xmichaelx 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (712)

• On the post: County Pays $300,000 To 11-Year-Old Whose Pet Goat Was Seized And Killed By Cops Because She Backed Out Of A 4-H Auction

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 12 Nov, 2024 @ 03:27pm

  I read a thing on tumblr recently

  Imagine not only learning everything you understand about philosophy on social media, but then advertising that fact when it's not relevant. Go read some books.

• On the post: Facial Recognition Firm Announces Way To Punish Retail Workers, Shoppers For Forming Relationships

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2024 @ 09:09am

  Seriously. The older workers at my grocery store are the only ones I go to. No small talk, all business, get me out the door. Young people rarely know shit about produce and so have to look up half the stuff I buy. Tim apparently has a very low opinion of the poors and the olds.

• On the post: Japan Arrests Operators Of Three Sites For ‘Anime Spoilers’ Under Copyright Law

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2024 @ 09:02am

  Screenrant is trash. I quit going there when they put a spoiler for one of the Money Heist seasons IN A FUCKING HEADLINE the day the series was released. The articles have always read like they were written by high school kids.

• On the post: Election Conspiracy-Mongers’ ‘Election Integrity’ App Flaw Reveals Voter Suppression Plan (Along With User Data)

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 06 Nov, 2024 @ 08:07am

  Just pointing out: The Dems didn't actually prevent anyone from building the wall. Trump just didn't care once he was in office. Just like infrastructure. The Republican Party is nothing but useful idiots. Trump delivered on none of his promises, and his singular legislative victory was a massive tax cut for billionaires, with specific favors carved out for real estate developers (like himself) and hedge-fund managers (like his son-in-law). People like yourself only care about what your politicians say and don't care at all what they actually accomplish. So there's no impetus for them to accomplish anything other than self-dealing. Want better for yourself. /a real life, educated conservative

• On the post: ChatGPT Dreams Up Fake Studies, Alaska Cites Them To Support School Phone Ban

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2024 @ 09:19am

  It's almost like tools aren't necessarily pure good or pure evil, depending on their use or misuse. Surely this isn't all that difficult to understand, right?

  some TechDirt writers act like AI is the greatest thing since baked bread

  Could you point to a story like this? Or is it possible -- just possible -- that the privacy bills you're referring to just sucked, and adding "But AI!!1!" to them wouldn't have made them better?

• On the post: VGHF, Libraries Lose Again On DMCA Exemption Request To Preserve Old Video Games

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 31 Oct, 2024 @ 10:04am

  Seriously. I must have missed the part in the Constitution related to "market harms" regarding copyright.

• On the post: Trademark Relinquished After Backlash From Trademark Bullying A Decade Ago By Pho Restaurant

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2024 @ 12:40pm

  Chipotle as well

  I've been making chipotle (smoked peppers) for years. It's still not clear to me how the restaurant chain Chipotle was able to get that trademark. How is that different from "Pho"?

• On the post: Google Antitrust Remedies: Promoting Competition Without Punishing Users

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2024 @ 08:49am

  This isn't a solution

  Every search company has mimicked all of the terrible, useless Google "features" in a race to the bottom. Making them all even more google-like isn't a solution. There was a time when both Bing and DuckDuckGo were superior to Google in functionality (ex: not changing my spelling, and respecting booleans). Then everybody decided to be just like google and treat all search terms as suggestions, so all started sucking equally. This "solution" would just create more sameness, without offering users literally anything, and without punishing google at all. Demonstrably, people don't care whether search results or functionality are good; they've been trained to use google, so they use google.

• On the post: Your ISP Now Requires A Broadband ‘Nutrition Label’ To Clearly Show You You’re Being Ripped Off

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 28 Oct, 2024 @ 02:41pm

  They should have to list uptime as well

  There should also be a field for uptime, or a guarantee that users won't be charged during outages. Cox in Vegas is down for hours every month, so that working from home means using mobile data (extra $10 for my Google Fi last month). Fiber can't come soon enough to my 'hood.

• On the post: NY Times Gets 230 Wrong Again; Misrepresenting History, Law, And The First Amendment

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 28 Oct, 2024 @ 02:37pm

  This wasn't news, genius; it was an opinion piece. Not understanding the difference is how people form dumb opinions like yours. The Times is the gold standard for news, even if it's imperfect. Its opinions are another matter, particularly for tech. In fact, most of their tech coverage has been garbage for (at least) two decades, because people who are competent in tech make far too much money to become journalists. That's how you wind up with people like David Pogue and Kara Swisher writing about technology (and why Swisher is great at writing about the tech personalities, and terrible when it comes to the actual technology).

• On the post: Chris Rufo Is Exploiting The Fact That Academic Plagiarism Norms Are Absurd

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2024 @ 09:36am

  Terrible take by Techdirt

  I've worked in academia for years, and have read TD for most of them. This is the worst take I've ever read here by a very wide margin. "It's okay not to cite your sources" is an idiotic stance. Anyone who's been to grad school should be extremely familiar with the practice of citing everything. That includes statements that, outside of academia, would seem to just be common knowledge or common sense. You cite EVERYTHING that's not an original thought or you're a plagiarist. People who fail to do so have no business being in academia, and it's disgraceful that the author here has decided that plagiarism is suddenly okay just because the person calling it out is an undeniable asshole. I might as well add that citing any and all sources for any and all facts in a paper isn't just some random tradition that exists just for fun. It's a mark of academic rigor, and not doing it vastly increases the chances of outright academic fraud.

• On the post: Houston Cop Gerald Goines Gets 60-Year Sentence For Leading Bogus Drug Raid That Ended With Cops Killing Two People

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2024 @ 08:27am

  Agreed. Apparently Cushing would also claim that swatting is just a prank that should be punished by (at most) a misdemeanor, even though the risk of death is high. I don't see a difference here, except that the offender here was a cop, and therefore should be held to a much higher standard, and a much harsher penalty. At the very least it's 2nd-degree murder (in my state).

• On the post: Trump’s Likely FCC Boss, Brendan Carr, Tries To Undermine Popular Infrastructure Bill Broadband Improvements

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2024 @ 08:17am

  Move taxes back to 1990s levels -- one of the most productive periods in US history -- and our debt problem magically evaporates. Hell, move taxes back to 1950s levels -- the period of the US's greatest growth and that MAGAts claim to want to revive -- and the debt problem not only evaporates, but we could start to lead the world in infrastructure (and health outcomes, and criminal justice, and education, ...) again.

• On the post: Trump Campaign Actually Does With ExTwitter What It Falsely Accused The Biden Campaign Of Doing Four Years Ago

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2024 @ 09:51am

  Because they reflexive support the guy who hates the same brown people they do. 100% of questions about the Republican party at least as far back as Reagan can be answered with a single word: Racism. /conservative non-Republican

• On the post: EU’s Commission’s Anti-Encryption Plans On The Ropes (Again) After Rejection By The Dutch Gov’t

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2024 @ 01:02pm

  Republicans love Orban

  Not only does Trump (and Tucker) constantly talk about how great Orban is, but the influential, policy-setting group within the Republican Party -- CPAC -- had their big meeting in Hungary this year. Can you imagine the outcry if Dems held something like that in a foreign country? Also, wanna know who China's best friend in the EU is? That's right: It's Orban in Hungary, who's been fellating China for the past few years almost as hard as Trump fellates Putin. Funny how little press all this gets.

• On the post: CNN Seems To Think Annoying Paywalls Will Save It From Irrelevance

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2024 @ 10:26am

  Brunchlord, n.: A word that Bode uses in every article he writes to describe fail-upward do-nothing C-suite execs who are terrible at their jobs. It was clever the first time, and now is just a sad crutch showing limited creativity on Bode's part. Using it twice in this article actally made me lol. And not in a way Bode would expect or apreciate.

• On the post: Quick Let’s Watch Everyone Flip Sides On Twitter’s Handling Of The Hunter Biden Laptop vs. The JD Vance Dossier

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 27 Sep, 2024 @ 11:05am

  It would be newsworthy because it shows that Trump's utter incompetence when it comes to hiring practices extends even to the people he hired to vet his runningmate. Just because something isn't surprising doesn't make it un-newsworthy.

• On the post: California Politicians Embarrass Themselves By Calling For ‘Warning Labels’ On Social Media

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2024 @ 11:08am

  I'm sure Republicans -- whose votes would be required to pass such an amendment -- can't wait to start adding those protections for minorities to the Constitution. /s

• On the post: Zuckerberg Vows To Stop Apologizing To Bad Faith Politicians, Right After Doing Just That

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2024 @ 11:21am

  Wherever the political winds are blowing ...

  Zuck (who now appears to dress like a nu-metal douche and/or a juggalo) will say whatever he thinks the next president wants to hear. When it looked like things were going Trump's way, he fellated Trump with a bunch of Republican talking points. Now he's back-pedaling. The comments discussed here happened on Tuesday, before Harris's improved polling post-debate happened. I guarantee Zuck will distance himself further from his obviously phony, Trump-flavored comments in the coming weeks.

• On the post: Florida Gov’t Sending Cops To Voter’s Houses To Intimidate Pro-Choice Ballot Measure Petition Supporters

  

  xmichaelx ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2024 @ 11:28am

  "Do you have a warrant?"

  This is the proper response when a cop comes knocking. And when they say no, just close the door and move on with your life.

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