Google is the latest California-based tech giant to make a major donation to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, which will take place on Jan. 20, or Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      13 hours ago

      The Supreme Court, who are corrupt and take bribes, ruled that bribes are legal. Also that even if they weren’t, the law doesn’t apply to the President.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        11 hours ago

        This still doesn’t fall within their rules. The bribe has to be paid after service for it to be legal.

        So for example, if you’re a purchasing agent for the army and you have to buy new canvas tents. A manufacturer could tell you if you make the award, they will personally pay you $20 per tent purchased. But they supposedly can’t come with 20k in hand and say here you go! Now I get the award for 10,000 tents.

        • kautau@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          You’re correct, this is the even better kind of legal bribery: lobbying. “Donating” to a cause for favorable rulings later

    • aleq@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Seems this is a common thing. Found this and also Claude (the LLM) tells me it goes very far back and kinda got very big around Reagan’s time. Allegedly Obama had some restrictions on his first term, but these were lifted on second term, but I haven’t bothered to verify that.

      However, the answer is yes. Just that it seems to be nothing new.

        • otp@sh.itjust.works
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          9 hours ago

          Hey, at least some people are citing their sources.

          How often do people say stuff like that without telling others where it came from? It’s easy enough to accept things as true if they sound reasonable. Having a source means that grain of salt is already there.

          • snooggums@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            Giving a LLM as a source is like giving your hair dresser as a source for things not related to hair dressing, because LLMs are trained on random people’s online posts mixed in with actual knowledgeable people’s posts.

            Saying they got info from a LLM makes them less credible that someone who might actually know what they are talking about. They basically admit they don’t have the ability to think for themselves and are just trying to promote using LLMs.