ShadowNinja 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: The TV Sector's Latest Bad Idea: Ads That Play When You Press Pause

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2018 @ 07:42am

    Re:

    And I hit the back button and refuse to visit those sites again that do that.

  • On the post: After Getting FOSTA Turned Into Law, Facebook Tells Its Users To Stop Using Naughty Words

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2018 @ 12:44pm

    that the bill was really designed to end online pornography. It seems to be taking some steps towards that goal.

    What are the chances it fails miserably at that one to? Chances are pretty good in the end I'd say.

  • On the post: When A 'Trade War' Involves Seizing And Imprisoning Foreign Execs, It's No Longer Just About Trade

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2018 @ 12:37pm

    Are the charges even legitimate, or just trumped up lies?

    Then, take it a step further. White House officials have told the press that they believe Meng "could be used as leverage with China in trade talks," and you realize this has fuck all to do with Iranian sanctions.

    It's even worse then that. A statement like that from officials working for the head of the US government makes it look like the charges are likely baseless, and were just made up for pure political reasons, not actual law breaking.

    As in the kind of thing a dictatorship does. The kind of thing we've accused China's government of doing in their 'corruption crackdowns', where enemies of China's presidents are prosecuted, but his allies get away with all sorts of corruption. Because it's not really about fighting corruption, it's about hurting enemies of the president of China.

    Also, I'm not lawyer, but I think it sounds like complete BS that shouldn't be enforceable under sensible laws to say that a foreign business has to follow trade sanctions that were implemented by a second foreign government that they do business in.

    If the US doesn't like it that they violate US trade sanctions because they aren't sanctioned by China then they can bar the foreign company from selling their products in the US until they abide by said sanctions.

  • On the post: What Do Pot And Software Have In Common? Stupid Patent Thickets Based On A Lack Of Patented Prior Art

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2018 @ 07:39am

    ... Isn't it illegal to patent illegal things?

    ... Isn't it illegal to patent illegal things? If so, then NONE of these patents have ANY legal standing in the first place.

    Despite what you may think, Marijuana is STILL illegal in ALL of the US because it's illegal at the Federal level, and Federal law trumps State law when the conflict. There's NOTHING stopping from the feds from prosecuting you for using/possessing marijuana in any of the states where it's 'legal'.

    Hence all these patents on marijuana related things are patents on illegal goods, so they really shouldn't have any legal protections if you can't patent illegal things.

  • On the post: Man Shot By Cops Claims Shotspotter Found Phantom 'Gunshot' To Justify Officer's Deadly Force

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2018 @ 10:10am

    Re:

    Damn forgot to check the formatting box. :(

  • On the post: Rudy Giuliani's Paranoid Nonsense Tweet Is A Good Reminder That We Need Actual Cybersecurity Experts In Government

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2018 @ 09:13am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    There's a lot of dispute about that.

    You know why Giuliani was running around all over the place on 9/11 instead of sitting in a command center? It's because he decided to ignore security experts and put NYC's anti-terror center headquarters in the Twin Towers, to be within easy walking distance of his office! Nevermind the previous terror attacks against it years before 9/11!

    So yeah, the guy who 'calmed' people down on TV made 9/11 even worse for NYC.

    Giuliani also got virtually no votes from the African American community for a reason, just do some googling on why they don't like him. Jon Oliver made a segment a year or two ago about why Giuliani has always been like his present insane and offensive self.

  • On the post: Man Shot By Cops Claims Shotspotter Found Phantom 'Gunshot' To Justify Officer's Deadly Force

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2018 @ 10:09am

    > Having reverse-engineered a narrative to support the shooting, cops set about charging Simmons with attempted aggravated murder, attempted aggravated assault on a police officer, and criminal weapon possession. Simmons spent more than a year in jail before being acquitted on all charges. The wounds he sustained are permanent.

    ... Forget the legal aspects of this, how the hell did this not attract enough outrage on social media and national news to force the prosecutors (an elected position) to drop these ridiculous charges?

    There's not even any kind of "well he was illegally selling a couple dollar cigarette" justification for these actions. It was straight up pull over and attempt to murder the first person you see, then charge THEM with the attempted murder instead of the shooting.

  • On the post: EternalSuffering: NSA Exploits Still Being Successfully Used To Hijack Computers More Than A Year After Patching

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2018 @ 08:47am

    Re: Re: 'Not our computers, not our problem'

    Let's save a bit of blame for the people writing and releasing insecure software

    While they can do more some of the times, the fact is if a Nation State is trying to break into your systems, you're 100% fucked no matter how seriously you take security.

    Nation states can afford to spend an infinite amount of money on finding vulnerabilities and breaking into your software/hardware/etc. Businesses that develop the software/hardware/etc. have limited amounts of money, even the giants like Microsoft/Google/Apple/Amazon. If you have an infinite amount of money and you want to find a way to hack users using their products, you're going to find it eventually.

    I'm not just making this up out of thin air. This is literally what the Cyber Security division of the company I work for says about Cyber Security.

  • On the post: The Utter Failure Of FOSTA: More Lives At Risk… And Sex Ads Have Increased, Not Decreased

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2018 @ 01:41pm

    Re:

    Hey why not?

    Louisiana Senator 'Diaper' David Vitter didn't even have to resign for hiring a prostitute, and he won reelection.

    The only price he paid was losing Louisiana's last governor election, after one of his opponents from the primary endorsed the candidate for the other party.

  • On the post: Latest On EU Copyright Directive: No One's Happy With Article 13, So Maybe Let's Drop It?

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2018 @ 01:35pm

    Great, so why didn't platforms like Twitch step up to warn their users about the dangers of Articles 11 & 13 BEFORE they were voted on in the first place?

    That's like calling the fire department to report a forest fire after the fire has already burned a few acres of land and is about to spread to several hundred acres. Sure you might be able to stop the fire if you move quick enough, but it would have been a whole lot easier to stop the damn fire if you had shown up before it burned the first couple of acres.

  • On the post: Lawsuit: Boston PD's 'Gang Database' Says People Who Wear Nikes And Have Been Beat Up By Gang Members Are 'Gang Associates'

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2018 @ 08:34am

    Some parts of the scoring system sound like statistically there are some definite correlations between gang affiliation and those things. Gang on gang violence for example is a thing, I'm sure cops in a city overrun with gang violence have seen plenty of victims who were members of rival gangs.

    But then they took those statistical correlations too far, and turned them into a monstrosity that given enough time will flag everyone in the city as a 'gang member' due to 6 points of separation (i.e. pick any 2 people on the planet and you can link them together by finding people who they associate with who will eventually link the 2 of them together).

    This sounds so much like the early versions of the suspected terrorist lists, where simply calling/getting called by someone else on the suspected terrorist list got you added to the suspected terrorist list. Over 4 million Americans landed on the list at one point, including Senator Ted Kennedy, who suddenly began having a lot of trouble boarding planes at airports because of a 'T Kennedy' on the list (even though his real name was 'Edward Kennedy').

  • On the post: Woman Sues Georgia Deputies After Their Field Drug Test Said Her Cotton Candy Was Meth

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2018 @ 01:59pm

    Re: Simple really

    I can't tell if you're being dead serious, or attempting to be sarcastic to make a point but failing horribly at it.

  • On the post: Facebook's Policy Team Steamrolled On FOSTA By Sheryl Sandberg's Personal Priorities

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2018 @ 01:37pm

    Re: Sheryl Sandberg's forward thinking

    Carly Fiorina never stood a real chance in hell, she was just in it for the fame and money. Voters would never elect a proven failure like her who couldn't even claim to have been successful in business (minus the golden parachute part).

    Meg Whitman on the other hand might have won if she ran in a redder state.

    That said, recent executives who tanked their own organization to score political points and run for office didn't do so well (see the Komen executive Karen Handle who caused Komen to piss off literally everyone on the abortion issue with planned parenthood funding, which caused a huge hit to Komen's fundraising. She ran for the senate in Georgia and lost the primary)

  • On the post: Woman Sues Georgia Deputies After Their Field Drug Test Said Her Cotton Candy Was Meth

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2018 @ 02:04pm

    What kind of an idiot judge would put a $1 million dollar bail for something so ridiculously trivial even if the test were accurate? The fact that it wasn't enough weight for the changes makes it even more outrageous.

    This person didn't even have a weapon on them, how the hell does that make them a threat to the community.

  • On the post: Israeli Exploit Developer Caught Negotiating Spyware Sales With Saudi Government

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 27 Nov, 2018 @ 12:03pm

    Re: Re: 'They even PINKY PROMISED!'

    And 'terrorism' literally means using fear and/or violence to accomplish your political goals. Wouldn't be too hard to say those journalists were scaring people, so therefore they're terrorists. And those anti-government groups scare the government, so they're terrorists to!

  • On the post: Homicide, Sexual Assault Cases On The Line After Crime Lab Discovers Tech Using The Wrong Tools For The Job

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 27 Nov, 2018 @ 06:59am

    Re:

    Not to mention this stuff can be used to wrongly execute people, like Cameron Todd Willingham of Texas. Cameron Todd Willingham's case is the reason I went from on the fence about the Death Penalty to strongly opposing it. He was sentenced and executed purely based on junk science for arson cases.

  • On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 01:52pm

    Re: Re:

    Those stuff were a problem before then. The cause of the problem came during WW2, not Obama or Nixon. WW2 is what brought us the horrible employer based healthcare system, which locked us into a horribly inefficient system. The truth is insurance companies can't really get you a discount, the cost for the doctors or hospitals is the same regardless of if you have insurance or not. But insurance companies need to encourage people to get insurance by driving up the price, hence they force doctors and hospitals to raise the price on others without insurance, and then charge insurance their 'actual' price in effect. Then the average person needs insurance to avoid being raped by the artificial prices for those with no insurance. I find it most ironic how so many Americans demonize Canada's healthcare system (where the government is everyone's insurance provider), all while loving those Canadian cheap drug prices and thinking we should re-import those US made drugs we shipped to them.

  • On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 01:45pm

    Re:

    Some medical technology is connected to the Internet so your doctor can monitor it in real time, and at times make necessary adjustments (such as people with a Pacemaker).

    There's actually a fear that such technology could/has already been used to murder people. When Vice President Dick Cheney got a pacemaker from his heart conditions the Secret Service wouldn't allow it to be connected to the Internet because of the threat of someone assassinating him by hacking into it.

    That said, while I'm not a medical professional, I'm skeptical that there's any need for any real time data or adjustments in sleep apnea. I may be wrong, but I'm still deeply skeptical.

  • On the post: To Prosecute A Single Bombing Suspect, FBI Demands Identifying Info On Thousands Of YouTube Viewers

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 11:57am

    Re:

    Except the logs surely say when those IP's accessed the link.

  • On the post: Prosecutors Charge Suspect With Evidence Tampering After A Seized iPhone Is Wiped Remotely

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2018 @ 12:28pm

    Re: Hmmm....

    That and records of texts/calls seem like the only things they could realistically find that would be relevant.

    I always thought the cell phone provider had all that information and could be required to hand it over with a warrant?

    The contact list is stored on the phone I think (unless it's different on iOS) so it would be deleted, but surely they'd have texts/calls to those numbers in the phone company records if they existed.

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