Support NeoGAF

[DeafTourette]

I'm invested in what B Blade2.0 and rm082e have to say! Honestly!

 

[DragoonKain]

I like how other countries can just hack a country's super sensitive databases, organizations, and send spy devices into another nation's airspace and everyone is just supposed to accept that as the price of doing business.

Not sure what the solution is, and I realize starting conflicts with countries that have nuclear arsenals isn't wise, and all countries do this, including the US. But I'd hope that we retaliate in some way when a country does this kinda shit to us so they know that actions have consequences. Even if that retaliation is simply a retaliatory hack job of their own.

 

[Blade2.0]

Okay, now you're really surprising me. What about the US makes you say this?

Americans can't agree on anything. Our middle class is constantly being eroded for the money to funnel up. We have the highest wealth inequality since the gilded age. Our infrastructure is shot to shit and we haven't completed one bullet train track when even poorer countries than us have hundreds to thousands of miles of track laid. We had our highest number of homeless this year since the great depression with around 750k unhoused individuals. Our health care industry is bankrupting citizens left and right. We also are having less children than before. Not as low as China, but we are at record lows also. To top it all off our next administration is not going to do a damn thing to address any of these issues. The USA is in rapid decline.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

I have no idea why the west won't wake up. China is a threat. CCP would have us all sterilised and die out if they could get away with. Then repopulate the planet with han Chinese; then rewrite human history.

This. I think the West is aware, and actively working to prevent that. China is growing old faster than it is getting rich, it’s a matter of a few decades. They have zero knowledge immigration and their authoritarian system actively prevents best and brightest from having an impact.

 

[Kurotri]

In what way do you mean exactly?

I was speaking specifically about their demographic collapse. Their population is aging at a rate that is faster than any in human history. Their strength for many decades has been a massive workforce with a bottomless supply of interest free capitol from their government. They've been able to throw massive amounts of people and free money at manufacturing and construction which led them to becoming the hub of cheap production. But that entire system depends on having that massive workforce of young workers who can churn out products. They no longer have that.

It's like having a car with an engine that has less and less horsepower every month and also gets worse gas mileage. Eventually the engine consumes so much gas, and gets weak enough that it doesn't make sense to drive the car anymore.

They don't have a healthy economy that can support a move to automation like Japan. Automation is a very expensive process, and it takes a lot of highly skilled workers to build out. That's just not in the cards for China. They also can't borrow more money from anyone else because they don't have any collateral to justify it. They can keep printing Yuan, but they're already so overextended their system is showing signs of serious stress.

You got me curious, so I want to ask since I'm not as knowledgable: Doesn't Japan (and well, Korea?) face the exact same issue that China does? In regards to more having more old people than young ones. Aren't they basically heading towards the same future? Why is that that Japan can afford automation but China can't?

 

[Northeastmonk]

I have to wonder how they secured their environment. Firewalls are suppose to catch attacks like this. I wonder if they were using Fortinet products? You can block traffic from countries with Geo filtering. I have no idea how this attack was administered. You can lock things down, but usually attacks like these are with users with crappy passwords.

 

[Blade2.0]

You got me curious, so I want to ask since I'm not as knowledgable: Doesn't Japan (and well, Korea?) face the exact same issue that China does? In regards to more having more old people than young ones. Aren't they basically heading towards the same future? Why is that that Japan can afford automation but China can't?

America is also in that situation. We just usually allowed for more immigration to offset it, but nowadays, the right wants to deport everyone that keeps us going.

 

[rm082e]

Americans can't agree on anything. Our middle class is constantly being eroded for the money to funnel up. We have the highest wealth inequality since the gilded age. Our infrastructure is shot to shit and we haven't completed one bullet train track when even poorer countries than us have hundreds to thousands of miles of track laid. We had our highest number of homeless this year since the great depression with around 750k unhoused individuals. Our health care industry is bankrupting citizens left and right. We also are having less children than before. Not as low as China, but we are at record lows also. To top it all off our next administration is not going to do a damn thing to address any of these issues. The USA is in rapid decline.

Okay. I guess I would say:

• Yes we're divided as a nation, but we have an abundance of natural resources, energy, and food. Our GDP keeps growing at 2.5% on average, and our unemployment is at near record lows. It doesn't seem like political or cultural divisions are going to impact those base facts.
• I agree on wealth inequality and health care. Both of these seem unsustainable, but I don't think it will take much of a social uprising to "motivate" changes at the top of the system. Just look at the elite class response to the United Health CEO murder - Not that I'm advocating for this in any way, but if those sorts of incidents became as common as school shootings, we'd see politicians running on platforms of significant reform.
• As for infrastructure, I don't get the bullet train thing. We have the largest airline industry and the largest inter-state highway network in the world. Both of these are cheaper to maintain, upgrade, and expand than building high speed rail. The US is a large spread of land with a wide distribution of major cities. Planes, trucks and automobiles make more sense for our geography than rail.
• While I agree homelessness is a problem, the rate of homelessness in the US over the past 12 years has been around 550k-650k. Given we just came out of a pandemic and all the financial turmoil that's brought, I'm not surprised the rate has gone up. But it's only gone up by 1/5th of the average. I don't see any reason to think this will continue to escalate in an exponential way.
• On the US birthrate, I agree this is something that needs to be addressed. If the costs of having and raising children weren't so overwhelming, I think our birthrate would be higher. There are many different laws that could be passed to impact this in a positive way. It's just going to take this problem becoming a big enough pain that politicians are motivated to run on it. I think we're seeing the beginnings of this with the immigration debate we've been having for a few years now. I think it will take another ten years or so to get real traction on it because we have to wait for the Boomer generation to no longer influence the political discussion. They're the largest generation in our history, so they've dominated a lot of the issues with their interests.

 

[SpiceRacz]

They have much better infrastructure than us nowadays. Their bullet train mileage is testament to that and their commitment to renewables and nuclear power plants means they'll likely not have to rely on oil from outside countries in the long run. They also offer the best salaries in the region. They'll be able to keep churning and burning for a while yet. I think USA is closer to losing its superpower status before China.

China has more people over 50 than under. Their population is falling at an unprecedented rate and all signs indicate they’ve been misreporting their numbers for years, if not decades. Bullet trains and renewable energy mean nothing if you don’t have people to operate and maintain them. It’s basically an irreversible problem at this point. Their death rate is higher than the birth rate last time I looked.

 

[MMaRsu]

 

[rm082e]

You got me curious, so I want to ask since I'm not as knowledgable: Doesn't Japan (and well, Korea?) face the exact same issue that China does? In regards to more having more old people than young ones. Aren't they basically heading towards the same future? Why is that that Japan can afford automation but China can't?

Yes, they do face the same demographic collapse. The difference between them and China is they're both free and open democratic societies, not top-down dictatorships. They have free market economies with high skill labor and both Japan and South Korea have been investing in automated manufacturing for decades. China could have done that if they had planned for it back in the 90's and never let up. But they didn't. Now that they're this far down the spiral, they don't have the option of reversing course.

Japan and South Korea have been increasing their rates of immigration. It's not enough to stabilize their populations, but they both seem much more likely to have a "managed decline" than China does.

Related:

 

[Blade2.0]

China has more people over 50 than under. Their population is falling at an unprecedented rate and all signs indicate they’ve been misreporting their numbers for years, if not decades. Bullet trains and renewable energy mean nothing if you don’t have people to operate and maintain them. It’s basically an irreversible problem at this point. Their death rate is higher than the birth rate last time I looked.

I think they'll start importing workers from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, etc before they let it crumble. They are the place most Asian countries want to immigrate to because they offer higher salaries in the region.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

Let's not exclude the other members of that legendary flight crew.

 

[IntentionalPun]

#1 rule with cyber security. If there's stuff you really care about, don't put it on the internet

Government: So.....put it on the internet right?

This is absurd and not true.

 

[Mistake]

This is absurd and not true.

You're going to have to be more specific. You disagree with the A or B? Because this is umpteenth time we've heard this story, and if you don't think the internet puts your pc at risk, I've got a copy of limewire to sell you

 

[Durien]

 

[RagnarokIV]

yo dawg they be hacking our wifi or something that crazy

 

[IntentionalPun]

You're going to have to be more specific. You disagree with the A or B? Because this is umpteenth time we've heard this story, and if you don't think the internet puts your pc at risk, I've got a copy of limewire to sell you

Of course it puts you at risk; it’s just absurd to state that “rule” you said was the #1 rule of cybersecurity when companies run on info being accessible to the internet. Try running an insurance company or a pharmacy and not having a portal for people to log into to see their information; you will lose loads of customers.

There’s very little information that is fully isolated from the internet. Hardly anyone works in an environment where they have a fully offline computing system and can’t even access the internet.

If you walked into a company and said “#1 rule is if you care about it don’t put it in the internet” you would get a real side eye from anyone in InfoSec lol

 

[Mistake]

Of course it puts you at risk; it’s just absurd to state that “rule” you said was the #1 rule of cybersecurity when companies run on info being accessible to the internet. Try running an insurance company or a pharmacy and not having a portal for people to log into to see their information; you will lose loads of customers.

There’s very little information that is fully isolated from the internet. Hardly anyone works in an environment where they have a fully offline computing system and can’t even access the internet.

If you walked into a company and said “#1 rule is if you care about it don’t put it in the internet” you would get a real side eye from anyone in InfoSec lol

I worked with cisco for three years, and that was the rule. Computers are essentially fine until either a person touches it, or it's connected to the internet. You never heard of off site backups? I wasn't talking about running some company, I was talking about important information and you ran with it. If you have data you absolutely don't want foreign actors to have, putting it online is retarded

 

[BlackTron]

What the fuck? This guy barely knows how to run a computer let alone secure them.

Can't hack a bunch of secret documents stuffed into your drawers with other random shit amirite

 

[NecrosaroIII]

I have no idea why the west won't wake up. China is a threat. CCP would have us all sterilised and die out if they could get away with. Then repopulate the planet with han Chinese; then rewrite human history.

The Powers that Be are aware. It's very much something all sides are preparing for as an inevitability

 

[IntentionalPun]

I worked with cisco for three years, and that was the rule. Computers are essentially fine until either a person touches it, or it's connected to the internet. You never heard of off site backups? I wasn't talking about running some company, I was talking about important information and you ran with it. If you have data you absolutely don't want foreign actors to have, putting it online is retarded

Off site backups.... you meant he ones that are often done in the cloud now? lol

Look, it's jsut an absurd statement.. maybe re-read what you wrote.. "information you really care about", it's just silly. An asbolutely massive amount of data companies and governments "Really care about" has to be in some way exposed via the internet for business to operate.

It's just way too reductionist. Least privlege is really the #1 rule.. which includes proper network controls in place.. but the data at some point very often needs exposed to the internet..

 

[KINGMOKU]

What salt? Daily Show is about to have some great material for the next few years!

Not paying attention huh? Its their only material.

*yawn*

 

[P:axMagellanic]

Xi has isolated himself almost completely, so it seems like no one really knows what's going on in his head at this point. However, here are some things to consider:

• Despite all the fear mongering about China's military expansion, their Navy is pathetic and incompetent compared to the US Navy. Most of their ships can't sail very far from shore. They can make some trouble in their own back yard, but even their neighbors haven't been intimated by their antics.
• China imports the vast majority of it's food, food supply inputs, and energy. If they start any major shit with the US, our Navy can stick a few ships out there to block their imports, and they're done. They would suffer a major famine in 6 months. And with Russia in the state they're in, they can't help.
• Their Army is just as corrupt, if not more so, than the Russian army. We've seen how poorly the Russians performed in Ukraine. China would likely be even worse. Meanwhile the US is fresh off 20 years of war in the middle east with all the lessons learned there. If we actually got into a shooting war with them, it would be over in a matter of days.
• China is dying out. The one child policy has put them in a state of demographic collapse. They have more old people than young, and so few women making babies their population is likely to drop by half within a few decades. As a result, they aren't consuming products anymore, because it's young people who do the bulk of the consuming. There is no economic model for a society that has a bunch of old people and few young people - the math is just upside down. This is a recipe for disaster when you have an autocrat running the place. There's nothing he can do to keep the system from failing, but he also can't allow himself to be blamed for the failure.

Realistically, hackers hack. This is normal. If you follow this stuff, state actors from all sides are constantly hacking each other. The real question is what actual damage was done, if any? It doesn't sound like that information is available yet.

All those serpentza and zeihan videos turns the human brain in to swiss cheese.

 

[Mistake]

Off site backups.... you meant he ones that are often done in the cloud now? lol

Look, it's jsut an absurd statement.. maybe re-read what you wrote.. "information you really care about", it's just silly. An asbolutely massive amount of data companies and governments "Really care about" has to be in some way exposed via the internet for business to operate.

It's just way too reductionist. Least privlege is really the #1 rule.. which includes proper network controls in place.. but the data at some point very often needs exposed to the internet..

You act like a business can only have one network and not it's own servers. Riiiight, governments should be using cloud backups, pull my other leg. These hacks keep happening and people are like turkeys in the rain when the obvious solution is not to expose certain things to the entire planet. I swear, this constant need for convenience is turning into a sickness

 

[Lord Panda]

US should start retaliating with missile strikes against state actors.