Banning advertising would have the opposite effect; entrenched players would have a massive moat. The biggest gains from advertising by far accrue to newer entrants, not the big companies.
I assume you're primarily referring to freedom of expression? I take the view that it doesn't include the freedom to pay people to carry a particular message so long as the restriction on paying is neutral as to the content of the message, but I can certainly respect the view that it does.
My comment about not having a right to business models is in some ways more general. Regardless of whether this business model is protected for some other reason, business models in general aren't, and it's a common flawed argument that they are.
Is there any evidence that the US executive branches and three letter agencies care about the physical location of the data center? Never mind the dependency on AWS, which is a US company
I doubt datacenter location matters for anything beyond latency
The US CLOUD Act explicitly asserts jurisdiction over data controlled by US companies regardless of the physical server location. So relying on AWS Frankfurt doesn't actually protect the data from US warrants if the provider is a US entity.
There are fireflies in every state except Hawaii. There are more east of the Mississippi and in the south generally, but anywhere with water has some (including river valleys in arid states).
I had to google this. If you count non-flashing bugs as fireflies, sure. Nothing like the typical experience in my backyard when I lived in Alabama. They are very different bugs.
Still, neat, to be sure. Indeed, my point in the original post was that I find the wildlife out here in the PNW to be very fun and I like all of the wildlife we have. Banana slugs, as a fun example.
> Allow me to explain a contrarian position. Judges favor individuals that use an expensive lawyer for representation, even if there isn't much of a legal argument to be made. Judges give such individuals a far better deal. The reason for this is that hiring an expensive lawyer shows that you've paid homage to the legal profession with your wallet, that you support the systemic judicial-attorney-penalty complex. It grants you favors.
This isn't why expensive lawyers tend to get better results in court, or why those who represent themselves often end up screwed. I'm against the legal monopoly system, but this is out-of-touch and silly.
Expensive lawyers can get better deals in court even for run-of-the-mill cases. Why is this? Are cheaper lawyers so dumb that they can't even handle common cases?
Expensive lawyers have better relationships with opposing parties, have more and better legal research both already on hand and available to be done, with more and smarter people doing research, with more and more experienced people available to consult, and may hire outside consultants when the situation calls for it.
They can also better afford to play dirty in various ways, from burying you in discovery documents to dragging things out with various motions.
And in general, yes — they often also have at least slightly smarter lawyers (and more eyes on the case). That doesn't mean cheaper lawyers are dumb, and there are smart lawyers out there who aren't incredibly expensive, but the average intelligence goes up noticeably as you interact with more expensive firms (which tracks, because they hired people with the top performance in and possibly after law school).
AI may close the gap on some things, but not others.
FYI, even lawyers who represent themselves generally don't do well, no matter how smart they are or how much experience they have in that area. But that's not because the judge wants them to pay into the cartel -- it's because law is hard, there are a million factors affecting performance on a particular case, and one major factor is ability to keep perspective on your case. People are uniformly terrible at this when looking at their own cases.
Cheaper lawyers can’t afford to pay for as many research librarians, paralegals, junior attorneys, writing consultants, jury consultants, etc. LLMs may level the playing field in this regard. But of course, the expensive lawyer might be able to pay for more tokens.
But virtually everyone in the field does believe there are many different mechanisms behind autism, some of which have little-to-no overlap either in the mechanisms themselves or necessarily even in the presentation.
Many scientists believe that one day we will likely be able to split off at least some of the undifferentiated mass of ASD into potentially completely unrelated disorders that may share a lot of aspects of presentation.
For example, we may find out that one set of genes combined with cytokine storms in utero cause dysfunction in synaptic pruning, while another set of genes combined with gut dysbiosis may affect brain plasticity in the critical period of early childhood. Those would be two completely unrelated conditions, with overlapping symptoms for some (but not all) who have them.
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