There's a better way to fuck Bezos. Buy stuff from Target, Walmart, Netflix, or Apple instead of Amazon. Hit him where it hurts, his wallet.

Probably, but that's not entirely bad. Any increase in housing supply will drive down costs all down the line. If developers build high-end housing, some hipsters will move out of their grunge studio apartments and free them up for other people.

Will that be enough to ensure there's enough supply so Starbucks baristas can afford their own place? Probably not, at least not until you build a lot of units. The low end is probably going to be the last market filled when there's a huge unsatisfied demand. But maybe not: make it easy to build really inexpensive homes and someone will decide to make a thin profit on each unit and just build a zillion of them (the Walmart model of housing). Just don't require solar panels on each house like California just did. (Solar panels in San Francisco? Have you ever been to San Francisco? Sunny and warm are not typical adjectives for the City by the Bay.)

A few things come to mind, in reverse chronological order. Most recent, the Obama administration passing the ACA without any Republican support using a legal but marginally ethical procedure. IMHO, that burned any remaining bridges between the two parties and they haven't cooperated ever since.

Before that, the chaos after the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The invasions pretty broad support at the start but the blood bath afterwards (and the slow reveal that the invasions were based on false pretenses) really soured a lot of people on the GOP.

Before that, the 2000 election results. The SCOTUS decision to cut off the recounts also soured many Democrats from ever wanting to work with Republicans, no matter what. That's the converse of the ACA procedure.

And the first major blow came with the Clinton impeachment process. Many viewed that as a purely political attack and again, soured many Democrats from ever being willing to work with Republicans.

Add it all up and everyone has an axe to grind and a reason to want to grind their opponents into the mud. Neither party seems at all willing to debate issues on their merits. It's all about denying their opponents a victory at all costs.

The closeness of US elections doesn't help. I'm sure the political scientists can explain why having a closely divided electorate enhances partisanship. California is under complete Democratic control right now and Sacramento is pretty calm. There's no reason to have a noisy battle and every reason to cooperate. Not being a Democrat, I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with that situation but it is peaceful.

I'm a little puzzled. How exactly is your local ISP screwing you over?

They offer you a service, you willingly buy it. No one put a gun to your head. Contrary to popular belief, you can live without internet access at home. If you don't like their service, why are you paying for it?

It is possible you live somewhere where there aren't any competing ISPs. That's probably a gripe you have with your local mayor or city council. Go tell them to make it easier for AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile to set up cell towers so you have good cell coverage. Tell them to make it easier for AT&T/Comcast/Cox to dig up the streets to lay cable. Tell them to not sign contracts giving one ISP or the other exclusive access to your neighborhood.

Once you have options, then you can tell your ISP to go f*** themselves if you don't like how you're being treated. That's something the ISP will listen to.

Sure. That's why they should have tried to pass a bill under the previous President. Oh wait, that would have been DOA in Congress too.

This, and things like the Iran Nuke deal, underscore how shaky it is to bypass Congress and administer "with a pen and a phone". Anything done unilaterally by one administration can just as quickly be undone by the next, as we're now seeing. If a President wants to accomplish something lasting, he or she needs to get Congress to go along with it and pass some legislation. Otherwise, your legacy is built on a foundation of sand.

Yay Founding Fathers for making it harder to implement controversial policies without getting broad support. That's not sarcasm, this is why we have separate branches.

In this case, I'm happy with current outcome. The Net Neutrality regulations were a bad solution to a non-problem. I'm sure there are other cases where I'll be less glad policy is flip-flopping every four to eight years.

In addition, I think we're much further from a self-aware AI than the OP suggests. The AIs we create now are idiot savants. They have absolutely no self-motivation, no personality, no emotions, no goals, no nothing. In many ways they're about as intelligent as a beetle.

Let's suppose we create AIs which can reason about the world and figure out solutions to abstract problems without explicit programming. Now we have the motivation issue. Today's AIs don't have any initiative to do anything we don't tell them to do. An AI wouldn't "care" about Monster Truck Rallys (Sunday..ay..ay..ay!!!) because they have no reason to care. We haven't even started working on that so it's very hard to guess what it might eventually look like.

So, I submit that a truly intelligent and self-aware AI will likely behave however we program it to behave. At some point we'll give it goals and values ("I should value the innocent bystander's life over the driver's.") Some goals will emerge out of complex system in ways we won't predict and that will be interesting to see. Terrifying, perhaps, but hopefully wonderful too.

This isn't the first company to set up antenna, catch OTA signals, and time or space shift them. Wasn't there a case against some other company a few years ago? IIRC the company won with the courts saying time and space shifting was permitted.

That doesn't work for streaming services. I'm obligated to have a Netflix account to view Netflix content. I can see how it might be fine for me to buffer the bits and watch them later. I don't think I have the right to keep those buffered bits if I should cancel my Netflix account. I don't think it's ethical (and probably in violation of my contract with Netflix) if I buffer the bits and share them with anyone who pays me $20.

So how is Set TV legally getting the streaming content to re-stream?

Except, sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case for copyright. What with retroactive extensions of copyright, no published works will enter the public domain in 2018. On January 1, 2019, some works from 1923 will become public domain, assuming a well known media conglomerate with a rodent mascot doesn't buy another extension.

I understand why the House of the Mouse wants to protect their holdings. I understand (but despise) how Congress might go along with this. I really can't understand how The Supremes can reconcile the incentives intended by the Constitution with the idea of retroactively protecting works which are already published. Extending copyright by (essentially) a year every year doesn't sound like much of a "limited duration" to me.

"Somewhat"?!? They're blowing up the entire industry! As a consumer, this is fantastic. The competition for my attention (instigated by Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and others) is forcing all the studios to up their games. Yay free market! Yay no legal barriers to entry!

Now back to The Expanse...

Really? I don't watch much cable or OTA but I watch a lot of YouTube, Netflix and Amazon. We're living in the golden age of video content, at least through streaming distribution.

If you can't find nice content, you must have much higher standards than I do. I'd love to know what you think nice content would be and how it's better than the best available today.

I don't blame Amazon for receiving subsidies. Well, I wish they'd have the principles to not ask but that's a lot to expect.

I mostly blame cities and states for offering those subsidies. We've seen time and again that they're generally a terrible investment. When will cities and states learn that the only way to win is to not play the game?

Absolutely. Amazon is following the Walmart playbook. Walmart is ruthless about cutting costs so they can undersell the competition (which, at the time, was Sears, K-Mart, and the like) and have a good (or good enough) shopping experience to draw in customers. Amazon's tactics are different but they're definitely trying to be the one-stop-shop where you can find everything at prices low enough you don't bother shopping anywhere else. That's the value they add over older business models. The ideas aren't totally revolutionary, it's the implementation which blows the doors off everyone else. That implementation is totally something you could steal...er...redistribute.

To be blunt, so what? This is a decision for Californians about how we want to govern ourselves. Why does it have to benefit anyone outside the state? And as a Californian, why would I give a hoot about their opinions?

If I'm reading the map right, each of the new states would have one major city. NorCal has the Bay Area (and Sacramento), NewCal has LA, and SoCal has San Diego (and Fresno). Since cities tend to be heavily Democratic and rural areas heavily Republican, both NorCal and SoCal would have exciting elections. NewCal seems pretty likely to be a safe Democratic state.

I'd be a NorCal resident. Given that the entire split won't add Representatives, the balance in the House ought not change. We'd gain four senators. We've had two Democratic senators since, what was it, 1994? The split might add more Democrat senators but might also add Republican ones. It's a little hard to say with just the maps.

Personally, I'll be voting on this based on my local position. What happens nationally won't be on the top of my mind. I'm all on board for dividing the state to get more Senate seats and maybe make some of the new states battleground states so we get attention during presidential elections. Shoot, I liked the six state plan. California is just too large.

Not the judge's fault, he's just enforcing the law as passed by idiot voters in '89 (or whenever).

What we need is a mandatory sunset clause on all voter propositions. Or for voters to realize propositions are really hard to repeal or modify when they turn out not to work as advertised and thus we should be very cautious about voting for them.

I also want a pony.