We disagree on what defines doing business in the UK. The justifications you provided can easily be rewritten from the other perspective:
They serve content and ads from the US. They make money from ads served from the US. The content served from the US serves their goal, whatever that goal is, financial or otherwise.

Internationally commerce, maybe, but they're not doing business within the UK. It's a lot closer to someone selling a doodad that gets sold overseas as well.

Right, which is why it's on them to enforce it (IMO). They want to dictate this crazy shit, they can implement it. Why would the onus fall on the website?

That's what makes it an analogy, and it's stretched on purpose. The question is still, once it reaches a point where you would agree it is overreaching, like in this stretched example, what does that change? It should be prevented from getting to that point - fix this before it's a step too far. As that famous poem goes, "First they came for..."

Using 4chan as an example is attempting to pick the low hanging fruit that most people will agree with blocking. They can be certain they'll find *something* pretty bad there. But this is also having a chilling effect in a lot of other places.

This is the git repo site used by Alpine (the modern fork of UW's Pine email software), and their notice to UK users:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Frepo.or.cz%2Fuk-blocked....

This repo decided to block the UK preemptively because they don't have the means to comply with the requested audit. Here's details on that:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhowto.geoblockthe.uk%2F

I don't know how I feel about this as a response to the UK's law, but maybe more of the completely innocent sites should start doing this? If enough did it, would enough UK users notice and vote to correct it? OTOH, I don't want to get into a situation where every site has a variety of blocks for other countries due to their esoteric laws, but doing nothing means the UK will end up selectively blocking sites they deem bad instead of all sites caught in this wide net.

In any case, we should all (both sides of the pond) be prepared with a VPN or two and working access to Tor.

You must have a different definition of "do business in the UK" than I do. Care you explain what business that entails? Is it simply existing on the internet?

Why would it be their responsibility? Why isn't that, "then the UK can block them"?

Let's say I decide to do a swear jar at home, but for everything that plays on my TV (ex. someone drops an f-bomb on some youtube short, and I bill them $5). I start sending out bills to the content creators, and I threaten to jail them if they ever step foot in my house before paying, and then demand that they censor what I want censored "or else". Is that overreaching?

If and when it is overreaching, what does that change? People recognizing the overreach won't change the law or their behavior. We see this encroachment for what it is and can address it BEFORE it gets to that point, can we not?

These posts are screaming for a better answer. Like the GP, I also mainly use it for weather and timers, but also to control the lights. I'm shocked there haven't been knock-off versions of these, similar to the knock off smart watches that are really just dumb bluetooth devices but handle 95% of what people use their smartwatch for (time, alert on call, alert on (select) notifications, steps, maybe music start/stop).

Where's the echo knockoff that just does:
* time
* weather
* set a timer
* turn on/off lights

That logic does not follow. Have you never heard of a product failing to make a profit?

Look at Home Assistant. A Raspberry Pi seems sufficient, and then most of it doesn't need to go out to a server farm. The Echo Show's likely have more than enough power to do it. Covering their R&D costs... that's their problem. They're dumping a TON into getting AI/LLM stuff on them, and that's going under their R&D budget. If you just mean the sunk costs getting the hardware out the door, that should be well paid for by now.

I keep waiting and hoping someone will get something open running on these "smart" speakers. They have some great hardware in them (mic arrays, low power, decent speakers). Even if it just sent the audio to a server of your choosing and relayed back a result, that'd make them useful and worth saving from the dump.

You're spot on. I appreciate the info from SlashbotAgent, but this cat and mouse game just keeps getting worse.

Another ad area is in the follow ups. Ask it something benign like, "What's the weather today?" and it often follows its answer with an annoying follow up question like, "By the way, you have pending notifications. Would you like me to read me?" It also throws in ads for its services in the follow ups, or asks if you want to enable features, or train to learn your voice, etc etc.. I just want to continue my conversation with actual people in my house, but I can't cause it sits there listening and waiting for that response.

BTW, here's an Amazon rep saying there's no way to turn it off: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazonforum.com%2Fs%2F...

Even more infuriating (personally) is that they dropped support for Sengled smart hub managed stuff (ex. lights). That was one of the recommended vendors. I can still manage them via the Sengled app, but that is NOT what I bought them for. One may want to victim blame here - go for it - but that doesn't change how fucked this is. To add insult to injury, I had started to get Sengled's newer bulbs that are Alexa only (no app support, no hub, and no support on other smart devices) because they were much cheaper and recommended. FYI, those frequently stop working and need to be reset and re-added, and may still not work, until they suddenly do start working again... it's a mess. But for me, it's worse because half my bulbs are the old Sengled (can work on other systems) and half are the news ones (don't work on others), so moving to some other system (Apple, Google, Homekit, etc..) means replacing half the bulbs, and staying means half no longer work. </old man yells at cloud>

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F... - "Prediction markets, also known as betting markets..."

AFAICT, investing in the stock market is not gambling because they use other words for it, more or less. Maybe it's just one of the many forms of (soon to be) legalized gambling?

It hasn't really changed. You got old.

As much as I don't give a fuck if those voting for trump get screwed as a result, the remaining 263 million Americans are NOT getting what they want. Can we not consider them?

Came here to say the same! A few hundred emails!?!? At my previous job, I got far more than that daily that were work related, and a couple dozen a day that got replies.

On the plus side, this is welcome news for people wanting to complain to their representatives. I've been assuming that a few emails a day would go entirely unnoticed but, if they view a few hundred as breaking inboxes, maybe the voices of a few can be easily heard?

Equally true: there is no state on the world that isn't natural.

Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but there's been a bit of a shakeup in the government. I can't say that's the cause, but are you incapable of thinking of any other reasons why they may have stopped complaining loudly? When the leadership is using the same technology those groups were once complaining about, and are firing people left and right for less justification than attacking the decisions of the head of the Department of War, it doesn't surprise me at all that they may have had them drop those intimidation programs (or they languished after DOGE cuts, or any number of other reasons!).

By your logic, global warming has been stopped in the US cause the govt stopped complaining about it.

This is the sort of logic that leads to beliefs like the flat earth.

I can't help but think that a bunch of these cheap cells are made somewhat like these lead acid refurbs:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fshorts...

There are loads of videos of stuff like that being done manually in dirt floor shops by barefoot people (not judging, but it's far from a clean and orderly factory).