Japanese Kei trucks are pretty rad, but they don’t fly with US highway safety regulations. They’re meant for slower roads / slower collisions speeds.

That said, most American trucks do not need to be remotely as big as they are.

The Americans don’t, but Volvo, Benz, Audi still do.

Cranberries do not grow on the water.

Their fields are flooded during harvest because that expedites harvesting.

She positively highlights that it comes from “protected” Canadian bison so there are “no hormones” and “no vaccines given to the bison”.

These people are now claiming food, and pet food, need to be unvaccinated?

Fact remains, not voting is basically is half a vote for Trump, and Trump is going to be MUCH worse for the citizens of Gaza.

True. I’m mostly saying that you could probably take that cash and upgrade to a nicer car that isn’t covered in creaking injection molded plastic inside, or something with nicer seats and upholstery.

AKA decent materials, and not the cheap garbage you get on a base model American SUV.

The US has different laws for media ownership depending upon what the type of media is owned. For example, networks like BBC America fell under less scrutiny because legacy regulations around paid cable broadcasters were less stringent than those given to free airwaves.

That all being said, all of these regulations, old and new, are basically trying to do the same thing - limit propaganda opportunities for adversarial actors.

IMHO, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to look at what’s going on in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and say “maybe the CCP shouldn’t have easy access to a major media algorithm where stars are literally praised for their ability to ‘influence.’”

I’m mostly just guessing because I’m at work right now, and while I’m on a pee break I don’t have the time or energy to research the nuance of foreign media ownership legislation and regulation.

The US owns and regulates the frequencies TV and radio are broadcast on.

The US has also historically regulated who owns media companies.

As for RT vs TikTok - good question. My guess is that scale and influence have a lot to do with why regulating TikTok was prioritized. Also RT has been removed from most broadcasters and App Stores in the US.

Yeah, a lot of stupid culture war crap is now tied up into the car your own.

If people actually prioritized performance, handling, visability, cost to drive, and cabin features, then a LOT of people would probably be better off with a sedan.

If you don’t need the space, you can get so much more bang for your buck with a smaller car. The $10k more you spend on the larger form factor could go toward a nicer power train and cabin luxury features.

Propaganda is a very well known way to enact influence on a foreign nation. It’s so well known that the US has 90 year old laws that limit foreign ownership of US media. For example, in order for Rupert Murdock to own media in the US, he had to become a US citizen and renounce his Australian citizenship in the 80s.

The people making the content have the right freedom of speech, but the people making the editorial decisions on what is / isn’t shown do not have that same right if they are not American citizens.

If tomorrow morning, the CCP decided to start promoting pro-CCP videos made by Americans, they could. And they could use micro targeting to connect people with pro-CCP influencers that were relatable. For example, I like nerdy shit, so I might get propaganda from a content creator that liked a lot of the same nerdy shit I liked.

The primary concern isn’t the content, it’s who controls the editor’s desk.

Murdoch is an American citizen.

Murdoch became a naturalized US citizen in the 80’s so that he could comply with US laws about foreign nationals owning media entities.

That’s definitely the critique coming from America’s right.

That said, both America’s left and right wing politicians seem to agree that it’s dangerous to have a mass media recommendation algorithm in the hands of a foreign adversary.

If they want to promote content favorable a Chinese political objective, they can use micro targeting data do that with extreme precision - if they wanted to.

It doesn’t matter who created the content or where it was created. What matters is the message of the content and who it’s being directed to.

My hot take is that these lies are for the undecideds that hate politics, didn’t watch the debate, and only catch a few snippets a week about what is going on.

He hopes that these people catch his bullshit Cliffs notes before heading into the ballot box.

They didn’t see the debate, so try to get snippets out on social media that tells them about the debate you wished happened.

The concern isn’t that these companies have microtargeting data. The concern is about what these companies could use that data for.

An off-brand t-shirt site would be a fairly ineffective vehicle for political propaganda. Tik Tok would be great at that.

The concern isn’t the input, it’s the potential output. Temu doesn’t have the potential to be used for a large micro-targeted political messaging campaign.

This is arguably more akin to how the US handles TV and radio. There are national security restrictions on foreign ownership.

That was Foxcon, not TSMC. And all of us have a LOT of shit in our homes made by Foxcon.

Not that it justifies the shit Foxcon did. Just saying that Apple got a lot of flack, even though a lot of other companies should be scrutinized for their manufacturing contractor choices. Microsoft, Sony, etc.

Less risk of tariffs on China, less risk of supply chain disruptions like with the pandemic, takes advantage of incentives from the US government, and is something that is cool to advertise.

Maybe I should’ve said “midsize.”

My point is that they’re not a company with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees. And, as someone that usually likes to work at companies that are about size, you can run out of engineers pretty quickly if you’re not focused and or working on stuff that is wickedly complex. And Mozilla is definitely doing the latter.

The foundation is about 80 folks on payroll, although OSS projects have about 1000 contributors popping in and out.

There is also the “MZLA Technologies” subsidiary, which I think has some dedicated headcount under it as well. Although, there isn’t a lot of public info about that company.