mannerheim

Piracy used to be punishable by death. There would be a lot fewer people willing to pull these kinds of stunts if they knew they would actually face consequences.

>then you can, you know, put a bit more into making them work

Assuming it's a problem that can be solved by more money. The US has the fifth-highest amount of education spending in the world, behind countries like Luxembourg and Norway, but ahead of Germany, France, UK, Sweden, and Belgium. Some problems can't be fixed with money alone, and throwing good money after bad is foolish.

There were no good people at the end of the USSR fighting for the USSR. They fought for their country in the sense of their individual nations, but anyone fighting for the USSR was fighting for what really was an evil empire.

EW is needed at the front, and these bases were deep within Russia. Lasers are not common technology for anti-drone use yet, and likely kinetic weapons are superior since lasers will not work in any sort of bad weather.

Russia has gone to great lengths to insulate its populace from feeling the effects of the war. For Russians not directly involved in the war, one could hardly tell there even was a war going on. You can see this from interviews with the residents of Sudzha.

Whether or not they value individual lives, putting a hospital out of commission will be something they will need to divert resources to.

They produce large quantities of drones, like the kind that were used in this operation.

2.2 million in 2024. Some of those could be diverted to worthwhile targets for deterrence purposes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/12/45-million-...

>The attack occurred a day after Russia launched airstrikes at multiple cities in Ukraine, killing 57 and wounding 160.

Needed to get 32 more.

Well, if we're ignoring everyone else's descriptions of SBF, Caroline Ellison had a tumblr on which she repeatedly self-identified as a rationalist: https://caroline.milkyeggs.com/worldoptimization

There's also the other time the rationalist community made national news, when a similar cult accidentally gambled away ten billion dollars in cryptocurrency.

'We have the Manson family at home'

Back in the day, sailors would be hanged by the neck until dead for acts of piracy like this.

That hollow, symbolic win could have been given to them by anyone other than Trump. If nobody else thinks a group's interests are worth listening to, don't be surprised when they start chasing after the tiniest morsels.

There are credibility issues if you make promises you don't follow up on, especially very public promises that are completely within your power to carry out; there are no limits on the presidential pardon power, barring that it only applies to federal crimes.

Many were convicted of the same acts and received far lighter sentences. They specifically sought to make an example out of him. That is contrary to the rule of law.

Selectively punishing someone with a grossly disproportionate sentence on the grounds of their political beliefs seems contrary to the rule of law.

One issue with any potential trial for murder-for-hire is that the allegation as presented in the Maryland indictment has two problematic witnesses: DEA agent Carl Force who acted as the hitman, now in prison for embezzling cryptocurrency from the Silk Road case, and Curtis Green, the would-be victim in this case, who has previously insisted that Ulbricht was innocent of plotting his murder (and was also recently imprisoned for cocaine distribution last year, although I don't think that would be too relevant). Maybe the other allegations might have more meat on the bone, but they didn't make it on to any indictment.

Biden could have taken the wind out of Trump's sails by commuting Ulbricht's sentence when he was in office. If you don't think a group's interests are worth listening to, don't be surprised when that group votes for someone who does.

Possibly a deal with the Libertarian Party, which chose not to run their candidate in several states to help Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY

A video from Reason magazine a few days ago[0] mentioned a deal between the Libertarian Party leadership and Trump in which they selectively didn't run their candidate in several states in order to help Trump. If this is true, Trump could have reneged, but evidently decided whatever political blowback for pardoning Ulbricht (which is probably small potatoes at this rate) wasn't worth the credibility cost.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY

He was in jail for running a darknet drug marketplace. Hiring a contract killer was a crime he was neither charged with nor convicted of.

That's not a constitutional requirement. There's no law that says the government can only do this to terrorists. In fact, even if somebody is a terrorist, if they're American, it would still be unconstitutional to deprive their freedom of speech. ByteDance, as a foreign entity, enjoys no such protection.

The content is not what is being outlawed, only the distribution mechanism. ISIS wouldn't be allowed to own a publishing company in America; nobody thinks that somehow curtails freedom of speech. If somebody so chooses, they could distribute content from ISIS, and restrictions on that would indeed be a restriction on speech. But it wouldn't be a restriction to make it illegal to give money to ISIS.

> At the end of the day, what this law is asking for is a Great Firewall around the US, that prohibits which websites its citizens can visit.

This law is asking for no such thing. Even if ByteDance refuses to sell TikTok, Americans would still be able to visit the site.

Case law does not protect non-citizens. People have been deported for being communists.

The law doesn't say Americans must buy it. Just that it can't be owned by a 'foreign adversary'.

Good news: The law to force divestiture of TikTok is an American law.

TikTok should be banned until Facebook and Google are available in China.

Are you saying he asked them to approve a contract that the board never saw the terms of, and they agreed?

> If Sam was responsible for that, he smuggled one hell of a trojan horse into OpenAI, and should have been fired a long time ago.

What's the likelihood that he signed onto a $10 billion investment deal from Microsoft without approval from the board?

Everyone has a price, yet Microsoft can't buy the three board members on OpenAI board. Curious.

Your initial statement was flatly wrong, and you're grasping at straws to make it still true. Microsoft wouldn't be able to get anywhere if the people who work for OpenAI chose to stay. The choice they're making to leave is still their choice, made of their own volition.