Per item costs on shipping vary, and they can change while you shop based on what you add to your cart. If you buy 30 different items in a single order will be significantly less than if you buy 30 separate orders. It might even transition to free* shipping. I’d like to know the final cost of the item itself, shipping can stay a separate line item, though it would be real nice if it showed up on the cart before checkout time,

*I’m not convinced free shipping exists. Someone pays for it, and even if it’s free to you, it’s being paid for by higher overall prices or by lower volume shoppers. See “Amazon prime” for examples. Go look at the cost of prime products vs other products and you may find that your prime shopping cart comes out to a higher price even after shipping costs are accounted for because they do include shipping in the price.

This is playing havoc on smaller businesses and producers who have commitments in place already. A large number of Kickstarter or other crowd funded projects produce goods in China, and can’t afford to just eat a more than doubling in cost. Large vendors might see little impact, but small producers are getting destroyed already.

I'm of the opinion that sudden tariffs used as a blunt instrument against the rest of the world is a bad solution. It always has been. It's not like companies can open new US factories overnight and have them fully staffed and fully stocked. The right way to do this is through corporate taxes, but also through corporate tax discounts. It also requires a consistent approach over 5-10 years, not 5 minutes because someone said something mean to the President.

By law, increase corporate taxes by (for example) 20% over the next 10 years, at a rate of 2% per year. At the same time, apply a production discount based on the percentage of labor performed in the United States in the production of each product. (or in general to the practice of the labor being done, such as in the case of services, not products); This places the burden on the corporation, which Republicans are absolutely against, but does so with a way out. Move your tech support to the United States in years 1-3 while you build your factories to return your initial labor costs to the United States. While you're doing that, start scaling up production in the United States.

Note, I did say in production of the product, or services performed. I didn't say "by employees of the company." This includes contractors, and companies materials/products are bought from.

I'd love to see a similar solution to automation and AI as well, possibly with a minimum in place so that some automation is allowed to handle tasks that employees find completely inane.

Is it a perfect solution? No. No system under capitalism will ever be perfect. It's a system that applies pressure, and it may need to be scaled up or down, based on the costs of non-US labor and raw materials. It does apply broadly, and much more fairly than these tariffs do. It also gives time to ramp up production and handle changes to systems already in place. Would any Republican find it even remotely acceptable? Nope. It's a tax. No matter if it can be completely avoided by taking simple actions.

Can you name fees, other than taxes, collected by the government currently? If your purchase is taxed in an online store, those taxes are listed. Things like employee reimbursement and payroll taxes aren't listed because they don't apply to the product. Tariffs expressly apply to the product.

Inflation isn't a tax. Biden wasn't "applying inflation." These tariffs are being applied directly every product that enters the US from overseas.

I sure hope they're not using code that requires the source be available in the output without obeying the open source license that led to it.... would be a shame if that happened and these "vibe coding" folks got sued for it.

I used to have a 3rd party alarm clock app I used because Apple doesn't support one feature I need in their built in alarms function. I bought the app for $5 years ago and held onto it because it worked well until only 64bit apps were allowed, which broke it. New version from the same dev is a monthly fee for $5.50/month. The patch notes for every update from the last year are "localization updates". There have been no notable changes to the interface or functionality of the app since the version I bought years ago. I'm not sure why anyone would pay $5.50 a month in perpetuity for a developer to occasionally recompile it with no code changes or add a language they themselves don't use.

90% of apps are essentially the same situation. The developers are charging a monthly fee to use an app that they have no cost to operate. It's certainly not worth it to me.

I'm absolutely willing to pay for an app... and if they're making regular updates, I'd even pay a subscription. I will not pay a subscription for something that doesn't get attention from the dev, or that still has ads even if you buy it.

If this is how Trump expects to play it, the advert is simple: divest these corporations from operating within the borders of the EU - like he originally wanted to do to TikTok (until he flipped 180 on that - he canâ(TM)t even be strong on his own policies)

Stop Google (US), Meta (US), and Apple (US) from operating within EU states. Give those nations time and opportunity to create their own alternatives, or allow each of these companies to create entities that exist within these nations and are beholden to them.

I expect the Internet to decay into commercial states that allow some cross traffic rather than an open internet thanks to stupid stuff like Trumpâ(TM)s blustering. Itâ(TM)s going to be eyerollmazing.

If we had a truly unregulated market, the ISP situation would be significantly worse. Primary ISPs would work harder to ensure there was no competition whatsoever.

Market regulations are necessary at times, but regulations should exist to benefit the end user, not the corporation. Always.

"When we have a search warrant and we are in front of a house and the door is locked, and you know that the criminal is inside of the house, the population will not accept that you cannot enter"

And that's why cops don't use a key. They use equipment to knock down doors. They don't go to to the lock manufacturer and demand they make skeleton keys that work in every home in the country. If they want to break encryption, they can build their own digital battering rams.

From what I can see, the original promise, as stated below (thanks garrett_spencley) didn't include access to WP.Org resources, simply to the trademark and identity. How does that relate to accessing WP.Org resources?

I'm not the person who provided that example, but I appreciate the response regardless. I was just asking how this applies to Freedom of Association - constitutionally, the right to choose how and with whom to associate. There are certainly exceptions in place having to do with not discriminating based on inalienable characteristics, but I can't imagine generally requiring association between two entities based on a "business need"; the promise element is valid and, as someone who has only vaguely been following this mess, I hadn't seen that this was what the complaint was about.

Absolutely fair - I didn't know about that promise component - I've only been vaguely following the story.

Obviously, you do know more about this than me, but it seems as though this is a step against freedom of association, as guaranteed in the bill of rights. Am I wrong about that?

They kind of are mutually exclusive. At least in terms of Socialism's definition and origins. That doesn't mean there aren't people who use the word "socialist" to describe themselves, but don't meet the definition.

Socialism is social ownership of the means of production. It literally means that no individual can own a business or product, but that they must share any and all ownership with those around them. i.e. There is no person at a company who gets to have all the power, and that social owners (whether that be the employees or community owners) decide the pay scale. The person in a top hierarchical role can't give themselves a raise. Socialists, by definition, want others to succeed, even if it means sacrificing their own wealth.

When someone claims to be a socialist, but grabs power and uses it to enrich themselves, they're not being a socialist. They're being an autocrat.

Your memory must be a lot better than mine. I'll remember the general content of a book, but won't remember it word for word. I can't write a sentence directly from that book if someone asks me the right question - at least not without going to that book and finding it in the book for them. LLMs don't think back about what they read and give you its understanding of historical context. LLMs keep a full copy of all of that text and regurgitate parts of it. They might mix and match parts of sentences, but there's no real intelligence behind it and it's still using the source material in exact precision with each read.

Beyond that, libraries do pay a higher licensing fee for their copies of books than you or I do in order to have their license. E-Books incur an even greater hit, as each licensed e-book is only sold with a set number of reads before they have to buy it again. Bookstores want you there buying books, not just reading them in store. They might well kick you out of you spend days and days in there reading every book on their shelves without buying anything, so you're not likely to get through much of their selection before being sent away or asked to pay a license of some sort.