mechtheist 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: The Batshit Crazy Story Of The Day Elon Musk Decided To Personally Rip Servers Out Of A Sacramento Data Center

    mechtheist ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2023 @ 07:49am

    Choices: Right or Wrong

    This article mentions a really interesting topic--just because you chose to do something a certain way and it worked doesn't mean you made the right choice. And it's the same the other way, if it went horribly wrong doesn't mean you made the wrong choice. How often are folks hugely celebrated for making the wrong choice or seriously condemned for making the right choice?

  • On the post: The Batshit Crazy Story Of The Day Elon Musk Decided To Personally Rip Servers Out Of A Sacramento Data Center

    mechtheist ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2023 @ 07:34am

    It was the headiest of times, it was the headlessiest of times. Guillotines work! They're a proven solution.

  • On the post: Montana’s Response To Lawsuits Over Laughably Unconstitutional TikTok Ban Is To Say That TikTok Is The Equivalent Of ‘Cancer-Causing Radio’

    mechtheist ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2023 @ 08:35pm

    Moving to Montan soon, gonna be a mental dross tycoon, seems the perfect place.

  • On the post: The Fallout Continues For Cops Who Decided It Was A Good Idea To Raid The Office Of A Small Kansas Newspaper

    mechtheist ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2023 @ 05:33am

    the desperation of those involved is so palpable those following this case can show us on the doll where the story inappropriately touched us.

    "the desperation of those involved is so palpable those following this case can show us on the doll where the story inappropriately touched us." Brilliant!

  • On the post: Masculine Policy: The GOP’s Plan To Outlaw ‘Porn’ And Suspend The First Amendment 

    mechtheist ( profile ), 18 Aug, 2023 @ 04:03am

    It's Christianity all the way down

    The profoundly toxic views of those like Hawley evidence the unbound arrogance of a mindset that sees fit to force its own views of acceptable behavior on all, born of a certainty that only arises through faith/cults, idolatry, or other fundamentalists bents. These are diseased minds, they're delusional minds. This is quite evident in how I'd bet 90-95% of them will see themselves as doing god's will, the christian god, and would happily quote scripture to support their claims, scripture from the bible, a book filled with sexual deviancy and horrific behavior towards children.

  • On the post: Judge Dumps Trump’s Retaliatory Defamation Suit Against The Winner Of A Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Against Him

    mechtheist ( profile ), 09 Aug, 2023 @ 03:46am

    They're largely christian. Have you read the bible? How many books obsess over penises more than the bible?

  • On the post: Maryland’s Top Court Calls Bullshit On Ballistic Forensics

    mechtheist ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2023 @ 03:58am

    The implications of this are basically horrific, the numbers of folks wrongly convicted and thrown in prison for lengthy stays, or for life, or executed FFS is going to be huge. In a sane world where justice was the goal of the justice and police departments, all convictions that relied on this BS should be overturned. It's difficult for me to believe that the majority of these 'experts' didn't realize how full of shit they were, same for their bosses and most prosecutors and that has real implications for the type of folks who are in these jobs.

  • On the post: Republican AGs Decide That Coercive Jawboning Is Good, Actually (When They Do It)

    mechtheist ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2023 @ 01:12pm

    So What’s These AGs’ Problem, Exactly?

    One problem that's pretty clear is these religious freak shows simply can't comprehend that their religion doesn't get to define what is or isn't a fact or moral. Considering their religion is a particularly vile, hateful, bigoted and primitive religion, it's no uprise that they engage in such heinous hateful bigoted BS that ignores facts and common sense which are anathema to religious belief.

  • On the post: Court Suppresses Breathalyzer Results In 27,000 DUI Cases After Years Of Being Jerked Around By The State Crime Lab

    mechtheist ( profile ), 16 May, 2023 @ 07:17am

    These Crime, no, CRIMINAL Labs guilty of conspiracy to kidnap

    Not just kidnapping, involuntary servitude when you consider the usual substance abuse programs mandated to DUI conviction sentencing. These programs are usually run by ??? I'm betting the companies chosen to run these programs often as not involve some corruption. I'm wondering if those running the lab have a financial interest in these programs? Might explain to some extent the absurd lengths they've gone to to hide the shitty performance of the breathalyzers.

  • On the post: Biden Nominates Legacy Entertainment Industry Copyright Enforcer To Be New IP Czar

    mechtheist ( profile ), 13 May, 2023 @ 07:09am

    It's reified doublespeak and it's the norm

    Industry insiders and lobbyists running the regulatory agencies, Treasury turned into the destination for GoldmanSachs sabbaticals, laws with 'Freedom' in their names actually insidious grotesque attacks on our most basic civil rights. It's Groundhog Day [Year]--always 1984.

  • On the post: Pornhub Says No More Porn For Folks In Utah (Unless They Know How To Use A VPN)

    mechtheist ( profile ), 03 May, 2023 @ 12:51pm

    "material harmful to minors" These people think it's harmful for a child to see a woman breast feeding. That pretty much sums up everything you need to know about these folks.

  • On the post: Cheap Field Drug Tests Are Finally Getting Called Out By Courts As The Bullshit They Are

    mechtheist ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2023 @ 07:12am

    I was in the position of having to take a drug test administered by feds, it came up positive for opiates, which I most definitely had not partaken of. It was right before christmas and the 2nd better test results wouldn't be done until after New Years. Since I had a good reason to put little trust in this 2nd test, it kinda effed up my holidays. What was most infuriating is how the mfers kept talking to me like they knew I was guilty, kept telling me how much better it would be for me if I fessed up. Of course, there was nothing resembling an apology when the 2nd test came back negative, I don't think they actually fully accepted that result. This issue is one of those things that makes me physically ill, it did before this happened to me. They KNOW how bad these tests are, the judges know, the officers know, it's unconscionable that this shit is still going on, that it's allowed to still go on. It's ridiculous that it seems the only way to stop it is to sue, that's an indictment of the legal system, the honesty and character of law enforcement, and all the judges who could stop it and haven't.

  • On the post: Like The Social Dilemma Did, The AI Dilemma Seeks To Mislead You With Misinformation

    mechtheist ( profile ), 28 Apr, 2023 @ 04:55am

    Yep, we don't need no stinkin AI to help kill us off, our god-given natural intelligence is more than adequate. Even global pandemic is more likely to kill us off now with the percentages of folks who will probably never see a vaccine as anything but a government effort at mind or population control, or a corp's profit scheme, or ??? Of course, an AI would still be something we did to ourselves unless it's an alien AI turning us all into alien paperclips.

  • On the post: One More Time With Feeling: The GOP Never Seriously Supported ‘Antitrust Reform’ Or Monopoly Busting

    mechtheist ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2023 @ 05:56am

    There is a lot of BS about the GOP suddenly getting on the right side of a lot of issues while the Dims are abandoning their usual positions of being on the right side of issues like monopolies, free speech, war, privacy etc. But it's all sham as far as the GOP is concerned, as this piece highlights. If you look at virtually all of their turnaround, it's almost all in support of Trump in some way, as evidenced in their going after big tech, it was all because of Trump's fights with them and his BS claims of bias. Another example is the GOPs attacks on the FBI and seeming support of privacy, all Trump related, there's not a hint of them rethinking all of their past support, or the recent MTG et al attacks on jail conditions, she doesn't give a damn about the horrible conditions in jails and prisons, she only cares about the treatment of the 1/6 perps. The Dims though, have gone crazy. Maybe look at Clinton's Telecommunications Act for the real ramping up of media corps consolidation, and more recently the lefts embrace of law enforcement, spooks, war, and attacking free speech. And ironically, most of this later crap seems Trump related too.

  • On the post: Like The Social Dilemma Did, The AI Dilemma Seeks To Mislead You With Misinformation

    mechtheist ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2023 @ 05:32am

    Hmmm, aren't lots of folks using ChatGPT to help write stories or scripts? That's generating deliberately false content. Seems Mr. ChatGPT isn't very good at self-awareness. OR recognizing the meaning of simple sentences. You'd think an advanced AI LANGUAGE model would do better with that sort of thing.

  • On the post: Like The Social Dilemma Did, The AI Dilemma Seeks To Mislead You With Misinformation

    mechtheist ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2023 @ 05:23am

    I'm sorry but that is just way too touchy. Using mythological critters as a source for stories, for character types/names, etc is incredibly common. There's not even a hint they're implying anything about the folklore, much less about Jews. Even if they were trying to smear the gollem characters, that would hardly be anti-Semitic, it's folklore FFS, what folklore doesn't have a whole host of monsters, demons, or whatever, there's always all kinds of bad guys, how does using any of them as a source for a metaphorical name reflect back on the culture with that folklore? Would you say Terry Pratchett stereotyped gollems as great firemen and that somehow reflected onto Jewish people? Or Kraken, how many stories use Krakens as horrible monsters? It's a Norwegian legend, would you say its a slur against Norwegians to name some monstrous thing 'Kraken'?

  • On the post: Wizards Of The Coast Sends Pinkerton Agency To Person That Bought Unreleased ‘Magic’ Cards In Error

    mechtheist ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2023 @ 04:41am

    It seems to me the only question that matters is whether the seller obtained the cards legally, if he did, I don't see how there's anything criminal going on and hiring the Pinkertons is effed up. If there was an 'Are you a douche bag' questionnaire, if you only ticked off the box 'have you ever hired the Pinkertons', you'd definitely qualify.

  • On the post: DEA’s Fentanyl Narrative Clown Car Being Overseen By A ‘Reformer’ Who Replaced Old Corruption With Her Own Brand Of Corruption

    mechtheist ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2023 @ 02:33am

    The drug war is an absolutely horrific nightmare we imposed on ourselves, and a lot of the rest of the world, and it's unbelievable it's still going on. Just listing the categories of the harms it's done would need more space than this article. The costs in money alone is heartbreaking, the costs in human lives destroyed or lost is utterly unconscionable. The opportunity costs considering the DECADES of resources expended is unthinkable. There really couldn't be a better fit for the saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. " people suffering from mental health issues are unable to access the drugs that might help them most" This is a particularly egregious example of less understood costs, and it's not only mental health issues, the most powerful pain meds are usually triplicate prescriptions, something that can be an incredible hassle to deal with, often resulting in missing doses due to glitches in the system, but much worse is doctors being afraid to prescribe them in the fist place. Put simply, the drug war is FAR worse than anything drug abuse has ever done. The DEA is a cancer that need excising.

  • On the post: Netflix To End DVD Rentals As Streaming Fails To Live Up To Its Full Potential

    mechtheist ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2023 @ 04:51am

    "eclectic and obscure" That could be a fun 'war' to get into, who can out 'eclectic and obscure' who. Add 'outré" and it would be even more fun. Dig deep into Ingmar Bergman or Kurosawa, or Fritz Lang, or more like early Stephen Chow or even John Waters, or ... The whole business model is unfortunate, well, to me it just sucks. While 'streaming' seems to be accepted as normal, I still have a hard time understanding what the term really means. If I'm using Potplayer to play a file on my local HD, is that streaming? What if the file is actually on a networked disk? I've seen the term used for both. Which is why "while discs still exist" bothers me, why should that be a problem? One reason streaming from the usual suspects REALLY sucks is the player apps as I mentioned in a post below. I don't know for sure but I'd bet most of the reasons these apps suck is due to the mechanisms used to satisfy DRM and the paranoia of pirating that make simple actions like pausing and restarting something that can take seconds, or the impossibility of simply backing up a few frames or frame stepping. You don't need actual disks to rent movies, ISOs would be far better. Bluray players can play video files, there's no reason they couldn't play ISOs. For the 'eclectic and obscure' inclined, or for the more ravenous than one can afford, these can be found in certain places in ISO format and DRM free to boot. It's a shame someone like Blockbuster didn't figure out a way to rent disks in this manner, Another reason streaming sucks is how you can never really know what you're getting, what quality is actually being delivered as that can be downgraded at any time, or what version of a title they're offering. An egregious example of the latter is the series "Utopia", a brilliant British show that if streamed on Amazon, they're a few bits edited out. That's an obscenity, as much a one as Amazon's remake of the series, something most 'eclectic and obscure' types probably appreciate. I've repeatedly tried to figure out such things before deciding to stream a title and it's never there. Maybe Criterion is better, I don't subscribe but it doesn't look like it. If you could rent ISOs of disks that were sold as disks, you would at least know a lot more about what you're getting, wrt both content and quality.

  • On the post: Netflix To End DVD Rentals As Streaming Fails To Live Up To Its Full Potential

    mechtheist ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2023 @ 04:31am

    None of the streaming services that I've used spend any appreciable amount on developing a decent app and it's effing infuriating. They're all glitchy, all slow, all offer really pathetic controls. The resources needed to develop a really killer app can't be significant for most of these companies, why would they not do this as a way to distinguish their product in an increasingly competitive and crowded market is beyond me.

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