Writing an extemporaneous essay from start to finish in one draft on the spot is a skill that students were expected to develop in my educational experience in the US less than 15 years ago or so. If that's vanished, I'd be glad to see it come back.
> Writing an extemporaneous essay from start to finish in one draft
Every English class I had in high school focused so strongly on how important revision was, or at a minimum having an outline to work from. While AP tests expected us to dash off essays by hand in a single go I empathize with OP around how useful a tool revision is.
Exactly. People often forget that Congress can only exercise a limited domain of enumerated powers. The big one is regulating Interstate Commerce, which is already huge because of how interconnected the country is today, and is even bigger because of creative stretching of its reach (did you know that the Civil Right's Act's ban on discrimination by businesses is within Congress's Interstate Commerce power, because somebody might patronize your business from out of state?).
Anyway, I suspect Bob Hacker has a strong case that such a law as applied to himself would be beyond the scope of Interstate Commerce. Until he tries to sell or make his OS widely available, at least.
Given how broadly the commerce clause has been interpreted I don't think we can rely on that to save us here. Criminalizing Bob publishing his OS on GitHub is still too authoritarian for my liking.
Just off the top of my head, something like "physical hardware with web access sold in the US without an ID check at the checkout counter must include this feature in its preinstalled OS" would be a better way to write the law in my opinion. Plenty of ways around it if you're a hobbyist or for some reason really don't want to comply, but a big enough hassle that all the major commercial OS providers would probably find it easiest to just include the feature. (Especially since this is a feature most parents would probably appreciate anyway.)
Warning: This website has audio which is activated when you press the letters, despite not giving any fair warning indication of this. Not a nice surprise if you're at work!
> Not all titles are positive law — some titles are "evidence of law" rather than the legal text itself (see 1 USC § 204)
The vocabulary of this sentence is inconsistent with section 204 [0]. It is the positively enacted titles which are "legal evidence of the laws". The other titles merely "establish prima facie" what the law is, subordinate to a closer examination of the bills actually passed, which control. In other words, "evidence of law" is the stronger of the two, not the weaker, as the readme suggests.
> These courts just want to clear their dockets which is why they reversed.
You have made no attempt to justify this claim, which, I suspect, you pulled out of thin air, though it amounts to a provocative accusation of significant ethical bankruptcy and judicial malpractice in "these courts" (whichever courts you may be referring to). Do better.
The 9th district court of appeals, something that's on the first page of the ruling. Did you read it? That was implicit in this comment thread.
And the justification is the fact that this is an unpublished ruling "This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3"
That alone is a good sign that these judges don't really think this is a great argument.
And, if you read the ruling (which lacks a dissent). It's extremely weak. California law requires that the end user makes an affirmative action to accept a TOS agreement in the form of checking a box or clicking a button. Something the court admits the defendant does not do.
They make a lot of hay around how wonderful the email was, but who cares? Just showing someone text does not count as accepting the TOS.
They had to construe the fact that the plaintiff used the app later as being an acceptance of the TOS. TOS which include moving the case of stalking out of the federal courts and into the arbitration courts which Tile picked. The fact that this reduces their case load is apparent because if they didn't force this into arbitration the court would end up dealing with all the appeals that Tile would invariably file.
Maybe you should do better and actually read the linked ruling before accusing others. My example is exactly the sort of behavior that this court would find acceptable for accepting a TOS change.
I'm assuming bad motivations because this is a garbage ruling. And the only reason why they'd make such a ruling is case load. That, in fact, is charitable to these judges.
"That alone is a good sign that these judges don't really think this is a great argument."
No, this is a totally normal thing, at least for the 9th circuit (and a few others). They do not publish all rulings, and they don't designate all opinions as precedential.
The rest is just disagreement with governing law, framed as if the court should have disregarded it and done what you wanted.
"California law requires that the end user makes an affirmative action to accept a TOS agreement in the form of checking a box or clicking a button. Something the court admits the defendant does not do."
This is only true as of July 1st, 2025. So was not in force at the time of this dispute.
"Just showing someone text does not count as accepting the TOS."
During the time, it did, as the court explains pretty well.
It is hilarious that you think this was about clearing a docket.
As a lawyer, I would guess this was literally the last thing they cared about here.
I also happen to think consumers get shafted and am quite happy with california's recent contract law changes, but ...
this ruling is quite clearly reasonable, if not totally correct based on the law as it existed at the time.
The document in question itself may be interesting as a historical artifact, which the article kind of gets into at the end. But the headline and opening paragraphs are just complicit in amplifying low-quality online discourse, about a decade-old topic no less. It just shows that 1) rage-machines are silly, and 2) Daily Mail is not a reputable outlet. Skip.
I used to live in just such a place. Went to the city center to apply for a library card, thinking "of course I can get a card here, I live in Foo City and this is the Foo City Public Library." I was asked for my street address, and she pulled out a binder of street names to check (yes it was analog, in the year 2016 A.D.). I was not within the city limits and was denied a card.
You did not pay the tariffs. You bore the cost of the tariffs. Those are not the same thing. The refund is due to the party that got the bill for the tariff and paid it-- the importer. What you paid for was for the business not to go bankrupt while this was occurring. If the business wants to refund you for that, they can choose to do so. But you are not owed a refund.
Look you can write the funny numbers in whatever accounting mumbo jumbo you want, but I paid more to cover the cost to the supplier == I paid the tariffs.
I don't think the commenter you are responding too thinks this is a good thing - they are just describing that it is. I read it as just a blunt summary of how absurd this situation is.
Let's call it what it is, a massive wealth transfer from the general public to companies, and transitively (primarily) to the super-rich. Just because it's legal that they are robbing us blind does not make it right.
What businesses were legitimately going to go bankrupt by the increased tariffs? I'm not defending the tariffs, mind you, but I don't buy that every company had to increase prices to offset the additional taxes. Many could've taken the hit and been fine, except profits would be down and shareholders would be angry.
Lots of them. Profit margins in many sectors are low, lower than the cost of the tariffs.
> except profits would be down and shareholders would be angry.
Right. So when profits turn into losses, you expect shareholders to be OK with the stock price falling to zero and they lose their entire investment? You think this is "fine"?
Delivery companies act as tariff agents and collect tariffs for Customs and Border Protection, so, yes, if you were the importer of record on a delivery, it is quite likely that you paid the tariff via the delivery company.
These are likely to be refunded, because even if you were the purchaser of the product, you were the importer of record and paid the tariff, not a downstream buyer who paid an increased price because of the tariffs.
This answer is the incarnation of capitalismmaxxing. Economically speaking you're correct - but morally definitely not, companies are for the bigger part not the harmed party here.
Similarly, the importers voluntarily paid the tariffs. They could choose to go out of business, go to jail, be sued into bankruptcy, or pay. Totally at their discretion.
In other words: the president can break the law and fuck you over by transferring a nice chunk of your money to big companies, and none of the lawbreakers will be held accountable in any way, and you're not owed a dime in restitution.
The government's job is not to maximize its ROI. For example, (and I make no argument about whether the current situation does this), protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance, even if it's very very expensive and unlikely to somehow feed back into the economy in a way that recoups the cost long term.
Then surely universal health care, strict anti-pollution measures, and worker safety efforts are next on the list, alongside access to healthy food and efforts to reduce the number of miles the average person needs to drive daily.
On the contrary, by starting this war the government kmjust made terrorist attacks more likely. It's laughably naive to think this dumbfuck war has anything to do with Trump caring about regular Americans.
It's all about government efficiency for some folks until the time comes do drop bombs on girls schools. Then there is no need for ROI or smart spending.
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