It's a similar concept to Alternative Minimum Taxes [*], which you probably haven't experienced with your own taxes. Basically, deductions that corporations can normally claim are disallowed and then their taxes are calculated at the lower rate. If the result is more than they would pay with the higher rate and broader set of deductions, then they have to pay it rather rather than the normally-calculated amount. So it doesn't apply to all corporations, or maybe even most, but it extracts additional revenue from those that would otherwise be successful at using extensive deductions and credits (also known as "loopholes") to reduce their tax liability.

In some cases they're already committed to the behavior and won't be able to avoid the tax. But, yeah, in many cases this tax may deter the behavior rather than raise revenue. The CBO's projections try to take that into account when projecting the revenue impacts, of course. But I think the main goal of this part of the IRA is to appease populists on both sides who think stock buybacks are bad, because they don't understand how publicly-traded corporations work.

The grants will also be paid out over time, so it's more like spending money in the future that will be raised in the future.

Yeah, it's probably inflation-neutral. The IRA does contain some inflation-reducing provisions in specific areas, notably healthcare, but it's mostly revenue-neutral and inflation-neutral. I suppose you can say it's inflation-reducing compared to its previous incarnation, the Build Back Better bill, which if enacted would have increased the deficit and potentially stoked inflation.

[*] Note that AMT is slightly different in that for most taxpayers AMT is actually calculated at a higher tax rate, in addition to disallowing a lot of deductions. But AMT also allows a much larger standard deduction (with a phaseout based on income).

They're "getting into" power generation? That makes it sound like this is something brand new. I remember when Apple put in its first natural gas cogeneration plant to take its build infrastructure off the grid, back around 2002 or 2003, I think. Google has massive generators around a bunch of its buildings, presumably for the same reason. Big tech has been in the energy business quite literally for decades at this point.

That's *with* time-of-use metering. I'm pretty sure the price for EV metering has roughly tripled in the last five years. And only about 11 to 16 cents of that is the actual generation cost. The rest of it is profit for PG&E. The only way to get reasonably priced power in California is to build your own power plant, which will bring your price down to about 17 cents per kWh, and even that isn't much below the price of gasoline.

For a state that's desperate to push electrification, the state's utility regulators sure don't seem to be on board. That's probably why EV sales dropped last quarter for the first time in years.

We really need to break up the PG&E monopoly or let the state buy it and run it. It has never been more clear that regional-scale for-profit utility monopolies just don't work and can never work no matter how regulated they might be.

If we were sure that we'll never go to war with China, I'd agree. Right now we're facing a situation where we may end up in another world war, but we'll be on the side fighting against the manufacturing powerhouse. If it weren't for such strategic concerns, I'd be all for dropping all the tariffs (well, we should add some carbon tariffs) and outsourcing all the manufacturing to China. Trading electronic dollars that we invent as needed for hard goods? Hell yeah. I'll take all of that they want to give us.

But I don't think the geopolitical situation can be ignored. I'm not sure that propping up the US auto industry is the best way to maintain vehicle manufacturing capacity, but until a better alternative is proposed we should probably stick with it.

It really won't. We already know how battery degradation works. Unless they bought trucks with too-small batteries to begin with, the trucks will wear out before battery capacity drops enough to require replacement.

My point is that expanding the acronym isn't useful, except perhaps to chemists who would already know what the acronym expands to. Explaining what PFAS are is useful. And the article did that:

PFAS are a class of 15,000 chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. Though the compounds are highly effective, they are also linked to cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, decreased immunity, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.

They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and are highly mobile once in the environment, so they continuously move through the ground, water and air. PFAS have been detected in all corners of the globe, from penguin eggs in Antarctica to polar bears in the Arctic.

So, I think the Guardian did a fine job of explaining what matters.

Per- And Polyfluorinated Substances. Did that help?

With 65,502 bytes left over.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

Not flat, 10% increase. Some of that increase may be due to more dual-income households, but we were already pretty well along that transition by 1999.

Let's do that: GDP per capita of the UK: $46k. GDP per capita of China: $12k. But maybe China does better at distributing the wealth? Nope. UK Gini coefficient: 35, China, 47 (higher is more inequality). Until recently China had phenomenal growth rates, but that's only because (a) they started from a very depressed level and (b) they mostly abandoned socialism. As Xi is reasserting more socialist policies their growth engine has largely stopped and their growth rate is currently below that of the UK. It's still positive at the moment, but if Xi continues what he's doing, it will likely go negative.

Socialism -- not social democracy, which is a thoroughly capitalist economy that accepts high but strongly progressive taxation to fund a strong safety net -- consistently drives economies into the toilet whenever applied on any scale larger than a kibbutz. Without fail, every time.

I don't think this is true. If you enable emergency mode video recording you have to enter your PIN to end the recording, but biometrics will still unlock the lockscreen. While the recording is going, hit the power button to activate the lockscreen, which will be unlockable with biometrics. You can also swipe up from the bottom (assuming gesture navigation) and switch to other apps. The device is not locked and not in lockdown mode while in emergency mode.

What you can do is press power and volume up to bring up the power menu, and then tap the "Lockdown" icon. That will lock the device and disable biometric authentication.

If you really, really want to lock it down, power the device down, or reboot it and don't log in. Android's disk encryption scheme uses your PIN/pattern/password ("lockscreen knowledge factor", or LSKF) along with keys stored in secure hardware to derive the disk encryption keys. It would make for a long post to go into all of the details, but given the hardware-enforced brute force mitigation,if the attacker gets a device in this state it's extremely difficult to decrypt any of the credential-encrypted data on the device without your LSKF. This is particularly true on devices that implement "StrongBox" (all Pixels, some Samsungs, some others). Android StrongBox moves some crucial functionality, including LSKF authentication and LSKF brute force resistance, into a separate hardened, lab-certified[*] security processor with its own internal storage, a "secure element".

Of course, note that appellate courts in the US have split on whether or not your LSKF can be compelled. Some have ruled that unless the PIN/pattern/password is itself incriminating, it's no different than compelling the combination to a safe, which has long been held to be constitutional.

[*] For anyone interested in the details, the required certification is Common Criteria EAL 4+ (5+ is recommended, and common, many devices meet 6+), using protection profile 0084 for the hardware and equivalent "high attack potential" evaluation for the software, plus AVA_VAN.5 penetration testing, all performed in a nationally-accredited security testing lab. While certification isn't a guarantee of security (nothing is), the required certification applies the highest level of scrutiny you can get for commercially-available devices. Apple also uses a similarly-certified SE in their devices, but it's not clear whether they use it for LSKF authentication, or whether they use their (uncertified) Secure Enclave.

Maybe not hundreds, but at least dozens. For most people their phone is their digital assistant in all sorts of ways... not only for communication for for calendaring, looking up random things, reading the news or books, listening to music, getting directions, checking their bank account/brokerage, doing calculations, fitness tracking, managing shopping and to-do lists... the list goes on and on.

Alternatively, if, rather than arming both sides with missiles and other weapons that help create bloodbaths, everyone instead treated both sides like small children, put a wall around the country, didn't let any new weapons in, and just let them all pummel the crap out of each other until they tired themselves out, maybe both sides would eventually start to act like adults.

The thing is, there's a second part of the problem, which is that at least some parts of the U.S. government seem to see Israel as their proxy in the Middle East, and I get the feeling that Iran and possibly other countries see the conflict as an opportunity to cozy up to Russia by arming the enemy of America's proxy in the Middle East. And as long as both sides are getting armed by people who are more interested in being the friend of the winner than in actually achieving peace, the conflict will continue to rage on.

It's not really a proxy war, per se, because both sides have kind of hated each other since time immemorial, but even though there was always a fire, various world interests have elected to throw gasoline on it, and that makes the problem worse. Were it not for the realization that there's no good way to keep foreign political powers (Iran, etc.) from supporting groups that attack Israel, my inclination would be to believe that the right solution would be to stop arming Israel entirely. After all, if Israel weren't so confident that the U.S. would always have their backs and supply them with whatever weapons they needed no matter what they do, they might just be a bit more respectful towards the Palestinians as a people. But those foreign powers on the other side make that solution problematic.

Either way, I'm glad to see the U.S. being a lot less vigorous in their defense of Israel's missteps as of late, and a lot more critical. I hope this marks a turning point in the relationship between the U.S. and Israel that pressures Israel to stop taking unilateral actions in retribution against Palestine and to instead start asking other nations to help them get things back under control in a manner that complies with international law.

Genocide, no, but I've been sensing for a few years that a lot of the war hawks in Washington D.C. (mostly people with an "R" by their name) are trying to come up with justification for bombing the crap out of Iran, which might not end the conflict, but would definitely reduce the amount of fuel being added to the fire. I could be wrong about that — it's just a feeling based on what politicians say — but if that happens, I won't be surprised.

I AOA Disagree. :-D

But seriously, yeah, it was Airbus that had airspeed sensor problems (pitot tubes).

But to play devil's advocate here, by that time, Israel had also been whittling away at their territory for decades, illegally taking land from Palestinians and giving it to Israeli settlers, all while denying the Palestinians any real say in the matter. They also occupied parts of Palestinian territory militarily until 2005, IIRC.

Don't get me wrong here. I agree that terrorism isn't an appropriate way to handle that situation, and I agree that Israel has a right to defend itself. But the Palestinians being angry at Israel over the situation isn't *entirely* unreasonable, and Israel's repeated disproportionate responses create martyrs and enmity, which is a bad outcome.

The Israeli people have a right to not be blown up by the Palestinians and vice versa. Both groups have a right to self-governance. Right now, it seems like neither side is willing to acknowledge those rights as applied to the other side. And that's the real problem. Both sides have to stop seeing the other side as a problem to be dealt with and start seeing them as fellow human beings before there can be any true and lasting peace. And that has to start with one side or the other stepping back from the extremist right-wing rhetoric and genuinely seaking peace. Until that happens, IMO, nothing short of outside intervention is going to solve the problem in any long-lasting way.