The federal government has always (for at least several decades) used the threat of removing federal funding to force states to do things that they don't want to do. This is nothing new, and is not, as this summary implies, setting a dangerous precedent.

The difference is that normally, this is used to do things that add standards intended to make things better/safer for the general public or serve some legitimate public need.

This is being done to remove standards intended to protect the general public. As a general rule, states have always been allowed to have stricter laws than the federal government, just not more lax laws. Using the threat of removing federal funding to take away laws intended to protect the public's rights, reduce competition among content providers, and push the Internet more and more towards a content monopoly is doing the opposite of that.

It's not the federal government using the threat of withdrawing funding to push its agenda that is bad. It is the agenda itself that is bad. It is fundamentally antithetical to the rule of law, fundamentally contrary to the regulatory powers required to maintain a functioning capitalist system, and fundamentally contrary to the public interest. It is putting greedy corporations ahead of the American people.

Additionally, the executive branch taking such an action without authorization from Congress is also bad. The long history of doing this has, to my knowledge, been limited to the executive branch acting on laws passed by Congress that give them the authority to withhold funds for specific non-compliance reasons. Doing so in the absence of such laws is likely a violation of the separation of powers.

But unfortunately, the current administration has a long history of violating that separation of powers, doing various illegal acts, knowing full well that it will take months for the courts to strike down those acts, and that the damage will have been done by then, and using the threat of such illegal executive orders as a way to extort concessions out of states, government agencies, corporations, nonprofits, and individuals. And that right there — the repeated willful commission of unconstitutional acts for borderline felonious purposes — is a fundamental abrogation of their oath of office.

So the way I see it, there are only three ways to fix the problem:

A. Pass laws clarifying that Congress has exclusive power of the purse, and that the executive branch shall not retract funding to any state, any agency, or any individual for any reason unless the right to retract funding for that specific reason is explicitly codified in the relevant law as an executive power, and that this rule shall apply to all government agencies, without exception, superseding all previously assumed authority, and providing criminal liability for anyone acting in contravention of this law, with no statute of limitations. That way, federal agency heads who act on such executive orders will no longer be protected by any assumption of legality or constitutionality, and will risk future criminal charges if they act on an executive order that violates the separation of powers in this way.

B. Remove the people who are pushing this agenda, whether through the ballot box, through impeachment, or both.

C. Do both A and B.

Yep, pretty much this.

When you have a physical datacentre, you take backup off site in case the site fails, when you're in the cloud you're really just in one physical location unless you're paying through the nose for co-location.

"Cloud" has pretty much taken the LCC (Low Cost Carrier, A.K.A. Budget Airlines) model to compute and Amazon is the Ryanair of that world. Sure, they advertise a £19 flight to Magaluf but want a seat that isn't shit, pony up, want to take luggage, gonna cost you, don't want to take the red eye flight from "London" Isle of Skye airport... you get the idea and before you know it that £19 flight is a £190 flight. Amazons price structure is the same, cheap headline price, what you actually pay is much, much higher.

No, that's not true. The reason Trump went to war with Iran was to distract everyone from the Epstein files, which were gaining serious news cycle coverage at the time. ...and the Epstein files are like an iceberg. We still don't know how big they are yet, but we keep discovering more serious stuff.

A good manager would... Sadly there are a lot of bad managers out there.

There is a grey area here.

Yes, following someone around in public can be considered harassment if it were done with the intent of harassing or disrupting the person in question. A journalist with a legitimate interest can use that as an excuse provided they were not intentionally being disruptive or harassing in order to get a story. If a "reporter" starts getting in your way to force you to react and does so repeatedly, this is harassment.

Intent has a lot to do with it, if you're following someone around without cause then you're pretty much on the wrong side of it.

Also, a good investigative reporter (or private dick) doesn't want to be noticed by the person they're surveilling. It tends to taint the results of the investigation (and here in the UK the police can use the results of a journalists investigation in court) and this affects their livelihood as no legitimate news agency wants to deal with a reporter who is a well known nuisance (as they can be sued as well as the "reporter" in question).

In most countries, taxi services automated their dispatch years ago... This is not an excuse to support illegal services that are both against competition and seek to reduce the rights of workers.

Ever since I've lived in the UK, you've been able to book taxis and minicabs online. It is more recent to Australia but Australia is hopelessly stuck in the past.

Not a joke. I'm aware of that feature, and that's why I said it. No idea about false positives.

No, it does not. Maybe you're thinking of Pixel Watch?

Yep, get caught posting company secrets online, expect to get marched out the door immediately.

Employee protection laws simply mean I can't be fired because the CEO wants to make themselves look scary.

And your saliva filled fellatio of Musk makes you oblivious... I mean in general, not just about Europe.

I could get fired today if I did something illegal, dangerous, or blatantly stupid (like sexual harassment or threats). Hell, you can even be fired if you're bringing the company into disrepute, like becoming a far right thug (the freedom of association which is enshrined in the UK and Europe includes the freedom not to be associated with something).

What I can't be fired for is when the CEO is having a bad day, wants to get their jollies or if the company wants to cut costs (in that case, they'll need to make me redundant, which has some legal responsibilities).

You're saying that like it's a bad thing.

A CEO in Europe is expected to act like an adult, so they are expected to deal with disagreements with colleagues and employees as an adult. Often this means compromising and understanding the other side. This has the unfortunate side effect of making the CEO better informed and thus leading to better decisions being made. I know this is hard for many Americans to understand as it seems that emotional maturity isn't a requirement for leadership positions over there.

Let me know when all this heart rate monitoring can do loss-of-pulse detection and call emergency services if I have a heart attack. That's worth paying for. Having slightly more frequent heart rate monitoring? Don't care. Not even a little.

Yep, Australia went fully card mental in the 2000s and wonders why everything became so expensive. Sadly they'll never put two and two together because the answer really is 5, 2+2 is 4 but the extra is made up by merchant service fees that the merchant is legally obliged to hide in their prices.

What about the brave soldiers on the Floating Fortress Winston Smith.

It's only criminal if you get caught.

That being said, why do you think so many companies are trying to demonise laws like the GDPR... because they have real teeth to protect ordinary people.