R.H. 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: U.S. Prepares To Spend $42 Billion On A Broadband Problem It Can't Accurately Measure

    R.H. ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2021 @ 01:57am

    Re: "By any measure this is a good thing"

    You seem to be one of the (many) people who misunderstands how money works from the point of view of the issuer of said money. Every dollar that the US government issues is spent on something. That's how new dollars enter circulation. Taxation, on the other hand, removes dollars from circulation effectively destroying them. If you have a perfectly balanced federal budget, then you've managed to remove exactly as many dollars as you added that year from circulation. Even worse, if you have a surplus then you've removed more dollars than you added that year! If you do either of those things and the population using the currency is still increasing then there are either no new dollars for any currency users (you, me, local/state governments, corporations, etc.) to keep or (in the case of a surplus) fewer dollars to go around than we started with. The federal deficit is the number of dollars that the government created that they haven't removed from circulation. Those are the dollars that all of us currency users have in our pockets, bank accounts, and investments. While inflation is a worry in the long term, as long as there are still sufficient goods and services for the number of extant dollars to chase, the economy won't collapse.

  • On the post: GOP Claim That Biden FCC Nom Gigi Sohn Wants To 'Censor Conservatives' Is AT&T & Rupert Murdoch Backed Gibberish

    R.H. ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2021 @ 01:06am

    Re: Re:

    Only one of the two infamous Koch brothers is still alive. David Koch died in 2019.

  • On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights

    R.H. ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2021 @ 01:23am

    Re: Re:

    Even if a homicide is found to be justified as those were, it's still the intentional killing of one human by another. That is, by definition, murder even if no crime has been committed.

  • On the post: Institute For Justice Survey Shows How Philadelphia's Forfeiture Program Preyed On Poor Minorities

    R.H. ( profile ), 09 Nov, 2021 @ 05:04pm

    Re:

    Unfortunately, this isn't only a metropolitan US policy. In Oklahoma, police have (or at least they had at one point) devices to pull money off of gift cards and prepaid debit cards.

  • On the post: Forget 'The Kids These Days'; It's The Adults And Their Moral Panics To Worry About

    R.H. ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2021 @ 10:34pm

    Re:

    For your first point, just a few days ago a 17-year-old girl was {shouted down at a school board meeting](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10148303/Gay-student-sharing-experience-bullying-shouted-woman.html)* (by an adult) while she was speaking about being bullied at school over her sexual identity (she's gay). As to the second, if you don't allow people without children into school board meetings for "lack of standing" do you also not tax them to pay for education? Remember taxation without representation was a major reason for the creation of the United States in the first place. *Sorry about the Daily Mail link, while I read it elsewhere, this was the first one I found in my search just now.

  • On the post: Most People Probably Don't Need A VPN, Experts Now Advise

    R.H. ( profile ), 12 Oct, 2021 @ 11:08am

    Sometimes Even Americans Need VPN's

    My ISP blocks certain legal websites that use services other than Cloudflare for DDOS protection. To access these sites, I have to use a VPN (since Spectrum is the only broadband option available to me).

  • On the post: Court Tells Child Sexual Abuse Investigators That The Private Search Warrant Exception Only Works When There's A Private Search

    R.H. ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2021 @ 02:13pm

    Re: the courts are drawing a funny distinction

    There was no privacy intrusion by Google because of two things. One the user, by way of Google's Terms of Service, agreed to let Google look at their attachments. Two, Google is not the government so they aren't limited by the Fourth Amendment. What the court is saying is that until some being with a mind (let's use the term "person" from here on out) looks at the evidence, no search (as defined by the Fourth Amendment) has occurred. This means that if no person at Google or the NCMEC actually looks at the images, no private search has yet occurred and the police need to get a warrant before looking at the forwarded images themselves.

  • On the post: Following Nationwide Police Brutality Protests, DOJ Steps Up To Issue Incremental Updates To Its Chokehold/No-Knock Warrant Policies

    R.H. ( profile ), 28 Sep, 2021 @ 05:57pm

    Re: No-knock warrants-- future substitutes?

    I'm not even certain about that first case. There was a home with two(!) hostage situations that I could see from my bedroom window last year. Even then, the Michigan State Police announced themselves and ended up making entry by dumping a ton of tear gas in through the windows and rushing the perpetrator. On a separate note, that landlord had a rough time with two separate tenants being held hostage by different people in the house he owned within 6 months of each other. Replacing all those windows twice couldn't have been cheap.

  • On the post: Minnesota Dept. Of Public Safety Now Handing Out License/Insurance Carriers In Hopes Of Keeping Cops From Killing More Drivers

    R.H. ( profile ), 25 Sep, 2021 @ 01:23pm

    Re:

    In Michigan, you are required to have your registration in the vehicle when it's in operation on a public road. One example is that, in winter, it's very easy for the plate to be partially (or fully) covered in snow and therefore to have either its characters or its annual tag covered and unreadable. In those cases, proof of registration is required to know if the vehicle actually has up-to-date registration. Anecdotally, every time I've been in a vehicle that was pulled over here in Michigan (this includes one time I was pulled over), the driver has been asked for license, registration, and proof of insurance.

  • On the post: Now Josh Hawley Is Threatening Google Over 1st Amendment Protected Expression

    R.H. ( profile ), 22 Sep, 2021 @ 01:48am

    Re: Re: Re:

    US Senators are only required to be residents of the state they're elected from when they initially run. Members of the House, on the other hand, are required to maintain legal residency in their home state (but not the district that they represent) at all times. Hawley was, therefore, a resident of Missouri when initially elected but now lives closer to where he works.

  • On the post: Russian Government Abuses IP Law, Regular Law To Shut Down Alexey Navalny's 'Smart Voting' App

    R.H. ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2021 @ 08:33pm

    Re:

    This is true, Navalny has said some truly dreadful things. However, Putin is also a horrible person to have in charge of a nuclear power, and having someone stand up to him is not exactly a bad thing.

  • On the post: FCC Will Take A Closer Look At ISP/Landlord Broadband Monopolies

    R.H. ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2021 @ 07:43pm

    Re: Re:

    I don't know about that. Without the Constitutions clause specifically allowing Congress to create intellectual property laws, the First Amendment's free speech clause would appear to prohibit Congress from passing a law that keeps someone from duplicating someone else's speech.

  • On the post: Biden Has Wasted A Year Failing To Fill Top Telecom Oversight Spots

    R.H. ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2021 @ 06:01am

    Re:

    The article points out that even if he nominated someone today, it would take most of the rest of the year to actually get them confirmed. It also points out that Interim Chairperson Rosenworcel's term ends at the end of the year which will require another nomination and set of confirmation hearings. I had thoughts like yours after reading the title and before reading the article but, the article cleared up the issues for me.

  • On the post: GoDaddy Reignites Debate Over Infrastructure Layer Moderation By Banning Texas Anti-Abortion Snitch Site

    R.H. ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2021 @ 09:31pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    A tapeworm is also not part of one's body and has a DNA sequence that is "unique and completely distinct from" the person it resides in. Should people not be allowed to have tapeworms or other unwanted parasites removed from their bodies?

  • On the post: Unilever Sends Letter To Firm In Israel Over Use Of 'Ben & Jerry's' Trademark

    R.H. ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2021 @ 07:47pm

    Re:

    I saw this comparison coming. Unilever decided not to sell Ben & Jerry's ice cream in the West Bank and Gaza two small (disputed) parts of Israel. In N' Out Burger only sells food at a single pop-up restaurant in Australia for a few days every three years. These situations are not comparable.

  • On the post: California Regulators Say T-Mobile Lied To Gain Sprint Merger Approval

    R.H. ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2021 @ 08:44am

    Re:

    T-Mobile is only planning on supporting devices that use Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) for voice services starting on January 1st, 2022. This is based on the notifications I've been getting since the merger since one of the phones on my plan doesn't support VoLTE and therefore needs to be replaced by the end of the year.
    Effectively, that means that all voice services will use data (but not be charged as such). Both Verizon and AT&T also support VoLTE (I even think Verizon was first), they just don't require it yet.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Says Iowa's Ag-Gag Law Is About 50 Percent Constitutional

    R.H. ( profile ), 18 Aug, 2021 @ 03:08pm

    Re: Re:

    Whole milk is already 87% water. Most liquids ingested by humans to quench our thirst are mostly water. Even if you're just talking about milkfat, whole milk is ~3.5% milkfat and the other varieties go down from there. Most of the differences in chicken raised for meat are related to their size. Chickens that are raised for meat are bred to grow fast and large. It has been illegal for years to provide antibiotics to chickens in the US so that's not the issue. I've had non-factory farmed chicken before, other than the price, I didn't notice much of a difference.

  • On the post: Facebook Is NOT The Internet; Stop Regulating As If It Was

    R.H. ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2021 @ 09:05pm

    Re: Facebook what?

    Based on your comment, username, and the fact that you comment here I'm guessing that you are reasonably tech-savvy. Those of us who fit that mold, don't really need a service like Facebook to connect with others like us. There are plenty of internet communication services that don't treat their customers like a product but, they tend to be harder to use, have fewer features, and have smaller userbases. The people who aren't as tech-savvy as many of us prefer ease-of-use and free over all else. Facebook has provided a way to easily keep in contact with every acquaintance you've ever made very easily and for free. 2.89 billion people (as of Q2 2021) have seen the trade-off and decided that it's worth it to them. Once a company has a userbase of over a quarter of the human population for a product that isn't a necessity for life, (food, water, shelter, etc) those of us who have access to the service but choose not to use it are the strange ones.

  • On the post: DOJ Announces Investigation Of Phoenix PD's Use Of Excessive Force And Abuse Of Homeless People

    R.H. ( profile ), 13 Aug, 2021 @ 06:35pm

    Re:

    Utah runs a program where they simply put homeless people in houses, and the vast majority, once they have a permanent address, manage to get on their feet. They have had a bit of an issue where homeless people move there to get housing but, once they are housed, they can get jobs, and once they have jobs, they become taxpayers paying into the system that houses people. This is a positive feedback loop. While Utah still has a homeless problem, it's not nearly as bad as anywhere else in the US.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Says No Sovereign Immunity For Turkish Security Forces Who Attacked DC Protesters

    R.H. ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2021 @ 09:47pm

    Re: 'Here's a nickel, now beat it before we beat you again.'

    I'm willing to bet that the Republic of Turkey has funds in accounts in the United States since many nations do. Those funds would be in reach of any judgment against the nation in this case.

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