When you call in to Support at Google, you'll get someone who is a specialist in a certain thing, and they have access to only the tools and data necessary to do their particular job with your account. They rely on your disclosure of stuff to them. I often find myself uploading files to Drive, or images to Photos, and sharing them Public so that the Googler can follow a link.
As an anecdotal example, I've visited Waymo depots a couple of times. (Not actually Google, but a sister company under Alphabet.) The depot is completely nondescript, and I wouldn't have identified it if I didn't know what it was. There are a few Visitor parking spaces up front. And the front entrance leads to a Security Desk. The waiting room has about 4 chairs and a table of interesting design. The Security Guard will see you know. And there's a door beyond.
I was there to pick up "Lost & Found" items. You basically get the impression that security is tight as a drum. The guards can be kind of informal; there are employees circulating in and out; but ain't nobody going to exfiltrate a bunch of data, if they appreciate their freedom and civil rights.
I am not tired of that at all. But you have people be tired of tons of things, on reddit too. That should not distract discussions. If technology is involved I think it perfectly fits HN and in this regard, the state uses technology to sniff after people - without a real legal, objective cause. It's almost as if the current administration attempts to inflate court cases to weaken the system, e. g. until judges say "no, that's too much work, I just auto-convict via this AI tool the government gave me".
> the administration’s rhetoric about cracking down on students protesting what we saw as genocide forced me into hiding for three months. Federal agents came to my home looking for me. A friend was detained at an airport in Tampa and interrogated about my whereabouts.
Do you think any of them were sincere?
On a side note, it was interesting after Trump was elected where some of my co-workers wanted to use old pronouns after some laws changed _in meetings_ and I realized the only thing stopping them was the awkwardness it would have been for _them_ in that situation
Of course, it turned out that the average American had no problem learning what a pronoun was if it gave them the opportunity to be mean. Sigh.
Maybe there was some other sign they didn't ask in good faith? But I have no idea what dumb thing trump said you're even talking about.
It's so weird how people join these partisan factions that have a full package of beliefs that you have to be evil not to share. Woe to your job if you say that you think brush buildup should be cleared; you're obviously racist.
Intelligent people don't post condescending, shallow dismissals.
Were they clearly actually talking about that? If that was their question, word-for-word, it's a good question! We are not managing our forests all that well. No, we shouldn't be doing Trump's dumbass raking "idea", but we should be doing controlled burns, at minimum.
Are you sure about that? I've been hearing for at least a decade that the solution to CA's forest fire problem is something along the lines of reducing the amount of potential fuel that is allowed to build up by either allowing smaller fires to run their course without intervention or alternatively aggressively executing controlled burns on a regular schedule.
Not sure how viable that is as a solution but I do know the idea didn't originate with Trump because it predates his entire political career.
Not that this is the only factor in play here on a lot of these fires, and once again I do agree Trump's take is idiotic and ultimately he's not helping but pouring gasoline on the issue. Just pointing out, we definitely aren't managing our forests well for a multitude of reasons.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confi...
In the west coast, the state vs federal friction reduces how much of that happens, and there's more uncontrolled growth happening. And there's not always a lot that e.g. CA government can do about it if it's federal land.
For example, Minnesota (intentionally) burns like 50% more acreage than California on an annual basis, despite being like half the size. But CA also is like half federal land, MN is like 5% or something.
Allowing people they don't like to insult them? Not much of a priority.
The number of HNers (and people at large) who think that both corporate parties don't vehemently oppose free speech and privacy is disturbing. Right now, today, a massive number of Democrats who have spent years decrying Trump (and Republicans as a whole) as fascists are lining up to support a "clean" reauthorization of section 702 of FISA, which allows (despite the phony claims of its supporters) the warrantless and unconstituional surveillance of US citizens (and others). If our government was controlled fascists, why would anyone give them the power to spy on anyone without a warrant? Because it's all kabuki theater and everyone in DC is part of the same team, and you ain't on it.
I don't think anyone posting here thinks that Democrats are pro-free speech and pro-privacy, and it would be great if we could have politicians that truly support free speech and privacy rights. But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
Obama was murdering US citizens for exercising their free speech, and their children, more than a decade ago.
>But of the options currently available, one is much less bad than the other.
If one person says they are going to stab 99 people and the other person says they are going to stab 100 people, you could argue that the guy who stabs 99 people isn't as bad, but I won't ever support either one of them or consider them worthwhile no matter how many others do.
With such a small sample size, you have a whole lot of confidence saying "well, the Dems encouraged them".
Which ones?
Can you further clarify how the US was involved in the war in Gaza, and how that was the Democrats getting involved? And do you really feel that involvement was anywhere near what is happening or comparable with Iran at the moment?
How many US servicemembers were injured or killed in the US's apparent major war with Gaza?
We've spent ~$20B in grants for weapons procurement on Israel's behalf over several years, with a lot of that being defensive missile systems. I'm not a fan of us spending so much of our money on another country's military, especially when we hear over and over how we can't afford to feed kids or provide transportation to our people. But, we've spent over double than that so far in Iran in less than two months, and that's ignoring the many billions it'll cost to fix things that were destroyed so far. We're looking at the actual US cost of this war potentially reaching one trillion dollars.
Its a scale that's so radically different. And also, one was in support of a country who we have defense agreements with who was attacked, and another was us deciding to go bomb a country seemingly unprovoked.
Who is spreading whataboutism again?
Everyone must simultaneously fight for a better system and choose the least-worst option when it comes time for an election.
At the time, the Republicans whined incessantly about how soft Obama was. But they sure enjoyed dropping those Obama Bombs last year that he commissioned as a Plan B. Obama spoke softly, carried a big stick, and hammered out a brilliant deal. Trump bragged loudly, tore up the deal, swung the stick he inherited, missed, and fell in the oil. Sad.
At the time, Israel whined incessantly about how Iran was going to secretly enrich anyway. But their own intelligence from compromising the enrichment program shows in hindsight that this was not the case and Iran was behaving themselves.
That's why I base my expectations on track records, not on Republican whining.
US withdrew from JCPOA under Trump (which led to a certain chain of events), but Biden was not able to revive it during his term. Not clear why we think a different president would be able to, and under what terms/concessions.
I wonder what wonderful things all the Russian and Iranian (!) oil that Trump lifted sanctions on will fund! We will find out in time.
Kamala had a better shot at reviving the deal for the same reason Trump thought he had a chance at regime change: Iran's situation has been deteriorating. I'm quite sure that if she had hammered out a deal comparable to the JCPOA, Republicans would be running around yapping about how Trump would have achieved peace in the middle east by just having the stones to bomb Iran. Lol.
This is probably the best and most succinct -- and pithy -- take I've read as of yet.
Iran's regime sucked (still sucks), to be sure. This was frankly not all that much of an issue for the US. It was a big issue for other Arab nations in the area (not to mention for Israel), but I'm not sure why we should be doing their dirty work.
If the end result of all this is a large weakening in Iran's regime, a reduction in Iran's influence in the region, and (otherwise) a return to the status quo, I guess that's something of a victory. But it's far from clear that we'll even come out that well, and meanwhile we've murdered civilians, and spent American lives and war materiel. Not great. We should have left well enough alone.
Iran isn't a democracy, it's an authoritarian theocracy that spreads terrorism throughout the Middle East, and that brutally oppresses it's own people[0]. The only objective of the regime is to stay in power, regardless of the costs imposed to Iran and other countries, and the only language they understand is violence.
I hope you're joking!
IMO there are no surprises from this admin, they are doing what they promised.
Trump has been very clearly against free speech well before 2015. He's been anti-American and anti-constituion well before he came down that escalator.
It doesn't make me feel better that you're still pretending otherwise.
Trump? Not holding up his end of the deal? Who could have seen that coming!
They were also very eager to supply weapon tech to Israel when the Gaza war started, far more eager than they ever were to supply it to our own country. Leadership was letting employees push back, then all of a sudden in ~2023 they told everyone to shut up and physically gated off the HQ. Then told everyone to shut up even more after some people broke into Thomas Kurian's office.
Maybe the founders have personal reasons. Sergey Brin called the UN antisemitic for calling out genocide in Gaza.