gian

Only problem is the fascists are smarter this time and are pushing everywhere, so this time might not have nation states on the good side.

Putting that way is stupid. Yeah, maybe what you call fascist this time are smarter but on the other hand what should oppose them is dumber.

I had somewhat hoped that my fellow countrymen in Germany would not fall for the obtuse populism of the right, but that is exactly what has happened.

Maybe if you (in the generic sense) stop to say that the people who vote for a certain party is (basically) stupid, we all can start to solve problems. The people who voted AfD, like the people who voted for the Right in every other country, are simply saying that they have (or they think to have) a set of problems. Are they real problems ? Maybe, maybe not. But not even acknowledge what these people are saying cannot end in nothing different.

I’m afraid there’s nothing left to counter this, because voters obviously no longer care about rational arguments and don’t even want to acknowledge the real problems of our time.

Voters don't care for rational arguments because the Left throw them out o the window.

Speaking for Italy, the right wing is in government exactly because the Left wing tried way too hard to lose. If the only thing the Left wing can offer is a multi-gender (whatever it means) leader who dont' even speak about what the people's problems are (or, again, what the people perceive as a problem) why someone should vote for them ? Rationally, why I should vote for a person that don't even talk about what I see as a problem instead of a person that at least talk about it ?

And I think that in Germany it is the same thing, even if for different reasons.

They make it easy for themselves and just blame everything on illegal migration or whatever - just as the right-wingers tell them to do.

Yeah, and the problem is that when the right wing say "the illegal migration is a problem" and people say "the illegal immigration is a problem" the only thing the left wing say is "we need to get more illegal migration". See how the left wing is basically let the right wing win and on easy mode ?

It’s about the big, long-term picture. Companies spend money on branding and advertising because it works. You create the perception that your product is for a certain type of person, which makes them more inclined to buy it. By making cigarettes boring, you make them less appealing, and on average less people will smoke.

Fine, but if that the point, a more honest (intellectually) thing to do would be simply ban cigarettes advertising. The way it is done seems to me something like "I want to ban this but I don't want to be the one that do it".

Tobacco companies fought it tooth and nail. Kept arguing it wouldn’t stop people from smoking.

They are right, people will not stop smoking only because the packaging is dull.

Well then why are you lobbying so hard against it? Obviously the only reason they will ever fight anything is because they think it will hurt their revenue. So whatever they oppose, I support.

Because they lost advertising opportunity.
People recognize the brand by the packaging before even reading the brand name. This way your country just make any type of advertising for the cigarettes useless. And maybe as a collateral effect some younger people will not start to smoke since they will not see the advertising, but as far as I know people don't start to smoke because the package is cool.

The fine is just the first step. They could also block entirely from operating in the EU.

EU: Hello OpenAI, what do you think about the choice "Follow GDPR or here is the fine" ?

The fact is these are high tech machines. To follow your example with the car, you don't need to replace the battery but an ECU, for which there are no available design and you have no idea how to build it.
Add to this that probably if you make a mistake in your try, you destroy the machine.

Basically what ASLM is saying is that they can brick the machine with a software update and even if not bricked the machine cannot run long without specialized maintenance and spare parts (that they obviously will not provide anymore). True, China can try to clone them, but even if/when understand how to make them, you then need to make them, a thing which seems out of question for now for China (else they already would have such machines).

For example, Visa is forcing art platforms to ban (legal) adult content or face blocking.

Only because the social pressure after the metoo charade. Visa itself was more than happy to allow these transaction before it. And once all this stigma on adult content will pass, Visa will be more than happy to allow these transactions again. They are money to them.

Firefox can do something like this with the "send tab to device", not sure it is what you want

They also weren’t an excuse to keep property off the housing rental market at scale.

True. But given that houses were off the market even before, I don't think it is exclusively their fault.

For example Milano historically always had about 30% of the available homes empty, and that even before Airbnb.

I agree with you to some extend.

What I do not agree about is the implicit assumption that if AIRBNB is banned then every house that was used for short-term rental would become available on the long-term rental market.

The main advantage of the short-term rental (obvious higher profits aside) is the fact that the owner is sure to be able to get back the house if/when he need it. So many owners saw the possibility to use an house with AirBnB (or other similar ways) a lot more attractive than keeping it empty (paying the taxes on it) and much less risky than having a long-term rental where the tenants could be turn out to be a bad one.