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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Government officials are really scared of changing the status quo. They’re really afraid that if they get rid of anti-circumvention laws, that they’ll become a pariah state. In the past that probably would have been true. The US would have thrown its weight around, and Europe would have fallen in line and boycotted whoever it was. Many countries also have a lot of Hollywood productions made there. The major Hollywood studios care about anti-circumvention because they think it guarantees their profits. So, if these countries scaled back anti-circumvention, Hollywood would probably throw a fit and cut them off too. Even if the economic impact of getting rid of anti-circumvention were a huge positive, Hollywood has a big cultural impact worldwide.

    I’d like to see it happen, but I think the most likely scenario is that a country that already doesn’t fully respect US copyright laws, like Switzerland or Singapore, might take an additional step and stop respecting anti-circumvention.


  • This is why lawyers advise clients to use a PIN instead of face ID or fingerprints

    That’s because cops don’t need a warrant if you use a face or fingerprints, but they do if you use a PIN. What you’re talking about is for protection against casual, warrantless searches.

    What I’m talking about is a subpoena where you’re required to present evidence. The fact that it’s encrypted is irrelevant. If the data is subject to a subpoena it doesn’t matter if you store it encrypted or unencrypted, you’re still required to present it to the court.

    If you keep you stuff updated

    Keeping stuff updated is a chore, and it can take hours out of your week, often when you don’t expect it or don’t have time. When that’s someone’s full time job and they’re updating it for hundreds, thousands or millions or people, there’s a better chance they do it right, and a much better chance that they do it in a timely fashion.

    I am not your lawyer and this is not legal advice for you or anyone who reads this.

    I hope you’re not anybody’s lawyer, with your lack of knowledge of the law. Did you graduate from Dunning-Kruger law school?


  • Communication that can’t be shut down: Matrix, Mastodon, email servers you control

    Uh, those can all be shut down. You may control the server but you don’t control the datacenter the email server lives in, unless you’re hosting out of your house, which is a bad idea. You also don’t control the pipes to and from these servers. There have been many plans over the years requiring that ISPs ban users who are accused of copyright infringement. And, even if you don’t infringe copyrights, we all know about how the DMCA can be weaponized against people who have done nothing wrong.

    File storage that can’t be subpoenaed: Nextcloud, Syncthing

    Sorry, your own file storage can be subpoenaed, you just don’t have a lawyer on call to help you through the process. If you think “haha, I’ll just delete the data”, you can be in much worse trouble. AFAIK in some cases the judge / jury are allowed to assume that evidence that you deleted was incriminating.

    I self-host things and think it’s a good idea. But, don’t go overboard with how good it is. It’s still vulnerable to government and corporate actions. in many cases you’re more vulnerable because you’re on your own, you probably don’t have a lawyer on retainer, etc.


  • Somewhat relevant: when I first searched for those videos I searched for “robot that tests Ikea chairs by sitting on them” or something. I got lots of results, but every one of them was about robots that were building furniture, not testing it. To actually get the results I wanted I needed to say “furniture testing machine”.

    So, I guess the Internet doesn’t think those are actually robots, so they don’t worry about their purpose.



  • On the subject of devices lasting a long time, does anybody remember when Ikea used to have displays in their stores where you could see a machine testing a piece of furniture over and over? Like, they had one that simulated someone sitting down in a chair over and over again, or one that simulated a drawer being opened over and over again.

    Those machines were great. They should bring them back.







  • No, they haven’t. They’re effectively prop masters. Someone wants a prop that looks a lot like a legal document, the LLM can generate something that is so convincing as a prop that it might even fool a real judge. Someone else wants a prop that looks like a computer program, it can generate something that might actually run, and one that will certainly look good on screen.

    If the prop master requests a chat where it looks like the chatbot is gaining agency, it can fake that too. It has been trained on fiction like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Wargames. It can also generate a chat where it looks like a chatbot feels sorry for what it did. But, no matter what it’s doing, it’s basically saying “what would an answer to this look like in a way that might fool a human being”.






  • The influencer obviously has much less skill than the boxer. But, he has been getting the best training money can buy for several years, and he’s used a lot of steroids to get as big as possible. It’s not like you or me getting into the ring, it’s a decently talented amateur boxer going up against a pro. He was trained on how to defend himself, and had the experience to do it. I think he got as badly injured as he did mainly because he acted like a twat in two ways. First, he spent a lot of the match running away, which tired him out. Second, he spent a lot of it showboating and taunting Joshua, with his hands down.

    The punch that wrecked his jaw was a clean hit that happened both because the influencer was too tired to defend himself properly, and was acting like in idiot and not defending his head. Joshua was eventually going to win, regardless. But, the influencer probably would have been less damaged if he’d fought fairly and protected his head. Then he’d have been hit through his guard, which would have been enough to drop him, but not to wreck his jaw.


  • I completely agree. He was in the ring because he was earning tens of millions of dollars to do it.

    I could imagine giving him kudos if he’d been willing to stand toe-to-toe and actually engage in a boxing match with Joshua. It would probably mean that he’d have lost more quickly, but at least he would have been trying to win. Instead he spent almost all the time running away, and when he couldn’t run away anymore he’d drop to his knees and attempt to wrestle Joshua to the mat. In a competitive boxing match I think he would have been disqualified, or at least had a major points reduction by the end of the first round.

    Look, if I were offered tens of millions to engage in a real boxing match against a real boxer, I’d definitely take it, and my approach would be basically the same: run away and try to avoid taking damage. For tens of millions I think almost anybody would take the fight, and almost nobody would actually fight to win, if it risked being hit harder. But, the difference is that I wouldn’t be the one organizing the event. I wouldn’t be claiming I had a chance. I wouldn’t be trying to intimidate the actual boxer at the weigh ins.

    The influencer hyped up the fight like he had a chance, he posted training videos showing he was taking it seriously, he used a lot of steroids to try to get as big as possible. Then, as soon as he got into the ring, he did everything possible to avoid fighting aside from leaving the ring.


  • Death is extremely rare in boxing, serious injuries are also rare. The main issue with boxers is the lifetime of getting hit tends to add up, especially hits to the head.

    Jake Paul’s jaw injury is just about the worst thing you could expect to have happen in a single boxing match, as long as the referee was competent and didn’t allow a fighter with a concussion to keep fighting.