ke9tv 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Fascinating New Study Suggests (Again) That Twitter Moderation Is Biased Against Misinformation, Not Conservatives

    ke9tv ( profile ), 19 Apr, 2022 @ 05:53am

    One line summary of the conclusions

    "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." -- S. Colbert

  • On the post: And Now The Copia Institute Tells The Fifth Circuit That Texas Doesn’t Get To Regulate The Internet Either

    ke9tv ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2022 @ 08:29am

    Very much agreed. The backscatter is even more annoying to read than the trolling - and people don't flag it, so it doesn't get hidden along with the original post.

  • On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 317: Algorithmic Destruction

    ke9tv ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2022 @ 01:55pm

    Link to the paper

    A link to the actual paper would have been appreciated.

  • On the post: Judge Says Mayor, Town Can’t Escape 1st Amendment Retaliation Suit Involving 62 Tickets Over Lawn Furniture

    ke9tv ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2022 @ 09:20am

    The problem is that the electorate keeps re-electing them because they're abusive assholes. As long as they're abusing those people, the electorate is fine with it.

  • On the post: Ted Cruz, Mike Lee Join Dumb, Baseless GOP Quest To Pretend OAN Was Unfairly Censored

    ke9tv ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2022 @ 09:35am

    In the unlikely event that OANN were to receive an FCC license and operate a broadcast TV station in a given local area, then the "must carry" rule would come into play; the station could opt to require local cable providers to carry it. In doing so, it would forgo any revenue from the cable provider; a station can charge the cable operator for its content, or it can opt for "must carry." It cannot do both. The "must carry" rule does not require a given cable operator to carry the local station's content outside that station's broadcast footprint. I am led to believe that there are some Sinclair-owned stations that have opted for "must carry", which is odious enough, but I'm not aware of any local over-the-air broadcast station owned, operated or affiliated with OANN. In no case would the "must carry" rule apply to a satellite provider.

  • On the post: Avoidable Viasat Satellite Hack Causes Headaches Across Europe And Ukraine

    ke9tv ( profile ), 24 Mar, 2022 @ 08:06am

    This also reminds me of satellite TV providers

    I recall a time when at least one satellite TV provider had the opportunity to render a customer's modem permanently unusable upon an accusation of theft of service. Not just cease recognizing the subscriber's card, but actually get the modem into a state where it would not work again, even if the dispute were resolved. A person I know had his modem bricked in this fashion. (He'd paid his bills; the fault was entirely on the provider's side.) There was no compensation for the fact that he had to purchase a new modem. He never did business with that provider again. Somehow, it appears to be legal, or at least unchallenged, for a provider to damage customer-owned equipment upon an unproven accusation. A system that's set up for that sort of corporate retaliation is always going to have a path to be hijacked in just this way.

  • On the post: White House Urges Companies To Protect Data From Russian Hacks With Encryption; While Congress Looks To Effectively Outlaw Encryption

    ke9tv ( profile ), 24 Mar, 2022 @ 06:16am

    Protected speech? Maybe.

    Bernstein v United States is close to being on point, but the case wasn't actually resolved because the government loosened the regulations right before it would have lost. That keeps the case from being binding precedent, so the Government succeeded in its mission to punish those who have the temerity to speak freely with ruinous legal costs. By the time the case wound down, four judges had already ruled that prohibiting the export of encryption was an infringement upon the freedom of speech. Apple cited Bernstein in its refusal to hack the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter. Once again, the Government delayed the case until the key question was moot. Once again, the Government was going eventually to lose - every judge who reviewed it said that the order to decrypt the phone was indeed compelled speech. I don't think it's actually possible to answer such a question in the US court system. The government effectively has the ability to prolong a case beyond a single human lifetime. Justice moves so slowly that if nothing else resolves a case, it will simply end with the natural death of a litigant.

  • On the post: Congress Is Weakening America’s Cybersecurity. It Couldn’t Have Picked A Worse Time.  

    ke9tv ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2022 @ 10:34am

    That issue is, however, why security of "data at rest" is a different problem from, and usually harder than security of "data in transmission".

  • On the post: Congress Is Weakening America’s Cybersecurity. It Couldn’t Have Picked A Worse Time.  

    ke9tv ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2022 @ 09:28am

    It takes only one side to start a war. Once a war has started, your side has to win it.

  • On the post: It’s 2022 And Bullshit Cable TV Fees Are Somehow Still A Thing

    ke9tv ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2022 @ 01:12pm

    Grocery store?

    I don't know of any jurisdiction in which a bricks-and-mortar grocery store would be required to collect taxes based on the address of a customer, unless it was delivering to that customer. Advertising the post-tax price that you'd pay if you walked into the store and bought something should be perfectly fine. It's hard even to see how a retailer could do business if they had to verify what special tax district an in-person customer lived in! Technically, the in-person customer likely owes a "use tax" to the home jurisdiction, but that's not imposed on the merchant to collect. In fact, it's hard to see how it could be, when the customer's home town doesn't have personal jurisdiction over the merchant. In any case, except for general sales taxes, it smells like fraud to add a ton of below-the-line "taxes". Most of these are taxes assessed on the business, not on the sale - they're part of the cost of doing business.

  • On the post: Russia Follows Up Ukraine Invasion By Demanding US Social Media Companies Stop Fact-Checking Russian Government Content

    ke9tv ( profile ), 03 Mar, 2022 @ 07:55am

    Pedantry

    It's not CCCP, it's СССР - which looks the same, but since you were managing to type in Cyrillic just above, you would certainly know that the letters Er and Es are not the letters Pee and See.

  • On the post: Peloton Outage Prevents Customers From Using $2,500 Exercise Bikes

    ke9tv ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2022 @ 09:04am

    excuse me, why would I want one of these things?

    An exercise bike doesn't go anywhere. My hiking boots do. I've got good rain gear and good cold weather gear and good traction gear - all of which cost me a fraction of the cost of a Peloton. I've got no shortage of mountains to explore.

  • On the post: Comcast Continues To Bleed Olympics Viewers After Years Of Bumbling

    ke9tv ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2022 @ 08:53am

    NBC

    NBC: Nothing But Commercials

    One thing that people who don't understand the broadcasting business get wrong is that a network wants to miss its rating targets by a small margin in a major event. You can always compensate advertisers for slightly low ratings by giving them time in other sporting events. If you go wildly over on ratings, you can't charge more than your negotiated rate. You make the best profit by overpromising slightly.

  • On the post: Even Officials In The Intelligence Community Are Recognizing The Dangers Of Over-Classification

    ke9tv ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2022 @ 12:20pm

    Re: Re:

    Effectively, there is no difference. Once a secret is known by "the American Public" it is also known by China, Russia, N Korea, etc.
    The concern is more over the secrets that are known to China, Russia, North Korea, and whoever your bogeyman-du-jour is, and are still kept from the American public. I'm betting that's most classified information. (There's also the stuff that's classified simply because the culture in the agencies is that if it isn't highly classified, it can't possibly be important, because nothing of any real importance ever happens in the white world.)

  • On the post: Why U.S. Robocall Hell Seemingly Never Ends

    ke9tv ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2022 @ 08:14am

    Re: Re: Re:

    US carriers often offer introductory rates to new customers and then overcharge renewing customers, so in many areas, switching carriers every couple of years is a major saving in cost to the customer. Before number portability was required, the carriers had you over a barrel, since few people are willing to change their contact number that often.

  • On the post: New Washington Law Requires Home Sellers Disclose Lack Of Broadband Access

    ke9tv ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 10:48am

    Re: Better

    Generally, service drops - from the curb to the house, basically - have been installed at the builders' or customers' expense since forever. I'd be fine with that if the telcos and cable providers hadn't expanded that to include wiring that's off my property. I'm not in a position to negotiate with the township for utility access along the right-of-way or with the power company for the use of their poles. It's particularly obnoxious when a company cuts an exclusive deal for a right of way and then doesn't wire it but sits on it so that nobody else can provide service. I'm also for repeal of the universal service fee since there is no universal service mandate any longer.

  • On the post: New Washington Law Requires Home Sellers Disclose Lack Of Broadband Access

    ke9tv ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 10:40am

    Re: Re: Re:

    In the US they can say that you are served if they have a customer anywhere in your census tract.

  • On the post: New Washington Law Requires Home Sellers Disclose Lack Of Broadband Access

    ke9tv ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 10:37am

    Re: Re:

    Yeah. I lost my Verizon POTS a few years ago when my Circuit failed. They told me that there were no free pairs and put a cellular terminal in the house to serve the inside wiring. They tell the regulators that my community is provisioned with FIOS because there are a couple of houses in one little corner of the town who have it from the next town over. Apparently all this is legal and they get to collect the universal service fees for doing bupkis.

  • On the post: More Bad Ideas: Congressional Rep Suggests Participants In The Attack On The Capitol Building Be Added To The No-Fly List

    ke9tv ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2021 @ 08:22pm

    Re: Meanwhile on Twitter

    In at least one of those, the individual in question had been banned by American Airlines for insisting on flying maskless, but thought that the 'I've been banned for assaulting the Capitol' would make better video.

  • On the post: Fifth Circuit Denies Immunity To Cops Who Beat And Tased An Unresisting Man To Death

    ke9tv ( profile ), 25 Nov, 2020 @ 04:27pm

    Re: The rule stands: 'Only call the cops if you want someone dea

    Is there a case on point that violent retaliation by police against jurors that convict a fellow officer is inappropriate police behaviour? The more outrageous the crime by police, the less likely that there will be a case on point - and therefore the more likely that they will be immunized.

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