As medical technology improves, people will be able to remain in power for much longer than before. Sometimes I worry that, if we manage to remove the limits on the human lifespan soon enough, my generation (the millennials) will end up being seen by future generations as just as bad as the baby boom generation is seen by us.
I turn 35 this year and I still use a Chrome extension to auto-fill those age boxes on Steam with some over-21 birthdate since they don't remember my birth date.
I can tell you for certain that this isn't true. For example, on an Android device, if you attack the system partition and add your malware there (preferably with the assistance of the OEM by way of a poisoned update to make sure that the checksums check out) then it'll still be there after a hard reset. This is how Android custom ROM's work, you replace everything with something new and that way, even if you hard reset the device, you're just resetting back to the initial setup of your custom ROM and not to the original OEM software. You wouldn't even need OEM assistance if the Android device is rooted since all the authority necessary to alter system files would exist on the device itself.
I don't know enough about iOS to comment on it specifically (I've jailbroken a single iOS device for a friend years ago and that process, if you get physical access to the phone, would allow a similar attack) but, if you can get Apple to help you, I believe that it would be trivial to do something similar with a poisoned iOS update.
They probably want a ruling allowing them to compel passwords in the future. To be honest, DUI defendants aren't generally considered the most sympathetic people.
Here's a related example. If the police have a warrant to search my home, I don't have to let them in (if I don't, then they can pick my lock or break down my door) and I don't have to tell them if I have a room hidden behind my bookshelf (they can search for such things on their own). Why shouldn't digital security be treated the same way? If I don't give them my password then they can try to hack around the security or brute-force my password. It's not my problem if that could take months, years, or millennia.
Twitter's current method for controlling autoplay is that GIFs are turned into MP4 video which is then controlled by a video player (videos are simply in the video player from the start). APNG is a format that isn't designed to be turned into video as easily as a GIF so they won't work with the same libraries that are in use now. Also, unlike GIF, APNG files tend to be smaller than their respective videos so libraries to simply turn APNG into mp4 are much less mature than the same libraries for GIF.
The problem with a copyright based law is that the owner of the copyright is the taker of the picture/video. If someone recorded their "fun times" with the permission of their partner and then the relationship fell apart, the one who took the picture or video would own the rights to it.
The problem with the thought that "that's what we have courts for" is the fact that, as of last Friday, 1-in-4 circuit court judges were appointed by Trump. We don't yet know if they'll all rule exactly as he would like in various matters but, generally, our back and forth switching between parties in the Presidency keeps the courts from sliding too far in either ideological direction. However, since Obama was only able to get 55 circuit court judges approved (in 8 years) and left 140+ vacancies, which have now been filled (mostly with younger judges) by Trump, the courts have been tilted quite far to the right and will likely stay that way for decades.
Re: Re: 'Never let a good tragedy/victimization go to waste'
Techdirt has always had the Silence Techdirt option available where it costs $100,000,001 to shut them down for a year or $1,000,000 for just one day without Techdirt. I'd like to think that this option is a joke but, one hundred million dollars is certainly an ungodly amount of money.
I don't know exactly where the line should be drawn on how long the police can perform surveillance on a private residence from a public place without a warrant but, I definitely agree with the court here and I'll explain why. Firstly, as the court noted, a camera mounted on a utility pole can often see things that aren't realisticly visible from the street or other public rights-of-way. Secondly, and more importantly, even the best surveillance team will likely slip up somehow over the course of multiple months and the person or people under surveillance will discover that there's an odd vehicle outside of their home at all hours. That possibility is greatly reduced by a camera mounted on a utility pole. In-person surveillance is what any previous decisions on warrantless surveillance were based so, we're in need of an update for the modern paradigm.
I remember reading over a decade ago that the best way to avoid a DUI conviction (after being charged, of course) was to request the calibration and maintenance records of the device they used for the roadside test. Unfortunately, that means that this article doesn't surprise me.
Hemp is legal at the federal level. That came to pass last year because Kentucky farmers want to grow it in order to compete with cotton and "Moscow" Mitch McConnell is a Senator from Kentucky. That's what also made CBD based substances covered by the FDA and therefore subject to approval.
I don't know where you live but, in the United States, no pay change for Congress can go into effect until after the next Congressional term begins. That's laid out in the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.
By law, very few people employed by the US Government earn more than the President does, and his (or her) salary creates the scale for most employees. The few employees who earn more are those in fields where the average salary is very high already (coaches at the Division I service academies and some surgeons in the VA). So, if we want the lower-level employees to earn enough to make government service appealing compared to private-sector employment, the pay at the top end has to go up too.
Lastly, the US federal government has one of the better "CEO" to bottom level employee pay ratio's in the country. Since the President is paid $400,000/year and the minimum hourly wage for a federal employee is $10.35/hour, assuming full-time employment for that bottom end employee, the ratio between them is only about 18.6. When you look at the wages of some CEO's compared to their least paid employees, it's easy to see those ratios get into the hundreds.
The first public test of Starlink happened on October 22nd when Elon Musk sent this tweet over its network. As the full network hasn't been deployed, we certainly don't know if it will scale yet but, it quite clearly works.
Secondly, the laws of physics state that nothing travels faster than light in a vacuum and that's how the inter-satellite links are designed, they're literally communication lasers traveling between the satellites so, as long as each satellite has enough computing power to handle the routing, there won't be any bandwidth issues there.
Thirdly, as Ryuugami points out, orbital mechanics is a nearly solved bit of physics, if it wasn't, GPS wouldn't work at all. As long as each satellite knows where its neighbors in orbit are, those and the ground stations are the only things that they need to communicate with. We've gotten quite good at that type of communication. (Also to this point, the communications to and from the ground are using radio frequency not laser communications. You have a point there, pointing a laser at a specific point on Earth while traveling at thousands of miles an hour over the surface is quite difficult. It's not impossible but, the cost per satellite would be far greater.)
Lastly, these satellites are being designed with a ~5-year lifespan so that, as new technology becomes available, the replacement satellites will be able to take advantage of it without having any unexpected replacement costs creeping in.
The people trying to frame it as a phone issue are primarily trying to make people forget that farmers were at the forefront of the current wave of right-to-repair legislation.
Your warehouse store analogy fails to mention that the lower prices of those stores are offset by the membership fees (shown by the fact that, at Sam's Club, you can still make purchases without a membership, they just charge you a 10% markup on all items where a markup is legal) and the game one fails because the MSRP for software is quite close to the wholesale price of software. There's no margin for a markdown without losing money on each sale. As far as retailer-exclusive releases are concerned, do you need to subscribe to a particular service to get the game? So far, I don't think there have been any major releases that were digital-only.
However in the case of digital storefront exclusivity, the stores aren't competing for your money, they're competing for the developers' releases. They compete by giving up a larger portion of the proceeds to the developer or buy directly paying for exclusivity. Since that's the case, you won't likely see that kind of exclusive go away any time soon.
I assume that you're joking a bit but, in this case the FCC simply gave up part of their own authority. If Pai had a stroke and decided to call ISP's Telecommunication Services under Title II again and regulate them accordingly, then they'd be able to preempt all of these state laws without issue.
The judicial branch can't get involved until someone files a suit against one of the other two branches. Also, don't forget that judges are chosen by the executive. Don't be so quick to think that they'll slap them down, even if they should.
On the post: Joe Biden Can't Tell The Difference Between The 1st Amendment & Section 230; Still Thinks Video Games Cause Violence
Re: Re:
As medical technology improves, people will be able to remain in power for much longer than before. Sometimes I worry that, if we manage to remove the limits on the human lifespan soon enough, my generation (the millennials) will end up being seen by future generations as just as bad as the baby boom generation is seen by us.
On the post: Bad Ideas: Raising The Arbitrary Age Of Internet Service 'Consent' To 16
Re:
I turn 35 this year and I still use a Chrome extension to auto-fill those age boxes on Steam with some over-21 birthdate since they don't remember my birth date.
On the post: European Law Enforcement Officials Upset Facebook Is Warning Users Their Devices May Have Been Hacked
Re:
I can tell you for certain that this isn't true. For example, on an Android device, if you attack the system partition and add your malware there (preferably with the assistance of the OEM by way of a poisoned update to make sure that the checksums check out) then it'll still be there after a hard reset. This is how Android custom ROM's work, you replace everything with something new and that way, even if you hard reset the device, you're just resetting back to the initial setup of your custom ROM and not to the original OEM software. You wouldn't even need OEM assistance if the Android device is rooted since all the authority necessary to alter system files would exist on the device itself.
I don't know enough about iOS to comment on it specifically (I've jailbroken a single iOS device for a friend years ago and that process, if you get physical access to the phone, would allow a similar attack) but, if you can get Apple to help you, I believe that it would be trivial to do something similar with a poisoned iOS update.
On the post: Florida Appeals Court Asks State's Top Court To Decide Whether Compelled Password Production Violates The Fifth Amendment
Re: Re:
They probably want a ruling allowing them to compel passwords in the future. To be honest, DUI defendants aren't generally considered the most sympathetic people.
On the post: Florida Appeals Court Asks State's Top Court To Decide Whether Compelled Password Production Violates The Fifth Amendment
Re: Because you all care what I think...
Here's a related example. If the police have a warrant to search my home, I don't have to let them in (if I don't, then they can pick my lock or break down my door) and I don't have to tell them if I have a room hidden behind my bookshelf (they can search for such things on their own). Why shouldn't digital security be treated the same way? If I don't give them my password then they can try to hack around the security or brute-force my password. It's not my problem if that could take months, years, or millennia.
On the post: Twitter Blocks Animated PNGs After A Bunch Of Shitbirds Spend National Epilepsy Month Harassing Epileptics
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Twitter's current method for controlling autoplay is that GIFs are turned into MP4 video which is then controlled by a video player (videos are simply in the video player from the start). APNG is a format that isn't designed to be turned into video as easily as a GIF so they won't work with the same libraries that are in use now. Also, unlike GIF, APNG files tend to be smaller than their respective videos so libraries to simply turn APNG into mp4 are much less mature than the same libraries for GIF.
On the post: Minnesota Appeals Court Nukes State's Broadly-Written Revenge Porn Law
Re: Start with negligence and work up
The problem with a copyright based law is that the owner of the copyright is the taker of the picture/video. If someone recorded their "fun times" with the permission of their partner and then the relationship fell apart, the one who took the picture or video would own the rights to it.
On the post: Having Learned Absolutely Nothing From The Failures Of FOSTA, Senators Graham & Blumenthal Prep FOSTA 2.0
Re: Re: Re: Old and corrupt.
The problem with the thought that "that's what we have courts for" is the fact that, as of last Friday, 1-in-4 circuit court judges were appointed by Trump. We don't yet know if they'll all rule exactly as he would like in various matters but, generally, our back and forth switching between parties in the Presidency keeps the courts from sliding too far in either ideological direction. However, since Obama was only able to get 55 circuit court judges approved (in 8 years) and left 140+ vacancies, which have now been filled (mostly with younger judges) by Trump, the courts have been tilted quite far to the right and will likely stay that way for decades.
On the post: Having Learned Absolutely Nothing From The Failures Of FOSTA, Senators Graham & Blumenthal Prep FOSTA 2.0
Re: Re: 'Never let a good tragedy/victimization go to waste'
Techdirt has always had the Silence Techdirt option available where it costs $100,000,001 to shut them down for a year or $1,000,000 for just one day without Techdirt. I'd like to think that this option is a joke but, one hundred million dollars is certainly an ungodly amount of money.
On the post: Colorado Appeals Court: Three Months Of Surveillance Via Pole-Mounted Camera Is Unconstitutional
I don't know exactly where the line should be drawn on how long the police can perform surveillance on a private residence from a public place without a warrant but, I definitely agree with the court here and I'll explain why. Firstly, as the court noted, a camera mounted on a utility pole can often see things that aren't realisticly visible from the street or other public rights-of-way. Secondly, and more importantly, even the best surveillance team will likely slip up somehow over the course of multiple months and the person or people under surveillance will discover that there's an odd vehicle outside of their home at all hours. That possibility is greatly reduced by a camera mounted on a utility pole. In-person surveillance is what any previous decisions on warrantless surveillance were based so, we're in need of an update for the modern paradigm.
On the post: Roadside Breath Tests Are Just As Unreliable As Field Drug Tests
Re:
I remember reading over a decade ago that the best way to avoid a DUI conviction (after being charged, of course) was to request the calibration and maintenance records of the device they used for the roadside test. Unfortunately, that means that this article doesn't surprise me.
On the post: Lawsuit: An Officer's BS Claims About 'Odor Of Marijuana' Led To 14 SWAT Team Members Pointing Guns At Our Kids
Re: Re: Smoke Hemp
Hemp is legal at the federal level. That came to pass last year because Kentucky farmers want to grow it in order to compete with cotton and "Moscow" Mitch McConnell is a Senator from Kentucky. That's what also made CBD based substances covered by the FDA and therefore subject to approval.
On the post: Twitter's Decision To Ban Political Ads Is A Moderation Choice Itself That Likely Will Backfire In Its Own Way
Re:
I don't know where you live but, in the United States, no pay change for Congress can go into effect until after the next Congressional term begins. That's laid out in the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.
By law, very few people employed by the US Government earn more than the President does, and his (or her) salary creates the scale for most employees. The few employees who earn more are those in fields where the average salary is very high already (coaches at the Division I service academies and some surgeons in the VA). So, if we want the lower-level employees to earn enough to make government service appealing compared to private-sector employment, the pay at the top end has to go up too.
Lastly, the US federal government has one of the better "CEO" to bottom level employee pay ratio's in the country. Since the President is paid $400,000/year and the minimum hourly wage for a federal employee is $10.35/hour, assuming full-time employment for that bottom end employee, the ratio between them is only about 18.6. When you look at the wages of some CEO's compared to their least paid employees, it's easy to see those ratios get into the hundreds.
On the post: Shocker: ISPs Cut Back 2020 Investment Despite Tax Breaks, Death Of Net Neutrality
Re: Re: Starlink
The first public test of Starlink happened on October 22nd when Elon Musk sent this tweet over its network. As the full network hasn't been deployed, we certainly don't know if it will scale yet but, it quite clearly works.
Secondly, the laws of physics state that nothing travels faster than light in a vacuum and that's how the inter-satellite links are designed, they're literally communication lasers traveling between the satellites so, as long as each satellite has enough computing power to handle the routing, there won't be any bandwidth issues there.
Thirdly, as Ryuugami points out, orbital mechanics is a nearly solved bit of physics, if it wasn't, GPS wouldn't work at all. As long as each satellite knows where its neighbors in orbit are, those and the ground stations are the only things that they need to communicate with. We've gotten quite good at that type of communication. (Also to this point, the communications to and from the ground are using radio frequency not laser communications. You have a point there, pointing a laser at a specific point on Earth while traveling at thousands of miles an hour over the surface is quite difficult. It's not impossible but, the cost per satellite would be far greater.)
Lastly, these satellites are being designed with a ~5-year lifespan so that, as new technology becomes available, the replacement satellites will be able to take advantage of it without having any unexpected replacement costs creeping in.
On the post: Totally In-Touch NH Lawmaker Blocks Device Repair Bill, Tells Constituents To Just Buy New $1k Phones
Re:
The people trying to frame it as a phone issue are primarily trying to make people forget that farmers were at the forefront of the current wave of right-to-repair legislation.
On the post: Totally In-Touch NH Lawmaker Blocks Device Repair Bill, Tells Constituents To Just Buy New $1k Phones
Re: Re: Best Leather Addicts Products For You
Did you see how that spam bot is even signed into an account! It's doing better than some of the well-known reported posters around here.
On the post: Comcast's 'Free' Streaming Box Is Actually $13 After Stupid Fees
Re: subscriptions just suck
Your warehouse store analogy fails to mention that the lower prices of those stores are offset by the membership fees (shown by the fact that, at Sam's Club, you can still make purchases without a membership, they just charge you a 10% markup on all items where a markup is legal) and the game one fails because the MSRP for software is quite close to the wholesale price of software. There's no margin for a markdown without losing money on each sale. As far as retailer-exclusive releases are concerned, do you need to subscribe to a particular service to get the game? So far, I don't think there have been any major releases that were digital-only.
However in the case of digital storefront exclusivity, the stores aren't competing for your money, they're competing for the developers' releases. They compete by giving up a larger portion of the proceeds to the developer or buy directly paying for exclusivity. Since that's the case, you won't likely see that kind of exclusive go away any time soon.
On the post: Ajit Pai Whines About The Numerous State-Level Net Neutrality Laws He Just Helped Create
Re: FCC Authority
I assume that you're joking a bit but, in this case the FCC simply gave up part of their own authority. If Pai had a stroke and decided to call ISP's Telecommunication Services under Title II again and regulate them accordingly, then they'd be able to preempt all of these state laws without issue.
On the post: Congressional Reps Targeting Homegrown Terrorism Are Pushing A Bill That Would Allow Congress To Subpoena Citizens' Communications
Re:
The judicial branch can't get involved until someone files a suit against one of the other two branches. Also, don't forget that judges are chosen by the executive. Don't be so quick to think that they'll slap them down, even if they should.
On the post: Violating The Fourth Amendment To Break Up An Underage Drinking Party Means No Qualified Immunity
Re: Re:
Not in this case, they lost qualified immunity. That means that they can be directly sued for their actions here.
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