I bet she knows fine what the phrase means. Doesn't mean she's beyond protecting the business interests of people who fund her political goals of course but she's always struck me as a woman who knows her brief.

She claimed she didn’t know what “wiping a server” meant 10 years ago. I’d bet she’d say anything once the check cleared.

I'm always reading about how much of a meritocracy these tech places are. And that the US is a bastion of free market enterprise compared to backwaters like the UK.

So if this was really true, how come there aren't AI recruiters who scan the supposedly obscure newspapers for job ads like these and bring them to their clients and make a fat commission when their (clearly superior US based candidate :lol:) demonstrates throughout the interview process that they are capable of doing the job.

I dunno. Didn't it still need to be driven by a team of experienced Mathematicians? I don't believe that two months ago, you or I could've just typed "Solve Navier Stokes. Make no mistakes" into claude and come back some time later and expect to see a solution.

The whole point of corporations is that the assets (and liabilities) created by the people working on behalf of the corporation outlive the term of their employment.

They don't (or at least shouldn't) get to keep the assets without also honouring the liabilities.

I don't think so. I think the British public genuinely want to live in an authoritarian surveillance state.

Once they do, they might stop wanting to live in one. But for now they want it.

If the country is thoroughly taken over by crime, an authoritarian surveillance state does have its perks. I heard there are no-go zones in London that tourists are warned about, so maybe that is the case over there.

Citizens had been cheering when the government over in El Salvador was rounding up all the gang members and just locked them up without due process.

If a country is "thoroughly taken over by crime", wouldn't it stand to reason that the criminals are running the surveillance state? Certainly starting to feel that way in the US at the federal level.

'No go' zones are massively exaggerated. There are nicer areas and less nice areas, but crime is generally pretty low (compared to other comparable countries) in every area. No one ever describes dodgy parts of US cities as 'no go' areas even though the crime happening there is typically much more prevalent and visible (e.g. Hard drug use on the streets).

The UK is a divided country. Pensioners are the most important demographic for getting reliable votes and they live in fear because they read crime news every day, so they support any measures if they believe it can help put the criminals in line. Most politicians do everything they can to have pensioners on their side. Touching the triple lock was unthinkable for years while liberal and socialist economists were all warning against it.

Fascists are split between young American influenced ones who want freedom and hate the Online Safety Act, and racists who support anything as long as will make Muslims lives harder. The freedom loving ones are winning today so you see Green and Reform MPs standing together against the government.

Middle class professionals see Dubai, Singapore and China as good examples and don't mind losing freedom for safety. The rich technocrats running the country are the ones who came up with all this, because they see the world as uneducated masses who need a nanny state to control them. And it helps their investments grow.

The types of people who are most affected by the surveillance state already gave up on politics years ago because there's no one to represent them. There is no party fighting for young or working class people's actual interests, so they vote for extremists in the hope that something will change.

When Thatcher said "there is no society" she was wrong at the time, but her successors did everything they could to make it real.

Why does electricity stop at 1973? It's been going back up again for the last few years.

Warren Buffet made the largest single tax payment in US history last year. He doesn't play any games.

You mean fund ICE and build some more concentration camps?

Approximately 1% of the federal budget is infrastructure. There are huge advantages to donating to a charity that actually does something productive instead of the federal waste machine.

Or maybe, just maybe, a system that doesn't create massive concentration of wealth won't try to divert people's focus by pitting people against each other and building concentration camps. Governments aren't fundamentally wasteful. In fact, an effective government is an absolute requirement for functioning healthcare, fair wages, consumer protection, and actual public safety that protects all people equally.

This isn't to diminish all the good things charities have done, but charities are fundamentally band-aid solutions to a dysfunctional society. Leaving welfare at the mercy of wealthy individuals as the wealth gap keeps getting bigger and bigger is a losing strategy. It shouldn't be the state of things people should be aiming for.

Cool. Give me a call when our government isn't wasteful and destructive, then we can talk about the relative benefits of taxes versus charity.

Until then, I'm going to look at the real world and conclude that charities do massively more good

Pretending that reality is other than it is nothing short of delusion, living in a fantasy.

Fixing government and taxing the rich is the only solution that addresses the core of the issue. Charities can't close wealth gaps, because they lack the power to enforce laws that ensure fair labor and trade practices. Charities can't stop the healthcare industry from bankrupting sick or injured people, because that too requires enforcing the law. Charities can't stop concentration camps.

Charities do have a place in society and they can do enormous good, but can't compensate for a poor government.

Frankly, the notion that government is fundamentally ineffective and only the private sector can fix things is billionaire propaganda. Billionaires undermine government so they can exploit working-class people with fewer constraints. Then they'd use charity to launder their reputation while pushing their own agenda.

Deriding calls for fair taxes and claiming charities will fix things is wishful thinking at best.

> Yep, for all the moralizing about sports gambling people on HN do, they sure love to prime their children for it.

Can't get through life without gambling at least a little bit.

Even taking out a life insurance policy is making a bet you're going to die before it expires

Although it uses the same technology as gambling, it's for a different purpose. You aren't hoping to die, you are doing risk management for your family.