Uriel-238 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (8463)

• On the post: Twitter Tried Removing The Block Feature Before. It Didn’t Go Well. Elon’s Doing It Again Anyway

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2024 @ 03:36pm

  Musk and Ex-Twitter continues to serve as a brilliant example...

  ...of the pitfalls of monarchy. Musk is not doing this stuff in an effort to build a better platform or to maximize profit to shareholders, rather he's doing what he feels he wants, which has more to do with his personal needs for validation. Musk wants everyone to hear him when he speaks, even when he doesn't have anything valuable to say.

• On the post: No ABC Did Not Engage In Election Interference In [Checks Notes] Fact Checking Donald Trump

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2024 @ 01:08pm

  Jumping to conclusions

  Crooks (the first would-be assassin) was from a Republican household and in the after-incident investigation, records of Crooks' internet activity showed he had been researching opportunities to shoot at either Biden or Trump. (Biden would announce his withdrawal from the election seven days later. Harris was not yet a candidate.) But it's typical of rampage killers to simply look for any venue where they can cause sufficient havoc, and while investigations of Crooks sought to paint a more sophisticated picture, he appears to fall into exactly that category: a young man like many in the United States, on the edge of despair and hopelessness, looking for a way to express his outrage and unlife. And despite extensive searches for a terror operative to point him in a specific direction (say your imaginary Democrat subversive looking to throw assassins Trump's way) not a single contact has been found. Crooks might have been thrilled for some guidance, nefarious or otherwise, but none was had. Regarding Ryan Wesley Routh (The prime suspect of the incident at the Trump International Golf Club), as of this comment, Routh is charged with possessing an illegal firearm (he's a felon ex-con, otherwise the firearm would be legal) and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. He has a public defender. His phone (because of course he took his phone) shows that he'd been camping at that site for twelve hours. Rough brought his own cell phone. No Agent 47, this man. The Secret Service made a statement that at no point was Trump ever in line-of-sight with Routh, and considering the rifle in question, Trump would have to cross at least half way across the golf course to be in effective range (that is assuming Routh wanted to shoot at Trump and not miss). Once again, it appears to be a rifle of convenience. Billy Summers knew to get a specific rifle for the job and to check it thoroughly. (And thanks to Stephen King, now, so do we.) We do not yet have any information as to Routh's motivations. If a super-delegate from the DNC wanted to kill Trump they wouldn't send someone like Routh or Crooks, they'd send someone who actually knew how to shoot, or better yet, find a way to poison his toothpaste or blow up his car. A Billy Summers or Agent 47. But then, principals in the party would totally know better than to shoot at Trump, who has been cultivated by several ministries involved with the white Christian nationalist movement to make Trump a prophet. If Trump dies by accident (say a coronary embolism after a hearty fried chicken dinner) then there is a risk he'd become a martyr figure. And if he were killed by an assassin -- even if committed by a known Republican or a manic rampage killer -- then Trump might rule the United States from beyond the grave like Kim Il Sung. It's why I'm terrified one of these crackpots might actually succeed. No, the safest way to dispose of Trump for sake of the Democratic party and the US Public is to beat him resoundingly in the election, stave off any coup d'etat effort he might launch (because he almost assuredly will try, both procedural and violent) and then convict him of the crimes for which we have substantial evidence, and imprison him or confine him to house arrest until dementia sets in. That'll give his MAGA fanatics time to come to terms that time conquers even god-emperors, that Trump, like King Cnut cannot command the elements, or the relentless march of time. That said, there's a good case that Trump's own shadowy masters (whether US Oligarchs or Russian) might find more use in a dead prophet than a live tyrant. We know of thirty-nine attempts on Hitler, and most were from within his own party.

• On the post: No ABC Did Not Engage In Election Interference In [Checks Notes] Fact Checking Donald Trump

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2024 @ 04:07pm

  Let's make the brush broader

  During the Reagan era Republicans were pretty consistent about building more prisons, prosecuting drug users, attacking immigrants, killing unions and gutting social safety nets. You know, normal Republican stuff. The Republican intelligentsia at the time knew that these polices would lead back to where things were in the 1930s, with industrialists thinking the Austrian fellow had some good ideas, blaming the great depression on the failure of Americans to work hard enough. The working class was living in cardboard houses, surviving on flour paste and wandering what that Lenin fellow was up to. So no. To Hell with the lot of you, since as soon as we pull back from the precipice of one-party authoritarianism you'll be back at it with the same anti-union, anti-welfare, anti-plurality, anti-secular policy set, and that rail-line leads right back here to the precipice of one-party autocracy, or as Representative Jamie Raskin called it, Neo-monarchism We've been on these tracks a long time with no brakes. We're now coming up on the final destination of a one party autocracy propped up by a fascist enemy within narrative featuring mass arrests and purges, eventually into mass graves or just ash in the wind. You guys are absolutely the same Republicans as the MAGAs. You just don't like what you see now that we're only a few miles from the end result, rather than a few hundred. It's time to recognize that Republicanism doesn't work and ditch the identity the way a Schutzstaffel officer ditches his uniform while on the lam in Argentina. It's time to recognize that the working class needs to be treated like human beings, and not disposable / replaceable parts in your billionare-vanity-project industrial machine. It's long been time to stop being GOP the way it's long been time to stop being NSDAP.

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2024 @ 12:37am

  The law enforcement pipeline

  The police unions have been, as we've watched right here on TD, the freikorps to Sturmabteilung to Sicherheitsdienst pipeline. (Note that the pipeline of the German Reich was not quite as direct. In the summer of 1934, the Sturmabteilung were long-knifed by the Schutzstaffel, a competing NSDAP paramilitary group, which supplanted Röhm's Brownshirted stormtroopers. Heydrich started the Sicherheitsdienst as an intel-gathering secret-police subdivision of the SS. As part of the enemy within narrative of the fascist movement, Heydrich's SD began rounding up undesirables into detention centers. Expansion of this due to overcrowding created need for the concentration camp system, the ghettos and eventually the extermination machine of the Holocaust.) So yes, the Endlösung der Judenfrage is the final destination of the police pipeline, and in the US it can totally happen here... Is already happening here...

• On the post: School Monitoring Software Sacrifices Student Privacy For Unproven Promises Of Safety

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2024 @ 06:36pm

  Weird stats

  NCHS suicide deaths stat is below the national average (everyone) while homicide deaths stat is above the national average. 🤓 As a note regarding suicide in general a) not all suicides are declared, and some families are glad to cover up a suicidal death if they can, since suicide implies scandal. And b) About 75% (estimated) of suicides fail, which is to say the victim survives, often ending up in the ER. So when we see about 40k-45K people die in the US every year from suicide, that's about a quarter of those whose suicidality drove them to action, after the call to some hotline, if they even did that. /🤓

• On the post: NO FAKES – A Dream For Lawyers, A Nightmare For Everyone Else

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2024 @ 05:29pm

  A fun bill for Doppelgangers

  One of the problems with facial recognition is that too many people look like other people, hence we have the occasional arrest or even conviction due to a FRT false-positive. So if you want your game / video / media to feature a picture of someone you like, you can just cruise around town for a doppelganger of your star of choice, buy their likeness for a nice price, and voilà established rights to that likeness! I mean it's sleazy, sure. You'd have to be some kind of Hollywood studio to have the audacity.

• On the post: Cops Are Starting To Tow Away Teslas To ‘Secure’ Recordings Captured By The Cars’ Cameras

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 03 Sep, 2024 @ 01:09pm

  I think a police officer wants a used Tesla

  From what I understand of the connected state of Teslas, a police officer with a court order can contact the Tesla car company and have that specific Tesla unlocked so the officer can access the thumb drive and copy it for sake of any evidence. (Instances of tow requests according to the article are when the owner of the vehicle cannot be found, and it presumes the vehicle is in sentry mode.) Unless I'm mistaken, it's a procedural problem, but it's easier on the car and the owner if the vehicle isn't towed. Not towing also leaves less of an intervention footprint by law enforcement. But this also presents a motivation for private security to not store locally but stream it elsewhere. This was a problem when police were confiscating private phones used to record police action, hence the ACLU app/tool that allowed video recording that streamed the data to ACLU cloud sites in real time, so law enforcement couldn't bury their abuse.

• On the post: Chicago PD Hid Nearly 200,000 Traffic Stops From City Oversight In 2023

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2024 @ 06:25pm

  Suppressed evidence

  Well, now I wonder how long a supercut we could make of instances where the officer's record of behavior was presented and suppressed based on public records. That might make a wild meme.

• On the post: Chicago PD Hid Nearly 200,000 Traffic Stops From City Oversight In 2023

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2024 @ 02:41pm

  "No officer can be relied on"

  ...no officer can be relied on to follow the law or tell the truth. They can't. The problem is DAs and judges are complicit even as officers lie in court. I'm curious how it plays out when the defense pulls the known history of the specific officers to develop a character argument that their accounts of the incident are not to be trusted (including any official reports). Do thin-blue-line judges lose their minds in the face of evidence of a corrupt institution?

• On the post: Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should, Or What Disney’s Litigation Disaster Teaches Us About Tech Policy

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2024 @ 01:09pm

  One of the the morals of this story is that click-wrap TOS can be dangerous, and it is lower risk to pirate than it is to engage in corporate-connected services legitimately. It also provides an example of how an institution will argue in bad faith in court in order to get out of paying for events for which they are rightly liable.

• On the post: 2nd Circuit To Cop: Someone Observing All The Laws Is Not ‘Probable Cause’ For A Search

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2024 @ 08:33pm

  And this was the one that made news.

  ...Which is to say there could be dozens or hundreds of other incidents that didn't. Can we please consider again abolishing police?

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 18 Aug, 2024 @ 04:10pm

  Looking the other way

  It's all about this. Our theocrats, our moral guardians, our MAGAs and our Republicans are all about looking the other way when in comes to those within the white Christian nationalist movement. When it comes to anyone else, they clutch pearls and declare them as undesirables to be evicted from society.

• On the post: Texas School Thinks It Can Solve Student Mental Health Issues By Banning Black Clothing

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2024 @ 01:05pm

  Flanders is the unquestionable lord and master of the world

  Next in El Paso, mandatory smile-hooks and proscriptions against slouching and crying.

• On the post: Utah’s Book Banning Law Claims Judy Blume, Five Other Female Authors As Its First Victims

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 15 Aug, 2024 @ 12:09pm

  ✝️ >> 🔥

  The only thing slowing it down is deciding which version of God should be considered the “official” version of God. If I recall my Western Civ correctly, this very controversy started an awful lot of wars in Europe, which factored into the egress to the new world and was a fundamental driver of the establishment clause of the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Which is to say our fucking lawmakers are fucking playing with fucking fire.

• On the post: Appeals Court Rejects DMCA Constitutional Challenge, Because Apparently Fair Use Means Nothing Good Will Ever Be Published

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2024 @ 05:05pm

  The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin

  Once again, a high court sides with private interests in order to strip rights away from the public, what is the ongoing story of intellectual property. Every additional year a given copyright monopoly is extended, every fair-use instance that is denied to an individual is a reduction of the rights of the people to a robust public domain. That was the whole intention of intellectual property in the first place. Or was it just rent seeking and another effort to silence the working class of dissent language? In the end, ruling against the public delegitimizes the courts. Stripping fair use access delegitimizes the whole notion of intellectual property and temporary monopolies And it makes legitimate and necessary the practice of media piracy. Hoist the colors!🏴‍☠️

• On the post: Appeals Court Says Cop Whose Cop Dog Bit Another Cop Is Entitled To Qualified Immunity

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2024 @ 02:04pm

  It's been a fantasy of mine that society may finally determine law enforcement departments cannot be trusted with dogs. Not attack dogs and not detection dogs. (Maybe a neutral third party who is tasked specifically with keeping a dog up on their detection skills with low false positives / negatives, and making sure they know they're the goodest boy / girl in the world could be eventually developed, but that's a late step.) I can't imagine that dogs in the police force are not abused, and should be retired. But then I have it on good authority, being a police officer is not healthy for the human beings in the force, and maybe they should be retired from duty as well. I can't speak for their qualifications for other duties like gardening or baking.

• On the post: Cellebrite Sent The FBI Unreleased Software To Crack The Trump Shooter’s Phone

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2024 @ 04:51pm

  The rights of dead guys

  It's not the rights of dead guys I worry about. It's the rights of the living who will see these high-powered cracking-guns turned on them after the fact, not for shooting at presidents, but for securing too much fentanyl.

• On the post: Cellebrite Sent The FBI Unreleased Software To Crack The Trump Shooter’s Phone

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2024 @ 04:34pm

  "A criminal event of national importance"

  We had a twenty-year international war on terror (discontinued August 2021 according to Wikipedia) and we failed to actually learn from it? Cracking the gunman's phone is grasping at straws. When it comes to most acts of terror, most rampage killings, radicalization occurs before a target is chosen. Now, yes, in some cases, there'd be an IRA operative, an Islamist magazine a CIA or GRU internet troll that looks for sad people wishing to express their fury and outrage in a way that is publicly recognized (and sometimes these spooks are, in fact, not a gaslighting FBI plant looking to secure another terror conviction via entrapment -- see BOWLING GREEN MASSACRE for an example). The world does have a few agencies, NGOs and corporate interests that seek to influence some political events, and when they need to stay low key, they look for strong candidates that might self-activate: young angry men on the brink of suicide, who they can then steer (one of the places where the term grooming is fully applicable) towards a specific target, and how to secure the means by which they will -- everyone hopes -- make international news. Right now, all the evidence points to someone who is not directly connected to such an agency. It was a weapon of convenience. He was shopping for targets on his own. We can ascertain a high chance he was lonely, worried about his long-term survival, and maybe obsessing on something like Jody Foster, or The Catcher In the Rye or Helter Skelter. So the chances that FBI is going to discover a conversation between WannaKillSoBad88 and Mysterio6969 coaching him about how he could totally get back at the Blue Meanies what vex him. But suppose they did. Suppose we roll two twenties in a row and lo, there is someone that poked at him to go shoot Trump with his daddy's gun. FBI's going to need to spend some years (and some taxpayer money) on finding out who it is, and that's going to require some more double-twenty rolls. They'd have to get very lucky the Mysterio didn't totally cover his tracks. But it'd be fun and make some good fiction, I guess. But that's not a great reason for FBI to have access to Cellebrite lock picks without a warrant. And the problem is historically when US law enforcement gets cracks to devices, they tend to ignore the law and hope to get a warrant post hoc, even when it's just some guy with half a lid of weed.

• On the post: Fox News’ Desperate Attempts To Link Trump Shooter To Video Games Is Pathetic

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2024 @ 01:12pm

  Thank you, FOX News, for once again triggering this particular rant of mine

  Clickbait news agencies like to point to video games (and before them, violent movies with boobs) as the inspiration of violent crime and summer crime waves. Infamously Marilyn Manson and modded DOOM as inspiring Eric Harris to plan and commit the Columbine High School massacre... ...mostly because we don't dare look at larger factors like intergenerational mental illness caused by forcing all adults to work forty-plus hours a week, leaving them too little time to parent or engage in civics, much the way ASD seems to correlate much more with childhood neglect than additives in vaccines. I digress. But then, how else would we blame Adam Lanza's 2012 perpetration of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on his obsession with Dance Dance Revolution? This is not a new thing. My childhood obsession, Dungeons & Dragons which I still have the habit of abbreviating AD&D because I had all the first hardbound volumes evar for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was associated by moral guardians and media pundits with Satanism and Suicide, including an amazing Jack Chick illustration of cultists standing on a giant pentagram for a night of refreshments and demon summoning. I was twelve, and would grow up disappointed that The Real Magic was never revealed in my vast tomes of gaming lore. Nor were they a path to getting invited to parties of robe-wearing, snacks and eldritch spellcasting. It also turns out that AD&D players have a lower rate of suicide, compared to the general population, though those like me who dealt with chronic suicidality often turned to TTRPGs (and later, computer games, even the shooty ones) as a coping mechanism to manage our mental illness symptoms. These days, gaming is a commonly tried and true part of a mental health regimen when confronted with a high stress world (say, in a society on the verge of collapse into one-party autocracy...I'm derailing again.) After the whole affair with activist and now-disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson calling Grand Theft Auto: Vice City a murder simulator some actual studies were done and showed lo! gritty shooty video games don't make people any more prone to actual violence that did watching Coppola's Godfather series did in the 1970s (and, I guess, 1990), but I still find a couple of other datapoints make for an interesting post-script. One was Penn and Teller's Bullshit! ep 07-03 on video games, in which they found a normal looking nine-year-old kid who was way into the Call of Duty series, and hooked him up with an off-duty marine and a shooting range, to look down the sites of a real AR-15. It was too real and scary for the boy, leaving him in tears. And the other is the high-turnover rate of the CIA drone strike programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Are they over now?) No matter how much like video games real killing gets, it takes a toll on those pulling the trigger, even as their commanders are ordering them to do so. It's not an easy thing to kill a man. Probably harder to set fire to a village just to hit an alleged person of interest. (Sucks even more when the commanders told you to shoot even when you couldn't conform the POI was actually there.) So in the end, video games are about as radicalizing as trashy romance novels (which were also once accused of Satanic origins and giving women ideas), but also real war can't be reverse engineered into a video game.

• On the post: Sample Library Company Copyright Strikes YouTuber Over Showing Their ToS

  

  Uriel-238 ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2024 @ 12:11pm

  I am not a copyright lawyer...

  It makes sense to me that once something is protected by copyright or some other IP limited monopoly license, it goes from being opt out to opt in. You can't (or shouldn't be) bound by a contract you don't have full access to. It has some intersection with the unethical practice of NSLs, which denies targets the freedom to announce they are captured by a state agent. That said, I am curious if the TOS are actually copyrighted, and the Krystle is actually restricted from publishing them (even for fair use, such as reporting, critique and education, for which her videos should qualify) or the copyright strike was just use as a known, consistently-effective vector of attack. Splice's lawyers knew they could harass Krystle and get the video removed by pulling the YouTube copyright strike trigger, so they did with little regard to whether its intended purpose was applicable. Either way, it shows Splice is a company that engages in bad-faith behavior in its effort to sell its wares. It's demonstrably a toxic company.

Next >>