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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • The scenario you describe actually demonstrates my point. Where anonymity is “illegal”, the only entity you can trust to protect your privacy is you.

    That fact does not change when anonymity is “legal”. That fact does not change even when anonymity is mandated. Even if it is a criminal act for me to make a record of who is accessing my service, that is only a legal restriction. It is not a technical restriction. You can’t know whether I am abiding by such a law at the time you are accessing my service. A law mandating anonymity doesn’t actually protect your anonymity; it just gives you the illusion that your anonymity is being protected.

    The relevant difference between your scenario and reality is that in your scenario, nobody is blatantly lying about whether your privacy is under attack: it most certainly is.





  • Gentrification isn’t the problem. Rent is the problem.

    Eliminate rent. Convert rentals to land contracts or private mortgages. Convert apartments to condominiums

    When the residents of a neighborhood are owners instead of renters, they gain an unexpected windfall from gentrification.

    How do we eliminate rent? How do we convince landlords to sell? How do we convince them to issue land contracts instead of rental agreements?

    Massively increase property taxes, but issue owner-occupant credits to revert those increases. Only owner-occupants get the credit. Investors do not.

    Eat up their profits, unless they switch to an investment strategy that puts the deed in the occupant’s name, such as a land contract or a private mortgage. With the deed in their name, the occupant gains equity as property values rise.

    The concept of renting needs to die in a fire.





  • There is literally no way in hell someone can convince me what Meta and others are doing is not pirating

    Then your argument is non-falsifiable, and therefore, invalid.

    Major corporations and pirates are finally on the same side for once. “Fair Use” finally has financial backing. Meta is certainly not a friend, but our interests currently align.

    The worst possible outcome here is that copyright trolls manage to convince the courts that they are owed licensing fees. Next worse is a settlement that grants rightsholders a share of profits generated by AI, like they got from manufacturers of blank tapes and CDs.

    Best case is that the MPAA, RIAA, and other copyright trolls get reminded that “Fair Use” is not an exception to copyright law, but the fundamental reason it exists: Fair Use is the promotion of science and the useful arts. Fair Use is the rule; Restriction is the exception.