Flakbait 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (260) comment rss

  • On the post: GM, LexisNexis Sued For (Nontransparent) Sale Of Driver Behavior Data To Insurers

    Flakbait ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2024 @ 01:42pm

    Inevitable progress

    "...but consumers should also be empowered to opt out of punitive surveillance and data collection without losing features or seeing entirely new, annoying restrictions." How do you expect the ensshittification of the car driving experience to proceed without these?

  • On the post: Auto Makers Are Selling Data On Your Driving Habits To Your Insurer Without Properly Informing You

    Flakbait ( profile ), 13 Mar, 2024 @ 07:11am

    More than just platforms

    Cory Doctorow created the term enshittification to describe platform decay, but it clearly applies to automobiles as well.

  • On the post: Peoria Police Put Out Recruiting Poster Telling Recruits To Come Play ‘Call Of Duty’ In Real Life

    Flakbait ( profile ), 07 Mar, 2024 @ 03:40am

    Never satisfied

    Some people are never satisfied. The cops finally start using truth in advertising and everyone loses their minds.

  • On the post: Yulu Bikes Sues Kinetic Green In India Over Its ‘Zulu’ E-Bike Brand

    Flakbait ( profile ), 06 Mar, 2024 @ 04:21am

    Next up...

    ...any products named for:

    • Yuzu, the citrus fruit
    • Sulu, the Star Trek character
    • Sulu, the Philippine province
    • Sulu, the Fijian garment
    Then, once they've got those little guys out of the way, they'll go after Hulu.

  • On the post: Wikipedia Wisely Downgrades CNET Reliability Score After Lazy AI Screw Ups

    Flakbait ( profile ), 05 Mar, 2024 @ 08:28am

    A shame

    I remember waaay back, when I was using pretty much the only practical browser, Netscape 1.0, that CNET was a remarkable and reliable source for computer-related information that could not be obtained anywhere else. Everything changes. Giant, influential companies like Sears, Pan Am, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, Conestoga wagons, all faded away. But to watch this not so much fade away as devolve into trash is sad.

  • On the post: Missouri’s New Speech Police

    Flakbait ( profile ), 05 Mar, 2024 @ 05:48am

    Irony

    This is the kind of thing the Christian Nationalists want, but a law criminalizing being kind to children has to be one of the least Christian things ever.

  • On the post: The Guy Behind That Biden AI Deepfake Robocall Is Going To Go Through Some Things

    Flakbait ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2024 @ 05:28pm

    Came here to say the same thing

    How about useless, worthless, incompetent, inefficient, inept, good-for-nothing, ne'er-do-well; lazy, idle, slothful, indolent, shiftless, spiritless, apathetic, aimless, unambitious, unenterprising; no-good, no-account, lousy.

  • On the post: Two Congressmen Introduce Law To Grant Copyright To Golf Course Design

    Flakbait ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2024 @ 07:08am

    Oh yeah?

    "You don’t lose the ball like you would on a driving range..." Well, obviously, you've never seen me at Putt-Putt.

  • On the post: CBP’s Top Doctor Tried To Obtain ‘Fentanyl Lollipops’ For ‘Pain Management’ In Case Of A Helicopter Crash

    Flakbait ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2024 @ 04:24am

    Route of administration

    In my 20 years as a paramedic on the streets, I have never, ever seen a patient who was in need of narcotic analgesia who was going to be super-compliant with directions to "suck on this lollipop." Fentanyl lollipops were developed for use as preoperative medication, in highly controlled environments (the exact opposite of helicopter crashes), with fully compliant patients. Oral administration of any pain med is undesirable in emergency situations (like helicopter crashes) because A) it takes significantly longer than most routes to work; B) a lollipop takes a while to dissolve, increasing the already long time for the drug to work; C) for a patient whose mental status is adversely affected by pain (and if it's not, they don't need high-powered narcotics), the lollipop poses a choking hazard. Then let's add in that if there were to be a helicopter crash in which Dr. Eastman could be there to hand out lollipops, chances are he was IN the crashed helicopter and odds are against him not being injured and able to function normally as a physician.

  • On the post: Court To Elon: No You Can’t Just Ignore The SEC’s Investigation Into Your Failure To Comply With The Law

    Flakbait ( profile ), 14 Feb, 2024 @ 01:24pm

    Paraphrase

    To paraphrase the Bard of Avon: The techbro doth protest too much, methinks.

  • On the post: Wine Brand ‘Valdo’ Attempts To Trademark Bully Wine Brand Owned By Nick Faldo

    Flakbait ( profile ), 08 Feb, 2024 @ 03:00pm

    Then...

    After that, they go after any member of Big Pharma that produces anything with aldosterone.

  • On the post: Wine Brand ‘Valdo’ Attempts To Trademark Bully Wine Brand Owned By Nick Faldo

    Flakbait ( profile ), 08 Feb, 2024 @ 02:57pm

    Up next...

    Next they're going after the creators of Where's Waldo?

  • On the post: Amazon Prime Video Starts Charging Extra To Avoid Ads, As The Enshittification Of Streaming Video Truly Begins

    Flakbait ( profile ), 31 Jan, 2024 @ 01:01pm

    Townsend, 1971

    Pete Townsend got it right in 1971: Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss. It applies in so many ways...

  • On the post: DOJ Decides To Try Backpage’s Michael Lacey For The Third Time After Failing To Get Convictions The First Two Times

    Flakbait ( profile ), 30 Jan, 2024 @ 12:43pm

    After double jeopardy

    For Final Jeopardy! the category is "Backpage"

  • On the post: Cable Giants Insist That Forcing Them To Make Cancellations Easier Violates Their First Amendment Rights

    Flakbait ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2024 @ 12:04pm

    Civil War avoided?

    If only the slaveholding states had thought of that. "Forcing me to stop forcing humans into bondage violates my 1st Amendment rights." The whole Civil War could have been avoided.

  • On the post: Our FutureCast Tool Awarded ‘Ingenuity’ Award By Association Of Professional Futurists

    Flakbait ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2024 @ 03:53am

    Congratulations!

    Well done, TD Team! But I could see this coming.

  • On the post: Telecom Monopolies Are Once Again Funding Covert, Sleazy Local Attacks On Community Broadband Networks

    Flakbait ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2024 @ 08:44am

    Knowing versus caring

    Even they know how toxic their reputations have become... They know but they don't care. They will only begin to care when it starts to hit their shareholders in the wallet.

  • On the post: Plagiarism Is Fine

    Flakbait ( profile ), 09 Jan, 2024 @ 06:08pm

    I disagree. There’s plenty of hypocrisy and bad faith to go around in the ridiculous Claudine Gay plagiarism scandal. While Gay’s accusers are right that she technically violated Harvard’s plagiarism rules by copying phrases either without quotation marks or required attribution, they don’t actually care about plagiarism, only “scalping” Gay. What’s more, their own plagiarism accusations have already started biting them back. And while Gay’s defenders are right that her offenses were comically trivial, because she copied mere banalities, Harvard students are punished severely for doing exactly the same thing. In fact, some of Gay’s defenders probably did the punishing. A pox on both their houses. Plagiarism is fine, plagiarism rules are stupid, and the plagiarism police should mind their own business. Everyone “knows” plagiarism is bad, but no one can provide a coherent explanation why. Some people say plagiarism defrauds the reader. Give me a break. Readers don’t care, or if they do, it’s only because they’ve been browbeaten into believing plagiarism is wrong. Others say plagiarism is like stealing. But no one owns ideas, and no one should own the words we use to express them, either. I’ll be blunt. The plagiarism police are just intellectual landlords, demanding rent in the form of attribution. And plagiarism rules are just a sneaky way for authors to claim de facto ownership of ideas, while cloaking themselves in false virtue. When the plagiarism police cry, “J’accuse!,” we should respond with a raspberry. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to attribution. In fact, attribution is great, so long as it’s voluntary, rather than mandatory. Authors should absolutely attribute expressions and ideas, when they think it will help readers, or even just to honor an author they admire. But authors shouldn’t be required to attribute, unless they think it’s deserved. Let us cite out of love, rather than obligation. Some people worry that eliminating plagiarism rules will harm disadvantaged authors, who often don’t get the credit they deserve. I doubt it. For one thing, plagiarism rules have existed for at least 2000 years. If they were going to protect disadvantaged authors, they would have done it by now. For another, plagiarism rules actually create a “Matthew Effect,” in which the most prominent authors get all the credit, and the disadvantaged authors get ignored. Why not adopt attribution norms that encourage citation of deserving disadvantaged authors instead of undeserving privileged ones? You probably think I’m joking. I’m not. And I can prove it. I’ve published scholarly articles arguing that plagiarism rules are unjustified, authorizing plagiarism of myself, providing a “plagiarism license,” advocating a “right of reattribution,” offering to reattribute my own articles (please claim one!), using essay mills, plagiarizing every word (I stole the idea from Jonathan Lethem), proposing to teach law students how to plagiarize efficiently (in the practice of law, if you aren’t plagiarizing, you’re committing malpractice), and using AI to reflect on the legitimacy of plagiarism norms. I’m dead serious. Well, as serious as I get, anyway. Think about it. We want to believe plagiarism rules protect original expressions and ideas. But AI shows us that most of what we produce is generic banalities. Why treat them like spun gold, rather than the chaff they really are? We’ve now spent weeks debating how to interpret and apply plagiarism rules. If anything comes out of this idiotic “scandal,” I hope it’s that, when it comes to plagiarism norms, the juice definitely isn’t worth the squeeze. We should just admit they’re a waste of time and abandon them. We should stop punishing authors for “stealing” clichés, And we should especially stop punishing students “for their own good.” Plagiarism is also a way of learning, so we should encourage it, whenever it helps students learn more effectively and efficiently. By the way, every word of this op-ed is plagiarized. Or maybe it isn’t. I’m not telling, because it doesn’t matter.

  • On the post: Florida’s Anti-Drag Law Loses The Big One: Supreme Court Says Block On Unconstitutional Law Can Remain In Place

    Flakbait ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2023 @ 02:41pm

    Courts say you can't protect children from obscene performances? What a drag.

  • On the post: If You Kill Two People In A Car Crash, You Shouldn’t Then Sue Their Relatives For Emailing Your University About What You Did

    Flakbait ( profile ), 20 Nov, 2023 @ 02:01pm

    Paging Ms. Streisand. Ms. Barbra Streisand. Please bring your Effect to Stanford University.

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