Posts by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
(DIR) Post #B5m1D5uxk0hR44xuSm by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
"Sony Rolls Out 30-Day Online DRM Check-In For PlayStation Digital Games""No matter what, any game you download from now on will feature this new requirement, effectively eliminating the concept of offline play for even single-player titles. "And yet... people will continue putting up with this crap. If only there was this thing called the free market and people voted with their fiat (dirty money, ie government money). Then companies wouldn't pull this shit.I long ago refused to lay my hands on any game console. However my sole voice alone does not impact change. Only people spending their money on products from companies that refuse to pull this bullshit will have any genuine positive impact.Unfortunately there is no free market with copyright. Copyright is a literal monopoly on distribution. There was for a while some level of limited reprieve with VHS, DVD, blu-ray, and at one time game rentals. Back in the day the court ruled that companies could rent out the tapes they *BOUGHT*. This created some resemblance of a free market as you could obtain entertainment for some years without there being a single source. However that didn't apply to broadcast and so later when the internet era came to be no one other than major major major tech and entertainment companies (think Netflix and Disney) could enter the online rental (or streaming) market. As a consequence we went from 10s of thousands of rental shops across just the United States to a ~handful. It is also well known these handful will eventually consolidate and we'll be left with ~1-2 options in the coming years.You can thank your government education system for failing us here. They did education about the dangers of cpyright, monopolies, or the supposedly "free" market.
(DIR) Post #B5nbQTGq1BSAlTpptA by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
@xianc78 True, though I'd still argue that this isn't the equivalent and the copyright owner still maintains and even more so today a monopoly on distribution which is a detriment of ones (or the population as a whole) interests and wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else. Could you imagine if CVS could dictate that Walgreens not open up across the street? CVS should not have a monopoly on building in town x, nor should copyright holders have a monopoly distribution. In other related areas such as patents and general purpose technologies companies are often obliged to license their patents under RAND terms (Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory). Basically anyone can license the patents for use in their products mitigating some of the danger of what is otherwise a monopoly too.The obligation arises voluntarily when a company participates in a standard-setting organization (SSO) and agrees to the SSO's intellectual property rights (IPR) policy, which typically includes a RAND or FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) licensing commitment for any patents that become essential to the adopted standard.This voluntary agreement creates a legally binding contract between the patent holder and the SSO. Crucially, U.S. courts have recognized that companies implementing the standard (e.g., manufacturers) are third-party beneficiaries of this contract. This means an implementer can sue the patent holder for breach of the RAND commitment if the terms offered are not reasonable or non-discriminatory.
(DIR) Post #B5tFEHX2nuLqq8xQWm by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
Help! They want to put an end to free software!The EFF has put together a campaign to try and push back against these anti-developer, anti-consumer, and-human bills that would mandate you provide ID for every site you visit, app you install, and OS you use/install.Please tell congress to oppose the GUARD Act!This broad bill goes way beyond AI and regulates everyday internet life.With just two clicks you can tell your rep what you think by clicking the link here:https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-oppose-the-guard-act
(DIR) Post #B5tFEKebCHB2WRW0Dg by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
1 likes, 1 repeats
@sister_sam I'm not sure that's the point of 'open source' software, but I would phrase the point of free software as being to put the control of peoples machines and devices back into the hands of the end-user.I think the problem is not that it's not an effective tool against the state apparatus too, but rather that the state still posses a lot of power and is a threat to those who dare operate a system beyond their clutches, develop an app they can't control, etc.Will they be able to stop cryptocurrencies or privacy friendly cryptocurrencies despite having arrested a handful of developers (Samourai Wallet), threatened exchanges (which in turn have stopped offering privacy coins like Monero), etc? No. I don't think so. However they're certainly going in that direction with hardware mandates that force manufacturing to occur in the United States, mandated lock downs on devices (anything with a modern wifi 5Ghz chip can't be 100% free), etc. And now they're trying to lock down phones, tablets, and computers through laws like that through age attestation and age verification. The UK has already started going after VPN providers because there are 'workarounds' to age verification. Well, there are workarounds if you can install an operating system you control too! That's next. These people are just so stupid they don't realize this quite yet. Once they fail at stopping 'kids' from accessing social media (60% of kids in Australia I believe are STILL able to access social media, proving how ineffective bans are) they will invariably start going after any other means that result in it being possible to bypass their stupid law to 'protect the children'.
(DIR) Post #B5uG9LPNG6lEWhXUzQ by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
Apparently US propaganda is going on and on about shopping malls in Russia performing poorly and what it means in economic terms to Russia's economy. I wonder what that says about the US where the shopping malls have largely disappeared and closed down entirely.I'm not pro-putin, pro-ukranian, pro-Russia, pro-Trump, pro-US, or pro-Bernie Sanders. Just pointing out the hypocrisy and hilariousness of the propaganda.
(DIR) Post #B5w9I7aNi1BytrqVLU by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
1 likes, 1 repeats
It's sad that someone needs to explain the concept of jurisdiction to Utah's legislators and the first amendment:"Signed by Governor Spencer Cox on March 19, the controversial law establishes that a user is considered to be accessing a website from Utah if they are physically located there, regardless of whether they use a VPN or proxy to mask their IP address."You can't dictate who must obey your law to those outside your jurisdiction where your law does not apply. This is of Europe which fails to understand this with the GDPR and apparently Utah with this new anti-VPN law. I get that there may be some sites that fall within the scope of Utah's jurisdiction, but it's doubtful many actually do.Does this not sound to you like they are prohibiting speech explicitly protected by the first amendment? Sure does to me:"It also prohibits covered websites from sharing instructions on how to use a VPN to bypass age checks."I will also point out that similar laws in the 1990s were repeatedly struck down that restricted access to pornography online. Requiring identification is NOT constitutional.In the 1990s, the Supreme Court struck down age-verification requirements for online content in Reno v. ACLU (1997), ruling that they violated the First Amendment by imposing an undue burden on adults' access to legally protected speech. The case challenged the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which criminalized transmitting "indecent" or "patently offensive" material to minors online and allowed a defense based on using age verification like credit card checks.https://www.tomshardware.com/software/vpn/utah-becomes-first-us-state-to-target-vpn-use-with-age-verification-law
(DIR) Post #B5zbxUt3MREpENydmq by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 1 repeats
Things aren't looking good for the companies implementing age verification, Roblox just reported:"As of the end of the first quarter, 51% of global daily active users had completed age verification,""Roblox cut its full-year 2026 bookings forecast by roughly $900 million at the midpoint on Thursday, blaming stronger-than-expected headwinds from its mandatory age-verification rollout"
(DIR) Post #B62ZDKAfFm5SF0wwYC by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
1 likes, 1 repeats
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation, regarding a new bill that is about to pass in California that mandates everyone ID online (not just age attestation, but like a literal biometric ID on many if not most sites you access):"By banning access to social media platforms for young people under 16, California is emulating Australia, where early results show exactly what EFF and other critics predicted: overblocking by platforms, leaving youth without support and even adults barred from access, major spikes in VPN use and other workarounds ranging from clever to desperate,"And the disturbing part I'd like to comment on:"and smaller platforms shutting down rather than attempting costly compliance with these sweeping bills."Yea, or they just flat out leave California. There is this thing called jurisdiction and companies that don't operate in California are generally not subject to California law. Particularly laws that don't have equivalents elsewhere (in the extraditing jurisdiction). In other words Canada isn't going to extradite someone from Canada to the US for picking their nose and posting about it online when the US bans it because it's only illegal in the one country. This isn't always the case- but it's usually the case (the US and UK have a one-way thing going where the UK extradites to the US, but not vice versa humorously because the US didn't hold up their part of the deal after signing some treaty recently, but the UK did).Can we all say it: California, go fuck yourself.I'll add one more comment, so a company might become subject to California law if they market to those in CA more explicitly or ship their own property into CA (rent DVDs) or pay contractors to fix PCs of customers in California, https://eff.org/effector/
(DIR) Post #B6Ky9qkKC15roQLe7s by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
1 likes, 1 repeats
More entertaining nonsense from the copyright cartel world:"'Such conduct, coupled with the use of domain names incorporating the expression 'IMDb', prima facie reflects dishonest adoption intended to exploit the goodwill and recognition associated with IMDb and to induce users into accessing infringing streams under the guise of legitimacy,' the order adds."When was the last time IMDb had "goodwill"? Maybe in the early 90s when they were claiming to be some sort of non-profit or user-driven organization rather than a corporation out to exploit it's users contributions???They certainly don't have "goodwill" here. They switched over to a .com from a .org and later shutdown public access to their database. Now you have to go through imdb.com and even pay for a subscription to access some functionality.I'm not against companies making money- hell- I am the founder and CEO of one, but this isn't the way you generate "goodwill". This is how you put off users. They stop just shy of people fleeing ... not to mention Google and other search engines prioritize them over everyone else because they had the benefit of millions of contributions before anyone else of which no one today can pull off due to their dominance and the direction of traffic by search engines to IMDB over everyone else.
(DIR) Post #B6N88k6ylKFInsyWbg by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
1 likes, 0 repeats
Apparently people can't do math and give in to stupid ideas like Roblox has a child exploitation problem based on raw numbers.Even people advocating against this stupidity. GamersNexus stated that Roblox has a problem and stated there are 13,000 sexual incidents on the platform a year. Without context this sounds like a problem, but it's not. There are 1.4 billion users on the platform! That is 0.000000867% risk factor. Your kid is far more likely to be hit by a car: 0.0001% and it is about as likely that they'll be struck by lightning. If you can't do math that amounts to a near ZERO percent chance your kid will encounter a predator.Based on this logic every kid should be locked in a padded room and only released once they turn "adult" (?28? maybe... brain isn't "fully developed" until then). Yes, this is stupid, but these advocates of this kind of shit are the real threat and the real extremists. They think even one incident is far too many as if there is some magical way to stop all threats if only we pass another dumb law (that often only endangers children, or worse everyone). They advocate based on fear and rely on stupid people (those in 'society') not being able to think for themselves. It's long past time we started advocating to re-introduce 'danger' into the lives of 'children'.In the 80s getting cut up- falling off a bike- or dealing with a bully was said to 'build character'. I certainly wouldn't go quite that far, but there is some element of the mentality that you need to let kids live and learn and experience the world for themself that makes sense. It's how we learn and grow as humans. Not doing it leads to bad decisions, bigger more prolific problems; loss of life savings to Nigerian princes.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DibdcQTZTk
(DIR) Post #B6OlERfYKmRGiIohma by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
@beardalaxy @xianc78 @Hephaestic For sure. I'm not pro-50's - 80's style parenting, but modern 'parenting' is probably worse."Safety" is overrated, but that doesn't mean you need to take your kid to the woodshed either.There is something in-between regular beatings and corporal punishment and keeping your kid inside for fear of someone kidnapping your kid. The kidnapping by a stranger is statistically rare and most of us who survived the 50-80's are better off as adults than those whom were been over the last two or so decades.
(DIR) Post #B6OlvPkHMX7bCPW60O by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
@xianc78 @Hephaestic Even this is kinda ridicules when 99.95% of people are NOT a danger. I'd certainly agree it's not a good idea to give out your address, but even this is kinda ridicules.Before cell phones there was this thing called a phone book and everyone's name and address were published in it. It's how us kids of the prior generations found each others contact information to reach out to one another or write a letter.Danger has been hyped to no end and used to control us.We need to get rid of drivers licenses, vehicle registration, mandatory seat belt laws, helmet laws, curfews, car insurance, etc.It's not anywhere near as crazy as it sounds either. New Hampshire doesn't have a mandatory seat belt law or helmet law (for adults on the seat belt at least, and for motorcyclists on the helmet at least). New Hampshire doesn't mandate car insurance either. You'll never be asked for insurance if you get pulled over in New Hampshire.The point that I'm trying to make is that while safety is important it's not something we need to mandate at an individualized level and it's not mandated in many places. New Hampshire just got rid of vehicular inspections and the same argument to keep them was "but safety"... well... um most states don't have them... and the data suggests there is no safety benefit (or something like that) anyway.Yup- fear. That's how you control people and tyrants know this. It's near all of those those who seek and end up in power. It doesn't matter if it's a law enforcement position, politician, or a school principle. Or hell parents.
(DIR) Post #B6aqSXRIVcSoKaCvwm by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
1 likes, 1 repeats
"Google is again pressuring some longtime G Suite Legacy users to move onto paid Workspace plans, warning that accounts flagged as 'commercial use' could lose access to Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and other services if appeals fail."Stupid people do stupid things. There is a reason why for ~30 years I have refused to touch Meta (Facebook), Google (Gmail, etc), Apple (IDK what they even sell), or Microsoft products (also not super familiar with their product line-up).Not to mention Adobe, and many others. And that is just in "tech".I was once young (~11 ? or so maybe) and maybe not near as naive as the average adult today, but even I was questioning my use of Hotmail long before Microsoft bought the company.I was 100% right to be skeptical that Hotmail wouldn't sell out to Microsoft, and then they did.I was right not to use Facebook when everyone around me was hopping on board.I was right in my quest to move away from Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop.I made a lot of good decisions ... now if only other people would take responsibility for their own stupidity and stop blaming the evil people behind said companies.You enabled this. Take some responsibility for your actions and spend some time and dollars [euros/bitcoin/monero/etc] where it matters to mitigate that stupidity. The free market enables changes, but only if people actually utilize it to their benefit. I also have been maintaining a mail server for about as long. When I was abused- I learned- I switched to less hostile operators. I've dealt with different companies and some were terrible/abusive- one suspended an account I had in 1997 I believe after they changed their policies to prohibit mp3s and then immediately scanned and suspended accounts without warning.
(DIR) Post #B6byxAwDDDAkJRkOwq by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
1 likes, 1 repeats
One of the victims with a technical background that spoke during the enemy of state event at the national libertarian convention today referenced the name of the specific remote management protocol that governments are using to take control of ISP supplied routers/modems and spy on users.As someone behind a product that hinders this sort of abuse through a router that can sit between your ISP supplied modem/router (or spying device) and your actual network I found it quite interesting to hear from a technical user describe their experience when a government exploited this functionality against them. So it’s something we’ve known was possible on routers and I’ve mostly only read about in the case of cellular phones and/or articles have alluded to. On routers it's called the TR-069 protocol, and apparently has been succeeded by TR-369. In any event I hadn’t known the name of the specific protocol prior (not that it would have been hard to figure out, it’s not a secret) and thought it was interesting to hear that it’s what was in fact exploited and used against him. My companies routers solve this problem of course which made it particularly interesting for me to hear someone even if only briefly bring it up where it’s been used against an actual person with first hand experience.Basically the moral of the story is stick a router you actually control in-between your ISP supplied modem (or for that matter any modem) and computers/printers/devices.If your interested in watching the video you can find it here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h450fh7qvksThese are the two router products my company currently develops that can mitigate the threat:https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/free-software-wireless-n-mini-vpn-router-v3-tpe-r1300https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/free-software-gigabit-mini-vpn-router-tpe-r1400
(DIR) Post #B6oA5ADFhXAT8V00O0 by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 1 repeats
"Meta had argued that it can't be sued in Vermont court because neither the company nor the app design has specific ties to the state. Vermont countered that the sites' large number of teen users gives its courts jurisdiction. "Talk about seriously disturbing. They just threw out a legal concept called jurisdiction or more specifically nexus in one blow that protects everyone from having to obey the laws of every other state on the mere basis someone might use a product or site in another state.There is no way anyone including a large entity could even begin to comply with the 10s of millions of laws that exist in just the 10,000 + legal jurisdictions within the United States.What this means is everyone is effectively guilty of violating millions of laws simply because they posted something that can be accessed on the internet.This is not the first time that US courts have accepted this kind of nonsensical argument.It's getting more and more dangerous to live within the United States when foreigners can demand and get your extradition despite that you've NEVER even stepped into their jurisdiction.If a states wants to extradite a liberal for saying means things on the internet what's to stop them now? Or vice versa for that matter. The answer is pretty much nothing if you completely throw the concept of jurisdiction and nexus right out the window.Previously accepted weak arguments have been "you have a site where the domain name was registered using a company in the United States and therefore we have jurisdiction".... or "you sent your physical property into another state (DVD rentals) therefore we can tax you" (pre-US Supreme court ruling that threw out nexus for sales taxes, which is probably the biggest can of worms).
(DIR) Post #B6vlvoOgb9P5Ec2C6C by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
1 likes, 1 repeats
It blows my mind that people are still using Ubuntu on the desktop. I actually thought for a moment that Ubuntu had disabled the ability of users to shut down their system. Yes- I only saw 'suspend' as an option when I went to the shutdown button. The reason is I was behind the lock screen. Seems like a bad design, but that might just be GNOME.I have a ton of criticism for Canonical, but the most recent is they utterly dropped the ball for the 2nd time in a decade when it comes to USB wifi adapters. They failed to include the firmwares in 26.04 and so hundreds of thousands of users are unable to connect to the internet. The only other "distribution" that I am aware of that has gotten it this wrong is "Purism's" ???? (I'm going blank with the name at the moment) and humorously that was worse because they didn't include the only free firmware in a distribution that only works with free software friendly hardware (theoretically, it appears they actually include non-free software, or they've been caught doing it repeatedly anyhow.. and stuff they should have caught... every other distro did).
(DIR) Post #B7yHdDn8ew1Q5TOfnE by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
@eff umm no. Unless I'm missing something being openly trans on the internet is not 'harmful'. It exposes people to the fact there is a diverse range of people in the world. Familiarity undermines fear and grows acceptance mitigating the likelihood of violence and fearmongers.
(DIR) Post #B7yHrdOEHZIPX6cP5M by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
@eff Better solution: Stop using Twitter.
(DIR) Post #B821wgiAXSvseGAl6W by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
@xianc78 Yea, I'm aware of this. It's sad, but true. It's also true that the fediverse isn't just mastodon and there is a protocol behind it. Mastodon is just the most feature rich variant. I don't think point any of this out changes the dynamics or point I was making and I doubt you intended it that way either. It's just sad. I'm not going to worry too much about it though. The point of the licensing behind free software has largely been to undermine the barriers that prevent people from working together on common goals independent of their other political agendas. To that end the left, even if not extreme left and libertarians have worked together.
(DIR) Post #B82gchxaHbbsqkyTXE by mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com
0 likes, 0 repeats
@xianc78 I haven't used Pleroma recently, but last I used it there were feature parity issues with comparison to Mastodon. I don't have an issue with Pleroma itself, but it was deficient in some way the last time I played with it.