Kutuzov's genius of repeatedly pulling back until the Grande Armee was standing at the doorstep of their ancient capital, fighting one of the most stubborn battles in the Napoleonic era, yet loosing significantly more men than their attackers, and finally backing off, to behind their capital, allowing it to be plundered and burnt down during the occupation? (The city didn't burn down in a day, but a series of fires occurred almost every day until the Grande Armee left). Even when the attackers were retreating, he was still indecisive.
The main goal of Napoleon's invasion of Russia was to beat their military in a decisive battle long before reaching Moscow, forcing Alexander to comply with the continental system - a European trade embargo created by Napoleon to weaken the British Empire who have been hostile toward France since long before the French revolution. Alexander signed this trade embargo during the treaty of Tilsit of 1807, and had been breaking the treaty for years by allowing trade with the British.
The Russians did intend to fight, and set up redoubts several times close to the invading army, but would always retreat when the Grande Armée approached. The military leadership in Russia was very indecisive, caught up in internal rivalries and disagreements. It didn't help that a large part of their military leadership was German. Aside from small skirmishes, they only gave battle once they were practically standing at the doorstep of Moscow, in the battle of Borodino.
The 400,000 dead soldiers died mostly to disease. Recent studies have found evidence of Borrelia Recurrentis which causes a form of relapsing fever. The western soldiers wouldn't have had any exposure to this bacteria before, so they were particularly weak to it. It was also exceptionally hot during the summer while they were invading (when the majority of soldiers died), which contributed to spread of disease and exhausting the horses. Disease and dying horses did way more damage to the Grande Armée than the Russian military did.
The campaign was a military disaster (though the people at home might not be aware, due to slow information flow and propaganda), but it was not without aim, and it was not obvious to anyone that 70% of the army would die to disease before a single major battle.
I appreciate that you at least didn't propagate the myth that Napoleon invaded in the winter, or that he lost because Kutuzov "outsmarted" him by giving him free passage to Moscow and burning it down.
> There’s a particular kind of person who can’t accept that story at face value
I would hope that the majority of readers here are taking the story with a huge pinch of salt. Napoleon's invasion of Russia is one of the most misunderstood events in modern history. Maybe that's why it's so popular to use it as an anecdote - because it can be molded to mean whatever you like, and people probably won't question you.
> The 400,000 dead soldiers died mostly to disease.
I believe that in every major war of the 1800s, more soldiers died from disease than from combat.
Consider the War of 1812. "fully three-quarters of the war deaths resulted from disease, most commonly typhoid fever, pneumonia, malaria, measles, typhus, smallpox and diarrhea" - https://www.nps.gov/articles/military-medicine.htm
Oh, hey - in the Franco-Prussian War more soldiers died of combat than from disease (for the Germans, 28,000 battle deaths vs 12,000 by disease, and for the French, 77,000 battle deaths vs 45,000 by disease) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War , so I was wrong! Though those numbers exclude "162,000 German[ civilian deaths] in a smallpox epidemic spread by French POWs" and "450,000 French civilians dead from war-related famine and disease".
You are completely right. Disease has been the major killer in most military campaigns of history. The original post stated that 400,000 soldiers died "mostly from starvation and exposure", which isn't correct. However, loosing over a third of an army to disease in 52 days, before any major battle solely to disease (Allen, B. M., https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA398046.pdf), is unusually high.
Starvation became a major problem later as supply chains broke down, and exposure became a major problem on the retreat. Though the retreat from Moscow included only about 100,000 people.
The author wrote explicitly that they want to be compensated because they spent weekends writing the thing.
Any customer support that has to do with payments and license checks doesn't count.
Once you have a community of interested folks then fixing security issues and keeping things up to date is much easier. If there isn't enough interest then there isn't much of a monetizeable customer base anyway. It's self-regulating.
Venture Capital is how entrepreneurs get off the ground and are able to try out new ideas. It is of both the entrepreneur's interest and the investors' interest that the product or service being developed captures value in the market, so they can reimburse their original investments. Without Venture Capital, we are limiting business creation to people who are already wealthy, which severely limits the pool of potential creativity that the society can utilize.
We have regulations in place to make it more difficult and more risky for businesses to engage in immoral behavior, but these regulations usually appear after observing bad behavior.
If you go to duckduckgo.com/settings you can generate a URL with all of your saved settings. Loading it will configure all the settings it includes in your browser's local data. Blocked sites are included, I just checked.
You should gather together your team and look through the responses to this thread together. There are a lot of emotions in these comments, but it could be a very constructive experience if you're able to put that aside. I'm sure you're aware that customer-sentiment toward Github has been poor lately, but these commenters are your customers. I believe Github has the potential to win back loyalty, but it will require a deeper understanding of your customer segment.
You can take it up with your manager that you saved 10 minutes of time per day for 2000 workers, equivalent to 8333 work hours per year, equivalent to $2M USD per year, and argue that this value you bring should be reflected in your salary. You can also add it to your CV, to make you more attractive to other employers. Ultimately, you will have to make an effort to convince others of your value if you want a higher salary.
Talking about bait, good job getting 42 responses on hacker news! Your opinions are controversial enough to draw out people who need to correct them, yet genuine enough to not be passed off as a troll and downvoted.
It's been pretty amusing seeing the total upvotes for my comment go up and down.
I wasn't expecting it to be so controversial. Reading and responding to many of the replies, I think many people are strawmanning me as being in support of AI slop.
Curious, how would this affect the production of things that have long supply chains, or require lots of manual labor? There are many things that require labor, like plumbing, irrigation, farming, transportation, brick firing, steel production, etc. where the product is either an intermediary step, or otherwise contributes to something that the worker doesn't themself benefit from. Who would create my car, computer, desk, house, etc. if people are only working for themselves? Maybe I misunderstood your comment
The cost of these things would simply rise until people are willing to either produce them, or obviate the need for that production (such as by increasing automation in that particular sector).
I feel like a lot of people have the impression of a UBI that it would mean no one would have paid jobs anymore. It's primary advantage is that it removes the perverse incentive of the existing needs-based assistance system to not work (or not work more) because if you do you lose your benefits. Which doesn't exist if the payment is unconditional rather than conditional on not making [more] money.
But the amount would be something in the nature of $12,000/year. Is that actually a disincentive to work that would cause no one to take a paid job anymore? Only if no one wants a lifestyle that costs more than $12,000/year.
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