Talentless hack and way out of his depth grifter who knows the position he has reached and the money he makes in it is really just supported by cultivated connections and his bullshiting ability, rather than any superior strategical capabilities, when the business “strategy” he chose as CEO merelly because “everybody else is doing it” starts to be perceived as not just broken but a bit of a shit show, keeps on trying to push the impression that, actually, he’s just a misunderstood visionary and it’s others that don’t yet recognize how wonderful the direction he chose for the company is.

By using such arguments, maybe once again he’ll “fake it until you make it” his way into success (after all, that’s how he became MS’ CEO in the first place) or, at worst, it will extend how long he can keep on getting paid the big bucks for nothing more than being a lucky bullshitter with the right connections.

I’ve been in Tech on and off since the 90s, including in Tech Startups, and nowadays “leaders” in it are pretty much all grifters, not techies with a vision.

I’ve been reading the posts here and most people are coming from a “decent honest person trying to do his jobs as well as possible” point of view in their reading of the guy (probably because that’s the kind of person they are) and thus giving this guy the benefit of the doubt, whilst from what I’ve seen in that world this guy is almost certainly a talentless hack at anything other than grifting and who, lacking any above average strategical thinking abilities, went for the “everybody else is doing it” strategy which is now blowing up, so of course he’ll use typical grifter skills to try and dig his way out of that hole or, at least, stave off the innevitable end of getting big fat $$$ for holding a position he’s not actually competent at.

The guy is gaslighting because he’s a grifter not a strategist and the “it’s others, not me” line of argument is a common “defend & delay” tool in a grifter’s toolbox.

Innovation as an inherently good thing (rather than merelly new) has always been a mantra and a slogan of the post-2000 Crash generation of Tech “Leaders”, who unlike the ones in the 90s, are almost always grifters rather than techies.

A grifter, when his personal upside maximization (in the form of keeping his job and performance bonuses) is at stake, will say whatever it takes to try and push the impression that his strategical choices as head of a Tech company are “visionary” rather than “blind fad following” because at best he might succeed at “fake it until you make it” and at worst he’s delaying the moment when he stops getting the big bucks for what is mainly bullshitting abilities.

So maybe Mustafa Suleyman smokes the tech bollocks he sells and genuinelly thinks that this stuff is an improvement for customers, but personally and having been in Tech (and the Tech Startup world) on and off since the 90s, my bet is that his words are nothing more than a grifter grifting because that’s the kind of person that world has been rewarding the most since the 2000 Crash.

Nah, most of Europe did exactly the same thing as America last time around. Hell the EU went out of its way to make sure bankers didn’t lose money (how do you think Greek Debt which was entirely in private hands ended up in the hands of the EU, which then turned around and forced Austerity of Greece “to avoid losses of money of EU taxpayers”) - the Corruption was just as bad on this side of the pond as it was on the other.

Iceland stands out because they were almost unique in the West in making the bankers pay for their shenanigans.

Yeah, I just wanted to point out that by the very “logic” of that Propaganda, Israel is way more murderous towards gay Palestinians than Hamas.

It’s a propaganda line that falls flat in the face of even the simplest logical analysis.

One has to actually be a total idiot to believe that Israel is nicer to gay Palestinians than Hamas or think that everybody else are total idiots who will believe such nonsense.

Clearly Israel only ever used special bombs, rockets, artilery shells and bullets which, when they detected a gay person, would change trajectory to avoid harming that person.

Believing that is the only way to possibly believe that Israel wasn’t harming gay people when arbitrarily bombing Gaza and even targetting refugee camps.

Ditto for “opposition people” or whatever other subset of the Palestinian population you can think of: Israel was literally targetting refugee camps and appartment buildings thus killing all kinds of people without exception.

Compared to what Israel did to Palestinian opposition and gay people, what even the most extremist of Hamas did to them is nothing.

Read the rest of the article.

They’re talking about “affordable Samsung models”.

“Budget” for a Samsung, not “budget” for a smartphone on that region and definitelly not “low budged”.

Want to check what “low budged” means for a smartphone in unstable (read: poor) regions, go to to AliExpress and search for “cheap smartphone”.

No Name Chinese brand is “low budget” in those regions, not Samsung.

This is the American version of Kremlinology: just like then all manner of non-political actions of members of the Soviet elites were studied to try to predict the direction of the Soviet Union, now all manner of non-political actions of members of the American elites are studied to try to predict the direction of the United States.

The reason for that kind of thing is that in systems were almost all of the real thinking, motivations and even politically revelevant actions of the elites controlling those nations are hidden or disguised, the only way to try and deduce what’s going on is to look at those things which by need or because they’re deemed to unimportant aren’t hidden or disguised.

Peter Tiel’s bulk stock sales and purchases are one of such non-political data points that might be important in predicting the short- and mid-term future of the US, at least Economically, which in turn has Political implications and more broadly for the future of American and Americans.

Sadly what American elites do in the Stockmarkets tells us a lot more about were they see the country going to than what they say, which itself already tells us way more than what Politicians say.

Well, what’s already happening is circular self-contained greed “economies” were money (not actual wealth just value-tokens such as money but also assets which have valuations expressed in said value-tokens, from crypto coins to realestate and stocks) is made from merely money being passed around whilst no actual value is created (in fact, value is mainly destroyed as those things are consuming actual resources to produce no real value at all, only boost the count of value-tokens)

This is destroying the capability of currently accepted value-tokens to actual represent an underlying utility value.

In other words, thing like stocks but also things like currency are decoupling from the underlying value they used to represent:

• Stocks were a share of ownership in a structure - the company - that created things, either directly - manufacturing, extraction - or indirectly by increasing the efficiency of direct value creation - i.e. services that indirectly made manufacturing or extraction more efficient or helped in distributing the products of those - whilst nowadays the most “valuable” by market capitalization of stocks have almost purely speculative valuations or are for companies in rent-seeking activities which don’t create value but merely take a share of the value created by others.
• Currency used to be (and still is to a large extent) value tokens which were a claim on the value produced by the Economy. What we’re seeing is that as more of those value tokens are created in those circular “economies” each token can claim less and less quyantities of the traditional underlying value things - just notice food inflation. Also rent-seeking activities (such as realestate investment) have even faster devalued how much each value-token can claim. Whilst official Inflation numbers don’t tell us this story (there is a strong motivation for politicians to have Officially recognized Inflation be lower than reality, because Mathematically that makes GDP seem larger), most people are actually feeling the real Inflation, especially in the most ancient and required concrete assets: Food and Housing.

I expect that something is going to break, though I don’t know when and exactly how it’s going to materialized (though the way the ultra-wealthy are trying to transform the powers they captured from Democratic to Autocratic, leads me to believe that they’re preparing for a break in the functioning of the current value-tokens by having a more direct control over just about everything than indirectly by merelly holding lots of value-tokens).

The societal consequences of the value-representation structures we have (literally, of thing like money, stocks and even certificates of ownership) unwinding would be huge.

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Maybe the really unusual thing which made it worth mentioning the “man named Kim” in that group is that out of 200 Koreans there was only one man named Kim?

I personally know a person who was charged and convicted of the Crime of Libel (in what for my country was an incredibly speedy legal process) for accusing a local politician of Corruption.

Curiously, about a decade later said politician was convicted for Corruption. Lets just say it only happened because that Libel conviction really pissed of that person who had time, brains and no fear of their professional life being affected, so they worked tirelessly behind the curtains to push an earlier report into “irregularities” in his City Hall all the way into and as a case against him, including digging evidence even from abroad and having to threaten with exposure in the Press at least 3 public prosecutors who on different occasions were quietly holding the case so that it didn’t get to court before the deadlines for prosecution expired (and even then that politician actually got away with a number of crimes because the deadlines for prosecution did expired for those). In fact that was the first politician ever in my country convicted of Corruption.

Libel having been made a Crime in my country (which is quite unusual in the World) was done exactly so that people can be punished for openly accusing the powerful of malfeasance without the powerful having to bare the costs for a civil court case and actually prove damages (so it mainly helps politicians in the big parties who have the connections to get the local Public Prosecutions Office to take the case to court) and that’s exactly how it has been used.

By an amazing coincidence my country is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and last I checked was the one most behind in implementing the EU advised anti-Corruption measures.

Well, for merely commissioners that moved from the commission to those positions, the first example that comes to my mind is the head of the EU Commission during the 2008 Crash and it’s aftermath, who went to Goldman Sachs afterwards and is still there today as a non-executive president.

During his time in the Commission they were very pro-Finance in the way they handled the aftermath of the Crash with him personally pushing frequently for measures were EU money was used to unconditionally helped the interests of large Financial Industry companies, and Goldman Sachs is one of the largest companies and massively benefited from, amongst other things, near-defaulting Greek Treasuries being bought from the private sector by the EU, which subsequently forced the Greeks into Austerity to as much as possible pay those Treasuries.

There’s even a scandal with him were, whilst working at Goldman Sachs, he broke the EU rules on lobbying by using his access card to EU buildings - which he was entitled to have as an ex-Head of the Commission - to simply enter into those buildings and waltz over to the offices of sitting EU officials to lobby for Goldman Sachs. The EU ended up revoking his access privileges, the first and only time that has happened for an ex-EU Commissioner.

Legally there are no Corrupt EU Commissioners. To be deemed Corrupt there would have to be actual evidence of Corruption (such as recordings of meetings were they explicitly promised to use their power in a certain way, in exchange for some form of payment, which normally only the Police has powers to obtain), them being subsequently charged and a Court Of Law convicting them for the crime of Corruption.

None of them was ever just investigated for Corruption, much less convicted so pointing fingers at any one of the them explicitly and saying that they’re Corrupt would be Libel, which in my country (which by the way, is pretty Corrupt, with actual ex-government members convicted of Corruption) is an actual Crime prosecuted by the local Prosecution Office, not merely a civil lawsuit for damages.

So if I was to name names, I would be putting my head of the block for the Crime of Libel. Obviously I’m not going to do that.

What there is are various coincidences of EU Commissioners which acted in very positive ways towards certain industries and then after leaving the Commission went to work for those Industries making a lot of money, even thought they had no background in them (never before had worked in said Industries, no Educational training for said Industries).

Since the police never investigates it, all there are are such coincidences of commissioners ending up in gold plated gigs in the industries they helped whilst they were commissioners.

I’m not going to put my head of the nose for you by naming names (I’m not a Legal expert so don’t want to risk committing the Crime of Libel by doing so). I suggest you start by looking into were the EU commissioners during the 2008 Crash (during which the commission was very pro-Finance) ended up working afterwards.

That’s because Fascism is the natural end state of unfettered Capitalism as monopolies and cartels form naturally under it over time for most things and capital (which in Capitalism is Power) increasingly concentration, thus Corruption in Politics explodes which in turn accelerates monopoly and cartel formation and thus capital concentration in a vicious cycle.

However homophobia is not an inherent problem of Capitalism, it’s an inherent problem of what Capitalism innevitably leads to if it’s not stopped.

(All of this IMHO).

I’m sure he’s happy to fuck all Apple customers for money if he thinks he can get away with it, which strictly speaking would make him Pansexual.

True.

That is however a pretty hard and time consuming change, so to me it makes sense that in the meanwhile we take steps to reduce the harm caused by the system still in place, not least by cracking down hard on Corruption and Conflicts Of Interest and closing the legal loopholes that allow certain politicians to stay within the Law whilst purposefully using today the power they have been delegated to do favors for others who have promised them monetary payback for it tomorrow.

If you’re drowning now you don’t put all your hopes on the ship that might be coming but isn’t even visible yet.

Sounds like the problem is lack of enforcement of the existing laws rather than the existing laws being bad.

To provide an extreme example, just because there’s a wave of murders doesn’t mean murder should be made legal.

I believe the EU Parliament has to approve this so they can block it, and that’s elected by Proportional Vote and we all have MEPs there who, unlike national parliamentarians in countries without Proportional Vote (which are most of them) have to worry more about the public opinion in their nation turning against them.

So if this shit ever makes its way to the EU Parliament (were the EU Commission will try to make it pass quietly), contact your country’s MEPs and show you’re well aware of it.

Whilst I do not agree with the spirit of the message of the previous poster, I must point out that specifically the EU Comission - from were this came - is not elected but nominated, and the nomination is one big horse trading shit show several levels removed from voters, were everybody but the head of it is chosen by the Council Of Ministers (which only represents EU National Governments , not National Parliaments) so the whole thing is maybe slightly more “democratic” than nominations for the Chinese Politburo.

(If there is one thing that needs changing in the EU political structures, it’s the crooked, rotten shit show that’s the EU Commission).

That said, the EU Parliament which can stop most of this shit, is elected and it’s even via Proportional Vote so there is no mathematical rigging at all to make some votes count more than others (unlike in First Past The Post Power Duopoly countries like the US or Britain) and hence voting in the EU Election does matter.