It's the equivalent of the cops pulling you over and using a slightly dim tail light to search your entire car, make you get out, spread your legs, and get a pat-down.
Every large government department in every country in the world has some waste. All of them. All of the time.
This is why it's so disingenuous for Trump/Musk supporters to point at tiny bits of waste or whatever and scream "See! See! We found it! They deserve what they got!"
It's not coincidentally one of the justifications used by Russia to invade Ukraine. They claimed they were after Nazis. So what if Ukraine has Nazis!? So does every other damned European country! American has Nazis! Russia has Nazis!
It's the drill sergeant making you do 100 push ups because there was a barely visible scratch on your boots. His boots have scratches too. That's not the point. It's an excuse to make you jump.
My advice is: Any time anyone uses such a claim, or anything like it, always ask yourself: Okay, but what is the base rate for this thing they've suddenly decided is objectionable? Is it higher or lower elsewhere?
Elon Musk's people have been remarkably bad at finding real examples of waste. Their hit rate is extremely low - almost everything they publicize turns out to be wrong.
You'd think they'd be able to scour the Federal budget and find a few real examples of waste to crow about, but instead they give us things like: $50 million in condoms sent to Gaza so that Hamas can make bombs??? And of course, that instantly turned out to be fake news.
All the same, try not being distracted by the smoke and noise of the circus, it's all just a massive dead cat on the table to distract while other quieter changes are made.
Oh the bullshit they brainwashed you with. What infrastructure? Non-existent healthcare? Non-existent public transportation? Non-existent fiber to the home? Non-existent policing of crimes? Schools that look like jails? Homes built of shitty wood? Power outages, fires, disasters all the time?
There are countries with far better infrastructure that have less taxes. The US loves spending tax dollars on a bunch of inefficiencies and meddling in the affairs of other countries I will never live in, with my money.
Because you found a person with opinions different to your own?
I think most of what Trump is attempting will work out poorly, for America, Trump, and the world in general. I can't prove that and there are so many presumptions in my world view, my estimation might be incorrect.
Trump was elected. I think a lot of that support came from people who had been voting for either Kang or Kodos for years and knew the outcome of that wasn't going to be what they wanted. I believe those people know exactly what kind of person Trump is, but that Trump acting in his own self interest might cause government action that is at least not-as-bad as the alternative of a perpetual status quo.
I don't think that is the case, but I think it would be unreasonable to declare that someone who believes something different is wrong simply because I think my opinion objectively carries more weight.
I appreciate your post, and I think there is some truth to what you're saying. The problem is that... It's hard bordering on impossible for me to process what these people see good in what he's doing. I've tried, mind you, I've really truly tried. But this whole thing sounds insane to me. There is no way for me to erase the bigger picture from my mind that I get to the point... "yeah, he's doing a good job."
The second point is I feel a lot of these people are NOT arguing in good faith. If someone is not arguing in good faith, being "understanding" would just embolden them.
I have a hard time expressing why I like what Trump is doing. It might just be to see those squirm who put us through Covid lockdown hell, or just someone who is so willing to do whatever openly.
An example I like: they deport a bunch of Colombians here illegally, Socialist Colombian President refuses to let the plane land, Trump immediately says we are going to hammer them with tariffs and other things, Colombian President apologizes and says they won’t get in the way.
He is just exerting American dominance openly. He took us out of the WHO, ends the dumb climate accord. The idea that we should put our own people first.
Now it all might blow up in our face as the world gets sick of the American bully, and that will crush our empire, but I’m also ok with that, because it might be the only thing that will allow us to rebuild from the ground up.
Well, at least you're honest about it, it's somewhat refreshing. How do you feel about the way he is treating your traditional allies? Canada, the EU...
Well I don’t like Trudeau so I’ve enjoyed his trolling of him as “the governor of the great state of Canada”. For the most part I don’t mind, but we will come to regret it if war actually breaks out. I think for the most part it is all superficial, and yes tariffs (which are terrible for an economy), will not do well long term, but have already forced Mexico and Canada to act at least, and I think that was the intent. Essentially saying you need us more than we need you. If/When that is no longer true, it is going to come back to bite us if we’ve completely burned all the bridges with our allies.
As it is the United States military is so dominant around the world, NATO should just be considered an overseas American army for example, and Trump is essentially just exerting the us dominance in a blunt way, but it has always been wielded, but is always prettied up to not sound like what it is. A giant military empire of force. Trump is just showing us what has always been behind the curtain of the US government, and the US use of power.
I think long term it will weaken the American empire, but will also make us less reliant on globalization, but I think if all the individual EU countries took a mindset of “our citizens first” like Trump it will be a good thing.
Trump put us through Covid lockdown hell. Awfully strange to re-elect the guy responsible for the worst of Covid.
What happened with the Colombians was the President said "you cannot land them here in chains and handcuffs" and Trump threatened tariffs, then cancelled the tariffs, then caved into the Colombian President's demands and removed the handcuffs from the Colombian citizens. Fox News and conservative media spun this as a "win" because Trump made a threat and also because they misunderstood why Colombia refused the plane.
I was going to say the same in less kind words. I am sick of seeing the media, even allegedly informed people like IT admins, devs, the tech media, are all trying to change the news in real time to fit whatever agenda they have.
The number of times I've already explained to people online and in person that this is not the fault of Microsoft, Windows, etc.
It's this blatant disregard for reality that makes me tired of the internet. The next dumb lie they try meme into existence, I'll just not use the internet for a week.
> this is not the fault of Microsoft, Windows, etc.
Partially, it is. The expected lifetime of unprotected Windows machine connected to the Internet is in minutes, and I think there's some fault of Microsoft and Windows in that. And people want a solution to this problem, and when Crowdstrike offers one they take it. The reason "Windows + Crowdstrike" became so omnipresent is because "Windows without Crowdstrike" is too big a risk. It may be not a direct fault but certainly a contribution to the whole situation.
Maybe it you're running Windows XP, but that is absolutely not true for a supported version of Windows. It is absolute FUD to say simply connecting a Windows 10/11 machine to the internet will cause it to be automatically infected.
You can continue to record audio in the background, but you can't use the API to just listen all the time, like "hey siri" does, and then open the app and act on it.
If Apple delivers a defective device to the customer, I see no reason why they shouldn't be fixing it using the money the customer originally paid. A security vulnerability may eventually leave a device completely unusable.
There are a couple of problems with this argument. One is that with a device (especially a premium one) the cost of support for a reasonable lifetime is considered baked into the price. The other is that security updates imply a security issue, meaning the company sold you an insecure, i.e. defective device in the first place.
You are exactly the audience being misled by these articles. Apple or Google aren’t secretly screen recording you and couldnt care less about your bank account.
If on Linux or a BSD, people can analyze what is happening by inspecting packets, seeing what is saved and being sent on the system. That cannot be fully done on phones.
Not to the degree that a full-on conspiracy theorist will believe it - like the people who actually think that Apple telling us not to "close" iOS applications is actually some 5th dimensional chess Tim Cook is playing to get people's phones wear down more or something.
But enough to convince the best security experts I know and have heard of. That's enough for me.
Devil's advocate: User data is now more valuable than user consent or user trust, seeing as consumers are locked in to a few brands and AI is the way of the future.
I find it especially difficult to believe that Google has any moral qualms about extracting every bit of data possible.
I'm not saying they are, I'm saying it's based on trust and that trust has been broken.
Google wants all the data it can get on you that won't get it in serious legal hot water. Which is all quite sketchy.
But, extracting your financial information is so far into the boiling ocean of criminal prosecutions and mass customer abandonment, that they are heavily incentivized as an ad company, and operating system developer, to make sure that neither they nor anyone else can get that information.
That doesn't mean there can't be security gaps that could reveal financial information, but Google is the one looking to prevent them, and plug them when found, not leverage them.
15 years is completely realistic, I only started having problems with my 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid after 17 years of heavy use and 260k miles. Keep in mind that 2007 was when the 1st generation hybrids were just coming out, too, so technology is much better today.
Don’t forget that there are other parts of a car that degrades as well with time. Eventually most well used cars will have an engine or powertrain issue if they even make it to 15 years to use without being totaled in an accident or simply sold second hand or misused.
The 2007 Ford Escape Hybrids were using a lot of shared parts with the Toyota Prius, so the battery pack is definitely not Li-ion. The newer high-density Li-ion packs will not survive 15 years without loosing significant capacity, if they survive at all.
The escape hybrid had a nickel cadmium battery.
I don’t see why a li-ion battery pack wouldn’t be usable for 15 years with good battery management. Both battery and ICE cars have reduced performance and range due to capacity/efficiency degradation so replacing and recycling a battery or engine at 15 years to restore performance is not unreasonable. No car, EV or ICE lasts forever. Likewise, most people want to upgrade to a newer flashier car before 15 years.
> I don’t see why a li-ion battery pack wouldn’t be usable for 15 years.
For 2 reasons, primarily. First, Toyota chose nickel-cadmium batteries because of their higher charge-cycle life, at the cost of a much lower energy density (about half that of li-ion). Secondly, they designed their system so that the discharge rate and the discharge level of their battery pack stayed low, thereby maximizing the lifetime of their battery pack, at the cost, once more, of extra weight.
So those two aspects combined mean that you can expect a much longer real-life usage of your battery pack before reduced performance becomes an issue.
I fully agree that a battery pack replacement after 15 years could be considered reasonable (as long as the build quality of the rest of the car warrants it, which is not a given nowadays). But if the mean-time between replacement is around 5 years, then it becomes unreasonable.
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