Frankly to me the fact Canada is "retooling itself" knowing well that this nightmare should be over in less than 3 years, and most likely next President will be a Democrat, but yet they keep retooling, means their strong (reliable?) assumption is that Trump Administration won't leave the office at all, similar to how Putin stayed in power in what arguingly is a Democratic Country.
A lot of people are still in denial about Jan 6th. They really tried to overthrow the election like actually in physical effect. Not hypothetically. They were trying to not certify the election and it came down to a hairs width. They're going to try to again.
You're missing some of the history here. Canada's initial free trade integration with the US in the late 80s was controversial at the time, with opponents specifically predicting a slow erosion of sovereignty until one day Canada is forced to subordinate itself to the US. What Trump showed is that that concern was correct, although the erosion was fortunately not yet complete enough to force Canada's hand. The Canadian people don't want to be continually dependent on the goodwill of future US Presidents; they want "Canada should the US" to sound like "Taiwan should join the US" or "France should join the US", an obviously impossible idea that even the most vehement partisans would have to explain away rather than trying to make it happen.
This is Trump's second term and MAGA views won't disappear 3 years from now. Even if they assume that there will be a peaceful and lawful transition of power, I can see why they may be planning on the assumption that the "instability" (from their point of view) will continue into the future.
I disagree. You literally have one single human being in charge of 3 main branches of government, and multiple smaller agencies. Noone will manage US like Trump does.
There's a "people won't get tired of our good cop/bad cop bullshit because there's money to be made" attitude in the US that doesn't even reflect our own point of view.
They're retooling because it doesn't matter who the next president is.
It's not just trump anymore. The entire cabinet is project 2025 people, most GOP has turned or was replaced with MAGA. Project 2025 wasn't just about RAGE, it was a sycophant hiring system as people could send in their resumes and get into unelected positions.
The only chance is if the cult spell breaks with trump, as cults rarely survive that. But it at some point it will be too late, their takeover and ability to fuck with elections means you can't vote them out anymore.
It's actually that I think most expect the Democrats to either be to weak to fix it, or not much better even if they can win big. That's part of it, anyways.
That and there's been a clearly protectionist bias also among Democrats as well. We had to lobby the crap out of the Biden admin to get "Buy American" provisions to not exclude some standard Canadian things, etc. etc.
At the same time, flipping things around... it's clear that Carney and Co are holding out for November mid-terms on the trade front. Conservatives here keep lambasting them for not sitting down to bargain with the US to hammer out a deal, which is just the stupidest losingest idea you can think of. Trump is going to get hammered in November -- why would we sign a deal with a loser like that? To our disadvantage?
Same here! none of my home Tvs, most LG and Samsung, have ever seen w Wifi password. Always putting firestick on it and call it a day. At least firestick I can unplug throw away, God only knows what updates TV does that I obviously cannot revert.
> Always putting firestick on it and call it a day.
Aren't you just letting amazon collect and monetize your viewing habits while allowing them to push ads at you? Avoiding ads and data collection are the reasons I'd want to leave my TV offline in the first place.
I have more control over where Amazon shows me ads versus my own TV. Someone will always collect the data, I prefer USA's Amazon does it than Singaporean's Samsung. And I never seen Ads on Firestick, BUT that could be because I'm prime member, which actually works very well in my zip code (there is Amazon distribution Hub about 10 minutes away from my home)
Ashamed of France Poland and Hungary. Hungary is a state regime dictatorship so I get it.. but France and Poland, after everything Poland went thru during WW2 then communism with USSR, who the heck are these people voting FOR ?
> 3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law.
No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.
Should Apple be responsible for righting the wrongs of legislation in every country it operates in? I don’t think so. Ideally it would mettle as little as possible, even though they clearly don’t (see right to repair).
Hmm. I don't think the point is that Apple has to "fight". The point is that Apple needs a moral high ground and is willing to completely give up the UK market (which I understand but don't necessarily agree with). I don't see that happening with today's environment, considering that shareholders will happily fire Cook over that.
I think this law is the wrong way about doing what they're trying to do, but I also don't want US corps deciding what is and isn't permissible in our country.
> I also don't want US corps deciding what is and isn't permissible in our country.
Apple might be the wrong company for you then. They're all about corporate control and deciding what is and isn't permissible on their devices. The first time you want to install an app that isn't approved in their app store, this becomes quite apparent.
They can do whatever they want on their devices that is permissible in whatever jurisdiction they're selling into, but they don't get to choose to follow our laws. If we want those changed we'll do it at the ballot box.
I'm not aware of any law or even terms of service that prevents Apple from saying "we don't like your politics, your iPhone has been disabled, account suspended, all iCloud data deleted." I don't think they would suffer any reputation damage either at this point.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few out there who have gotten their Apple account restricted for whatever reason, and didn't have the clout, energy, or mental bandwidth to pursue it loudly and publicly.
Apple paid 304m in taxes on 1200m in profits in the UK. That's ~25% tax rate on profits. It's entirely subjective to say if that's a "pretty hefty" rate or not, but it seems to be pretty standard for G20 countries.
I suspect the UK wouldn't love losing that 304m, but Apple would also probably not enjoy losing the 1200m of profits either.
It's almost like international companies having to deal with legislation in every country they operate in is a more complicated topic than could ever be hashed out in the comment sections of a tech news site...
None. But you don't put a non refined cruide oil in your diesel, it not only has to be refined but DELIVERED to your country. Depending where that country is, delivery could be even 60% of the final price. And when, you know, tankers with oil explode due to drone attacks, you will see quick large spikes in pump price.
EDIT: also, oil is a commodity traded worldwide, and downside of this is the price of oil is directed by future contracts bet on said oil. In other words, if enough people assume there will be future upticks related to raising cost of transportation insurance, they buy more futures. If they buy more of this virtual contract on price going up (called "long") then eventually real price of oil catches up. Sure, this is upside down, but markets live in this setup for many years now where tail wags the dog.
> You call it for what it is: an executive with authoritarian tendencies.
I think you misunderstand fascism. Fascism is not gassing certain minority group of people in concentration camps, that's called crimes against humanity. It might be an endgame to fascism if you are government that is allowed to commit those crimes without consequences, but the road to it is still fascism regardless whether you historically know how it ends. Calling press "the enemy of the people" as Trump did (also known as "Lügenpresse") IS a form of fascism. You don't need to push Democrats and immigrants into gas chambers to be full blown fascist. Overwhelming amount of actions taken by this democratic government ARE what most historians call fascism.
Fascism, in political science, has some clear requirements: a government that controls all branches of power, lack of elections and effective ban of free speech and other political parties.
It also requires ideological aspects such as nationalism and far right politics, otherwise fascism would apply to far left dictatorships which didn't have these traits.
You really going to say that Trump and his Administration does not control all branches of power?
During Third Reich neither press was banned nor elections. Look it up, Google is still free to research. Unless of course you want to endup at conclusion that Nazism and Third Reich wasn't fascism.
And what did it change? NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Tariffs are still here - this morning I accepted DHL package and had to pay it - and even if - Trump/Vence already said its actually good because we will use another vehicle which will allow us to continue collect the money. So it won't be called tariff - it will be called embargo fee. So yes, Trump continues to control all branches, one way or another.
It’s ridiculous, but it’s OK. Because we have other ways, numerous other ways,” the president said. “The numbers can be far greater than the hundreds of billions we’ve already taken in.
The nature of tariffs has fundamentally changed. Imports from all countries are subject to the same 15% rate which means no more deals or wielding tariffs as a punishment.
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