pc_edwin

The key is "as the standard of prosecution".

They could've still prosecuted her and gave her a slap on the wrist. This is what they would've done to anybody a level or two beneath her but Comey set a new precedent that the standard to prosecute would be intent.

This is why they can't prosecute trump for the files at Mara-lago, besides the (very reaosnable) argument that he was the president so be definition anything he takes home should be deemed unclassified, Comey set the precedent of intent so if they cant prove intent they cant prosecute.

We'll I suppose we are somewhat at an impasse.

I Believe you understand why it is prudent for the judicial branch to refrain from prosecuting key figures from both political parties if the crime committed is just a minor technicality such as not paying a parking ticket or accidentally using non-secure lines of comms.

I think we disagree on whether what Trump is rumoured to be charged on falls under the category of "reasonable to refrain from prosecuting".

I think this is a politically biased DA, going out of his way to use a technicality to charge Trump. In my opinion, this is way outside of what is acceptable. If the rumours are true there is no major nor minor crime committed here, this is at best a technicality and will likely be thrown out.

Besides my opinions on the specific case, I think we also disagree on how much leeway these key political figures and officials should be given before the justice department gets involved.

I personally believe we should give much more affordances. I despise the modern idea of the "civil servant". Its a sort of neutering of what should be very revered roles. Everything from the laughable law salaries which are earned by 20 something kids in silicon valley or wall street. To little things like the secret service being able to veto the president on what he/she wants do etc.

It just seems so unamerican to me. In a very short timeframe, we have lost so much of the reverence and weight given to these roles.

Anyways, I can go on a very long tangent here, so I'll stop myself.

I didn't mean to get into the politics of it, I was using the case as an example where Comey went as far as setting a new precedent of "intent" as the standard of prosection in order to avoid the prosecution and impacting the election.

Mishandling of classified material is a crime, regardless of intent. Here's a short summary of chatGPTs take:

> This statute does not require that the person transmitting the information have a specific intent to harm the United States or aid a foreign government;

> Additionally, under 18 U.S. Code § 1924, it is a federal crime to knowingly remove classified material from its proper place of custody or to transmit it to an unauthorized person, regardless of whether there is any intent to harm the United States or aid a foreign government.

Upon further research, I retract this comment. I wont delete it for the sake of transparency.

My initial reading of the text was that it gives the executive branch the right to force companies from a selected list of "foreign adversaries" to divest if it deems it a threat to national security.

I personally believe thats entirely reasonable both from a national security and trade-relations point of view but upon further research this bill looks like an extension of the Patriot Act giving the executive branch

Heres the new information regarding the vagueness that changed my mind: - It punishes citizens for using the "banned" product. - It gives way more arbitrary power to the secretary of commerce to decide whats a threat to national security than I initially realised. - It allows the government to regulate VPN, essentially removing our write to privacy.

As a side note, this is exactly why many people like me have trust issues with the government and other institutions. I don't understand how these smart lawyer types don't realise the immense damage they are doing to public trust.

With all due respect, I'm of the opinion that the alternative here is the weaponisation of the judicial branch.

Most commenters on this post has knowingly or unknowingly broken the law multiple times in their lives. As the Buffet saying goes: "If a cop follows you for 500 miles, you’re going to get a ticket."

Buffet said this in relation to JP Morgan's "London Whale" scandal. Whats interesting here is he went on further to say: "You can’t be active in a big business without making some mistakes, and sometimes they may be big ones". This is especially true for government.

For example, something as simple and normal as taking some work docs home or discussing work with a spouse could lead to breaking serious federal laws.

Clinton's private email server is a perfect example of this, she committed a clear crime here but Comey chose to not prosecute. Despite this decision, he faced heavy scrutiny for delaying the decision which many believe had an impact on the outcome of the election.

It is important to take note of my earlier point, this is not a debate on whether leaders and "aristocrats" should be subject to the law. We are witnessing a departure from practices established centuries ago in common law tradition.

You would think a topic like this would be somewhat lower ranked in a tech-oriented forum but it seems even those of us who are technically inclined cant evade the pull of politics.

As side note, heres my 2 cents:

This is extremely dangerous and unprecedented. Its a long standing practice common law tradition to refrain from prosecuting political leaders unless a serious crime is involved (Prosecutorial discretion).

Ignore Trump, he'll likely win or worse-case get a misdemeanour. This just changed the whole game, the judicial branch just got weaponised as political tool.

Unless somebody puts a conclusive stop to this nonsense, things are about to get very ugly. This is the kind of thing you see from third world countries with corrupt/unstable institutions.

I'll also add that its pretty interesting to see China in the list of "Foreign Adversaries".

I think this probably the first time they are recognised as such in an official capacity in recent times.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer nor a legal/constitutional expert.

TLDR: The bill doesn't ban TikTok, it gives the executive branch the power to ban companies like Tiktok. IMO this is an entirely reasonable measure.

As someone with strong libertarian leanings, I am generally opposed to the trend of the executive branch gaining arbitrary legislative authority but this bill appears entirely reasonable to me despite some concerns of vagueness.

It gives the Secretary of commerce the responsibility of consulting with agencies to determine if software companies from "foreign adversaries" pose a national security threat. If the secretary seems it does then it gives the president the authority to ban the company.

No I don't work on AI but as a dev, I would say I'm heavily invested in the outcome like everyone else on HN.

I fully agree with his concerns, but I believe that he is misleading the public about the motives behind this campaign and the recent petty tweets.

It is a competition tactic aimed at slowing down OpenAI so that he and others can catch up. Due to the exponential nature of the work involved, there is a reasonable chance that OpenAI will maintain its lead for some time and with each iteration the gap between OpenAI and its competitors will widen.

I've been following his takes and predictions on AI for the better part of a decade and I tend to agree with him.

From what I heard, Elon wanted to take over OpenAI and the other founders refused. This is why he left the org and backed away from further committed funding.

Theres been an ongoing rumour that he brought together a bunch of people to develop a alternative (BasedAI) and to me this campaign looks like an attempt to slow down competition rather than an act of genuine concern.

I cant come up with any other reason to have OpenAI pause research for 6 months other than providing competition time to catch up.

I've been a staunch supporter of Elon throughout all his scandals, especially the Twitter ones but I'm unable to come up with any justification for this.

Everything leads to him (and others) pressuring OpenAI to pause so they could catch up.

It doesn't take much smarts to deduce the cats already out of the bag. There is no stopping this, only pressuring/slowing-down/targeting certain players (OpenAI) as a competition tactic.

I often refer to the I, Robot quote "brilliant people often have the most persuasive demons" when it comes these situations with people like Elon or Ye but even then, all this just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

This is not directly related to question but I would suggest using go just for those use cases.

Programming in general has become a lot more abstract and standardised so with some exceptions (C/rust) you can easily use multiple languages without incurring much if any costs.

Something else you can do thats slightly unorthodox is to write in typescript then ask chatGPT to rewrite your code in golang. You still have to maintain in golang but you get do the initial implementation part in typescript.

With all due respect, I'm of the opinion that this idea of maintaining an equilibrium through "easing" and "tightening" is a logical fallacy.

In practice, this theory has been shown to be deeply flawed with grave consequence. Each iteration of this easing/tightening cycle seems to make the entire system more fragile at an exponential rate.

In essence, with each iteration, the extent of easing or intervention needed is increasing exponentially. Simultaneously, the system's capacity to withstand tightening or normalization is decreasing exponentially, requiring further interventions sooner and with greater severity.

I believe this is the basis for prognoses such as Balaji's on the US economic hegemony. When examining the exponential increase of these factors, it becomes evident that there is little space left before hyperinflation sets in. While I do not think the collapse will occur in 90 days, it may transpire in 900 or even 3000 days.

It's perplexing how some are quick to place all blame on "greedy price gouging capitalists" while you have a massive elephant in the room.

As a society, we pride ourselves on being logical yet we ignore the predictable consequences of injecting trillions into the economy amidst heavily damaged supply chains?

I'm not even referring to the downstream consequences such as the extreme fragility leading to blow ups like SVB. Just consider what might happen when you have trillions in new money competing for fewer goods.

Its fascinating how narratives can have such a outsized impact on our worldview, often distorting reality. In this context, we see the "evil bankers" vs "free market" trope but in reality, neither sides couldn't be further from the truth.

You can prevent the bank runs and massive economic booms/busts by simply prohibiting banks from monetising deposits. We wont do this because it will collapse the nation-state as we know it.

Banks and the government have an agreement where banks operate as if deposits are stable in order to buy long-term assets, while the government insures deposit stability.

These assets primarily comprise of lending to governments, businesses and mortgages. In other words, the banking system essentially acts as a quasi-arm of the government, enabling the welfare state to function both explicitly by buying government debt and implicitly by expanding the monetary supply.

The progressive and libertarian narratives were both fighting against their own interests, which is why I find them both amusing. The reality is that we haven't had a free market for banks since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, so it wasn't a battle between "evil bankers" and "poor poor lidl workers," but rather a game of king-making.

As this tech permeates every aspect of our lives, I believe we are on cusp of an explosion of productivity/creation where it will become increasingly hard to distinguish between noise vs signal.

It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. I'm very optimistic and not because a positive outcome is guaranteed but because we as a civilisation desperately needed this.

The last time we saw multiple technological innovations converging was almost a century ago! Buckle up!

To put it simply, the banking system essentially acts as a quasi-arm of the government, enabling the welfare state to function. The banks and the government have an implicit agreement that they will operate under the assumption that deposits are stable and, in exchange, the government will provide insurance against any potential volatility.

Throughout the past century, numerous financial crises have occurred, all of which could have been prevented by passing a simple law. This law could be as short as a single page and would simply state that customer deposits cannot be utilized to purchase assets. If a bank wants to use these funds in such a manner, they would need to enter into an agreement with the customer, similar to the relationship between Limited Partners (LPs) and General Partners (GPs) in a venture capital fund.

It is unlikely that such a law will ever be passed because it would have the potential to bring about the collapse of the nation-state as we know it. This is just the tip of the iceberg; as one delves deeper into the issue, they begin to realize that the government has largely transformed into a set of insurance programs.

If we examine the budgets of major Western governments, we can see that the overwhelming majority of their expenditures are directed towards insurance programs and interest payments. These programs encompass areas such as military spending, healthcare, pensions, unemployment/food assistance, and education.

I respectfully suggest that there may be a slight misunderstanding regarding the situation at hand. It is important to note that the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is the protagonist here, not UBS.

Credit Suisse (CS) is hated by everyone, which has made it difficult to provide them with a direct bailout. However, allowing the bank to fail will lead to a crisis that surpasses the GFC.

Therefore, the SNB sidestepped CS and its shareholders to craft a deal in such a way that it is too good for UBS to refuse. I would like to reiterate that neither CS nor UBS wants this, its being forced upon them by the SNB through the carrot (sweet deal) or the stick (coercion).

I'm not absolving any of the individual parties from responsibility but I have to state the obvious here. The current state of affairs is a direct result of a chain of events that has led us to this point. The government implemented a set of measures including a lockdown and a dangerous stimulus and liquidity program. However, just as we were on the brink of hyperinflation, they began rapidly draining liquidity from the system.

It is essential to acknowledge that it is not a mere possibility but rather an absolute certainty that something will break. Upon delving deeper into how the banking system operates, this becomes abundantly clear.

The entire economy is built around deposit stability, without this stability, banks are unable to hold long-term assets on their balance sheets. These long-term assets include mortgages, business loans, corporate bonds, municipal loans, government bonds, and others. This is what is meant when people refer to the economy as a credit-based system.

I find this stage of the economic/business cycle to be truly fascinating. A lot of things happen in such a short amount of time that we typically only read about or see in movies

UBS's main calculus is risk, which is why the offer can double in a matter of hours. If the crisis is not stabilised, UBS could potentially be liable for tens of billions and face potential downfall.

This is why UBS needed a guarantee from the Swiss National Bank and a MAC clause to proceed with the deal.

Given the sensitivity of this topic, I will refrain from sharing my (colorful) opinions and maintain a professional tone to avoid scrutiny or censure.

If the objective is to boost efficiency and reduce expenses while minimizing negative impacts on the product, one can establish metrics to evaluate the outcome.

By examining metrics such as feature velocity, revenue, SRE, and usage, I believe you'll find the answer to your question.

In 2019, Facebook had 44k employees but by 2022 that number had more than doubled to 86k. Even with the current layoffs, they will only be back to 2021 levels.

It could be argued that it's reasonable to aim for pre-pandemic employee levels, given the drop in valuation, post-pandemic revenue decrease, and the significant loss in revenue from Apple's privacy changes.

This is just speculation and should be taken with a grain of salt. To achieve pre-pandemic employee levels, Facebook would need to cut an additional 20K employees.

While it may seem like Mark Zuckerberg's responses are out of touch, many employees do understand the situation.

Every major tech company (except Apple) is doing the same because they overhired to an incredible extent.

Mind you, these companies were already bloated before the pandameic hiring, partly because of a strategy to drain talent from the startups ecosystem.

In my opinion, they should rip off the bandaid and conduct one big round of layoffs.

While I understand that gradual layoffs are less risky and easier for the organization to absorb, it seems short-sighted.

Delaying the inevitable will only cause more pain and damage in the long term.

To elaborate, I'm convinced that Jerome Powell knew something like this was bound to happen.

However, in my opinion, the decision was made that it would be more feasible to address any issues that arose from rate hikes than attempting to address the potential consequences of inflation runoff.

It's ironic how Silicon Valley played a significant role in the current administration's rise to power.

I'm not even referring to the peculiar moderation strategies employed by Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. What's truly fascinating to me is the extent of donations from billionaires and high-earning employees to get these politicians elected. The sheer amount of money involved is mind-boggling.

To be honest, a part of me was against the idea of backstopping (bailouts). I wanted these people (you guys) to see the consequences of the monster they have created.

And just to be clear, this is your making and its just the beginning. It's a result of a chain of events that can be traced back to the lockdowns and MMT economics. While it's easy to blame individual actors for the collapse of SVB, the truth is that all of this could have been predicted. It's not sustainable to continuously pump money into the system, creating an extreme level of fragility, only to drain it out later without any consequences.

Being able to search a ranked index of sources is extremely powerful but thats nothing compared what is possible when you can outsource intelligence.

In other words, when you can outsource the part of cognition where you need to understand the problem, go through the ranked sources, find the right answer and digest it in right way.

This is unbelievably powerful, comparing it to horse carriages vs cars does not do it justice, we are talking about Jarvis in real life!

P.S. I have some colourful opinions about the kind of thinking thats leads to your comment but I'll keep that to myself since its likely to attract scrutiny or censure

I understand that my opinion may be controversial, but I believe that the presence of unions is a contributing factor.

The impact of unions is far-reaching and can be seen in everything from the salaries of grocery chain CEOs to startup stock option allocation for early employees.

Here in the UK, it's not uncommon to come across articles in major publications about a CEO's pay being multiple times higher than the average employee and you look at the number its peanuts compared to the US.

It's premature to declare a victor, and typically in such cases, it's not a matter of winning or losing but rather of losing more or less.

Additionally, COVID and Ukraine have caused significant disruptions that put a stop to the entire process.

In my view, we'll need to wait until the end of the decade, at a minimum, to determine whether remaining in the EU or striking out on one's own was the correct decision.

Investing, whether in real estate or day trading, is inherently based on asymmetry, leading to an extremely uneven distribution where it can appear as if the smart money just dumped the bag at the top on retail.

My concern with your perspective is that it ultimately leads to the conclusion that the only way to prevent these situations is to prohibit retail investors from participating in certain types of investing.

This kind of thinking is what has led to modern America, where individuals are unable to invest in their friend's barbershop unless they meet certain net worth requirements or have worked on Wall Street.

Fox News yes, Breitbart nope. They haven't been in the zeitgeist for years.

Its worth nothing that although there are no strict definitions of what counts as mainstream vs independent, the populist wings of both parties loosely group them in the same buckets.

A lifetime ago, I used to consider myself populist-left and since then there hasn't been much if any difference in what I consider as mainstream.