Mostly, they can’t. Businesses like Walmart have margins of around 3-4% or so. If the cost goes up an extra 10% or more, that’s it.

Besides, I don’t see why they would prop up a guy who’s ruining them, anyway. Even if it didn’t require gifting billions to customers.

In war, the economy does not slow down. It is turbocharged.

A nuclear war could counter global warming by triggering a nuclear winter but the actual effects are very uncertain. Basically, for a nuclear winter, a lot of “dust” needs to be lifted into the stratosphere. Those huge, multi-megaton bombs that they had back in the day caused a mushroom cloud that rose all the way to the stratosphere. Today, smaller, more precisely targeted bombs are preferred. It also depends on how combustible the targets are. No one is really quite sure what the climate effect of nuking a city is.

ETA: That was how climatologists saw nuclear winter ~15-20 years ago. No idea if anything has changed, but there probably wasn’t a lot of new data.

A substantial reduction in the human population would largely end the burning of fossil fuels and trigger reforestation; removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Ultimately, I would expect WW3 to greatly mitigate global warming.

Most people don’t care about locked-down tech. They don’t have the skills necessary to use anything open, and that’s fine. You have to pick what you do with your limited time.

OTOH, many people want to have control over their data. That means having control over other people’s computers. It’s not just the copyright industry demanding money, or Big Tech building walled gardens. You can see a lot of users on Lemmy demanding that kind of control. That means that computing devices of all kinds must become more locked-down and remote-controllable.

So that’s where I see us going.

You mean legally? Yeah, no problem. It depends on the location, though. In the EU, the rights-holder can opt out. So if you want to do it in the EU you have to pay off Reddit, Meta, and so on. In Japan, it’s fine regardless. In the US, it should turn out similarly, but it’s up to the courts to work out the details, and it’s quite up in the air if you can trust the system to work.

The usual tends to be that the platform can do basically whatever. That shouldn’t really be surprising. But I see your point. If you literally want consent, not just legally licensed material, then you need more than just a clause in the TOS.

You could raise the same issue with permissively licensed material. People who released it may not have foreseen AI training as a use, and might not have wanted to actually allow it.

For images, yes. Most notable is probably Adobe. Their AI, which powers photoshop’s generative fill among other things, is trained on public domain and licensed works.

For text, there’s nothing similar. LLMs get better the more data you have. So, the less training data you use, the less useful they are. I think there are 1 or a few small models for research purposes, but it really doesn’t get you there.

Of course, such open source projects are tricky. When you take these extreme, maximalist views of (intellectual) property, then giving stuff away for free isn’t the obvious first step.

And quartz, of course.

“Instance” is programmer lingo. Roughly, it’s when you have the same piece of code running multiple times with different values (as part of the same system). More narrowly, “instance” is used in the context of classes. All lemmy instances run the lemmy code but with different users, admins, and so on. The expression makes perfect sense, but it is not used in a formal way.

A lemmy instance runs a web server. Wikipedia says that when you host a web page under a dedicated domain name, you have a website.

Far fewer than 1 in 20 defendants get a jury trial in the US. If every defendant insisted on their right to one, then the system would break down for lack of jurors.

Few juries would decide to nullify, since, by and large, Americans believe in punishment.

So the change would be insubstantial.

Lemmy.world is trying very hard to comply with the law. I think the same is true for lemm.ee; in that sense, they have already caved.

Sooner or later, EU governments are going to take a closer look at the fediverse. There are very loud demands that regulations should be more vigorously enforced. Some instances may not survive.

Maybe what happens first is that some instance gets sued. Maybe by the copyright industry, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some disgruntled user.

The EU doesn’t value the freedom of information (“free speech”) in the same way as the US, and a lot of people on the fediverse will tell you that it’s just more American bullshit. You shouldn’t assume that there is any “we” that wants to get around regulations.

Ok, another answer closer to the ground. 2 goals are often invoked. Reduce the trade deficit and increase domestic manufacturing.

1. Trade deficit

… means that more goods (and services) come into the US from the rest of the world than the US delivers in return.

Reducing the trade deficit makes Americans poorer by design. There will be fewer goods available for Americans, either because they have to give up more to the rest of the world, or because they don’t come into the country in the first place.

The rest of the world is willing to loan money to people, companies, and governments in the US. It is also eager to invest in the country, because it really was a good place in which to do business. Look at the current big thing: AI. You can’t really do that in the EU, and investing in China has its own risks. Trump may actually reduce the deficit by making the US more of a South American style banana republic.

2. Manufacturing in the US.

One manufactures stuff outside the US and transports it there because it is more efficient. Americans can be more profitably employed in different areas. Moving more manufacturing to the US should be expected to leave the average American poorer. It should not be expected, in isolation, to reduce the trade deficit as it creates new investment opportunities that potentially attract foreign money, increasing the deficit.

However, while Americans would be left financially poorer, there may be benefits not captured by conventional econometrics. Maybe manufacturing is more emotionally satisfying in a way that is not captured by only looking at the wages. Who knows?

Unfortunately, getting to that state will be brutal. Millions of people will have to find and learn new jobs. That is what happened when manufacturing was off-shored. Reversing that will have the same cost. Some economists have come to believe that the psychological cost of such structural changes has been vastly underestimated, and that is why trade agreements are so unpopular. The benefits from free trade may not outweigh the psychological pain and disruption of communities. Reversing free trade will have similar effects, that are likewise virtually impossible to measure.

I think the most objective benefit would arise if a war happened that disrupted trade. For example, if Trump invaded Canada and Greenland, this would probably lead to the US being embargoed. Then it would appear good to have already built manufacturing capacity in the US while it was still easy. You need physical goods to fight wars, after all.

There is no absolute, objective way to judge if some policy is a good or bad. We can only determine if some policy achieves its goals. This is difficult as different justifications for the tariffs have been given.

We can also have philosophical arguments over whether the goals are good in some abstract sense. For example, some people on the right feel that the US not having access to X-mas knick-knacks and gifts is positive, as it will force people to engage with religion.

Ouch. Things are about to get real harsh before they get worse. I hope you are prepared.

It’s been speculated that Trump is doing this to prepare for the drop in cargo transport in the next few days. Me, I have doubts because nothing that Trump has said or done so far makes me believe that he or his sycophants are intellectually capable of that kind of rational planning. What do you think?

There’s a few billionaire numptie

Like who?

That would certainly be quite surprising. The expression of Trump being right is flexible enough to be interpreted in various ways.

The only plausible way would be if he achieves some largely meaningless concessions and the media spins it as a win. But if the American electorate gets the idea that the US can get free stuff by throwing a fit, then any agreement is not worth the paper it is written on.

Well, I guess that’s the answer. If Trump achieves anything positive with this, then the reaction with be self-destructive.

Do you have any particular scenario in mind that ends with Trump being vindicated?

I don’t think you have the choice. Products that aren’t imported are made with parts that are imported. In fact, there will be products that have several layers of products tariffs in them, for example cars. Parts are made, assembled into bigger parts and ever bigger parts, and may cross the Mexican or Canadian border each time.

These tariffs are a monumental act of economic self harm. That’s what the stock market is saying. Stocks have (rational) value because you are entitled to a share of future profits. The stock market crashing tells you that the pros expects that a lot of value is not going to be created. Trillions of dollars will not be paid out to stock-owners, and further trillions will not be paid out as wages. The real wealth that is the other side of that money - all these new goods, cars, phones, TVs, dishwashers … - will not exist in the USA.

So, don’t worry about hitting them in the wallet.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on an American ball sack—for ever.

Maybe watch out for products from Russia and Belarus, as they are not included in the tariffs. This may start a new era of economic cooperation; putting the US in USSR. Ironically, Russia is still hit hard because of oil taking a nosedive.

I think I can contribute something to the “privacy” aspect. But I’ll say first that I have noticed the same thing. There are some toxic behaviors that feel more common in these circles than what I have experienced elsewhere.

There is a lot of confusion around European data protection rights and privacy. EG the GDPR is often wrongly called a privacy regulation. In reality, privacy and EU data protection rights are entirely separate.

In the Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union, you will find privacy in Article 7 and data protection in Article 8.

EU data protection works similar to copyright in that you have rights over data. Personal data is defined as any data that is “directly or indirectly related” to you (GDPR). It does not matter if the data is public or private, sensitive or banal. It doesn’t even matter if the data can be connected to your real identity. That’s quite unlike what one would think of as privacy.

So, it does not matter if people expected their communications to be secure or not. “Reasonable expectation of privacy” is a concept in US law.

Comments, posts and DMs are personal data because they are connected to a user who is a person. If any other person is mentioned, then this mention is their personal data. You could even argue that some post or comment also becomes someone else’s personal data when they reply to it. Such texts cease to be personal data only when the connection is irreversibly broken. As long as the connection can be restored, it remains personal data, even if that requires access to information that isn’t readily available.

When a DM is sent to some unauthorized recipient, that is literally a violation of the senders fundamental rights. In truth, this is relatively serious compared to some other stuff that causes outrage or gets the authorities involved.

It might have been legally required to notify the authorities of such a data breach within 72 hours.

Trademarks have valid uses but they, too, are perverted. Think about luxury goods. The purpose of the brand name is simply to signal that the owner is able to afford the brand. These brands have nothing to do with consumer protection.

I consider them parasitic. Whatever utility someone gets from signalling with an exclusive brand is provided by society, not the company.

The public domain is not just useful but unavoidable and necessary.

You could imagine a world where all available physical matter is owned property. But intellectual property is an arbitrary legal creation. It is not finite.

EG Trademark law. Only the owner of a mark may use it to trade. The mark proclaims who is responsible for a product. If there were no unowned trademarks, you could not start a business without first paying off some owner. This would clearly be economically disastrous. So having unused, potential trademarks is necessary.

EG Patent law. Only the patent owner may use a certain invention; some trick of doing something. The patent is published so that others may learn from it and perhaps come up with other ways of achieving the same end. After (usually) 20 years, everyone may use the invention. Scientific theories, mathematical theorems, and other such things are always public domain.

If patents were broader and/or lasted for longer, you’d eventually not be able to do much business without having to pay off some owner. The owners could basically demand a tax on any kind of economic activity and deny consent for anything that might threaten their status. Progress would grind to a halt. It would be a new kind of feudalism.

So, a public domain is not just useful but absolutely necessary to our civilization.

Anything could be made into intellectual property. For example tax farming in ancient Rome and elsewhere. Monarchs granted special privileges, such as granting the East India Company a monopoly on trade. Or they might grant some person the monopoly on opening coffee houses in the country or a certain city. A title of nobility could be seen as a kind of intellectual property. Such titles were traded in a limited way. Anything that can be allowed or forbidden by the government could be turned into intellectual property.

That’s not correct. There are other forms of IP besides copyright, such as trademarks, patents, or even trade secrets.

What you are saying is somewhat true for US copyrights (and patents) per the copyright clause in the US Constitution. But mind that typically copyrights are owned by the employer of the creator, who may be a writer, even a programmer, photographer, or any other such professional who may not be considered an “artist”.

You would probably not consider yourself an artist for writing comments here, but you get copyright nevertheless.

European copyright has a very different philosophy behind it, which does not consider the public at all. It’s quite harmful to the public, actually.