Neither China nor the US have signed on. In other words, this is basically nothing. Its like an agreement on cell phone battery standards that doesnt include Samsung, Apple, or any of the Chinese manufacturers.

are always low. Like, only a few percent of people respond to random requests for survey info.

Plus, nowadays, why would people even bother? The Trump admin is busy deleting every scrap of public data from the web. I don't really get it, but somehow, scrubbing all data off government websites must play well on Fox. Maybe it's a small-government thing. Or maybe it's just to trigger-the-libs. To me, it just screams "ignorance is bliss".

Whatever the reason is, the top of the government has made it clear that they don't care much for data. This is America. Our elections are fair. We get the leaders we want/deserve, and they tend reflect the current feelings in society. So it's no surprise to me that people aren't bothering to answer annoying survey requests.

I dont think that a few million is enough anymore. Inflation, ya know.

You hit the nail directly on the head when you say that Robinhood is fun. So is every casino. By design. But the house always wins. Robinhood will make TONS of money.

I looked that over. It syncs with my memory of the situation, which is that Cambridge Analytica was an outfit of rightwing bros who scraped Facebook to support Trumps reelection campaign in a way that involved outright lies and deception (pretty much an everyday occurrence in politics nowadays), and Facebook is largely guilty of “being a social media website that got scraped”. Again, Im not a Facebook fan. At the time I was pissed off and ready to see Facebook shut down over it. But a few years later, its clear that there are hundreds of Cambridge analytica out there harvesting net data for various purposes, and pretty much every large net company has the same vulnerabilities as Facebook. The whole thing about Facebooks TOS is largely a technicality. Yeah they claimed they were more secure and had more control over data than they actually did. Does that really merit a billion dollar fine? What about the other social media companies that get scraped? What about outfits like Craigslist that have literally zero control? What about companies like lifelock that built an entire business about making people feel better about their security on the web while providing nothing but security theatre? What about every single AI company with a model that can spit out your personal data if a user pushes it hard enough but the company totally claims they didnt use private net data for training because *gasp* that would be illegal. Facebook is dirty, yes. So is practically every other company on the well, to a very similar degree. If justice is inconsistent, its almost as bad as no justice at all for society.

You dont really get it. The Cambridge Analytica thing was all about *gasp* scraping data from the web. Well, if we punish every group that scrapes net data, we’d have to shut down every single AI company out there, every single social media site, every significant political PAC, and probably hundreds or thousands of smaller companies that are data scraping, If I understand correctly, you can practically vibe-code a data scraper using Chatgpt and github.

This is like trying to outlaw and punish gum-chewing. Have you ever heard the term “fighting the tide”?

This is all true, but the bar has moved way, way, wwwaaaayyyy downwards since then. When the cambridge analytica thing happened, what they were doing was shocking. Nowadays, “cambridge analytica” is a strategy that pretty much every political messaging org employs. Actually, what they did is now considered pretty tame, everyday stuff.

I’m no fan of facebook, but they’re being forced to shell out a billion dollars for something that thousands of companies and orgs are doing nowadays, and very few people or governments seem to care much any more. This should be dropped for the sake of consistency. Why should they be the only ones to pay up when literally every player in the room has the same dirt on their hands?

This is why publicly-funded research is an absolutely critical part of the system. The incentives of the state (at least in western countries) are pretty well aligned with what the population actually wants. In this case, that would be an actual understanding of heart attacks and possible fixes.

Also, Im not as down on industry research as you are. You say the statins-makers have an incentive to suppress other ways of fixing heart issues? Yeah, they do, and thats a problem, but if they the company ignores the ethics and acts as a cabal/cartel, they run a big risk of being the next Sacklers. No CEO wants that. Plus, if a statin company suppresses the next heart treatment breakthrough, some upstart competing company will go ahead and develop it and eat the lunch of the incumbent. I know I sound like a right winger here, but capitalism actually incentivizes companies to push forward with real advances. If I dont want something to advance, that creates an opening for YOU to exploit. The result is a constant corporate push for better medicine and anyone standing still gets passed up in the race.

Nope. One thing Trump cant stand is people who try to out-Trump him, which is exactly what Dotcom has been doing. Fight everything, admit nothing, litigate everything, accuse the other side of everything that you’re doing yourself, and generally strut around with both your middle fingers stuck high in the air.

Plus, Dotcom isn’t wealthy enough to afford a pardon and probably doesnt have anything else to offer Trump. That guy is probably screwed.

Is because the other 5% were false negatives.

Chemical assays nowadays can detect near-single-molecule quantities of stuff. The problem is that we don’t really understand what concentration of these molecules are bad for you (yet).

There’s radioactivity in literally every object on the planet. Lead and Arsenic contamination is detectable in every object you put in your mouth. Same goes for PFAS.

While I understand your sentiment, there's really no comparison.

Trump is really powerful, and has a lot of influence in US society, and he's using his power in ways that I don't approve of. But, here's a list of a few things that he explicitly DOESNT control: The congress. The courts. The state legislatures. The state courts. The state national guards. The local governments. The local police departments.

Here is a list of things that Xi doesn't explicitly control in China: *insert null set here*

There's quite a difference. The US federalist system is holding it's own against Trump. If Xi goes off the rails, there's no mechanism for pushback. China is doing reasonably well right now because Xi is basically a benevolent dictator. But, history shows that those don't last long.

You make some valid points, but I'm not losing any sleep at night that the Chinese system will overtake the west. For starters, they're completely dependent on the whims of their emperor, which change every few years. If Xi wakes up one day and decides to curbstomp the EV manufacturers because they've become a threat, the industry will get the same treatment as the Chinese internet giants did in 2021. Second, government subsidies are a zero-sum game. They're sucking the vitality out of other industries in order to dominate one specific thing. That doesn't mean that they're gonna rule the world. So, government-led domination of one industry causes a ton of problems elsewhere. State capitalism is better than anarchy, but there are yet better models aka western capitalism.

Regarding your comment about foreign cars: exactly which cars would you call foreign? Toyota and Honda? Those are manufactured in Ohio. Hyundi? There's a massive plant in Tennesee. I bet you really like Ford, right? Those are mostly made in Mexico.

I'm not being snarky. I challenge you to tell me which cars are truly foreign and ones are truly domestic. You can't. Supply chains are planet-wide nowadays.

I bet that the Chinese designs are probably pretty good. Let's be honest, EV drivetrain design isn't exactly cutting-edge science. Batteries, motors, and controls. Basic electromechanical engineering at this point. Bead-and-butter stuff nowadays. And the EV industry in China is heavily bankrolled by the Chinese government, so they've basically taxed their citizens in order to throw hordes of money and people at the problem to develop the designs as fast as possible. No surprise that they've made quick progress.

Why shouldn't we leverage their work, especially for something that totally isn't at the cutting edge any more?

The main issues here is long-term replacement parts. They have a history of developing whizzy auto models, and then dropping all support a few years later. There's no time for a secondary parts market to develop, so people wind up with a 5 year old car but no replacement parts are available. They're practically throwaway items. If western car companies want to adopt Chinese designs, they better be making their own plans for replacement parts.

When I buy my first EV, I'll stick with US or Japanese. Those companies know how to keep a car alive for 15-20 years. It's part of the reason why they're more expensive. Supply-chains are not cheap, but without them, your expensive piece of tech turns into a paperweight.

If your house is on fire, I bet you would oppose evacuating the building because the wasted effort just gets in the way of putting out the fire. People with your attitude arent as bad as the climate deniers, but you’re a close second. The climate deniers scream “change nothing” and the mitigation deniers scream “do nothing to mitigate harm while everyone address the problem the way I demand”.

Opposing Narcan, because the drug users should “just focus on getting clean” and arguing that harm mitigation efforts just encourage more drug use.