That's not how it works. Even if human-like consciousness could be replicate by a machine, there is no evidence that LLMs are doing that.

What he is saying is that it "looks enough like actual consciousness that it must be it", but that is not sound reasoning.

Something can be functionally equivalent enough to the real thing to give the impression of being the real thing without actually being the real thing.

From the text of the initiative, basically the government would be required to implement restrictive measures once 9.5M are reached. If 10M are exceeded, the government would be required to terminate international treaties that drive immigration.

This is effectively a constitutional amendment, so many details are not defined at this level. If successfull, the details would need to be elaborated by the government, e.g. by the Parliament enacting new legislation to satisfy the new constitutional requirements.

No, it's not: it's a subscription contract that lasts until one of the parties terminates it. This means the contract lasts effectively indefinitely but can be terminated or in some aspects modified during its course without having to agree to a full new contract agreement, which the consumer would have to actively accept every time.

The issue is that for these contracts the law does allow for modifications without requiring a full new contract agreement every time, but the clauses in the contract need to be specific about what can be changed and why and cannot give the provider too much unilateral power. The clause Netflix was using from 2017 to April 2025 were instead very generic, giving Netflix basically unlimited power to unilaterally change the price without justification.

In the Italian system clauses like these, which give a party significant unilateral power over the other party, are called "vessatorie" (vexatious) and are void unless individually accepted and signed by the other party on top of the contract containing them. In case of online contracts this might require a separate digital signature for each individual clause.

Note that a proper digital signature would otherwise not be required for an online contract not containing these type of clauses, which can be accepted by a consumer by simply clicking on a consent box. This means having these clauses makes an online contract much more problematic to accept.

Since the clauses Netflix was using to increase prices were found to be "vexatious" and were not accepted with individual signature, they were found to be void. Since they were void, Netflix could not use them as basis to increase the prices. After April 2025 Netflix introduced clauses that were considered not vexatious and Netflix can increase prices based on them.

It would not negate e.g. the bandwagon effect.

Sure, but technically you can do with a physical box too... In e-voting they employ mechanisms to avoid that kind of tracking before tallying, e.g. mixnets.

What is encrypted is the ballot, so e.g. "yes" or "no" if that are the available choices. The ballot does not contain any identifiable information.

By decrypting the ballot they would be able to know whether it contains "yes" or "no", but they would still be unable to know who cast that particular yes/no.

It's estimated that about 1/4 of the voters abroad have issues. It's one of the main reasons e-voting is being pushed.

You need to do that to preserve confidentiality of the vote. Nobody except the voter should know how they personally voted. Furthermore, nobody should know how the votes are being cast until tallying officially begins.

What they do is they authenticate the user to make sure they are eligible to vote, but the ballot is submitted end-to-end encrypted from the voter's device. The system that receives the ballot knows the user is eligible to vote, receives the user's ballot, but cannot read the ballot's content.

The ballot can only be decrypted by the tallying authority and the decryption is performed only after the tallying can officially begin. This means nobody knows how a particular voter voted and nobody knows how the vote is going in advance.

This is exactly how it works in Switzerland too and this vote did not change that: the vote is mainly symbolic without practical consequences.

It is kind of explicitly acknowledged: (quote translated in English)

Said that, it was a popular initiative: the people of Switzerland decided to put the matter to the vote, not the government.

The cat and mouse game does happen since companies do try these kind of tactics, but regulators know them well too.

If a company exercises enough control over a contractor, regulators can decide that the relationship is effectively an artificial construct meant to skirt employer's obligations. If that's the case, the company can be determined to be the actual employer of the contractors, with all obligations that come with that.

It's not entirely the fault of the US, but it's pretty clear that the US did significantly contribute to the situation.

It might, but keep in mind it won't necessarily work. Britain had a relatively liberal culture: it tolerated self-government, dissent and challenge to authority to a certain extent and that enabled the American Revolution movement to start coordinating and grow.

It's not a given that the American Revolution would have worked as well against a more ruthless and authoritarian regime cracking down hard against it early and fast. Brutal crackdowns might have prevented establishing the kind of coordination that was crucial to lead to a successful revolution.

Basically, it's true that it's important that the people take up arms in some situations if they want change, but depending on the situation and whom they are facing it doesn't mean they are going to win.

The question is also whether states can impose warnings that are not supported by solid scientific consensus. Parts of California's Prop 65 has been ruled unconstitutional in Federal District Court for this reason, see California Chamber of Commerce v. Rob Bonta:

That would also happen. Think of the interest rate as how much risk the creditor is willing to work with: lower the interest and the creditor will have to become more selective, lowering limits and denying more debtors than before.

That's difficult to say, maybe you would have been denied credit and you would have had to find a different solution. Said that, there are other options to provide affordable credit but they typical require state intervention to cover the risk outside of free-market economics.

Take your own home as example: if you bought it with a mortgage in the US part of the risk of that mortgage is covered by the Federal Reserve acting as "lender of last resort". Without that backstop provided by the government, you might have been denied a mortgage or it would have only be accepted at a much higher interest rate.