Yep, this is why I couldn't stomach reading all the way through it. I get paid to read this type of garbage all day long. Why would I do it in my own time for free? It's sh*t. I'm not reading any AI articles, and I'm not watching AI-scripted videos unless I'm getting paid a fair wage for it.
Maybe if it wasn't so damn shameless. This article did absolutely nothing to try and conceal the fact that it's pure AI slop.
"It has always been this way, this is normal" is the typical first response to tyranny. It puts you on their side, which is fine if that's where you want to be. Just be aware of it. If you think it's wrong, you definitely don't want to be taking the side of "it's normal," because whether or not it's normal is irrelevant when your government is doing immoral and tyrannical behavior in your name.
Asking whether or not something is new or how frequently it's been done in the past isn't saying it's acceptable nor does it put them on the side of tyranny. In fact, a sign of tyranny would be a significant uptick in the number of these searches, and how else would you be able to see that worrying signal without answering the question they asked?
You quoted something that wasn't part of the question, which was "I'm wondering if this is a new thing".
Their impression was that it wasn't and that other countries do similar things. Stating your understanding of a situation helps guide discussion and helps people answer your inquiries. Doing that should be encouraged, not somehow treated as an endorsement of tyranny.
I guess the question is whether the reporting is politically motivated because someone doesn’t like the current admin or grounded in historical fact.
I get what you’re saying and agree. But if there is no statistically significant jump in the number from historical data for previous administrations then I can conclude that the reporting is politically motivated.
Sure but that means November will have no impact on what CPB does. It’s always happened and will continue to happen just like stock trading with insider information by congress members will continue to happen regardless of November results. The vote came up and it was voted down and I don’t see that changing. I don’t see the spying on citizens changing. The NSA spied on Congress and they did nothing about it.
It’s disingenuous to imply that November will have an effect on either of those topics.
My math teacher used to say that “obviously” means “I don’t know how to prove” and “trivially” means “tenuously at best”. Thanks for the demo of this in action.
Enough alarm bells are ringing to suggest that this is not normal. The persecution of political enemies isn't even a veiled threat, they are spoken outright in public.
Right like the ~400 subpoenas on Republican lawmakers by Jack S with the tenuous linkage to the Jan riot. You might have reason to subpoena 10 or even 30 lawmakers who may have had some linkage but going after ~400 seems dubious.
An event like the Jan 6th putsch attempt would, in pretty much every democracy that has got some sense of self-preservation, result in at the very least intense public hearings, and outside of the European Union that bans the death penalty under all circumstances, followed by the chief perpetrators getting strung up at the same gallows they brought to hang Mike Pence off of.
The fact that barely any consequences came for those instigating the putsch, except a few of those dumb enough to do stuff like parade around in front of cameras, is completely inexcusable.
The brought a mock up of a gallows -the same kind other protesters bring to anti-Trump rallies. Should we punish people who went into the Congressional buildings? Yes! (Keep in mind we have hosted protests in Congress too) Do they need to subpoena ~400 lawmakers and $10 donors to the campaign? I think it’s obvious that that is overreach and intimidation.
> The brought a mock up of a gallows -the same kind other protesters bring to anti-Trump rallies.
I'm not aware of this being a widespread practice at anti-Trump rallies.
> Do they need to subpoena ~400 lawmakers and $10 donors to the campaign? I think it’s obvious that that is overreach and intimidation.
Well... it's not unlikely that there might have been "inside help" from lawmakers and/or their staff or even general Congressional staff. The purpose of an investigation is to go, dig deep and fully take apart whatever conspiracy there was.
As for the donors - anti-terrorist laws in pretty much every country don't care if it was just a $10 donation. Donate to a cause that ends up being terrorists, be labeled as a terrorism supporter.
the gallows mockup was one of the reasons for the reaction to the Jan 6th stuff.[0] , although as far as what political party the owning group is using it for or against is sort of up for grabs.
Rioting is not terrorism. Terrorism usually involves conspiracy and planning they're typically not one-time, ad-hoc events. I know governments all over the world like to go overboard with that terms since Sep 11 because it's a get-them for free kind of card, but to me it means actual infliction of terror. A mock gallows is not. If it were, lots of protests with burning effigies, etc. could quite possibly be considered terroristic events.
Subpoenas are an investigating tool. It's part of gathering the data. I think you may be confused. It's not in any way a punishment.
Do you think at that point he had it out for Republicans in general? Republican congressmen were appalled by what happened on Jan 6th, and it was only because they thought Trump would just go away that he wasn't convicted in the Senate.
Trying to frame that investigation as some sort of political witch hunt is ridiculous.
In any professional sport, anyone can lobby the rules committee for a rules change and hope for the best. Meanwhile if you can't get one, you play the game by the existing set of rules, and you play to win.
Can you explain the scenario where Anthropic getting to “aligned” superintelligence first blocks their competitors from creating unaligned superintelligence?
True, it does not say the reason for the decline to indict. It could have as much to do with the overall decline in quality of the DoJ and its cases as a whole over the past year. Many nonsalient crimes will also go unprosecuted under this DoJ, but they will not generate headlines like this one.
Was the Union army complicit in the crimes of the Confederacy by simply allowing them to drop their arms and walk away as well? The world is complicated and full of nuanced takes depending on context. That said:
>If a rival political party takes power in 2029 and they decide to do nothing about this, are they complicit?
Like this really does read as: I still blame the Democrats for the crimes of the Republicans.
The ultimate authority here is the US voters and they have chosen poorly again and again. They are complicit for sure as they chose both to empower Republicans and tie the hands of the Democrats with impossible standards.
It's stuff like this that really makes me wonder about the great man theory of history.
Without JW Booth, maybe Lincoln would've broken the southern white aristocracy, and maybe Reconstruction would've succeeded. One man could've made the difference and finished the job.
Likewise, it's difficult to imagine any other con man so skilled and beloved (by a certain subset of the population) as Trump, and his singular abilities and predilections have potentially derailed the entire project of American empire - maybe permanently.
Reconstruction ended more than 10 years after Lincoln's assassination, he would not have remained in office forever. I think for most Unionists the war was not about abolition or racial equality and there simply was not the political will to make the changes necessary to prevent Jim Crow in the south.
>Was the Union army complicit in the crimes of the Confederacy by simply allowing them to drop their arms and walk away as well? The world is complicated and full of nuanced takes depending on context.
I think the irony here is you are presenting this like a complicated choice, when I would argue many people agree that the way the Union handled reconstruction was extremely poor.
We are still paying the price for that today, some of us a lot more than others. It was well-intentioned but with hindsight being what it is, historians pretty much agree that it was the cause of a lot of the problems we fight with today.
It’s funny you bring up Union vs Confederacy, because Reconstruction should be a blueprint of what not to do. We’re still paying today for the failures of our forefathers to not have the bravery to stamp out the worst cultural elements of the Confederacy, let alone the extended century-long suffering of formerly enslaved peoples in what ranged from “separate but equal” to outright apartheid.
So yes, it was very much the Union’s fault for not properly cutting the many heads of the hydra with great prejudice.
Edit: the Nuremberg trials are a fantastic blueprint for what to do, though. And that’s what was missing after the Civil War. The sentences handed out at Nuremberg aren’t necessarily relevant to the crimes committed by those in power today, but the cultural shift that materialized in Germany post-war is the type of cultural shift needed to counteract the damage of the current administration: against corruption, grift, and executive overreach.
> the Nuremberg trials are a fantastic blueprint for what to do, though.
Some would argue that the Nuremberg trials did not go nearly far enough, as there should also have been similar trials in all countries that collaborated with that regime during the course of the war.
That's why you see far-right parties nowadays spring up again and start to grain more influence. It could have been stomped out well enough.
I agree, much of the Balkan suffering from the latter half of the 20th century could have been curtailed by properly stamping out ultranationalist groups as a punishment for their ethnic cleansing. The Ustaše, for example.
Yes. That’s a great historical precedent — Reconstruction was a hotly debated topic and the more radical forms would have banned former Confederate soldiers for voting, for example. Many Southern states had military governors imposed by the Federal government.
Andrew Johnson pardoned almost all Confederate leaders, didn’t care about freeing slaves, and is one of the worst Presidents in history.
Doesn't that still feel shortsighted? The way you speak, you cannot even imagine a world without a political landscape that is Republican vs Democrats. I think both parties have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted steering the country.
Yes, that probably means that the US has to utterly break in its political system before it can get any better, considering that the current election process favours a two-party stalemate (or one party controlling everything)
There’s no tool for them to do it with and I prefer that that remain the case. I would prefer that we take the pardon away from the President and certainly think the pre-emptive pardon is unacceptable but there is no mechanism to pursue the present government.
I’d prefer if the US doesn’t become like my native India where the previous government goes in jail when a new government takes power. Hopefully we just destroy the pardon and call the obvious self-enrichment here an abuse of government that we cannot fix with our devices and go forward.
Even if the rival party were to somehow control all 3 branches of government (which they will not), the voting records show a full 1/3 of American adults outright support this corruption (many of the cops themselves), and another 1/3 are willing to ignore it.
If you are in the 1/3 that does care about it, you are not going to have a good time trying to fight the other 1/3, many of whom make up the “law and order” department.
So the answer to both questions is a resounding no, because the world is more complicated than a comic book superhero movie.
This is such an amazing take because it is a constant in US politics. Like how in the world did you think it appropriate to pivot like this?
The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection, regardless of the challenges.
The standards for the Republicans is...there are literally zero standards. Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable, and somehow Americans convince themselves that if the Democrats don't (usually because they can't) do anything about it, clearly the Dems are the real problem, so it's time to vote Republicans. Just bizarre stuff.
I could give infinite examples where the slightest thing is a massive story about Democrat action or inaction, while every day is a new low in what the shit-pile that the modern Republican party gets away with. Benghazi is still constantly cited by the right, while Trump...Jesus Christ, every day is a thousand times worse. Astonishing levels of corruption and stupidity is just another Tuesday now.
It's amazing. Every framing somehow shifts like this.
Biden was speaking to the people who ended up bankrolling Trump when threatened with slightly increased taxes, and who are going to dump billions into the midterms. When you're in a country that wavers around 50/50 every election (even when the choice is between competent government or a spectacularly incompetent shitshow of grifters, pedos and thieves), yes, there are limits to what you can realistically do in one election cycle.
In any case, it's actually hilarious that rhetoric like this "oh well actually the Dems are to blame because they haven't stopped them yet" is precisely why Republicans are gung ho in fighting against ranked choice ballots. A secret they've learned is to field some fringe bullshit candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Kanye, and so on, and they need the sort of idiots that vote for idiots like that to be throwing away their votes because "it's a uniparty of capital". Ranked choice ballots -- real democracy -- would threaten that.
Trump has repeatedly claimed ranked choice ballots are "corrupt", and House Republicans have repeatedly tried to ban it. Do you want to know why? Protip - it's because they rely on incredibly stupid voters.
Is that why Dems elevated Trump originally from meme-tier gameshow host to serious contender with their pied piper "strategy"? The best they could do is be mad at wikileaks for making them look bad.
Or why they forced a widely unpopular Dem candidate instead of having an actual primary last time around (not that they've shown they can even run a fair primary)?
edit to add:
> Ranked choice ballots -- real democracy -- would threaten that.
This is not the magical fix you think it is, since other countries with >2 parties suffer from the same systemic rot of revolving door politics, monopolistic corporate media, etc.
100%. Clearly you've nailed it, and you should vote for Trump's third term.
Let's be real here - when people do the "both parties are the same", usually citing some chickenshit bullshit like you just did, they're almost always a terrible person who just loves Trump but won't just admit it.
Also, it's a strawman of your creation to say both parties are the same. They're two different facades for the same underlying monetary interests. Sorry you're so easily fooled by that, but it shows that it works.
> Uniparty is a political term referring to the idea that seemingly separate political parties, typically the two dominant parties in a liberal democracy, function in practice as a single entity. It is often applied to the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in the United States, or to the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom.[1] The concept implies that despite their outward disagreements, the parties collaborate behind closed doors and share a unified set of political and economic interests, effectively creating a de facto one-party state. Proponents of this idea argue that such a "uniparty" suppresses genuine political alternatives and dissenting viewpoints by exercising control over the media, grassroots organisations, and ballot access regulations.[2]
Note that Repubs have a more solid group than Dems in the Senate, because Dems have to win states with more compromising candidates like Sinema/Manchin/Lieberman/Fetterman/etc, whereas the Repub states are solidly Republican.
Just see how Repubs were able to stymie Democrat Supreme Court Justices, and how many they were able to install.
> Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable.
I would urge you strongly not to let yourself be this consumed by this kind of thinking. This is a distorted view of your fellow man - however accurate _some_ of it may be about _some_ people - regardless of their political affiliation. This kind of thinking is exactly how we got to where we are now and persisting in it will almost certainly get us more extreme reactions.
that said, the Republican establishment has proven itself unworthy of the office and should be shown the door in the next election cycle - in decimating fashion. So much so that it should cause a complete recalibration of that party.
>This kind of thinking is exactly how we got to where we are now and persisting in it will almost certainly get us more extreme reactions.
It was seeing a black guy, and then possibly a woman, and then possibly a black woman get to the top that got us where we are now. The message is clear, don’t disrupt up our image of the hierarchy, or else we will support the worst of the worst, as long as they maintain the order.
Firstly, the upvote please nonsense betrays that you really don't know HN. I post these comments knowing that they're going to get downvoted, and I'm perfectly fine with that given that I'm not a snowflake. HN abhors political discussions, which is why these sorts of submissions usually get flagged off the front page quickly.
Secondly, if by Republicans you're referring specifically to the Trump abomination that has completely perverted the Republican party into a grifting party of unbelievable stupidity, extraordinary levels of racism, and self-destruction while the country is being looted in the open, yes, that's true. Republicans bad. I mean, it used to be the party of sober competence and steadfast steering, now it's a fucking joke (and one where the only fans left are the really, really bad people). If this offends you, too bad, the observation is utterly true.
The irony is this will harm US manufacturing, not help it. Manufacturing is the sector that most depends on robotics. Companies will now have to sue the administration so they can continue operations without this new regulatory hindrance. I thought this president was supposed to eliminate regulations, not impose newer and stupider ones.
I read somebody point out that the cold war roles have reversed. Now the US is protectionist and isolationist, and the likely eventual outcome will be the same for the US as it was for the USSR.
Yes, that is covered by Annex A titled "You have to sue". Which is interesting because longstanding law says the US cannot normally be sued. Surely you're not be hyperbolic.
In the 80s Brazil went that same path. They made a law forbidding everyone from importing computers. The idea was to "develop a national computer industry".
They created a monstrosity. The Brazilian made computers were always one generation behind the foreign ones (AT 286 was a "new" thing when every country was going into 386) and would cost 3 times more. Computers smuggled from Paraguay were everywhere, even I smuggled some.
The IT industry in Brazil became a cartel dominated by few companies. They'd pirate everything from the Americans, even DOS and all BIOS and firmware. Their computers' mainboards were ugly, hacked and defect prone. But they would give buckets of money to the military controlling the government and the corrupt politicians in Congress. The 80s became known as the "lost decade" because of the low growth induced by this policy.
I though Brazil still has these weird tariffs on computers and high tech products in general - at least I've heard from some Brazilians that it's still making personal computing hardware far too expensive wioth little to no benefit to this day.
Yeah, they still have high tariffs. But back them it was just illegal to import computers. You'd need to request special authorization from the government to do so, and it would take months to get an authorization. And only a few reasons would be accepted (research, high-performance industrial automation, etc).
Oh, Intel is way ahead of the curve there, friend.
See: broken cablemodem chipsets, poor performing cellular modems, multiple generations of desktop ethernet adapters that don't work properly, uncompetitive processors in all but some very specific markets, CPUs that literally fry themselves to death because they couldn't keep up with AMD's advances so the just just kept cranking the voltage and clock speeds...Intel has been a bucket of Fail for a decade and a half.
And now the US government owns a not-too-shabby chunk of said Winning company thanks to a Very Stable Genius...
This is just a false-flag campaign planted by the UAW to ensure the slovenly can keep their jobs another couple years instead of actually be held to task for poor American manufacturing build quality. ;)
There's no reason it can't. You could do the same thing on streaming as was done back in the radio days. I've been searching for it but haven't really found it yet.
So far the closest thing I found was when Huey Lewis did a radio show on Apple Music. You couldn't call in and there were no contests, but it's a bit of talking from someone likable, separated by a couple of songs they introduce which you also like. That's basically the format of radio, in its most basic form.
I've searched a bit for that type of format on streaming. Sure there's always TuneIn or MyTuner apps which are interesting but those shows are always tailored to a specific faraway city that you don't know much about, or they're in a different language, or they're sports talk related which I'm not interested in.
I'm specifically looking for music I like and a likeable person talking and introducing songs, just like the clips you have on your web site. I just don't understand how that can be so expensive that big tech companies with deep pockets like Apple Music don't want to produce it. What's up with that?
Maybe if it wasn't so damn shameless. This article did absolutely nothing to try and conceal the fact that it's pure AI slop.
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