> And as a consumer, I am somewhat happy that a company says "well, then not" if it cannot comply with the law.
As a citizen, I find it both fascinating and disturbing that this is even a thing. Of course companies have to follow the law. Why is this even a thing? If the product fills a real need and the externalities are acceptable, that will be a demonstration that the law needs an update.
> It is not the state's place to tell people what they should or should not be allowed to buy.
You will always find people willing to spend money on anything. The whole point of politics is that we have to draw a line between what people want to do and the effect that it can have on other people. To put it simply, if your freedom affects mine, then someone needs to decide how far you can go and how much I have to accept.
We commonly accept that scams are bad, even though someone might participate willingly, just because it is much more likely that someone is taken advantage of in a way that most people find immoral, for example. Even in bastions of free speech such as the US. That someone somewhere knowingly gave money to someone else is neither here nor there.
But MEPs can't even introduce legislation, they have to get all of Parliament to ask the European Commission to initiate legislation, and the Commissioners are pretty far removed from direct election. Nobody elected by the citizens can initiate legislation.
Apple and Google have been dealing with each other for quite a long time. My guess is that they want to replicate the relationship they have with Safari, where Apple provides the users and Google provides the search engine (and money).
Last year the announced they were working with OpenAI. It looks like this went nowhere, so it's not really surprising to see them try someone else.
> Forget US casualties. The US is concerned with minimizing Iranian casualties.
I can’t help but notice how closely this mirrors Russian talking points. According to them, the war is not finished only because the Russian military fights with their arms tied to avoid Ukrainian casualties. It is about as credible in Iran as it is in Ukraine.
> I guess "Jewish has nothing to do with support for the Jewish state" would have sounded too silly
It is not silly and it is true. In the same way as many Muslims don’t want to live in a theocracy and many Christians are not fundamentalists. Being a Jew, a Sionist, supporting the principle of Israel, and supporting its current apartheid iteration are all very different things.
This quote is terribly misunderstood. "Steal" here means "make it your own", as in, improve it, not "copy slavishly". What it means is that to be great you have to find good ideas and then execute.
Yeah, you are correct: in “good artists copy, great artists steal”, the “steal” doesn’t mean “copy”. But, OTOH, there’s another word in there that does...
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