Another good article about this.

Idealists are letting perfect be the enemy of the good but I don’t think that’s why Democrats underperformed. Neither Clinton nor Biden/Harris were idealists of this sort (despite some stuff Harris said but didn’t mean back in the 2020 primaries) and they didn’t lose elections because of a lack of support from the idealists. So IMO while the idealists aren’t helping, the very much non-idealistic institutions of the Democratic party which prioritize seniority within the party over electability are to blame.

I’m glad that at least one government is stepping in to protect the helpless public from the menace of, uh, ads over five seconds long. Disaster averted.

Really? I wonder what model year will have cars available without it. I was thinking of buying a new car but I can wait.

I’m used to driving a car from 2008, but I borrowed a friend’s 2021 Subaru Forester and there the engine just shuts off after the car is stopped for a few seconds, even without any sort of cruise control. The engine turns back on when I let go of the brake, but I find the noise, the vibration, and the delay of the startups irritating. There’s no way to get the feature to stay off - it defaults to on every time the car starts and it will eventually turn back on while you’re driving even after you’ve pressed the button to turn it off temporarily. I find that especially irritating. (IMO it’s simply not OK for a car to do something after I’ve pressed the button telling it not to do that.)

If they’re undoing changes that customers hate, maybe they’ll get rid of automatic stop-start too?

Are you arguing that it isn’t a scam?

Generally a scam is something done in secret, and if the government finds out exactly what the scammer is doing then the scammer can get in legal trouble. Here Uber is acting entirely out in the open, the government clearly wants to stop Uber, but writing a law that restricts Uber in the intended way appears to be difficult. (Maybe a law written strictly enough that Uber couldn’t work around it would also impact others that the government doesn’t want to target?) So I would argue that this is against the spirit of the law but it isn’t a scam.

I suppose I don’t give “loophole” the same moral weight that you do. Even if this was not intended to be legal, if the law as written permits it then the blame is on the government for passing a law other than the one intended to pass, not on Uber for taking action in accordance with the law.

(Moral obligations can exist without being legally required, but taxes are a legal construct and there is no such moral obligation to pay them which extends beyond the legal one.)

I’m not saying that taxes are bad. I’m saying that if the government says “there’s a new tax you have to pay if you do that” and you say “ok, then I won’t do that,” you have done nothing wrong. You have a duty to obey the law, but no duty to maximize government revenue.

Do you just voluntarily give the government money that you aren’t legally required to pay?

Windows is transitioning from being software you run to being an experience that Microsoft provides to you. The pattern of pushing new features to users unpredictably and without the option to refuse is clearly inappropriate in the first model but natural in the second. As a power user I strongly prefer the first model, but I recognize that most people these days might be ok with having their computer work like a website they access or an app they run on their phone - something they have no control over the state of.

The World Socialist Web Site? Seriously? This isn’t ML.

Demands made by hunger strikers are not democratic demands because rule by those willing to kill themselves isn’t a democracy.

The PSF is (presumably) already required to comply with Federal anti-discrimination laws. Am I misreading the text or does it not actually create any new obligations for the PSF if they were to accept the grant?

Handcuffs can leave signs, but I’m not sure how examining a body could indicate that the person had been blindfolded. Were the bodies returned with blindfolds on?

I don’t understand what he was hoping to gain. Intercepting the flotilla without anyone getting hurt once it got close to Israel was well within Israel’s naval capabilities and received relatively little news coverage because everyone knew from the start that it would happen. Playing around with drones offended the countries that the flotilla was near when it happened, got a lot of unfavorable news coverage because it is such a weird thing to do, and likely wouldn’t have stopped the flotilla even if it had burned down several ships.

At least his own therapist has helped him express himself only a little unprofessionally.

Do you imagine that the Russian people could possibly change their situation by voting?

I don’t trust Trump about this, but I trust Venezuela about as much as I trust Trump.

I wonder how they managed to target these guys after previous attacks, both by Israel and the USA, appeared to be largely ineffective. Was it a serendipitous opportunity or does it reflect progress on establishing an intelligence network in Yemen?

I’m not saying that ice cream is healthier than a normal dinner, just that if I really crave something sweet then the cost to my health of eating it periodically is actually quite low, whereas the cost of some other desserts (baked sweets are often the worst offenders) is relatively high. That means that a lot can be gained simply by replacing one dessert with a different, equally tasty dessert. Hence my ice cream advocacy.