Where did you read that? If it's true it would be momentous. A totally discretionary fund of $2-6B per year (based on nVidia's projections of selling $2-5B per quarter to China) would give the president enormous unchecked power.

I've spend some time searching and haven't found anything to substantiate this claim. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd like to see where you got the idea from.

Right... I worked for The Beer Store, the brewer-owned private company which distributes beer across the Province of Ontario. Our Premier (roughly equivalent to a State Governor) made a campaign promise of "A buck a beer!".

So, a new empty can cost roughly $0.20 at the time. The law in Ontario is that shelf prices include tax and deposit. So, the can is $0.30 - twenty cents for the can itself, plus another dime for the deposit to make sure the used can comes back for recycling.

Now, on top of that, you have to make a food-grade beverage, pay your excise tax to the federal government, and then there have to be profits for the manufacturer and the distributor/retailer (that would be Brewers Distributing Limited dba. The Beer Store).

Customers would come to me and - with that "I know more than you even though I haven't held a job in 16 years" expertise - tell me that we were going to be carrying "buck a beer" because they voted for Doug Ford (who also cut their welfare increases).

"When do you get it? It's gotta be soon!"

"The first shipment arrives February 31st, so mark your calendar!"

I must have used that line 500 times. Only one person realized that there's no February 31st. To his credit, he had to come back to the store to tell me. LOL

Exactly ONE brewer made the Buck A Beer - Cool Brewing of Etobicoke, in Doug Ford's riding. We were lucky if we got a single case (24 beers) a month. Promise fulfilled... Right.

Anyway... The Beer Store's shelf tags were printed at the distribution center and sent to stores with truckloads of beer and empties in and out. Of course, you always had too many tags you didn't need, and were always short of the shelf tags that you did need. If a tag was outdated and wrong, you have to - ethically if not legally - honour the price. And, of course, if a tag was damaged or lost, there was no tag for that product. All of this hearkened back to The Beer Store's roots as Brewer's Retail where everything was behind a counter and we had a selection wall. In a newer self-service store like mine, this did not work.

Electronic shelf tags were implemented. It was amazing. Snap the tag into place on the shelf. Scan the tag. Scan the product. Press a button. The scan gun would beep and a moment later, the tag would update with the item description and price.

Price changes? Automatically updated on all tags.

Now, something about selling addictive substances: Sometimes someone decides that the item's price is what they have, not what the shelf tag says. And they will argue with you until the cows come home. You get jaded to it.

"That will be $2.25 for the can of Pabst Blue Ribbon 5.9."

"The tag says $1.95 so you have to give it to me for that. You forgot to update the sticker."

"No sir, I assure you that it doesn't. They're not stickers, they're electronic and tied to the POS."

"It says $1.95."

"Sir, if the shelf tag says $1.95 for Pabst Blue Ribbon 5.9, I will give you a full case of it. On the house."

For a moment, they're elated. And then they realize that I'm coming out from behind the counter to call their bluff. In front of the lineup of impatient customers during the daily 10:01AM opening rush. Catcalls. Whistles. Jeers.

Walk over with the dude... shelf tag says $2.25 for PBR 5.9. Now, at this point, I'm annoyed, and I'm not going to short my till $0.30 for him. Or suggest to him an alternative beer that is $1.95 a can. If he'd just passed me all his change and come up a little short, I would have covered it. Personally, out of my pocket, if I didn't have a few nickels and dimes perpetually floating around my cash. I've spent way too much time on both sides of the counter at The Beer Store, so I have plenty of empathy - just don't be an asshole.

Anyway... Dollar stores are dealing with customers who are on the very bottom economic rung, whether from addiction or for some other bad life event. Now, sometimes these people are a nickel away from being able to afford a can of beer - or a jar of baby food. I have seen split tender three ways for a $2 item - $0.50 from returning 5 empty cans, $0.97 by scraping a prepaid Mastercard from last Christmas to the last cent, and then $0.55 from under the sofa cushions or wherever. Unexpected price changes can drastically upset plans these people have made to get a few supplies with their very last dollar.

"I can get a box of Kraft Dinner at Dollarama for $0.50, and two cans of cat food at A Buck Or Two with the other $0.50..." I've seen it, and I've personally lived it.

The shelf tags, especially at a dollar/discount/alcohol/cannabis store of any sort, must be accurate. As an experienced retail manager, electronic shelf tags are simply essential.

You can sell the boss on implementing them with the operational savings, the labour of having to change stickers with every price change. Electronic shelf tags will pay for themselves in very short order.

It is definitely regional. In California, stations that don't charge a higher price for cards are rare. It happens (I stumbled on one last week well outside my normal area) but it is rare. Card same as cash seems to be the rule in Missouri. Here is California, the stations that don't charge extra for cards tend to be in relatively low rent areas. Missouri is low rent compared to most anywhere in California.

The difficulty is that when you need them, you need them.

Money through the mail, money when online services aren't available, backups when AWS goes out, or the Internet is out in the region, etc, etc.

They provide an exact amount and an alternative when other methods fail.

You just know that some dufus at the gym would bring a 10kg steel dumbbell into the MRI room and ruin things for everyone.

No.. this would have to be a locked restricted room where only MRI techs and their clients may access.
However; the equipment is A. Very expensive. Your Gymn is not likely to buy it.

B. Due to the expense.. It is likely that your nearest local Hospitals will guarantee you are not able to obtain the necessary permits in order to protect their monopoly. They've got a huge investment to protect, And they actually have to successfully sell MRIs at those rates to make the return on that investment. Can't have some random additional facility installing one nearby. Guaranteed it would be blocked by the government due to the availability of another provider's location and the lack of public necessity for yours.

If you ban SUVs people will drive converted full sized vans and large cab pickup trucks.

My suggestion is not ban SUVs entirely, but require additional permitting heavily discouraging of consumer use. Restrict who can drive them when and where at what speed, and what for purpose. You may need an expensive permit, And take additional training to certify to a higher class large vehicle driver's license, for example.

Full sized vans and large cab pickups for personal use outside licensed work trucks or delivery vehicles etc would carry same restrictions tied to vehicle size and risk levels.

To deal with the affordability crisis. It doesn't work because if you get hit in one of those by an American SUV you might as well have gotten hit on a motorcycle.

That's a reason to ban "American SUVs" not the Kai cars. One of the flaws in the crash safety rating for personal passenger vehicles is we are only considering how well vehicles protect their passengers, and not how much risk vehicles pose to other vehicles in a crash. We should be banning or limiting the speeds and restricting highway use of personal vehicles that are overweight or pose a danger.

Considering that for the one-time investment of $150 and a half hour of your time you could not have to do that any more? Hell yes, you're crazy.

Samsung is collection of several companies and if you've ever spent any time working with them you quickly realize that they all prioritize other Samsung companies below other customers. I don't know whether it's because of anti-trust concerns, or market strategy, or just rivalry, but I've never seen any Samsung company that operated any differently. I worked quite a bit with Samsung Mobile and S.LSI, who are even quite interdependent (though S.LSI depends more on Samsung Mobile than the reverse), and they constantly ignored and even dissed one another.

There's no way your driver's ed class failed to mention that traffic is required to stop for school buses with their red lights flashing, and I think it's unlikely that your written test failed to include a question about school zone and school bus rules. Mine (Utah) certainly did.

In rural areas, like where I live, there aren't any marked crossings, and there really isn't any reasonable place to put them. If you mark a crossing it would only ever be used by the one or two houses near it, and only by school children, because there's really no need for anyone to walk across the street otherwise. The school buses stop directly in front of each child's house. There aren't any locations where a bus could pick up multiple children without making them have to walk an unreasonable distance, so each kid's house is a stop.

Also, the speed limit on my road is 45 mph, and cars routinely drive 55 mph... so having the "huge yellow beast" with flashing red lights and a flipped-out, flashing red stop sign is definitely necessary.

Yes, the details matter.

AI that can scan x-rays, analyze bloodwork, evaluate my poop for life-threatening conditions, or otherwise augment a doctor's treatment? AI models that look at millions of possible treatment plans and find the ones most likely to be successful? Wonderful.

AI systems that remove the human connections? AI that evaluates treatment not based on medical efficacy but on cost models? AI used to make healthcare cheaper but not better outcomes? Do not want!

A very real issue is the dumbing-down of doctors who rely too much on AI. There were studies that doctors using AI to help during colonoscopy were less able to do their job after getting used to the AI tools. They became worse at their job by being reliant on AI.

Use of AI in some cases and for some conditions results in far better outcomes for patients. In some cases it augments what a skilled doctor can do. In some cases it results in detrimental outcomes for patients. And in some cases, it adds no medical value with a risk of increasing problems, in addition to increasing costs, like cases of transcription errors that aren't caught, or case summaries that are wrong in critical ways.