ClarityJones

I decry the legitimacy of my coffee table, but my toe still hurts when I kick it.

I see some iPhone Pro Max buyers getting this simply because they paid around $1200 last year, then after trade-in ($885 for a 17PM), they could get into the Duo for $1,200.

If someone had that amount of disposable income last year, they might have it to throw at another upgrade this year.

If this proves to be a viable business strategy, then verisign could equally use it to re-sell google.com, ycombinator.com, etc. to the highest bidder.

I think your objection is fairly clear in terms of 1) you point out the difference between e.g. standing with a sign vs. more expensive options, and 2) you say "right to free assembly was to give richer corporations more sway."

Fundamentally it sounds like your complaint is that wealthy people are presumably more able to be effective with their efforts than folks who, e.g. can't afford as big of a bullhorn.

Citizens United wasn't about that. There wasn't a law saying no person shall spend more than $1k/yr supporting a candidate.

I don't understand what you're getting at.

If it's okay for Corporations can run ads themselves, then your objection isn't to wealthy people supporting candidates or even them doing so secretly, but... only when the little guy pools donations and they happen to be pool donations via a corporation?

Yes and no.

No, state's cannot e.g. discriminate on the basis of race by allowing corporations only composed of certain races. States also cannot infringe on the right to assemble or speak, by prohibiting people from supporting political candidates when they are organized as such a group.

But, generally, yes. States can require that the owners / members / corporate books / etc. of a company be disclosed publicly. If owners don't want their books disclosed, then they can forego the immunity that the corporate forms provide.

What is a corporation but people? Companies are groups of people. They're one or more owners, some managers, possibly some staff. If you take away all the people, then there's nothing there.

I wouldn't say CU enabled it. CU didn't address the secrecy of corporate forms. That wasn't at issue. CU was only about ~"Can people use money with their friends to support a candidate."

To say that repealing CU is the solution is to allow the critique to go unresolved, while arguing ~"People shouldn't be free to support political candidates."

Citizens United is a very sound ruling.

People have a right to support candidates > they can print a sign and stand on a street corner > printing signs costs money > people have a right to spend money supporting candidates.

People have a right to assemble > they can stand on a street corner with their friends > they can hold a big sign together > they can have lots of friends and form a group and print a really big sign.

We want to encourage private business > limiting liability for owners who do not participate in the business would increase access to capital > we offer corporate forms that shield investors from liability > identity of owners may be kept confidential.

People complain about the wrong thing. The problem isn't that people are allowed to support candidates with their money, buy airtime, etc.. It's that companies have secret owners...

The Apple chips are quick when the model is "warm" on your second and subsequent requests. It's also quick if you don't have a harness, and feed "Hi, how are you?" as a prompt. However, a lot of common usage is to have a harness with lots of instructions and context. Loading that context is slow. So, the first response may take ~1 minute to return the first token (varies widely by hardware, model, etc.).

Comcast is an ISP and Cable Television provider, with a terrible reputation. When I cancelled my service when them I had to mail the modem back to them. I did it UPS shipping with tracking, because I know not to trust them. They never-the-less claimed they did not receive it, and billed me for the device. Eventually - armed with the shipping confirmation - they acknowledged receipt of the package, but insisted that the box was empty and that I mailed them an empty box.

I forget the other details, but remember to never do business with Comcast or their subsidiaries / partners.

It's a general principle of agency law, but one example would be Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 489 US 602 (1989) involving a drug test performed by ostensibly private railroads, but pursuant to federal regulations. That was considered sufficient government action to implicate the 4th Amendment.

Ironically, those questions are more legal than Flock's current usage. The vast majority of Flock's revenue comes from government, and government cannot hire a 3rd party to do what would be unconstitutional if done directly. Thus far, pervasive monitoring without a warrant has been considered an unreasonable search.

[Edit: I think Flocks "victims" have a decent argument for injunctions for the removal of the cameras on the basis that Flock is conducting an illegal search on behalf of the government.]

However, the government can generally do what the public is allowed to do. So, if there are companies serving a genuine market for monitoring your employees, etc. via video surveillance installed on private property... then the government would not be restricted from accessing what private businesses have access to buy.

And... now it's a vulnerability that OpenAI has for your system, which you paid to provide.

That's an interesting take in 2026, because what I'd read said that SARS_CoV-2 essentially could not have come from a natural origin. They were saying that it was a descendant of a previously know variant, but with a degree of variance that greatly exceeded known rates of natural divergence. Can you share more recent studies refuting that?

England imposed the institution of slavery on the American colonies by means of their regulation of economic affairs. It didn't occur spontaneously from market dynamics, but was specifically provided for by (their) laws.

I don't think there's much meaning in saying the Soviets outlawed capitalism.

Capital continued to exist and there continued to be people who decided what got built and who received them. To me, that's private ownership. I mean, it's not like apple trees suddenly began bearing Ladas. If I wanted to acquire a field to occupy / farm, it was presumably controlled by someone, either an individual person or group of people. I don't see the difference in saying that in one situation my neighbor owns the field as personal real estate, versus whatever terminology the soviets used for why I can't just take it.

People talk about capitalism as if there is a choice; as if Gravity might not pull us towards earth.

The purpose of "the news" is to confuse and delude. There's an argument to be made for less-frequent use, but staying away on Mon - Fri doesn't do much good if you open a paper on Sunday morning and believe what you're being told.

AI is particularly infectious among C suites, because AI is great at spewing words. A substantial portion of folks in those positions are there because of family connections, existing wealth, etc., and their only contribution to the business is similarly spewing words. They went to good colleges where they excelled at spewing words. They worked cushy / hard jobs where they had to spew the just the right normal predictable words for this context, perhaps at a large volume and with little notice... and the words were hard words... not known to those outside the industry.

For those that lack initiative, strategy, a real understanding of their business, engineering, etc., the spewing words is the whole thing. It overshadows their entire understanding.

Raising prices allows Apple to reduce demand, possibly creating some flexibility in the durations of the current contracts.

If they never raise their prices, they can't drop them.

> the town will ... ensure that trees are ... replaced if they must be cut down.

I'd hate to speculate about what this means for people that might stand in their way.

I think this is the opposite of missing the forest for the trees.

It's not a legal fiction that ~"corporations are people." Corporations are literally individual owners, managers, employees, etc. with various personal rights and responsibilities. There is no forest but for the trees that compose it.

Time helps to some degree, but I've worked with professionals who've earned a living for 30+ years, enjoy strong reputations among their peers, and who absolutely do not know what they're doing.

The scientific method is generally to ask a question, and test it, before randomly collected evidence makes the obvious undeniable.

We hear about how dealing with liquid oxygen is hard. I don't know that we hear about industrial sabotage.

> ... the US government announced $2 billion in investments in ... a range of startups ... could be make-or-break investments for many companies that are likely years away from a product that could see widespread use. ...

The article doesn't make it sound like this is "going towards existing approaches". I totally get that you may not support these company's approaches to quantum processer design, but we'd be getting rather into the weeds if that's the hair we're splicing.

If the target were being investigated for terrorism, then the govt could inform the company of that and - if the company tipped the terrorist off - prosecute the company for being an accessory / aid to the terrorist.

However, if the govt claimed that the person was a terrorist and the company knew for 100% fact that the person was innocent and the investigation was in bad faith... they could tip off the victim.

The NSLs only really help in the latter scenario. As long as the govt has a plausible story, there will be a 50% chance that the target is a criminal and the company will not risk notifying the target. With NSLs they can prosecute the company even though there was no legitimate basis for the investigation and everyone knew it.

I think that's true regardless of what happened.

If Railway did something wrong, then letting that be known may help other customers avoid the same ~mistake.