It appears the IDs are stolen from legitimate residents, so that is not it.

The government is not sneaking in hidden fees. It is the advertiser, by not showing the total including taxes. This is absolutely possible and easy, don't say "taxes vary so they can't do it". They CAN do it, as demonstrated by the fact that they do it in a split second when you hit "buy now". You are right that for many purchases taxes are the biggest hidden fee, if this rule is added and they go after airlines to force the fee to include meals/carryon/checked/seat selection (the user can hit some checkmarks to indicate if they want these at the same time they are entering the dates they want to fly) then I would say taxes are the biggest hidden fee everywhere.

If they really really have to make the widget $10 for everybody, just adjust the price by location so that the sum of price and taxes is $10.

If they want to make a political statement, they are perfectly fine with saying "this much goes to the government" (or "this much pays for abortions" or "for the military industrial complex" or "DEI" or whatever). Just show the TOTAL.

This isn't about protecting the movie industry. He despises the movie industry.
He realized there's a river of money with the streaming services.
That's where the money is, and where it's easiest to extract from the citizenry.

They'll have foreign content flags put in the metadata, and every time that content is streamed,
a cut of the action will get deposited into Trump's slush fund.

A profitable and an easily adjustable twist of the arm for extortion and control.
If implemented, expect all media, music, tv shows, social media, to get put under this mechanism.

Does not harm the battery, but it does use more electricity to accelerate quicker.

The third derivative can be lower even if the second derivative is higher. Basically an electric car will operate at very low accelerations, an ICE typically has a jump between 0 and the lowest acceleration it can do.

Sounds like you would like an electric car, then. They have much higher acceleration.

Acceleration is the second derivative of the car's position and is considered fun. Smoothness or jerk is the third derivative and is different, that is the quantity being talked about here. The Prius Prime, besides being smoother, also has much better acceleration when in electric mode (not that it is that amazing, more like the gas engine feels like I should not try to merge into highway traffic).

The pump nozzles are also different sizes, which defeats a lot of casual attempts at cheating.

The weight thing is brought up a lot, but in reality the cost of roads is directly proportional to their area, not the weight on top of them.

Yes a vehicle tax is perfectly reasonable. But they need to apply it to *ALL* vehicles. They can get rid of the gas tax if they want since that does fall disproportionally on people who need gas to operate their vehicles.

The current proposal is just a Trumpian "stick it to the libs" move that has no basis in logic or reality.

Places with decent public transportation also "hand out driver's licenses to anybody with a pulse".

Holy crap, have you ever driven an EV? Our Prius Prime blatantly obviously accelerates smoother in EV mode than when it is using its engine.

You do know the "$950" limit is $2500 in TEXAS??????? Maybe instead of regurgitating false talking points you might actually check what is going on in the real world?

And no, shoplifters do not carefully add up what they are taking and stop at $950. Are you really so dense to believe that would be useful?

No, smog is not "tire particulates". That is a different type of pollution.

I upgraded my video card recently. I need four DisplayPort outputs so I picked a Nvidia RTX A2000 (old generation, not Ada). The prices on ebay.co.uk looked good value. Then I looked at the seller, and he had about a dozen of these cards for sale. I guess Bitcoin or crypto mining costs have reached some threshold where these cards no longer make money.

(The A2000 is a power-limited card drawing only 70 watts, intended for workstations, but I guess that might also make it suitable for mining.)

More seriously, it can guess the location. If it is wrong, you are still quite able to "comparison shop" because it is putting the same incorrect adjustment on everything. And the displayed total is going to be much much closer to what you are going to pay than "retail before tax and shipping".

You really think the site can't figure out where you live?