... is that they could have done this long ago, but it never even crossed their minds until Trump started his 'war of choice' and they were forced to consider their options. He agitated them enough to cause trouble, so they did. America's weaponry is large enough to destroy Iran, but it's too large to control Iran and still keep the parts America wants.

Can't see how that would ever get passed, part of that is accountability (the ability to sue Federal agents for things like this). All the ICE agents would have to remove their face masks when kidnapping or shooting citizens, foreign or American, and admit to their screw ups, and how they spy on everyone to try to find a few criminals (or just to meet their quota of captures).

Government agencies are already buying publicly-available databases of this kind of thing, not collecting it themselves (https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/26/0541202/privacy-advocate-accuses-us-government-of-investing-in-ai-powered-mass-surveillance). Get in on the ground floor: Start a company to track cell phone data, sell it to the government as they want it, everyone's happy .... Oh, wait, that's exactly what happened here except that the government agency didn't pay for it this time.

Mark clones himself with AI (https://meta.slashdot.org/story/26/04/13/1642228/mark-zuckerberg-is-reportedly-building-an-ai-clone-to-replace-him-in-meetings) ... then increases complexity with real people (https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/04/21/1849217/meta-to-start-capturing-employee-mouse-movements-keystrokes-for-ai-training-data) ... then reduce staff 10% by replacing with AI capturings? Once the first batch are suitably digitized, then incrementally the rest will be. No staff costs, no management meetings, all Mark will have to do is sit back and receive money. He may actually have a plan here.

Of course, I'd trust this government to honour the decision of the courts and pay back what they've unfairly taken. There are SO MANY things I trust them on....

First step is to enhance your memories. Next step is to supplement your memories (plug-in modules like the Matrix, so you "remember" how to fly a helicopter). The step after that is to apply memories and thoughts not your own, so someone else can take over your body ... Might be good for backup/restore at some point, but I can see the possibilities for misuse too.

A little off-topic, Myamoto Musashi, the sword-saint of Japan (the greatest swordsman of his time, late 1500s) had 21 tenets for a good life. Number 19 is: "Honor Buddha and the Gods, but don't count on them for help"

Does that fee get paid every year, or is it one-time for the life of the vehicle? An ICE vehicle (typically) goes more than 60,000 miles in its lifetime, and I'd expect that of an EV as well. ICE gasoline surcharges also increase from time to time.

But wouldn't all the non-sentients vote Republican?

"you'll appreciate just how responsible we were..." Yeah, past tense ... you were once a great country. I'd love to say more, but I think you've already said it all.

If the Chinese product is competitive, consider it. If the American product is better for the same cost, decline the Chinese product. When the comparison changes, re-evaluate which is better. Doesn't sound that difficult to me ... but I'm not American or Chinese.

... not fully removed yet ... but Microsoft is removing the Local Account workarounds with each update https://redmondmag.com/article....

No, they're setting YOU up for a catastrophic failure. When (not if) it fails, it won't hurt Microsoft at all, regardless of what happens to you. Since it's applied equally to all installs of Windows, there's no prejudice against any one group, company, faction so it must be equally fair to all.

If you can't trust Microsoft to protect you, you can at least trust the government oversight to protect you.

Sorry, no. I don't believe he could have figured it out himself, but I certainly would believe that his cronies would do so and (for a small cut of the proceeds) make a wager or two on his behalf. Doing it himself would obviously influence the odds and he wouldn't get as much.