I think the pre-Reagan rates were sufficient. A balance is required; extremely high rates just motivate the wealthy to work harder to find workarounds.

Bullshit. There are multiple Supreme Court rulings upholding the free speech rights of non-citizens. I recommend you start with Bridges v Wixon. And even the current very-conservative court is going to rule against the administration in the end, just watch.

Also, I notice that you ignored the points about suppression of freedom of the press or the ability of lawyers to advocate for clients who oppose the government. Care to point out where Obama did those things?

I bought a Panasonic plasma TV in 2013 shortly before they ended production. The picture is still gorgeous, and the TV has given me zero problems aside from the fact that the rather dated version of HDMI ARC it supports doesn't play well with even my mid-tier soundbar from last year. For what was on offer for a more premium but not outlandishly expensive TV when I bought it, I couldn't be more pleased.

I get that you're (rightly) pissed at Trump and Elon, but that's just dead wrong. SpaceX isn't getting any handouts from the federal government. They're getting launch contracts, yes, but at a lower price point than any other launch provider, ever. Hate on Elon all you like, but the Falcon 9 is the cheapest and most reliable orbital rocket ever built, and has reduced US space launch costs enormously, especially if you count the political costs of being beholden to Russia for space access. Or would you rather go back to the space shuttle, with per-launch costs of upwards of $2B, rather than the ~$80M SpaceX charges?

He's also firing most of the IRS, which means the wealthy just have to make sure their taxes are complicated to cheat, since the IRS won't have the staff to review anything complex. On paper they might owe more (even assuming he's not just blowing smoke, which he probably is, and even assuming he can get it passed, which he probably can't), but in practice gutting the IRS means they'll pay less.

At the same time his tariff policies are hammering the economy, which will reduce revenues, and he's cutting taxes, which will reduce revenues, and he's decimating the value of T-bills, which will increase debt servicing costs. Deficits are gonna skyrocket, and stagflation is going to set in. We're going to need another Jimmy Carter to make the hard decisions to fix the economy when Trump is done with it... and they'll be all the harder because Trump is also working to exclude us from international trade and to remove the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency.

We are so screwed.

I've been in Canada all week. Seems very nice. The massive pro-life protest at the capitol yesterday was a little annoying, just because it was hard to get through the packed crowds, but good on them for having free speech, even on topics their government disagrees with. I don't think the news media that cover the issue or the law firms that file cases about it even get sued or lose access to work with government!

Free speech seems like a pretty cool idea. Maybe we should try it in the US.

Anyway, it's time for me to log off and wipe my devices. I'm about to head to the airport and I don't want ICE to see this post and detain me, or send me to an El Salvadoran gulag.

Easier than cancelling gmail.

Both the EU and UK are participating in international standardization efforts, so it will work fine. It'll take some time to get there, of course.

Plastic cards suck, for many reasons.

1. They're forgeable. Digitally-signed data is not. Sure, governments can and do implement lots of anti-forgery mechanisms, but it takes almost as much expertise to use those anti-forgery mechanisms to validate a legitimate card as it does to fake one. Approximately no one checking plastic cards knows how to properly validate them. Digital ID cards require a bit of equipment to check them, but the equipment is ubiquitous (almost every smartphone in existence has all of the tech necessary, all you need is an app), and unless the attacker can either pwn the verification device or subvert the legitimate issuing system, they're unforgeable.

2. They cannot provide data minimization. Electronic IDs enable you to provide only the subset of data that is needed for the current use. For example, if you're buying alcohol the only information the store needs is whether you're over the minimum age. They don't need your home address, your driving privileges, your name... they don't even need your birthdate. Just a single yes/no bit -- plus some way to prove that the person presenting the ID is the legitimate holder (there are some good privacy-preserving options here, but that's a subject for another post). Contrast that to a plastic card with all the info printed on the front and repeated in a 2D barcode on the back, enabling easy snarfing of the whole data set. Digital IDs are better for privacy than plastic cards.

3. They don't work online. We use various workarounds for this, but they're all far worse for privacy, requiring users to provide far more information about themselves, not only beyond what's minimally necessary for the transaction, but even beyond what the ID card has. This is because the most important information isn't so much the content of the card as the proof of authenticity.

In the future we're going to look back at the era of ID cards and papers and shudder at how bad they are.

Of course, there are also risks. The biggest one is that having an ID that does work online means that more online services will want to use that ID. This is good where it enables transactions that currently can't happen online at all, and probably good where it makes transactions that occur now but are risky less risky. It's bad where it facilitates user data collection and user identification for transactions that don't really need it at all. But IMO that risk is better managed refusing to provide ID when it really isn't warranted, and by insisting that when ID presentation does make sense that the data provided is held to the absolute minimum required, rather than forgoing all of the other privacy, usability and security benefits of digital IDs.

Well, at least they'll continue marketing their devices as energy-efficient. They will probably quickly discover, however, that it's a lot cheaper and easier to put outstanding energy efficiency figures on the box and in the marketing materials than it is to actually make the devices efficient. Truth in advertising laws mean they probably can't just flat out lie about efficiency (well, assuming Trump doesn't shut down the FTC department tasked with enforcing truth in advertising laws -- or hasn't already done so), but they can certainly measure creatively.

Yes, that's what it will do, make their new appliances less efficient by enabling device manufacturers to quote misleading energy consumption figures. Energy Star doesn't make the appliances more efficient, but it provides trustworthy assertions about appliance energy efficiency, based on careful testing.

Absolutely. They've been educated to look for the Energy Star efficiency ratings.

That's obviously very important, but you aren't seriously arguing that the US hasn't played the pre-eminent role in technology development and productization for most of the last century, are you? Also, for the particular example you mention, it should be pointed out that mRNA vaccine technology was developed primarily in the US, based on research funded by the US NIH, and also that your "three out of four top COVID vaccines" characterization is misleading [*]. Though it should also be pointed out that most of the key mRNA researchers were not native-born Americans, but were attracted to live and work in the US by the high standard of living and top-notch research institutions available here. You know, the situation Trump is destroying.

The free world needs Europe to step up and do both basic research and engineering and productization, because the US is apparently going to focus on monster trucks from here on out.

[*] The two top two mRNA-based vaccines were from a US company (Moderna) and a US/German collaboration (Pfizer/BioNTech). Third place was definitely the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine which was purely European. I'm not sure which you picked as fourth place. By WHO approval, it would have to be the Jansen vaccine, which was a US/Netherlands collaboration. By doses delivered it would be the Sinovac vaccine, which neither the US nor Europe had any role in.

Insurance isn't really relevant. Insurance is for people who can't prove their ability to pay in the event they're liable. I don't know for sure that Google self-insures the Waymo vehicles, but I'd be very surprised if they don't. I know Google self-insures healthcare for its employees, for example, paying an insurance company to handle the paperwork, but covering actual costs rather than paying premiums. It's typical for large corporation to self-insure medical coverage, vehicle fleet insurance, building insurance, etc. It saves money, on average.

Bullshit. Oh, I have no doubt that they had some DEI programs and that they were a bit over the top... pretty much all of corporate America did that for a few years, but you're massively exaggerating.

How did he force companies to adopt those programs? Specifically, what did he do? Did he threaten to sue them? Bar them from working for the government? Take away security clearances?

(Hint: He didn't do any of those things.)

The DEI wave in corporate America during the Biden administration was real, but it didn't happen at the behest of the president. Oh, he approved and was supportive, but didn't make it happen. Companies did it mostly because of Trump. It was Trump's first term that created the backlash that massively empowered the whole woke movement, and companies implemented DEI programs partly because execs cooped up in their houses during COVID went nuts but mostly because they were convinced that their customers and employees wanted it.

Note that the woke movement predated Trump's presidency. It was still moderately weak when he entered office, but then he spent four years shoveling fuel onto it. He's doing that again now, but I think it's mostly burned itself out and won't come back. But if anyone can restore it, Donald Trump is the man for the job. Except that his tariffs are going to make Americans and American companies too poor to spend money on DEI frivolity, so... yay, you win?

All true, but those European advantages do not seem to generate the kind of innovation and economic productivity that the American system does. With the US actively pushing all of the best and brightest away, Europe has a golden opportunity to demonstrate that it can generate the same sort of entrepreneurial and productive activity -- but I doubt it will succeed unless it becomes significantly more business-friendly.