radix 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (282)

• On the post: A Bunch Of Authors Sue OpenAI Claiming Copyright Infringement, Because They Don’t Understand Copyright

  

  radix ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2023 @ 11:25am

  I give it 5 years before every physical book includes a prologue that's actually just a 10-page EULA about the reader not being a robot, and agreeing to not discuss the events or descriptions of the story without the express written consent of the publisher.

• On the post: Comcast Tells FCC It’s Just Too Hard To Explain Its Bullshit Broadband And TV Fees To Consumers

  

  radix ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2023 @ 09:09am

  Sounds about right. It's "difficult" to explain the fees in the same way it's "difficult" for one to explain to a significant other that they have been cheating.

• On the post: Reddit CEO Triples Down, Insults Protesters, Whines About Not Making Enough Money From Reddit Users

  

  radix ( profile ), 16 Jun, 2023 @ 12:32pm

  "We don't do things for free, so all the unpaid mods should get back to work" is quite the statement.

• On the post: Many Of The States Endlessly Freaking Out About TikTok Still Have State Websites That Funnel Sensitive Data To TikTok

  

  radix ( profile ), 08 Jun, 2023 @ 08:45am

  Call me naive...

  But why does a government-run website ever have any 3rd party cookies. Those are primarily intended for advertising, right? Session-cookies for logins, sure, but non-commercial sites should be super simple, and entirely self-contained. Aside from hyperlinks to useful off-site resources, I can't think of any reason a government site should be relying on any other servers to function. It's not just a matter of privacy, it's basic security.

• On the post: Federal Judge Rules Tennessee Anti-Drag Law Unconstitutional

  

  radix ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2023 @ 11:53am

  Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence.

• On the post: Broadband Usage Caps Now Drive MORE Broadband Usage, Study Finds

  

  radix ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2023 @ 06:57am

  I'll be a data point in support of this phenomenon, and I have some numbers to back it up. I've been tracking my data usage every day for nearly four years. My averages over that time: 1st-10th of the month: 28GB/day; 11-20th: 30GB/day; 21-30th: 32GB/day. The very last days are the heaviest. As a subset of that last bucket, for the 27th-30th, my household averages over 37GB/day. As the month goes on, and I have data to spare, I make sure to download everything I might want, just in case I don't have room in the 'budget' the next month. I have multiple terabytes of video games downloaded and installed that I've never touched, but they're available if I want them. Without the hard cap, I'd feel much more comfortable installing them as desired instead of queueing them up ahead of time.

• On the post: Texas Age Verification Bill Would Plaster Health Warnings On Porn Sites

  

  radix ( profile ), 01 Jun, 2023 @ 12:34pm

  The final three paragraphs answer all the questions you're raising.

• On the post: Consumers Aren’t Buying Automaker Plans To Make Everything A Subscription

  

  radix ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 07:40am

  market analysis

  Sure, but the results are depressing. 17 million cars are sold in the US every year. If even the lowest-interest item above (10%) can get half those people (5%) into paying subscribers at $10/month, that's $102 million/year the auto manufacturers think they're leaving on the table. Of course that's not true in the real world, but all CEOs' glasses are heavily rose-tinted.

• On the post: Texas Deputy Sued For Privacy Violations After Live Streaming A Traffic Stop On TikTok

  

  radix ( profile ), 15 Mar, 2023 @ 10:17am

  If the deputy loses this, expect the department to try to use it in all sorts of cases as precedent that stops can't be recorded/broadcast by citizens. They'll ignore the detail of the PII being the crux of the argument, and try to shut down all sorts of citizen journalism.

• On the post: Twitter Sued For Not Paying Rent On Its SF Headquarters And Its London Offices

  

  radix ( profile ), 30 Jan, 2023 @ 02:38pm

  the company was required to increase a letter of credit as a security deposit by $10 million.

  This is the kind of thing that would show up early in any basic due diligence. What kind of business genius wouldn't do that? Oh, nevermind.

• On the post: YouTube’s New Content Policies Around Mature Content Results In Chaos

  

  radix ( profile ), 28 Jan, 2023 @ 12:36pm

  something something enshittification

• On the post: Elon’s Big Moneymaker Plan… Doesn’t Appear To Be Paying Off

  

  radix ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2022 @ 02:40pm

  This is Internet 101 stuff. Out of all users, only about 10% interact with content, and 10% of those actually create content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule Maybe Twitter beats those numbers, but I doubt it's significantly different than that. Taking 40 mDAU as a baseline, that's only 400k that are serious daily tweeters that have enough influence that they might pay a subscription long-term. $3.2m/month ($38.4m/year) is a good starting point for any assumptions he wants to make. Adjust up or down from there based on whatever initiatives are in the pipeline, but that's a LOOOOOOONG way from the billions it will take to avoid default.

• On the post: Apple Sued After Another Study Finds Its Well-Hyped Privacy Standards Are Often Theatrical

  

  radix ( profile ), 15 Nov, 2022 @ 07:36am

  Even if it's not Apple in this case, it's really only a matter of time before somebody uses the Subway defense ("Footlong is a marketing term") and convinces a court that words like "privacy" and "security" don't mean what they sound like.

• On the post: Ye’s ‘Buyout’ Of Parler Looks Very Much Like A Failed Company Taking Advantage Of Troubled Rich Guy

  

  radix ( profile ), 19 Oct, 2022 @ 12:25pm

  It reminds me of the movie Pitch Black. The monsters appear every few decades and consume all the life on the planet, and when nothing is left, they eat each other. Only replace "monsters" with "grifters." Or don't, same thing.

• On the post: Dear California Law Makers: How The Hell Can I Comply With Your New Age-Appropriate Design Code?

  

  radix ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 01:13pm

  Can you at least combine all the legal notices so that people don't just skip the whole lot?

  This website contains stories known to the state of California to cause cancer.

• On the post: UK Columnist: Because Salman Rushdie Got Stabbed, We Should Regulate Online Speech, Get Rid Of Anonymity, And Hold Social Media Responsible

  

  radix ( profile ), 17 Aug, 2022 @ 12:21pm

  This, but even more. The democratisation of news and information means the old media is no longer a gatekeeper. They have significant incentive to rebuild those walls. Their salary depends on an all-out misinformation campaign against the new media.

• On the post: UK Columnist: Because Salman Rushdie Got Stabbed, We Should Regulate Online Speech, Get Rid Of Anonymity, And Hold Social Media Responsible

  

  radix ( profile ), 17 Aug, 2022 @ 11:29am

  After being published in 1989, Rushdie, his publisher, and sellers of the book got death threats, bounties, and even assassination attempts pretty much constantly for 15 years before "social media" was even a term. Clearly this is Twitter's fault.

• On the post: The End Of Roe Will Bring About A Sea Change In The Encryption Debate

  

  radix ( profile ), 16 May, 2022 @ 03:41pm

  And with that, I finally ordered the "Math is not a crime" t-shirt.

• On the post: Marjorie Taylor Greene Has A Bill To Burden Elon Musk’s Twitter With An Avalanche Of Frivolous Lawsuits

  

  radix ( profile ), 02 May, 2022 @ 09:41am

  Define "obscene" in an enforceable way that doesn't rely on any single person's interpretation.

• On the post: Marjorie Taylor Greene Has A Bill To Burden Elon Musk’s Twitter With An Avalanche Of Frivolous Lawsuits

  

  radix ( profile ), 02 May, 2022 @ 09:18am

  Twitter et al should have an anti-230 party for a few hours every year. Every time somebody tries to post something, they get a landing page/popup: "In the absence of Section 230, we would face the prospect of defending numerous lawsuits. We would win, but it would not be cost-effective to defend them all vigorously. In such a world, we would be compelled to review every post made on this site before it is made available to the wider internet. This is a preview of that world. Your post is number 12,430,659 in the moderation queue. It will be approved or disapproved in approximately 33 days."

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