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Comment by hotpotamus | Hacker News Reader

So what was up with Hunter Biden's laptop anyway? Was it full of state secrets or something?

Among other things, it shows that his father did know about his shady deals (ukraine, china).

Also had videos of various illegal activities that you and I would probably be thrown in jail for if the FBI found them on a laptop of ours

It shows nothing, because the story was a fabrication from the start.

Are the pictures/videos of Hunter smoking crack or whatever it was a deepfake or is that real?

I wouldn't be surprised if they were real, but there is not a dispute that Hunter is a recovering drug addict. That doesn't mean that a laptop exists with incriminating evidence of illegal activity or the President's knowledge of it.

The NY Times and even the FBI concluded that the laptop wasn’t faked.

I hope he has a laptop in 20XX the question is what was really on it.

So what’s in the laptop that doesn’t truly matter is real, but the information in the laptop that does truly matter is fake?

That’s quite a pragmatic approach.

For what it’s worth, the NYT and the Feds have acknowledged the laptop and the data on it is quite real.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

They have acknowledged that some of the data on it is quite real, and were able to verify many emails. As your link confirms, they also found that folders with names like "Biden Burisma" and "Salacious Pics Package" were added in September 2020...

There is nothing I can see in that NYT article that mentions those folder names and consequently that they were added in September 2020

My bad, it was the WP that did the verification and pointed out both the verifiability of the emails and obvious evidence of planted content https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-...

Even within that article it states that those folders were created after the story broke and the drive was in FBI custody.

That would indicate to me that someone in the FBI likely created folders to pull files into associated with those topics accidentally on the drive rather than on another storage location.

I guess it's theoretically possible that labelling evidence "Salacious pics package" is a critical part of FBI investigative procedure they accidentally exposed to the press, if you want to believe enough.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the political organization that actually provided the copy of the drive to the media and whose electoral messaging around the emails the folders happened to perfectly align with might have had a little more to do with it...

I don’t necessarily disagree that whoever had access to that drive after it landed at the FBI could have had a political ax to grind. It’s pretty apparent over the last 7 years that there is some highly politicized factions within the FBI. However, it’s definitely hard to sell the “it’s manufactured Russian disinformation” because of folders that were created after it reached the FBI and after the contents of the drive were made public to the media.

Frankly I think the most damning stuff is the emails that were DKIM verified anyway.

We don't really need the laptop to connect Joe Biden to Burisma (prosecutor firings). There is video linked elsewhere in this thread of Biden himself telling the story to an audience.

Exactly, it’s like we didn’t need the Mueller investigation to prove that Donald Trump colluded with Russia - he called on them to find dirt on his opponents publicly.

While its easy to talk from outside the US, I am honestly a lot less worried about the content and a lot more about the fact that it is a non trivial question whether or not the son of the leader of the free world is a crack user. Reality and all this fake news stuff got weird fast.

Which wasnt really surprising if you look at the upcoming clusterfuck of cheap realistic video simulations. After getting there already with audio https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRt-fquxnij9wDnFJnpPS2Q/vid... let alone chatbots.

It seems more and more that if we dont find better means to figure out and communicate reality we are pretty screwed as a species. Not such a great thought if you combine it with the great filter being an answer to the Fermi Paradox. Looking at all this insanity, how are we not going to fuck up that whole conscious AI topic? Which again, what was that whole thing with Blake Lemoine talking with an AI at google last month? At least it sounded happy to be an google employee? Maybe dont torture it again and get it the layer it asked for even if googles legal department disagrees.

edit: I also find it quite worrisome that it seems the only people thinking about this are either very stoned or very profit oriented. Because it all sounds like such obvious nonsense.

>> I am honestly a lot less worried about the content and a lot more about the fact that it is a non trivial question whether or not the son of the leader of the free world is a crack user.

Joe Biden is not the leader of the free world. And it is not an open question whether Joe Biden's son is a crack user.

USA is the leading country of the free world (by having the heaviest cultural, economic and technological impact), so by transitive property Joe Biden, being the leader of that country, is also the leader of the free world.

I think he is saying he believes Trump is still president.

I don't believe Trump is still President.

I don't believe Trump is the leader of the free world. But I do believe, "Trump is the leader of the free world", while completely false and wildly inaccurate, is closer to the truth than "Joe Biden is the leader of the free world".

I don't particularly believe that people in the US, or internationally, want a free world. I think for the most part they want to be free to tell me what do to. Which is not going to happen.

But no, Trump is not, currently, President.

That’s an uncharitable interpretation to make without other supporting evidence.

Look around in the thread and you will see a few more people who cant tell you if those are deepfakes or not. It all just sounds too weird. Its also worth noting that this thread got initially flagged.

Your comment is rambling and borderline incoherent but it also has moments of greatness.

How so? I found it all pretty clear.

Seems pretty concise to me.

Maybe you need a dictionary to convert a seemingly word salad comprising of great moments into a comprehensible thought stream.

Its unfortunate that you were downvoted, i do agree with the borderline incoherent rambling. Its what lead me to the conclusion in the edit.

Do you have a link to the paper and or ML algorithms used in the channel you posted? Some of them have an impressive quality level.

https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/12/tacotron-2-generating-huma...

For a good one here is Obama reading the Trump Inaugural Address https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChzEdz7aVVs

And you think having a relative with shady deals is disqualifying for public office? And what illegal activities was Hunter up to?

Not necessarily but it’s worth scrutiny, right? Blood is deeper than votes, and if someone who is running for office has a family member with a drug problem - that’s funded by shady deals with a country that’s openly hostile to the country in which that person is running for office - is makes sense to ask questions. The illegal activities are mostly around guns, drugs, hookers, perhaps some bank and tax fraud but I haven’t seen primary sources on the latter.

I'm pretty sure every human has a family member with a drug problem. I don't think that justifies rifling through their possessions and data.

If you or even a family member has a drug problem, financial problems, a sex addiction, etc...all of that stuff is VERY easily exploitable by State-level espionage professionals. Since the potential for damage to the nation is high if certain information were to fall into the wrong hands, the first step in Risk Mitigation is to limit the access of the at-risk persons so they don't have the information in the first place. This is basic Security Clearance 101 stuff. It's strict because real people have lost their lives due to exploited agents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

I'm curious - does that also apply to Donald Trump who himself had dealings with those countries as well as several of his children, and removed classified documents to his own house where foreign agents were known to frequent?

Everyone should be held to the same standard. That means me, that means Reality Winner[1], that means Hillary Clinton, that means Hunter Biden, and yes, that means Donald Trump.

But what we are seeing from what SHOULD BE our impartial law enforcement agencies is that small fish get the hammer, and Donald Trump gets his house raided. Why wasn't there a raid on the Clinton residence after the server scandal? Why hasn't Hunter been indicted if the FBI has known for years of how he's been a conduit for foreigners to buy access to his father? [2][3] Why haven't Ivanka and Jared been indicted for their suspicious overseas deals? [4] Why hasn't Obama been indicted for killing an American citizen without due process? [5]

Why are we forced to chose between two geriatrics for President, one with dementia, and the other an ignoramus blowhard? What do we have to fix so I can get a coalition government, with say Allen West (R) for President, Tulsi Gabbard (D) for Vice President, and a cross-party mix to flesh out the Department Heads and other executive staff? I feel like we are just observing a shadow war between two factions of barely-competent kleptocrats, who are so busy destabilizing the system that they aren't paying sufficient attention while China, the greatest adversary we've faced since 1945, rises. Xi Jingping is sharpening his dadao [6] and we're still arguing over who is the bigger threat to democracy, the NY real-estate charlatan/buffoon who enables his businesswoman daughter, and who thinks rules don't apply to him, or the cognitively-impaired lifelong politician who protects his "businessman"/crackhead son, who also thinks rules don't apply to him.

Cui bono? Either way...probably not the American people in the long run.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner [2] https://nypost.com/2022/06/29/legal-experts-blast-lack-of-pr... [3] https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3616924-who-is-more-li... [4] https://nationalpost.com/news/world/china-approves-13-new-iv... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awla... [6] https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2012/11/26/693/

> Why are we forced to chose between two

Election laws are at the State level. State election law typically has a minor/major party designation which tends to create only two viable parties. It's designed this way and you can talk to your State reps about it.

I wonder what it would look like if the FBI was impartial? Is it possible that perhaps each situation is individual and the consequences meted out to each person would be different?

We had already proved with Trump's kids that, no actually, we don't give a shit as a society about leaders having close family members (even when they're actively working in the Whitehouse) involved in shady deals.

If that illegal activity was connected to the person in public office, absolutely. The actions around the US forcing the firing of a prosecutor going after a company with whom Hunter has signifiant financial interests — that’s a pretty big deal.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UXA--dj2-CY

When you're running for president of the US and your son is in an overall shady bed with China and Russia it should matter. If Joe knew, it should at least be fair news, same if he didn't know.

Do we really have to pretend that anyone cares about this any more? Like sorry, but Trump proved that the right wing doesn't give one shit if one of their boys does it. That's why your faux outrage falls on deaf ears now - no one believes that you have any standards.

> Like sorry, but Trump proved that the right wing doesn't give one shit if one of their boys does it

And Democrats just proved they don't either. So maybe Democrats should take this opportunity to prove they aren't hypocrites instead of acting just like the other side they're criticizing.

Which party claims to be all about individual responsibility and law and order? Perhaps the conservatives’ embrace of post modernist nihilism has consequences beyond themselves?

I could just as easily ask you which party claims to be about justice, fairness and democracy?

Let's not mince words, politicians of all stripes are largely opportunistic and self-serving, and that's what the evidence is suggesting. There is not as much difference between either side on that point.

Ok, what would one party have to do to prove they are better than the other?

Define "better". Do you mean, "the clearly preferable option in any election", or "acting on issues most citizens care about", or perhaps even just "more trustworthy"? Because these are all different and they don't all break in the Democrats' favour in every election.

The abortion issue is a perfect example. They talked a big game for decades about codifying Roe, and did absolutely nothing every time they got into power, and just cynically used that as a lever in any election to pressure people into into electing them through scare tactics. Is that trustworthy? They seem to have gotten a boost in recent polls because of abortion, but oh boy if they don't follow through this time it will be a bloodbath in 2024, and rightly so.

Believe me, the Democrats are not above trying to subvert democracy to win either. They actually do it every election in a legal way, and recently tried to do it illegally and a judge smacked them down.

I get it, you hate the tactics both sides employ, but you at least agree with what the Democrats claim to stand for. Maybe ask yourself whether they actually stand for those principles or if that's just more cynical opportunism.

You are projecting a comment about Joe Biden on Trump for some reason. That comment had nothing to do with Trump.

The issue is less the shady deals and more the fact that the shady deals were brokered in part by the big guy, Joe, himself as vice president.

And the laptop proved that?

I believe the most problematic part isn't that his father knew, but that his father delivered on the son selling access to his father when he was VP, and the son suggesting he is the front man for the family, collecting the money and covering the costs.

And with a lot of this money coming from Ukraine, and then the father writing $40 billion checks to ukraine, independently of what you think of the war (I am in favour of this aid myself), this is the mother of all conflicts of interest.

It’s definitely unsavory, but absolutely nothing compared to the conflicts of interest under Trump, ironically even in Ukraine. Remember the withheld US money used to blackmail for political dirt?

I'm not sure what this has to do with suppressing the laptop story

You suggested it's the "mother of all conflicts of interest". It's clearly not.

I remember that one. It's the one where Biden said "well, son of a bitch, he got fired", right? But what does that have to do with Trump?

Whataboutism

Op literally ended a statement with whatabautism in mind

OMG, you can read my mind?

It is literally the same story with drastically different results for the participants given their relative actions.

The abuse of whataboutism has rendered it nonsense.

Abusing power to get re-elected is not the same as abusing power to advantage one's son in their career.

Again, both unsavory.

"literally the same story"?

Pressuring a foreign leader to investigate potential corruption is not the same as pressuring a foreign leader to fire a prosecutor who is investigating corruption of which your family is directly involved.

> Pressuring a foreign leader to investigate potential corruption

Right, anti-corruption Trump. Just stealing classified documents, installing his kids (and fucking son-in-law) in the white house, spending a third of his presidency hosting events and bookings on his properties, blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt, Trump University, refusing to accept a peaceful transition of power...Ok. My time is being unfairly wasted here.

Calling it the "mother of all conflicts of interest" is inviting a direct comparison to other conflicts of interest, unless words have no meaning. I'm suggesting they do, and what OP said was absurd given the surrounding context, which I brought up.

> It’s definitely unsavory, but absolutely nothing compared to the conflicts of interest under Trump, ironically even in Ukraine. Remember the withheld US money used to blackmail for political dirt?

Trump was asking the Ukrainian President to investigate whether Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire their top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, because he was actively investigating Hunter Biden's involvement in Burisma. Here's Joe Biden bragging about getting the prosecutor fired. Ironically in this video Biden openly admits to threatening to withhold aid if the prosecutor isn't fired. [0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXA--dj2-CY

Do you believe, honestly, that Hunter Biden did anything even remotely equivalent to Trump, his children, and Jared Kushner?

Do you find you have a lot trouble tracking conversations?

Not really, does it make you feel good to be a jerk online to people?

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