The “aspirational brand” value is a bit of Apple-ception, though. The really, really, luxury-level wealthy people buying Vision Pro, to inspire the just really wealthy people to buy the Vision Basic or whatever it’s called. It still is the price of the highest-end iPhone, and it’s far less functional.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they treated the Vision Pro as Apple’s version of the beta product - top-down rather than bottom-up testing.

The dumbest part about this ruling is it treats every bribe as unrelated to every other bribe. The majority ignored the basic trait of every human with a prefrontal cortex, that we judge future planning by past experience.

So even ignoring the “first bribe is free” effect of the decision, what will happen in effect is that legislators and politicians will pass laws they think will gain bribes, be paid by interests that benefit after the fact, and after that without a single word, have an understanding that such back-dated bribes can continue indefinitely. Regular, consistent bribery is legal and easy, under this ruling.

That’s a pretty funny idea for a political cartoon - swing states in a trench coat trying to get into the democracy theater.

“It’s absolutely true that when you look at an individual campaign, it’s just as likely as not that it hasn’t had a huge amount of influence, which is why Russia just does it again and again, or in a different form, or targeting a different group,” the Digital Forensic Research Lab’s Carvin said. “It’s almost like producing cheaply manufactured goods and just getting it out there in the world, hoping that maybe one particular gadget ends up becoming the popular toy of the season, even if the others completely fail.”

Many researchers who study disinformation warn against seeing the hand of Russia as an all-powerful puppeteer, especially since so much of what its mouthpieces amplify is homegrown.

I think we’re severely underestimating the damage and impact of Russian influence, just as we’ve spent decades underestimating the damage and impact of Fox News propaganda.

Amplifying something “home grown” rather than creating a narrative whole-cloth doesn’t make it any less impactful. On a scale of 1-100, turning a fringe party from a volume level of 0.1 to 10 makes it seem like it is still low impact, but in fact it’s 100 times as impactful. It’s the difference between a fringe idea remaining fringe and it being accepted as a variation on “normal.”

That’s why thirty years ago, white supremacy was a fringe group that would be toxic to anyone even touched by it. Now, thanks to normalization by Trump and Fox News - and yes, Russia - there are open white supremacists (though they only occasionally say the quiet part loud) in Congress.

Russia is normalizing fringe right-wing, populist and totalitarian policies. I think they are not only having an impact, they are winning in recent elections. Yes, proving it is difficult, and that’s why no news source is ready to claim Russia caused it. But they are injecting poison into the veins of the world. You might say it’s “trace” amounts, but given a long enough timescale, it is going to be fatal.

I’m sorry, “before you blame this on republicans”? Republicans vote for Horrible Policy, pass it, but we should blame it on democrats for not …calling for a recorded vote? Yeesh.

Democrats didn’t have the votes. You don’t like this result, vote out republicans.

If he gets a huge fine, he will not pay.

Correction, *his supporters will pay.

Yeah, she was always a rank opportunist. This isn’t her changing, this is her revealing who she’s always been.

Yeah, this was the moment for me too. There’s just no plausible explanation for this that doesn’t involve at least willful negligence and lack of empathy.

This is far far worse of a potential risk than a tracking identifier. Bank passwords, balances, social media pages, full text chat Windows, everything you ever view all OCRed and put in a neat searchable database for a hacker.

“I suggest you concede” was meant empathetically. I’ve been wrong before and will be wrong again. I also see internet debates devolve into digging positional trenches to not be wrong. Again, I’ve done that before too.

Here, I thought you appeared to be falling into that pattern and I was trying to coax you to do the bigger thing, which is admit something difficult but true. Admitting being wrong is a different show of strength - it elevates you and reduces bad feelings all around.

This is subtle, but it’s actually definitional shift in the word “convict,” which is a shortened colloquialism that sounds like it should mean the same thing as “convicted felon,” but is used in a slightly different way. “Convict” is defined differently because that colloquialism took on the meaning of a person serving or served a sentence when in use.

“Convicted felon” on the other hand is a technical phrase to mean a person convicted of a felony, which is exactly, definitionally what Trump is after the jury… convicted him.

So if you’re arguing in good faith, I suggest conceding that you’re wrong to say he is not a “convicted felon,” if your only support is about “convict.”. Because, sorry, you are incorrect.

“Damn…that guy got a blue check? We really should riot.”

I just assume she has resting smug face.

Exactly. The Google culture nowadays is a lot of climbers cynically trying to sell new ideas and then abandoning them once they get promo. It didn’t always used to be like that.

Between this stuff and the blatantly inflated Truth Social stock, I would be shocked if there weren’t fifty different types of campaign finance violations going on. If you want to launder a donation, this seems like a textbook setup.

The judge is no fan of Trump, but yes, he didn’t want to put Trump in jail during the trial for contempt. There was a good reason, because that may be misused by Trump’s team on appeal to suggest the judge biased the jury against Trump or that the judge was himself biased. I agree with prioritizing tactics to avoid any delay or unforced errors that Trump’s team will certainly try to exploit.

After a guilty verdict, I assume the judge will decide the sentencing, and I don’t see a reason to hold back. Of course, we’ve all been disappointed before.

The author addresses this.

He notes Tesla drivers are expected to be able to intervene at any time. Both companies rely on human intervention. But his argument is Tesla doesn’t have the infrastructure to learn from all its data with the accuracy necessary to account for edge cases, which are mortally important for safety.

Tesla, per the author, will need to go through exactly the staging Waymo is doing to move to driverless, but is years behind. That’s the argument.

Fediverse is the Wikipedia of encyclopedias

Isn’t Wikipedia the Wikipedia of encyclopedias?

I wish our national standards were not so low, because from a different perspective, it’s great that these people are self-identifying as power-corrupted fascists. Usually they hide it and we have to guess.

I really cannot understand how 40% of voters see a rejection of democratic elections as a qualification to run a democracy.

This was a pretty predictable comment, given that (1) Trump himself has long been alleged to snort Adderall and take other stimulants, and (2) Trump always, without fail, accuses his enemies of exactly what he is already doing.