calgarymicro

> This repo contains USA.gov's list of public government domains and URLs that don't end in .gov or .mil.

Definitely not.

The internet != the world wide web.

If you have an enemy that's committed and skilled enough to break into your house undetected while you're not there just to listen in on you, I feel like they could just plant a bug or something.

I doubt every chemical facility uses the same style connector, so at some point in time this information would have had to be communicated to the chemical supplier anyway. And sure, the supplier could just happen to send the truck with the exact right connector for the other chemical (though that wouldn't be a problem if they just moved the inlets apart), but that's a lot less likely than a screw up when the connectors are the same. I'm not saying (and I doubt the CSB is either) that any of this would eliminate the possibility of incidents. The point is that they'd become much less likely.

> New York

Really? Who was it introduced by? NY has actually passed a 'right to record' bill that did the exact opposite[0], so I'd be shocked if anything like this had a snowball's chance in hell of passing there.

[0]https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/S3253

Yup, so I guess I'd add that to the list - careless management of the padlocks for the valves, in addition to the gate, labeling, connector, and placement issues.

> They were labeled

Were they? It says they had labels some distance down the pipe, but they weren't labeled at the point where the hoses connected where someone could actually read it.

> Every chemical can't have a different connecter.

Every chemical doesn't have to have a different connector. Maybe just ones that will cause a dangerous reaction if mixed.

> I count 5 - 7 connections, they can't all be behind a gate, so there is no hard rule.

Sure. Again, a good rule of thumb would be to separate the ones that could cause rapid death.

> They actually want a 'written' policy to stop people coming in.

So no fire code issue then.

The USCSB didn't just recommend labels in that case (though that likely would have prevented the incident since it was caused by someone unfamiliar with the facility who might have read them). They also recommended making sure the connectors for the inlets were different so it would be physically impossible for the error to occur.

That said, it's quite silly indeed that the inlets for two incompatible chemicals that would release toxic fumes if mixed were 18 inches apart, unlabeled, used the exact same connector, and were locked behind the same gate. I don't think it takes extraordinary collective intelligence to see how this could become a problem.

The report for anyone who wants to know more: https://youtu.be/Tflm9mttAAI

I don't recall the compound gate thing but I'd appreciate a link if you have one.

I wouldn't recommend relying too heavily on an explicitly fictionalized novel for an accurate historical narrative, even if Vidal did attempt to ground it in fact (with some notable exceptions, such as the instigating factor behind the infamous duel).

Madison wasn't an Anti-Federalist; he actually wrote some of the Federalist papers himself (along with much of the constitution and Bill of Rights). He did later become a Democratic-Republican, but by then 'Federalist' meant the political party, not the pro-constitution movement.

For Madison it was entirely a matter of political experience, so he later tried to row back on this quite a bit during the nullification crisis; specifically, he stated[0] that what VA had done was 'interpose' itself between the Federal Government and its citizens in concert with other states, and that it wasn't actually nullification at all. Whether this was what he actually thought, or instead just an attempt to justify his earlier support for the VA and KY resolutions, is for the historians to decide, I guess.

[0]https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/99-02-02-319...

Did they ever want to keep it? It was my understanding that, as with Mexico following the Mexican American War, many in the US didn't want permanent integration due to racial sentiments; the thought of giving tens of millions of Filipinos US citizenship horrified them.

How does this square with broad reaching commerce-regulating state laws like the CCPA or CEQA? Also, for federal supremacy/the Commerce clause to apply to something like this, doesn't the Federal government first have to have legislated in this area?

Ah, you're right; I think most of that speech (fighting words, obscenity, etc.) is already illegal anyway, but in case there's any that isn't, I will edit that to say speech that's "protected by the 1st amendment".

Lying about an election to mislead voters on election processes (i.e. time, place, and manner) is illegal.[0] "Threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States" are also illegal. The judge lists several other things that are also illegal, such as malicious cyber activity and criminal conspiracy, so it doesn't seem like that section is intended to contains exceptions to section 8.

[0]https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca...

Is it? Reading over pages 4 and 5 of the injunction[0], based on points 4, 5, 9, and 10, it seems government employees are now barred in any way from discussing any social media content or company policy protected by the 1st amendment with the companies or nonprofits.

> (4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;

> (5) collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech;

> (9) requesting content reports from social-media companies detailing actions taken to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce content containing protected free speech; and

> (10) notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (“BOLO”) for postings containing protected free speech.

As you'll see from my above post, the judge has a curious idea of what 'inducing' censorship entails (among other things: making public statements that might be heard by Reddit mods, who in turn take it upon themselves to remove links to content).

[0]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

I wanted to point out several factual issues with this ruling, some of which I mentioned yesterday on another post. For starters, the judge severely misquotes an email:

>However, various emails show Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits through evidence that the motivation of the NIAID Defendants was a “take down” of protected free speech. Dr. Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there needed to be a “quick and devastating take down” of the GBD—the result was exactly that.

In reality, the email[0] actually said this:

>There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don't see anything like that online yet - is it underway?

Notice how he removed the word "published" from his quote, making it seem like an instruction to a social media company rather than a published rebuttal. He also mischaracterizes a WH aide's email to FB, claiming that the aid accused FB "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims", when in actuality he was referring to a WSJ article that detailed actual calls to violence on the platform[1].

He also characterizes Twitter's removal of an account with the handle "AnthonyFauci_" as government-directed censorship of parody:

> NIAID and NIH staff sent several messages to social-media platforms asking them to remove content lampooning or criticizing Dr. Fauci . . . An HHS official then asked Twitter if it could “block” similar parody accounts...

But in reality, the contact was initiated by Twitter, who asked the CDC whether the account was real or fake[2]. Why were they confused about this? Because the account wasn't a parody at all; its name was "Dr. Anthony Fauci", its bio was "Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases #NIAID", and there was nothing parodic about its tweets[3][4], which purported to be giving out factual info; it was a straight up impersonation.

On the subject of Dr. Fauci, there's a particularly egregious section where the judge accuses him and other members of NIAID of 'censoring' the so-called Great Barrington Declaration. To support his claim that Reddit and Google censored the GBD at the government's behest, he cites an article[5] that describes how Reddit mods (not Reddit the company!) took down links to the GBD, and complains about the top Google search results for the GBD were all disparaging it, without providing any evidence that either NIAID instructed Google to change the results, or even any evidence that Google purposely changed the results at all. His accusation is that Fauci made public statements 'in collusion' with another employee

>Dr. Fauci testified “it’s possible that” he coordinated with Dr. Collins on his public statements attacking the GBD.

Disparaging the GBD, and that Google and these individual mods in turn took independent action against it. So I guess PSAs are censorship?

Needless to say, there's a lot of issues with this injunction, and from just the small sections I've looked at, it doesn't seem like the judge has applied the necessary rigor to justify a nationwide injunction restricting the government from nearly all contact with various companies and nonprofits. I kind of wish Ars Technics had done some of this scrutiny (which really didn't take that long) before publishing this article.

[0]https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/12/18/23/51969841-10324873...

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=36619117

[2]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

[3]https://twitter.com/merrymanlab/status/1239321484297998336

[4]http://web.archive.org/web/20200313170022/https://twitter.co...

[5]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

Worth noting that this is a something of a misrepresentation of Flaherty's email[0] by the judge. Flaherty said

> All, especially given the Journal's reporting on your internal work on political violence spurred by Facebook groups, I am also curious about the new rules as part of the "overhaul."

Referring to this[1] WSJ article that details explicit calls to violence on FB. He then specifically quotes part of FB's response in his question

> I am seeing that you will no longer promote civic and health related groups, but I am wondering if the reforms here extend further?

So Flaherty was absolutely not accusing Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims", he was accusing FB of hosting actual calls to violence.

[0]https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63290154/174/1/missouri...

[1]https://archive.is/6q67O

Would love to hear about how teaching elementary schoolers about "the Earth system, biodiversity, food, energy and water, and infectious diseases" is equivalent to the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda.

>However, various emails show Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits through evidence that the motivation of the NIAID Defendants was a “take down” of protected free speech. Dr. Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there needed to be a “quick and devastating take down” of the GBD—the result was exactly that.

What an utterly horrendous misrepresentation of this email by the judge, who seemingly edited it to fit his narrative. Here's the full sentence[0]:

>there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don't see anything like that online yet - is it underway?

So clearly referring to 'takedown' in the sense of a published rebuttal, not an instruction to social media companies to remove content. Notice how he ommitted the word 'published' from his quote. This does not inspire confidence.

[0]https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/12/18/23/51969841-10324873...

This place was shut down by Paul Allen's sister after he died, in case anyone was wondering.

Yup, poor innocent Yanukovych was only minding his own business when the cruel protestors set upon him, he definitely wasn't ramming through draconian laws[0] that would have ended free speech and the right to protest, given the secret police expansive powers, and censored the internet.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-protest_laws_in_Ukraine

I browsed Twitter without an account at the time and I don't remember this being the case; there wasn't a way to exit the login flow. These[0][1] Reddit thread seems to confirm that.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitter/comments/sno1md/login_deman...

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/sod9ej/twitt...

No; tweets have always been viewable without an account. What he did do early on was make it so you could view someone's entire profile without signing in (previously after you scrolled down a bit you'd get hit with the login flow). But then he started restricting things again; first he restricted Twitter search to logged in users, and now the entire site.

> Mastodon doesn't implement ActivityPub server-client standard

To be fair to Mastodon, the main developer did give a reason for this.

> The ActivityPub Client-to-Server spec assumes a thin server and thick client. By which I mean, the client, like an e-mail app, has to download and manage most data from the server. From my understanding that's the only way to make anything like search or username autocomplete or even a notifications tab to work with the C2S at all. In my experience, app developers are generally not excited to do that kind of legwork, and we're entering the kind of P2P territory which comes with its own challenges like the ease of hopping from one device to another, or the fact that to have the same functionality in iOS, Android, and Web, you would need to recreate the heavy-lifting fundamental boilerplate in each separately. For that reason, I am not particularly interested in the C2S part of ActivityPub.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/zqfr4h/comment/j1...

WinWorld has been freely distributing copies of Windows 2000 for years now without issue.[0] Someone even tried reporting them to Microsoft and nothing happened,[1] even though WinWorld says they honor takedown requests.[2] It seems Microsoft really doesn't care as long as you stick to stuff older than XP.

[0]https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-nt-2000/final

[1]https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/winwor...

[2]https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion/6236/is-this-site-il...

Because they both operate in the EU, have customers in the EU, make money in the EU, and have legal presences in the EU. Generally, any merger of large multinational corporations will require multinational approval - the US and EU at a bare minimum, often also the UK, Japan, China, and any other countries with strong regulatory regimes where one of the companies has a major/critical presence.

Any one of these countries can block a merger if they see an antitrust issue; Qualcomm and NXP found this out the hard way with China a few years ago, and Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are finding that out with the UK right now. Of course, these companies could flip off China or the UK and just merge anyway, but then they'd risk being subject to crippling fines, having their local assets seized, and even being barred from doing business in that market altogether.

Technically, Apple did sell the iic as an optional portable/luggable as well[0], with an add-on LCD screen, case, and a built in handle. Granted, at this point we're just getting into the weeds.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIc#Portability_enhancem...

>The main part of the West Lothian question, which is where there are sometimes laws that _exclusively_ affect England and Wales, why do Scottish MPs get to vote on them?, was handled by the Scottish MPs voluntarily not voting on them. They managed to do this for centuries without any formal process.

Did they? Wikipedia says this:

> In establishing foundation hospitals and increasing student tuition fees in England, Scottish votes were decisive in getting the measures through.[10] The vote on foundation hospitals in November 2003 only applied to England – had the vote been restricted to English MPs then the government would have been defeated.[11] Had there been a vote by English MPs only on tuition fees in January 2004, the government would have lost because of a rebellion on their own benches.[12]

Reddit said the majority of the lost revenue was in opportunity cost (money they could have made from those users if they were using the official app), not the literal cost of maintaining the API. So the idea is that they would buy the app, then could serve ads to those users (or however else they monetize users on the official app) and recoup the opportunity cost.