I get asking for mercy for family or a close friend, even when they’ve committed crimes, heinous or otherwise. I’ll chalk that up to human emotions.

But ffs, read the room a bit.

His dedication to leading a drug-free life and the genuine care he extends to others make him an outstanding role model and friend.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Danny’s character is his unwavering commitment to discouraging the use of drugs.

His dedication to avoiding all substances has inspired not only me but also countless others in our circle. Danny’s steadfastness in promoting a drug-free lifestyle has been a guiding light in my journey through the entertainment world and has helped me prioritize my well-being and focus on make responsible choices.

Saying stuff like that when he’s convicted of drugging victims before taping them is just nuts. Even by some sense of stupidity you think you’re just trying to highlight that he’s not a habitual drug user, you’re essentially just highlighting how calculated his actions were by drugging his victims.

This reads as incredibly condescending, naive and duplicitous, filled with hubris.

For starters, the whole “yeah sure XMPP got EEE’d but who cares, only nerds cared about that, lol” is not only false (e.g. Jabber), but also does nothing to quell concerns.

Here’s an account by someone who was in the XMPP trenches when Google started adopting it.

Notice something? The “omg so cool!”, this is exactly the same as Rochko.

It’s the hubris when you’re a FOSS maintainer who toiled away for years without recognition and now a $700B+ corporation is flattering him by wanting to use/interact with his work.

The blog is a far cry from the anti-corporate tone in the informational video from 2018.

Then there’s the fact that Rochko is extremely tight lipped about the off the record meeting with Meta and consistently refuses to deny having received funds from Meta and refuses to pledge not to accept any funds from Meta.

There’s also the unsatisfactory answer he gave to people who started questioning some dubious sponsors and the fact that he rushed to lock the thread, killing any further discussion.

I genuinely think the dude is just so hyped for the perceived recognition, that he lost the thread.

So much so that he thinks Mastodon is untouchable.

And it’s extremely naive to think that Meta has benevolent motives here or that Mastodon will survive any schemes Meta might have.
What’s more realistic is that Mastodon will die because people will flock to Threads if their social graph has moved over.

Similarly these lofty and naive ideas that people on Threads will make the switch to Mastodon once they get a taste of what it has to offer.

So now all of a sudden the “difficulty” to get started in Mastodon, that is keeping people who want a polished corporate experience away isn’t going to be an issue?

Especially when in the “extinguish” phase Meta will have siloed off from Mastodon and its portability function, having to leave their social graph behind?

It’s all so increasingly naive, one can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional sabotage at this point.

Mark my words, this’ll be the end of Mastodon especially when Meta can outspend Mastodon all day every day to add proprietary functionality.

Sure perhaps years from now a few hundred to a few thousand people might still use it, but it will be as irrelevant as XMPP is to most people, and Rochko with it.

@[email protected] in 2 years.

USPS’ website does this, sort of.

If their text service is down it’ll let you know and just skip the 2FA process even though normally they offer an option to get the code via email.

The fact that they do this is bad enough, the fact that this happens so often that I’ve seen this at least a dozen times is even worse.

The proposal is bad enough as it is, but it’s the duplicitous gaslighting BS that really pisses people off.

If they came out and said “We came up with this thing to prevent loss of revenue on ads and prevent LLMs from capturing data” then people would still be against it, but at least it would feel like an honest discussion.

Instead it’s just another page out of Google’s playbook we’ve seen many times already.

1. Make up some thinly veiled use cases that supposedly highlight how this would benefit users, while significantly stretching the definition of “users”
2. Gaslight every one by pretending that people simply misunderstand what you’re proposing and what you’re trying to achieve
3. Pretend that nobody provides reasonable feedback because everyone is telling you not to commit murder in the first place instead of giving you tips on how to hide the body
4. Latch onto the few, inevitable, cases of people going too far to paint everyone opposing it in a negative light
5. Use that premise to explain why you had to unilaterally shut down any and all avenues for people to provide comment
6. Make the announcement that you hear people and that you’re working on it and that all will be well
7. Just do what you want anyways with minimal concessions if any and rinse repeat

For what it’s worth I blame W3C as well.
Their relatively young “Anti-Fraud Community Group” has essentially green lit this thing during meetings as can be seen here:

https://github.com/antifraudcg/meetings/blob/main/2023/05-26.md

https://github.com/antifraudcg/meetings/blob/main/2023/07-07-wei-side-meeting.md

Definitely!

I've deleted all my Reddit accounts, but from time to time I remember seeing something on some subreddit way back when that would be useful for something I'm currently working on and try to search for it.
This time I found a rabbit hole in the process and couldn't help but share what I found.

WEI can potentially be used to impose restrictions on unlawful activities on the internet, such as downloading YouTube videos and other content, ad blocking, web scraping, etc.

Did the author of the article come from some dystopian parallel universe?

Wow, didn't even know this existed. What hot garbage.

Then again, like you, I don't know why I'm surprised.

Huffman et al. straight up admitted that's how they got Reddit off the ground, by making posts under fake accounts: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/

Pro tip: if you do insist on using Google scroll to the bottom until you see a notice like the one below.

You can then click on the complaint to see the URLs that were removed.

They’ve wisened up a bit and now require a (throwaway) email to access the links, but chances are that if you’re looking for something more obscure, the link you seek is still there.

You don’t know Some Software Corp and their world famous website somesoftwarecorp.com?

Can’t speak for the article because all it leads me to is a photo disguised as a video without much context and pop-up galore.

That said, it’s a bit more nuanced that you make it out to be. HP uses some very shitty dark patterns.

Used to be that printers came with a set of starter ink cartridges.

HP nowadays uses Schrödinger’s ink called “HP Instant Ink Ready” cartridges.
If you never sign up for the HP Instant Ink subscription (incl. trials), then the cartridges that in the box will just be like the starter cartridges you’re used to.

If you however sign up for the subscription **or its ** trial, then the cartridges are changed into Instant Ink cartridges and will refuse to work once the trial is up and/or cancel the subscription.

I can see how people would expect to be able to use the cartridges that came with the printer like they always have been able to before HP pulled this nonsense.

It’s bad enough that this isn’t clearly and explicitly communicated with the customers.

What’s worse is that during setup of the printer (and in the marketing materials for the printer) customers are offered and asked if they want X months ink for free, without much indication that this is a trial for a subscription service.

Even worse that is not ink based, but per pages printed. Or to put it more bluntly: it’s a subscription that, depending on the tier chosen, gives you X amount of pages to print per month (paper needs to be provided by yourself) and HP will automatically send you ink to ensure you can print that amount of pages.

However, in all the marketing HP emphasizes ink and ink subscriptions (or “free” ink), and only after spending time looking into details can you figure out that you don’t pay for the ink, but for pages.

Here’s an example of how they market it as “6 months free ink”:

That ink is not free, because if after 6 months you cancel the trial, that ink is unusable.

Of course they can’t get a full cartridge and then just cancel the subscription

Is that so self-evident?
Classically (and HP also still has this as an option somewhere hidden away I believe) these kind of subscriptions used to be supply subscriptions.

For X amount a month we’ll send you Y amount of supply and it was yours to keep and do as you see fit, nowadays it’s often marketed as “auto-ship” across many web shops and comes with a marginal discount, but there are also plenty of examples that just call it a subscription (e.g. razor blade subscriptions).

You’re right that a lot of Terms of Service documents and similar agreement documents have language that reserves the right to modify those terms.

At the same time just because something is in the terms doesn’t mean it can stand the test of adjudication and terms as well as changes are often challenged in court with success.

Unity is in a particular tricky situation because the clause that governed modifications in their last ToS explicitly gives the user the option to pass on modifications that adversely affects them and stick with the old terms:

Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1). If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. If a modification is required to comply with applicable law, the modification will apply notwithstanding this section. Except as explicitly set forth in this paragraph, your use of any new version or release of the Unity Software will be subject to the Updated Terms applicable to that release or version. You understand that it is your responsibility to maintain complete records establishing your entitlement to Prior Terms.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/master/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md

A 100% of $0 is still $0.

Apparently if you try to use the USB port it’ll stop after having printed 20 or so pages, telling you you need to setup WiFi and install their bloatware app.

I think you might be misunderstanding what this does.

You did a search for symbol references that contain "User" ignoring cases.

When you do a search for symbol references this way, Xcode will return two things:

1. A declaration of all the symbols containing "User" and/or some context surrounding the symbol (ignoring Case)
2. Show any places where your code references the symbol

And it did just that.

The first three .swift files show references to symbols that contain "User".
The forth one, User.swift, is in and of itself a symbol that matches the query and has symbols inside itself.
The last one UserViewModel.swift is in itself a symbol as well and all the parts that are nested within that you've annotated with underscores and question marks, serve to give you context about the symbol "UserViewModel", hence the ellipses.

It's essentially telling you "Hey I've found this symbol UserViewModel, it starts with a var named username, has a bunch of stuff following that (i.e. …) then has an extension, then some more stuff (i.e. …) and then ends".

Without knowing what's inside UserViewModel.swift I can't tell if it goofed with giving you a typical declaration, but that doesn't change the fact that its trying to give you context about a valid search result, the symbol UserViewModel, so that you can figure out if that's the one you're looking for.

Keep in mind that variables are considered symbols as well, but in this instance I don't think that's what happened here, otherwise it would've been marked with a P instead of a C.

If this is not desired behavior then I suggest you switch from "Containing" to "Matching Word" or instead consider using the search bar at the bottom of the Symbol Navigator. Another option, if you're searching while going through code, is to right click on the symbol in your code and click Find > Find Selected Symbol in Workspace.

Lastly it might be an idea to go over the Xcode documentation as a refresher. This would be a good starting point.

That said, Apple clearly feels that things can be improved by clarifying, because in the current Xcode beta they've changed the option label from References to Symbols (and added a few more options).

Most of these services are US-centric because a lot of the necessary records to provide the information isn’t public in many countries outside of the US.

Birth records, death records, marriage records, divorce records, voting records, criminal records, etc. is considered public information in much of the US. Even address information can be found publicly and immigration records become available to the public after a certain time.

In a lot of countries, especially in many European countries, these are hard to access for people that aren’t the subject of these records, if accessible at all.

For example while court records are public in much of Europe, often times the names of private persons are censored because it’s not deemed necessary to know who the parties are to be able to check if the courts make fair decisions.
This automatically excludes criminal and divorce information from disseminating into the public.

Some countries will make some records public once the subject of those records have passed for X amount of years, but that’s still pretty rare.

As such services like these have limited use outside the United States.

Dude has reverse engineered pretty much the entire hardware stack of Macs to be able to provide the global community with Asahi, but because he says something you disagree with he’s supposedly “uninformed”.

Talk about childish…

There’s not much for him to be concerned about currently, given that he is dead.

As for 16 yo Aaron who wrote that list of hot takes in order of controversy, is it really surprising that a kid that developed an opinion of free speech extremism penned that down?
Especially after being inspired by this article as per his own admission?

The article also helps provide context for the time period this was written in.
Simple possession was still a relatively novel concept and simulated CSAM wasn’t criminal yet in the US.

Don’t misconstrue my own position on the matter, I originate from, and was legally trained in, a jurisdiction that criminalizes hate speech, imposing a significantly broader limit on free speech than the US currently does, and I think that’s the better path to take.
So I personally don’t adhere to free speech extremism.

Nevertheless, while not agreeing with his take, I can see the logic that persuaded him.

It’s essentially the facetious version of “Why stop here, why not also ban hate speech/guns/drugs/etc?”
All of those can be argued to be gateways to the harm of others, perhaps even disproportionately children.

To me it reads as him challenging the logic, not condoning the outcome much less the subsequent consequences. Very edgy indeed.

As for those who bring up that he reinstated his blog multiple times and with it this particular post from when he was 16, as a way to posthumously attribute this to a more older adult version of him; I’m not sure it’s that cut and dry.

As a fundamentalist such as himself it could also just be an exhibition of his free speech extremism perhaps combined with an effort to maintain transparency.

After all, it could suggest an eroding of his beliefs on free speech if he would remove it “now” with little benefit to him since the cat’s already out of the bag, even if he disagreed with his former self at the time of restoring the blog.

A better indication of his opinions later in life would be comments that reaffirm the prior expressed beliefs or, if the suspicion is that he practiced what he preached, one would expect this to have come out during the FBI investigation, considering they went through all his data.

Do I think it’s healthy to consider him a hero, or anyone else for that matter?
No not really, if only because the likelihood of heroes having irreconcilable blemishes is extremely high just by the very virtue of their, let’s say, unique thinking producing the things we love about them but also the things that might cause pause in many.

I mean personally I think it’s highly likely that someone at Reddit is behind it, if only because they stand to gain most of something like this and Huffman started emphasizing in interviews how the sentiment has changed in Reddit.

But out of the principle of intellectual honesty I didn’t feel comfortable blasting my personal suspicions as facts in the OP without something more concrete.