>They have to be always online, to get updates.

You think the military doesn't have their own private networks, so they don't need to depend on the public Internet for mission critical communications? How naive.

>If our nukes are connected to the public Internet, we might as well just push the Armageddon button now and git it over with!

FTFY.

Whenever they wanted me to take a drug test, I said "OK, which ones do you want me to test?"

They have to tell people not to trust the Artificial Idiot?

You fail by focusing on outcomes and not law.

>Americans have very little understanding of politics. ... I don't think the average American is going to understand just how bad a deal it's going to be when Trump runs for a third term.

Before commenting on US politics, you should take some time to acquire more than a "very little understanding of" them: US 22nd Amendment.

The problem is Woz is a living person! Since the American Revolution, the USA has not put the image of a living person on currency. This was part of our rebellion against the British, who continue to put reigning monarchs on the money. So around the time of the tricentennial you can push for a Woz coin.

FWIW, China offers a "travel without visa" for USA citizens for up to 10 days. I benefitted earlier this year when it was new. Other than Shanghai passport control needing to review their new rules (I guess I was among the first) it was simple and painless.

The speed or power thing wreaks of the 1990s when encryption was computationally costly. These days, with CDNs and HTTP/2, the difference is negligible, and the TLS overhead minimal. I would argue most Internet traffic that's still plaintext isn't setup such a way because it is unnecessary, it's because there is a legacy use case or sheer laziness/ignorance. Your web site won't even rank on Google if it doesn't support HTTPS by default. Attempting to access Slashdot via HTTP results in a 301 redirect to HTTPS.

I'll add the nitpick that SSL has been deprecated for a decade, and we use TLS now; albeit an evolution of the SSL protocol. Otherwise you're absolutely right, via public WiFi or eavesdropping satellite links, due to use of encryption at the transport layer between endpoints, mere packet header data can be obtained...which isn't very useful to an attacker.

I generally support consumer protections, though California already protects against situations like you mention: if the service degrades, or the company makes an alteration, you have recourse to cancel. To add to your protection, put the recurring charge on a credit card and the CC company will go to bat for you.

You don't think policies like VAT on private school fees and pushing up business taxes instead of personal ones play well with the typical Labour voter?

They're cratering in the polls anyway for a host of other reasons, and I suspect Starmer is already toast anyway for a host of other reasons (though it's significantly harder in practice for Labour to replace a leader they're not happy with than it is for the Tories), but I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that some of these policies are being chosen because of their political alignment.

They appear to be playing heavily on the politics of envy. Look at some of their education policies, for example, or the way they treat small businesses and the people who run them. They don't seem to want to pull up the less fortunate if they can be busy pulling down the more fortunate. It's not a good look if you actually want a successful economy, but it plays well to their base.

I agree with you that they seem to be all over the place in policy generally, and after trying to give them a fair chance in the early months, I now have a fairly low opinion of them (with the odd exception in Cabinet who does actually appear to be at least recognising the real problems and trying to do something about them, which I can respect even while thinking little of their party politicians and government as a whole).

You're right about the investment culture as well, but presumably if we're talking about entrepreneurs who have already been successful and are looking to move elsewhere, that's of limited relevance unless they're planning to start at least one more business after they arrive, so in this particular debate, I doubt that is such a major issue.

While we're hardly Russia, our democratic and stabilisation credentials are looking more shaky than ever as well. Our electoral system produces results very far from proportional. One of our two traditional main political parties is now essentially irrelevant. The other, which currently holds power, is breaking all the wrong records and is widely expected to suffer severe losses at the next election already, barely a year into their term. Waiting in the wings (and currently leading by a very wide margin in the polls) is the nascent far right populist party that has become the default protest vote. It looks scarily like that party might actually be pulling so far ahead (whether thanks to their own merits or, like the present incumbents before the last election, because the government of the day is so unpopular) that even with the usual reversion towards traditional voting patterns when a real election happens, they might still win. And the prospects of what happens next in that timeline are truly terrifying, particularly for anyone who isn't a white British citizen from birth.

As a Brit, I was surprised to see the UK as a destination of choice.

The current Labour government here often seems to be criticised for being ideological and not pragmatic. In particular, they seem to prefer policies that tax "the rich" and businesses in one way or another, yet not large, relatively wealthy groups like pensioners or the homeowners who have lucked out and now live in a million-plus property that most younger people will never be able to afford.

There's also quite a lot of red tape for businesses here, maybe not compared to some of our neighbours in Europe, but certainly compared to places like the US and probably parts of Asia too.

Obviously some of this is politics and maybe the policies are not so surprising coming from a party that in theory represents the working class. However, it is surprising that entrepreneurs would be attracted to a culture like this at a time when we expect to have this government for another four years still.