rsuri
@rsuri@lemmy.world
- Comment on Elon's Death Machine (aka Tesla) Mows Down Deer at Full Speed , Keeps Going on "Autopilot" 5 months ago:
True but if Tesla keeps acting like they’re on the verge of an unsupervised, steering wheel-free system…this is more evidence that they’re not. I doubt we’ll see a cybercab with no controls for the next 10 years if the current tech is still ignoring large, highly predictable objects in the road.
- Comment on No excuse 5 months ago:
Probably just someone traumatized by a sidewall puncture.
- Comment on Server dealer keeps hitting at Elon Musk for $61 million bill — Wiwynn sues X for unpaid IT infrastructure products 5 months ago:
X/Twitter has its own data centers, this is for physical equipment under X’s control. They need to get a judgment (which the article indicates they’re working on) before they can do anything. Presumably after months to years of litigation they can then repossess the servers, but then X would probably at the last minute pay the bill.
- Comment on Is American politics really as seemingly satirical of itself as it is portrayed? 5 months ago:
Yeah it’s terrible, but look at the rest of the world. Putin enjoys a lot of support from the same people he’s sending to die, Modi in India wins elections by a large margin on a platform of basically “Fuck Sikhs and Muslims”. Add China and basically most of humanity lives under someone who is blatantly racist, corrupt, generally horrible, or a combination thereof. And Western Europe doesn’t have a leg to stand on either, the UK ignored dire warnings and voted for Brexit without even understanding what it is.
Humans don’t believe what’s objectively correct, they believe what they want to believe. This makes feeding people what they want to hear a very successful strategy, and one that psychopaths have an advantage in pursuing.
- Comment on Octopus 5 months ago:
Obligatory video (click at your own risk)
- Comment on Mystery creator of Bitcoin identified, new HBO documentary claims 5 months ago:
It’s overwhelmingly likely to be someone none of us have ever heard of. If nothing else because that’s the base rate. Also because someone nerdy enough to care about this stuff before cryptocurrency existed couldn’t possibly have a life.
- Comment on Devs gaining little (if anything) from AI coding assistants 5 months ago:
I use it occasionally. Recently I used it to convert a written specification in a document to a java object. And it was like 95% correct - but having to manually double check everything and fix the errors eliminated much of the time savings.
However that’s a very ideal use case. Most often I forget it exists.
- Comment on If Biden wanted to could he have people kill Trump since he is in office and SCOTUS said it was ok? 5 months ago:
The catch-22 is that the 3 liberal justices dissented from the opinion. So all 9 can be presumed to vote against Biden being immune for assassinating his opponent, and eliminating justices won’t really help.
- Comment on If Biden wanted to could he have people kill Trump since he is in office and SCOTUS said it was ok? 5 months ago:
To give a serious answer: The short answer is probably, the long answer is no.
The opinion was deliberately vague on that issue. A dissent said they could under Roberts’ opinion, but Roberts calls that “fear mongering” without elaborating whether that’s true or not.
It’s also a pretty complicated opinion so bear with me. The whole thing comes down to this vague idea of official vs. unofficial acts which are supposed to be immune according to the court. Really, there’s multiple factual allegations and the court said each one has some level of immunity (and if you think these are full of contradictions, I know):
- Asking the DOJ to pressure states to investigate obvious spurious “fraud” claims and pressure states to throw out their results, and threatening to fire them if they refuse - here Trump is “absolutely immune” because the DOJ is part of the executive branch and the president has power to fire them, I guess for any reason now.
- Trying to get Mike Pence to refuse the vote count and throw the whole country into a chaotic power struggle - presumptively immune, because the president and vice president can talk about their duties. Can be rebutted if the government can prove a prosecution wouldn’t pose a danger of intrusion into executive branch functions, whatever the hell that means.
- Trump personally telling state officials to change electoral votes - here Roberts says there’s no basis for Trump to claim immunity because there’s no presidential power to try and coerce state officials. However, he then says it’s up to the lower court to consider if it’s official or not before proceeding, and is entirely unclear on who has the burden of proof here.
- Using twitter and a speech to organize and then start a riot at the capitol - similar to the above, the president has official duties relating to speaking but yada yada yada it’s sent back to the lower court to decide whether this is official or not.
Conclusion: Ordering an assassination of a rival certainly sounds most like the first - the president has several official duties relating to giving military orders, and the military is part of the executive branch. The FBI is also part of the DOJ, so if Trump can order the DOJ to do something criminal, that itself could be an assassination. But as described in the article below, one could make an argument that no, the opinion doesn’t actually say he do that with the military specifically, because congress has some powers relating to war (not convincing). However, to be fair to that opinion, this immunity ruling is such a stinker that lower and future courts will limit its holding as much as humanly possible. Plus seemingly contradictory aspects to it (Trump can order the DOJ to do things he can’t do himself?) could be used to argue for exceptions to the overall immunity. But reading the opinion at face value, yes the president could order an assassination, and even fire generals who refuse to pass along those orders.
Longer answer though: This is the real world. If Biden gave such an order, it would likely result in a coup and an overthowing of the Constitutional order as a whole. And if order were somehow restored and Biden brought up on criminal charges, you could be your life that the 6-3 Republican majority on the court would find a way to either limit or perhaps overturn their prior ruling as it pertains to Biden.
For an alternative perspective on the same topic, here’s a right-leaning law professor’s take on this which does a pretty plausible job sane-washing the opinion.
- Comment on If Trump loses the election and flees to another country to avoid his sentencing in his (multiple) lawsuits, does the Secret Service have to go with him? 5 months ago:
The former presidents act seems to imply that the president can decline Secret Service protection and even get $1 million for doing so. So I imagine he could just decline protection and hire his own security. But that would make it pretty obvious that he’s planning on fleeing.
- Comment on And you will never catch up as Bezos make 8,000,000 per hour 5 months ago:
How do I page right
- Comment on Musk’s X blocks links to JD Vance dossier and suspends journalist who posted it 5 months ago:
This is pretty much a summary of a lot of already public data. Could be valuable as an appendix of ways to attack Vance but otherwise not much new here.
My takeaway is the Trump campaign was too sycophantic to Trump to notice Vance’s actual problems. They have records of his weird views on domestic violence and other strange views but they’re buried in mountains of data about everything he’s said about Trump. And his obsession with childless women isn’t in the document anywhere as far as I can tell.