I see just the opposite. This current administration is trying to prevent the kinds of authoritarian excesses and illegal acts that occurred under BHO and JRB from ever happening again.
Perhaps America will once again be a place with "freedom and justice for all"!
> This current administration is trying to prevent the kinds of authoritarian excesses and illegal acts that occurred under BHO and JRB from ever happening again.
It’s telling that you didn’t mention these alleged excesses or explain your argument that concentrating power in the executive while removing safeguards somehow prevents future abuse. Without a coherent argument and supporting evidence, it’s hard to see how this will lead to a useful conversation.
All levers of the government, as I understand it, are controlled by the President's party. This would seem to suggest that the normal mechanism of passing laws and budgets would be straightforward, eliminating the need to rule by decree. As this does not seem to be happening, it suggests the US government is inoperative with all control ceded legally or otherwise to the executive.
I'm not sure of your understanding of America's government.
Conservatives control all three branches of government to an extent. The Senate GOP doesn't have 60 members, so the Dems can block legislation (the GOP hasn't invoked the "nuclear option" that would prevent that). That's why there's a government shutdown, 100% of that is on the Dems.
The Supreme Court exists only to interpret law in terms of constitutionality. Even with a conservative majority, it shouldn't, and almost certainly won't, violate the Constitution.
As I said above, events leading up to the midterms, and the midterms themselves, will determine the way forward...quite democratically. :-)
How do you figure? Or is the presumption that the GOP compromising by not (further) gutting healthcare subsidies just accepted as wishful thinking at this point?
> almost certainly won't, violate the Constitution
America will be autocracy. Current administration is dismantling last protections of democracy. There are people who dont want it to happen and those who want it to happen.
The fact that these opinions exist in earnest and without a hint of sarcasm is why we shake our heads in disgust and disbelief over the pond here. Good lord.
You are woefully misinformed. There are protests initiated by fringe right wingers, but even those fringe right wingers would be approximately centrists in the US. Virtually nobody wants a DJT-like figure in the UK, for many reasons.
I'd be more critical of the news sources I consumed, if I were you.
I can think of three worthwhile goals at a minimum:
1) Access the vast resources available elsewhere in the Solar System.
2) Move most polluting and destructive heavy industry off of Earth (this will take big advances in propulsion technology).
3) Provide good habitats for humans and ideally much of Earth's ecosphere elsewhere in the Solar System. Certainly the human population alone could rise to the hundreds of billions if desired/needed.
Surely it'll take a lot of progress to achieve those goals, but they're within reach of our current scientific knowledge. Interstellar travel, on the other hand, is much more of a stretch goal! ;-)
Actually one of the fast food restaurants here takes automated spoken orders at the drive through. I've only used it once, but I was surprised that it worked flawlessly for me...
The thing about automated systems is that they typically cover the happy paths, and leave people who fall outside of those happy paths extremely frustrated.
Take automated phone menu systems, for example.
"If you are calling about X, press 1
If you are calling about Y, press 2
If you are calling about Z, press 3"
customers presses 0 because they are calling about none-of-the-above and wants to talk to a human
"I'm sorry. I don't recognize that menu option. To hear the options again, please press 9."
Oh just today, to give another example of how automation can seriously frustrate end users, I'm trying to get a Square POS account approved for my new business. Their automated verification system sent me a form requesting more information about my business because certain information "could not be verified." One of the questions on the form was asking me to explain a discrepancy between the legal business name I typed in when setting up the account and the business name as it appears on the articles of incorporation that I submitted. The discrepancy in question: white-space and capitalization. No human being would read the two strings as distinct or recognize any discrepancy. Only software does that.
The F-35 isn't inferior to many other aircraft as far as raw capability goes. Really only the F-22. Nor is it expensive, at least the F-35A (I'm speaking of the initial cost, not sustainment which may or may not be a bargain).
The F-35 is the only genuinely stealthy aircraft any country outside the USA has access to (other than China, and the efficacy of its stealth technology isn't known). F-35 stealth is a game changer, as seen in every exercise in which they're involved.
At full capability, yes, it is. However if you don’t have the updated targeting data then my understanding is that it loses a lot of those advantages. And even if it didn’t, it may still be a case that it’s more cost effective to buy higher quantities of slightly inferior aircraft.
It’s hard to know for sure, though. The only true information we’ll get is when it’s used in a hot war and hints if or when countries reduce orders.
TSMC is building factories in America, and Apple is the biggest customer so far. It's a similar situation for rare earth magnets. So, not just "assembly".
As to tariffs in general, you should learn about something called the "trade deficit". The other countries, such as China, already had tariffs on American products, America is simply reciprocating. If tariffs are so stupid, why do so many countries use them I wonder?
One beneficial side effect of tariffs is bringing strategic manufacturing onshore, such as...semiconductor manufacturing.
Like it or not, the US economy will grow explosively as a result of the current economic policies, after an adjustment period.
A hard right turn into politics would benefit quite a lot of HN readers...
The anti-capitalism movement is completely misguided. Capitalism has improved the human condition immeasurably! Every other system tried recently has failed miserably.
Is capitalism perfect? No, so let's work on improving it, in the face of robotics and AI!
The future is bright, if we go energy-intensive and break out into the larger Solar System! Otherwise, we face stagnation and decline...and likely a global catastrophe.
This 'improvement' is what tech sold us these last two decades. What we got was struggle gig work and tech bro's pushing eachother out of the way to be first to endorse Project 2025. And NFTs, man that sure improved things.
Also 'we have to keep what we're doing because if we don't the earth will be destroyed because of what I want us to keep doing' isn't the best selling point.
i disagree, profoundly.
500 years of nation-state politics can be boiled down to "can we come up with a fair system for self-rule, or shall we have more kings"
the right wing answer is always another king.
hell, lenin was the czar who killed the czar before him and got popular support by pretending to be populist.
what is communist about him and his buddies eating caviar while the peasants starved?
fix the system, don't rig the system, and "fuck the system" and anti gubment anti UN nonsense just plays into the monarchists hands.
right is and will always be WRONG.
LEFT is just a wishlist, utopian general vector of where to go, but never achieved.
there, i fixed your brain, now wake up and spread the word.
Because the number of senile/crazy people voting is a tiny percentage. The 16-17 year old block is potentially much larger, and might actually swing an election.
I share the opinion of many here that almost all those below 18 are too ill-informed, poorly educated, and immature to deserve a vote. They'd be easily propagandized and peer-pressured into voting poorly. That's not to say that many 18 and older don't fall into the same category, but we don't need a new large group like that.
> The action of having a military parade for the president's birthday is expensive and doesn't benefit us.
The funds for the "United States Army 250th Anniversary Parade" were allocated before President Trump was elected, during the Biden debacle. The fact that it falls on June 14th is what is called a "coincidence".
Be careful about blindly accepting propaganda as fact.
> The funds for the "United States Army 250th Anniversary Parade" were allocated before President Trump was elected, during the Biden debacle.
Um: "The Army’s 250th birthday celebration has been in the works for two years, Army officials said. But adding a parade was the Trump White House’s idea, so planning for that began only two months ago." (Emphasis added.)
I would agree with your "coincidence" explanation if it weren't for the consistent pattern of "coincidences" in which Trump does something dictator-like and right-wingers rush to his defense with "coincidence". It's just a coincidence that all of these foreign diplomats invest in his meme coin or some family business and then suddenly are granted meetings with the president! It's just a coincidence that Qatar sends him a luxury airliner and his rhetoric about Qatar does a 180 degree flip! It's just a coincidence that he tried to interfere in a presidential election! It's just a coincidence that he consistently claims Article I and Article III powers for himself! It's just a coincidence that he's rounding up people and sending them to foreign prisons!
The date is entirely unimportant. I suppose it's just a coincidence that Trump is following project 2025, step by step, since day one¹. And also a coincidence that many of the people who wrote project 2025 are in the Trump administration²³. It's just a coincidence, but of course trump didn't and doesn't know anything about it. Stop playing stupid.
The date is exactly what was being discussed. I was responding to the mischaracterization of "a military parade for the president's birthday", which is factually inaccurate. Plus, the plan was made during Biden's term.
> I suppose it's just a coincidence that Trump is following project 2025, step by step, since day one
He's following Agenda 47, which was published on his campaign website. He stated he agreed with some of Project 2025, but not all of it.
It's unsurprising that some involved in writing Project 2025 are working for the Trump admin.
That was a pretty bad response, so I tried Grok 3, using the prompt "What's the likely meaning of BGP in a Hacker News article?"
Its entire response:
"In a Hacker News article, BGP most likely refers to Border Gateway Protocol, a key internet protocol used for routing data between different networks (autonomous systems) on the internet. It’s often discussed in contexts like network security, internet infrastructure, or outages caused by misconfigurations, as BGP is critical for directing traffic across the global internet. For example, a Hacker News article might cover BGP-related incidents like route leaks or hijacks, which can disrupt connectivity or enable cyberattacks.
If the context suggests something else (e.g., a specific acronym in a niche domain), could you provide more details about the article? I can also search for the specific post if you have a link or title."
I specifically ask the LLM about non-networking contexts because I was interested in what else BGP could mean.
I believe that every possible combination of 3 letters has at least 5 different meanings - most of them only used in some tiny niche (often just one department of a company)
I see. The problem is you left out that only non-networking contexts were considered, so that list missed the most relevant answer with no explanation.
If you look back you will see that networking contexts was assumed. I was trying to make the point that BGP can have multiple meanings. Between all the other replies and me not being a great writer that context was lost. However if you just the parent of my reply and then my post in isolation I think it still makes sense why I wouldn't have mentioned that context.
It’s on a site called NL Net Labs and it’s mentioned in this way:
> The need for Roto comes from Rotonda, our BGP engine written in Rust. Mature BGP applications usually feature some way to filter incoming route announcements.
I think networking and routing specifically is fair to assume.
Perhaps America will once again be a place with "freedom and justice for all"!