Are you not aware that that the credibility of the US DOJ under the present administration has been completely destroyed and you should not trust anything they say simply because they said it in a press release (perhaps especially because they said it in a press release)? Federal judges have repeatedly declined to give the DOJ the benefit of the doubt (called "presumption of regularity") and all but called them liars. [1]
In this case, experts are unanimous that this is a hit job by Director Patel (see his poor record here [2]) who had a political vendetta against this civil rights organization. SPLC's actions were all related to investigations to EXPOSE the KKK using undercover informants. They were paying investigators, not the organization. They were absolutely in no way "funding the KKK."
“SPLC is a leading authority on organized hate groups and undertakes the complex and often dangerous work of investigating and exposing these networks. Its outstanding record of tracking and addressing hate belies the misguided premise of the indictment — that SPLC was somehow supporting the very hate groups it has long helped to discredit and dismantle.
“The DOJ’s actions are wrong and part of a broader effort to intimidate organizations working to advance civil rights, strengthen our democracy, and hold bad actors accountable.[3]
I'm definitely not aware that the credibility of the US DOJ has been destroyed.
And I question why a 501c3 charity would need "field informants" and to launder money through shell corporations. Especially to leaders of these organizations who were (1) coordinating some of these rallies and (2) due to the materially dishonest treatment of the "fine people hoax" for years.
Is the SPLC an intelligence organization? Am I missing something?
What does that mean, "adjusted for poverty"? Reading level is an absolute. You're either at a third grade level or not. This adjustment seems to have no purpose other than completing a narrative that does not help solve the problem.
To be fair to gruez, the chart was made by the economist and not by them.
To be less fair to the economist, "adjusted by poverty level" is a heck of a spin, we've had many generations as a developed nation now, your state poverty level is caused by your state education outcomes. And that's without even speculating about what "demographic factors" means or implies.
You're right, but "don't blame us, we were investing our energy in oppressing the blacks" isn't really the greatest excuse for cotton belt states when it comes to their education and gdp numbers.
Teachers generally make the same in a suburb as in an inner city school. In the Des Moines area all schools get the same amount of money per student, but you still see suburbs outperforming the city schools. I don't know what the problem is, but this disproves the money is the problem theory.
>You're either at a third grade level or not. This adjustment seems to have no purpose other than completing a narrative that does not help solve the problem.
How should you measure an education system? Should you measure purely based on the student's performance? What if the students are just better at reading, independent of the school? It's not hard to imagine that even with identical teachers, that inner cities schools would have worse test scores than wealthy suburban schools, especially if the latter are rich enough to afford tutors, the family environment is more conductive to learning, etc. Recognizing this fact, it's fairly obvious that "you're either at a third grade level or not" is a terrible way of assessing how good of a job an educational system is doing.
> What does that mean, "adjusted for poverty"? Reading level is an absolute
Reading scores are SUPER strongly correlated with family income levels in the US. The fact that Alabama does a better job teaching its poorest students to read than Massachusetts does is impressive, particularly given the disparity in funding levels.
If you were comparing HS basketball coaches on the basis of how well their teams perform on the court, then you might find it useful to correct for how many tall kids went to the high schools they were coaching at.
It's important to keep in mind what the government is saying here. Set aside the specifics of who this individual is or where they originally came from and grasp what Trump is trying to argue here.
> Although the legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear, Abrego Garcia’s case is categorically different—there were no legalgrounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal. Nor does any evidence suggest thatAbrego Garcia is being held in CECOT at the behest of Salvadoran authorities to answer for crimesin that country. _Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless._
In short, they kidnapped someone--I'm using that word precisely because it was "lawless" and that's what elevates a detention to a kidnapping--and flew them to a foreign prison without notice, without hearing. From the street, transported hooded to a plan, and imprisoned in medieval conditions.
It was a mistake they concede. Oh well. Can't do anything about it now.
Do not argue that this individual should not have received a chance to have a court recognize the mistake. There is nothing separating your position from his. If they can kidnap him they can kidnap you. The government's position is, simply put, no one can stop them if they do.
We absolve government officials and agents of legal liability for almost every act they do as part of their job, but that's under the assumption that (1) fear of prosecution would paralyze every decision, and (2) the government acts in good faith. Previously, this was taken to be an impenetrable defense. A government too frightened to do anything is useless. And it takes a lot to prove the existence of malice and the absence of desire to help the country.
But I can't see any reason besides malice, or cruel disregard for human rights, behind continually ignoring the usual legal process when they'd already been reminded what it was and that they should stop violating it. The executive staff must have explicitly worded their demands so that the agents in the field circumvented this man's due process. I refuse to believe everyone in the chain was identically derelict in their duties when passing along commands. There was no good faith, and every decision maker behind this kidnapping should be given their own days in court.
As for the paralysis of fear, this should be like accepting a bribe: we want officials to fear prosecution.
I think there's another point that makes this even more surreal. The United States is paying El Salvador to detain these people. So the DOJ claim includes that the DOJ doesn't believe the federal judiciary has legal authority to prevent the United States from continuing to pay to detain people in other countries.
Do you have sources for any of these statements? I understand he was deportable but just had a clause that he should not got to El Salvador (where he was from) which for whatever reason got missed. I mean where else would he be deported to if not his country of origin? Kind of a strange case, and will be interesting to watch it unfold.
Do not both sides any of this. One cannot claim that both sides present misinformation and then not acknowledge that one side is doing so intentionally and the other is not.
Elon tweeted that there was a lot of 150-year-old recipients. That's all he said. [1] So there was a rush to point out why, if this 150 year old number is the only information he's providing of fraud, it is not a prima facie case of fraud. That was a good faith response to a bad faith, selective release of information.
So then Musk provides more data, but again, not enough data to provide all the context. What he leaves out is that there have been multiple, prior good faith attempts to investigate these data entries, identify whether there's any fraud, and address any problems. This was the work of inspectors general whose job is to work in good faith to try to resolve these issues.
There is one side acting only in bad faith. If they were acting in good faith, they would raise these issues through legal channels (inspectors general) and then have an orderly, legal process to address them. That is how it has always been done, for a reason. They are not operating legally because they know that what they are doing is in bad faith and would be found out as such.
What we are witnessing is a dismantling of the rule of law. It's important to recognize that and to not to be complicit in it.
You're replying to a thread on an article about how someone just made up the 1875 thing to own Elon.
There's definitely a "both sides" problem here. Many more commenters are making totally unfounded assertions about how these systems actually work for the same reason.
You yourself are pontificating about the inspector general's report at a level of expertise beyond what you likely have. I have some familiarity with IGs, though not in the SSA. It has been eye-opening to see people crawling out of the woodwork to talk about their role, their effectiveness, their "good faith attempts", etc. They don't actually know any of this: it's just ammo they found online to "get" Musk since the controversy started.
Why is it so hard to just suspend judgement about these claims, rather than attack them with little basis? Or at least go after it for solid philosophical reasons? I can't understand why the level of discourse on this subject on Hacker News, of all places, is so bad.
The way Musk has acted in the past 4 weeks has caused people here to feel it's not in good faith. Suspending judgement when people are lying to your face is a recipe for getting the wool pulled over your eyes. We have ample reason to think Musk isn't acting in good faith, mainly because of the drive-by posting he is doing and the way he's not working with Congress. He wants to make incredible claims without credible evidence... which just makes his claims incredible.
If Musk were doing what FDR did 100 years ago -- affecting major change by working through Congress -- there would be a different response.
I don't approve of Musk for varying reasons, but FDR's relationship with Congress was a little more complicated than that. If anything, Musk and Trump have not yet come close to Roosevelt's excesses, which are now thankfully mostly forgotten and not used as examples. Roosevelt did not so much as "work" with Congress as directly control it, particularly in his first term. Even in his later terms, he directly embedded his executive staff in Congressional committees. He also had no problem ignoring legislation that did not suit him, and had no problem using the FBI and IRS to harass and destroy his political enemies, which helped cooperation quite a bit. Today we find even a hint of this unacceptable. (We've also now mostly forgotten FDR's war against the media.)
From the distance of almost 100 years, it's difficult to see that FDR was an extreme radical when it came to executive power and probably the most powerful US President of all time. It's a good thing he was mostly a good one too.
> We have ample reason to think Musk isn't acting in good faith, mainly because of the drive-by posting he is doing and the way he's not working with Congress.
I don't think the "drive-by posting" or not working with Congress indicate anything of the kind. Congress has for decades done it's best to do absolutely nothing. Even when just a few years ago they busted the CIA spying on Congress, Congress did nothing. Congress has passed basically no major legislation since the ACA (itself pathetically watered down and passed narrowly) except in extremis. The best you get is one party or another grandstanding in committees about some nakedly partisan "investigation." But if they don't even do anything about a level of corruption and abuse that includes spying on Congress itself, why on earth do you think they'd care about low-to-mid-level fraud/waste?
As for drive-by posting, I think we all know Musk is a fundamentally unserious person, not a deep thinker, and prone to exaggeration or outright lying. That doesn't mean that DOGE personnel aren't looking into and finding things that perhaps we'd be better off without and which the executive has the legitimate power to correct or terminate. I don't see any problem with looking more deeply into Social Security payments. As I said in another post, we've had years of reporting on mass SSDI fraud, and other countries do have small amounts of pensioner fraud. Probably we have some too, and this strange belief that "the IG and Congress would have discovered any such problems" seems bizarrely naive to many of us who have worked in the government.
At any rate if Musk is making false claims, then making our own false claims does not help us or any good cause in any way. Lying because someone else is lying does not make anything better. Almost as bad is silly tendentious "well, actuallys" that dress up as a "fact check" and word everything very carefully as if Musk is totally wrong about something when the substance is correct. Consider the Reuters situation. Here's what Musk tweeted:
> “Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for ‘large scale social deception,’” Musk tweeted the night before. “That is literally what it says on the purchase order! They’re a total scam. Just wow.”
The entire story is written as if Musk and Trump are deranged conspiracy theorists...when in fact what Musk tweeted was correct. Yes, OK, actually "Thomson Reuters Special Services" was the one with the contract, not "Reuters", and yeah sure they're all actually ultimately part of the same organization, they own Reuters, but there's a firewall between them, we promise, so...and yeah, it was to study "large scale deception" and "social engineering defense" but actually it's a good thing and-
Long story short, Reuters did have some dumb consulting contract with the government regarding social engineering "defense", which likely was a huge waste of money. Of course, it also wouldn't be surprising if the government was not only paying for "defense" (just as the Department of Defense was not "defending" American from Iraq) but Musk didn't make that claim in the Tweet.
This is just an example. I find it just as bad as what Musk does. If we're trying to educate people telling our own lies and bending the truth to fit our narrative doesn't help anything.
> FDR's relationship with Congress was a little more complicated than that. If anything, Musk and Trump have not yet come close to Roosevelt's excesses
Yeah, what I'm saying is that going through Congress such as FDR did is what would make those actions defensible. If Congress wants to be compliant, that's their prerogative. This Congress wants to be compliant, they can pass laws to do what they are.
So if Musk were doing the same as FDR, I would have much less of an objection, and not much of a Constitutional grounds to stand on. I think they aim to wield executive power, but I think trying to go around Congress is what tips the scales from "radical view of executive power" to "dictatorial view of executive power".
> Congress has for decades done it's best to do absolutely nothing.
This is false, Congress has done N things. Some guys have proclaimed the N things are insufficient, and they demand a new thing be done. Now we are doing N+1 things. Are they working? Who knows; we can't tell because they won't post sufficient details.
We do know what Congress has done is not 0% effective - oversight, whistleblowers, IGs have identified areas of waste/fraud/abuse. Of course there's room for improvement by adding other areas of feedback and DOGE could have been that, but they won't/can't be by going around Congress.
> That doesn't mean that DOGE personnel aren't looking into and finding things that perhaps we'd be better off without and which the executive has the legitimate power to correct or terminate.
I have found in my life that "the fish rots from the head" is often true. A person of such low character surrounds himself with people of similar or lower character, because they lack the temerity to say no to him. Given the recent reports on the people who are in DOGE, they seem to be DEI hires, in that they seem to have been hired due to their proximity to Musk-owned companies rather than their ability to audit federal programs.
> This is just an example.
It's a great example of what I'm talking about when I said "drive by posting". Why is it up to leadstories.com to bring me this very relevant context about the program? Why didn't Musk describe the nature of the program in his initial tweet?
To me this tweet is implying that the money was spent for a social engineering program that caused large scale social disruption. Is that a fair reading, or do you disagree with that? Either way, it seems like many other people interpreted it that way with my reading and became alarmed, hence the reaction.
But when you look at the added context, it becomes clear this program is about preventing large scale social disruption via social media, which seems to me like a good thing. They are apparently paying Reuters for some sort of SaaS tool. I don't know what it does but if it's waste or fraud Musk could explain exactly why/how. But he doesn't, he just tweets his indignation at some perceived abuse and that's the end of it. How is this any different or going to produce better results than "grandstanding in committees about some nakedly partisan investigation".
> The entire story is written as if Musk and Trump are deranged conspiracy theorists
Can you point out where you feel the article characterizes Musk in this way? To me, the article reads as a recitation of factual statements. Every claim is backed by supporting evidence. They describe Musk in neutral and factual terms. They accurately depict his words. It only mentions Trump in passing by way of mentioning his first term. Are you claiming it has left out factual information to slant a narrative? Or that the information is presented in a misleading way?
So where does that leave us? Is the program waste/fraud? No idea, DOGE hasn't provided enough information enough though he has it all.
Not to mention that the radicalisation and terrorism USAID helped prevent from fomenting has likely saved the US many trillions in rebuilding efforts and healthcare.
USAID, as far as I can tell, is stoking anti-US sentiment in many places by importing their own cultural values, and that's a known thing State Department officials have commented on.
Additionally, to be specific on even worse activity:
A few months ago, $9M of USAID went to an organization affiliated with Al Qaeda.
The Middle East Forum recently found $164M in USAID grants to radical organizations.
Apart from that, we've since found lots of evidence of USAID funding Hamas specifically. $900K was given days before the October 7th attack.
There's even pictures of Al Shabaab terrorists inside a USAID tent.
It looks like in a week, they uncovered over $100M, maybe $200M in fraud (I'm not keeping close track), if you count million-dollar "executive coaching" contracts as fraud (I do). It's most likely telling their friend outside the government "hey, I got some extra budget — you be my 'executive coach,' and we'll split the proceeds."
They've found billions in things that we should not be spending our money on while our own people die of drug overdoses, homeless in the street. Things "we don't like" as you say.
I keep hearing them talking about "fraud", but I've yet to see it substantiated. Where are the reports? Where is the evidence? If we consider Musk to be an unreliable actor (I do), then I need more than his word.
Does the tens of millions in "executive coaching" and "strategic communication" contracts really not look like fraud to you, or do you not believe that they're there because it's DOGE reporting it?
I think they're moving as fast as possible right now, and it takes a while to investigate & report.
> If we consider Musk to be an unreliable actor (I do),
Musk said himself yesterday that he expects to be wrong, he has been wrong, and we should all scrutinize him thoroughly. So even he admits he's an unreliable actor.
We like to use the principle of charitable interpretation on here, and to be charitable, I think it's really clear he was saying that everybody should expect to be wrong sometimes, has been wrong, and should be scrutinized thoroughly.
To label someone as an unreliable actor is different than using our own free will and minds to analyze actions and determine truth.
Competent people use processes, procedures, and safeguards to minimize human error. It's easy to say "everyone makes mistakes" when you're just a guy, but when you're wielding the powers of the presidency in such an unbalanced and unchecked way, he should be reassuring us how he will assure the trustworthiness of his proclamations going forward. Instead, he gestures vaguely to the human condition.
How can you say he's not an unreliable actor? The man has unlimited resources, power, and the best information available to him. He also is in a position of dizzying public trust right now, so really he should be making the utmost effort to be above reproach. "Aw shucks man, what do you expect, I'm just human after all" is not reassuring. And I'm sorry that's not a charitable enough take, but we are far past the time for benefit of the doubt.
But those are insignificant portions of the federal budget and nothing indicates that the repercussions of the wanton tear-thru of federal agencies is going to be a net-gain for the US.
It will take years to understand the amount of corruption & waste in the federal government. We can agree that these numbers found each day are 'insignificant', but it adds up, and I think we need a hard reset on the size & scope of government. That's what was voted in by the people.
Sorry, but I'm highly skeptical that the political figures who are doing things like unconstitutionally firing inspectors general have any good interest at heart. It's completely contrary to what you are suggesting is going on. There is no good faith effort here to root out corruption. It is an effort to dismantle things that stand in the way of further graft.
"Even though I don't know everything, and especially everything about how an organization like a federal government works, I personally haven't heard about these things, and therefore it must be unnecessary and stupid."
I think you could convince people that their municipal water treatment facility is waste and fraud. They're dumping the chemicals into the water! And for what reason? It already comes out of the tap just fine; why do I need to keep paying for those useless bureaucrats?
And what happens when they're successful even in part and we dump a lot of unemployed workers all at once into the job market in the private sector? Measured and calculated reform is one things. Smashing things without addressing what happens next is just kindergarten level stupidity.
But then again, maybe crashing the job market with masses of unemployed, which will drive down wages and labor bargaining power, is exactly their strategy.
Very good perspective and I’m genuinely curious how this - in time - may interact with the H1B / skilled worker Visa programs in the US. For all the discussions about re-training for workforce needs, I see a genuinely human conflict perhaps around the corner.
I think this is the best takeaway. This case and its outcome is restricted to its facts. Most of the LLM activity today is very different than what happened here.
The current actively-developed VSCode extension is Tinymist. Its workflow is great and addresses all your issues (to the extent they are even relevant to Typst):
> Well, the feature you mentioned of clicking the PDF and redirecting to the source.
Tinymist does this. Click on text and it redirects the document buffer to the corresponding source text.
> Preview in the same buffer (window) as the code
Tinymist previews in a separate tab for side-by-side real-time writing with a preview.
> It uses other regexps to recognize the enabled packages, and then adds the package's macros and environments to its list, so with a command you can open an environment or macro, and it recognizes which packages you are using, if you are in a math environment, etc. and shows only the ones you can use in the context. It's like a super-intelligent set of macros.
This sounds like an artifact of Tex. The standard Typst library is very thorough. And for everything else, Typst has automatic retrieval of community packages. Just add an #import and it just works:
#import "@preview/example:0.1.0": add
#add(2, 7)
> AucTex has also great support for bibtex/biblatex, and glossary/glossaries, both for using the macros and for compiling.
This just works with Typst in-the-box for bibliographies, and with the glossarium package for glossaries (just add with: #import "@preview/glossarium:0.4.2": *). But one thing a Typst IDE like Tinymist or the web service adds to the writing environment is an autocomplete for labels and citations. Just start typing the reference and get autocomplete options.
> Automatic, intelligent, labeling.
Not sure what this means, but you can add a label to headings, figures, etc. and quickly reference them with @label, and the current IDEs
It seems good, and there's an emacs version, altough simpler than auctex.
Not having the preview in the code buffer, isn't a dealbreaker, especially when typst is so fast, but it's still a useful feature.
The part of the packages I wasn't talking about a tex feature but an emacs one. When you import a package, it'll usually add environments or macros (in typst i believe they are called commands). Emacs would recognize thay you imported a package and with a shortcut you are able to quickly insert a command without writing it manually (because that's too much time... Like a template) It also recognizes the document type for inserting sections, and whether you are or not inside a math environment.
Albeit, looking a bit more in typst I think it's as mandatory as in latex. Commands tend to be simpler and shorter, especially sections. So maybe it wouldn't impact as hard as I had thought.
For references, using bib files, it would be almost as good as latex.
The auto labeling is useful for align envs or itemizes. AucTeX adds a label to each item or equation automatically. Again, not a dealbreaker, but would be great.
Reading a bit more, it seems that typst is a bit more different that what I had thought. I will not switch till cetz is more mature or I find another alternative.
Maybe I'll remake my Cv in typst just to try it out (+ my cv is horrible)
With typst you can get autocomplete for symbols imported from packages or defined locally. And your bibliography can use the same .bib files as latex if you want to. I’m pretty sure the typst editor plugins also know which mode you’re in and give you different autocomplete suggestions depending on the mode. But yeah, it’s probably still not quite as mature. But it is, in my opinion, much better designed.
What features do you want from cetz that you think are missing?
(And yeah making something with it is a good idea. You’ll get much more of a sense of it by playing around with it.)
I've been using it a bit and it works very well, altough it's hard to get used to its way to define ”environments”. About cetz, I miss mainly circuits. There's a plugin, but's years behind circuitikz or its alternatives. I haven't tried it yet, so I can't tell if the support for mindmaps, trees, etc. is as good.
The article gives several examples, including a lawsuit against GNOME Foundation.
It also links to a study that backs up the figures in the title:
> The recent UnifiedPatents, Defending Open Source: An 2022 Litigation Update, report shows patent troll attacks on open-source projects are on track for a 100% increase over 2021.[1]
The report shows its trend graph, and explains its findings:
> Looking specifically at all kinds of NPEs, open-source patent litigation has reached 617 cases, and is on track for over 1,200 cases. This would nearly double the total amount of cases brought in 721 against open source technologies.
In this case, experts are unanimous that this is a hit job by Director Patel (see his poor record here [2]) who had a political vendetta against this civil rights organization. SPLC's actions were all related to investigations to EXPOSE the KKK using undercover informants. They were paying investigators, not the organization. They were absolutely in no way "funding the KKK."
“SPLC is a leading authority on organized hate groups and undertakes the complex and often dangerous work of investigating and exposing these networks. Its outstanding record of tracking and addressing hate belies the misguided premise of the indictment — that SPLC was somehow supporting the very hate groups it has long helped to discredit and dismantle.
“The DOJ’s actions are wrong and part of a broader effort to intimidate organizations working to advance civil rights, strengthen our democracy, and hold bad actors accountable.[3]
[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/120547/presumption-regularity-t...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-...
[3] https://www.lawyerscommittee.org/statement-from-the-lawyers-...
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