I would 100% support prosecuting the people responsible for wasting public funds. This is the kind of abuse that undermines trust in the state, and make it difficult to provide things to people that actually need them. The Adams administration is a disgrace.
You should check out Eric Adams in more detail. The guy - and his team - ranges from ridiculous to nuts to outright corrupt. A few excerpts:
>> Equally memorable, perhaps, were the strange subplots along the way: his hatred of rats and fear of ghosts; the mysteries about his home, his diet, his childhood; and his endless supply of catchphrases, gestures and head-scratching stories that could instantly transform a mundane bureaucratic event into a widely shared meme.
>> Then, on Sept. 26, 2024, federal prosecutors brought fraud and bribery charges against Adams, accusing him of allowing Turkish officials and other businesspeople to buy his influence with illegal campaign contributions and steep discounts on overseas trips.
>> Investigators also seized phones from the mayor's police commissioner, schools chancellor and multiple deputy mayors. Each denied wrongdoing, but a mass exodus of leadership followed, along with questions about the mayor’s ability to govern.
>> ...Weeks after Trump took office, the Justice Department dismissed the corruption case, writing in a two-page memo that it had interfered with Adams’ ability to help with the president’s immigration agenda.
I always feel weird reading statements from the EU regarding this relationship. There's always talk of the U.S abandoning it's position, guilt tripping, etc. but very little about what the EU plans to do in retaliation. Cut off the U.S from the research? Retaliatory tariffs? Why is the U.S leaving NATO a concern for the EU, but not a concern for the U.S? The fact that these are not the top talking points makes me think the U.S isn't entirely wrong in their approach.
It's the classic breakup story, one party is just done and want to cut contact, but the other party is still hopeful and wants to find a way to restore the relationship.
The EU is not independent minded in the same way that China and Russia are. That's the problem with them. Their leaders don't want to act independently from the US, because the European wealthy and politically connected classes consider themselves transatlantic, and they want to keep enjoying close ties to the US, even as the US pulls away.
Personally, as someone that has heard non-stop about how horrible the US is from Europeans ever since I was on the internet, I don't give statements from EU officials much weight. It isn't anything new.
I have family that has migrated _from_ Europe to the US, they still seem to hold this attitude that they know what is best for the US. They come live here for a higher quality of life and income, then go vacation in Europe like kings, talking about how much cheaper things are, without an ounce of irony. Not sure how they do it.
You have to be a special kind of ignorant to try and say it’s a higher quality of life with a straight face. On essentially zero of any of the metrics which are specifically designed to measure exactly this does the US come out on top. Thats just a jingoistic nonsense you heard somewhere and decided to repeat it like it was a fact.
> guilt tripping, etc. but very little about what the EU plans to do in retaliation.
The narratives are harmful. What would retaliation bring? The EU doesn't fancy a winner-takes-all mindset. There is no joy if the US goes down as some sort of backwards kleptocracy. There is no joy if the US populace slide back into the gilded age. It doesn't make the EU better. On the contrary. It will be a loss for both sides. Hence, why they speak out (a little).
Abandoning the rules based order, science, equality, personal rights; it all will have devastating effects. For Americans, for everyone.
The US position in the NATO is an arrangement like the Americans wanted for decades, it enabled the US to profit greatly from it, and Europa was happy to have the US as a counter balance. Now, if the US wants to change the arrangement, that is of course possible. But we have signed contracts, blackmail and extortion shouldn't have a place. Can't share sources, but under this administration several powerful but corrupt people in the army even tried to extort European partners already. It is on track to become Russified in that sense, nothing to be gleeful over.
The point isn't to crush the U.S in retaliation, it's to show why maintaining a relationship is mutually beneficial. It's troubling that the EU can't produce any concrete reasons why that's the case.
There is a lot to say about these things, but this forum is a hard place to lay them down. I have to keep it short.
The problem is that the "US" is not seated at the table, just a bunch of kleptocrats and some zealots. The mutual benefits are real for the US, as in the populace, but the problem is that if the string-pulling group has to choose between their own interest or the US interest, they pick the first option.
I can absolutely understand you will reject the following instinctively, but let me tell you that for some fractions in the current movement, the idea of "burning" it all down is something they don't see as a bad thing. Turning the clock back in time, back to the gilded age, doing away with modernity, equal rights, secularism and non-whites--they dream about it. It is something horribly detrimental for the 99.9999%, sure, but they shouldn't have a say anyway.
And instinctively, a EU that "becomes a shining light on the hill" in absence of the USA, is a threat to the USA. The recently released foreign policy isn't shy about it. The same dynamic as Putin has with a thriving open democracy next to its border. Can't exist, dangerous, needs to be dismantled.
The trouble isn't EU <-> US. It is the US as the representation of the American People does not exist anymore. However flawed it might have been in the past, this is something else entirely. There is not even a notion of normalcy anymore. As such, the EU can't deal with the American People anymore via the regular diplomatic channels to reach a common ground for win-wins. So these very modest public comments from officials you will read now and then in the press are nothing less than an alarm to the American people itself. If you ask me, I don't think this message will successfully cross the information space in the US, but what options do they have? If you look at HN, anything that might be interpreted as a criticism quickly becomes an identitarian battle. Which, given the binary political system in the USA and the general human trait of tribalism is quite understandable, but nonetheless self-defeating and unfortunate for both sides.
The overwhelming conversation is about how this relationship isn't worth it. Even among liberal Americans it's about how the U.S benefits immensely from the relationship. If you can't address that concern, then Americans will assume you ceded it.
> 1. The overwhelming conversation is about how this relationship isn't worth it.
> 2. Even among liberal Americans it's about how the U.S benefits immensely from the relationship.
I have to leave in a minute, but maybe you can explain what you mean? 1 and 2 are in conflict, no?
> If you can't address that concern, then Americans will assume you ceded it.
Do you mean that when the US' public can't hear from the US partners that this is a mutual beneficial relation, the public will assume that these partners thereby admit that this relation was indeed not beneficial for the US public? (Even that the EU is a threat to be dismantled, as foreign policy now calls it)?
Assuming you did mean it somewhat like that, I would say:
a. the American information space is warped and segmented. Corporate ownership, the abolishment of fairness doctrine, information deserts, algorithmic control, conconditioning by corporate narratives (as old as the US oligarchy)--it is all highly dysfunctional. No small feat to get anything sensible past these filters.
b. In line with a, even the Democrats are locked out of this information space. Some titles read by the liberals might be marketed as such, but they are controlling the narratives as much as possible, with language, below-fold, above-fold, false balance via "op-eds" and editors stepping in to relegate possibly impactful stories to books, so no one reads them. Sure, they won't go fox because you can't do that with this readership. For reference, look back at the New York Times: Trump and Project 2025 had given enough signals of what was about to come, but the newspaper frantically tried to balance it with endless stories of Biden's age.
c. As aside, it is real bad, but subtly bad. If one can only read English, I would recommend The Guardian to get real journalism.
d. To wrap it up, Americans are not reachable anymore. When dem voters and rep voters cannot talk with each other, their information space is warped. Do not expect the EU to even get anything in this mess through the gatekeepers. Even the Americans-in-the-know can't.
Yes your interpretation is correct, and I think it answers your first question.
The idea that Americans are unreachable is false. Republicans hold on to their power by only a slim amount. All of America's most influential cities lean liberal. The most influential right wing media is social media, and left wing sources still have plenty of room to work there. The EU needs to make a strong case for itself instead of assuming what it's owned.
> Republicans hold on to their power by only a slim amount.
Agreed. But that is only counting the Republican seats. Historically, Dems had great trouble to do reforms, even if they wanted to and got enough seats. Multiple reasons. 1) Internal opposition. Dems are a big tent party, the Bernie side isn't that big. 2) You have to battle with the oligarchy. The Dems had to fight a war to get something basic like an independent central bank. 3) Historically, the Reps excel in slick and expensive marketing campaigns. 4) You can reach some parts of the public with information, but the odds are low that this message will be allowed to gain critical mass.
> left wing sources still have plenty of room to work there
Sure, but was the reversal of anti-monopolist anti financial fraud legislature made undone in the past decades? The narratives that shaped the public's opinion do make the universe smaller, often in such a way that writers don't even notice, as it their lived universe too. Also, why can't the voices in the US that do sound the alarm get enough traction? The intelligence and military industry have done great damage since Bush. The irony is that the Reps, in the most shameless way started isolationist narratives, criticizing the various wars, as capital shifted from military industry to surveillance and big tech industry. Now that criticism was due, but the narratives have been established. Any writer has to deal with the power of those widespread narratives. Yes, illegal wars, private militaries¹ and so forth are bad. No, isolationism and might-makes-right is bad too. But that takes deconstructing the dominant narratives.
> The EU needs to make a strong case for itself instead of assuming what it's owned.
I can't say you are wrong, but I could understand if they calculate that this isn't worth the risks. You might be someone that would read a letter from some European official with willingness to consider its message, but I think most people would interpret it as some variant of "hey American, let me as some European bureaucrat try to blindside you with a factual looking message so that the europoors can continue siphoning of from you". Also, this might open the door for the Reps to go even further with propping up neo-nazi or far-right parties in Europe, because you can bet the press will present this as a "both sides do".
Secondly, the US populace will get hit harder than Europe. That begs the question why the US own voices shouldn't be the first. And if they fail, how would the EU do that better?
Long story short, you might be right that the EU should be more proactive, maybe. Their weak voice might be partly attributed to their limited geopolitical agenda. But, even if their voice could and should be louder, I have big doubts it would make a difference.
I agree this can work okay, but once I find myself doing this much handholding I would prefer to drive the process myself. Coordinating 4 agents and guiding them along really makes you appreciate the mythical-man-month on the scale of hours.
The problem is that people simply have no investment in a community anymore. This is a direct consequence of globalization and capitalism. Travel to a foreign land, exploit the locals, and return home. Westerners are just now realizing that they're on the receiving end of it now.
Don't know if you've been paying attention, but that's the intention. Many in the U.S are willing to sacrifice the country's GPD to inflict cruelty upon others and preserve "heritage Americans".
Yeah, I would rather just abolish the H1-B visa altogether. If someone can, legitimately or otherwise, put together a clean social media presence to get legal residency in country, this still doesn't guarantee that their natural born citizen children won't try to work against the interests of heritage Americans using whatever tools are available a generation from now.
When my dad remarried, my stepmother was a citizen of a different country, does that retroactively make me no longer a "heritage American"? If they had had kids, would my hypothetical half-sibling be a "heritage American"? If the answer is "no", would it change anything if I told you they would have been (like me) descended from a long line of US citizens going back to the 1790s?
Or actually now that I think about it, my mom, who as a child knew her great-grandma, a Norwegian immigrant, wouldn't count as a "heritage American".
> When my dad remarried, my stepmother was a citizen of a different country, does that retroactively make me no longer a "heritage American"? If they had had kids, would my hypothetical half-sibling be a "heritage American"?
No, because of the ties to a foreign country through your stepmother.
> Or actually now that I think about it, my mom, who as a child knew her great-grandma, a Norwegian immigrant, wouldn't count as a "heritage American".
No, although if it's only one great-grandmother among 8 I'm not super worried about your mom being more loyal to Norway than the US. Also realistically Norway today has many of the same issues with culturally-foreign immigrants that the US does, so maybe that wouldn't amount to all that much in the unlikely case that your mom did strongly identify with Norwegian cultural norms.
It's not cruel to want to keep your country from changing irreversibly. Foreigners don't have a right to immigrate. Americans are allowed to decide who they want to let in.
This type of testing is incredibly expensive and you'll have a startup run circles around you, assuming a startup could even exist when the YC investment needs to stretch 4x as far for the same product.
The real solution is to have individual software developers be licensed and personally liable for the damage their work does. Write horrible bugs? A licencing board will review your work. Make a calculated risk that damages someone? Company sued by the user, developer sued by the company. This correctly balances incentives between software quality and productivity, and has the added benefit of culling low quality workers.
The kind of relates to proper Engineering titles, unfortunely many countries don't have a legal system in place for those that decide to call themselves engineers without going through the exam, and related Order of the Engineer.
I don't think titles are for anything besides establishing blame. If a company hires someone in a local where the engineer can't be held responsible, the executives and major investors should be held liable. That way things will naturally sort themselves out. Need something unimportant done? Offshore. Have some critical system? Hire someone that can take responsibility.
You don't need formal licensing for this to work, passthrough liability would do plenty. The real sign of success is whether an insurance industry sprouts up to protect software engineers, just like doctors.
Wow. Yielding to a benevolent dictator requires a lot of trust, and it seems Eric is doing his best to exhaust any he might have had. Want to hear more from those involved, but seriously considering cancelling my order.
Personally, I don't mind burning some time to interview for free. But I expect the company to also burn the time of their own engineers as well. It displays a degree of commitment and seriousness from them about this meeting. I'm never going to let them yank my chain and dance for them when all they've done is send an email. But I'm also not desperate for work, so it's a good filter for me to know what kinda dogshit work culture you've got.
When my manager pings me about it I'll just show him your ai slop and tell him we'll be liable for all the bugs and production issues related to this, in addition to maintaining it. Then let him make the choice. Escalate if needed.
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