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rhino369

7,152 karma · joined December 31, 2013

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rhino369··on Some Pirate Sites Received More Visitors After Being Blocked
You do know the seeders on BitTorrent don’t have a license though.

Just admit you don’t care about pirating from a major company. You don’t have to lie to yourself to concoct a moral justification.

rhino369··on Some Pirate Sites Received More Visitors After Being Blocked
I bet the amount of pirating of Netflix content is up since password sharing is being clamped down on—not that Netflix cares. If an unpaid user falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, did it make a sound?

But I can’t help but feel that 90% of the “back to the high seas” comments on Reddit or social media discussions of streaming is just pirates justifying the piracy they were already committing.

Pirates love having some moral justification. Shit, they should just admit they prefer getting something without paying for it.

rhino369··on Repeat after me: building any new homes reduces housing costs for all
>>I doubt that it's very often not the case

In my UMC area that was formerly MC there are a lot of tear-down rebuilds that trade one single family home for another. They barely increase stock ( though the houses probably have more bedrooms).

rhino369··on US broadband grant rules shut out small ISPs and municipalities, advocates say
>I have not heard any arguments in favor of this system that hold water in my entire life

One defense is that the old AT&T system was really expensive and slowed progress. Deregulation was a big win for consumers.

I agree that well regulated monopoly ISPs could deliver better service. But I'm deeply skeptical that, in practice, we'd manage to actually regulate the ISPs properly.

Our regulated power companies have shitty, underfunded grids that create massive forest fires.

I would half expect really cheap nationwide DSL.

rhino369··on US broadband grant rules shut out small ISPs and municipalities, advocates say
I'm skeptical too.
rhino369··on Confessions of a Netflix DVD Dead-Ender
When were you in high school? Blockbuster cut prices near the end as it was dying to try to compete with Netflix and Redbox.
rhino369··on Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?
There really isn’t any reasonable defense for these examples or the lack of the speedy hearing.

But I’m not against civil forfeiture if practiced better with better safe guards.

Every year the government takes 30%+ of the money I make via taxation. Unelected administrative functionaries lay down laws that can massively change the value of your property.

I’m not going to cry if the government keeps money whose origin you can’t explain. By law, I have to file tax returns that explains my income. There isn’t a huge difference. These kind of seizures makes organized crime much easier to fight.

But again, a lot of these examples look more like straight theft.

Also, law enforcement shouldn’t get to keep the money it seizes. It’s a perverse incentive. Should just go into the general treasury.

rhino369··on Tesla braces for its first trial involving Autopilot fatality
What evidence exists that Tesla FSD is actually safer than an average driver?
rhino369··on No app, no entry: How the digital world is failing the non tech-savvy
I find menus on phones harder to read. And it just feels annoying to have everyone’s face in their phones at a meal.

I have no issue with it being default, but since covid ended, the places that still use qr menus seem not to have paper menus on hand.

It’s not the end of the world but it makes your restaurant feel cheap.

Still 100 times better than places that make you order on your phone.

rhino369··on Netflix Removes “Basic” Ad-Free Plan in U.S. and U.K
Apple TV, google play, Amazon, and all the other video stores are no harder to use than Spotify.

You don’t use them because it costs 6 bucks a pop.

That’s a price motive not a service issue.

rhino369··on Netflix Removes “Basic” Ad-Free Plan in U.S. and U.K
That was never sustainable. Netflix got that content for cheap because streaming was the last stop on the value chain. All cost of production was paid by the tv network that commissioned the content. And if you couldn’t sell it for re-runs, streaming was a way to get something out of a dead asset. It was free money.

Now streaming is putting the TV networks out of business. Nobody is going to make content to dump on streaming for nearly free.

People also forget that in the glory days, Netflix’s steaming movie selection was always bad. Like discount bin at Walmart bad.

rhino369··on Farmer ordered to pay $CAD82k after confusion over meaning of thumbs-up emoji
Most states have a maximum dollar value for verbal agreements for sale of goods.
rhino369··on Over 900 Rarbg Magnet Link Repos Anonymously Nuked from GitHub
Not complying with DMCA doesn’t directly get into legal trouble. It’s not a crime and doesn’t create (itself) any civil liability.

What it does do is forfeit a safe harbor defense against copyright infringement liability. Basically, as long as you comply with take down requests, you can’t be sued for copyright infringement unless you knew about it.

It’s part of a quid pro quo with online services that publish user content.

Other publishers are liable for what they publish even if they didn’t know about it.

Without the DMCA, Google would be liable for all the piracy that happens on the site.

rhino369··on FedEx Accused of Largest Odometer Rollback Fraud in History with Used Vans
The person you are replying to used it in the classic sense.

It was commonly mis-used to mean “eh that just a minor exception that you should ignore.” But it’s been mis-used so much that now it has both meaning.

rhino369··on Apple Vision Pro – Why It May Be Lousy for Watching Movies on a Plane
Maybe I’m out of touch in the UMC bubble, but aren’t AirPods pretty so common they they are no longer really a status symbol?

iPhones aren’t anymore either. You seen poor people with them all the time.

rhino369··on Apple Vision Pro – Why It May Be Lousy for Watching Movies on a Plane
Business class tickets often cost more than 3500 above than coach ticket for a single round trip.
rhino369··on Things I wish I’d known before fulltime RVing (2017)
The restaurants in Mauston, WI seem cleaner/better. That’s where I always stopped between Chicago and Hayward.
rhino369··on Private equity is buying everything from vet offices to tech conglomerates
I can’t speak to Toys R Us specifically, but if the underlying business was solid, it would reemerge under chapter 11.
rhino369··on A man sued Avianca Airline – his lawyer used ChatGPT
How do you do that? Is there a tutorial?
rhino369··on Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?
The so called Alli-oops.
rhino369··on Defamed by ChatGPT
The article explains the problems. AI proponents want to use these systems to censor. And it leads to major companies like Microsoft slandering people. Microsoft should be afraid about that.
rhino369··on Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco
The standard is very hard to meet. These mentally ill drug addicts homeless people usually don’t qualify.
rhino369··on Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco
There is some truth to weather. But also those areas are less likely to get queasy about cracking down on vagabonds. Police will hassle beggars in nice areas to keep respectable folks safe.

On the coasts that is now considered horrible tyranny. So you gotta deal with the downsides of that.

rhino369··on Former Hiroshima Branch of the Bank of Japan
Calling a trade embargo baiting someone into war is Japanese colonialism apologism.
rhino369··on Former Hiroshima Branch of the Bank of Japan
> Nobody expected the United States to specifically target tens of thousands of innocent civilians instead of military targets in a single sweep.

Yea they did. The US had already bombed most big cities killing hundreds of thousands. The other cities were actively preparing for the same to happen.

rhino369··on Grand jury votes to indict Donald Trump
>Ironically, if he'd just paid it directly from campaign funds and given it an obfuscated name ("PR Services"), he'd be in much less legal trouble now.

No, he would have probably instead be indicted for using campaign funds to pay a mistress under the theory that such a payment is not a valid campaign expense. The rules are so unclear that you could prosecute him either way.

rhino369··on Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
45-60 minutes each way is a pretty bad commute.
rhino369··on The 'Insanely Broad' Restrict Act Could Ban Much More Than Just TikTok
Unidirectional free trade isn't free trade.
rhino369··on Judge decides against Internet Archive
Without copyright, it wouldn’t just be pirates on shady websites distributing GTA5. It would be ripped and sold at Walmart and on Steam by anyone.

Why would anyone pay for HBO when Netflix could just put up The Last of Us without paying a cent.

Why would AMC theaters pay Disney for Avengers 5 when they can just pay some Disney employee to send them a copy for free?

rhino369··on Judge decides against Internet Archive
It’s a subtle distinction but when you lend a physical book no copy is made.
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