That only applies to Iranian traffic. It would in fact be an act of war for the U.S. to blockade maritime traffic of countries it's not already at war with.
Cuban tankers have hardly left the island’s shores for months. Oil-rich allies have halted shipments or declined to come to the rescue. The U.S. military has seized ships that have supported Cuba. And in recent days, vessels roaming the Caribbean Sea in search of fuel for Cuba have come up empty or been intercepted by the U.S. authorities.
Last week, a tanker linked to Cuba burned fuel for five days to get to the port in Curaçao but then left without cargo, according to ship-tracking data. Three days later, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a tanker full of Colombian fuel oil en route to Cuba that had gotten within 70 miles of the island, the data showed.
While President Trump has pledged to halt any oil headed to Cuba, the Trump administration has stopped short of calling its policy a blockade.
But it is functioning as one.
Sure, economic sanctions have been in place for a long time, but the US has started seizing full ships.
Which in turn is also against international law (international law would let them retaliate against israel & usa. It doesn't let them target neutral shipping [edit: to clarify i mean neutral shipping going to neutral ports]).
Of course international law is not worth the paper its written on.
> Blockades restrict the trading rights of neutrals, who must submit for inspection for contraband, which the blockading power may define narrowly or broadly, sometimes including food and medicine.
To clarify, i meant shipping to neutral ports (article 99 of San Remo: "A blockade must not bar access to the ports and coasts of neutral States" https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/san-remo-manu... ). Oman seems neutral in all this but nonetheless affected.
They would be allowed to blockade neutral ships going to enemy ports (e.g. Israel) subject to a bunch of rules but that doesn't seem to be what they are doing.
I dont even think Iran is claiming this is a blockade. They are claiming its part of its territorial waters, and they are claiming that they dont recognize the UNCLOS which would give vessels transit rights (but at the same time they are claiming they recognize the part of UNCLOS that allows claiming 12 miles out as territorial waters). At least that is what i got from https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-legality-of-irans-closure-of-th...
> There are no neutral ports there. Every other country past the strait is a US ally with US military bases hosted on their territory.
I dont think hosting a US base would necessarily make them non neutral unless that base was used offensively. According to international law, Iran would also have to justify their exercise of self-defense rights was porportional, which even if you accept hosting a us base made that state non neutral, i think it would be difficult to justify their response against states simply hosting a us base met the porportionality requirements of int law.
However even if they were enemy states, Iran would have to declare all of these countries as being under blockade, which they haven't as far as i am aware.
> Oman is before the strait begins.
How is the Oman port of Khasab before the strait begins?
As a late thought - i would also add that the idea that this is an aggressive war against Iran relies on the idea that iran and hamas are separate enough that israel striking iran is not self-defense from when hamas struck Israel. But the relationship between Hamas and Iran is a lot closer than usa and the gulf countries. So i think its difficult to say that Iran striking gulf countries that host USA bases but are otherwise uninvolved is legitament self-defense without also saying that Israel striking iran was legitament self-defense from the proxies they fund. I feel like logically you cant have it both ways. Either both are valid self defense or neither are.
Did you miss the part about contraband? You quoted it, after all.
Firing on neutral shipping is not the same as intercepting it and inspecting it for war materiel or other contraband. Preventing shipping from reaching or leaving Kuwaiti ports is not the same as inspecting it for war materiel or other contraband.
Iran has been requiring shipping to submit to inspection and tolls via an adjusted route through the strait. And they can certainly deem oil contraband if they are allowed to do food and medicine, as quoted.
Ships that don’t stop get fired upon. That’s what happens in a blockade.
Kuwait is a US ally and hosts American military bases. Stopping shipping to there is very clearly legitimate.
> And they can certainly deem oil contraband if they are allowed to do food and medicine, as quoted.
Wikipedia is defining what the term blockade means not what constitutes a legal blockade.
Medicine is not allowed to be blockaded. Food is not allowed to be blockaded if there is a shortage.
Relavent parts of the san remo manual:
> 102 The declaration or establishment of a blockade is prohibited if:
> (a) it has the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denying it other objects essential for its survival; or
> (b) the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade.
> 103. If the civilian population of the blockaded territory is inadequately provided with food and other objects essential for its survival, the blockading party must provide for free passage of such foodstuffs and other essential supplies, subject to...
> 104. The blockading belligerent shall allow the passage of medical supplies for the civilian population or for the wounded and sick members of armed forces,...
You're correct that blocking oil would be allowed (barring situations where the civilian population needs it to survive, which doesnt apply here) if this was a legal blockade. However Iran is not complying with the other rules around blockades, which is the issue.
I guess nobody likes hearing that their country is unethically invading other countries. As much as I hate defending Iran, I don't think there's much of a difference between what the US is doing to Iran and what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
People seem to forget that China is a fully authoritarian state. The fact is that China is an adversary and blocks virtually every western social network, including YouTube, Instagram, and Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
The CCP has absolute authority over internal companies to bend them to their will, and regularly disappears political dissidents including tech leaders like Jack Ma.
TikTok has over 150 million users in the United States, skewing young. We have seen the massive misinformation campaigns from other adversaries like Russia, with the goal of sowing dissent and malcontent.
All it takes is leaning on the algorithmic levers. Today the controversy may be over the issue you are passionate about, tomorrow it will a different issue, the only thing that matters is that TikTok is an open door to unduly influence public opinion in America.
The immense scale of data collection, from personal information to location tracking data, is also a clear concern.
Anyone that thinks it is reasonable for a geopolitical rival to control this company, especially a country known to reach its hand deep into company policy, is incredibly naive and self-sabotaging.
TikTok must be banned or fully controlled by a US based company.
> the only thing that matters is that TikTok is an open door to unduly influence public opinion in America.
The immense scale of data collection, from personal information to location tracking data, is also a clear concern.
I understand where you’re coming from - “they ban us so we’ll ban you” is a valid sentiment. But this grandstanding is like slapping a bandaid on a leaky tub and calling it “Job done”. I’m almost being transported to the 1940s with this McCarthy-lite take.
Everything that TikTok is doing is being done by Meta, Snap, Instagram, etc. If it’s not done through TikTok it’ll be done somewhere else. But sure, instead of passing real privacy laws let’s just also be authoritarian - I’m sure that’ll solve the problem.
> Everything that TikTok is doing is being done by Meta, Snap, Instagram, etc. If it’s not done through TikTok it’ll be done somewhere else.
Meta, Snap, Instagram (i.e. Meta), are US-based media companies and subject to US regulation and jurisprudence.
TikTok operates under the jurisdiction of authoritarian adversary. This undue foreign influence is the sticking point, not merely the massive media sway.
TikTok operates in the US, so they are operating under US jurisdiction and subject to the same regulations as US companies.
The main difference is political pressure, not legal. US companies will bend the knee to Trump, Chinese companies will do so to Xi. Both of these leaders are authoritarian, but Trump's government is also fascist. However Xi's government is more experienced and successful.
I don't know which is worse, honestly. I mean, at this exact second, China is obviously a more authoritarian state, but the US is riding a bullet train into fascism. So who knows what things will look like in a few years?
Everything that is being done on TikTok is not being done on the other socials. Some of the actions are more or less the same. The difference is in consequences.
Yes, they are all manipulating feeds. Yes, they are are using psychological sabotage and attention hacks to steal as much attention as they possibly can from every pair of eyeballs they encounter.
If Meta, Youtube, Snap, et al do something that is illegal, or violates social norms, or commits any of a thousand different offenses, legal or cultural or otherwise, they can be held to account. They have. Facebook and Instagram and Youtube and all US platforms have been sued, settle out of court, have been subpoenaed and forced to account for themselves in front of congress, etc.
China can use TikTok for many purposes, whether it's purely disruptive, or in pursuit of nation-state agendas, or any sort of nefarious deliberate action they might take. You can hold Zuck accountable. You cannot, with China, and because all Chinese companies are under state control, they are by definition not operating in good faith. They do not follow trade agreements, norms, or deal in good faith. They will steal IP, ignore sanctions, and do whatever benefits them most regardless of any agreements to the contrary, and will actively seek to undermine opposition to their greatest advantage. And they're more or less immune to accountability for anything they do outside of China, except and unless they make the state look bad, or costs them money or reputation in the market.
China chose to deliberately manipulate and abuse their platform by using it to cause all sorts of users to flood their representatives with calls - that one move, by itself, the choice of a paltform to deliberately intervene at scale and advocate for political action, should be sufficient to have seized the platform outright, and then tell China to go pound sand. Imagine how they'd respond to us broadcasting American Freedom TV across their whole country from Starlink satellites, with free satellite 5G compatible with their carriers, bypassing all their great firewall and censorship? As much as I loathe the authoritarianism, we ostensibly have to respect state sovereignty - China deliberately and specifically violated US sovereignty by manipulating a bunch of useful idiots to their own purposes, flexing on the US, threatening them with manipulating the electorate unless they played ball on TikTok control.
We should just seize it and tell them to pound sand, then auction the assets. You can't trust the code, so sell off the name, domain, the network to other platforms if they want to rebuild it, then scour the content and software and hardware, burn it, and salt the earth over it.
> China can use TikTok for many purposes, whether it's purely disruptive, or in pursuit of nation-state agendas, or any sort of nefarious deliberate action they might take. You can hold Zuck accountable.
Yeah they can in theory but so can Facebook. Remember Cambridge Analytica? They held Zuck accountable in the sense that there was a slap on the wrist and he went on his merry way. You can similarly hold the ByteDance US CEO accountable and they operate as a US business.
It’s all political theatrics and has nothing do with keeping our personal data safe or protect the American people. These companies might run in the US but corporations are beholden to no nation.
It’s funny because as a European when you wrote “Anyone that thinks it is reasonable for a geopolitical rival to control this company, especially a country known to reach its hand deep into company policy, is incredibly naive and self-sabotaging.” I thought “yeah, when you put it like that it would be AWFUL for the Trump administration to own it.
And then I read the next line and realised you meant China.
When a parent tells their child not to touch the hot stove, they want the best for the child. When the child does it anyway, the parent hopes that the lesson will be instructive for the future.
With respect, allowing political posts that clearly violate the HN guidelines will normalize such posts, incentivize them in the future due to karma, and attract the type of people that want to soapbox to the community.
If you want to understand how we think about and approach moderation of political stories on HN, probably the best set of explanations is https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... If you (or anyone) familiarize yourself with those explanations and then still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. But do please read some of that stuff first because the questions (and therefore the answers) are nearly always the same.
p.s. All that said, I appreciate your watching out for the quality of HN and I understand the concern.
I guess with polarizing topics it comes down to the ratio of "intellectually interesting" (quote from your first link) comments, and those that engage with them in good faith, versus all the yelling and condemnation, right? And there's some fuzzy line that you want the thread to stay on one side of.
I will freely admit my view may be too dismissive and that I should change my ways, but these kinds of threads almost never feel to me like the juice is worth the squeeze. In other words, that ratio I mentioned seems out of whack. Too many good-faith comments that don't go with the thread mainstream get flagged and dead, not enough people vouch for 'em (I'm sometimes guilty of that), and the amount of invective and judgment they're met with just seems to depend on how fast they got downvoted or flagged to oblivion.
I realize I'm shouting into the wind, and you have no obligation to change any of this for me. But I really do not see how this sort of thing is good for the site long-term. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's a certain set that needs to scream about something every month or they start vandalizing less controversial threads and it's net positive to let them have their moment. Maybe I'll go write something that auto-hides threads for me when there's been a certain proportion of flagging and downvoting.
Anyway, you've got a tough job and do it with grace. No reply necessary, but thanks for all you do.
> these kinds of threads almost never feel to me like the juice is worth the squeeze
I agree. The trouble is that not discussing it at all is not a solution either.
> it comes down to the ratio of "intellectually interesting" (quote from your first link) comments, and those that engage with them in good faith, versus all the yelling and condemnation, right?
I wish it were that simple but I don't think it is.
> Too many good-faith comments that don't go with the thread mainstream get flagged and dead
I don't think there's a "thread mainstream" here. I think the community is deeply divided.
If you (or anyone) see good-faith comments getting mistreated in this way, we'd appreciate links so we can take a look. Sometimes we restore those comments, other times we find that the comment broke the site guidelines and thus should stay flagged. But we always look, and usually also have enough time to reply.
> I realize I'm shouting into the wind
Not at all! We're interested. We just don't necessarily have good answers.
> So, sending it to page 4 quick-like has too many downsides? I am not an expert in community management, I'm interested to understand why.
We're not experts either. It's not as if there's any foundation for this job other than just doing it, badly.
I'll try to explain how I personally think about this. One thing is clear: the core value of HN is intellectual curiosity so that's what we're trying to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). I'd refine that one bit further by saying it's broad intellectual curiosity. There's also narrow intellectual curiosity, which has its place but isn't what we're trying for here. (And there are other forms of curiosity, e.g. social curiosity, which motivates things like celebrity news and gossip. Those also have their place but are less relevant here.)
What's the difference between broad and narrow intellectual curiosity? If you think of curiosity as desire and willingness to take in new information, then I'd say "broad" means wanting to take in new information about anything—whatever's going on in reality, the world, etc., because it's there; and "narrow" means wanting new information, but only about a restricted subset of things. That means there's an excluded set of topics—things about which one could take in new information, but for whatever reason, doesn't want to. Maybe it's too painful, for example.
What I'm saying is that the current topic is one of a few topics which are painful (and the pain shows up as anger in the comments), but which broad intellectual curiosity simply cannot exclude. If we exclude it, then we fail to optimize for what we're optimizing for. In that sense, not discussing it amounts to failing.
But discussing it also amounts to failing, because it's not realistically very possible for this community to discuss it while remaining within the site guidelines. It's too painful, too activating, and crosses too many of the red lines that past generations have left pulsating in all our bodies. That is why I said "I wish it were that simple but I don't think it is".
We can try to mitigate that through moderation ("please don't cross into personal attack", "please don't post flamebait", etc.), but those lines are particularly feeble in this case. There's little scope for those to land as neutral with commenters and readers. It too easily feels like we're adding to the conflict when we post that way.
Therefore this is a case where we can only fail, and all we can do is follow what Beckett said and fail better. Failing better is still failing and still feels like failing—there's no way out of that. I'm just pretty sure that the alternative in this case would be worse overall, even if it felt easier in the short term. It's always easier to go narrow in the short term. But we're in this for the long haul.
Thank you for your thoughtful response, that helps me understand more where the site leadership is coming from.
BTW the comment I linked above[0] has been flagged and is dead again, after I thought it had been restored. Did it violate site guidelines? Or did somebody come back in and flag it again?
> > these kinds of threads almost never feel to me like the juice is worth the squeeze
> I agree. The trouble is that not discussing it at all is not a solution either.
Not discussing it at all is certainly a solution. There are plenty of other fora where these issues can be discussed (Reddit and Twitter, off the top of my head). HN does not have to also take up that mantle.
> > Too many good-faith comments that don't go with the thread mainstream get flagged and dead
> I don't think there's a "thread mainstream" here. I think the community is deeply divided.
It's quite obvious that there's a thread mainstream. One perspective absolutely dominates the top level posts and replies. Top level posts with a different point of view have been flag killed very thoroughly. I would make a contrarian post (the type that HN normally loves) to try share my knowledge of the situation (which I bet is significantly deeper than 99% of the commenters here) but it's not worth it when I expect it to get instantly flag killed.
> If you (or anyone) see good-faith comments getting mistreated in this way, we'd appreciate links so we can take a look. Sometimes we restore those comments, other times we find that the comment broke the site guidelines and thus should stay flagged. But we always look, and usually also have enough time to reply.
But the discussion will have moved on by then. There are simply not enough moderator resources to moderate a discussion on this topic. That's not your fault, that's just the way it is, but it does lead to HN becoming a worse place.
> Is it accidental or intentional that all political posts on this war are biased towards one of the sides?
You are presenting a false dichotomy. It could be that the posts are a reflection of the reality of the situation (i.e. one of the sides is 'more wrong').
Why is it false? Either admins intentionally make only specific articles to appear, or they do not, i.e. it happens unintentionally/accidentally. What other options are there? If something happens it is either intentional or not.
Not sure what wrongness has to do with that either.
In the first case it reflects the political preferences of the admin, in the other it reflects the preferences of HN bubble. Either could happen independently of who is wrong and who is right.
I don't see a false dichotomy here and if there were posts against right to privacy that are flagged while posts for it were not (either with admin intervention or without) I wouldn't say "there is nothing to see here".
I would definitely prefer to see both sides of issue and I wouldn't flag posts against privacy, though not upvote it either.
If you think it's nice when media is biased towards what you consider to be right, and that's the point of your analogy, I disagree.
I was making no comment on the flagging or moderation of posts, only their submission.
For example, more posts will be submitted that support the view that individuals have a right to privacy than the opposite ('more wrong') view.
You don't seem to be accounting for this outcome - no flagging or moderation, accidental or intentional, just a difference in the number of submissions for each view.
The sun doesn't rise by accident or design, it just rises.
But you replied to comment that specifically pondered about flagging and moderation. There are enough users (though still in minority) to submit and upvote the stories for the opposite view. There are comments supporting "wrong" view that survive. There is no downvote so the only way to suppress the submissions is to flag then and this is indeed what happens.
Political stories are usually getting flag enough by people who don't want politics on HN, people disagreeing with it/believing it's not good content and eventual mod interventions. So if "accidental" framing bothers you, I can rephrase.
Either mods are not intervening, and HN consensus is strong enough to overcome the flagging on this specific topic. I would expect more stories on main in this case, but it is an option (what I called accidental).
Alternatively, mods do intervene, either by manually unflagging some stories, or manually demoting some, but not all of them (what I called intentional). In this case I'd want to know what's the argument [1] for it
And the sun either rises by design of whoever designed our universe or because the solar system appeared by accident out of initial conditions of the big bang.
My guess is as with most emergent phenomena: both. Accidental that it happens in the first place, intentional that little is done to redress the balance. How could it be anything else?
I think Amazon's Echo device is doing this the proper way, which "uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud". It seems like a technical or design failure on Samsung's part to not feature similar functionality.
Also Google Now (for devices that are always listening for the "trigger word"), where your phone will make a very distinctive noise and pop up a screen to indicate that it's listening.
Pretty much the same thing that everyone else does:
"Echo uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where we leverage the power of Amazon Web Services to recognize and respond to your request."
The article refers to the same thing being the difference that Samsung doesn't owns the Amazon/Microsoft/Google/IBM cloud where they run all the voice-recon algorithms.
A World War 2 training video for evading flak cannon fire is one of the best examples of graphical information presentation that I've seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP_-WUMi-nw
It features smoothly animated and highly functional designs as well as overlaying graphics on real footage to achieve a fashion of "augmented reality". The production quality is astounding and it is amazing to think that it was produced in the 40s. The entire video is an inspiring example of conveying information.
That was really interesting. I never knew there was this kind of strategy behind flak evasion. Man, must have taken some stones to do a bomber mission. I knew an old timer that flew bombers in WW2 and he said towards the end of the war the germans were running out of metal and all sorts of things were used as flak. He said nuts and bolts were pretty common. He'd find them embedded inside the cabin after close flak fire. Pretty scary to think that your end might come from a washer.
The wiki article gives good explanation of how bombing developed during WWII - starting as a weapon to terrible to be used (based on poor quality data); with general agreements not to kill civilians; realising that bombers were hopelessly inaccurate; changing tactics to allow bombing of civillian populations, including the (to my mind) war crimes of fire bombing.
> Bomber Command crews also suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war.
I loved reading this because I made something exceedingly similar a few years ago, and I'm similarly fascinated with how complex behavior can emerge from such simple rules.
My ants also had no conception of where their home was located, their behavior is entirely pheromone driven. They can "read" pheromones from any adjacent cell.
They leave a pheromone every movement depending on which state they are in, either "find food" or "return food".
In my system, the pheromones have a strength. Whenever an ant touches the nest, his "nest pheromone" is at full strength (255). Each movement decreases the strength by 1. This sets up a natural gradient of nest strength for ants to follow. They also "deteriorate" each round as yours do.
A similar setup is used with food, such that a high food scent is created when they pick up food, and decreases in strength as they return to the nest.
So to find food, they try to move up a food gradient or down the nest gradient (away from the nest), while to return food they move up the nest gradient (towards the nest).
Their searching consists of a random walking into cells that have no nest scent, or following a food trail.
They have an energy cost for moving, and if it's too low they have to eat a piece of food. Returning a piece of food to the hill spawns a new ant. The lines on the right side show the population of each colony and the total food on the board.
From these extremely basic rules, they are very efficient at clearing the "world" of food.
Similarly, I've heard that the cockpit voice recording only keeps the last two hours. While that deals with 99% of the cases, here it will miss out on all conversation near the point that the flight began to go off course, and indeed hours after that.
What would be the cost to simply bump the recording time up closer to the maximum flight time possible on a full tank?
