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Comment Finally, we can afford ad-blocking classes (Score 1) 23

I love the idea of Facebook money being used to teach kids how to block advertisements. $25B should be enough to teach every single kid in New Mexico how to do it, going forward forever, as a permanent addition to public school curriculum.

I was going to suggest that maybe we could even use a tiny portion of the money to establish a state DNS server that blackholes the adservers the way pi-hole does. Then kids stuck running proprietary "apps," instead of accessing things through their Manifest-V2-compatible web browser, wouldn't have to install their own DNS server.

But then I realized the aforementioned ad-blocking curriculum ought to have resulted in every kid building their own pi-hole at school anyway, so a state pi-hole is unnecessary.

Comment Re:Lying (Score 1) 289

"Off the top of my head, I cannot do it fully accurately."

Correct. You cannot. Courts are in disagreement, the police take advantage.

There was no warrant here (as you pointed out). They are claiming to not need one, even in light of the 4th and 5th Amendments.

RAS is a legal requirement. What was the Reasonable Articulatable Suspicion. They lied either by claiming Kiddie Pron or they had no RAS at all.

Can cops lie? Legally yes and largely without boundries. That is the end of any conversation.

Comment Re:Synergy (Score 4, Interesting) 121

Did SpaceX build rockets to fuel Starlink, or did Starlink fuel the need for cheap launch vehicles?

This is the classic chicken egg problem.

IMHO SpaceX was building Rockets and when they finally got it working and relaunching boosters, it needed something to put on them. A bunch of satellites in LEO creating a super network of communications was obvious. Now they have launched everything those rockets could ever launch, it needs the next big thing AI in Space (Outside geo-political lines) makes sense. Who's laws does SpaceX XAI have to obey once in space?

Comment Re:Lying (Score 1) 289

Can you define exactly what they are allowed to lie about and what they cannot lie about? Are you 100% positive you cover everything?

I'm not being a dick here, because I don't think the courts even have a good grasp of this.

"We think you have kiddie pron on your phone, let me see and prove that you don't or else you'll be arrested for obstruction"

Where is the acceptable lie here? Where did it go over the line (if at all)? This isn't outrage bait, this is the exact scenario found here. A cellphone is the modern "secure in their papers" IMHO. He was a US citizen on US soil, the right apply or we don't have rights at all.

I am a libertarian. The state has accrued too much power. This case just proves it again.

Comment Lying (Score 4, Insightful) 289

Police are allowed to lie during an investigation.

This is the end of the conversation. All interactions ought to be considered suspect from the beginning.

"I don't consent. I want a lawyer. I invoke my rights to remain silent".

Then STFU. You don't have to say anything, or do anything other than provide ID. The contents of the phone are important, then it will go into a tamper resistant chain of custody bag and sealed. If they can crack it, great, then they'll have to answer for that if they didn't get court search warrant. Let your lawyer protect you. You have no chance by yourself. Hence STFU.

Comment Re: Cybersecurity or bringing a few jobs stateside (Score 2) 110

Routers ought to be removed from WiFi, but there is a strong reason why they aren't (and thus won't be).

There are good open source router/firewalls available, and are easily updated/upgraded. Which is why I suggested the WiFi ought to be a separate device.

Proprietary hardware/software solutions are the problem. Unable to replace the OS/Firmware we are buying a lock-in that we have no control over.

Comment Re:"if you pay for it, you own it" (Score 1) 152

Normally, you don't license media (whether it's digital or analog is irrelevant). That CD or tape or vinyl record is sold, such that you own that copy. Title is transferred just exactly the same as how title is transferred when you buy (not license) a loaf of bread, or a screwdriver, or a book. (WARNING: Though I say "normally," what's normal does change. I'm aware that a lot of people use proprietary streaming to consume media now, instead of playing locally-stored purchased copies, and those people likely did agree to a licensing contract rather than purchasing anything.)

But with software, they've been claiming that a piece of paper that they inserted into the box, retroactively causes the sale to not have really happened, even though the information that the sale was a fraud, is hidden inside the box until after the fraud has been perpetrated. The customer thinks they bought the box rather than licensed it.

There was some monumental decision reinforcing this a while back. I'm not sure this is the best example, but it's well-illustrated in this decision in favor of Blizzard against a cheatbot named Glide, where the judge supports the outrageous assertion that WoW purchasers actually did not purchase what they thought they purchased. And then instead of throwing Blizzard's executives into prison for a decade to deter future fraud, he found in their favor instead. Dirty judge. He actually fucking says this:

section 3 of the EULA provides that Blizzard explicitly retains title to “all copies” of the game client software

[emphasis mine]

For whatever reason, nobody's tried that outside of software (that I know of). I still haven't seen a EULA packed in a loaf of bread or a music CD case. But maybe some day....?

You wouldn't necessarily be wrong to expect this form of fraud to happen some day, so perhaps you're right that Congress should nip it in the bud ASAP. Sure, ok. But Congress is normally reactive so it also makes sense they're seeing it just as software problem. None of their constituents are complaining about media companies defrauding them, just software companies.

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