Snot Flickerman

I already agreed that I made a mistake.

You made a new argument about the use of words, I refuted it, not in relation to the original argument. I apologize if I was not clear on that.

I disagree because language is imperfect and everyone has their own connotations for words and ideas, no matter what you do. You can’t unmake that part of humanity, where certain words and ideas make us feel things. I think the focus on “words of the law” over “spirit of the law” is how America has turned into a fucking shithole by letting every scumfuck get away with stuff that’s “within the letter of the law” because people stopped giving a fucking shit about the “spirit of the law.” In some countries, they don’t go by specific wording, but do go with the spirit of the law. That matters. Also, let’s not even get into how language evolves and the idea that it is in any way static is a real big joke.

So good that you’re happy, and I think the focus on “the right words” is absurd. We’re literally facing rising fascism from people who abuse words.

EDIT: Amazon gained its market position because monopoly law doesn’t account for a business that builds its monopoly through not making a profit for nearly 15 years. Amazon is now even bigger than Walmart when it comes to sales, and absolutely dominates the market, but because the letter of the law didn’t expect a company to run on growth and losing money until it was large enough to dominate, nothing was done until they were already in a monopoly position. Using “clear words” left a gaping fucking hole for that shit to happen.

Fine, I got it wrong. Happy? I still think its a fucking joke that it wouldn’t apply in this instance, because it literally involves them degrading service for certain users over others.

And up until a few months ago Net Neutrality was a dead issue in America, and could be again, because it isn’t a law, it’s an FCC rule. If people report this to the FCC, there’s definitely a chance that they could look at this and amend NN rules to account for it. They can literally change it anytime they want.

Google Fiber doesn’t exist?

The fact that its an oversight to not apply it to companies like Google if they are also choosing what traffic gets to people is an oversight, to be sure.

Google acts as an ISP in a different capacity, as well. Alphabet spun off lots of parts of the company, but last I checked, they’re still technically an ISP. So why wouldn’t rules apply to a business that is also literally an ISP with Google Fiber?

It’s about prioritization of data, which can be through ISPs, but in this case, it’s Google choosing to prioritize or deprioritize data.

I understand, yes, that’s its generally aimed at ISPs, but this is an example of a non-ISP using data-shaping to impact use of their service.

It could still be argued as net neutrality, because the browser with the largest market share is slowing down bits on their way to a different browser when it comes to their video service.

It also should be viewed negatively through an anti-competitive/monopolization lens.

If the internet is truly and open platform where no bits are treated differently on the path to the user based on their content, then this is inherently antithetical to that. Slowing down bits because you don’t like whats in them or where they are going is fundamentally breaking Net Neutrality rules. The interruption of bits on their path is what makes it a Net Neutrality issue.

Seriously, someone needs to report this to the FCC since they just re-adopted Net Neutrality.

The problem is they already succeeded. There will unlikely be any ruling telling them they have to now reduce rents to reasonable levels.

They will be unlikely to let go of these profits.

EDIT: Just came back with the deets. The application they use for this is called YieldStar. They bought YieldStar in 2002. They have potentially been doing this for twenty fucking years now. The idea that we could go back and undo what they have done is lunacy. Our government can barely even pass a budget. They’re certainly not going to make it so that rents in every market covered by YieldStar go back down to what they were 20 years ago, especially because that’s literally not sustainable with maintenance costs as they currently are.

https://www.realpage.com/news/realpage-acquires-yieldstar-multifamily-revenue-management-system/

Even if the DOJ shuts this down and prevents it from happening again in the future, they had twenty years to slowly raise rents all over the country. This is why people who are in their 40’s suddenly can’t afford places that they could afford in their 20’s.

Beeper’s business model is actually based on people wanting all their messaging services in one app so they’re not always separated.

I don’t like Beeper personally, but this kind of misunderstands what Beeper intends to do, which is bigger and more thoughtful than what Sunbird is doing, which is just iMessage.

Meanwhile Beeper, doing the exact same thing as Nothing for iMessage for several years already:

*crickets

The bigger issue isn’t compensation but rather the number of corporations who profit handsomely off of the labor of Free Open Source Software developers.

It’s okay if FOSS developers don’t get compensated, that’s part of their ethos.

It’s not okay for corporations to be like “thanks for this free thing, we’re going to take all that profit that your ethos makes you not care about, and what we give back to the open source community will pale in comparison.”

Of course that’s not always true, a handful of companies really pay FOSS developers really well. Valve for example. IBM/RedHat for another.

But for every company that respects where it’s code comes from and wants to support those developers, there’s several more companies that just use FOSS as ‘off-the-shelf’ components with no intention to do anything but use it, set it, and forget it with intent to make profit.

One way to ensure FOSS developers are paid well is to spend money at businesses who pay FOSS developers well and keep them on actual payroll.

Cool, cool, cool.

And just Apple’s word and a pinkie swear is enough to trust that they won’t censor content for China?

Wake the fuck up, Congress.

Businesses don’t give one good god damn about democracy. They don’t give one good god damn about allegiances to one nation over another. They give a damn about money, so unless you plan on making Apple open up their fucking internal records and fucking show you that they’re not capitulating to China or anyone else, you can bet your ass they are.

How do all these fucking self-professed capitalists on Capitol Hill not understand how capitalism works?

EDIT: I want to make clear, this isn’t meant to be a “China BAD” post. It’s a “You can’t trust people whose bottom line is always money” post. Who they capitulate to is less important than the fact that they’re willing to toss out morals and ethics for money.

Honestly, it’s a way bigger problem that kids are being indoctrinated into “keeping up with the Joneses” as such a young age.

We’ve officially made children part of the Conspicuous Consumption game and motherfucker, they don’t have money, it’s their parents money!

It’s sickening and will fuck their finances their whole lives if having the best iPhone is more important than being able to put food on your plate.

I’m way the fuck more worried about these kids indoctrinated into a Capitalist hell-hole more than I am about fucking Android.

If our democratic future is banking on these kids saving us, and they’re already rooted firmly up a corporations asshole, we’re fucked.

Of course they do, because even if they know based on their internal testing that its a hardware issue, they are going to fight tooth and nail against a recall or doing anything to help the consumers affected. They will never publicly admit wrongdoing. It will likely take a class action lawsuit where they will settle without admitting wrongdoing and each person affected gets a buck fiddy for their troubles. (They will settle because going to court and dealing with discovery means they would be caught knowing this was a problem and hiding it anyway.)

Why? Because capitalists gonna capitalist. They want none of the risk associated with profit and all the profit associated with risk. They want to have their cake and eat it, too.

Sunbird is closed source so you just have to take their word for it when they say they don’t store messages or credentials. How the fuck could you know if they’re lying or not? You can’t because it’s closed source.

As much as I have issues with the similar Beeper, at least Beeper is open sourcing their bridges.

And they were so right, too. The truth is the enemy of the state. Part of the way the allies won was by the US/UK working together to break German encryption, and then basically lying by omission to the world by never telling anyone about it until about 75 years or so after the war.

Exactly, truth was always based solely on an observers interpretation of events, and since we’re not outside of the universe, but inside of it, we’re not some neutral outside observer.

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

-From an OSS psychological profile of Adolf Hitler

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

-Joeseph Goebbels

Naturally the common people don’t want war . . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

-Hermann Goering

Sounds like Goering was right, then. It seems to be a hallmark of modern disinformation campaigns no matter where they happen: make the public not know who to trust so you can swoop in and be all “you can trust us.”