I ask this with sincere curiosity -
what does his current place of residence have to do with his message that programmers should avoid companies building infrastructure for the police state?
Grow up with a safety net and you don't take it seriously.
Group poor and/or with people depending on you, you understand the task at hand.
I goofed off a lot in college until I was tired of partying and realized I was going nowhere; about end of Sophomore year. All the older folks who paid their own way sure took it seriously. For reference, I'm also GenX.
I'm sure motivations range from what I suggested to what you suggested.
I think it plays a part. Just like personality does. And the college itself does. And the professors you get, and so on.
But really the insight is internal. And it's just insight, it doesn't dictate your response.
In other words I'm not saying this insight suddenly means you change career path. Most of us will go out and get jobs in an office, most will progress on similar lines.
The difference is in how you approach things. For example; if you see programming as vocational training then the language they teach you matters. If they taught you Java then you apply for a job doing Java.
If you see it as I did, then you see programming, not language. Language is easy to learn, and I've done serious work in at least 4 in my career. My first job was in a language I'd never seen before. Today I spend a lot of time in one that wasn't even invented.
If I had to go out and find work tomorrow I'm confident I can handle whatever language they prefer. I don't say that with arrogance- it'll take effort - but rather I'm confident I know how to learn.
Thus I'm not scared of AI. It's a tool, and I'm happy to learn it and use it. It won't replace me because I don't "write code", I program (and I understand the difference. )
So ultimately I'm not sure that financial status or whatever make a big difference. Ultimately it comes down to the person.
If the honeypot description is accurate, the wolf is real. The below is from section 5 of their complaint [1]:
> Rippling’s General
Counsel sent a legal letter to Deel’s senior leadership identifying a recently established Slack
channel called “d-defectors,”
> In reality, the “d-defectors” channel
was not used by Rippling employees and contained no discussions at all. It had never been searched
for or accessed by the spy, would not have come up in any of the spy’s previous searches, and the
spy had no legitimate reason to access the channel. Crucially, this legal letter was only sent to three
recipients, all associated with Deel: Deel’s Chairman, Chief Financial Officer, and General Counsel
(Philippe Bouaziz), Deel’s Head of U.S. Legal (Spiros Komis), and Deel’s outside counsel. Neither
the letter nor the #d-defectors channel was known to anyone outside of Rippling’s investigative team
and the Deel recipients. Yet, just hours after Rippling sent the letter to Deel’s executives and
counsel, Deel’s spy searched for and accessed the #d-defectors channel
I know, insane if true. But it seems like Parker is pretty litigious these days, and I guess feels like he's losing? There was a very cringe snake game a couple of months ago where the Deel logo was a snake, which leads me to believe he's not fighting from the point of strength.
May fav part: "D.S. was heard ‘doing something’ on his phone by the independent solicitor, who also heard D.S. flush the toilet— suggesting that D.S. may have attempted to flush his phone down the toilet rather than provide it for inspection."
We have exactly one piece of data on this case right now, which is the filed legal complaint. As a parody of corporate espionage, it's excellent, but as a piece of evidence… I would treat it with about the same seriousness as a parody of corporate espionage. Rippling has some incentive not to lie outright, but none whatsoever not to exaggerate the living heck out of everything. And so that leaves us with one unreliable document, and general background information on the parties, or "vibes" as you dismiss it. And the general background is that Rippling is litigious and clearly has a preexisting axe to grind with Deel.
> Rippling has some incentive not to lie outright, but none whatsoever not to exaggerate the living heck out of everything.
What could have been exaggerated in the honeypot story? That seems pretty damning and they would be able to provide evidence to back it up (e.g. Slack access logs and the email).
> As for American gold holdings, they’re essentially pointless: Fort Knox is a legacy of the days when the U.S. promised to exchange gold for dollars on demand.
> More to the point, bitcoin was created to be an alternative to the dollar, not a support for it. Far from strengthening the dollar, having the U.S. purchase billions of dollars of assets that were created to be alternatives to the dollar would at best be economically pointless and at worst would actually weaken confidence in the dollar.
so why other than fort knox, are you advocating for this position?
Countries and banks (including central banks) are still buying gold as a hedge against dollar and other currencies.
For example, "from November 2022 to April 2024, China reported adding about 314 tons to its reserves, bringing the official total to 2,264 tons by mid-2024".
The logic for holding Bitcoin is the same as the logic for holding gold: a hedge against dollar and other currencies.
You may be right, but I think China specifically has learned something from Russia.
Before invading Ukraine, Russia held assets across the world and they were frozen (some of it USD).
Now imagine you are a large holder of US treasuries, would you take some off the table and purchase this other asset (gold) that can ensure you're less susceptible to your enemies sanctions?
Additionally, the proposed currency for BRICS is going to be partially backed by gold, assuming they still go ahead with it even with the threat of Trump's tarriffs.
> Finally, it is not sufficient to have an army of parachute ninjas large or smart to drop into all the agencies in the executive branch. Many institutions of power are outside the government proper. Ninjas will have to land on the roofs of these buildings too—mainly journalism, academia and social media.
The author is quoting Yarvin's substack here.
Say what you will about reducing the federal workforce - are people really ok with this line of thinking?
The idea of running the govt in 'founder mode' sounds reasonable on paper, until you realize there are established rules that outline the roles of each branch of govt in a democracy.
We should be ok that these rules don't establish the most efficient govt, a worthy trade-off against the edge-cases.
> “We should treat Trump and members of his administration like Elon Musk as akin to Russian oligarchs,” Macfarlane wrote. “We need to impose meaningful costs on the U.S. for its economic aggression.”
The most meaningful cost you could impose in this situation is to establish a direction in which innovation within your borders rivals that of your aggressors, so you are not beholden to the government of their day.
Does anyone else find it odd, that this type of access would typically require training and/or a background check, yet here we are 12 days after this administration was sworn in?
Are there no checks and balances in place? Seems like one side that won the popular vote has taken the entire spectrum of action, regardless if they need to govern for an entire nation.
It appears there are no checks and balances in place. Congress could impeach, or the Supreme Court could enjoin (is that the word?), but I see no prospect of either happening soon.
It would help if people could outline exactly what they are concerned about.
As far as I can tell, nothing that that Musk et al is doing is unusual when an organisation changes hands. This is normal for a change of government or a corporate aquisition.
Perhaps there should be certain, limited, aspects of executive decision making that require congressional oversight, but because left weren't decrying the lack of checks and balances previously, they now come across as sore losers, worse, dishonest sore losers who are cloaking their pettiness as concern.
Secondly, the left lost the public support so badly that the republicans control congress now, so even if such oversight existed, it would also be controlled by the republican party.
A person who has not gone through a confirmation process is running an agency not provided for by Congress and not vetted for security clearances which is taking actions that violate employment laws and union protections.
That is what we are concerned about. This violates all kinds of norms, regulations, and laws.
The left did not lose "so badly". They lost a handful of electoral college swing states by small margins. These people do not have a mandate, no matter how much they say they do.
Trump won the election. The left need to accept that.
He has a mandate to significantly reduce the size of the federal government, and he has the authority to appoint Musk to act in this way.
You can complain about it violating norms all you like, but norms aren’t laws and taking into account the preferences of the left isn’t something Trump is required to do nor is it something the Democrats have done in the past for the right.
As for violating employment laws, there’s no evidence of this. It appears you just threw that in there hoping no one would challenge you on it.
Federal employees are unionized. There are procedures to dismiss employees. They are not following those procedures.
So, no, I didn't just throw that on there.
Even if there weren't, are you so callous and heartless that you can't see how this blow-it-all-up approach is making chaos of people's lives? Is that what you're here for... to make things hard on people?
The Republicans won the election. That doesn't mean trample the entirety of the country to fit their vision. The Democrats have done nothing like this.
I'm sure calling them such names makes sense in your echo chambers, but to the overwhelming majority of people this is an inaccurate and inappropriate label.
Calling people things which they are not, does not hurt their reputation, it simply makes your fringe of the political spectrum look immature.
But you don't care about immaturity. You voted for Trump. The guy who said he can "grab them by the pussy, they let you do it".
It's just lockeroom talk. Right?
The entire Republican chorus backed up this juvenile locker room talk excuse. Trotted it out for the whole world to see. Not very mature. Did you love it?
Trump lost the 2020 election and Trump's kooks didn't accept that. Instead they engaged in violence at the request of Trump, while he was still president, on the basis of Trump's election denialism.
Peaceful transition also isn't the law. It was a norm. Until Trump pissed on it.
Trump ordered the vice president to overturn an election, and when Mike Pence refused that order, Trump sent a mob to have the VPOTUS assassinated.
And then, in possibly something like mass hysteria, they vote for Trump again. Or maybe it's an addiction to depravity, anger and drama. Like drug addiction.
Trump voters voted for a rapist, for president. This how low and desperate they've become. They kicked Mike Pence to the curb - all the boilerplate Republican policies they claim to want, but Pence wasn't good enough. It's pretty clear the right wanted an abusive personality.
Don't expect reasonable people to become docile about that.
Musk has no authority. He operates only under the pleasure of the authority of the president and the officers of the USDS under which he is a federal employee.
You needn't be an officer to gain access to and analyze payment systems.
Has no authority but is taking authoritorial actions. Right. He's not a federal employee afaik as he hasn't passed any of the requisite checks or been approved by the Senate.
No. The story I read was for "Interim Top Secret". If you have a clear National Agency Check (arrest and convictions), and do not flag as a drug user / mental case, then you can be given an "Interim Top Secret" while waiting for the clearance adjudication. Does not allow access to SCI, or NATO Cosmic, but does allow access to regular Top Secret. There is also an "Interim Secret". Over 90% of the people with interim clearances are positively adjudicated.
Normal thing. Provided they are using the same criteria for the Interim Clearances.
Top Secret is also a fairly common clearance, despite the name it is not a clearance level reserved for highest levels of intelligence or anything like that.
Huh? This isn't a corporation, nothing about corporate change of control applies.
Political, not civil, servants taking over these systems without any oversight is truly brazen. Sounds like you're saying that since there wasn't a prior act of Congress declaring this illegal, it's just whining. Please clarify.
You're right that oversight would be influenced by the party in power. Generally, the inspectors general would be relatively independent but guess what, they all got sacked just a few days ago. And Republican congresspeople behave as if they represent the president, not their constituents. The system functioned with some level of decorum before, but this looks like war.
I think this is a case where it’s becoming clear that some US laws were vague and there always needed to be some specification. I mean, what does checks and balances mean? How do you execute it? By sheer force of will apparently.
The actions that are being taken by Trump, Musk and co is normal in both governmental and corporate organisations when a change of control occurs.
Oversight in these systems tends to be illusory, because for the executive branch to function it fundamnetally needs to have the authority to make the decisions that are currently being made.
The Democrats have, broadly speaking, not cared much for oversight when they were in power, so suddenly caring about it now that republicans are in power comes across as, and probably is, just them being sore losers.
No, the US has been able to have a clean transfer of power without sending in random goons who won't identify themselves & who download key/secure OPM data onto random hard drives & leave with it.
This is all batshit insanity, an assault on democracy.
> Clearly your framing is driven by ideological hatred
Is that the current trope in American political discourse? If someone points out there are brazen acts which haven't happened before you just tack the label "ideological hatred" or "partisan" and think that covers all ground?
They are random goons, DOGE wasn't signed into existence by Congress, the "officer" in charge of DOGE has not been through the process of confirmation by Congress/Senate. Those people are getting access to the Treasury without any checks and balances process.
I cannot believe that Americans are falling for this, you were supposed to fight against the tyranny of highly-concentrated power in a single person's hand and yet now it's ok to do it because it's a team you support? This is all so stupid to watch from the outside, a bizarro-world of hot takes without any regards to civics, government function, nor democratic distribution of power across government branches.
What is infuriating is that any argument against it is then met by some twist of an ad hominem boiling down to "this is partisanship/ideological hatred". It's just all so, so stupid.
Edit: also forgot, I don't think anyone like you shouting "partisan" or "ideology" has ever heard about "The Network State", I recommend going through it to see the playbook you are all participating in.
The feds can screech all they want. The people have spoken. Their jobs won't be missed. That the feds that tyrannically oppress the people hate this so much is some of the strongest evidence DOGE might actually get something done.
It is time for their civics lesson, not ours. Hopefully they can learn to code.
Wreck everything in this case means a return to constitutional basis under which the feds have a narrow scope limited by the 10th amendment rather than the pretend one invented under FDR era and stamped under threat of packing the courts.
The screeching about Mao and Nazis doesn't work anymore. Accessing payment systems isn't the holocaust and you've cried wolf too many times for it to work anymore.
Who the fuck is "you"? I'm not American, I don't live in the USA, I'm just watching from the sidelines how fucking bonkers all of this is unfolding, and for some reason you don't even consider that maybe it is that fucking bonkers. Even if you support what's being done just the sheer pace of it won't drive it forward anywhere bright.
It's just some pent up rage and anger, now being used for retribution against something not even tangible, it's just wrecking for the sake of wrecking.
The only way to see through if it's "crying wolf" or heeding some warning calls is when you're way past a turning back point, it's speeding fast to that point and you are actively choosing to blind yourself because you feel there's an "other" (as your usage of "you" in there) that is only against what's happening because of some distorted notion of bucketing people into camps of ideology and only thinking through that lens.
I don't even know how to try anymore to shine a light on how absurd each step is growing to be on top of each other, if even the cohort of Americans who have absolute access to information, knowledge, are supposedly well-educated can just blindly follow through the master plan in motion and call anyone trying to warn you there's danger ahead as the opposite-you I simply have no respect left for the general American populace.
You do deserve the reckoning that is very likely to come, perhaps after that we can talk about who is crying wolf or not because this "no, you" rhetoric does work, it's fucking exhausting, it doesn't lead anywhere, and there's no room for talking to be done if you cannot ever reflect on your own position to admit that some stuff doesn't look nor feel right.
For all the fearmongering of a New World Order the conservatives in general have been stoking it does seem, yet again, that every accusation is an admission. Your government is rapidly getting taken under control of a few select people with a plan to fundamentally change how the fabric of your State works (and it's not under the 10th Ammendment or whatever the fuck else is in your fossilised Constitution). The plan has been talked out in the open, they've been talking about it on podcasts, on interviews, on articles, and yet it seems that any warning call is just "crying wolf".
What does this mean? You are just going in circles and basically saying "no, you" to a pretty valid criticism about a power grab.
It's fucking scary to see how easily people can jump into camp A or camp B, and simply blind themselves to any sort of criticism because actions come from their own camp.
American politics is done for decades, I don't see how you can recover from the erosion of public discourse steadily degrading for the past 30+ years, it just got worse and worse. The final nail in the coffin seem to be social media, it really hastened this downfall, there's no common narrative, no budging from your position; it's all based on shitstorming and hunkering down in your own trench.
It's just so stupid and sad, Nikita Khrushchev would be in fucking glee "We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within". And the thing is, I don't even believe Putin/Russia did that much, it was all self-inflicted, you are just imploding by your hands...
A big purpose of primaries is a sanity check for election suitability. Unfortunately whatever elites shit-canned Biden forgot that they need primaries almost as much as the people do.
This system is squarely in the hands of the executive. The elected executive handed access to DOGE, as he advertised in his campaign. This is so squarely and fairly a democratic action it defies logic this is even worth taking note of. This is what the people, who the government is beholden to, explicitly asked for. Tyranny would be NOT handing it over.
The Constitution provides for checks&balances. This violates the Appointments Clause (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2). It is unconstitutional like so many of these executive orders that violate the 1st and 4th Amendments.
I find it hard to believe every employee accessing the system without a congressional appointment is violating the constitution. Perhaps that is the case but I haven't heard a peep from constitutional watchdogs until now. Can you explain why it's suddenly unconstitutional when the US digital service employees access it?
I'm sure calling them these names makes sense in your echo chambers, but to the overwhelming majority of people these are inaccurate and inappropriate labels.
Calling people things which they are not, does not hurt their reputation, it simply makes your fringe of the political spectrum look immature.
Interesting - I genuinely want to understand your perspective here.
Are you saying following the laws to protect sensitive information is not worth it in this case, because it has been authorized by the party of the day?
That sounds like a 'why did you beat your wife' kind of question. No comment here has established law was broken, nor did you even cite any specific crime. Genuinely have no idea what red herring you are going on here.
I don’t get it, we want anti trust laws right? Democrats as well I assumed? I actually thought they were more of a democrat thing tbh, but now that the republicans want them they are bad? I don’t get it anymore.
Antitrust enforcement, sure, it's a good thing. Pretending that Republicans are better than Democrats in that sense, is not that great. Especially after who attended the inauguration, it's very naive to hope that they will solve "Big Tech abuses" in any way.
