Trump is 100% American.

I wish people who said things like this, or who believed that Trump is/was a Russian agent could see how silly and racist they look. America's problems are not caused by foreigners. They're caused by Americans.

The xenophobia exhibited by sentiments such as this simply demonstrate hatred and ignorance of the world outside of the USA, and demonstrate an incapacity to critically evaluate American culture and history.

I am not Xenophobic of Russia. I speak and read Russian and my partner is Russian. I also don’t hate the world outside of the USA. In have lived in that world for more than ten years. I simply think that trump is a patsy. Whether he knows he is or not doesn’t matter. Putin plays him like a fiddle.

That being said, I absolutely completely agree with you that American problems are caused by Americans.

That aside, US electorates has decided to award another term for Trump. FYI at that point Trump is not an unknown dark horse candidate anymore and he even won the popular vote. Last time a GOP president won popular vote was 20 years ago.

So it's very fair to attribute the so called erraticness to what American want in general instead of attributing it to Putin or other non American.

Or that foreign influence campaigns on social media are having a good return on their investment cost.

Completely consistent with what Russia is? Sure. With who Trump is? I'm not sure that I see it. Trump does not strike me as the kind of guy who would willingly be someone else's puppet.

Unwillingly? Sure. Being played? Sure. Knowingly being a puppet? No.

He acts like Putins puppet. I can see it both willingly and unwillingly. Trump admires powerful dictators and wants their validation. Putin is one. Also, I would not be surprised at all if there was unwilling component too.

What better lesson could there be? Learn to hate corporate America early so you're not disabused later in life.

As a Dutch citizen Chat Control is the first time I genuinely wish the Netherlands was not part of the EU.

That seems naive — this was pushed by several Dutch ministers over the past decades. It would have been made law here in any case.

Law and order, tuff-on-crime political parties (PVV, VVD, CDA¹) just love the idea of control over citizen's chat messages.

This is not 'because of the EU'. We are part of the EU and influence its policies.

1: https://chatcontrole.nl/stemwijzer2023/

The answer to this is a physical switch on the machine that enables/disables hackability.

I still do banking through a random reader at ABN AMRO. I really hope they never get rid of it because I trust that little dumb plastic device 1000% more than my phone.

Even better, the system that Rabobank has.

They make you use this separate device to scan a color qr code generated by the app. The details of the transaction you're authorizing are then displayed on this completely decoupled device, no internet, nothing. After keying in your pin you're given an OTP to put back into the app to authorize.

And I haven't checked, but I'm sure the 'payload' the qr code conveys is signed.

What is a "random reader at ABN AMRO"?

Physical OTP generator. Stick your bank pass in the plastic decice and type your pin in the calculator like front and it will give you an OTP for online use.

Russia weaken NATO? Wut?

Denmark is in NATO. What does NATO even mean if the leader of NATO (USA) is attempting to take territory from another NATO country?

The point of NATO is to keep Europe tied to and subservient to the USA (ie. Atlanticism). Or at least that used to be the point of NATO. I have no idea what the point of it is now.

There is no going back to "normal". The American Empire is failing, the imperial boomerang is in full effect, and it will continue to destroy American democracy from within.

Revolution is required.

Who is going to fight the revolution?

PG has become a parody of himself.

He was some 20..10 years ago a proponent of succint code and even authored the Arc language which is used to run HN.

Is HN any more sophisticated than a PHPbb forum? The value is in the community and moderation, not the back end.

Given that is has soldiered on almost two decades as a single-server system, I'd give a bit more credit to the back end.

Maybe it's an inside baseball joke taken out of context that I don't understand.

They're usually better for the deficit (yes, really, if you just looked at the data and not rhetoric Republicans are who you'd vote for if you wanted to make the deficit worse) and sometimes do stuff like effective consumer protection enforcement, do a lot less of things like trying to sell off public land to extractive industries, haven't tried to use the civil service as a captured partisan tool & loyalist-reward program since like the 19th century, and occasionally get us at least baby-steps in the right direction like this now-removed direct filing program and the ACA (god knows what they might accomplish if those baby steps didn't keep getting completely wiped out every few years, perhaps they'd move beyond that! But I guess we'll never know because we keep electing Republicans)

Except when we DID elect Democrats we got the free Direct File tax service. so no, it's not "just as crappy"

>> You could elect Democrats and it would be just as crappy.

Crappy for different reasons though. This tax filing thing was implemented on their watch, so they would not be the ones to dismantle it. Somehow we seem to get the worst ideas from both parties rather than the best.

No one wanted to dismantle it; it was a very positive change in terms of government and citizen efficiency.

If no one wanted to dismantle it, why is it being dismantled?

Because Intuit wants to dismantle it.

Well, clearly someone did, but not anyone who used it.

.. so still better