Are you suggesting that it is okay for a Sysadmin to lack sufficient knowledge to answer those questions? Or that they are somehow discriminatory? I'm just not sure of your point here. I would be perfectly comfortable asking Sysadmin applicants these questions. (With the caveat that the moon is indeed sometimes visible during the day. That question is dumb. But asking why it's visible most nights is not. Interviewers can be stupid too.)

I'm not claiming they weren't being discriminatory. Maybe they were. But that's weak evidence at best.

Expanding fiat currency leads to economic reduction, stagnation and often collapse, history is on my side, you don't have anything on yours. 1971 - the year of default on the US dollar was the beginning of the end of USA economy, since then the productivity has been shrinking, deficits and debts growing, government growing and individual freedoms shrinking at an increasing rate.

That's one example, obviously there are thousands, including USSR, Weimar Republic and at least 30 examples of countries destroying their currency that way in only the last 100 years.

As to whether any amount of inflation of fiat currency is bad, yes, theft and thus misallocation of resources from those who produce to those who do not produce in the free market (not enough to be compensated for it by more than what the stolen or inflated currency allowed) is not good by any stretch of imagination, unless you have your head stuck all the way up into your ass.

Wrong, you do not get to rename rising prices into inflation and expansion (inflation) into rising prices.

As to 'increased money supply being always bad' - you are putting words in my mouth.

Expanding FIAT currency, as in paper not backed by anything is always bad and the history is my witness, every time it was done it led to long term economic damage.

Wrong, you are talking about 'gazonk', you do not get to point at shit, call it cheesecake for your political agenda and expect everybody to accept your nonsense.

Yes, Ukrainians do in fact have a special place in that model - they are considered "Russians who forgot/rejected their roots" (ditto Belarusians).

At the same time, you're also correct that the current conflict raised the hostility between two nations to a level that was never seen before, and it is also felt in Russia. The rhetoric was updated accordingly: now Ukrainians are deemed to consist of two parts - the larger one that is the unconsciously subjugated Russian-at-heart majority that can be rehabilitated (by force of arms if necessary), and the minority of hardcore "true Ukrainians" who do the subjugation, and for whom hating Russia is in their very nature. The latter are generally associated with Galicia (many people have suddenly discovered that those lands have not been in Russia, or any state that Russia claims succession to, for over 700 years before the 20th century - and therefore decided that reclassifying the inhabitants as inherently hostile is alright after all).

Thing is, I don't think the people who run the country believe in all this crap. They peddle it to the population because it's an easy sell and meshes well with their policies.

- another type of Milky Way?

I build and supply retail chain management systems and part of the platform is a store management system, which communicates with POS machines (in most cases via a share). So our solution to what you are describing (a common problem with POS systems) is to put our store management system on a Linux machine that has 2 network cards in it, one is the Internet connection and the other is LAN, this Linux machine runs the store management system and it becomes local network manager and a firewall.

The POS machines are on the LAN only, no Internet connection for them, the store management system connects to the retail management system that is external to the store (controls the entire chain). This way we can avoid this huge security breach.

Well, whether this practice is common or not is probably irrelevant, it is still not a prudent thing to do.

I build and supply retail chain management software to a number of chains, there are dozens of stores that use it, we switch at least one computer in a store to a Linux machine that runs the store management software (the chain management software is a central system and it doesn't run in a store, but all stores talk to it.)

Store management system is on the Linux machine that faces the Internet, it has 2 network cards, one is the Internet and the other is LAN (the same machine controls the LAN). Since this is Linux, iptables is used to filter out any unnecessary traffic.

I think there should be some sort of packet filter on Internet facing equipment, POS or anything else.

It's the inflation in play here, just like in the economy, the units of measurement are being stretched now, so the same mass measured in different units gives a nominally different answer ;)

So median income is falling in terms of actual purchasing power, just not quite that fast.

Getting a credit card with no history whatsoever might be tricky unless you're really young. But even in that case, pretty much any bank will happily give you a credit card if you place a security deposit with them (the credit limit will then be tied to the amount of said deposit). That still counts as credit and lets you build up credit score - and eventually they will release the deposit. I had to resort to that when I moved into US from another country - given my age and employment, combined with the complete and utter lack of any credit score records whatsoever, that's the only arrangement that I could find. I got my security deposit back on the second year of using the card, and started getting more card offers from other banks at about the same time, which I assume coincides with crossing some threshold on the credit score.

Nonsense, inflation is expansion of money supply, nothing else. Rising prices (or prices that are failing to fall) can be a result of inflation. Inflation changes the size of the measurement units of the economy, value of the currency. Inflation does not improve economy in any way, it destroys the economy both by destroying value of savings and rising prices of real savings, thus denying access to capital for productive purposes and pushing up nominal prices of assets, creating asset bubbles, making it look like economy is growing (faking the GDP), while in reality the economy stays the same (or shrinks), only the units change.

You are using this in an Orwellian fashion to confuse the population on the causes of inflation and its effects.

Socialism is fascism. Socialists want to control companies and companies fight back and buy political power, but the only reason political power can be bought is because socialists allow government to usurp all that power.

The reason for all this debt is lack of productivity and substitution of a real economy with a fake one.

    Americans are an extremely unproductive bunch, living at the expense of the productive Chinese and others, printing money and 'buying' products created by others that they themselves do not produce, thus the 500 Billion USD/year trade deficits for a couple of decades now.

Inflation is rampant, of-course the publicly 'educated' children do not understand what inflation is or why it is bad and they revolt at that thought.

There is no 'your' definition, the definition that you are cheering for is the definition of propaganda, redefining the meaning of words in order to promote wilful ignorance.