Yeah, I was trying to sell some fake patents to Harcourt Fenton Mudd's mother, and she reminded me that unless I presented a fraudulent offer, I might not make a sale to her at all.

Like books, once you own a DVD it's yours. No one can take it away, alter it, or prevent you from watching when you want. It's always yours.

While that is technically correct ("the best kind...") it's legally incorrect.

DVDs use DRM. So, at any time, the copyright holder can revoke your authorization to watch them, even if there's no technical means to prevent you. (That's assuming they ever granted authorization to watch them in the first place, which is actually pretty unclear. Nowhere on a DVD or its case or paperwork have I seen any text suggesting that the copyright holder has granted permission to watch the DVD. I guess it's just sort of implied.)

DMCA makes it illegal to decrypt DRMed content without authorization from the copyright holder. Authorization is not something you buy (check your receipt; do you see it there?), so it's one of those things which can be given and taken away, at will. And (see above) that can be done without any communication or the consumer's knowledge. What you did legally a week ago might be illegal today, without any communication given to you.

Since you own and physically possess the DVD, you can still do it, but it might be illegal.

DMCA needs to be repealed before there will be any coherent policies that consumers will be able to make unambiguous sense of. So I think even for situations where the content isn't licensed, it's probably best to avoid the word "buy" if there's any DRM.

I just wanted to remind everyone: you agree to my terms.

I'm told that a few of you supposedly didn't realize that you agree to my terms, so I'm just reminding you.

It's easy to forget how utterly fucked up things have become, compared to how a few decades ago, we(? well, at least I) thought things would evolve, and one of those has to do with dedicated services for secure communications.

The thing that defies my predictions, is that dedicated services for secure communications, exist at all.

When you wanted to secure email, you didn't use a "secure email" service; you (the user!) just added security onto your insecure email service. Send a PGP/MIME message and the email provider doesn't give a damn that it's encrypted, it just cares about SMTP.

But these days (could I call it the "Age of Lack of Standards"?), everyone is trying to manipulate you into depending on their software and services (inextricably linked; you can't use their software without their service, or their service without their software), so you can't just replace the service or easily "tunnel" security through their presumably-insecure (perhaps even mandated insecure) service. Whatever security they offer, is all you can reasonably get (pretty much the opposite of the classic email situation).

Why do I bring this up? Because the regulations are all about services! Not protocols. Not software. Services. (emphasis mine in all below quotes)

Here's the beginning of The UK Online Safety Act (1)(1)(a):

imposes duties which, in broad terms, require providers of services regulated by this Act to identify, mitigate and manage the risks of harm

Here's good 'ol CALEA (US Code title 47 Section 1002 (a):

Except as provided in subsections (b), (c), and (d) of this section and sections 1007(a) and 1008(b) and (d) of this title, a telecommunications carrier shall ensure that ...

CALEA even mentions encryption:

A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting, or ensuring the government’s ability to decrypt, any communication encrypted by a subscriber or customer, unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication.

I haven't dived into the details of EU's DSA, but I see a hopeful sign right there at the very beginning of Article 1:

The aim of this Regulation is to contribute to the proper functioning of the internal market for intermediary services by setting out harmonised rules...

Look at all those references to services! Not the code you run; the services you use.

What does it mean? I think it might mean that even in the UK(!) you might be perfectly fine and legal using secure software. You just can't have it rely on some coercible corporation's secure services. Send your encrypted blobs over generic protocols and un-dedicated services, and the law won't apply to your situation. I'm not necessarily saying "Make PGP/MIME Great Again" but I do think following in its spirit is a really great idea.

If you run a service, what you want to be able to tell the government (whether it's US or UK or France/Germany) is "we don't provide any encryption, though some of our customers supply their own."

Stop asking for secure services. Worse is better. Ask for secure software (which assumes that all services are completely hostile) decoupled from any particular service.

The key phrase is subassemblies are still produced in China.
So Cameras, Screens, Touch Screen, Speakers, Glass, maybe even the PCBs themselves... all still made in China.
India is just a screw bits together country to get around tariffs.

Thing is - this kind of behaviour is what I want to avoid by buying iOS. If I wanted multiple stores - well that capability already exists, I buy Android. There's no monopoly, I can buy an Android device tomorrow. I can buy one right now online.

The argument is made that if alt stores become available then it's a user choice as to whether to install them or not - no-one's forcing me to and I could just stick with Apple's. Well, this behaviour from Sweeney is exactly the counter-argument - the moment alt stores become possible, every corporate exec and their dog will immediately insist on their apps only being available via their store, with none of the same rules as the main one. All the web dark patterns would be back - an obvious one might be no one-click unsubscribe, for example.

It's less open, but that's the trade off I actively chose to make when buying an iPhone over an Android phone. Those who prefer Android made different choices - absolutely no shade on their preference, good for them for picking what they'd prefer. But it's stripping my choice away when people try to turn iOS into the same thing.

...I thoroughly support whatever measure is necessary to keep Tim flaming Sweeney comically going "whaaaaahhhhhh!!!" every two weeks. Why people are taking this self-interested hustler seriously beats me.

Note that this study doesn't create any sort of "universal" brain-to-text capability. It's tuned to the three specific individuals in the study. A fourth person's brain activity would just be noise. If you and I think of a rubber duck, our brain activity does not look similar.

"Now Playing Axel F, by Harold Faltermeyer".

So the big news here is that all the cool media players spy on their users.

But does mpv? Users are obviously demanding this feature, or else these stats wouldn't be available. How hard is it, to add code to betray the user and tell someone else how fast they watch videos? Free Software just doesn't keep up. All it does it work perfectly, time after time, until the user dies of boredom from the lack of drama.

The one browser I never install because of history as being spyware.

Ok, I’m getting old.
I’ve noticed the decay of logical thought process from politicians especially over the last 10 years.
For example, in Victoria Australia, the state government just paid a small fortune to place dozens of Machete amnesty bins around the city. I honestly thought it was an AI joke, yet they can’t afford to replace rural fire trucks.
As an engineer, it’s infuriating how ideology increasingly rules over logical thought process, and in the case of this article, complete nonsense makes its way into the public discourse.

I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.

I know some on the right decided to make up some ludicrous definition at one point that right vs left was "freedom vs tyranny" and it looks like you've bought into that

Uhr? No, to me, the essence is slow, careful changes vs fast, possibly-not-thought-out, experimental changes. If I had to do it in 4 words, they would be "degree of risk aversion."

That is how Trump appears to be the furthest-left president in US history, and how even FDR (and LBJ, etc) look relatively right-wing compared to him. Comrade Trump is breaking things which had good, proven track records. No conservative (or even centrist or lightly-left) person would do that.

Well, if your government is a shitshow, it just means your people need to vo--

Sigh. Why, yes, I am an American. Why do you a--

[hangs head in shame] Ok, fair enough. I'll shut the fuck up now.