And yet, I get to watch a ton of stuff I don't own and would never want to buy. For far less money than if I bought everything I watch.

It's almost as if a lot of people have figured out that buying isn't always a great deal.

Refunding the tariffs will be a nightmare. The Treasury can refund the payments to the importers but how in the world would the importers find all their customers and refund the tariff they paid? Especially if the import was an input to some subsequent product (which most imports are)? Is Maytag going to issue steel tariff refunds to every customers?

On the other end of the spectrum, my wife has bought imported items on eBay. Is she going to apply for a refund? Is eBay? The vendor?

The refund paperwork might easily cost over $100 billion when you add it all up.

Funny: I saw a headline that someone (Republicans? The administration?) was asserting refunding the tariffs would be corporate welfare. On the one hand, importers probably would not refund the tariffs to their customers, they'd just keep the windfall. And vendors who raised prices because their imported competing products got more expensive wouldn't even have a paper trail of who they'd want to issue refunds to.

That's not the way US courts generally operate. They can only rule on the issues brought before them by the plaintiffs. If the plaintiffs didn't raise the other rules, the court can't rule on them.

That said, many commentators have pointed out that other provisions, such as section 122 of the Trade Act of '74, explicitly allow tariffs but only using a specific process, for specific reasons, and for a limited duration. That's qualitatively different from what Trump asserted the IEEPA allowed him to do (any tariffs with no process for as long as he wants). I'm not at all sure the SCOTUS would have an issue with that limited delegation of legislative power.

Beats me. That was a general statement of principle. In this case, though, perhaps a taxi driver gets a job remotely operating 10 robotaxies.

That's one thing to keep in mind. This came up when ride sharing was just starting. People noticed that if you were in lower Manhattan, taxies were easy(ish) to find. Not so much if you lived in the Bronx or Queens. Uber and Lyft, in comparison, expanded the range of ride services to serve the outer boroughs. So it wasn't as if the only thing they did was put existing taxi companies out of business, they expanded service to many, many people who didn't have the ability to flag down a cab in the first place. I'm expecting robotaxis to do the same. I see far, far more Waymos on the streets of the Bay Area than I do traditional taxis.

Cool. I fully support your right to have this position. I myself prefer small independent shops over large chains.

That said, I don't see why you, I, or Kathy Hochul have any right to say a New York resident isn't entitled to make the same choice.

I don't particularly want to eliminate jobs, except to convert them into higher wage jobs.

Anyway, I don't live in New York so it's not my decision to make. New Yorkers ought to be given the chance to decide: would they prefer to hire human drivers or not? Given their safety record (better than humans), I can't think of any compelling reason to not allow them.

Let me put it this way: you and I generally have the same choice: do we use a self-checkout lane or ordering kiosk, or do we go to a staffed lane or ordering counter? It's the same question about whether you or I value jobs over personal convenience.

When I was a lad, I lived in Massachusetts. Self-serve gas was a new thing. For a while, gas stations offered self and full service pumps. For ten cents more a gallon, I could have someone pump my gas for me. I, and everyone I knew, opted for cheaper gas and fewer gas station attendants. Self driving cars are no different.

You mean the X-stein files?

TFA is missing a major point. The biggest blow is to New Yorkers. It's a potential gold mine because there are millions of registered voters who might prefer a robotaxi to the existing alternatives. Just sayin' Kathy.

Note the "might". We don't know for sure and we won't until someone tries it. Given how popular robotaxis are everywhere else they've been rolled out, I don't think that's a huge question. But this argument hasn't stopped hostility to ride or house sharing either so I doubt it will now.

I didn't think it was a secret that self-driving cars sometimes, or maybe even often, need human assistance. The name of the game if you're operating the service is to make a sound trade off between compute power and human labor.

As to where the drivers are, that's also a decision trading off network latency, labor costs, site reliability, hours of operation, and driver skill. It's not at all obvious to me where you'd find the right set of remote operators.

Absolutely. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it. They should call it honeypot.gov.

You've never used the iDrive scroll wheel/joystick/button controller on the console? Does your vehicle have one?

I've been driving a BMW for about eight years and I love how much I can get done with that thing. Sure it's not as fast as dedicated buttons but I can do most things one handed without my hand leaving the controller. My only complaint is I do need to glance at the screen. So long as I'm not in a rush to finish the operation, it doesn't seem terribly distracting.

It's odd: it sounds like that's the system Mazda is getting rid of. I think BMW is a proof by demonstration you can build a great UI with that type of controller.

I'd be interested in seeing more details. What exactly was that benefit? Hopefully it wasn't "the artist was able to buy more groceries."

I'd also be interested in seeing if the study looked into the ROI of not paying artists anything and letting average citizens keep their tax money.

Good points. My question still stands: anyone know how much did removing lead from plumbing solder reduce typical lead exposure, relative to removing leaded gas and paint?

(Yes, I know, now that AC mentions it, that we no longer use lead in electronic devices. I'd forgotten that. I wonder where that fits in?)

At-will versus contract employment is a tradeoff. Being able to fire workers easily lets companies hire more freely too. The reverse side of at-will employment is I am under no obligation to show up tomorrow, should I find something better.

There's no right or wrong answer there, just preferences. Personally, I'm a huge fan of low-friction environments, even though I got laid off recently and it took a year to find something new.

Uhh, yes, obviously that's a consideration, although I'd use "policy" rather than "purpose". Imagine you were running a business: of course you're trying to minimize your costs and maximize you revenue.

Naturally, some people are more productive than others so the least expensive worker might not be the best buy. Sometimes buying the cheapest labor is penny wise and pound foolish, just like it's sometimes worth it buying a high quality tool versus the Harbor Freight special.

(That said, I'm really warming up to Harbor Freight these days.)

From the fine summary:

UPFs and cigarettes are engineered to encourage addiction and consumption, researchers from three US universities said,

Designed to encourage consumption, sure. If I were making a food product, of course I want to make something people like to eat. The more they like to eat it, the better I've designed the product. I don't think there's anything nefarious about this.

Addiction is a different story. Is there any evidence producers have conversations of the form "once they start eating this, they'll find it very difficult to stop"? Because that's what "additive" implies to me, that the addict has little to no control over their consumption.

Speaking as someone who routinely used to drink soda, it's not addictive. It's quite easy to give up should one choose to, especially given how many other options there are. Shoot, I have a harder time giving up coffee than I did giving up soda and sugary foods.