There's an interesting legal argument there about it being a "contract of adehsion." But it is very hard to win on those grounds.

If the best critique the Russia AI trollbots can come up with is Zelensky is no Saint, they're grasping at straws. George Washington was no saint. Neither was Benjamin Franklin, renowned for his seduction of French aristocratic women and frequenting brothels. Nor was Dwight Eisenhower, but you know, winning WWII is a messy job. JFK himself had the whole bay of pigs thing and let's not forget the Vietnam War, which worked out so splendidly. They all were not saintly, but the forces they opposed ranging from British autocrats to the far right fascists, to the authoritarian communists -- they were all far worse. Pick a Deity of any religion and consider if they think Zelensky or Putin is closer to sainthood. My money is on St Peter letting in Zelensky first.

Exactly, at the end of the bday, numbers win. I've seen many Republican business leaders who are ostensibly patriotic (former military officers and the like) go and take American jobs at companies they acquire or come in to lead and outsource those jobs to India, Mexico, Philippines etc. Generally this declines the quality of product or service but increases profits. It's going to see if these leaders who voted for Trump/Vance are willing to part with their bonuses for profit growth to further an ideology. In the past, I've seen those ideologies put aside frequently in exchange for profits.

So incredibly true. At this point, with a family that makes less than 200k a year, it's nearly impossible to raise a child that can get into Harvard. You need them to go to a great high school with lots of sports, extracurriculars and AP programs -- and pay for all that in addition. Just living near those great schools is expensive, even if they're public. You'll need to pay for all kinds of activities and camps to pad their application. You'll need the time to drive them to all these things or the money to pay someone else to. You'll also need tutors, years of test prep, and maybe a college application consultant. So realistically, this tuition-free-under-200k is likely to make little difference in who can go to Harvard. The cost of elite college is nothing compared to the costs of doing the necessary things to get in.

He's actually always made calculated fashion moves. Even his t-shirts ten plus years ago were custom made and $400 each. https://www.businessinsider.co... It was intentional for it to look like a normal t shirt and give him a young tech founder vibe, but it actually be expensive custom fashion. If there's one thing Zuckerberg is, it's someone who pretends to be whatever he thinks is currently to his advantage. You don't become one of the world's richest people being authentic and caring.

Definitely an improvement but I think it also requires qualification as a low severity exploit, "unable to perform sensitive actions or exfiltrate data.". Exploits of this nature wouldn't even be newsworthy, but it relates to AI and Gemini...

There were numerous guns illegally brought into the Capitol on Jan 6. https://www.reuters.com/fact-c.... It is virtually impossible for police to "immediately arrest" people for having guns when they are concealed and the police are busy fighting off a mob who is overwhelming them and winning.

It does take away from his success somewhat in that he was already a member of the aristocracy, and has major advantages in education, early access to computers, and business connections. Someone else with higher merit or intelligence wouldn't have been able to do the same without those factors. That said he's obviously been wildly successful to the level of few others in history. Is that the American Dream though? Ironically the person asking is Mark Cuban, who grew up a second generation immigrant in a working class family. That's the American Dream -- coming to this country from outside or up from the working class, working hard and seeing yourself or your children succeed amazingly. Bill Gates seems to think here the American Dream was him going from pretty damn rich to the richest in the world. That sounds a lot more like an aristocratic dream of a Roman patrician family than American.

You are 100 percent right but also Bill Gates' parents were well connected, savvy businesspeople who were very wealthy. His mother introduced him early in his career to Warren Buffett who she knew fairly well. So I don't think he experienced the American dream more like a European Aristocracy one of starting out as a Count and becoming a Duke.

Interestingly this theory is similar to that of Aldous Huxley's in the classic "The Doors of Perception" (if you've ever listened to The Doors, you know the famous American Band, that's their namesake). Essentially, he posits that the brain's function is largely reductive and it ignores or reduces most of its sensory input to essentially filter out elements unnecessary for survival. Huxley believed psychedelics disrupt the efficiency of this filter, leading to states analogous with religious rapture, artistic inspiration, or on the darker side schizophrenia.

The results of this particular study seem to agree with much of Huxley's old argument.

I didn't immigrate anywhere, I have a grandmother who is 100 percent Puerto Rican. However she appeared white despite not speaking much English. As such she was already an American citizen. I moved to California about 20 years ago from NYC. Hispanic for census purposes counts people like me with descent from Spanish dominated Caribbean colonies like Cuba or Puerto Rico.

I am of mixed Hispanic descent, go down as white/Hispanic on the census, and definitely work in tech in California and have for nearly two decades. I think you are falsely equating Hispanic population with non-white collar.

There is a whole huge drama to this story involving the sister, who is married to a rich surgeon, being in a wife sharing/polyamorous lifestyle in which Lee was also allegedly involved. It's sadly a tragedy stemming from a mega rich party scene. https://nypost.com/2024/10/24/...

Saudi Arabia's medieval monarchy and bribery-petrostate form of government is a threat to human civilization and advancement. Beheadings for slandering the prince is a clear threat to human life. If they had their way we'd be stuck in the 1500s culturally and scientifically.

It's a deceptive term used by marketing to indicate a level of quality beyond consumer-grade, when really it just means anything used by the military they can also sell to consumers. The military uses Starlink, but that wouldn't be commonly understood as military-grade, it's a consumer product also opportunistically used by the military. Neither would Campbell's soup be considered military grade, but it's eaten a lot by armed forces. Writers focused on marketing use the term military-grade to puff whatever they're selling or touting, but it is disingenuous. AES is a fairly universal encryption standard used by everyone from Grandma to the military. Calling it military-grade is an attempt to gain credibility for a generally available non-military product from the respect and admiration people have for the armed forces.