TWeaK

Fun fact: at birth koalas can't actually digest eucalyptus leaves on their own. They eat their mum's faeces to gain the necessary gut bacteria.

I mean it was a precarious case that was on the verge of being acceptable to most people, but legally was clearly not. Scanning books and providing a single digital copy was legally grey, but everyone looked the other way. Providing extra copies during a pandemic was kind, but allowing it to go to court and not settling (and then doubling down with appeals, all of which has to be funded by donations that could have been spent elsewhere) ended up with a judge ruling that no one can scan books and publish a single copy without an explicit license from the publisher. So that grey area is now black and white.

I can't help but resent them for this, given that the main part of the organisation - the actual Internet Archive - is so important and they've put its survial at risk with their side hussle. Some of the blame (perhaps even a majority?) should also go to the lawyers that represented IA.

Starlink literally has direct to cell capability. Their orbits are around 300-600km, and this is well within reach for two way communication for cellphones as there's nothing in the way (no trees, no buildings, just space). GPS satellites are one-way, because they're at geostationary orbit of 35,786km. GPS antennae are powerful enough to shout at your phone, but your phone isn't powerful enough to shout back; with Starshield's orbit your phone can.

Starlink has deals with T-Mobile in the US and others across the world to provide cellphone coverage. They have a webpage for it and the concept is proven. https://www.starlink.com/business/direct-to-cell

The point I'm making is that this turns Starlink into global cellphone towers, existing extrajudicially to almost all the countries they effectively operate in. Furthermore, as they move (and quite quickly at that) it becomes easy for them to take multiple measurements from different locations over time, allowing them to get high accuracy location information even if only one or two satellites are nearby (with cell towers you would need at least 3 as they're at a fixed location). And on top of that the two-way communication to devices creates an avenue for exploits - maybe not all of those available to a Stingray device (which is much closer and potentially overpowers and blocks ground based cell towers) but certainly a potential for things that I find concerning.

They currently have a couple hundred direct to cell satellites out of the total constellation of 6,-8,000 satellites. However this may just be the number of satellites allocated to the commercial product; having watched most of the Falcon 9 Starlink launches I had the impression there were more direct to cell ones up there. This number also doesn't include the Starshield satellites in the constellation, which are owned by the US Space Force and have classified capabilities.

The IA is already marked for death and has been ever since they doubled down after blatantly infringing copyright with scanned books during the pandemic. IRC the full penalties of that haven't been felt yet, and I think they are likely to bankrupt the ogranisation.

What IA needs to do is spin off the actual Internet Archive element to another organisation, outside of the US like you say, such that an essential part of the internet isn't taken down with the organisation.

Could be? It absolutely is off topic.

That's to say nothing of the global mass tracking of cellphones via Starlink satellites...

I'm just awaiting the government investing all these "savings" and the money raised through tariffs into an obvious crypto scam, which then fails spectacularly and predictably and all the US taxpayer money conveniently disappears into the pockets of those running the scam (which totally won't involve Elon Musk).

Definitely not the people of American Samoa.

Edit: It's interesting that RFK Jr is now only briefly mentioned in the body of that article, but several of the source links at the bottom explicitly reference him in their titles.

Well yeah, 90% of the market is overpriced crap - that's not unique to boardgames, although like you say it's understandble how when the material cost can be low. But there are some game makers that do really make the effort, and in particular when I looked up what Scythe is and all the pieces it comes with I feel it's probably not too unreasonable to ask a higher retail price (although I saw them available for much less also).

People are already boycotting American things on their own, it doesn't make sense to punish them. If anything, that's more likely to backfire and make that government look bad towards its people.

The only way tariffs work is if the revenue collected from them is used to do something for the country setting them. America isn't doing that, America is being stupid. Trump is going to rinse America dry and all the tariff money American taxpayers paid will be gone (probably by the government investing in a classic and obvious crypto scam meme coin).

Other countries shouldn't be stupid like America, they should only apply tariffs with a plan to re-invest the revenue back into their country. If they even need to apply tariffs at all; I'd argue not.

The point I'm making is that retaliatory tariffs don't make Americans suffer, let alone the American government. They maybe mean some American businesses make a little bit less money, but that's it. What tariffs really do is make that country's people suffer.

The American government is already making Americans suffer with American tariffs. It makes no sense for other countries to make their own people suffer with their own tariffs.

Ultimately, tariffs are a tax; they take money from the people and put it in the government's pocket. I wouldn't want my governmet taking more of my money, not at least without some plan for what it's going to be spent on (and those plans being in my or the country's interest).

If America wants to tax Americans for buying overseas then that's their problem, and it doesn't mean that Europe or other countries should start taxing their own citizens.

I just want to add something right here:

Retirement was pushed to the age of 64 under his name

Macron did this unilaterally by twisting an emergency constitutional power so that he could bypass a vote from the Assembly/Senate.