n00bdragon 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: The Leopard Has Come For A Small Town Kansas Mayor & Its Residents

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2025 @ 04:52am

    It's important to remember that the United States is fifty different states. There are fifty different systems. Some of them work exactly the same. Some work slightly differently. Some have their own thing going on. Virtually none of them talk to each other and communication between them and the federal government (Bespoke System #51!) is spotty at best. States are largely left to their own devices to determine who is a valid voter and how elections are held. There are nominally supposed to be some rules handed down from the federal level, but they largely operate on the idea that things are working until someone finds evidence that they are not. Combine this with a political apparatus that is very incentivized to sign up as many people as possible and throw vetting over the wall to law enforcement and yeah, sometimes things can slip through (intentionally or not).

  • On the post: Congress Is Finally Going To Look Into Trump’s Boat Strike Killing Spree

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 02 Dec, 2025 @ 11:46am

    My point is that it's not "war crime shaped". It does not sport a "war crime silhouette". It's "serial killer" shaped that sports a "premeditated murder" silhouette.

  • On the post: Congress Is Finally Going To Look Into Trump’s Boat Strike Killing Spree

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 02 Dec, 2025 @ 11:41am

    State sponsored terrorism?

  • On the post: Congress Is Finally Going To Look Into Trump’s Boat Strike Killing Spree

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 02 Dec, 2025 @ 10:06am

    Stop calling it a war crime. It's not a war crime. To commit a war crime you must be at war, or at very least in some form of armed conflict. This is not that. In fact, by its perpetrators own admission (and legal necessity) it is not an armed conflict because the bad people in the boats are not capable of shooting back. The reality is so awful that it doesn't even make a funny joke: Legally the Department of Defense is claiming that the US is just shooting its weapons into the water apropos nothing and if some poor unfortunate souls happen to be in the way of said missiles that is unfortunate for them but not the problem of the United States.

  • On the post: BBC Pre-Edits Lecture Calling Trump ‘Most Openly Corrupt President’

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2025 @ 06:29pm

    Why choose to be spineless? Everyone who actually stands up the Fanta Dr. Evil succeeds at it. Before you say "defending yourself in court costs money": 1. This is the BBC. They have money. 2. You don't exactly need to dish out for a legal defense that comes down to "lol no".

  • On the post: Trump Says Democratic Lawmakers Should Die For Telling The Military To Obey Their Oath

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2025 @ 02:39pm

    There was a word for this exact sort of thing long before Barbara Streisand came along: the Nuremberg Defense

  • On the post: Ken Paxton’s Tylenol Lawsuit Is Off To A Terrible Start

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2025 @ 03:43am

    Paxton is like Trump in many ways (except less charismatic). He is (and has always been) dogged by legal and financial troubles that will absolutely 100% ruin him if he isn't constantly pushed into a higher office where he can use graft and the power of his new position to kick the can down the road. He has to have Trump's favor, because that's the only thing saving him from being impeached by Texas Republicans.

  • On the post: Trump Says He’ll Sue BBC For ‘$5 Billion’ Despite Apologies, Resignations Over Editing Gaffe

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2025 @ 06:34pm

    His standing to sue clearly resides right there in the FYTW clause of the constitution, particularly the part where he can unilaterally impose tariffs on countries that displease him.

  • On the post: Trump Says He’ll Sue BBC For ‘$5 Billion’ Despite Apologies, Resignations Over Editing Gaffe

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2025 @ 06:40am

    So here's the plan. We get control of the White House and hold worldwide trade at ransom for... one-hundred \looks nervously at JD Vance\ billion dollars!

  • On the post: Book Reports Potentially Copyright Infringing, Thanks To Court Attacks On LLMs

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 18 Nov, 2025 @ 02:32pm

    I don’t see that one can give AI a blanket permission to absorb protected works without taking a look at what it does with it.
    Great. Now explain how the human eyeball is not a copyright infringement device.

  • On the post: DOJ Memo Says It Won’t Prosecute US Troops No Matter How Illegal Trump’s Boat Strike Program Is

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 18 Nov, 2025 @ 02:24pm

    Does the JDOLC's opinion really, truly, matter? We know it's not actually based on any reading of actual laws, but rather on complete and total fealty to Trump. The moment Trump is gone, everyone issuing these opinions will disappear faster than a snowflake in July. If they are replaced by people who can actual provide sound legal advice to the Department of Justice, then this sort of crap means nothing. Everyone involved is going to walk the plank.

  • On the post: Pete Hegseth Has Turned State Violence Into TikTok Content

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 17 Nov, 2025 @ 06:31pm

    Dismissals? More like murder trials. It's one thing to commit some atrocities in the heat of the moment during an actual war (that's still wrong btw, but a different level of wrong). It's quite another to, apropos nothing, decide to seek out defenseless people who pose no threat to you expressly so that you can murder them for a real life frag reel. One is an moral failure. The other is a ghoulish monstrosity. I hope when America comes to its senses the prosecutor seeks the death penalty for every single person in the chain of command who had the power to say "no".

  • On the post: Judge Orders OpenAI To Give Lawyers 20 Million Private Chats, Thinks ‘Anonymization’ Can Keep Them Private

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 13 Nov, 2025 @ 12:23pm

    Not saying this is a good thing, but OpenAI could have avoided all this trouble by simply not making and retaining those logs in the first place. Finance companies routinely purge old data that they are not legally required to keep, because having it can make them financially liable if a dispute arises. If you're concerned that people are giving private info to your chat bot (and OpenAI must realize that this is happening), then the only way to truly protect yourself from the law is to not keep anything the law doesn't require you to keep.

  • On the post: The Department Of Defense Wants Less Proof Its Software Works

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 09 Nov, 2025 @ 11:44am

    What did you expect from a guy who rose through the ranks of the Army National Guard to the lofty position of Major? It's like if a WalMart general manager was named Secretary of Labor. He was not chosen for his competence.

  • On the post: The Department Of Defense Wants Less Proof Its Software Works

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 09 Nov, 2025 @ 11:35am

    They're all about "lethal", but they never specified who would be dying.

  • On the post: Student Gets Handcuffed, Searched At Gunpoint Because AI Thought A Bag Of Chips Was A Handgun

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 05 Nov, 2025 @ 05:27pm

    You can tell the kid didn't have a real gun because so many officers were downright excited to swarm him.

  • On the post: DOJ Prosecutor Says He’ll Just Keep Prosecuting Despite Court Ruling He Was Illegally Appointed

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 04 Nov, 2025 @ 01:28pm

    It's the responsibility of the courts to call those bluffs. However, any court decision that isn't rendered by SCOTUS gets appealed to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS is 150% cool with Trump & Co doing whatever the fuck, forever, with no limitations at all.

  • On the post: Man Arrested By Charlie Kirk Fan/Sheriff For Directly Quoting Donald Trump

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 03 Nov, 2025 @ 03:08pm

    Not so much when you think about it. People like to do things. A post retirement job is a job that you do not because you need the money, but because it's genuinely how you want to spend your day. Everyone should aspire to have something that they are responsible for doing just for the joy and satisfaction of doing it.

  • On the post: 60 Minutes Edits Donald Trump Telling Them 60 Minutes Should Edit Donald Trump Talking About How 60 Minutes Paid Him For Editing Kamala Harris

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 03 Nov, 2025 @ 11:58am

    Literally in the same sentence
    To be entirely fair to Mr. Trump, everything he says is in the same sentence. He doesn't believe in periods.

  • On the post: DC Cops Sued After Arresting A Man For Playing Darth Vader’s Theme Music Near Federal Troops

    n00bdragon ( profile ), 03 Nov, 2025 @ 10:49am

    You better define protest.
    This feels like a weird request. Is he asking for the definition of a protest because he doesn't know? Or is it because he wants to argue about it? Or is he hoping that Sam O'Hara will psychically read his mind and regurgitate a fancifully imaginative definition of the word "protest" that happens to align with whatever Sgt. Beck is currently thinking of? If it's the first, then it would seem to undermine any future claims of qualified immunity, because he doesn't just misunderstand the law, he knows he misunderstands the law. He's no longer ignorant that he is breaking the law. He is cognizant of that fact. If it's the second, since when do cops argue about the finer points of the law with suspects? If the police arrest a burglar in your house, the burglar is not allowed to debate about the definition of theft. It's ridiculous. If it's the third, then god help us all, but I believe this is the correct answer and the one which SCOTUS will be most receptive to. They seem to be on a big "just read my mind" kick this year.

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