Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | more whatsupdog's commentslogin

> Treat other people as you want to be treated

I want to be left alone, and when I do that to others (leave them alone) they think I'm arrogant.


Also it sends a message that only scientists are welcome as immigrants. There's millions of immigrants who contribute positively to the society, who aren't scientists.


> Also it sends a message that only scientists are welcome as immigrants.

This is not a conclusion I would make without trying to make an anti-immigrant argument.


> BBC is one of the most impartial sources available.

I really hope that is sarcasm. BBC is highly skewed to the left. No debate on that. Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right?


> Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right?

They're saying that the BBC is relatively impartial, not that it is biased to the right.

If you're saying that the BBC has left-biased stories, and therefore the claim of impartiality requires evidence of counterbalancing right-biased stories, I think you need to start by providing evidence of the former. (Even if you think it's blindingly obvious that the left-biased content exists, your examples will clarify what would be required to balance it out.)


> BBC is highly skewed to the left. No debate on that.

The fact that you argued that shows there is some debate. ;)

> Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right?

No, because my point is that it isn’t biased to the left nor right.

What the BBC does is offer both sides of the political spectrum to have equal time sharing their arguments.

If you think that’s biased then what you’re actually saying is that the left deserves less time than the right. Thus it’s not the BBC exhibiting bias.


Is the BBC highly skewed to the left, or is reality?


I don’t think this is the flex you think it is.


their treatment of Israel-Palestine


or, both in modern times and during 'The Troubles', Ireland.

Biased does not mean it has to skew to a certain political leaning all of the time.


I hope you're being sarcastic. If you do want a debate, there's plenty of research on bias at the BBC, and there are examples of bias left and right, pun intended.


Air Canada vouchers also expire in one year. I had the misfortune of having a flight cancelled at the beginning of COVID. They never refunded me, because apparently you had to go fill a form to apply for a refund within a few days of cancellation. Air Canada is the worst.


> I'll bet $10 it hasn't! That I can't send $10 from one country to another, without paying fees that are a significant proportion of that amount

It has been solved, but the hacker news hivemind hates the solution. Sending USDT on Ethereum chain costs 25 cents usually.


I think I agree with the hacker new hivemind, but I think I formed the opinion separately. I did a few small transactions with bitcoin ages ago, and it was a huge pain. Buying the bitcoin was painful, and then I couldn't send an exact amount, it's better to receive change to a different address, and the fees weren't as cheap as I expected for small amounts.

I often hear this has been solved with additional layers, and I see that you mentioned Ethereum instead of bitcoin. Is that significantly easier? $0.25 is not bad for $10, so the fee seems fine. I'm accepting money in an envelope as a solution, and that costs more, but I'm keen to hear whether this would have been easier.


Bitcoin maximalists have purposely ruined the cheap transactions on Bitcoin (in order to sell their own centralized solution) by limiting the block size. If everything had gone according Satoshi's original plan, we would have transaction fees in cents today. That's why I mentioned Ethereum, because it's eating Bitcoin's lunch in cheap transactions and contracts.


If you ignore parts the transaction sure it is cheap. What can I do with USDT? no shop near me would accept it, most major digital commerce stores like Amazon won't accept it, my bank won't accept deposits in USDT.

If I have to start and end with USD which is what anyone interested in other three functions of money want, there is USD -> USDT and back to USD costs, and depending on geography there may not be cheap or legal way to make that trade, which means it is going to be far more expensive than just the $0.25 "gas" fees.


Go to a site like bitrefill and buy a gift card for any store where you want to spend it. I often buy Amazon, Uber, Apple, etc. cards from them. Pretty straightforward. Obviously they might not support any stores in your country, but they seem to have a wide reach. And they are not the only ones in the game.


I'm fine with that solution, how can I store the $10 safely in that case?


Download a wallet on your phone, I guess. As long as you are not downloading unverified APKs left and right, your 10$ should be pretty safe. I can even bet a 10$ on it!


What happens if my phone gets bricked?


I guess you'll be more worried about a $200-$4000 phone over $10. If you are planning to get hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of crypto, buy a hardware wallet. They are hack proof and you can write down the seed phrase as a backup in case the wallet bricks.


Agree. And the constant spying doesn't help either. Who wants an always online meta controlled camera/microphone in their bedroom all the time?


I'm never going to update a photo government ID to some company just to use an app. What kind of a bonkers world are we living in? Totally ridiculous. No app is worth this.


Some sites outsource their ID verification to platforms that want live videos of different angles of your face, along with pictures of your ID.

Literally all the data they could possibly need to build 3D models of your face for even better facial recognition, along with plenty of data to train models on. When that data eventually leaks, it will be interesting.

It's insane that anyone puts up with it.


> "that want live videos of different angles of your face"

Hetzner (outsourcing to Idenfy) dared to demand this of me, three years ago. I'm still mad about it.

> "When that data eventually leaks,"

Indeed, my understanding is these sensitive biometrics are generically (i) uploaded in full to a remote server, where they're (ii) retained for a nontrivial amount of time, because they need to be (iii) manually QA'd by humans. It's nothing like an iPhone's local-only biometrics enclave. My understanding's based on the specific case of Idenfy, and an ex-Idenfy HN'er explaining its workflow[0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33863625#33864440


Hetzner (in Germany) never did things like these to me. What were you trying to do with them?


Hetzner uses some kind of AI (the old kind) to assign risk scores to customers. In my case they just wanted a photo of my passport, but that was years ago. For some people they just outright deny access no matter what you upload. Other people just go right on through.


It’s likely your face in multiple angles already exists online whether from photos or videos, simply because you were in the background of someone else taking a photo or video. Whilst I align with you in being restrictive in the data we share online, corporations and government with infinite resources likely have everything they need to construct “3D models of your face for even better facial recognition”.


people scan their retina in exchange of coupons amd shitcoins in mall booths


Some people also eat rocks, it doesn't mean it's common or even a good thing to do.


desperate people do that. Scammer Altman went to Argentina during the peak economic crise of the century to make that offer.

likewise, most USA government backed benefits require people to submit all sorts of biometric to a private company who used to monetize coupons for military deployed personel, called gov.id or something.


I've seen them in Chile, which wasn't in crisis. Always had a queue waiting to be scanned.


I had to go through this shit show once in my life, in order to use Airbnb.

It's been a few years since I last used Airbnb and I regret that moment of weakness.


Most new accounts seem to require a face scan too (finally they're true to their name?). I recently needed to get a Facebook account and was not able to use it without providing the scan. Luckily I was able to do an AI face swap, but far from everyone is that savvy.


Interesting. Did you swap your face on a computer, and pointed the smartphone camera on the monitor?



Lots of people, actually. This website is an echo chamber of those privacy-conscious.


HN is typically slow to admit it, but Facebook and TikTok wouldn't be popular if you were wrong. Consumers don't care.


Consumers don't know or want to know rather - ignorance is bliss when it comes to getting Children to spend relatively quiet time independently. Otherwise the GOP would be virtue-signalling about getting Roblox as a platform getting banned due to the preponderance of predators and material unsuitable or unsafe for children.


I live in Europe so there are still rules keeping Weyland-Yutani in line.

If you're in the US you're on your own I guess.


Google glass


People care about other people they meet spying on them or doing creepy things. They don't care about people they don't meet spying on them or doing creepy things, because they don't notice it and it has a very low chance of showing up in the social media feed of people they know.


Totally. Most people just click Accept All on the dumb cookie banners, and they don't give a sh*t about privacy at all.


Its not that they dont care at all. They just dont care until they feel the pain of it, because they are optimising for short term satisfaction.


You already have one, regardless of some companies repeating the privacy claim 24/7 to make you believe so.


Objectively speaking, most people do. That's why Meta has so much money.


The only reason I ditched GrapheneOS is because it doesn’t support automatic call recording. Sure, you can hit the record button every time you pick up, but who remembers to do that? Plenty of people have asked for this feature on GitHub [0], and the way the lead developer responds makes it look like there are some serious unresolved mental issues at play. Then I watched Louis Rossmann’s video [1] about him, and that sealed it. I refuse to touch Graphene OS with a 20 foot pole.

0. https://web.archive.org/web/20250123135603/https://github.co... 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1x1Dy-ej4


> Then I watched Louis Rossmann’s video [1] about him, and that sealed it.

fwiw, Louis Rossmann's employer/key supporter has disbursed grants to GrapheneOS and associated projects.

> Plenty of people have asked for this feature on GitHub

The issue has been deleted, but from the archive, (assuming the "lead developer" jab is aimed at Daniel) Micay says, "This is an issue that's going to be fixed and not a reason to change this." Then goes, "Please use reactions on the top level issue instead of adding comments expressing support for a change. You're sending unnecessary emails to the project developers."

As someone who maintains rather unremarkable FOSS projects, saying NO to feature requests is not at all easy in that it irks the community to no end, let alone one as large as Graphene's. Everyone is quick to reach all sorts of conclusions and pass judgements.

> ... the way the lead developer responds makes it look like there are some serious unresolved mental issues at play

afaik, there's 3 directors (also developers, from what I can tell) who steward GrapheneOS. Don't suppose they are all "mental"?

https://www.canadacompanyregistry.com/companies/grapheneos-f...


they actually don't want futo grants anymore

> FUTO made a $40k donation to GrapheneOS supposedly with no strings attached. They ended up being unhappy with us not making content with them and promoting them.

https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1854611673711353902


Why is it that whenever someone makes an accusation of bad behaviour from GrapeheneOS devs, they always end the posts with citations that lead to absolutely nowhere? Where, specifically in that first link as I don't consider a Louis Rossmann video a credible source, are these indications of "unresolved mental issues"?

Don't post another link or quote from anywhere else. You provided that link as evidence and I want to see specifically what it is you expect people to take from it.


Do you think Louiss fabricated that chat he was showing in realtime? Seemed pretty unhinged to me...


Strcat gets harassed based on frivolties, manufactured outrage. There have been repeated accusations of mental health issues without any substantive evidence, including from the person I was just replying to. The evidence they do give is usually of the developer expressing frustration at dealing with those accusations, which is ironic given that those accusations are self evidently true given that the people making those posts are usually accusing them!

All I see in Rossman's video is someone frustrated by a influential person giving a platform to an organisation that, to be frank, has shown themselves to be considerably less trustworthy than GrapheneOS. I believe strcat has been the target of harassment, I believe them because I've seen it happen and given the sensitive nature of GrapheneOS I also think it's not terribly unlikely there was an organized disinfo effort.

That I've seen "This is informative and unfortunate." come up over and over again as if it were some mantra, I guess is sorta telling. People aren't thinking for themselves, they're just uncritically absorbing the opinions of the charming people they're watching on youtube.


Idk anything about this drama, but "frustrated" is generous interpretation. Dude left an comment on a YouTube video and the guy freaked out on him. Seems like exactly the type of behavior he's claiming isn't real. I just want to know the OS I'm installing on my phone isn't at the whims of anyone who could pull a "colours/faker" stunt. But hopefully the project has governance and control that no single person could that that anyways (otherwise it'd be hard to calm it's a "secure" alternative)


If you don't know anything about the "drama" then maybe you should avoid jumping to conclusions.


I don’t think that you need to know anything about the drama to know that there is no context in which responses showed in the video are fine. Did strcat apologise for it?

I don’t understand these GitHub links either. None of them which I’ve seen bad at all. I don’t understand the one with strcat’s post history either. The comments which are one the first two pages are completely fine.


Rossman was complicit in harassment, harassment (particularly at this scale, driven by their significant viewer base) that would be harmful to literally anyone who would be the target of it. strcat was upset, understandably, and privately communicated that to Rossman who then proceeds to cynically turn it into something to generate more views for his channel.

Apologise for what?


Once again, there is no context in which strcat’s comments to Rossman would be fine which are in the video in full. Repeating a context won’t change this. Even if the main points of strcat is fine, their style was really, really bad, without the possibility of excuse. They got plenty of options for excuse during the conversation, they clearly didn’t use them. The whole conversation just seemingly proved the point of “harassments”.

So I assume they didn’t apologise. Stupidly, further proving the points of “harassments”, which I can imagine exist and probably disproportional, they were just stupid enough to give data points to support them more. For no good reason.


The video you're referencing very clearly exists for the purpose of directing harassment towards me based on fabrications and spin as part of Rossmann's bullying towards me. Nearly all of the claims he makes in the video are lies of misrepresentations, including even the title.

You're supporting someone who very openly engages in libel and bullying towards me while he was actively publicly using and catering to Kiwi Farms. The content is very clearly aimed at that kind of audience and to make the harassment much worse, which it did, and Rossmann continued to double down on that.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45255341.


I reflected only on the comments which you sent to Rossmann; you don’t deny that you sent those AFAIK. I purposefully ignored everything what Rossmann said. As I said, even if you’re right, those comments were mistakes.


Your claims about the conversation are based on Rossmann's lies about what was said and his lies about the context for it. He was and still is actively and openly engaging in bullying, libel and harassment. You're not even being specific about what you think is wrong. The conversation happened after violence he helped to encourage. He then made a very clear attempt to direct more violence towards me with the harassment content he published. Rossmann openly uses many of the same tactics and tropes as Kiwi Farms to cause harm to people. It's therefore not surprising that he openly has a verified account on the site where he pals around with serial harassers and vents to them about what's bothering him including naming people he has issues with. It's clear what his tactics are meant to accomplish including the incredibly dishonest content he published about me to direct his followers and Kiwi Farms friends to target me, which they have.


It's a fabricated story which you're taking at face value. What Rossmann claims to have been said to him was not said to him. He deliberately misrepresents what was said and the context of him engaging in many months of public and private bullying leading up to it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45255341.


The basic thing is that the developer had been swatted multiple times right before that video. Swatted by a fan of the YouTubers who made the video that Louis commented on.

But the targeted update thing isn't even possible on GrapheneOS. The update server is basically a basic web server. The updates are stored on the servers and the update client downloads them. All update files follow the same naming system and the update client downloads updates using that system.

The update client never sends any IDs either.

So if GrapheneOS can't get unique IDs, then how can targeting be done? It's just not possible.


> Dude left an comment on a YouTube video and the guy freaked out on him.

No, that's part of Rossmann's heavily fabricated story about what happened. The reality is that Rossmann's live stream and video very clearly aimed at directing harassment towards me with spin and fabrications were only a further escalation of his ongoing bullying towards me. His video is self-evidently dishonest bullying and harassment. Even the video title was a lie disproven by his own followers catching him continuing to use GrapheneOS as a daily driver with his important apps and data for many months afterwards. He did eventually move away from it, potentially multiple years later, but his claim to have deleted it was a lie, as were his claims of being scared of us replying to his attacks or targeting him with an update. It was utter nonsense to justify engaging in a massively escalated form of bullying using his community as a weapon to cause harm to someone and try to destroy their life.

Rossmann actively uses Kiwi Farms with a verified account and was very clearly catering to them. He actively seeks their friendship and respect in a thread he was actively using before and after posting the video. He's friendly with the person who posted the harassment and doxxing thread clearly aimed at causing physical harm to me and further propagating fabricated stories/claims about me. Rossmann continued to post jabs towards me and complaints about us on Kiwi Farms following that thread being posted which has acted as a regular reminder to them to keep targeting us. He continues to actively post there and engage with serial harassers.


[flagged]


It's kind of funny that you're doing the exact same thing the person I initially responded to was doing, making a broad accusation and posting a link as evidence without specifying what it is within that link that you have a problem with. Grow a backbone and actually pull a quote that you feel is relevant.


joemazerino very frequently makes inaccurate claims about GrapheneOS and has been participating in bullying towards me for years. He has repeatedly lied about me and pushed fabricated stories. You're not going to find anything in my post history to back up his claims that I'm insane or delusional. If you look through his comment history, you'll find a lot of evidence that he has an unhealthy obsession with me and is blatantly engaging in bullying. It's something Hacker News should be addressing as a moderation issue. It should not be permitted to engage in blatant bullying and harassment on this platform including repeatedly claiming an open source developer is insane.


[flagged]


Convincing or not, given strcat (Daniel) is very vocal that you stop (what they sincerely feels is) harrasment, should be an indication enough that you do.


I don't listen to people who accuse me of being complicit in swatting attacks, and I don't cowtow to bullies. The truth will always come out.


This is informative, and unfortunate

I don't use call recording and also don't care about some guy I've never heard of ranting for 18min about some pointless comment he made on youtube causing drama (but I do care about NFC payments so that's why I haven't tried GrapheneOS yet).


I am sick of people raising this developer's mental issues. This is 2025, we should be sympathetic and encouranging to any human being struggling with mental issues, helping them get through or at least not trip them or sideline them. GrapheneOS is undeniably a project of great value, if you don't like something about it's development raise it and stop there as you would do with any project. Stop the "Graphene doesn't have X feature but the lead dev is nuts so I don't touch it" meme.


Completely agree. Writing off the project's numerous benefits on the basis of one missing feature is irrational. Immediately moving on to attack him personally by claiming he's mentally ill makes it impossible to assume good faith.


This is besides the point. The lead dev started going on a rant when facing a comment as simple as "this is informative, and unfortunate" on a video that he didn't like, and is unable to parse that statement as anything else but a personal attack at him. He threatened banning Louis over that unless he completely gave in. You can see the whole discussion in the video linked in the post above.

It's a communication issue at the core, and always doubling down is not making it any better.

It portrays the whole project as being unreliable.


I know the whole story in depth and you keep iterating over the same thing.

If this person has indeed mental issues, to publicly expose it in a degrading light does not help him, or anyone else really.

If he doesn't have mental issues then all this discussion is unjustly defaming a person and damaging perception around mental issues.

Either way this discussion is bad.

You are the one portraying the project as unreliable. I only judge GrapheneOS by the actual output being delivered, the code and and the binary that is. And if you go down the route of validating the output based on his behaviour then i would flip it on you. I would much rather use an OS developed by a paranoid guy who thinks everyone hunts them. I'd bet it's more secure.

But this is silly-talk. What matters is the deliverable. Has the project given any evidence of being unreliable or not teustworthy?


Posting "this is informative, and unfortunate" as a comment to a video with a bunch of inflammatory accusations is giving credence to and expressing approval at the substance of it's content.

So no, it isn't as "simple" as the issue being only the literal content of that comment. The context matters.


As someone else pointed out, it's not just the comment. There's context you're either ignoring because it's inconvenient for you, or you don't know because you couldn't be bothered to learn more about it.

The video is harassment content, plain and simple. It's filled with disinformation and he lied about not using GrapheneOS moving forward. The developer was swatted multiple times, then when upset with Rossmann he tried to talk to him about his support for harassment content (the swatter was a fan), and instead of being a decent human being, Rossmann made a video of it while it was happening.


GrapheneOS being in use by people and orgs with a high security requirement dictates an organizational review. OPSEC extends beyond just cyber capabilities.


The people calling me insane, delusional, schizophrenic, etc. almost entirely don't believe what they're saying as there's no actual basis for it. All they can do is link to incredibly dishonest harassment content from Louis Rossmann and Henry Fisher where they engage in a monologue pushing fabricated stories. What they show as supposed evidence doesn't at all match their claims and instead they heavily misrepresent it.

Many people enjoy participating in harassment towards an open source developer when they have a disagreement with the project such as our requirements for accepting a pull request for automatic call recording. We've said we won't accept it without showing that it's active so that people are aware calls are being recorded when it's enabled. That's more than enough for some people to participate in harassment.

Hacker News shouldn't be permitting it over and over again.


Couldn't that be achieved by a separate app? Why would the OS need to do it?


Automatic recording may be illegal in jurisdictions that mandate permission from both parties. I can see why gos might not want to include it in a base operating system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_call_recording_laws


We never said we wouldn't implement it. We said the current pull request is inadequate because it doesn't show users that it's enabled so people can end up accidentally recording a bunch of calls if they toggle it on and forget about it or toggle it by accident.


Samsung phones have it. I have verified from at least one source who lives in one of such jurisdictions (India), a Samsung phone they bought has this feature. So, it doesn't have anything to do with the law.


I'm one of GrapheneOS's moderators and just saw this.

What I see here is someone who wants a feature, a feature that many people want, but it hasn't been added for reasons listed in the GrapheneOS issue tracker. No one was rude or anything there in that link you shared that I can see.

> the lead developer responds makes it look like there are some serious unresolved mental issues

To say something like this is extremely out of line.

> Louis Rossmann’s video

What you fail to mention here is incredibly important context, but leaving that out conveniently supports the narrative that Daniel is crazy. Biggest fact there is that he had just been swatted multiple times. Louis commented on another harassment video and Daniel was understandably upset. By the way, the swatter had been in contact and even told GrapheneOS project members that they were a fan of the YouTuber who made the first video. So, attempted murder by some other person, a "friend" was supporting harassment content making him out to be "crazy" and comments on that video showing support for it, then, knowing that, Louis records a video of a private conversation in real time. The video itself was filled with lies and misrepresentations. Even the title was a lie because Rossmann continued to use GrapheneOS for long after that video was released.

Not to mention the fact that targeted updates aren't even possible on GrapheneOS considering how updates work and the infrastructure. Louis may not understand these things, but even though we and others have pointed this fact out multiple times, the video remains up. The video is clearly meant to do one thing: damage or destroy GrapheneOS.


From what I can tell sounds like this guy's stepped away from the project? Curious what the latest status is.


He didn't step away. He made a post where he "stepped down" as the project lead and instead got replaced by a "GrapheneOS Foundation director", of which there are 3 including him.

That post has been deleted.

As far as I can tell, nothing has changed other than obscuring the leadership of the project a tiny bit. strcat is still active here in the comments.


Is strcat the person who supposedly stepped down?

If so, I'm glad he's still project lead. I would have immediately written off GrapheneOS as a lost cause if he wasn't.

I have spent many hours browsing his comment history and reading his extremely detailed posts on Android and smartphone security. He obviously knows what he's doing. Not only is he competent, it's also clear that he cares way too much about GrapheneOS and is personally invested in it.

Competence and actually giving a shit are the two attributes I respect most in a person. I wouldn't want anyone else making decisions.

And that's coming from a guy who publicly disagreed with him on some ideological issue literally three days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45214818


> Is strcat the person who supposedly stepped down?

They're misrepresenting our announcement. It's unsurprising since it's in the context of supporting harassment towards me based on fabrications. Unfortunately, Hacker News consistently permits baselessly calling people insane, schizophrenic, etc. and pushing fabricated stories about them.


Getting to the meat of why they didn't implement automatic call recording is that storage could fill up and they didn't want to implement managing user storage? I mean sounds like a fair call.


We never said we wouldn't implement it. We said the current pull request is inadequate because it doesn't show users that it's enabled so people can end up accidentally recording a bunch of calls if they toggle it on and forget about it or toggle it by accident.


It's been known for years that bad oral health leads to heart disease.


How is grade 6 treating you so far?


This action might save trillions of dollars when the future generations will see all this money going to war, instead of "defense". And you are worried about a few million it might take to rebrand?


To believe that this rebrand was anything other than the self service of a strongman is willful ignorance.


And it doesn’t even make any sense.

It’s not Gen Z or the Alphas (“future generations”) are thirsting for war. It’s still going to the same organization no matter what we call it.

It’s just a fig leaf argument to justify a colossal waste of money and time.

The DoD has many problems but the name isn’t one of them.


I doubt it. People want to live with their heads in the sand.

After all, "War and Peace" had a working title "War, what is it good for" before his mistress insisted he change it.


> "War and Peace" had a working title "War, what is it good for" before his mistress insisted he change it.

I suspect that you are being facetious, but for the benefit of anyone else reading, this is not true. It's a "factoid" (an invented fact mistaken as true)[1] spawned from a joke on the TV program Seinfeld[2].

This has been your daily wet blanket.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/factoid

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqS1Ty79mOE


booooooo!!


Oh no, a spooky ghost!

(Unless, of course, you were saying "Boooourrrns")


Maybe it's more obvious when named this way, but I don't think I've ever been under the impression that the DoD is focused on peaceful means of keeping the peace.


You're right. USAID was the Department that used peaceful means and encouragement for suffering countries in spite of lack of resources, adventurism, health and wealth inequalities and border disputes. It was a stick and carrot way of influencing participation in the spread of democracy, feeding the hungry and warding off disease that could spread to the rest of the world.


Transparency might cost a government in a direct sense, but the liberal argument would be that a transparent government is a more democratic and accountable government therefore that cost should ultimately result in better governance which has lots of indirect benefits.

In reality the majority of the US military budget does not go to defence in the colloquial sense, it's far more about projecting US power globally (which isn't necessarily a bad thing if you think that the US is projecting it's power for good).

"War" is a better description and sounds less innocent than "defence" would imply, although I think you could argue that even this is a slightly misleading description.


This it how it used to me.

We had a War Department. Rebranding to Defense was a PR move to hide what was really happening.

This is a good thing as it’s far more truthful.


While it sounds more honest, that department has done far more defense than war since the '40s.


> This it how it used to me.

No, its not; not that the implicit equation of “how it used to be” with “how it ought to be” is valid to start with.

> We had a War Department. Rebranding to Defense was a PR move to hide what was really happening.

No. We had a War Department that was the agency responsible for the Army, including what was then the Army Air Forces, and a Navy Department that was the agency responsible for the Navy including the Marine Corps. Splitting and rebranding the former to the two Departments of the Army and Air Force was done to simultaneously more accurately reflect its responsibilities and to address the growing significance of air power.

This split was simultaneous with the old and now split up War Department and the old but keeping its name Navy Department being subordinated to the new consolidated military establishment named the Department of Defense, but the Defense Department wasn’t a new name for the War Dpartment, it was the name for a completely new thing placed above the older, separate military departments.


Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: