If such tabletop experiments were possible, then surely the particle physicists who use these colliders would be building them? As far as I can see, they're requesting colliders because to the best of their knowledge, colliders are necessary.
A muon collider would be revolutionary in the sense that it would open up a new energy range for lepton collisions. It would also be a technological marvel.
It's not that simple. There are many smaller scale experiments in HEP, all kind of dark matter detectors among them. Colliders are irreplaceable in a sense that we do not know how to get higher energies without them, but it's unclear for me that just getting higher energies is enough.
Energy scales for new physics can be enormous for all we know, I do not see any reason to expect that new physics hides "around the corner" (in a 1.5 orders of magnitude FCC or muon collider could give us). Muon collider is at least looking in a different place, and it's definitely more interesting than FCC for me, but I'm still not 100% sure it is the right thing to do, given the limited resources.
Those colliders need more research, but are possible (like wakefield accelerators). The physicists who want these colliders probably aren't interested in this kind of research though, so they push for classic collider designs they already know how to build.
I agree that muon colliders are a better investment than something like the Future Circular Collider though, it's an area that hasn't been as thoroughly explored.
This article incorrectly labels the DFT as as a Fourier transform. To people who use these tools, the distinction is important and misnomers like this will make learning harder for people starting out. The article should be updated to correct this error.
Microsoft want to advertise to users because it makes them money. That money will come from the pockets of the people you're describing, and not as a fraction of their income as with many taxes.
> That money will come from the pockets of the people you're describing
Very indirectly maybe. Ad spend is a cost to businesses, not consumers.
I'll also add that making ad spend less inefficient (as this regulation will do) will ultimately cost either the business or consumer as someone will need to eat those extra costs. Assuming that those inefficiencies are not passed to the consumer and is instead is a cost to the business, this would still only be a good thing if you believe companies making more money is bad.
Money spent on ads doesn't cost businesses money, it makes them money. Otherwise they wouldn't do it. That money comes directly from consumers, who are also taxpayers. I haven't said whether this is good or bad.
