What seems to be lost on most, is that money has been coming “out of thin air” for close to a century already. The problem is that every time less money gets destroyed than created, it dilutes the worth of the total… and people who still think in terms of gold nuggets, are completely unprepared to propose anything that would make sense.

Gen Beta might have more of a grasp on things.

That’s going to be a “he said, she said” case. Chances are, since she was an activist in the US, that she might’ve been labeled as an “instigator” in whatever ID database they are using.

You can learn about manipulation techniques so you can spot some sooner… but ultimately it’s up to you to make a decision, and chances are you’ll either over-react, or under-react. It’s very hard to not make any mistakes, or spot the ones who spend their whole life learning how to manipulate others.

Not really an option, when the data is being used for billing purposes (which phone, used what services, and when).

The US has no laws forcing data retention like the EU, but it would take something like anonymous micro transactions in order to have a working billing system, without collecting the data (and it being available to law enforcement).

By the time they’re about to go belly up, companies no longer have the resources to ensure they comb through the code to remove the parts licensed from 3rd parties, and the liquidators see all assets as something to sell in order to cover whatever loans the company got.

In an ideal world, consumers would never buy a non-open sourced car, or phone, or IoT device.

In the real world, regulators need to force companies to give consumers at least some basic way to control the products they buy.

Smart to have a buyback clause in the contract, otherwise this would’ve been lost and locked until the patent expired.

You say I don’t read… then proceed to explain the same that I already said? Ok.

This is going to get interesting:

The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/30/elon-musk-x-could-face-ban-in-brazil-after-failure-to-appoint-legal-representative

A judge’s ruling on a previous case makes that ruling law.

Not everywhere.

Previous rulings are a precedent in Common Law systems like the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.

Only Supreme Court rulings become a precedent in Civil Law systems like the EU, Russia,most of the rest of America.

To draw an example, the EU never made a law about cookie splash screens.

A very poor example; Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002/58/EC.

The EU at its top level creates “Directives”, which member states then are bound to transpose into their national Civil Law systems. Judges can interprete that law in different ways, none of which creates a precedent. Only a country’s Supreme Court decision creates a precedent for that country, but even then it can be recurred up to the EU Tribunal, which has the last saying.

Where I am, the news said:

• “Telegram is a social network” (it isn’t)
• “that allows terrorism from Russia and Iran” (it’s used by Russian and Iranian oppositors)
• “drug trafficking” (because it’s encrypted, I guess)
• “fraud” (scams are also part of email and the web)
• “money laundering” (…what?)
• “piracy” (sigh…)
• “and distribution of child pornography.” (so does email)
• “It doesn’t honor removal requests from the film/music industry organizations” (that’s piracy twice)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse

Terrorists, pedophiles/child molesters, organized crime like drug dealers, intellectual property pirates, and money launderers are cited commonly

Do we have a BINGO?

It may not be just the Kremlin. I’ve had several cases where I wrote about something in a Telegram chat, stuff I had never talked about before, and in a matter of seconds started seeing related ads on Facebook.

Alternatively, it could be the keyboard leaking all text, or I could have some other spyware, but I’ve only had that happen to me between Telegram and Facebook.

Then again, Telegram group chats are unencrypted, and personal chats are unencrypted by default.

On the bright sight, he also promised Saudi Arabia to build a Hyperloop, also for The Line city in Neom, that’s turning out to be a great way to syphon SA’s oil sales state fund.

But seriously, a Hyperloop would work best on Mars, where the pressure differential would be minimal, while a tube would keep the dust out. Elon’s master plan is still to build a Mars colony with indentured servants under threat of no air. On the way, he’s scamming whoever it takes, and getting any investment or benefit he can land.

narcissistic arsehole

I’ve recently got suckered into a group that turned out to consider calling people “narcissistic” is an “ableist slur… because narcissism is a disability”.

EM is still kind of a real life Tony Stark, the character is not exactly an altruistic philanthropist either.

Well, there is an OpenSource client, and private servers with custom rules. That makes every modification possible.

Not great. We’ll see during next hatching season.

• 1 coin = $0.012
• 2 coins = 1 Diamond
• 1 Diamond = $0.005

For every $0.024 that TikTok gets, they pay out $0.005, meaning TikTok keeps 80% of it.

With TikTok just skimming 80% off the top of all prize money… 🙄

US company enacting puritanical culture erasure guidelines? What’s new?

If they want their culture preserved, there is peertube and archive.org, but they may have trouble monetizing them.

The problem is that some people are “so copyleft”… that they fall into the MIT honeytrap.

Crazy talk, and you’re onto something… that’s been solved already.

First part: you hate that a 10+ years old game is only getting cosmetic changes instead of a rehaul of the whole character model. That’s crazy, nobody’s going to do that, not the ones expecting a profit, and not the modding community doing it for free. If you feel it’s a silly change, you’re right, but realize that it’s the only change they could do.

You’re onto something: body feature sliders. Male, female, giraffe, and turtle bodies, have some structural differences, that however mostly match to the same bones having different shapes. The solution is a body shape slider, or 50. It’s something that existed, in some games, since at least the 2000s. Others were lazy and didn’t do it.

For reference of how far this could go, the following all have the same bones, only change in shape, size, and muscle placemen: