SavageBeast

Surplus? LOL!! If we cut a massive $1T from our nearly $2T deficit every year that would be considered a radical success. Thats how screwed up things are. Nobody is even talking about a BUDGET SURPLUS here. Sometimes I don't think people realistically see how deep the hole is.

As for a less chaotic way to go about it, both Democrats and Republicans have been screaming about a balanced budget for as long as I can remember (Im not young) and now we finally have someone willing to attack the problem seriously.

I mean we all know how to do it, simply cut THE OTHER GUYS programs and then we can afford OUR programs. Simple right? What we have here is a Republican administration deciding where to make cuts and a Democratic party unhappy about it. Donald Trump could literally save planet earth and the democratic party wouldn't have a nice word to say about him. This is the exactly how the Republican party treated President Obama for 8 years.

The US is very backwards in a lot of important ways. Since you're in Australia it might be hard for you to see but about half the country is perfectly happy with whats going on and they knowingly voted for exactly this. Its not a surprise this is happening and if anything is surprising about it a politician is actually doing the thing he promised to do.

The complaints and panic energy you see around this topic seems to stem from the fact that the Republican party has the executive branch and both chambers of congress in addition to a sympathetic supreme court (read FULL CONTROL). The party in power today can more or less do whatever it wants and the opposing party can only make complaints among themselves while mounting literally any legal challenge they can come up with in hopes of slowing the process down.

At this point I think its more of a strategic reserve of gold for non-financial purposes. In terms of our budget/debt/spending its not a significant amount. We could sell it all and make not one dent in anything.

"I'm always surprised to see a fair amount of support for DOGE here. I'd love to understand why these people think this is OK."

So consider the guy who makes $100k/year and spends $200k/year. Over the course of enough years what must inevitably happen here?

I think making financial decisions to avoid what amounts to bankruptcy is OK.

Now, the US wont ever go "bankrupt" or "default" of course, but it will absolutely print money to service the debt on its bonds. Bond holders tend not to like that and sooner or later will demand higher payments in exchange for the use of their money thus increasing our "minimum monthly payment" on our giant credit card.

Sooner or later we get to a death spiral situation - nobody knows when that will be or what set of circumstances will trigger it - and when/if it does finally happen it will somehow take everyone by surprise. Nothing is so surprising as the inevitable when it finally occurs.

For those stateside you can still do this in a local office apparently. Not ideal but its not as if passport issuance has been suspended. The site is under maintenance to remove modifications made for more than 2 genders according to a quick search. Medicaid payment's were down for a few days last week too. Not ideal by any means but far from world ending.

This is the playbook of a company moving from "Growth" to "Maturity". Of note:

In August 2024, Alphabet announced a quarterly dividend of $0.20 per share, totaling $0.80 annually, resulting in a dividend yield of approximately 0.39%

At current that would mean Alphabet's annual dividend payout is approximately $9.8112 billion.

Now the game is to pay that dividend, incentivize people to hold the stock and reduce volatility. A dividend stock company behaves very differently than a growth stock company.

Whats really frightening here is that a company like Google looks into the future and sees bad prospects for growth.

Personally I view the tariffs as a threat to get compliance. Its possible the goal is to get them to "have a brilliant idea" and invest in some American production. I don't know why but Asking Nicely never works for anything, why should international trade be any different.

Perhaps the opposite is true: Maybe Zuck found the courage to stand up for what he's come to believe in as he's matured as a person and a leader. Maybe what we're seeing now is a Zuck thats willing to say No More. Its seems rational that what we're seeing is just exactly that and that he actively wishes to be aligned with the policies of the new administration as he sees merit in their approach and ideas.

@iExploder has been a consultant in a previous life - this is a more realistic plan than it sounds

Where is the solo founder startup thats up and running today where the non-technical founder used AI to generate all code and infrastructure?

You are precisely correct. However I use AI regularly to write what Ive come to call Nuisance Code, which is for example: I need a function to find the highest peak and lowest valley in this example stream of data points.

Can I do that? Sure I can do that. Will I have to think about it for a minute and fire up the debugger here and there, drop a few log print statements to get it running? You bet I will. Will I have to dig around in my memory for the last time I did a thing like this, oh yeah.

Can I tell AI what my stream of data looks like, tell it I want a list of peaks and valleys in the data, get some code and run it the first time, today? Yes I can.

Someone is always going to have to break the ask down into discrete logical units for implementation then precisely describe that work. This person is always going to be a developer.

Tell him your accounting department can only issue paper checks. Get his name and address "for the check" or course. Also your accounting department can't issue any check with out an invoice, so he needs to give you a detailed invoice.

Then you can out him or take up legal action, or send some goons over to his house for that matter.

If you really want to have some fun tell him you're happy to pay him but he must become and Approved Vendor first ... and boy thats a process but you want paid right? This is the only way accounting will pay anybody. Sorry :)

Billionaires keep their massive wealth invested in assets rather than cash in their checking account. We had significant inflation in '24 and with that dollars got smaller. The resulting impact is that the billionaire who was worth $10B now had $12B as the valuations of their owned assets changed with inflation.

So "Billionaires kept pace with inflation in 2024" is probably a more accurate headline.

This is the way.

In reading this I come to wonder if the current advances in "AI" are going to follow the Self Driving Car model. Turns out the 80% is relatively easy to do, but the remaining 20% to get it right is REALLY hard.

Technical Cofounder here: I presume we're all living some parallel life. Forcing founders/investors/biz people to think it even 10% through was always really hard. It's like they have some kind of dopamine addiction that only NEW SHIT EVERY DAY can scratch. They live in a sort of dream world and simply cannot STAND being pulled back into reality.

One of the worst books ever published was that damn Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. The week after that was published literally everyone with a laptop was a demanding asshole with ridiculous ideas they now felt compelled to beat everyone else into because IT WORKED FOR STEVE AMIRITE!!!???

I always found the whole thing odd personally. The Venn Diagram of people who both need to run a service in the cloud AND cannot manage an EC2 instance is a seemingly small set of people. I never saw the advantage to it and its got plenty of drawbacks.

"I have had several conflicts with founders because I act outside of my scope (I.E, I do things they think is a waste of my time: like budget forecasts, headcount plans, retrospectives of milestones and previously I was doing the product roadmap- which I definitely agree is out of scope)."

The founders hate it when you use numbers, facts and analysis to come up with very good reasons not to implement their latest Great Idea on demand. I presume you were the one that actually implemented a Product Roadmap to keep founders out of the weeds in the first place.

Well, it historically hasn't been every day ... that may be changing now

The Danish government is and has been well under their 2% NATO commitment. I can see a case where in the face of the requirement being moved up from 2%, Denmark may need the money. Lets not forget about the 57K people in Greenland who would love some mailbox money for letting the US exploit their natural resources. The way I see this happening is that the people of Greenland are sold on the idea and the Danish govt. is in the awkward position of trying to stop them, and theres some leverage over them regarding their ability to fund their NATO commitment. Additionally I have a feeling someone is going to have to fund whatever becomes of the war in Ukraine because it seems to me the US is finished.

Your take is dead on but there is a case where we actually do get it done and its not as hard as its being made out to be.

I wonder if you're missing my point here. Whatever Trump did or didn't do, whatever he represents to you, whatever evil things he's been accused of ... 77 million American voters chose him over a willing and available alternative. Its seems clear that the whole TRUMP==BAD campaign failed miserably if an election victory is any indication.

My point in a nutshell is simple; calling Trump names didn't work the first time and may have even helped him get reelected. If he is to be hampered, its too late to totally stop him, is this really the way to do it? Quadruple down on a losing strategy yet again?

Attacking Trump as a person failed. Attacking Trump on policy didn't seem to fare much better. Whats left at this point? 77 million people looked at the charges levied against him, and then voted for him anyhow. The rational response to this from his opponents is to continue down the same failed path? Its just performative theatrics at this point I think. The die has been cast.

Not possible in the US. Musk isn't a born American but a naturalized citizen. He can never be president without a constitutional amendment and that isn't going to happen ever.

I agree this is the current plan from Trump adversaries. They recognize the combined power of Trump's POTUS authority and Musk's money and they're anxious to try and exploit any opening they can find no matter how small. Frankly this combination will be very damaging to left wing priorities and I can see why they're anxious to try and sow division.

Remember Trump has vowed to primary Republican reps who don't get in line with the current party agenda. Musk has vowed to fund these alternative candidates, even funding moderate democrats in blue districts. Trump will need Musk's money to make these things a reality.

From my reading of the news, its seems more of a made up "rift" than an actual thing, though I get the impression opposition badly wants to sell it as a factual thing. The more the left tries to sell the narrative that "Trump is Elon's bitch" the more they look desperate and afraid of the power the two of them working together represents. The Left appears to be properly terrified of this, even from my far off point of view just having access to The News. They're not scared because they're winning and I can see that from here, so surely the main people involved can see it too.

Its a pretty good life rule that the person screaming the loudest is generally losing. This is really just a variant of the ole "Putin has dirty pictures of Trump and he owns him!" narrative all over again.

Alternatively, perhaps Trump has secured himself the use of a billionaires money? Personally I wonder who the puppet is in this situation.

If you're feeling too rich you don't need to cure it by donating all your money etc. Simply buy a jet and make fancy friends. Soon you wont be rich anymore, your existential dilemma will vanish and you can get back to working.

Also, when every house rep and every senator is on their respective floor and participates in each and every vote, I'll entertain the validity of RTO. Until then its just a means of soft-firing people.

If they can't be productive OUTSIDE the office, they're likely no productive IN the office.

It's worth a 20 minute rabbit hole dive to research Vivek's background a bit. Compare his accomplishments to the accolades (seemingly?) heaped on him. Love or hate Musk, his remarkable qualifications are undeniable. They are not the same breed of animal.

I put this out there simply to draw some attention to the question of exactly who are we "taking direction" from and on what basis? Why?

I've come to prompt in this format and its working well for me. I once had your issue on another subject and it was indeed annoying.

"Claude - Im learning to program C - I wan't you to help me learn"

"I'm unsure what Im doing so can you walk me through the problem 1 step at a time? We can decide when to move to the next step but I want to be sure I understand each step as we go"

"Ok - I get it so far - Im ready for the next small step so we can discuss it"

You said: Can you write a C language regex, using regex.h, just to split the following structure on "=" or ";"

I mean, it did exactly PRECISELY what you asked it to do - you asked it to write a program and it did! Never mind anything, how cool is that??

I've watched this before - its thought provoking and a good watch if you enjoy the documentary format. Covers a lot of ground.

CME Group has ETH and BTC futures and you can short those easily as theres no notion of "borrowing shares" in the futures world to get short.

"Are you only realizing who they are now?"

TL;DR: It was stupid on its face but its an intractable problem too - no sane person is going to address it - maybe its worth a shot?

Fair question and a well thought out ask - I suppose given the gravity of the current US fiscal situation I was ready to entertain an unconventional solution if for no other reason than it might draw real attention to the issue. Given the absolutely wild spending of the past 4 years (and before too of course) I was ready to consider things I'd never have given a second look before. Its the classic Hail Mary shot in basketball. Its not a good shot and at no other point in the game would it be a shot worth taking but you got the ball and theres 1 second on the clock - use it or lose it.

Given their limited and unofficial scope, my idea at least, was that they couldn't do any real damage. Congress alone spends the money and that isn't going to change. Some high profile people shining some sunlight on government spending abuses should only be a good thing. If they happen to do a good job then great, and if they're whacko they're not directly in charge of anything and theres still plenty of backstop keeping them from getting too far.

Now here we are 21 days from a new administration AND THEY'RE ALREADY OFF IN THE WEEDS! They were only tenuously entertained as reasonable in the first place and now here they are pretending they have some standing in the greater, national, policy conversation. To be clear they do not.

I never had any delusion that Elon was suddenly going to start saying rational, measured and accurate things. VR is just a guy trying to buy his way into the game and in my opinion not to be taken too seriously anyhow as a sidekick. BUT if you want to cut costs, make the seemingly impossible thing happen, change how the government actually provides services and spends money to do it - there are worse guys out there than Elon to make it happen. $2T in cuts was insane for sure and it was dumb to even say, not to mention it speaks poorly that someone even thought it was worth saying but such is typical out of him.

Warts and all - if there was one person who could make an improvement it was Elon Musk - and if not well at least we tried. He's in a sandbox for the most part and has no more authority than the administration allows. Even if Trump is seduced/enamored by the pair of them theres still a government in place.

At this very early point, before the war even starts in earnest, Im already looking at the rollback plan and cancelling the DOGE release.

EDIT: If nothing else DOGE was to be a patsy organization - we NEED SPENDING CUTS and nobody wants their sacred cow slaughtered. Its not going to be a popular job. It was my thinking that a "separate agency" might provide some cover in the form of Someone To Blame, thus making the conversation about cutting spending possible at all.

After their combined rants over the weekend Im done with Elon and Vivek. Nevermind the fact that nobody asked their opinions on the topic they were ranting about in the first place.

Tackling government waste is their charge and this is not on topic at all. It sickens me to see them using their purchased positions of influence with POTUS now to drive their own agendas. It doubly sickens me to see POTUS entertaining them. The current/outgoing administration spent 4 years talking down to me and now The New Guy is surrounding himself with people doing the same.

Get back to addressing government waste and understand that neither of you were elected to office. Vivek especially, given he was actually running.

Both of them hold what amounts to a pseudo cabinet position, unofficially of course (wink wink). They seem to want to have a say like an official position might BUT also play the Private Citizen card when it suits them too. They have only the slimmest mandate on a singular subject yet they want to publicly opine with the weight of a cabinet position as a reason their opinion carries weight. WE KNOW THE PRESIDENT AND YOU SHOULD DO WHAT WE SAY!

The more I think about it this just rubs me the worst kind of the wrong way.