kirklennon

1. Most Americans already knew he was a criminal and either strongly opposed him or strongly supported him, in part on that basis. There are a lot of other people who usually or often vote Republican, but also just don’t always vote. Those people aren’t going to be enthusiastic about showing up to vote for a felon. I think we’re looking at extremely low turnout among non-MAGA Republicans. Optimistically, this scenario can also lead to a blue wave as those same people skip down-ballot races as well.
2. First-time offenders get lighter sentences. He’s going to be convicted in multiple upcoming trials, and in all of them he’s now going to enter the sentencing phase as a felon. We can look forward to extended prison sentences in Georgia and the federal cases.

It’s up to the judge and can range from no prison to four years. A nonviolent first-time offense usually means a lighter sentence, but the judge can also factor in the complete lack of contrition and the numerous egregious gag order violations. These make prison significantly more likely than it otherwise would be.

A fine of less than $1 million is absolutely not what anyone except Google is asking for.

The DOJ can really only ask for treble damages. If Google paid ~$3 million, that’s realistically as good as the DOJ was going to get. It sounds like the initial estimates were just way off. Nobody should be shocked that the inept antitrust division screwed up again. They’re going after big, buzz-worthy names without the facts or law to actually back it up.

The headline is strange. The DOJ sued for money and Google just straight up gave them the money they could have won upfront. That’s not a “pay off”; it’s literally what they asked for. It’s a win for the DOJ. Google’s argument against a jury trial also seems on solid ground. The right to a trial by jury is meant as a protection for Americans; the government itself doesn’t have the right to demand a jury. If the defendant thinks the legal issues in the case are too arcane and a judge is more likely to get it right (and get it right faster, which is cheaper), that’s their prerogative.

A long exposure allows more of the light to be captured but that’s not the reason for the color discrepancy. They really are as colorful as they appear in photos but human night vision is primarily black and white. We just don’t see a lot of color unless it’s sufficiently bright and since auroras are still quite dim in absolute terms, our eyes aren’t capable of recognizing the full intensity of the color.

Of course you can. The iPhone never lost any of the basic features of the iPod and is perfectly capable of storing and playing DRM-free music in popular formats.

How is this relevant to anything at all? If you want a streaming music subscription, you can pay for one. If not, don’t. You can use any service you want on an iPhone, and you can likewise use Apple Music on an Android phone. The availability of services is just a totally separate issue.

No, because aspartame is not unhealthy.

No, my phone went into SOS mode yesterday. No apps, just a button to call 911.

That’s not a thing that exists. The closest thing is the shutdown screen, where the options are “slide to power off,” “Medical ID,” “Emergency SOS” and a cancel button, which requires you to enter your passcode and then takes you back to the home screen.

Sounds a bit sensationalist and doesn’t contradict what I said: if you already added your boarding pass to your phone, it will still be there, regardless of whether you have internet access at the moment. Furthermore, the staff can still pull up your record so nobody is going to miss their flight.

But the stakes are too high to skip the 5 minutes it takes to print a paper copy. I can almost guarantee that everyone else is one close call/missed flight away from doing the same thing, too.

I don’t understand what scenario you’re imagining where there’s a problem. You check in 24 hours before the flight and add the pass to your phone. It’s not going anywhere. How would you ever miss a flight because you didn’t print it? Absolute worst case scenario: they have to look it up at the gate.

CBDC is blockchain based, i.e cryptocurrency.

A CBDC can be blockchain based, but almost none actually will be. China’s isn’t. Japan’s CBDC is not. In the US, the Federal Reserve is still in early stages but I’m confident it won’t use blockchain either.

The login process for it is absolutely terrible and requires so much jumping back and forth between the dumb app and my computer, which is where I want to actually do my taxes.

Intuit divested the tax product in that sale, which was bought by Block (FKA Square) and is part of their Cash App brand. So it’s still around and still not Intuit.

Because we have an elected government. If the government causes somebody a loss, voters, and by extension their representatives, and by extension, the government itself, wants to make them whole. Without allowing lawsuits, the only option is passing individual laws for each possible claim, and also creating a way to adjudicate those claims. We already have courts to handle the exact same kinds of issues between private parties. Congress decided to let it apply to the government too, when appropriate.

The government has sovereign immunity and can be sued only when it allows itself to be sued, such as under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

This is about third-party apps.

I’m going to go ahead and just call this a nothingburger. The context is that you’re already a registered user signed into the Facebook, etc. app. You’ve already volunteered the valuable profile data and the analytics data from actually using the app. If you’re already OK with all of that, there’s effectively no additional concern with the relatively minor data that can be collected or inferred from the notifications. The very idea that someone should or would turn notifications off on, for example, Instagram because they’re concerned about privacy is ridiculous. It’s like telling someone not to crack the windows on their car because it might rain, but they’re in a convertible with the top down.

This isn’t going to fly with the EU.

If the EU didn’t want to allow this then they should have written the law differently, but poorly-written regulations are their specialty. Apple’s plan complies with the letter of the law. Developers are free to use a direct sales channel and can offer any price they want, along with various conditions that aren’t an option in the App Store. They just have to pay a commission for access to the lucrative market Apple built. The specific percentage of the commission is such that it’s not actually a desirable option for developers, but the law didn’t say that Apple had to make it desirable to avoid the App Store’s existing sales system.

For what it’s worth it’s possible to test the contents of an egg, but it’s moot because it doesn’t actually matter when we know. It exists independent of observation.