It seems the only thing that could break this is the off chance that the SCOTUS rules that the tariffs are illegal and/or Congress strips the Presidency of the power they gave it in utters incompetence many decades ago.

I’m thinking with sufficient pressure by all tech interested people it could become an issue in the midterms and even force Trump to sign agreements not to tariff RAM by Korean producers who could ramp up production.

Frankly, I wouldn’t even be surprised if we start seeing RAM smuggling. In not sure of drug prices, but would smuggling RAM not be at least just as profitable, especially without the high profile and risk?

Hey! … hey, you! You want to have some fun?

Tariffs aren't the problem.

I have to say, it is a bit astonishing how much you are in a kind of bargaining stage of trying to rationalize how what is happening, is not actually happening, all while the trap doors are closing all around you even though very slowly.

Why do you think that is?

It is not just a British thing, because this ruling class tyranny is descending all across the western world, regardless of whether it is particularly egregious in the UK. Or should we maybe just start calling it Airstrip One at this point, the AO?

For me at least (different person), the term "speech offences" has been so captured by the far-right who think publicly advocating for the burning down of buildings populated with minorities is totally fine, but calling someone racist is beyond the pale. Whereas, at least from my own experience, progressives tend to use phrases related to expression, eg, protests.

And so when I hear "speech offences", my immediate thought is to question the premise: Are we talking about people publicly advocating for mass violence? Are we talking about bullying or harassment? Are we talking about a private conversation? Are we talking about a group chat? Are we talking about hate speech? Are we talking about defamation? Are we talking about "fighting words"? Etc. Context matters.

For all the talk I see online advocating for social media to be considered a public space, I've yet to see anyone really grasp the consequences of that: have any of them tried yelling out in a public space that they should burn down a populated building? That won't go down well, and rightly so. It has never been okay to do that.

People facing consequences for broadcasting their depraved bloodlust online doesn't concern me. What concerns me is the extent to which protests against genocide are being suppressed, with police looking for any minor infraction to pounce upon, but we have video of people saying to police "I support the genocide" to make a point, which the police don't bat an eye at. That scares me.

For you the issue is a left right issue and if the opinion matches yours it is acceptable and seen in a positive light but if it's the other side you have no tolerance.

You will never have free speech just controlled speech with alternating people in power. Which I think is a worse outcome because the people in power will never allow controlled speech against them.

> For you the issue is a left right issue and if the opinion matches yours it is acceptable and seen in a positive light but if it's the other side you have no tolerance.

When you remove all content and context from what is actually being said and done, then yes, this is fairly accurate, but it's also an entirely meaningless framing. But you have fallen into the trap of thinking I only support protests that I agree with, which is the usual response for these kinds of discussions, sadly. If you want your climate-contrarian protest, by all means do so. Unironically do Straight Pride if that's what you want. I believe protest, and expression more generally, is a fundamental right. But what you're doing here is (to use a hyperbolic comparison) accusing me of hypocrisy because I'm okay with interpretive dance but not murder, even though they're both just actions. It reminds me of 2016 Reddit where slurs were "just soundwaves, bro".

We don't have American-style freedom of speech, nor should we. We have freedom of expression instead because we have very personal experience within our very recent history what unfettered hatred does to a continent. Attempting to import American-style freedom of speech will genuinely destroy this country, we are already seeing it happen.

Many people share your viewpoint on the left and right. It's natural to support free speech for what you agree and censor what you don't. It's part of living in a left or right ghetto of thought.

Take a step back. The right is in power you are not allowed to speak your ideas. The left is in power you can say anything that supports their agenda.

What you can never do is speak against the government right or left

Why would you want that? Seems like the worst of all worlds.

Isn't the history you are trying to not repeat a history of controlled speech where the wrong party got elected or got in power? Why won't this happen again and again?

Someday we need to kill this myth, the wave of fascisms that appeared in Europe (Italy, Germany, Spain, Romania) are more of a cultural and economic reaction to the destruction of the Great War and not due to "unlimited free speech".

Free speech does not amplify or cultivate hate, it lets it fester in dark areas until it explodes when a crisis happens (which is what is happening currently).

Free speech and open discourse serves as a pressure valve release and self-correcting mechanism where by impopular or "untolerable" but common opinions have to be dealt with i.e the migration backlash in Europe

Protests are pressure valves, not tweets.

Please tell me how did the recent wave of Gen-Z protests start, hw did the Arab spring start?

Tweets (and other censored social media) for better or for worse have been at the center of impactful political movements and protests

Again, you are stripping all context and content. You are pretending that protest organising and calling for the burning down of a building populated with asylum seekers are the same thing. I vehemently reject this facetious framing.

That's rather harsh. Exposing illegal, objectively treasonous activities by the government is not exactly not something positive, regardless of whether the regime has only gotten worse and more totalitarian and tightened its noose even more around the neck of humanity.

By objective measures, having the courage he did to do what he did was courageous, albeit possibly foolish, since his understanding of the USA did not actually match the reality of what the USA long has been, because he has been drinking the Kool-Aid too.

Ironically, the system depended on and somewhat still depends on the very kind of belief in the system that Snowden had, even if he just believed it far more and actually took it serious.

> even went to live under the protection of one of them. Some patriot he is, gladly embracing the Russian regime.

You know that's not true? His passport was cancelled while he was mid-flight and no country would touch him, and he was essentially trapped in an airport until Russia offered asylum.

The US effectively sent him to Russia.

The funniest thing is that he'd probably be in US prison by now had they not cancelled his passport.

account created 2 hours ago pathetic

That is largely correct, even if not for that specific purpose/reason. Those people are largely self-discrediting, among other things.

Or maybe the government should have a common convention regarding official government communications, which Blinken added fragmentation to by arbitrarily changing the font away from Times New Roman.

Oh, you're just obsessed with this, aren't you?

Can you cite a source that Blinken's decision was arbitrary? Because Rubio himself is quoted here as attributing a reason for the change (i.e. that it wasn't arbitrary).

I'm also interested to hear your thoughts on the arbitrariness of Microsoft's decision to switch to Calibri in 2007 - imagine the "fragmentation" that must have caused across the business world!

No, Times New Roman is old fashioned, so moving to something more readable doesn't shock me.

You seem weirdly worked up over this.

Blinken made no public statements on this until he was asked about it. He did not come out and say for example, "For too long, the vision impaired community have been discriminated against by the systemic bias via the use of Times New Roman. Today we are taking action to change this and restore the dignity of those this font has long oppressed", but Rubio just did exactly this. For all I can tell the actual decision was a recommendation made by an internal team doing an accessibility review.

The only other place I’m familiar with people making grandiose announcements about their font selection, other than a font company announcement, is here on HN.

Sure, this is a good point, but only if you completely ignore the the accessibility gains provided by the change. But I'm guessing rationality wasn't on the menu when this was written.

It seems we (America) are in some kind of “middle”, or at least a phase change in a larger wave of the addiction cycle, with different stages affecting different generations and countries based on arrival of what can be described as the addiction dealers, “Big American social media”. It reminds me of the effects of the crack epidemic rippling through different generations differently from the late 70s to this very day still.

I don’t have hard data to substantiate it and my theory is based on anecdotal conversations but it seems, e.g., where there is some recovery going on amidst something like American millennials, who have both dealt with their own addiction and were the first generation that is also dealing with the neglect of addicted parents, they are also to some degree recovering (“reparenting” themselves), to some degree probably also spurred on by realizations shot the deleterious effects of phones and SM that come from exhaustion and different life stages. On the other hand, other generations of Americans, like those now elderly parents of millennials, not only are still, but increasing number of them are entering the earlier stages of “phone addiction” (which encompasses many different things), with the most tragic part being that they are in the latter quarter of their life and are unlikely to even realize, let alone recover from the addiction.

I also see this cycle and these stages emerging in other western societies in particular. My theory is that it is a particular effect or amplifier of the underlying culture to some degree, i.e., adoption, degree, impacts. It seems particularly pernicious in America because the underlying culture (if you can call it that, after decades of it being poisoned and corrupted by corporations and the government) was and is fertile ground for the societal rot caused by social media and its amplifier, smart phones, to have taken hold and spread like the virus it is.

It was even all described as “viral”, and yet we still engaged in it as if unfamiliar and investigated viruses spreading in an uncontrolled manner are a perfectly acceptable thing that should not even give anyone pause, especially if money can be made, regardless of whether it is something like HIV, with a very long lead-time, a delayed ETA for the reaper.

What happens now that we are in some kind of middle stage of the “smartphone“/Social Media civilization wildfire, with the first to have been affected looking over the devastation it has left in their wake, Shell shocked by the neglect and destruction, as the inferno is still raging on off in the distance as it consumes their parents and new generations, and even toppling whole countries through the “Color Revolution” playbook?

I agree that this is a reasonable perspective, but from my cursory understanding of the “shakeup” at Apple, I am not sure it is seen that way by the Board and Cook.

Yes, I also see what you mean.

I don't want to imply that this is their only play or that it will even work out.

The EU (and others) already identified this general scheme of stiffling competition by "brokering" between the consumer and the free market, so outside of the US I'm not even sure how much Apple will be able to rely on such a strategy (again)...

That’s ironic, because I don’t see the European hiding of taxes being a benefit or WYSIWYG at all. I agree that the way it is done in the USA is also not ideal, but frankly, the majority of people in all places are, let’s just say disinterested in serious matters and don’t really care one way or the other beyond slight frustrations in their daily lives.

On net, hiding the ~20% VAT in the price of all goods in Europe is far worse and exactly why it is done, so you don’t think about it and don’t how much the ruling class has decided to plunder, by that one of many methods it plunders the lower classes.

Ideally, in a consumer, citizen centered society the price would have to be listed separately along side of the tax on the same label. There is today absolutely no reason that could not be done and it would make people realize both how much the ruling class/government plunders, as well as e.g., in the U.S. produce is far cheaper than processed foods because it is usually not taxed.

If information is deliberately hidden from you, you are no longer a citizen, but rather something more like a serf, a slave, or a mark of a con job; especially in an era where governments all across the west are hostile to and don’t represent anyone but their own self-interest, let alone their own people anymore.

To be clear. This information is not hidden. Every receipt you receive will have the VAT % of each individual item written down, and VAT % of certain kinds of items are often discussed as part of regular politics and very present on public consciousness.

You are missing the point even though I rather clearly indicated it. This is not a question of whether you or I see the taxes as we likely both care to similar degrees, it’s about whether it is front and center for regular people to see at the point of gratification contact line, i.e., looking at the product on the shelf.

The taxes in the US are also very clearly indicated on receipts, but that does not change that when you are looking at a price in Europe, you are appeased looking at it with a bias of assumed, baked in taxes. It’s a psychological difference related to loss aversion. Is precisely why the European rulers pushed to hide the taxes in the price so you don’t even think about it, opposed to additional monies being taken from you at the point of sale.

It’s the very same reason why they pushed for employer to take all the massive taxes and costs and “contributions” out of one’s paycheck because handing over a check of some five digit amount every year to the government would be far more of a galling issue to most people than having it taken out of toe paycheck once a month and you normalized it and take it for granted. Talk to anyone that runs a personal business admit how they feel writing 6 or 7 digit checks to the government every quarter or so, before you grow past having someone that just does it as a matter of their role and they have no vested interest in whether any amount is paid.

It astonishes me that people like you seem to be oblivious of the effects of these kinds of tricks and games, when this community is regularly discussing social engineering, dark patterns, marketing gobbledygook, etc. You think the government made up of liars that lie about everything, including lying; the people who cover up child rape of the Epstein kind and the rape gangs of the Brush Labour Party that numbers somewhere near ~250,000 victims of child gang rape … they wouldn’t have evaluated which way is better to hoodwink the multitude and minimize anger offer being pilfered?

> It astonishes me that people like you seem to be oblivious of the effects of these kinds of tricks and games, when this community is regularly discussing social engineering, dark patterns, marketing gobbledygook, etc.

Don't you see the hypocrisy of talking about "dark patterns" while trying to use every psychological trick in the book to trigger people's emotional responses that are opposed to their rational beliefs?

Sure, most of us will complain about taxes being higher than we like sometimes, but most of us also understand that those taxes pay for services that the vast majority of us want and rely on - we want healthcare, safety nets, infrastructure, quality education, etc. We can argue about a few % here or there but we also understand that we couldn't have those things if all of our taxes were substantially lower.

We already have transparency as all taxes and contributions are plainly documented on every receipt, pay slip, and tax invoice. Laypeople argue about taxes all the time, they complain about VAT and income taxes being too high, they aren't under the illusion you think they are.

Your entire strategy seems to be making bureaucracy and every day activities as irritating, anxiety-inducing, bias-inducing, and stressful as possible when it comes to taxes in order to get people to turn on taxes entirely. That's not transparency but subversion of people's self-interests through dark patterns you claim to oppose.

> Talk to anyone that runs a personal business admit how they feel writing 6 or 7 digit checks to the government every quarter or so

It feels gut-wrenching in the moment, but I don't believe that public policy should be influenced by our fleeting emotional reactions and I'm surprised to hear this quiet part said out loud.