Money. Tech was hot and trendy, so VCs were willing to continue pouring cash into a bottomless pit of unprofitable tech platforms, and now they're not so everyone has to figure out how to make money off of the community. In a surprise to absolutely no one that's been paying attention, companies filled with people that have never had to be profitable before are really bad at turning their company profitable and instead only manage to light large sections of it on fire. 🤷

This looks a likely a big part of it, and then we also have reports from MSNBC that at least some of the evidence being presented against him came from one of his lawyers. It could have been a former lawyer and not one of the two that recently resigned, but if it was one of these two they would have to resign or risk personal legal consequences.

Trump seems to have taken the view that plotting illegal things with his lawyer is smart due to attorney client confidentiality (see Cohen), not understanding that confidentiality specifically does not protect discussions related to new crimes. No one can force your attorney to disclose that you told him you were guilty, but if you ask them to help you suppress evidence or intimidate a witness, nothing stops the attorney from turning you in, and they have reasons to do just that as you’ve just made them complicit in your new crime and that is not protected by privilege.

Title's a little click-baity there. The Massachusetts ballot initiative that passed is a poorly thought out security nightmare, so until those issues can be addressed it would be dangerous to follow it.

Now, according to Reuters, NHTSA has written to automakers to advise them not to comply with the Massachusetts law. Among its problems are the fact that someone "could utilize such open access to remotely command vehicles to operate dangerously, including attacking multiple vehicles concurrently," and that "open access to vehicle manufacturers’ telematics offerings with the ability to remotely send commands allows for manipulation of systems on a vehicle, including safety-critical functions such as steering, acceleration, or braking."

The title isn't wrong, it just doesn't mean what it sounds like it means.

I'm also very optimistic right now. The challenges I see are more around funding, as continued work on the code bases and hosting seem to be the largest hurdles and ultimately easier with money than without. The Fediverse feels like an incredibly natural next step for a lot of users that are coming from a Reddit or Reddit-like background. Everything else (robust collection of communities, moderation, 3rd party tooling, etc) comes with the crowd and from the community, not from the "owner", and will only take time if we can solve for the funding/scaling challenges.

Most of the west has already been dealing with this for decades, and the way they typically deal with it is through offshore manufacturing and immigration. The process has been to identify a low cost nation, build up enough infrastructure to work from there, move manufacturing to that nation, and then when the nation becomes wealthier and no longer able to be exploited, restart the process. We've seen this cycle with India and China, and now it's starting to branch out (a lot of South American nations are being bulked up as "near-shore" partners that are cheap, but also in the same timezone and closer for shipping). Africa is another continent with a lot of potential future options.

The Venn diagram of lawyers that see this as good press for themselves and the lawyers that have the experience and record to work a case of this magnitude has an exceedingly slim overlapping area at this point. We’ve seen very good lawyers come and go from his team when he seemed eccentric but able to be represented and as that veil lifted the talent pool has shrunk. I’m not ragging on the people that agree to represent him - no matter the person or crime, they are entitled to competent representation and someone has to do it - but several of them have just been completely out of their depth.

That feeling makes sense, but I think everyone knows that the Fediverse wasn't created specifically to give them a landing in this event, just like Reddit wasn't created to catch the Digg refugees, etc. More of a "next phase in the evolution of this concept", and while it took a catastrophe, they're ready to consider that it's time to move on now.

The trick is going to be walking that line between preserving what made the Fediverse great and not alienating the newcomers. I think there's room for everyone, though, and really the big advantage of the Fediverse - we don't have to agree to co-exist, and can even co-existing completely separately if needed.

Fit perfectly is right. I refreshed and my eyes instantly detected a change but it took a minute to hone in on what it was. They just fit in like they’ve always been there. Fantastic execution.

What the ballot initiative was meant to do and what the legal wording of the initiative are are two different things, though.

there are a million and one ways to implement a standardized open protocol securely.

Right, but that work hasn't been done yet, and moving ahead before that exists is a big risk.

I think that's the point, but if they're willing to admit it now, how bad must it be?

While this community is generally a place to complain about and laugh at Reddit, I don't know that you'll get any sympathy here. You're admitting that you said you wanted to kill someone, but justifying it because they're someone everyone should really hate. I'm with you on the second part, but you still crossed a line with the first part no matter how you slice it.

While there's going to be plenty of pressure on her to recuse, there may not be any legal obligation or recourse against her.

Federal courts have repeatedly interpreted Section 455 narrowly in several crucial ways. They have emphasized that the question of whether a judge is biased must be decided “objectively: “whether an objective, disinterested, lay observer fully informed of the facts underlying the grounds on which recusal was sought would entertain a significant doubt about the judge's impartiality.” But here’s the thing: once again, the plain language reading of this test is not reliable. One of the hazards of a black robe is a tendency to think that your views are the (only) objectively reasonable ones. The law on Section 455 reflects a set of judicial norms and values, not necessarily the norms or values of a “lay observer.”

I already “burnt the boats”, so you lot are stuck with me now.

I expect that in time, that's exactly what will happen. Some instance somewhere will offer guaranteed availability and performance for a monthly fee to it's members. That feels icky at first blush, but why should it? It's not everyone's cup of tea, but no one is forced to use that instance to be part of the larger community, and one instance can't hold the community hostage like a single company social media company could. They'll have success right up until they don't and the Fediverse will sort it out through migrations of users and communities.

Very fair point. The unsealed indictment paints an interesting picture that I'm still digesting into this whole tapestry (Trump and his aide successfully tricked his lawyers into attesting that all documents had been turned over through a shell game of boxes in different locations and properties). I need one of those big cork boards with pictures and red string to organize all of the parts to this mess.

You'd have to have a hook - guaranteed performance or uptime. Maybe some niche feature set or enhancement.

I think it's similar to some of the other open source vendors out there that sell a service that they host, but do not actually own (even if they are one of the open source project contributors). You can't get too greedy because the thing you sell can be sold by anyone, so you have to compete on price and "extras". Not the easiest way to make money, but it's not unheard of.

kind of a Christopher Columbus situation. While I realize that might be a little tone-deaf it’s the best analogy I have for it.

I definitely get the sentiment. Everyone is looking for how to make this what they "need" (want) without enough consideration for what it already is and who got it there. It's going to be a journey, that's for sure.

“In the West today, their talks on the understanding of the human race are dominated by (concepts on how) humans are more like animals, according to the Darwinian evolution theory,” he said when debating the Human Rights Commission’s 2020 Annual Report in the Dewan Rakyat today.

“This contradicts the Islamic understanding of what constitutes a human, as Muslims believe that God created our spirit and body. This thinking has been rejected by Western scholars.”

Oh, so you should have an even higher standard on human rights than the west since the human soul is divine, right? No? 🙄

Just more "west bad" screeching from someone that doesn't appreciate being told that people (LGBTQ+ people in particular, but not exclusively) have human rights too.

But the US still isn't the one that needs to be pressured for that to happen. Barring a new anti-Ukraine president in the next election the ones to worry about are Hungary and Turkey who have also been speed bumps for Norway and Sweden's membership bids.

some of these hiccups are from the unpredictability of exodus traffic and its impact on the various servers.

That's been what I've been wondering as well - with all of the chaos and hiccups right now, maybe I did figure this out already, and things just a little tilted for the time being. Then I also wonder if some of what I think I figured out might also be that tilt and worry myself again.

🤷Oh well - we'll sort it out eventually 😆