theFu comments

It is about money, not free speech.

Content moderation is hard. Doing it well and consistently is next to impossible. X makes money when lies are posted and re-posted. The more outlandish, the better.

"Freedom of expression does not come without responsibilities," it added.

Exactly.

How does it impair their ability to function?

It takes away viewers, which lowers the ad rates that can be charged. Less income to professional reporting means fewer, qualified, reporters. We've seen the same effect from Social networks stealing content without compensating the team that originated that content.

The number of news organizations, including newspapers has been reduced at least 50% in the last 40 yrs. Call it "failure to compete." The world used to get a newspaper every day and read it throughout the day, starting with the headlines with their morning coffee, going deeper on their commute to work, and have lighter reading at lunch or during work breaks to shift their mind from work topics to other topics. It was good for our brains and made us more productive.

Then newspaper subscriptions became something the next generation chose not to get. Saving trees. The news organizations had to move their content online since that was how the next generation wanted to have their news delivered. Initially, they followed the free model with advertising to have as many readers as possible. Online news that charged money and had paywalls quickly died. Very few online news organizations had the reputation to support paywalled readers. My local news begs for donations every few weeks. They've tried free with advertising. They've tried paywalled reading. Even with 1M local people, they can't raise $5000/month in any way. That's not enough to have even 1 full-time reporter doing everything.

AI vendors take advantage of free content. These small newspapers don't have the expertise to block outside crawlers/scanners from stealing their content. I've had the same issue with my websites. They are crawled by AI engines about 6x a day. When I say "crawled", I mean they hit every single page, even those that haven't changed in 10 yrs. Over 90% of all the costs to run my websites is wasted by AI crawlers. Bandwidth might seem free, but it isn't.

15 yrs ago, the crawlers were google, yahoo, yandex, baidu and a bunch of university research "bots" eating the bandwidth. Be cause we don't do 1 paragraph articles, those old-style crawlers would actually send readers our way - - well, most of them did except baidu, which has never, ever, ever, sent any referrals. Not once. Additionally, baidu didn't honor the robots.txt file, which says where to crawl and how fast to crawl. This is a well-known standard for all websites.

Crawlers that don't send any referrals and don't honor the robots.txt instructions are parasites, just like AI crawlers are parasites. They take, but provide nothing in return.

And that's the problem with AI crawlers and other bots. The source of the information needs to still get paid and not have their content stolen, like a "lost generation auntie finding a low-cost deal in a grocery store."

They need to stay off all social networks, as do most humans, regardless of age.

Much to easy to get pulled into an echo chamber full of paranoia and fact-less claims. We all know people who act like any crazy claim by anyone online is true and when it doesn't get picked up by professional journalists, their paranoia chooses to think there's a conspiracy, instead of realizing the original post as there just to find them, make them crazy and paranoid to the point they actually believe that no news from any reputable source can ever be trusted. That's what happened to Trump and the entire MAGA group.

Trump doesn't feel personally threatened by Iran.

Israel is threatened. Iran has Midrange ballistic missiles that can carry a bomb and reach Israel today. There's no question about that.

How close they are to a nuclear bomb is something that Israel has much more intelligence concerning than the US. Israel has hundreds, if not thousands, of people working for them inside Iran.

Well, if the Iranians weren’t working on a nuke before, you can bet they’re going to now.

They have been all along. If you think differently, best to check with your mental health professional team.

Plus, Iran is supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, so there are multiple reasons to make Iran unable to manufacture machines of war or anything related to nuclear technology.

Trump likes dividing Americans. 1312 days remaining.

Who started this war?

The country that has a stated goal of destroying Israel and the US started this war. It has just finally gotten to the point that ignoring them cannot be allowed.

Trump has a 140 character limit on any thoughts he has. He can only understand simple issues and seeks simple solutions. Trump doesn't realize that Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution is when their hatred of Israel actually started. Prior to that, they were allies and Iran was one of the first countries to recognize Israel as a country. Not even 50 yrs.

The Khomeini fundamentalists in Iran changed everything. Since that time, Iran has been supporting a proxy war against Iran through Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

By removing Khomeini fundamentalists from power in Iran, perhaps peace in the region will be possible? This would dry up money and weapons getting to Hezbollah and Hamas, which would remove 3 anti-Israeli organizations from the region.

And it would probably end Iran's goal of nuclear weapons. Nuclear power needs 10% enriched uranium. Iran has reached 60% enrichment levels and was trying to get to 90%. This cannot be allowed, regardless of the cost. A world with terrorist having nuclear weapons cannot be allowed.

Favoritism. Just call it what it is.

Trump and his croanies like it when they have more control over things that they have no business controlling.

Kennedy doesn't have any clue about science, nor do any of the people appointed by butt-kissers of Trump. All Trump appointments only have 1 qualification - they will kiss the ring.

Yes, but nothing useful to the world or countries involved.

Trump is aiding Putin's delay tactics.

I wouldn't put it passed Trump to have bunker busting bombs used in Iran. Watch for the B-2s showing up over there in the next few nights. Trump would get 3 things from this.

He gets away from the G7 conference where true diplomats are showing their skills are 10x Trump's level.

He gets to appear to force Iran to give up nuclear weapons and prove his threat that Iran should have signed a deal to be true.

He gets Putin's attention for "being strong", but not directly doing anything towards Russia.

Dropping bombs is very different from deploying the army for a ground war.

He said/she said happening here.

I worked for an Israeli owned company for 5 yrs and traveled with the CEO internationally. He always took longer getting through borders than it took me. The leaders of our company were very stubborn and pushed any limits they felt were wrong, in my experience. When your goals align with theirs, great things can happen. If the goals for both can't be achieved "along the way", expect they will ignore or sabotage your goals to ensure theirs gain priority. Reminds me of Trump, actually, except there's logic in the goals of Israelis from my experience.

The relatives of the victims of this Boeing mass casualty event deserve honest answers.

Everyone deserves honest answers, but assuming that a model of aircraft with an excellent flight safety record and a specific plan that is over 10 yrs old has some sort of design flaw is massively jumping ahead.

The flight recorders have probably been copied and the cockpit voices are known at this point. There's a risk of publishing data that might seem correct today, but are found over the next months to be incorrect for lots of reasons, so this is why that information isn't shared with the public immediately.

The way to get to the truth is to state facts and avoid opinions, so that incorrect guesses don't lead the investigation team to wrong conclusions. That can keeping politics out of the search for truth, since we've all been reminded that truth and politicians seldom align.

We've already seen a few "experts" change their guesses for the cause based on videos of videos. It is a dangerous thing to guess when all the facts aren't known.

Boeing and GE being there makes perfect sense, under watchful eyes of Indian investigators. NTSB and FAA are there since the aircraft was American made. This is a standard, recognized, protocol for crash investigations.

The latest facts I could find:

Air India flight 171 (Ahmedabad -- London Gatwick)

Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner

Ahmedabad

Killed all but one of the 242 people on board and at least 33 more on the ground.

Two FDR and one CVR have been located and secured.

Remains of at least 76 people have been turned over to their families as DNA and dental record identification occurs.

"Authorities are focusing on engine failure, loss of thrust, and mechanical faults,"

Over 1000 B787 are still in service world-wide.

Carrier aircraft will be different and need modifications due to the much harder landings. Stronger landing gear, stronger undercarriages, When the landing target is pitching and rolling, hard landings are expected. For carrier storage, folding wings are common.

Things also need to be different because getting P&W F100 engines isn't easy for China or Russia. From everything I've read, both the Russian and Chinese engines in their variants are nowhere near what the current P&W F100 provides. Also, the maintenance periods for the US-made engines is significantly longer than both China's and Russia's engine maintenance requirements and the total lifespan for the engine with proper maintenance. In these days of 20-50% of a model of aircraft being out for maintenance, this is a key aspect for military and logistics planning. An engine pulled for overhaul can't be used to fight.

Seems odd how the Chinese fighters look just like American F-15s. Just try to claim they didn't steal the classified plans? Try.

Some day, China will create new and better stuff than others in the world, but when it comes to military equipment, they have a long way to go.

Japanese pilots need to have the freedom to fly erratically, so that the Chinese pilots are afraid of coming too close. In 2001, a US plane was hit by a Chinese fighter. There were 2 Chinese fighters there. 1 plane went down and the pilot died due to his inept flying.

Theocracy is the most broken form of govt, followed closely by Marxism-based govts.

I encourage all people subject to those types of govts to revolt, overthrow their govt, and move towards a Constitutional and Parliamentary form of representative govt so they can enjoy the freedom and economic prosperity provided.

Chinese web-warriors, look up what a P-3 is before posting incorrect information, please.

I have yet to see how close the P-3 was to the carrier group or where the Chinese carrier group was actually located. If it was between 2 Japanese islands that are less than 24NM apart, then it was inside Japanese waters.

Entering the EEZ of another country by warships and performing military exercises is legal, provided the airspace isn't and they aren't allowed to fish of the ship. Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ) are allowed to restrict certain activities, but there's 1 rule - if the aircraft doesn't intend to cross the 12nm national boundary, then they don't need to request permission while inside the ADIZ. Flying parallel to the 12nm territorial boundary is perfectly legal for China, Japan, or the US in any EEZ or ADIZ. As usual, China disagrees and wants the entire Chinese EEZ to be off limits to all other countries. The rules for all need to be the same.

NK tries to push this EEZ claim even further. They say that taking photos by any non-NK ship or aircraft inside their recognized EEZ is prohibited and challenges all commercial shipping trying to pass through their EEZ waters illegally.

Ref: https://sites.tufts.edu/lawofthesea/chapter-4/

This is like telling an 8 yr old to "be careful" when they leave for school every day.

Careful of what?

Check what? There are hundreds of thousands of parts in a commercial airliner.

At this point, we don't have any clue what happened, but both engines seem to have been affected. A single engine failure wouldn't bring down the aircraft.

The fact that the pilots decided to take off says all was fine and normal when they decided to rotate (lift the front wheel off the ground).

The black box will show much. The cockpit voice recorder too.

Nobody says that China can't send fighters to follow non-Chinese aircraft flying in international airspace. That isn't an issue.

What is an issue is when the fighter pilots are commanded to fly dangerously close to any other foreign plane. They all have radios. They all can talk to each other to make clear their wishes.

A P-3 is not armed to attack other aircraft, BTW. Hard to see that when you are flying ahead of the P-3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-3_Orion

From 500m, the Chinese planes can see everything they need to see, follow safely, and not raise any dangerous interactions.

Sadly, just like bad Chinese boat captains that seem to hit other boats all the time or forget to raise their anchors, these Chinese pilots don't know how to operate their aircraft safely.

As long as the guard and marines perform only support roles for local law enforcement and ICE agents performing their legal duty, there isn't any conflict.

I'm still confused how anyone thinks people illegally in the US should remain and be ignored. Doesn't matter if they arrived yesterday or 40 yrs ago.

As I see it, the laws that make overstaying a Visa a misdemeanor with a $500 fine aren't enough deterrent and need to be changed to a $5000 fine for each year with a $5000 minimum for both the individual and a $50K minimum for anyone providing work or a place to live for someone illegally in the US. Plus deportation for anyone without documentation to prove they are citizens, green card holders, on a valid visa, or in the process of seeking asylum with a court date.

If any part of the govt acts too quickly to detain, jail, or deport someone with a legal right to be in the US, then they need to be administratively compensated.

Trump should get the GOP working on those law changes.

Today, Trump was making completely bogus claims about the most recent people being captured by ICE, saying they were murderers and violent criminals, without providing any proof. If ICE rounds up 3000 people a day, and 5 of them are violent criminals, that's nearly all non-violent criminals being rounded up.

Don't try to argue that anyone in the US illegally isn't a criminal. They are.

Iran has been attacking Israel since the Six Day War using proxy groups to do it.

For 40 years, Iranians have been yelling "Death to Israel", not "we want peace in the region, including with Israel."

There won't be peace with Iran until their Supreme Leader dies and moderate Iranian politicians remove fundamental Muslims from control of the country.

Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah are all part of the Iranian attacks on Israel, along with Iranian medium range missiles, which have been sent at Israel a few times in the last 2 yrs.

April 2024: Iran launched 300 missiles at Israel https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/2/timeline-the-key-moments-that-led-to-irans-missile-attacks-on-israel

Oct 2024: Iran launched 181 missiles at Israel. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70w1j0l488o

Israel has responded to the direct attacks. Recall the pagers that killed 700 Hezbollah members?

Israel has killed more than 45K Palestinians in Gaza thanks to Hamas not understanding war. Hamas leaders, coached by Iran, are fools. They traded 2K Israelis for 45K Palestinians. That's just dumb. And yet, Hamas is still seen attacking Israeli troops in Gaza when Gaza is rubble. They've been beaten, but rather than give up to fight another day, they are intent on having every last Palestinian killed. Hamas isn't your friend if you are Palestinian.

A few friends lost their jobs at the CDC. Haven't heard if they are in the group being hired back or not. None of them want to work there anymore and have their resumes out with 25+ pharmaceutical companies where they won't need to deal with a President and HHS head acting like science doesn't actually exist and work.

If they do go back, they will keep interviewing to leave. Their stance is "Screw Trump", regardless of how they voted last fall. They really don't want anything to do with Trump again.

All the anti-vax people in lead positions is laughable. Hard to believe someone so foolish would ever be appointed.

Chinese pilots are being told to do this by their commanders. Unsafe flying is the new harassment model. No way would a Chinese pilot fly like that without permission or orders.

The US never had any plans for first attacks of mainland China.

Only CCP first action will cause a US attack. The exact line is ambiguous for a reason. We've seen China trying to figure out where the line is as they make all sorts of outlandish claims including:

9-dash line

Invading Philippine areas

constant harassment of the country of Taiwan

and

constant harassment of ships sailing in international waters.

China is invading both Nepal and India, slowly, to avoid direct confrontation. Eventually, someone will add up all the transgressions and decide enough is enough. When that happens, a Chinese ship will disappear for unknown reasons in a deep part of the seas.

Don't forget in 2001 when China forced a US signals aircraft to emergency land on a Chinese island, Hainan, after one of two Chinese fighters collided with it 110 KM away. China ripped that plane apart to learn what they could. This could easily have started a military reaction in the region. It all started due to unsafe Chinese flying. The world has learned that Chinese and Russian fighter pilots often make unsafe approaches to other aircraft. There's lots of video proving this.

According to UNCLOS, an EEZ isn't sovereign like the 12nm area near a land boarder is. 112 km is far outside any border.

I lived less than 2 miles from nukes until I was 18. Dad was in SAC. Nuclear weapons aren't a boogeyman.

There are many safeguards to prevent lots of issues. They can't magically "go off" and because places with nukes are well protected, enemies aren't likely to get anywhere near them. Even if they do, they can't detonate without the correct codes. There are all sorts of procedures to make unauthorized firing impossible. the worse that an enemy might do is steal the weapons, take them apart and use the piece for their own weapons. Any nation capable of getting to the weapon storage would already have their own. No need to steal any.

Even when things do really bad, like high heat and explosions, they don't go off.

How many deaths was Mao responsible for again?

Sources vary, but between 35 and 50 million Chinese. By far the worst human killer in history. Even Hitler killed fewer, including 25M Russians and 6-10M Jews.

While the US isn't a Saint, they haven't killed even 6 million people in the entire history of the country while, including wars. 4M were native Americans, so less than 2M worldwide, including 500K during the US Civil war in the 1860s.

Or as I was taught in Georgia - the War of Northern Aggression. Funny that Virginia, Arkansas, Texas, and Nebraska History classes all taught it as the Civil War. Each state teaches their state history in a different grade. The family moved every year for about 4 yrs, so I was exposed to more state histories than anyone should be. Georgia is still a bit backwards on the Civil War, there are people here who think they could win still, while all the other states seem to agree is was wrong. Georgia is proof that revisionist history is alive if you are stubborn enough and keep certain people in power to control what can be taught and how it is taught.

There isn't any specific vehicle that Americans want over all others. Some want only EVs. Some prefer Hybrids and some want just ICE vehicles. Depends on many factors. If a house has 2 vehicles, then having 1 be an EV for daily commuting makes sense and it isn't a hard choice, provided the purchase price isn't too high. For 1 vehicle households that don't need large capacity for moving things or towing, a hybrid makes some sense, again, if it isn't too costly. For people with heavy towing needs or other large capacity needs, an ICE can make the most sense. Diesel and gasoline powered engines have been optimized over the last 100 yrs to get mostly excellent mileage for the weight and towing capacity.

We have an ICE vehicle. It is 25 yr old and runs like new, still. Why would I spend $40K to replace it? I won't. For our needs in 10 yrs, either another ICE or hybrid makes since, not an EV, nor an H₂ powered vehicle. Too much trouble to find charging stations or cost-efficient H₂ fill places. We have 1 vehicle and don't drive much, less than $200 in fuel each year. That includes a few yearly long trips for holidays. If we had 2 cars, the 2nd would probably be an EV motorcycle with a locked storage bin of some sort for quick grocery trips. Until EV vehicles actually cost less than ICE vehicles, they are DOA for our house.

Trump is out for Trump. Nobody else.

He's out to hide everything bad he does by delaying courts, lying whenever that is easiest, and firing anyone, anywhere, who he can or applying pressure to their employers when he can't directly fire them, if they know something which shows Trump stupidity.

If Trump cared about truth, he'd settle all his US tax code violation cases, release his tax returns, place all his assets into a blind trust. He refused all of that. The US needs a Constitutional Amendment to make it mandatory to limit the age of an elected President to under 70 yrs old on election day. Lots of other Amendments are needed, like the ability to recall a President from office when he behaves badly. Congress has failed in that duty of theirs. They can't be trusted.

And Trump's doctor has been lying every time he's in office.

Or the folks with the most experience and success at NASA. That would save a lot of time over asking those with much less know how like China.

While NASA has some success, it also has lots of failures. Same for China. Ask for knowledge from anyone willing to provide it without too many strings connected. But like many things in life, until you actually do it yourself, you don't really KNOW the necessary answers. There's no substitute for experience.

SpaceX shows that all the time with their unscheduled rapid disassembly missions.

NASA over analyzes everything they do, which makes missions 3x longer to get off the ground and 10x more expensive. Look at the SLS. 14 yrs since it was first funded in 2011 and it flew once so far. SpaceX "Ship" will surpass the SLS sometime this year or early next year and be 10x less expensive per launch. Actual launch experience matters.

FWIW, I worked at NASA as a rocket scientist contractor writing guidance, navigation and flight control software for spacecraft that actually flew on 98 missions (135 total missions were flown). My software partially controlled specific aspects of launch, on-orbit ops and landings. You've seem my work, I'm positive, though it would be subtle to notice for non-engineers. Of course, I worked with a team of experts to ensure it was bug-free software and handled every possible situation. We coded to prevent computer lockups, slow processing, in addition to flight control requirements. In real-time software, being too slow is a failure, just like being wrong is a failure. Lots of my code was never seen, thank Dog! It was for really, really, really, bad days when everyone on the spacecraft were gonna die. The astronauts all knew they'd be dead, but we all joked that would be "automated" after the new software was loaded. Sometimes, laughing is all you can do.

Way to paint a target.

The US never did anything to Yemen before they started attacking shipping and Israel. Why is this group involved again? Also, Yemen is split with most of the country under moderate govt control with peaceful people. It is the western areas where the terrorist have taken over.

To help people remember the first Yemeni attack on the US:

https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/uss-cole-bombing - not by the govt of Yemen, but by terrorists connected to al Qaeda. The Yemeni govt actually arrested 2 of the leaders behind the USS Cole bombing, so it is important to note that most of Yemen isn't anti-US. They just have their hands full with a civil war.

Even a broken watch shows the correct time twice daily. Rubio is right this one time. Perhaps there are some others. It is easier to count the times he is correct rather than the thousands of times he's been wrong on topics.

Eventually, mainland China will outgrow their single-party system. Don't know if that will happen this year or in 50 yrs, but it will happen. People are being connected around the world, so when the mainland Chinese see much of the rest of the world, they are jealous. Don't believe the videos showing everything in China is beautiful. For almost every one of those videos, if they just walked 1-2 blocks away, or even turned the camera around, there would be rubble with kids playing like a war zone in Gaza.

The Iranian people aren't the problem.

They don't fund terrorist around the world. The problem is with their govt who would and has placed spies (and worse) inside the US multiple times. They've been caught with kill teams inside the US.

Anytime a govt have a dictator for life, you have abuse of power. Only the Iranian people can solve that problem. Same goes for Russia, China, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and everywhere power is seized without term limits to keep the abuse of power in check.

It isn't about countries with Muslims. It is about the govts in those locations being stable enough to actually know their people, have real background checks, and provide that data to any country who may receive citizens from that country to ensure they aren't criminals on a tourist visa.

Thanks to President Trump's policies, this makes perfect sense for J-corp.

I've seen US companies lieth and renegeth on a signed agreement with USGovt regulators personally. The deal was they'd not outsource 3000 jobs. We deployed to new buildings for 2 yrs so those 3000 people would have US locations to work. But on day 1 of year 3, they were all notified their jobs were being outsourced to Asia by the company.

The J-company has seen Trump's anti-EV policies, so it makes perfect sense for them to walk away.

I've seen US companies walk away from projects where $500M was spent because milestones were missed by prime contractors for over a year. Fortunately, I'd only spent $100M (company money) in new hardware and we could reassign that hardware to other projects the same year for the most part.

I hope Musk spends $10B on advertising to stop the Big Beautiful Boondoggle. This way, sanity in Congress might return and Trump will be impotent going forward and every Trump supporter in an elected office will be gone ASAP.

I look forward to the day when truth is actually what the US govt tells the people it represents, not lies.