kcplate
Well, you wrote this, didn’t you?
>> This regime have flagrantly violated their oaths of office, outright ignoring their Constitutional roles and instead acting in bad faith to achieve their own personal/political goals.
You turned a simple question about what crimes were committed and convicted by tech leaders that deserved prison and decided to loop in a diatribe against the current administration. You apparently have an axe there you want to grind. So be it, but perhaps grind away on another thread appropriate to that topic.
> That behavior is most certainly in the realm of criminality, despite there not being a law that directly states it. Rather it's the kind of thing that needs to be decomposed into specific chargeable crimes by prosecutors, after having been investigated for the extent of communications, agreements, etc that effect the conspiracy. And then judges make an actual decision which intrinsically creates new precedents (ie common law) because these type of things don't happen every dao.
So…your answer is “no, they have not committed a crime for which they can be put in prison, but you really hope that some prosecutors and judges can get together to invent some way to parse legal behavior you disagree with into creating a precedent that can bypass congress’s responsibility to make law”. Good to know.
It is shit like this that make people like you fucking scare the shit out of me…way more than some tech bro training AI on copyrighted material (And to put that in perspective, I am one of those people who think AI is probably gonna eventually kill us).
> These types of crimes aren't generally formalized and written down
Then they aren't crimes. To have a crime you need a law first. Someone then has to break that law. You need an authority that recognizes and can enforce that law. Then you need a conviction under that law and a legal authority that can met out punishment. If you don't have a law, you cant have a crime and you cant have a conviction for it.
> But worries about how that might play out should not prevent us from demanding justice for what by all measures appears to be a concerted attack on the United States!
So your solution is “lets make what they did illegal now, and then convict them for a current law for something they did in the past that wasn’t illegal at the time they did it”?
Seems to me to be a dangerous precedent to set and one that will be used against you whenever power shifts (and power always shifts).
Well…it is fashionable to hate all things Elon.
I spent 8 years of my life at a daily news organization, I know for a fact that reporters, editors, executives, and sometimes even the advertisers have a voice in what is published…whether opinion or not.
I’d be willing to bet your roommates would have been even happier if you used wifi.
No chance any ever passes. Amendment’s are difficult to pass by design.
The equal rights amendment which virtually nobody actually really opposes in theory in 2026 has been bantered around for 103 years as a concept and 54 years after congress approved it and sent it for ratification. Its close, but still no cigar. This is an amendment that is hardly controversial bit still cannot manage to be passed due to procedural issues and set deadlines being missed.
Now consider just how much effort and how long a controversial amendment would take…
That was 64 years ago and are you suggesting here that things that happened that far back have no bearing today? Hell, the brother of the dictator from 64 years ago is currently in charge there today still oppressing the Cuban people so it’s not like there hasn't been some continuity.
If you are a lawyer how technically competent would you need to be to have complete assurance that your engineering team is now and always will be in full compliance to eliminate all risk to allow a lack of consent.
Or…you just drop the Ack on site and not worry over it. Thats not spite, it’s compliance convenience.
The method of compliance may may not be perfect, but it addresses the legal problem. There wouldn't be a legal issue without the law. This is not a chicken or the egg situation. No law, no need to inform even if no tracking cookies exist.
> hassle your customers in the worst way they have so far conceived
By informing and asking for a acknowledgment? That seems pretty benign compared to a ton of things I have seen over the last nearly three decades.
No, it’s a legal CYA that provides safe harbor in case you are accused of the behavior. If a law says you need to inform, your lawyers will demand you inform even if zero cookies are used on the site.
Instead we are presented with some lukewarm have it both ways BS where the only solution to truly give you safe harbor is present the cookie acknowledgment. Good corporate lawyers will demand the dickover even if you do not use cookies at all just to cover the company’s ass.
Bit of a difference…
I’ll admit that I definitely like collecting my paycheck much more than I worry about customer annoyance at acknowledging a cookie policy. Some hills ain't worth dying on.
It’s certainly on the surface impressive, but when I dive into the details of what it creates, the slop becomes so apparent I cant unsee it and it distracts me.
Every cuban ex-pat I know (and thats quite a lot because I live in FL) will tell you there is a Cuba problem. They all still have family suffering under that regime.
Here is a nice little brain teaser…What law would that be? And who would or could enforce said law? And if said law cannot be enforced, is it actually a law at all?
> Explain how that gave the US any "soft power" influence over the Cuban government.
Pretty sure the Castro bros regime knowing that there is nearly a half million people who are specifically “non-fans” of the current Cuban government, but are people patriotic towards Cuba, with family still in Cuba…who are sitting 100 miles off the Cuban shores would factor into cuban government decision making as it relates to US relations.
My comment was about why this was not a “it’s both” type of situation. So just own your motivation for what it is—you emigrate so you can get a better life in a new country than you can get in your old country. That’s honorable enough.
You want a better life, the country providing it is arbitrary as long as it accepts the currency that you can provide for that better life by your skill set.
If it was altruistic you would emigrate because you believe in the country you are emigrating to even if it meant your life was worse.
Within my circle of friends (generally those who are in Europe), I have been trying explain this distinction whenever it’s brought up that “US violates international law”. Be it Greenland, Iran, Israel…whatever…if your international law’s enforcement arm (The US) will not enforce on itself, then whatever the US does or decides to do is legal.
I’m not a Trump supporter but I am exhausted watching other people who don’t support him provide such lazy arguments.
It was literally only until the last 5 words that I realized you were not talking about Iran. Funny how you ignore their part in all this.
However, I do want to take issue with the idea of “deeply incompetent”. That doesn't fit. They are either extremely competent at implementing their political agenda, or extremely lucky. Additionally this whole situation is contrary to the Trump administration’s normal playbook. If anything is consistent about Trump is that he panders to his base. This was the exact opposite. Why the change?
Thats the problem with assuming that this is Trump business as usual, its not…which is why I feel that there is a catalyst to go off their normal playbook.
While I am not big on trust either, I am perplexed why “successful” negotiations would all of a sudden turn on a dime into a regional military event without a major catalyst— especially this close to midterms. This action was not politically helpful to Trump, was risky with his base, yet he did it anyway.