Not that Trump is directly trying to solve it, but TSMC being in Taiwan has been a geopolitical problem for a long time. It's even more of a problem in a situation where China catches up on fabbing, which feels less like an "if" and more like a "when, if not already".
They are building vast amounts of solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power, and for fossil fuels they can't yet get rid of they are replacing old equipment with newer more efficient equipment.
New car sales there are over 50% EV or PHEV, up from 7% a few years ago. They currently have the 4th highest percent of EVs in use at 7.6% in 2023, behind Netherlands at 8.3%, Sweden at 11.0%, and Norway at 29.0%. The US is at 2.1%.
If we’re talking about banned words or terms, one of our Supreme Court justices wouldn’t define the term “woman.”
The Biden administration directed ICE to use the term “undocumented noncitizen” instead of “illegal alien.” They also pressured social media sites to censor certain content.
is any of this comparable to banning any acknowledgement of the existence of trans and intersex people in anything connected to the federal government?
in fact refusing to define a term doesn't sound like banning at all. to ban is to forbid somebody else from doing something. to refuse to do something personally isn't banning.
Being unable to describe a woman would be pretty similar to banning trans acknowledgement. They're basically 2 sides of the same coin; the mismatch between reality and the categories we use. There are different opinions about which part of the mental model has to give. Ie, the concept of man/woman is too imprecise for political discourse - do politicians abandon the word woman or do they abandon the parts of reality that don't fit into a man/woman model?
The obvious solution is the third option of letting a few more genders in, but that would still require being able to articulate what a woman is.
The gender one is more consequential; if we accept that they exist there are a lot of women who get involved in the legal system because of their gender. Eg, say there is a case that involves gender discrimination - a judge that can't identify what a woman is will struggle to come up with reasonable rulings.
In fairness we don't have the words the judge used in front of us so maybe there was some hedging involved. But they do have to be able to come up with a working definition.
if the ruling is unsatisfactory, you can appeal. you can bring in expert witnesses. she's a professional, and she'll make her decisions based on the facts of the case, and hopefully not based on prejudice. if it's the supreme court, she won't be alone.
None of those services could exist today if copyright didn't exist, because streaming services wouldn't be able to compete with free downloads. I think Patreon and Kickstarter are how creative work is funded in that world.
Piracy isn’t a legal problem—it’s a service problem [1].
Netflix, Spotify, and Valve (Steam) didn’t succeed because of copyright enforcement. They won because they made paying for content easier, faster, and better than piracy.
Piracy isn’t hard, but these services solved the friction: instant access, high quality, fair pricing, and features that free alternatives couldn’t match. That’s why they still thrive today.
If it were legal to download movies and music, Netflix and Spotify would absolutely not exist.
Steam is an unusual case, because games are running software and can't be trivially reproduced in their unencoded form. The publishers can include copy protection, network connection requirements, or even run essential parts of game logic on their own servers. So free downloads became a much worse experience over time.
Netflix might accidentally be the worst possible example you could pick for 'wouldn't exist if piracy were legal.'
Netflix built their entire streaming business model during a time when piracy was so widespread it was almost as good as legal. They succeeded precisely by proving that people would pay for good service even when free options were readily available. They're a textbook example of a business that thrives by being better than free!
Despite huge investments in enforcement, movie piracy never waned. The reason it declined? Netflix. Why is it now seeing a bit of a resurgence? Also Netflix, actually, or rather the fact that people have splintered the streaming landscape.
Here's some articles from Forbes at the time. [1] [2] [3] and an interview with the Netflix CEO [4]
People following the Netflix/piracy story at the time saw it like this: Netflix doesn't necessarily need to care if piracy is legal or not, because it removes most of the incentive to pirate. People tried a lot of things against piracy, until Netflix came along and that was the thing that actually worked. Piracy goes down where Netflix is available. I've also provided enough sources to explain why: Piracy is a service problem [3]. Netflix provides the missing service, so people don't feel like they need to pirate anymore.
In a world where piracy was fully legal, Netflix would still exist, and still drive down piracy. This is Netflix's entire reason for success!
I think you're arguing in good faith, so my response is that I think the legal-piracy world would make it very easy to download things, on par with going to YouTube, something anyone could and would do. I don't think Netflix would be the same in that world. They might well have been the premiere free movie distributors!
We have an internet. It was and is already very easy to download things, legally or not [1] . That's why speculating about legalization making piracy easier misses the point - it's already as easy as it can get.
Netflix just made it that much easier to find what you want[2] and just watch it. People were and are willing to pay for that.
[1] for movies and other large files you can use a torrent tracking site: type what you want, click the result with most seeds, download, play.
[2] Not necessarily as easy as it used to be a few years ago. So piracy is going back up.
Alternative take: those services have a smaller selection, use annoying algorithms to promote IP they own, and are generally worse that piracy, but people don't like being hassled by their ISP and initially they cost a similar amount to a VPN.
Your comment about looky-loos got me thinking about real-world socialization. People who hang around the edge of a group in the real world, looking like they're trying not to be noticed, get pegged as creepy - it looks like predator behavior in the wild! The group then has a reason to either invite them to participate or keep them out - otherwise they're making the space feel unsafe.
The edge-hangers have two good choices: They can be very visibly present and then join the conversation when an opportunity presents itself, or they can leave.
Social-media edge-hangers don't have to do anything, they can just hang there forever without clearly joining or leaving the group.
In in activist group there is always a concern, founded or not, that law enforcement, opposition groups, or opposed individuals will try to infilitrate the group. People who are in this situation [1] in regards to romantic attraction also are creepy as hell.
Agreed, but the "connotations don't match" is mostly because the folks who chose to call it open source wanted the marketing benefits of doing so. Otherwise it'd match pretty well.
The Daily Show's Jordan Klepper had a sad clip of a Trump supporter demanding to know where President Obama was during Katrina, and that he should be investigated for his failures.
(The answer, of course, is "he was a state Senator in Illinois at the time".)
I'm on the fence about this kind of talk, to be honest. I ask myself sometimes, is it fair to demean those who have been let down by the state they were educated in? I know that generally Americans are uninspired and under educated, but a lot of that comes from systematic and cultural issues rather than it being a fault of the person itself.
