"What was War and Peace about?" "Explain linear algebra" "What is the history of the Persian people?" "What is the relationship between Dasien and Das Mann?" "What did J.L. Goddard do?" "How do I build a skyscraper?"

If the reply is more than 1 sentence, what's the point? I just want THE answer!

Coitus interruptus

I want to see a breakdown of FF expenditures: salaries, bandwidth, compute, etc.

Maybe there are tech ways to mitigate some of the costs, like using a bittorrent-style technology for bandwidth, encouraging home servers for cloud stuff (password manager, sync, maybe calendaring, etc).

I think there really is something to your point. FF never tries to take advantage of the weaknesses of Google and Apple, they always play nice and never step on toes. They didn't make a big deal out of being blocked from iPhone. They didn't pound of Google over manifest v3. They didn't ho for jugular against the bad monopolistic practices. They didn't set up an alt vision against the "App stores" or the "Cloud" etc. It feels like they decided to just try to stay in their own lane and coast. Do not get me wrong: love FF and the developers - they have done some of the best Free Software work we have ever seen. But maybe the org did become "beholden" like you say. Maybe this is an opportunity to shift.

If amazon pays the tarrifs they can deduct them from their taxes.

If they pass along the tarrifs then the consumer can deduct them

So
1. They have to do this if they are not deducting them

2. And there is no net revenue to the us government on any tax deductible tarrif collected

If amazon passes along the excise tax on a good for resale then they have to provide this to consumers who can deduct it.

If they don't pass it on then they can deduct it.

Either way there is no net revenue to the us government from any deductible tarrif

Lundberg conducts regular arsenic testing and publish results. Whole Foods' 365 brown rice has higher levels than other brands. Rice from California, India, and Pakistan mostly has lower levels than from southern US states like Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. I assume this means that you can mitigate the arsenic. It seems like there are various approaches, some better and more thoughtful than others.

https://nutritionfacts.org/vid...

Did you see the E-waste Recycling in India post here recently? I didn't just RTFS but went to the actual site. Great article; the discussion on that site reminded me of the old days here.

Why do we want free speech?
- People have a natural right to express themselves (moral)
- Speech creates a vibrancy where good ideas or expression can convince, influence, or otherwise "win" (practical)
- The tyranny of the majority as a danger to all is most clear here (political)
- etc.
But these also apply to what "IP" wants to regulate. When I want to sing a song, write a book, make a film, make a speech (much less train my AI) I'm regulated by IP laws. Just posting a video very often leads to all kinds of roadblocks. Some might claim that my art that rips-off other's art is not "my" speech, but think of sampling, remixing, Wicked, Eyes on the Prize, Oresteia, etc etc etc etc. The vibrancy of art, science, and politics comes from various forms of remixing. The idea of free speech forbids us from thinking of the merits of the individual case ("this specific speech is worthless, derivative, threatens someone else's power") because we have faith that the openness of freedom brings forward all kinds of value (moral, artistic, political, monetary) that is not immediately apparent.

A lot of slashdotters and others seems to think that copyrights protect a moral right of artists to control their work, but this is a distinctly European, not American or Anglo tradition - this book gives a pretty good overview: https://press.princeton.edu/bo...

In my mind, the First Amendment came AFTER the copyright parts of the US Constitution, and so should be seen as overriding. I know no one agrees with this, but I think it makes sense. A constitutional power was given to the US government to regulate speech, but then, through the Amendment process, that power was taken away.

If copyright is meant to incentivize artistic and scientific and political advancement, then why is its efficacy not studied? It might be too entrenched to be able to look at, but when copyright is not enforced we see innovations, scientific and technological benefits, money being made, health care improving, and other benefits and knock-on effects. How much more bandwidth, disk space, recording devices, and paint would be sold in a world with no copyright? Can't we predict all kinds of job creation when copyright gets eliminated?

What about making other incentives that don't violate freedom? Subsidies? Tax benefits? Higher taxation on mass-distributed speech by commercial orgs? Stronger regulations against business advertisements? These could open the marketplace, encourage experimentation, make expression come from the ground up. But still leave a lot of room for making money. But these are just small, naive, spitballing ideas. I'm sure we could come up with a lot of new good ideas on how the state could incentivize art and speech.

Why ASSUME that the current system is optimal, but just needs tweaking?

You are taking a narrow view: that we can/should create and manipulate markets to incentivize certain kinds of expression. But there are other, broader, considerations: artists might need or want more freedom; there might be scientific or technical strangulation; the right to access literature and science is often hobbled; etc. etc. All of the arguments for free speech apply: the moral ones, the ones about a marketplace of ideas, the status of minority views, etc. Theories of art do not all privilege economics over other factors (we don't understand some kind of universal incentives for art). The sociology of science isn't leading the way in the demand for IP (academics is complex and not only economic). By investing so heavily in creating a powerful legal, financial framework, we are making a very narrow, niche vision dominate the entire wide field of possibilities.

That said, what you wrote was really interesting, succinct, and insightful.

Are cultural works really "my" or "your" works? It seems that the pendulum has swung so far that most art, writing, film, etc., is controlled by big-monied interests.

The elimination of copyright, I think, would benefit the arts and & sciences, would benefit the people over the big companies. The companies want more IP laws & limits, because this is their way of gathering rents. International trade has focused largely on IP, with the US demanding that China and others respect our legal restrictions. IP has become a deeply reactionary way of looking at things.

I think the rip, mix, burn model is the natural way that people express themselves, build culture, and (indirectly) effect the course of humanity. By making it so highly regulated, we strangle the ability for change to come from below. It serves an intensely oppressive impulse, and is a "market" in all the bad ways (unfair monopoly, rents, legal manipulation) and none of the good ways (trade, competition, innovation).

The big AI companies are going to SUPPORT making it more and more illegal to "train" on "data" -- or in other words, for people to be allowed to freely read and experience culture in its broadest sense. Yes, even China will end up here: it will be very illegal to train your personal AI on unapproved data.

I think the anti-corporate sentiment and impulse of the political grassroots is wrongly focused. I want my personal AI to train on all the books and music and movies and stuff that I love, that I hold dear. Just like how I want my children to read those books, see those movies, sing those songs. The AI that I train for myself will not respect the "rights" of the "creators" of those things. When I read a book and it deeply influences me, I am not doing a disservice to the author! When someone convinces me about an idea, I am not stealing their "product!" When I make a computer program that appreciates the film techniques that I have grown to love, I am not ruining those traditions!

I thought best buy already served as Amazon's showroom ?

Altairs had a little as 1K memory and you entered the boot loader by hand using binary switches. I got a lot of practice with octal using that very Altair computer that bill gates gifted my high school.

Why octal you might ask and not hex. The importance of hex only emerged after we started trying programs. But when you had to enter machine code by hand using 16 dip switches in a row octal could be done using three fingers on each hand. Try to slap four switches at the same time is two spastic a movement for most people's hands. You could go wickedly fast in octal

With the Altair there was no overriding operating system at all so comparing it to Linux is weird. No hard or floppy drives. To write a program you keyed in the boot loader that had enough brains to read something off cassette tape which was a more sophisticated loader that then could read in the 2K basic. The basic could then accept input from a teletype.
If you wanted a file manager for your cassette tape then you write one in basic and ran it.

For me the phone is an appliance. I don't seek crazy standout features if it an anyway degrades my legacy knowledge and expectations in operating my appliance. I don't like relearning how to use a different microwave oven. A toaster is simple and all that matters is that it's a good toaster that cooks evenly and reproducibly.
But I like new features so I don't just want to keep my old phone. I just want an ecosystem that has tamed new innovations and integrates those across my existing apps well.
Getting the cheapest phone is never of interest. Anything you touch more times per day than your wife should be a graceful pleasant experience and so paying a dollar or even two per day for the best experience phone is a no brainer.

You may note I did not say the word Apple. If that sounds like I just described the Apple experience that is your imputation. But you'd not be wrong that Apple serves that customer better than any other

The competition has had years to study Apple, and even hire away their engineers but no one has such a user centric experience as Apple,

I don't need to care what processor I have inside. My privacy is as protected as much as possible. Devices last years. Everything works together. Apple saves time rather worrying about flash.

Apple has been creating its own processor and bus architecture letting it make fan free high performance long battery life computers. It may not be a new product category per se but it sure is innovative as it has let them create awesome performance systems.

You may recall Microsoft spent years failing at moving its OS to arm. Abysmal failure. Surfaces are still playing catchup.

I also like the expansion of my privacy on sppple with things like private relay and on board AI task specific entiiies rather than external servers.

The Apple AR system was sure shell of a lot better than anything Zuckerberg produced. Just because AR isn't being adopted fast doesn't change that they smoked Zuckerbergs
passion project

And the Apple ecosystem still "just works" better than the competition. The creation of a secure privacy centered seamless integration of long lived products is very satisfying to any user that values their time