Uriel238 [all pronouns]

I posted more lenthy comments on the other communities. Here I’ll say this:

When it comes to backdoors to security, there are no good guys. Zero.

Governments have long wanted backdoors on secure private communication, and so long as we have an ownership class, they always will.

And backdoors will always be more useful to hackers, industrial spies and terrorists than they are these departments of state looking to ensure national security (or watch for proletariat unrest. We’re already pissed.)

And the private sector will always route around these backdoors, possibly by modding the client or offering new services that are still secure.

States should get used to disappointment. Investigation bureaus should prepare for going dark. Once upon a time they had to rely on detective work rather than asking Google whose phones were near the incident or what web-surfers were asking questions about the circumstances pre-hoc.

1978 US Automotive Companies: If we make a product that locks our customers in, they’ll be our customers forever!

1978 Japanese Automotive Companies: The US gave us their required parameters. If we make a product that works then customers will keep buying our stuff.

2025 US Tech Companies: If we make our products contingent on proprietary software and hardware, we’ll lock them in.

2025 Chinese Tech Companies: The US gave us their required parameters. If we make a product that works and they can utilize freely, they’ll keep buying our stuff.

Not our first rodeo.

According to the Behind the Bastards on Peter Thiel, he is really scared of death (as in dying from old age) and really wants to stay alive or take it with him.

So he may be the first private citizen to buy a DeepSouth supercomputer that has a capacity comparable to the human brain. All someone needs to do is convince him there’s software that can create an adequate simulation of him that he is essentially immortal.

Of course, this thought experiment intersects with the transporter paradox, but that’s part of the deal.

That may be a good thing as it speeds our way to general class consciousness.

That’s how revolutions start. (It’s also how violent revolt starts, which is different from revolution but can become revolution sometimes.)

Marvel Snap is still down. Like the 1980s we nerds don’t matter.

ETA: As of 11:16pm, PST, 2025-01-20, Snap’s been up for a few hours but it’s still not accessible on the Apple Store or Google Play.

The unfortunate implications of the daughters flex are overwhelming. Also rule 34 is not merely a rule of the internet but biology. All the critters that weren’t sufficiently thirsty desperate to rut as often as possible died out long before simioids descended from the trees.

It is always morally preferrable to pirate things made by giant corporations

Fixed It For You.

Regardless of what is regarded as a crime against the state, it is wrongdoing against the public to support corporations that seek to extract more wealth than value they produce.

Intellectual property rights were a (very) temporary monopoly to give creators an incentive to create in order to build a robust public domain.

Copyrights, patents and trademarks no longer do that. So charging for content is now rent-seeking

Corporations, their share holders and the plutocrats who own them pull wealth out of the economy by hoarding it. The whenever you buy from anything but directly from the creator, you are reducing the wealth in the economy since your money goes straight into Scrooge McDuck’s swimming coffers.

And our public domain only contains stuff from a century ago. Steamboat Willie became public domain just a year or two ago. Copyright holders and courts even assert all content should be owned and licensed, including SCOTUS. (Though the US Supreme Court is a traitor to the United States and its constitution.)

Pirate everything. Steal from companies for they have already stolen from you.

Can Graphene add a feature to run in emulation mode to allow apps to believe it’s on an unrestricted OS?

They may already have your data today but as soon as you can cut off pipelines that data starts getting stale.

This brings me hope Ubi might rot from within and collapse. And some nice Lemming will buy all their IP for a song and release it with a copyleft license.