No, I was not poor. I was decidedly middle-class, a thing that used to exist in the old days.

I think asset taxes do make a bit of sense at the high end, because super-rich people can and do play all sorts of games to make it look like they have a very low income.

I think any assets owned or controlled by a single person should be tax free up to some pretty high amount, let's say $50M. That's certainly high enough to encourage entrepreneurship. And yes, we can index it to inflation so the poor dears are not too disadvantaged.

After that, it's just excessive and I would support an annual asset tax of around 0.1% to 0.2% of the total value of assets above $50M, and this should include any assets effectively controlled by the individual such as assets in trusts, holding companies, etc. If someone with a net worth of $500M gripes about paying $450K in asset taxes per year, too bad. That's not even a first-world problem.

I've hired probably 25 people over the 18 years I ran my company, and I was nowhere near a billionaire.

But if it wasn't legal to obtain the cell phone data in the first place, then none of that is admissible as it's fruit of the poisonous tree.

Video evidence shows people who are near the video camera. And lets face it: When you're out in public, you don't have much expectation of privacy.

Cellphone location data shows where you went anywhere in the world. That's a lot more information about you than can be gleaned from a few video cameras near the location of interest.

And if you're out in public, you can wear a big hat and a face mask (relatively normalized since COVID) if you're worried about being identified on video. There's no analogous masking possible with cell phone location data.

I meant airplane mode above, obviously. D'oh.

Turning off location services isn't enough. You can still be roughly located by watching what cell towers your phone connects to.

You could put your phone in wireless mode, but who knows if that's completely safe? Or turn it off, but is that 100% safe? Or best plan, especially if you're planning on robbing a bank, leave your phone at home.

It should still be illegal to do a warrantless location search for someone's phone, no matter what technology is used.

Yes, when I first heard about qualified immunity (I do not live in the USA) I was gobsmacked. I can't believe it passed constitutional muster.

Thanks, BMW, for concentrating on the important things. All those losers who want a cheap, reliable, energy-efficient means of getting from A to B have really been distorting the market all these years. Color-changing is obviously far more pressing than any of those things!

Parents cannot fight the social media companies, which have armies of psychologists working on making their products more addictive. Adults are in as much danger from social media as kids are, IMO.

I want a blanket ban on the business models used by social media platforms. No "engagement+surveillance capitalism" business models should be allowed; they should be illegal. For everyone, not just for kids.

It's good to reduce energy dependence on fossil fuel. However, this will serve to make China more powerful since it's the source of the vast majority of the world's solar panels and large batteries.

I think other countries need to ramp up production of solar panels and batteries so as not to give China even more geopolitical leverage.

The answer is Linux. Raspberry Pi Zeros can act as USB devices; it's pretty easy to program one to look like a mouse to the host computer.

So when you take a break, you plug in your fake mouse that does all kinds of random mouse movements and clicks. Just make sure your screen is locked so none of the clicks do anything.

Ontario did it too, and it was very well received by both teachers and students.

If the shoe fits...

The working title of the book was "My Struggle", but I guess that was changed before it was published.