this talking point is mainstream on all Russian aligned outlets, who previously blamed the US (Nuland, Biden, Obama) for the war.
It is hard to tell what the game is:
1) (Most cynical) Trump and Russia want to divide up the world. Russia gets Ukraine and will not object to the US getting Greenland.
2) (Pragmatic) Both Russia and the US are low on weapons and would actually like a ceasefire. They blame Europe for preventing the deal.
3) (Neocon, continuity of agenda) Trump insults the EU in order to make them increase their military budget, so they can take over the Ukraine war by themselves and never talk to Russia again. The Russian media still hasn't caught on (or just uses the EU as the current convenient enemy for domestic consumption).
Some game is being played here, perhaps it's "the great game".
The US doesn't like the EU as a strong entity on equal footing or the Euro as a strong global currency, but wants weaker and more divided countries that can be controlled.
This isn't a Trump-exclusive thing, the relationship has gradually soured ever since Obama and when TTIP fell through, it just wasn't as public.
I am not the one saying that the US is being controlled by Russia, but it seems like a more reasonable and convincing take than yours at explaining why the US is busy dismantling every leverage of power that made it a global hegemon after the second world war. Surely there are winners, and all evidence points towards them not being the average US citizen (nor that of formerly US-aligned countries).
> explaining why the US is busy dismantling every leverage of power
The same reason Gorbachev got busy dismantling every leverage of power that the Soviet Union exercised in its last days: because he realized it was overextended and needed to slow down or go bankrupt and collapse. It did anyway, despite his best efforts at reform.
Trump and Musk have long been proponents of the idea that the US is overextended and far too deeply in debt. Whether you agree with them or not, that doesn't make them "Russia controlled".
Oh, so now that's because the US is overextended... Then it's formidable that you think they are doing something good and significant about it, because nobody's convinced.
No, I do not believe that Trump and Musk are doing a good job. I just compared them to Gorbachev. But to suggest they are Russia-controlled is batshit insane, it's like the people who say "the Jews control everything".
Can you cite any times he did something the Putin didn't want him to do? And I mean not just saying he's thinking of putting sanctions on Russia but actually doing any sort of sanctions whatsoever while he stops all support and shouts at their victims?
Don't you find it a bit strange that absolutely everything the new US government does and says is good for Russia and disastrous for the traditional allies?
"good for Russia and disastrous for traditional allies" in your interpretation. In the interpretation of others, it is "good for America and better to be anti-globalist".
"good for America"... I don't think Canada or Mexico are thrilled by Trumps actions so far. It's at best good for a handful oligarchs in the USA. For everybody else it will be a rough awakening. I would be very surprised if isolationism will work, it would be a first.
In the sense that the US suddenly came to its senses, yes it is strange. Breath of fresh air.
This war was provoked and escalated by the US State Department. Pulling back and giving the Russians some space is the only way that doesn't look like it'll escalate further into the disaster. Thank goodness the US voting public is a bit better at sniffing out reasonable men than whoever handles hiring for the US government.
If the Europeans could shake the same mad instinct to mass up and charge Russia that worked so badly every other time there was a big war that'd also be helpful. 3rd time is not a charm.
> This war was provoked and escalated by the US State Department.
The State Department provoked the war by:
* Stating that the US would not put boots on the ground if Russia invaded Ukraine.
* Opposing troop deployments from other NATO countries to Ukraine.
* Withdrawing US soldiers from joint exercises in Ukraine.
* Reducing embassy staffing to a minimum.
* Refusing to provide heavy weapons like artillery, tanks, and fighter jets to Ukraine.
* Offering to evacuate Ukraine's leaders.
> Pulling back and giving the Russians some space is the only way that doesn't look like it'll escalate further into the disaster.
This is a superb idea, because it has worked so well so far. Russia has matched every Western retreat by pulling back on its side as well. That's why the war ended three years ago.
>Just because a person's anti-globalist policy choices happen to align with Russia
There's more to it than that.
Who is the worst actor on the international stage? Pretty much Putin. Who does Trump never criticize or do anything against? Putin. After the 2016 election when the US security services said Russia had interfered what did Trump do? Said he trusted Putin over his own intelligence. etc. etc.
Part of the effeminacy is they get what they need now not some time in the future. The old school requisition systems where everything had to be approved in advance and the purchase handled by a purchasing agent was slow and inefficient for small orders. Which is why organizations give their employees a card with a spending limit.
You're totally missing the point of parent. The cost is in how insidiously this behavior ostracizes Android owners over time, just like they've done for years with blue/green bubbles.
I'm an Apple user, and it serves me well, but it absolutely uses really sinister dark patterns to separate me from contacts in the Android world.
I have never gotten the blue green ostacization. It's a color. It denotes whether you're using iMessage or SMS (now the new standard, RCS I think).
Like I've heard of teenagers giving each other shit for it, I have never ever once in my life, myself or any person I've worked or been friends with, gives it a second thought. And if I actually heard someone attempting to make this into a thing I would judge them incredibly harshly.
I don’t mind it at all, nor would I care, but it others people that don’t have an iPhone (especially teenagers), and they also suggest this in their explanation (that a green bubble means the chat is no longer encrypted, even though WhatsApp and RCS exist).
It’s a dark pattern that they’ve rightly been criticized for, but no-one has thus far cared enough to do something about it.
I’ve given a lot of interviews, candidates will always try to come up with the best story as an answer to your question because “I can’t think of an example” is not an acceptable answer. It’s a demand you’re placing on them.
Also having experience puffed up on a resume happens around 100% of the time. The point of the interview is to figure out how much real relevant experience the candidate has.
OP was right to end the interview as they were an unprepared candidate and a bad fit, but low-key threatening someone with “word gets around” who’s trying to find a job and probably starting to panic about not having one doesn’t make him the good guy in this story that he thinks it does.
OP could have just told them not to use AI in future, but even that’s unnecessary as the lesson’s already been learned.
(I’ve also noticed that towards the end of the post OP mentions this, but it doesn’t line up with the actual call as described unfortunately)
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