So how does this public wallet work? The linked article describes it as an Ethereum wallet so does that mean these memecoins are based on Ethereum, or is it a wallet on an exchange that supports many types of currency? I don't quite understand how someone can send cryptocurrency (create a transaction on the ledger) to someone else who hasn't actively created an identity (public/private keys) for that network.

I don't think it is hypocritical for a landowner to receive credit for not logging just because they weren't planning on doing so to begin with. Why shouldn't someone who has cared for land for decades not get the same credit as someone who has just now decided to stop doing further harm? Members of the Audubon society may question whether enabling companies to generate more CO2 pollution is consistent with their values though.

The bigger problem is that allowing such broad and varied credits completely undermines the purpose of cap and trade. If you limit cap and trade to a small well defined set of industries (car manufacturers, electric generating stations, etc), then you can easily measure what the current emissions are and decide on an acceptable level of emissions (the cap), and then allow the market do decide how to allocate that pollution to meet that goal. There are legitimate reasons for different cars to have different fuel efficiencies, and good reasons to keep old plants running until their end of life. Nor is there any good reason why each company needs to have a broad enough portfolio of products to meet those goals individually (McLauren should not have to make enough compliance cars to offset their emissions if Tesla is willing to do it for them).

But once you start allowing anything and everything that could increase or decrease emissions into the pool, then it is impossible to measure what the base level of effective emissions are, and thus impossible to set a meaningful cap. It was a stupid idea when the EU did it, and it was even stupider for California to allow them after they had already seen the problem that EU had with carbon credits. They really need to revamp the entire program if they want to get serious about meeting carbon goals.

This is complete bullshit. Regulators have strict rules regarding the processes for passing regulations, as well as some limitations on the scope of their regulations, and the courts do not shy from overturning regulations that violate them. Every regulatory agency has oversight committee in Congress. Congress has authority to overturn any specific regulations passed within 60 days, and authority to change the laws that grant regulators authority at any time. And lastly, agencies are subject to regular audits from the executive branch (GFO, GAO, etc).

I do agree that the power of the executive branch has gradually grown stronger than it should have, and that the powers granted to some agencies is far too vague and broad, but saying there is no oversight at all is laughable.

The fact that Apple does not allow you to change the default texing app means that most of my iPhone-using friends/family wont install Signal because it is annoying to have to juggle multiple texting apps and remember who is on which. And the fact that I can't install iMessage (or a compatible app) on Android means that I can't use the encrypted texting service they already have. The combination of these two policies means that nearly all my communication between iPhone and Android users is unencrypted.

It is a shitty move for a company that claims to put the privacy of their users first, especially since they do so with the goal of locking their users in (however ineffective that is).

But I don't see how it helps Epic's case. They are trying to turn this into a general anti-trust case, with arguments that go beyond actions that caused them actual harm, which is DoJ territory, not theirs.

I think you have it completely backwards. SpaceX can't provide service to a significant number of people in highly populated areas, so it has to have some way of picking the small fraction of those potential customers it will serve. Could be lottery, or first come first serve, or merit based (backup service for critical needs), or they could let the market decide and auction off service in areas of high demand. I think that is way more likely than trying to gouge their primary market of service in sparsely populated areas.

The terminal for mobile applications might be a bit more expensive if it needs to be ruggedized for marine application or the mechanical pointing system is more advanced than what they are selling for stationary applications (the phased array will handle most steering, but initial setup also includes the dish physically pointing itself in the right general direction).

I understand all that, and apologize for being slopping in saying "affirmed" which overstates the situation, when I should have said "did not challenge". Apart from that, the reason I summarized it so strongly is that I incorrectly thought that all appeals for copyright cases go to the Federal Circuit, so a precedent set there would effectively be binding to all district courts in the entire country. However, that is only true for patents and not copyright. It is still an issue for cases that concern both patents and copyright (or where the plaintiff throws in a patent claim for purposes of jurisdiction shopping as some suspect Oracle of doing here) but in general it is not as strong of a precedent as I was thinking.

Note that the Supreme Court already affirmed that Oracle has a valid copyright on the java APIs by refusing to hear the original case. This decision just states that it was fair use for Google to use those copyrighted APIs. Fair use has to be demonstrated on a case-by-case basis with expensive court cases that most developers won't be able to afford.

A quick summary:
1st District Court Case - API's aren't eligible for copyright
Federal Circuit Appeal - Yes they are
Supreme Court Appeal - Declined to hear case
2nd District Court Case - Google's application was fair use
Federal Circuit Appeal - No it wasn't
Supreme Court Appeal - Yes it was

numbers aren't an apples-to-apples comparison.

There is no evidence that the mRNA vaccines are any better than J&J. The trials where they were 95% effective finished before the new variants were common, while J&J trials ran later (and in parts of the world where the variants were more prevalent), so the number are apples-to-apples comparisons. We know for a fact that the mRNA vaccines have weaker immune response against the variants than the main strain, but don't yet have hard numbers. At this point there is no reason to think that they are better than J&J.

What are talking about? First, the "Pfizer" vaccine was actually developed by BioNTech, a German company and is being used in the EU. Pfizer is just manufacturing it in the US. Secondly, the US government is the one preventing US companies from exporting vaccines to the EU and the rest of the world; that's not the EU's decision.

Meanwhile, the dumb Roomba that I've had for 15 years is still working fine (other than having to replace the battery once). Some of the more intelligent mapping/navigation features in the newer models look interesting, but requiring internet connectivity makes them a hard pass for me. Between having them all stop working just because AWS is down, to crummy updates, and all the privacy concerns - what exactly is this connectivity buying us anyway?

Complete speculation, but I wonder if it is related to the recent pressure for tech companies to censor misinformation. No need to deal with any of that if you only redistribute fictional content. Especially if the market segment wasn't particularly profitable to begin with.

As of Firefox 85, it is intentionally not vulnerable, because nearly all persistent caches (including favicon) are now partitioned according to top-level domain which blocks a ton of methods used for super-cookies. Other browsers have been implementing similar protections.

Smartmatic may be considered a Limited-Purpose Public Figure in these circumstances in which case the actual malice standards would apply.

McConnell has already said that he will not be calling an emergency session of the Senate before Biden is inaugurated on the 20th. The Senate hearing will take place after Trump and Pence have left office, which is allowed.