naoEntendo 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (53)

• On the post: As Expected, Twitter’s New Trust & Safety Rules Are ‘Elon’s Whims’

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 31 Jan, 2023 @ 10:10am

  Trust and Safety....

  The Trust & Safety group at Twitter has devolved into trying to keep Elon safe and Ella doing everything she can to retain Elon's trust. What? You weren't expecting it to benefit Twitter or Twitter users, where you?

• On the post: Seattle School District Files Laughably Stupid Lawsuit Against Basically Every Social Media Company For… ‘Being A Public Nuisance’

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2023 @ 06:24am

  Facebook isn't cool anymore...

  Well if that chart's accurate, I can see why Meta is trying to kneecap TikTok. It seems that Facebook just isn't the cool hangout it used to be.

• On the post: Experian’s Treasure Trove Of PII Breached By Simply Altering URLs

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2023 @ 06:51am

  The rest of the country needs a CCPA

  Checked and saw that I had an old Experian web account, so I went to delete it. There's no way to delete your account on the web site. It says to email your request. So I email my request. Email says there's no way to delete your account via email you have to phone in your request. So I phone in. I get a nice fella that says they can 'deactivate' your account. I say I want to delete it. He says I can't AND they keep my data forever. I ask for a supervisor. Get the nice supervisor, she admits that they can only keep your data for six years and asks if I want a 'hard' deactivation, which means they won't spam your email address. She says if I really want my data deleted I have to go to this website: https://privacy.a.apps.experian.com/ccpa/ Unfortunately, they'll only honor your request if you happen to live in CA. The rest of the country needs it's own CCPA.

• On the post: WotC Makes Major Changes To D&D OGL License, Sends Community Into A Frenzy

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2023 @ 06:11am

  Here's the missing link to Cory's article

  Here's the link to the Cory Doctorow article I think you were referencing: Good riddance to the Open Gaming License As Mike's want to say, you should always include the link. ;)

• On the post: The First Amendment Needs To Protect Everyone (Even Homophobic Web Designers) To Protect Anyone

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 09 Dec, 2022 @ 05:42am

  unpopular views (or clients) make for bad laws

  It's sometimes said that bad cases make for bad case law. Reading the myriad comments here it's obvious that folks desperately want a certain result. Unfortunately, that result isn't supported by the protections we all enjoy and rely upon to maintain our freedom. Conflating, twisting, shoehorning both the facts and the law to achieve a result you feel is right just ends up making everyone less free. Thanks to the author for taking the time to try and breakdown what's actually at play and at stake in this case. It's important to remember that freedoms need to protect everyone, even the people you don't like, for doing things you may not agree with, if they are going to be able to protect anyone.

• On the post: Advertiser Explains Why They Paused Their Giant Ad Spend On Twitter After Two Weeks

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 22 Nov, 2022 @ 11:07am

  I guess $750,000 / month doesn't get you much on twitter

  Perhaps I'm not familiar with the multi-million dollar per month world of ad budgets, but the least you should be able to get is a modern working UI to sign on and upload your ad campaigns...

• On the post: Yet Another Renter Sues Hertz After He And His Teen Daughter Were Held At Gunpoint By Cops Following A Bogus Theft Report

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2022 @ 12:02pm

  it IS 'outsourcing the job'

  The cops should be called only after you have confirmed that something has in fact been stolen. As soon as you regain possession of the previously stolen item, it's your responsibility to inform the cops that the item in now no longer stolen. Hertz, a.k.a. Hurts, doesn't do that. It's outsourcing the job by calling the cops, and, possibly falsely, reporting a car stolen if it isn't in their lot when they expected it to be. There are lots of reason why a car might be missing: - it's being repaired - it was returned to the wrong office - it had its contract extended - it was stolen - etc. Instead of going through the trouble of checking, Hurts thinks it cheaper to just report it stolen. If you're in that car legally you're at risk of a dangerous encounter with the police. Hurts' laziness further compounds a renter's danger by refusing to let the police know when the car in question is back in their possession. Like the family in this story, Hurts cleared the flag in their computer system, rented the car out and were too lazy to let the cops know the car should no longer be considered stolen, if it ever should have. The results are as predictable as they are tragic. An innocent family gets to be terrorized by overzealous law enforcement for the crime of being gullible enough to rent a vehicle from Hurts.

  • People should be informed so that they stop renting from Hurts
  • Law enforcement needs to treat Hurts' reports with the large amount of skepticism that they deserve
  • Hurts should be sued into bankruptcy for all of the harm they have caused people due to their negligence.

• On the post: Yet Another Renter Sues Hertz After He And His Teen Daughter Were Held At Gunpoint By Cops Following A Bogus Theft Report

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2022 @ 11:44am

  Property crimes... fixed.

  This is how minorities people get murdered by cops. ftfy

• On the post: If GitHub Copilot Is A Copyright Problem, Perhaps The Problem Is Copyright

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2022 @ 06:55pm

  It's not the same, but it was bound to be tried eventually

  While CoPilot is an interesting idea that was bound to be tried sooner or later, I believe it's currently, especially in how it was/is trained, more like ClearView than StackOverflow. ClearView scrapped images from all over the web without the owners permission, or even awareness. CoPilot scrapped source code from GitHub without the owners permission, or even awareness. Some will argue that buried in the tens of thousands of pages of legalese governing GitHub, legalese I might remind you Microsoft can alter at it's unilateral whim anytime it wants to, gives Microsoft the right to use the source code as it sees fit. Others will argue that it's fair use (isn't that what ClearView is arguing, that the use of people's images is fair use?). I think those arguments miss the point. Microsoft should have been open and above board before they used other people's code as grist for CoPilot's mill. I believe that they weren't because they feared that folks would start deleting their repositories en masse. What good is a source code repository without much source code? Just as SourceForge. Some folks may have pulled their repositories, other repositories are public domain, and still other authors might not have cared. Microsoft is counting on the fact that they are Microsoft with all of the clout and lawyers that entails to see them through. Instead, the Software Freedom Conservancy is urging all open source projects to pull their source code off of GitHub. People are now wondering, "If Microsoft can do this with my source code, what's next?". And the knowing grey beards in the back are saying, "See I told you this would happen when Microsoft bought GitHub." I wouldn't be surprised if the next round of opensource licenses contains a new clause strictly prohibiting use of the source code in any ML data sets. The author opined that CoPilot is a lot like Google's scanning project, now Google Books. CoPilot (C) is different than Google Books (G) in many important ways. G allows analysis to be performed on book contents, such as how often "he" shows up, or how many works reference "boats". When G lets you browse a particular book, you know the book's name, author, etc. G limits the amount of access based on the rights to the book. Public domain books are free to read/download in their entirety. Other books are limited from between a few lines, to many/most pages, depending on the wishes of the copyright holder. C on the other hand doesn't let users perform analysis, although it does analyze software repositories. It doesn't let the user know which work or the author, or the license the answer comes from. C doesn't let you see the context, it just presents an answer, typically verbatim copying from some other authors work. C doesn't respect the wishes of the code's author or license. It's a shame Microsoft decided to well, be Microsoft. Hopefully the courts will decide fairly (yea, I know, there's not the best track record there) and that when someone else goes down this path, they do it with a lot more consideration.

• On the post: Survey Says… More Than Half Of Households With LAPD Officers Support Dismantling The LAPD

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2022 @ 01:08pm

  Hmmm....

  Yes, I do disagree. Thank you for recognizing my right to do so. Let us revisit the quote shall we:

  The dividing line in discussions often appeared to be limited to those who had felt the oppressive weight of decades of policing and those who had never experienced this oppression, either because they were white males or police officers — two categories with a sizable Venn diagram overlap.

  We have the portion in bold delineating two groups: * those who had felt the oppressive weight of decades of policing * those who had never experienced this oppression This is followed by the portion in italics listing the membership of the second group, those that had never experienced police oppression: * white males * police officers The author then points out the obvious, that many police officers are white males. Given that police officers have historically not included many women and that people who have been categorized as white have historically been the majority race in the United States, it stands to reason that this would be the case. Regardless of whether it's a standalone point, or presented in support of a larger argument, given the above, it's rather disingenuous to claim that the author did not intend to convey the sentiment that:

  white males have never experienced police oppression
  

  To read it otherwise would be to disregard the very words the author chose when writing his article. Since, as I have done multiple times in this thread, that statement is easily disproven, the reader is presented with a conundrum.

  • Agree with the original statement as written and disregard facts to the contrary
  • Agree with the original statement as written and attack anyone who disproves it as denigrating blacks, a defender of cops, and/or a white supremacist
  • Claim that what the author plainly wrote isn't what the author wrote and anyone who would disprove it is just reading it wrong
  • Realize that the original statement is false

  I guess it's an exercise to the reader of the article and these comments to decide where their beliefs and understanding fall.

• On the post: Survey Says… More Than Half Of Households With LAPD Officers Support Dismantling The LAPD

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2022 @ 12:23pm

  Sigh...

  You read into it what you want to. You still want to use percentages and averages to gloss over real suffering by real people. There are plenty of white folks here that have experienced decades of police oppression. But I guess if they don't fit into your narrative, your average, then they don't count. White people, and every other racial grouping, are not a monolith. Irish immigrants suffered for decades at the hands of police, as did the Italians, and the Portuguese, and Polish, etc. Some groups went on to become the police and oppress others themselves. Guess what, they are now all considered white. Tim's statement, no matter how you try to twist it to avoid its obvious failings, is still demonstrably false. I've never said that the absolute number of people killed by police is the only number that matters, but I do use it to demonstrate that claiming white people don't suffer at all is false. You might not like that statement, but you still haven't presented any referenceable facts that disprove it. Stating the fact that white people are also victims of police brutality in no way diminishes the fact that other races are also victims of police brutality. It only serves to disprove the narrative that white people are immune from police oppression. In this country, I'll go out on a limb to say (and I may be mistaken) that on average, white people are more brutalized. Over time white people are more brutalized. The only metric where black people are more brutalized is per capita and only if you treat all white people as a uniform block. Pick a group and a time period and you'll see that practically any group can win the most oppressed by police trophy. When the first immigrant from Ireland landed on these shores and was oppressed by police, guess what, per capita White Irish folk were 100% oppressed by police. In the end I say so what. It doesn't really matter. The important thing is that we work to eliminate all unwarranted police violence. Folks like yourself seem to want to nitpick about which group is most oppressed. Want to pin everything on white folks. Claim that any facts, or anyone pointing out those facts, are diminishing the suffering of some other group. Pointing out inconvenient truths makes them, in the context of this discussion anyway, a racist or white supremacist. Rather funny if you think about it. Pointing out that more white people are killed by police means that white people a supreme. Supreme at what, getting killed? Not really a trophy I want to take home. There are no facts you can present, there is no context you can cite, which would illustrate that white males have never been oppressed by police. Not in the number of bodies killed nor over the decades. All that you can point to are statistics that say per capita, in recent history, there are more black bodies than white bodies. Guess what though, even a single white male body lain at the foot of police brutality and oppression renders the original never statement false. So where's your fact based context that grinds my claim that there are and have been more white bodies attributable to police brutality than black bodies in recent history into the dust? Do try to limit yourself to statements that I have actually made. Oh, and obliquely comparing me to a white supremacist for even daring to question the narrative is classic you. You really can't just have a discussion without calling the other person names, can you.

• On the post: Survey Says… More Than Half Of Households With LAPD Officers Support Dismantling The LAPD

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2022 @ 11:30am

  That's O.K. I get it.

  That's O.K. I got what you were trying to say, even with markdowns interference (you can escape special characters for future reference). I am quite on board about the difference between absolute and percent values and I am quite comfortable with each, especially when they are used to illuminate as opposed to obfuscate. Police in many parts of the country have a problem with minorities. Less often discussed is the problem police in most parts of the country have with poor people of all races. I believe that in general Native Americans are disproportionately targeted by police, as are black members of our society. Ironically, even by black police officers. Where I take offense, or at least shake my head in disbelief (though I should know better by now), is when folks like the author make easily disprovable blanket statements like that white people never experience police violence or brutality. Admitting that all races suffer doesn't diminish the fact that some races may be, at least on a per capita basis, suffering more. Instead of trying to bring everyone together to institute reforms that will help everyone there is a faction that wants to push the narrative that white folks are to blame, that it's impossible to be racist when denigrating people for being white, that it's o.k. because white people never suffer. That's B.S. The sooner folks wake up to reality, the better the chance we stand of fixing things.

• On the post: Survey Says… More Than Half Of Households With LAPD Officers Support Dismantling The LAPD

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2022 @ 11:08am

  Absolutes are dangerous

  The line I initially commented on, where the author wrote that white males never experience police oppression is false. I've demonstrated multiple times with actual statistics that this is false. The problem is compounded by folks like who want to focus on averages and use that to dismiss the fact that there are real people, heaven forbid even white males that are also suffering. It isn't a competition, It doesn't matter what the percentage of people assaulted by police is. We should all be striving to bring the number of unwarranted police assaults to zero regardless of race. Would you be happier if the police assaulted and killed even more white folks? The fact that there are more white people dead at the hands of police than black people isn't good enough for you? Wow.... just wow. I guess you wouldn't be you without the gratuitous insult, now would it.

  "...you’re probably too busy licking a boot."

  projecting much?

• On the post: Survey Says… More Than Half Of Households With LAPD Officers Support Dismantling The LAPD

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2022 @ 10:33am

  I thought I already did.

  My opinion is that the viscerally satisfying choice of "De-fund the police" ultimately contributed to it being unable to accomplish its objective, police reform. It was too easy for opponents to spin as a call to abolish police (which I am sure was the end goal for some people). Couple that with an increasing animosity of those chanting it against the majority white population and it was no surprise that even Democrats who might have supported police reform ended up coming out against it. Of course, now it's you who are referencing items not in evidence. I have yet to "play defense for cops" in anything I've written, as you would say; cite your sources. Since you seem to have trouble following along lets start from the beginning. Tim wrote:

  "The dividing line in discussions often appeared to be limited to those who had felt the oppressive weight of decades of policing and those who had never experienced this oppression, either because they were white males or police officers — two categories with a sizable Venn diagram overlap."[emphasis mine]

  In that statement Tim proclaimed that white males have never experienced police oppression. It's a rather definitive and absolute statement. It's also one that easily disproven. I responded to an Anonymous with the numbers that show not only that there actually **are* white male victims of police violence, contrary to the statement by the author (see: Re: Re: hard numbers above) but in total number of bodies effected, folks who are white consist of the largest number of victims of any, even black, races. It's might not be a popular opinion at the moment, but as they say, the facts don't lie. The fact that the total number of victims of police violence are white (not surprising considering they still make up the majority of the population) in no way justifies how the police treat anyone of any race. The only thing that it does is undercut the narrative, popular in some circles, that white folks: * have some invincible privilege * never experience police violence * don't support the agenda because they can't relate all of which can be easily disproven by anyone who cares to look. I find it particularly ironic that you try to claim that I am minimizing the violence against people of color when the statistics I cited compare the number of people killed by police, state that both white people and black people are being killed by police, and explicitly stated that police killings regardless of race are bad and need to be stopped. I've cited my sources and shown my math. I haven't made any of the arguments or statements that you have accused me of doing and then went on to try and use against me. You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts. If you want to discuss or debate the article and my response to the same based on what I've actually written and demonstrable facts, I welcome it. If you instead want insult or denigrate me based on things you've made up about me and your personal beliefs, there isn't much of point. The ball in is your court.

• On the post: Survey Says… More Than Half Of Households With LAPD Officers Support Dismantling The LAPD

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2022 @ 09:18am

  So what, exactly, are you trying to say?

  Your first quote and response makes my point, that while it was popular with a particular group it wasn't terribly effective. Something less inflammatory might have been more effective, though less viscerally satisfying. I believe that was a portion of my response that you didn't quote. So thank you, I think. As for your second quote, that adding a racially motivated and demonstrably incorrect statement based on race into another wise good article was what I felt was race baiting (or race-baiting if you believe it to be more the correct spelling) is what? You don't make a statement or comment other than to list dictionary definitions of both spellings. Do you have a substantive comment to make? Or, since you can't actually object to the facts instead want to pick on my choice of spelling? Just wondering?

• On the post: Survey Says… More Than Half Of Households With LAPD Officers Support Dismantling The LAPD

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2022 @ 09:06am

  hard numbers

  Sure, though I warn you, it will involve some math. Rate of fatal police shootings in the United States from 2015 to September 2022, by ethnicity: - 42 million Black Americans - 197 million White Americans Between 2015 and September 2022 the rate of fatal police shootings in the United States by race: - 41 per million for blacks - 16 per million for whites "See, I told you so", you might exclaim in glee. Not so fast. 41 * 42 = 1,722 black victims 16 * 197 = 3,152 white victims The Washington Post reiterates basically the same statistics 1,039 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year, though they too focus on percentages as opposed to actual numbers of victims affected. Once again, black people may be killed at a higher percentage in relation to their population in this country, but in total numbers are still more white people who were killed at the hands of police than black people. I can go on to the major Lancet article Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980–2019 which again rehashes basically the same numbers. In every case there's a heavy emphasis on percentages and a minimization of the total number of people effected. Don't get me wrong, innocent people being killed or otherwise brutalized by police, regardless of their race is a terrible thing and needs to be stopped. Though until folks stop pushing the false narrative that white folks, especially white males live some sort of blessed lives untouched by police violence, there's no real hope of it ever changing. Of course, you can probably google as well as I can, and the math involved can be successfully accomplished by most grade-schoolers. Perhaps you just don't like facts getting in the way of your preferred world view.

• On the post: Survey Says… More Than Half Of Households With LAPD Officers Support Dismantling The LAPD

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2022 @ 07:29am

  did we realy need more identity politics in an otherwise decent article?

  On the whole this was a decent article that added one more point to the growing diagram of why policing and police departments in this country need to be restructured. Unfortunately, defund/abolish the police became a popular rallying cry on the left. It isn't practical and provided a easy way for those opposed to counter. Restructure the police would have been more accurate, but I guess just not visceral enough for some. Sadly, the author chose to reiterate the demonstrably false leftest belief that:

  "....those who had never experienced this oppression, either because they were white males [emphasis mine] ....."

  There are more white males that have experienced police oppression and brutality in this country than any other group. It was inevitable, since the vast majority of people in this country are white Non-white brutality is more visible, may be easier to spot, but is not more prevalent. There may be more black police violence per hundred or per thousand, but that is no reason to discount the suffering of tens of thousands of human beings, just because they happen to be white males. To those, other than the far left who already subscribe to the belief that white males are not only the sole cause of societies ills, but magically live life free of oppression, it comes across as tone deaf at best and antagonistic at worse. Just a little bit of race baiting in an otherwise solid article. For folks who believe that policing needs to be reformed, folks of all races, comments like yours aren't making it easier to accomplish. It only serves to drive what is still a majority of the country against the idea, either because they are disgusted by the injection of identity politics into an otherwise race neutral issue, or you have made them afraid of people who are blaming them for things they've never done and discount the real hurt and oppression they suffer every day. If you make them afraid of the folks calling to abolish the police, they will tend to want to support, even strengthen the police. If for no reason than to have someone to protect themselves from folks who keep publicly calling for them to be harmed.

• On the post: Court Strips Immunity From Cop Who Shot A Dog Within Seconds Of Arriving On The Scene Of A Non-Crime

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2022 @ 06:03am

  red flags and serial killers

  if harming animals is one of the red flags of imminent serial killlerdom, then what does that say about all of these folks that we arm and then watch as they gleefully kill animals under the flimsiest of excuses? Would we arm; Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, or Kristen Gilbert? Of course, as bad as all that is, what does it say about those of us who keep giving folks like that their badges, their guns, and keep making excuses for their behavior?

• On the post: The Media Demanded That Airbnb Do More Background Checks; Now It’s Upset That Airbnb Is Banning People With Criminal Records

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2022 @ 08:50am

  Are ex-cons _really_ criminals?

  I naively thought the process was supposed to be:

  1. innocent person
  2. may or may not commit crime
  3. accused criminal
  4. convicted criminal
  5. convict (serving time / on parole)
  6. finished serving sentence / released (unless you were a sex offender)
  7. goto #1

  Today it seems like we go from #1, skip #2, and then conflate #3 & #4 into criminal where you are cursed to remain for the rest of your life. Loose rights like the ability to vote, receive extra harassment from LEO, be unable to live in certain areas, hold down certain jobs (or any jobs), and now apparently you can't host or rent an Airbnb (not that I ever thought they were a good idea). Soon, no one will be legally allowed to do anything. The United States will find itself like Amazon on a larger scale. Having chewed through all of the available citizenry, the only thing left for people to do is crime.

• On the post: EA Announces New Anti-Cheat Tech That Operates At The Kernel Level

  

  naoEntendo ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2022 @ 06:51am

  Stick to consoles

  If they are really so concerned about security, and not say, all of the business opportunities this might open up for them, stick with console gaming. Consoles are already fairly locked down and it's already more difficult to cheat with one than a bog standard PC. Want a locked down 'gaming' machine, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo are all more than willing to sell you one. ....but, last time I checked, they don't have all of that juicy PII, and the console makers somewhat limit your opportunities for making additional money on the side.

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