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Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
381–390 of 392 posts
Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would have to occur, hypothetically, for you to conclude that the US is on the road to fascism?
Dictatorship. Control over media. No regard for human life.
"No regard for human life."
How can you watch ICE shoot and kill these two people and then leadership calls them both terrorists and the shooting justified and then suppress and block any investigtation and prosecution of the offenders and think they have ANY regard for human life?!
Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, in this instance, it does seem that Anthropic is walking away from money. The supply chain risk designation will be overturned in court, and the financial fallout from losing the government contracts will pale in comparison to the goodwill from consumers. Not to mention that giving in would mean they lose lots of their employees who would refuse to work under those terms. In this case, the principles are l…
> ...the financial fallout from losing the government contracts will pale in comparison to the goodwill from consumers. In fact, a friend heard about this and immediately signed up for a $200/year Claude Pro plan. This is someone who has been only a very occasional user of ChatGPT and never used Claude before. I told my friend "You could just sign up for the free plan and upgrade after you try it out." "No, I want to…
I'm seeing a lot of "QuitGPT" posts. It seems your friend has friends.
Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm out of the loop, but the last local tech job I had was with instant domains inc. That was great. These days I'm doing marine/geo science work with an NGO and I don't hear much about the local scene. A lot of the old players are still around, but there must be something new and interesting happening. A coworker mentioned there's an autonomous marine sensing startup right in the downtown area. I want to look into t…
oh, i think a friend might work there if theyre partnering with uvic at all. generally okalands/fernwood, though ive been eyeing some spots on the gorge
Nice, I was living in Fernwood and bought in Gorge. I love both. I miss some things about Fernwood, but overall I think I prefer Gorge. Being right by the waterway and having nicer places to walk, easy access to the galloping goose, and more of an up-and-coming vibe is nice. Fernwood feels a bit like it'll be residential forever, then Burnside and Gorge have wayyy more work to do, but more potential too in my opinion. Plus Gorge already has some beautiful spots as it is.
Oaklands is awesome. I haven't lived there but I love it. We've got a lot of friends out there.
Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I had to guess as a lifelong California resident, I'd say the salary discrepancy is probably the biggest factor. I'd also guess the weather and lack of available jobs would be the next biggest factors, not necessarily in that order.
No, imagine the salary potential, not the discrepancy. Ape stronger together. We'd be a new world super power
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Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN is pretty polarised about this - they are either “the good guys” or “doing it for positive marketing”. I’m on the camp “the world is so fucked up, take the good when you can find it”. Beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to taking a stand against dictatorships.
Yeah, the alternative is be OK with their product being used for surveillance. Not sure why it's controversial that they said no, regardless of the reasoning. Yeah there's a lot of marketing speak and things to cover their asses. Let's call them out on that later. Right now let's applaud them for doing the right thing. FWIW I do not think they are the "good guys" (if I had a dollar for every company that had a policy…
> the alternative is be OK with their product being used for surveillance.
Their statement didn't indicate they object to their product being used for surveillance, just for domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens
Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...the financial fallout from losing the government contracts will pale in comparison to the goodwill from consumers. In fact, a friend heard about this and immediately signed up for a $200/year Claude Pro plan. This is someone who has been only a very occasional user of ChatGPT and never used Claude before. I told my friend "You could just sign up for the free plan and upgrade after you try it out." "No, I want to…
Still, you’d need a million people to do that to compensate the $200M military contract.
I don't think it's easy to compare how this might affect their bottom line.
Anthropic may gain customers, but OpenAI may lose customers also (or they may even gain customers).
Maybe OpenAI also has to pay their employees more now for "moral flexibility". Or maybe right-wing devs are more inclined to work there, I don't know.
Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
#388I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about Anthropic's first response and the RSP update [1][2]. I think many people on HN have a cynical reaction to Anthropic's actions due to of their own lived experiences with tech companies. Sometimes, that holds: my part of the company looked like Meta or Stripe, and it's hard not to regress to the mean as you scale. But not every patt…
Anthropics principles are extraordinarily weak from an absolute point of view. Don't surviel the US populace? Don't automate killing, make sure a human is in the loop? No, sorry, don't automate killing yet . Yeah dude, I'm sure just about any burglar I pull out of prison will agree. Listen yes, it's good compared to like 99% of US companies. But that really speaks more to the absolute moral bankruptcy of most compani…
> Because yes this is rare and yes this is a step in the right direction
ehh.. I'd say it's a smaller step in the wrong direction than it could be.
Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
#389Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have an unrealistic picture of what fascism looks like. Most people got to pick strawberries throughout the Spanish, Italian, and even German fascist periods. The problem isn't that fascism will kill all of us, but that you will not get to choose . If the regime decides that your city, your company, or your friends are an enemy, they will destroy you, and if your fellow strawberry-pickers bother to read about it…
When has this "regime" destroyed any company, city, or any of our friends? I feel this whole conversation is emotionally charged and its clouding reality. People are protesting. Media is not controlled by the government. Our courts are strong. There is no dictator.
Some of my friends lost their research funding when Trump unlawfully cancelled a bunch of grants, and one still hasn't found new employment.
The government is working hard to control the media. Regime allies have conducted ideological purges at the Washington Post and CBS News so far, and another has promised Trump to conduct one at CNN if he's allowed to buy their parent company Warner Brothers (https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/10/media/trump-cnn-sold-paramoun...).
Our courts are strong in some ways and weak in other ways. There's a number of cases where ICE unlawfully kidnapped someone before eventually being ordered to let them go and eventually complying, after days or weeks of holding them in overcrowded facilities with absolutely no basis.
Is Trump Hitler? Probably not. It's true that people are protesting, it's true that public dissent is alive, and it's unlikely IMO that he will be able to engage in mass detention of citizens. But he's extremely open about the fact that he thinks it should be illegal to dislike him, or to try and stop him from doing what he wants to do.