Yes, it’s extremely complicated. I gave up on fire base for one project because I could not figure out how to get the right permissions set up and my support request resulted in someone copying and pasting a snippet from the instructions that I obviously had not understood in the first place.
It’s also extremely cumbersome to sign up for Google AI. The other day I tried to get deep seek working via Google’s hosted offering and gave up after about an hour. The form just would not complete without error and there was not a useful message to work with.
It would seem that in today’s modern world of AI assistance, Google could set up one that would help users do the simplest things. Why not just let the agent direct the user to the correct forms and let the user press submit?
Yep. The most popular sim well integrated with ROS is Gazebo, a full 3D sim. Very powerful. There’s also the much simpler Stage, limited to 2.5D mobile robots.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil... shows me that, while a lot of people strongly disapprove of Trump, he retains a very strong base of over 40% of likely voters. And his overall approval rating is pretty typical for a US President at this point in their term.
He won last election on a fragile coalition which doesn’t exist anymore today. So, if elections are held today, he’d not only lose but will also get buried deep down.
From that article, I can tell that there are farmers, and farmer groups, who are pissed off for good reason. But Trump carried rural counties by 93%. Given how well his general polls have held up, I am highly dubious that most farmers in most rural counties have turned against him.
Given the way that all media (across the spectrum) have been slipping, I will not take any story based on anecdote as indicative of anything other than the biases of the one selecting the anecdotes. Give me a poll. And the polling shows that his base is strong.
Note for the future. We reveal our own biases when we reject what is said by those who do not share them.
For the record, here are my biases. I hate Trump. I think that he's a threat to democracy, and I wish that red America would wake up and reject him. But I'm painfully aware that the world doesn't work like I would wish. And so I'll look for what I judge to be most accurate. And not for what I want.
You claim that the actual number of rural counties carried by Trump is much lower than the 93% that I said. But my 93% comes from your article. Do you have a reference that disagrees with your own article? If not, then you are insisting on facts that are not in evidence.
You also reject my bringing up that figure as being stuck in the past. But I didn't just stick in the past. I brought in current polls. Polls of his base, which truly do dominate rural counties, show that his support is holding strong. Certainly his support is holding strong among the rural people that I know through my family.
But let's be more specific. According to https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-rural-... last month, Trump's rating has slumped in rural counties from an overall approval of +22% down to +14%. Which means that some minds changed, but a random person from a rural county has probably not turned on Trump. Which is the opposite of your original claim.
Next up, the article brings up various groups that dislike this decision or that which Trump has made. But it is extremely common for us to dislike some decision that a political leader makes while continuing to support them overall. Registering specific unhappiness does *NOT* mean a change in popular support. It just means that there is specific unhappiness.
In fact the single decision that Trump made which caused the most specific unhappiness in his base is the choice to not release the Jeffry Epstein files. From https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/most-americans-want-th..., about 2/3 of Republicans want them released. But despite most of Trump's base disliking that decision, polling says that they are part of his base.
And no, I'm not looking for selective validation. I'm simply reading the news in a critical fashion. Per https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/cnn-bias/, CNN has a left-wing bias, and is only "mostly factual". What that means in practice is that they put a spin on stories that will appeal to left-wing audiences. Left-wing audiences want to believe that Trump's base is turning against him. That's the spin in the article.
But the article offered no fact which would lead me to believe that. And if you want to find out whether people have turned against Trump, the most reliable way to do so is to ask them. "Did you vote for Trump? Would you support Trump now?" Which is *EXACTLY* what a poll does.
My preference for polls is not a preference for the version I want to hear. It is a preference for the best kind of data asking the question that I want answered.
He has the lowest first 100 days polls amongst presidents, beaten only by himself on his first term. On his current & second term, he is losing on what should should be strong issues historically for the gop such as the economy and immigration. His core base is indeed difficult to move but independents are not.
Now that was 100 days, but we are 278 days into his second term now. The polls went down further and polls on issues he should have addressed are not going up.
For a better view of what's normal and compared with presidency of the past:
The first 6 months are usually a honey moon period. The full effect of Trump's policies are still to be felt, and with the current political / economic / legal / etc.. context, the approval ratings won't go up.
But indeed, his core is difficult to move. My opinion on what follows, but I think they attached too much of their identity to the guy and their coping mechanism will be studied for decades to come in political, psychology and history classes.
You shouldn't be citing articles about the first 100 days, when you're given a reference with much more current results.
There are many different pollsters, each of which has slightly different numbers. Here are Nate Silver's average of the polls giving approval for historical presidents at this point in their office who were then polling below 50%. (Obama, at 51.8% just missed the cutoff.)
45.8% Bill Clinton
43.7% Trump (current term)
43.6% Joe Biden
39.1% Gerald Ford
38.0% Trump (first term)
So really, despite how mad so many people are, his popularity is not that low by historical standards.
> You shouldn't be citing articles about the first 100 days
I think we can. This tells his popularity is not as strong as what the claim is. We are in a presence of a significant vocal minority. I will grant that his core base is hard to move, including the farmers who are going bankrupt and harmed by his own policies, and many will rationalize it. As Twain's quote go: "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled". Especially when voters are voting based on identity.
Equally, he could do a lot worse than his current numbers and they are not that catastrophic, granted. Comparing to Clinton who did bad in his early 1st term isn't great (for a myriad of scandals that are quite pale compared to recent times), or Biden inheriting a bad economy with a pandemic, while Trump inherited a boosting economy in his first term, and a recovering one for his second. Hence his numbers should be so much better.
Some key metrics to focus is the independants support/approval that he lost in majority, and certain pro maga communities such as the latinos who's families are directly affected. Farmers, who knows how much will swing and wake up after losing it all, but some did already. A trend might start with the economic dominoes slowly dropping.
Overall, I don't think he has normal polling numbers given the context. But we are not in normal times.
He probably feels powerful harming businesses (in the US and elsewhere) with his tariffs.
His inheritance performed worse than the s&p by a large margin under his stewardship.
He’s not a business man, he’s someone who inherited $450M in today’s dollars and wears a business suit as a costume, and incidentally more makeup than most drag queens.
He’s disgracing everything he touches and the Trump name will be hated and associated with stupidity and bigotry for a long time.
My reason why i consider canceling is that Spotify decided that it also wants to be a video platform. And now i have to enable screen time on Spotify so that my kids wont spend whole time "listening to music" but actually watching brainrot. Before there was no need for screen time limits on spotify.
They have in the app store, so yes. And yet, I can't boycott everything at once. Facebook and Spotify are a good place to start, there are plenty of alternatives and plenty of alternative reasons to cancel your subscription.
Yeah, as I said, I prefer my fans get my music from IPFS or Bit Torrent or some other decentralized place. I have the same objections to Apple Music that I have to Spotify and all the rest of the DRM crooks.
While it's impossible to completely avoid beliefs that are effectively from authority, we do have systems such as science (scientific peer review), capitalism (economic freedom) that give credibility to certain ideas or patterns. Not moral credibility, but effective consensus that is relatively stable. Sure there are disruptions -- scientific revolutions, economic creative destruction -- but those are typically viewed as having been good things after the fact.
Moral authority (elders, traditions, cultural norms) can be helpful in some ways, but they are much more crude and error prone. Respected elders can prey on children, long-held traditions can be oppressive and even harmful (genital mutilation, circumcision). Cultural norms can create significant social costs (women keeping house rather than starting companies or curing diseases, men spending weekends bored out of the social pressure to pretend to like various sports, ec.)
When the average person flips on a light switch they believe they know why the light turned on -- electricity! wire! -- but few could explain it much more specifically than that and could not ELI5 it. So in a sense they are expressing a faith-based belief. But most people can tell you who does understand it and know how to find more detailed explanations if they care to learn. This is quite unlike religious faith/tradition which demands that people profess beliefs that are impossible. When you think about it, the word faith means nearly the same thing as the word doubt only with a different connotation.
I am trying to understand your comment in context with the thread. Are you saying that if people continue to hold cultural or religious beliefs via faith in this day and age that they are mentally ill? You don’t outright say this, but in context that’s the message I took from it.
Perhaps you just used it as a springboard to point out contradiction of certain beliefs with modern knowledge or perhaps it’s a bias against religion that you hold. If so, noted.
Not at all. I respect that people accept religious authority, the authority of trusted elders., etc., as part of their decision making function. But in my view it should be considered largely an aesthetic preference, much like a favorite color or favorite rock and roll band or preferred pizza toppings.
Such authority has an important societal role, and traditions are important for a lot of people.
> Sadly, the whole culture around SV is based on libertarianism, so regulation isn't even considered.
Thiel actively supported one of the least libertarian candidates in US history. Whatever reputation he has for having libertarian views is nonsense.
No libertarian would try to control others based on his/her religious beliefs, and no libertarian would be remotely comfortable with any of the heavy handed stuff in Trump's platform.
In my view, what happened to Thiel and Musk is that they succeed in business and everyone starts respecting them and treating them like deities. They want to believe it is justified rather than simply people trying to manipulate them, which leads to a reinvention of self where they perceive themself to be a bit superhuman or important to the world. They act, they explore new areas, they act more. They usually do not experience as much reward from additional success in business, they are typically poorly socialized and fail to create a solid support network of people who know them and care about them. They realize money doesn't really help, fine food doesn't help, expensive possessions doesn't help. Even positions where they occupy a top hierarchical role end up feeling lacking.
What's left is the allure of tradition, religion, blood, war, progeny, and the trajectory of civilizations. They admire the brutality and decisiveness of medieval kings and the idea of theirs being destiny rather than luck. They then try to figure out how to believe they are deserving and suitable for the unique kind of destiny they realize can be theirs.
Most of us do not have to worry about hearing the voices they hear calling them to this destiny. One can see it on Elon's face. He's quick to sweat, quick to contemplate how his every decision will be more significant to the world than the entire lives of thousands.
Day after day of waiters, concierges, personal assistants, aides, advisors, trainers, masseuses, chefs, SVPs, etc. all at their absolute service. They must ask themselves again and again endlessly "what do I want? What do I really want?" Ultimately they realize that all they really want is to shape the world like so many kings or prime ministers or philosophers have. But theirs is a different skill-set. In spite of their desire they are not philosophers, not kings, not literati, not demagogues.
So they struggle to become that which they are not so they can do more than order a delicious lunch and pay for everyone else's and listen to everyone's flattery.
They want to shape the world with who they are, but part of them realizes it was luck and the are not as unique as they hoped. So they find ways to feel special like cultural supremacy, authoritarianism, buying favor with politicians or religious leaders, etc.
Reading your comment made me think of the Roman generals returning to a triumph and someone constantly following them saying "memento mori", reminding them they are not a god. Now, instead of humility it would just be seen as a challenge.
> No libertarian would try to control others based on his/her religious beliefs, and no libertarian would be remotely comfortable with any of the heavy handed stuff in Trump's platform.
Have you been on libertarian Internet recently? I don't see a lot of hand-wringing about people's civil liberties being under attack.
in my experience only the comments section which is full of the same whackos as it has been for the past decade. I'm a regular reader at reason, lots of the articles are good and present traditional libertarian points of view.
Those guys are just embarrassed republicans trying to pass themselves off as more intellectual, when they're just as close minded as ever and want to end civil rights and political speech. I've watched the Mises branches and they are not traditional libertarians at all. they welcome in the bigots and other white supremacists for the numbers it adds to their roll calls.
The administration's theft of TikTok is absolutely unacceptable and we should all be horrified. Entrepreneurs built a great business with an algorithm that is still -- years after it launched -- head and shoulders more entertaining and engagement-generating than anything domestic firms could come up with, even with years to figure it out.
TikTok is also significantly better for content creators and has more useful tooling. TikTok lets videos be downloaded by default which is why most Instagram Reels (tm) and YouTube Shorts (tm) are actually TikToks someone uploaded.
TikTok was a problem for the US Government both because it outshone US firms -- ironically by making the algorithm show more interesting and appealing content to users, rather than the "viral" rubbish that overtakes the incumbents feeds... and also because it started becoming a source of highly informative citizen journalism, spreading awareness about many social issues, from police brutality to the treatment of the people of Gaza by Israel and the US.
It's the politically sensitive citizen journalism that Bebe considers a "weapon" that needed to be stolen from its creators.
Now, per Larry Ellison's recent comments, everyone's TikTok history is being mined by Oracle to help suppress dissent against Trump's policies and keep people in line.
I've already started noticing a few obviously fake disinformation campaigns that support pro-Trump goals starting to gain ground on TikTok and other social media in the past week or so.
There is absolutely no reason that any country that values freedom of speech and press freedom should confiscate someone else's company to weaponize it against the American people. This is an utterly shameful episode motivated by the worst and darkest human motivations -- controlling others and suppressing the speech of the downtrodden.
Or people are just trying to not be reminded every second of their living lives that there's one conflict or another going on. TikTok is made in China and used worldwide. Not many things are relatable and relevant to a world wide audience.
Have you ever used TikTok? It responds rapidly to your engagement (likes, skips, etc.) and very quickly starts showing you mostly the kind of content you enjoy.
Not sure what you mean about it not being relatable to a worldwide audience. I see mostly US content in English and a bit in Spanish, but the algorithm will quickly adapt to show the user content from whatever regions they are interested in.
No, seems he hasn't even used the app before. He is just spamming this thread with thinly veiled pro-censorship advocacy. Seems to be a trend on this site as long as the content being censored is negative about trump.
Yeah it's pretty amazing. Not sure if a lot of HN readers are MAGA or if someone wrote a bot of some kind, or if dang and the crew are suppressing it to avoid retribution of some kind from Trump toward YC.
> Now, per Larry Ellison's recent comments, everyone's TikTok history is being mined by Oracle to help suppress dissent against Trump's policies and keep people in line.
Almost as if everyone using the same few centralized platforms that they ultimately have no control over is a situation ripe for abuse.
Probably fear of retribution or Garry being politically conservative himself. Garry has repeatedly called for more authoritarian policing in the SF area.
It’s also extremely cumbersome to sign up for Google AI. The other day I tried to get deep seek working via Google’s hosted offering and gave up after about an hour. The form just would not complete without error and there was not a useful message to work with.
It would seem that in today’s modern world of AI assistance, Google could set up one that would help users do the simplest things. Why not just let the agent direct the user to the correct forms and let the user press submit?
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