oldcigarette

I am probably far more sympathetic than you can ever imagine but the antecedents are not really unique to google. The technical destination of targeting advertising just looks like this given privacy laws (well the lack thereof).

See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/eff-congress-heres-wha... or probably any recent publication about privacy rights by the eff.

Like I get it but be mad that congress is a bunch of goofy old people who give zero shits. If you can point at some lobbying by google then by all means so be it - certainly they appeared to have kissed the ring as of late. But keep in mind googlers personally direct money into the eff every year too.

No - they are an advertising company. It is to their advantage to be ahead of the game with something like federated ML if that is where society is headed. To say Google has no positive impact is absurd - engineers there generally care about protecting user data. There is probably better access controls at Google than anywhere else. Sure there are pressures like you said but a gross misplace of user trust is what would destroy them.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Citation needed - see google and project maven. Of course that is all well in the past now - but for a brief moment google was capable of taking an ethical stance.

Just s/AI/surveillance state/ and it reads pretty much the same. People in the US you should read NSPM-7 which is obviously simply targeted at this admin's out group. Things seem to be well in motion already from the outward indications we have about DHS spending and disregard for legal processes. People are just still in denial or not paying attention.

Yeah the resulting stigma on tariffs is a bit unfortunate. You could imagine a system of tariffs that was intended to set a sort of globalized minimum wage in certain segments. The US could even have foreign entities to distribute the tariff income to the workers in those countries for example.

Tariffs are totally a reasonable tool for protecting national security interests or leveling the playing field for the American worker. Unfortunately none of that was done in a coherent or legible way.

With all the global fallout and nothing to show for it I'm really not sure I could have come up with a better way to sabotage the United States.

it is times like these i am reminded of https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

I remember rolling out encryption over all the DC<->DC fiber after the PRISM leaks at Google. People were pissed about it. I'm sure they comply with legal requests but I would be very surprised if they break the law (such as it is) in any way.

muh lag

Every car for the last 150 years has had mechanical connection from the steering wheel to the tires and nobody is talking about the reliablity and safety concerns. The absolute state of hacker news.

Don't confuse the US before the collapse of the soviet union and now. There is a reason it is in the position it is - it actually did stuff countries liked such as rebuilding the world after WWII. When the soviet union collapsed the US needed to pivot - instead a bunch of inept politicians have been doing expedient nothings for 30 years.

To your point every creek in pittsburgh is still "shit creek" or loaded with amd in the spring. I wouldn't eat any mud - maybe some dirt up on a hill.

Economics, sociology and psychology all tend to say very little with very many words to the extent that the message gets lost and people don't even know what they are discussing.

You see it to a lesser extent in software and math too though - just look at any mathematical article on wikipedia. The "dynamic programming" article is a good one for this.

I'm not sure this is a new problem.

Yeah this seems like a quite simple affirmation of states rights in matters which have not been explicitly deferred to the federal government. I was kind of hoping to find good discussion at least on hacker news but it's the same nonsense as every other back water shithole on the internet. At this point 4chan is having a more nuanced discussion :( I'm increasingly convinced we will see the US split - and to be honest after today I would be quite happy for that to happen since a large contingent of people don't seem to understand or even want to operate in the legal frameworks we have.

Yeah you can go and read what was in the buffalo shooters head though which is a thing. He's pretty much a schizo christchurch copy cat. Amusingly he seems mostly in favor of shootings since it intensifies the gun control debate and accelerate the schism in the united states.

Gun control is not going to fix this kind of radicalism or its impact. The dude was a straight up terrorist and IMO he made the correct observation that this sort of terrorism will be successful in driving the divide and creating more extremism.

This has been discussed at great length many many times and courts nor anyone serious about this topic agrees with you. The right is not predicated on being part of a militia in any way. Anyone who says this is pretty much immediately ignored by gun owners because they are clearly not serious at all about the topic.

"and then for no reason at all putin invaded ukraine"

The response has been absurdly hostile to the Russian people. The West's foreign policy is simple "escalate". Stay tuned for your daily programming.

bringing back the old USSR satellites

This is basically equivalent to saying Putin is retarded because there is no way they can pull this off. Putin has acted exactly how he said he would act since at least 2008 when NATO membership was proposed. I'm inclined to believe the words of someone who acts consistently with them rather than your literal bandwagon fallacy.

So are we at the point where we deny the Nuland thing every happened? None of this happened under the foreign policy of Trump. I support Ukrainian self determination but this is not what happened and even if it is it is not how Russia perceives which seems entirely reasonable.

If you look at election and poll results there is a clear east/west divide in Ukraine. It is not moot and ignoring this factor is woefully uninformed about the causes and perceptions of this event in the east.

muh generational wealth Gone in two or three generations - irrelevant to policy decisions. Handing out these (false) mental crutches is unproductive and just creates resentment in the wrong places. Some people take a risk and are rewarded for it. Some people just work hard. Some people got a shit hand. You come across as one of those load voices clamoring for some policy without any appreciation for nuance.

eh it's not really HN - this has been the narrative of certain elements for a long time now: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1085...

the left has become obsessed with authoritarianism under the guise of "liberalism". i don't think any of them know what the word means anymore. they rile up imaginary "injustice" to distract and sow discord. people who would do that are far more traitorous than grandma going on a larp in the capitol.

Clever is rarely a good idea. If this isn't a public it might just be totally broken instead of throttled.

Is there a more generous perspective than this? I've been reading but from what I can tell this was just a terrible idea. Hindsight is 20/20 and all - but really?

Well at least 4chan and hackernews are getting closer together (still miles apart but never thought i'd see the day). I'm not sure what to make if it all.

Is there a coherent thought here? I don't disagree the vaccine has saved lives or even that you shouldn't get it. I can enjoy my job and what I do and disapprove of decisions made by leadership at the same time. It's easily the best place and people I've ever worked with.

Yeah I totally get that there is an interest - I disagree with whether it's a big enough interest at the employer level to justify a requirement. It feels more like pandering/posturing to me. The trade off isn't something that's easily weighed and I doubt we could ever reach consensus (it's pretty much a classic divisive political issue) but in those cases I err on the side of freedom and am sort of fed up with Americans giving up their freedoms.

I work at google and am vaxxed but this pisses me off. I decided that the vaccine was worth the risk and for the best overall but if someone makes a different calculus I can understand and respect that.

IMHO they gone way outside the reasonable scope of an employer - this is a cultural decision at the society level - why the fuck does my employer give a shit about this. Unless the employees are only commuting back and forth to work this does fuck all. It's feel good virtue signalling and I can't stomach any more counter productive SJW bullshit. The risk from COVID is not even that high for vaccinated individuals. What low risk bullshit are they going to make rules about next? Don't expect me to smile when you ask me to trade freedom for a bit of false security.

Want to change something? Then change societies perspective on the vaccine on your own fucking time.

Personally this ranks with their worst decisions and they made some fucking awful decisions over the years. I probably will act as if I don't have the vaccine and let them fire me for it when push comes to shove.

how long you keep a car is your decision

You do repair work in the desert don't you? I mostly agree with your sentiment. However in the rust belt we spray corrosive agents all over our cars and within 5 years loosening half of the fasteners takes 10 times what you are probably familiar with.

In railfanning we don't look kindly on people who trespass to great the 'perfect shot' because they just end up screwing things up for everyone else with ever increasing rules, surveillance and fences. Please think about the consequences of your actions when doing something like this.

I did an interview with them and it seems like they do hire the cheapest.

Yeah this is pretty much it. The senate is there to help preserve the state's rights equally. Without it the larger states get an unobstructed bigger say over the smaller ones. Remember the federal government was setup to be very limited keeping most of the power in the hands of the states.