This would arguably be much more severe -- and quite likely already happening -- than the whole "congress trading stocks" thing because most of those (besides the sports ones) tie very directly to government actions in a way that the economy or a large company in generally doesn't as predictably.
Maybe this is fine until it incentivizes easily-achieved but adverse actions that would greatly harm the public.
For a silly example, I would imagine the streaker from this year’s Super Bowl is either (a) a complete idiot, or (b) put a significant amount of money on a “prediction market” of there being a streaker at the Super Bowl - more than enough to cover his ticket, legal, and medical costs.
A cartel using a SAM against a US civilian aircraft would massively solidify public opinion against them just like 9/11 or the Iran hostage crisis. The US has been trying to extent the "foreign terrorist" label and casus belli to drug activities forever to justify military operations (ex. the "arrest" of Maduro was for drugs, not oil/Cuba/political stuff). That would be a massive self-own on the cartels part. (And if it did happen, just like 9/11, it would be used as justification for anything even remotely immigration or drug related at every level.)
My understanding over the US/MX cartel relations is performing an invasion and “act of war” would solidify asylum status claims by Mexican residents and throw a wrench into the whole immigration scheme every administration plays.
But then again this time seems different, laws aren’t followed or upheld. Human rights are a fleeting staple.
Its mincing words a bit, but an attack targeting drug cartel assets wouldn't necessarily be viewed as a war with Mexico. It could lead to that for sure, and the Mexican government could declare it an act of war, but we did just see the US literally invade a foreign country and arrest their sitting leader without war being declared on either side.
We declared war on drugs and on terror, maybe AIDs and Covid as well? Though you're right, we haven't declared war on another state since WWII despite being in multiple wars over that time.
I assumed when you wrote "war being declared" you meant in Constitutional sense which reserves to Congress the power to declare war.
Not in the metaphorical "war on poverty" sort of way.
FWIW, examples in addition to Maduro are Aguinaldo (Philippines), Noriega (Panama), Hussein (Iraq), and Aristide (Haiti).
(Technically speaking, the US didn't recognize Philippine independence so didn't consider Aguinaldo to be its president, but instead a rightful cession from the Kingdom of Spain due to the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish–American War, where the US had made a formal declaration of war.)
(Also, the US says Aristide's departure was voluntary.)
From what I've seen in the news, and also in history books, and also from anecdotes from the family of a previous (American dual national) partner, I don't agree that Americans as a whole see the international border as "a bright line" nor "a defining point of jurisdictional change".
Some Americans may, I don't know how many, but definitely not Americans as a collective.
I tried writing a comment to explain the Chicano perspective, but since I am a non-Chicano American, I was just making things up.
Suffice it to say that the Chicano experience and perspectives on nationalism are different than that of typical Americans. And that Americans cannot understand the political relationships or the border states or the Chicano enclaves without accepting that our perspective is not shared by them, and their worldviews on race, ethnicity, culture, territory, nationalism and legal status has led us to this point in 2026.
Our national motto is "E PLURIBUS UNUM" and our structure is a republic with 50 states. But like the Internet is a network of networks, the United States is a nation of immigrants, where not everyone is playing by the same rules.
> In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.
They definitely care about not ratting the cage with the US - they don't harm US federal agents, or take US hostages, and the last incident of Americans being killed in Mexico by cartel-affiliated gunmen in a case of mistaken identity - it was the cartel who handed the perps over and apologised[0]
It is, of course. What they mean, I assume, is that it would reach a tipping point where intervention would be more broadly supported. Virtually everyone is willing to say "that's bad" with regards to something happening somewhere, it is far less agreed upon that the US should intervene in that bad thing. An effective tipping point is probably something on the order of "we feel attacked".
Much of the world was against Saddam Hussein, but it took the wholesale invention of an Iraqi nuclear program to justify and get authorization for deposing him through international military action. Iraq didn't attack us, though in attacking an oil partner they might as well have, but the public certainly didn't feel attacked until someone dreamed up the prospect of Iraq nuking Israel, Europe, and/or us.
In that case, the justification was a prerequisite to Congress authorizing a war without losing elections, and then selling it to the US's allies so we wouldn't have to send quite as many troops and thus lose elections. This administration demonstrably doesn't care about justification, authorization, alliances, or elections. So why bother? If they're going to stage an arbitrary Venezuela-like military operation in Mexico because of "cartels", they wouldn't wait for a civilian mass-death event, or for Congress, or regional allies, or public opinion. They didn't wait for any of that in Venezuela.
TBQH this just felt like a cheap and easy way for them to perpetuate the idea that we're always at war with terrorists. Now they're "narcoterrorists", but they're still "terrorists". And this administration might not like obstacles like authorization and due process, but it loves cheap, easy terrorists.
Regarding the justification given to the US, it was not just WMDs, from the US public's perspective. Large portions of the US population believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 9/11 and the US repeatedly framed things that way.
There were plenty of people that were not against Pablo Escobar as he spent a lot of money back in his home town. Once the violence escalated, like when they took down a civilian flight, even that support waned. So I can see where GP is saying similar that by the time cartels get to the point of shooting down civilian aircraft even those that did support them would consider that the final straw.
I don't mean that many people actively support them (in the US, my understand is in some areas they do have local support in Mexico, but anyway), but rather that this is not the forefront of most peoples minds, nor would people necessarily support any conceivable action against them. Moreover, many would criticize efforts against them as "failed war on drugs" and see it primarily in that lens absent any clear attack on US civilians not involved in the trade.
There's still a difference between the opinions on cartels and the opinion on an invasion and bombing of groups hopefully-related-to-cartels during another years long not-war.
> In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.
I think you’re getting tripped up by some specific wording and managing to miss the point the poster was making. The point should be taken seriously even if imprecisely articulated. While most folks are against the cartels, there’s a much wider range of belief on how much they warrant government or military intervention and to what degree we should be spending various resources on them. The historical state of play was(is?) that cartels are criminal organizations which are generally a policing matter that has escalated to specialized policing agencies and multinational networks of policing agencies. The marked escalation of the military into this is a more recent piece that is somewhat more controversial. One doesn’t have to be “in favor of the cartel” to ask questions about whether our military should be bombing boats or invading countries to ostensibly neutralize organizations that historically have been subject to policing operations.
To go back to the parallel… the public wasn’t in favor of Al Qaeda before 9/11 either, but there was a huge difference in the level of response the public was in favor of after. It turned from an intelligence monitoring level of response into an active military invasion of multiple countries.
The best part about bombing the boats is that the second strikes on them were war crimes, while the few survivors that were picked up... All ended up repatriated.
If they were all drug runners, why weren't they put on trial? Why was so much effort made to sink all the evidence? Why did an admiral resign, when told to do this?
Everybody involved, starting from the people pulling the trigger, to the people giving the orders should be getting a fair trial and a swift punishment for that little stint of piracy and murder.
But these people all act like there is no such thing as consequences.
Huh? Google does not even make a web server, or any kind of major servers, unless you count GCP load balancers or whatever. You are confusing their control of the client (which is still significantly shared with Apple and Microsoft since they control OS-level certificate trusts) with the server side, who are the "customers" of the CA. Google has almost no involvement in that and couldn't care less what kind of code is requesting and using certificates.
Huh bis? Aren't people using Google browser mostly to use Google services hosted on Google servers? Haven't you heard of Google the search engine, Google maps, YouTube, Gmail, Google docs, etc?
But this is about SSL certificates. Google may account for say half of web traffic, but there are billions of other servers that account for the other half, and it has absolutely no care what web server or ACME client they are running or much else. It is concerned about the client experience and how it trusts certificates.
Google already has its own CA that is used for its own systems as well as to issue certificates for GCP customers. They don't interact with Lets Encrypt or any other external CA as far as I know for their own services.
But didn't it technically not even apply at the end of the day for SVB? They sold the bank to another bank, which is what usually happens, and that other bank assumed all its deposits and liabilities. The FDIC didn't have to pay out any deposits and thus the limit didn't come into play.
Right, it would make a lot of sense for international founders, except that YC already requires them to have a company in one of a few countries (US, Canada, Seychelles, maybe a couple more?) and thus would otherwise be receiving it in USD or possibly another stable currency and storing it in a bank account there.
I agree, if you just want to not "waste" the cash while it's sitting, keep it very simple with something like T bills or, if you don't need it immediately, maybe a total market fund.
This also makes sense from the investors point of view, they invested in your company to receive growth from your product/business, not from random stocks you bought with it.
That said, I think there is a distinction between trying to be innovative across the company (ex. Gitlab's open employee handbook, CEO shadows, etc.) which is arguably not a bad thing at all, and this specific case of trying to actively invest company funds. In some cases, a more innovative way of doing things may actually be simpler and less complex than the default way for bigger companies, it just depends on the exact scenario.
> if you don't need it immediately, maybe a total market fund
That strikes me as unwise. If there’s a sharp downturn in the total market, that’s precisely when you might need to call upon otherwise unneeded cash reserves.
And is Vance or Trump watching Flightradar24 in their free time? And if they did, would they even get mad at this and not find it funny? And if they did get mad at it, would they do anything at all? If they did something, would it be anything desirable or just trying to retaliate at whoever drew this?
Speaking of Zoom and encryption, its crazy that they bought Keybase (I think they basically said it was largely an acquihire) years ago, and have neither shut it down as everyone thought, nor materially changed it in any way. Unless they changed something it even gives 200GB cloud storage (KBFS) iirc.
Yeah, which is ironic given that it is not E2EE (unless specifically opted in for a private chat, and even then some would argue the MTProto crypto isn't good enough, although those people wouldn't trust WhatsApp ether). WhatsApp is overwhelming associated with legitimate (though in many countries, primarily overseas) users, and Telegram is somewhat associated with shady activities.
That said, Telegram is likely a lot more open for a business type that is legal but still regulated or illegal in some countries (legalized/unregulated substances, tobacco/e-cigarettes, adult content, etc.), probably less worried of random bans/demonetization.
Despite not being E2EE, Telegram also seems to have higher usage in censored countries (Russia and Iran etc). Once a Russian guy in Korea randomly asked if I had Telegram wanting me to take a picture for him since his phone was dead -- obviously had no idea that sounded like a massive scam flag to most Western users.
The number is only checked at login, and after that you can now create a WebAuthn passkey (iCloud Keychain/Google Passwords synced to your next phone) for future sign-ins so it's actually only needed for first sign up. So just get a prepaid SIM or eSIM and make another account unless your business is so large that tons of people know your number.
Sorry I am confused. I have a "WhatsApp Business Account", tied to an "Business" (verifications all done). What I am talking about is registering a phone number that acts as the "Sender/Responder" of the messages from my customers. I am not trying to use WhatsApp from my phone manually, but have my app communicate with my customers programatically. Hope this is clear.
I can't do any of the above,
1. Requesting a new test number. Test numbers are placeholder 555 number that works only within WhatsApp test network. Can't get one.
2. Registering a new, real phone number (SIM obtained from a regular tele provider)
3. Disconnecting the WhatsApp product from the Facebook App to reset the integration.
Although the FB app is being used, I don't have any WhatsAppp users (because I have not even made the product), so wiping out any WBA accounts and starting fresh is also okay, if someone can do this.
This would arguably be much more severe -- and quite likely already happening -- than the whole "congress trading stocks" thing because most of those (besides the sports ones) tie very directly to government actions in a way that the economy or a large company in generally doesn't as predictably.
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