vdupras

The speech was surprisingly good. I think it's going to prove effective. This "taking the sign off" thing, good imagery.

But I can't help notice the inconsistency in this imagery. First, he says it himself a few minutes later. He doesn't "take the sign off" for NATO. We can understand why it's important to keep this facade.

But another one that bothers me is "energy, both clean and traditional". Oh, you didn't go for "clean and dirty"? Categories are clearer thus. Oh, not ready to take the sign off on the climate front? Too bad.

Hey, it's nice that you came in signed up to HN to cheer for the USD. I think it's going to be needed to change the overall sentiment.

Good strategy. Don't blame the king, blame his counselors. It's always the sensible thing to do in an absolute monarchy.

You're not wrong, but at the same time, any discussion around this subject that remotely resembles a truth bombshell promptly gets flagged, so the only way you're going to see anything about this subject is if it states the obvious in the most bland way possible.

This means that to the subset of HN crowd that don't have alternate sources of political news, this indeed looks like a bombshell.

I think the words are "you're absolutely right".

I'm curious what gives you the impression that no one cares. Anyone non-white in the US, regardless of their immigration and citizenship status, can expect to be harassed in the near future, so I'm guessing they care. Maybe they're afraid enough to be silenced, but that doesn't mean they don't care.

Someone looking at HN front page could falsely get the impression that no one cares, but that's only because all ICE-related subjects are actively and relentlessly flagged. We never see them. You can have an idea of how much some of the HN crowd cares by visiting https://news.ycombinator.com/active more often.

I don't see where you're going. We trust europeans and I very much doubt that we had any tariff on their automobiles to begin with. We're talking about removing a "artificial" stopgap tariff specifically targeting Chinese imports, not preferring China over Europe.

European cars can't compete here because they're not cheap enough. Chinese car are. They're the one disrupting the global market now.

Why would this move imply anything about China's trustworthiness? Canada has forever been USA's lap dog. They say "jump" we say "how high?". Those tariffs we had were mostly to be in solidarity of the US.

Yes, it was also to protect car manufacturing in Ontario, but Trump has sent a clear signal that as long as Canada isn't a US state, this industry is going to die. So, why bother with a tariff at all?

This has nothing to do with China's trustworthiness.

Yes, it's a modest step, but my guess is that those BYD cars will sell like hot cakes and demand will go through the roof. By popular demand, the government will have to lift that limit. That's all China needs to destroy american car manufacturing.

Up until a while ago, I'm pretty sure that the consensus was that China not trustworthy. And then, Trump plays his cards and the consensus is now that the US are even less trustworthy. So here you go.

Those soldiers don't need to die for the attack on them (that is, taking them as prisoners) to be an act of war, doesn't it?

One explanation could be that, if Trump is a Russian asset, he'd be more effective at it if he wasn't obviously one. Seizing all tankers except russian ones might be too obvious.

Therefore, it might be worth it for Russia to lose a few tankers in order to keep one of their greatest assets.

All hypothetical of course. I'm sure Trump isn't a Russian asset. No way they can have kompromat on such a virtuous guy.

Let me join on this XFCE love fest. I also think it rocks, but it's more than that. It's also my go-to install for "friends and family" linux installs (Debian stable and XFCE).

I've been doing a couple of these over the years, and the great thing about XFCE is that it doesn't change, while at the same time being fairly intuitive and discoverable to the tech-unsavvy people.

So, with XFCE, I explain things once and I don't have to explain things to that person ever again. It stays as is over the years!

One only have to make sure to disable the virtual desktop (4 screens by default) thing and be sure to only keep one. That's the most confusing thing to non-tech-savvy that ever was. "Where have all my windows gone?! I moved the mouse and poof! they were gone"

Also, it runs great on old hardware. It's mostly what I've been doing. Family and friends tell me how they'll need to buy a new computer because theirs can't go on the internet anymore. I tell them "no you won't!". And then their computer becomes super fast again. Make my Computer Great Again.

It's weird, I feel like we're arguing over saying the same thing. Sure, I agree, but please don't say it's a meme.

Sure, it didn't take power, sure, the bourgeois were stronger, but they still managed to overthrow the forces of Louis-Phillipe. Internet wasn't invented yet, memes couldn't depose kings.

> meme that the French Revolution was a quasi-communist revolution

It's not a meme. There's clearly a collectivist movement within the revolution, it's just that this force failed to take power. The "révolution de Février", in 1848 was precisely this: Paris going full collectivist, abolishing property and all, then small land owner from the provinces freaking out and all come to Paris to whoop them.

You're being beside the point. All I'm saying is: don't conflate "nobility" and "bourgeois" in your statistics and analysis. In the context of the French revolution, they're not the same.

Of course the bourgeois weren't purged in the revolution. It's them who took power through that revolution.

> The answer is they are all members of the elite. It was the exact same with the leadership of the French Revolution, and the subsequent regimes.

no. Bourgeois, prior to the revolution, were not part of the elite. It's difficult to imagine, but there was a time where there wasn't such a direct correlation as today between wealth and power.

The statistics cited in the article you cite talks about the Nobility/Clergy/Other classification. There is no wealth-related statistic. It's entirely possible that a good fraction of the "Others" category were wealthy bourgeois.

And it's flagged, of course.

Will somebody vouch for this? I know what you're thinking. This doesn't encourage curiosity! This is politics! Same old, same old.

HN! Come on, how myopic must you be to not see that a working democracy is a condition sine qua non of your dear curiosity. You see what's happening in Iran, right? Well, they don't!

Put your glasses on, HN, you're not seeing shit.

It's as if, like, the whole tech supply chain could crumble overnight.

It's fair because privatization of public good is generally not made with proper compensation either.

I don't know, I guess there's all kinds of tricks. It's not as if US presence made the territory magically impervious to everything. Last time, weather balloons fooled the US military good enough.

I mean, the US can't even keep migrants from illegally crossing their borders with dangerous drugs. Are you really making the case that as soon as the US have boots on the ground, that Venezuela's borders are a 100% secure? America, fuck yeah!

That is why I specifically wrote the words "they won't go as far as direct US confrontation". I refer to China-sponsored guerilla warfare.

Thank you for articulating this outside of the regular "HN myopia" lenses.

This event will also serve as a measure of how strong China actually is. Venezuela is very important strategically for them, they can't let it slide unless they're weak.

Surely, they won't go as far as direct US confrontation, but if they don't make Venezuela into a death trap for any US soldier being stationed there, one can draw the conclusion that China isn't as strong as many make them (including me, I confess).

But it wouldn't be that surprising if Venezuela turns out being a death trap for any US soldier being stationed there...

Wizards invented guns, good for them, but now the order is tall: they need to figure out how to undo the effect of their bullets.

Why did you put "propaganda" in quotes?

Nevertheless, I also remember that in the 10.4 days, OS X had the reputation of being sluggish compared to Linux or even Windows (I guess it was Windows 7 at the time?). And it kinda was. Bouncing ball when launching an app.

How high the bar was back then.

Because it has landed on Netflix recently, I've rewatched Gangs of New York. The process where that corrupt cop is skimming off the top is eerily similar to what's happening now. Down to the part where the police officer claims that his watch is safe ("I could murder someone in the streets and nothing could happen to me!")

He could pardon Mangione as well and that would make his karma even. Even Steven, just about square.

Who's seeking power, the poor schmuck who misused their PDF tools?

It seems that my novel "razor" is misunderstood. The article attributes bad redacting to gross incompetence. But what if the person having done this bad redacting is instead doing sabotage with plausible deniability "lol, those damn PDF tools, you never know how they work"?

It makes this story more interesting, and it allows one to see an outline of the future film scripts that will be written about this period. The courageous saboteurs at the dawn of american fascism.

Trump's razor: Why attribute something to incompetence when you can attribute it to patriotic sabotage?