The guideline in question is "Gotta kick up to the big guy". If you don't pay your "taxes", you're gonna have a bad day. And, no, I'm not talking about the IRS.

I wish it were that simple.

First, note that there isn't one emoluments clause, there are two. And they're quite different.

The Foreign Emoluments clause prohibits any officer of the government, which would include the president, though that's not specifically stated, from accepting a "present" from any foreign government. The problem with this is that it's not clear how it's supposed to be enforced with respect to the president. Traditionally, presidents have treated gifts as gifts to the country, and when they wanted to make an exception they asked Congress to authorize it. Mostly. George Washington famously kept a painting the French gave him. Trump, er, took a different approach, simply ignoring the Foreign Emoluments clause, which the Constitution says isn't allowed... but then what? Congress never passed any law defining how exactly the clause was supposed to apply to the president (there are laws about not accepting gifts for pretty much everyone else in the executive branch)... so, how it might work is undefined.

During Trump's first term, a bunch of Congressional Democrats sued Trump for violating the Foreign Emoluments clause, and their suit was dismissed for lack of standing. Courts ruled that individual legislators (much less individual Americans) lack standing to sue over it, only Congress as a body has standing, and Congress as a body hasn't been interested in acting. There were also some suits by DC hospitality businesses claiming economic injury because foreign visitors chose Trump's properties to curry favor. The district court said they didn't have standing but that was reversed on appeal.. but never decided because it was mooted when he left office. The DC and Maryland governments sued and courts went back and forth on their standing, but that was never decided either, then mooted when he left.

So... at present there is no enforcement mechanism unless Congress creates one, or unless the courts decide that someone (and it's not clear who that might be) has standing. And we also have no idea what the remedies might be.

The Domestic Emoluments clause is more precise, but very narrow. It says Congress can't change the president's salary during their term, and that the president can't be paid by the federal government (other than his salary) nor any state government. That says nothing about Wall Street bros buying insider info, people paying for pardons, hodlers buying crypto to get a sit-down... none of that.

I think the inevitable thing is the main players getting crushed in the middle. At the high end it is as you said, but at the low end people can run some pretty impressive local models. Why pay monthly for something you can setup locally for a few $k in hardware. Anthropic and such are in the middle, not price competitive at the high end or low end.

America will retake the lead in AI the same way we did with EVs: Just ban the ones from China. Problem solved.

Not exactly a yawn. More like a shake of the head at more evidence that all politicians are on the take, perhaps with a wry grin that "their guy" is smarter and better at it and so makes a lot more money.

I mostly don't talk politics with my family because they're Trump supporters and it creates friction, and accomplishes nothing. This morning, though, when I saw this news, I started typing a post on the family chat to ask if they're really okay with it. By the time I got to the end, I realized I knew exactly what their response would be "Nancy Pelosi does it, too, Trump just does it better", so I deleted my post, unsent.

That reply is wrong in degree, of course, but, sadly, it's not wrong in kind. We've long tolerated insider trading by Congress, and a revolving door between regulators and the companies they regulate. The Supreme Court has allowed its justices to take veiled bribes, and even ruled that government officials can accept bribes as long as the payoff comes after the action. Prior to Trump, presidents and their staffs stayed out of this mud, but if others can do it, why not the president?

The root of the problem is voter acceptance of corruption. Too many Americans just assume that all politicians are corrupt and there's nothing you can do. They're wrong on both points -- and in fact the US previously did have massive public corruption and then mostly shut it off, but Americans don't know their own history -- but until voters care enough to get Congress to act, this is the new normal.

Hence the numbers I gave. Most people questioning authority do indeed just want some other authority in power.

With AI agents not even being remotely secure, anybody running this is asking for it.

This is about keeping the market _diverse_. It is anti-trust measures that keep capitalism from devolving into monopolies. It is good for consumers and keeps vendors on their toes. It keeps innovation going. But lots of clueless Americans apparently want to be abused by big-tech.

Just that it is neither IP not trade secrets this is about. Try to keep up, you sound very stupid.

Indeed. Even Microsoft and YouTube react very fast when they get a GDPR request. Nobody sane wants to lose the EU.

If you think anti-trust law that gets actually enforced is "idiotic", you are welcome to stay in your oligarcist hell-hole.

How about you idiot find out what anti-trust means?

I disagree. Search data can clearly be anonymized competently. Also, if anybody else deanonymizes people in there, then under the GDPR, they have 30 days (!) time to inform everybody they identified and to get informed consent. Any use of that data before they have gotten that consent is illegal. Failure to inform people within 30 days is illegal. Holding the data for longer without having gotten that informed consent (experts think 3 months is about the maximum) is illegal.

Hence nobody sane will try to identify people in such data.

You are wrong. While many incompetents have tried and failed to anonymize data in the past, it is well known how to do it competently. Your mistake is thinking you can do this without an actual expert designing things.

Here is a starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Yep. They should immediately jump on Google: "What do you mean, you do not know how to adequately anonymize search data?"