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Comment Re:Free Speech is Hard to Get Right (Score 5, Insightful) 59

Without a doubt, restricting the target audience a local broadcaster can reach to 39% is a form of censorship, no matter the reasoning behind it.

So if someone can't have a monopoly on local TV broadcasts they are being censored?

In the past the FCC had to balance censorship with censorship, and the cap did that by preventing a broadcaster who refused to air a show from affecting more than 39% of the national audience.

No, the FCC had to balance public interest vs corporate and political interests because it's more beneficial to give the public more choice and different views.

If it is not addressed, local broadcasters will be regulated out of existence by forcing them to compete with one hand tied behind their back.

Where's the competition if all the local broadcasters are owned by the same company?

Now that programs from major studios can reach 100% of the national audience via online streaming services

Oh, so every American has internet? Funny that, about ~25 million Americans lack access to reliable internet access.

If it is not addressed, local broadcasters will be regulated out of existence by forcing them to compete with one hand tied behind their back.

If addressed, there will not be any competition at all because most of the local broadcasters will be bought up by one company. Sinclair Broadcast Group tried this in 2018 by hiding their purchasing of Tribune Media through shell companies which resulted in them being sued and fined 48 million in 2020.

If FCC repeals the 39% national cap Sinclair will quickly dominate local broadcast and considering what has happened to every other local broadcaster they bought, those broadcasters will be gutted and start to air mostly news-slop that is produced centrally.

I guess it has escaped your notice that a consolidation of media is happening which means that a handful of billionaires are becoming the sole owners of a majority of all media which in turn means they get to decide what everyone can see, not you or the public. Anyone with a smidgen of critical thinking knows that is bad, like dystopian bad.

Comment Re:Observational study can't claim causality... (Score 1) 330

I do wonder what happened to the basic fact that if your field of vision is obstructed it increases the risk of you hitting something you didn't see regardless if you are driving a car, truck or lawn-mover and there exists a bunch of studies (correlative and others) for this.

Anyone thinking you need a double blind study to prove this fact should just cover the lower 1/3 of a pair of sunglasses with black tape and then take a walk.

Comment Re:Nothing to see here! (Score 1) 122

So let me get this right, a company that refuses to work with the government because of said company's ethical concerns of militarized AI is so dangerous that they are forbidden to do business outside the US compared to companies that are willing to militarize their AI and are still allowed to keep doing business abroad?

Don't you think that reasoning is ass-backward?

Do you want to know the real reason? Anthropic didn't kiss Trump's ass. That's it, because this administration gets vindictive if you don't toe the line.

Comment Re:Those aren't the same thing (Score 3, Interesting) 35

A loot box is not a known commodity.

A loot box is a known commodity with unknown content. Also, it was a joke because the concept of loot boxes is seen as gambling in many jurisdictions which is why EA tried to call them surprise mechanics to avoid gambling laws.

The whole thing with wagering on intangible commodities is the same type of evasion but with a lot more money, and with the right people involved laws will be adjusted to make sure it isn't gambling.

Comment Re:Futures trading is gambling (Score 4, Informative) 35

Do loot boxes with surprise mechanics also count as intangible commodities? Asking for a friend.

Anyway, it was quite easy to see where these cases where headed when you factor in this: President Donald Trump's eldest son is an adviser for both Kalshi and Polymarket and an investor in the latter. Trump's social media platform Truth Social is also launching its own cryptocurrency-based prediction market called Truth Predict.

Comment Re:Summary: TurboTax is not innocent per se (Score 1) 59

Do someone need to explain the difference between laws, regulations and what is considered civil and criminal offenses so you can get up to speed how federal agencies have operated for 200+ years? It's amazing what isn't taught in schools anymore, like basic civics and how federal agencies actually work. Civil cases don't have juries because the norm is that there are no monetary damages awarded, just remedies that the defendant has to implement so they are in compliance with laws and regulations.

If you get what you want, you'll have to accept that you can have a chemical factory as a neighbor that spews out toxic fumes because, you know, regulations can't be readily enforced. Or as with Intuit, that companies straight up lie to people and proceeding to rip them off any way they can.

You asked "Why is that right" without actually understanding how things work, I'll instead ask "Why are we allowing companies to lie and evade federal regulations?"

Comment Re:Summary: TurboTax is not innocent per se (Score 1) 59

So why did congress invest that power in them, something they have been doing it for a very long time now?

Are you also aware that breaking federal regulations usually fall under federal civil law, right? In federal civil cases juries are rare and only when there are monetary damages on the table. An administrative judge telling companies to "follow the regulations and don't fuck over the public" doesn't seem to involve monetary damages what so ever from what I can see, which is why the 5th circuit shoehorned in SEC v. Jarkesy as a precedent which did include monetary damages as a way to give Intuit free reign to keep lying while neutering the FTC even more.

Anyone cheering for this outcome is saying "Yes please, I'm bending over!", unless you are rich and couldn't care less about the public good.

Comment Re:Summary: TurboTax is not innocent per se (Score 4, Insightful) 59

This is just another outcome that makes federal agencies more powerless to do what they were created to do. Funny how the established precedent in Atlas Roofing Co. v. OSHRC that has held for over 40 years that congress can delegate enforcement to agencies without the need for a jury became burdensome lately when it started interfering with the bottom-line for duplicitous companies.

Comment Re:factoid (Score 1) 135

Solar or wind plus gas backup is clearly better than battery backup! I'm surprised, so maybe I made a mistake in the sums there.

No, it isn't. All generation has ramp-up times, battery is instant, and that saves a lot of money in ancillary costs. Waiting for a gas-plant to spin up to handle a load-spike costs money plus wear and tear, and it may well be that when it is finally producing power it isn't needed anymore. Stable energy production saves a lot of money, and even more so when there's grid energy storage like batteries available, and such storage usually pay for themselves in less than 10 years if correctly sized.

Comment Re: Misses the point. (Score 1) 87

What OS will let you install virtualization software without granting root/admin?
None.

You are misinformed, you can install and run many virtualization software in user-space, for example QEMU, Firecracker, UML and others. There are even VM-solutions you can run in a browser.

Regardless, this law is like setting up a door that you pinky swear you'll use. The problem is that it is freestanding and you can simply walk around it. The only thing this law does, is to penalize operating system/software vendors for something that is clearly the parents responsibility.

Your argument that "derp parents need to parent harder derp" is bullshit implies that parents have no responsibility. Bad parenting should have consequences but it seems many people think we should just let 3rd parties and the government shoulder the consequences of that, which to me seem ass-backwards. And parents need to parent harder, which includes actually educating their offspring of all the shit they can run into, both in the real world and on the internet.

A law that it is functionally worthless doesn't solve anything but it does add a ton of complications, liabilities and costs, and those will only increase every time they try to patch or fix the law in the future.

Comment Re:Negative growth (Score 1) 30

There's a big difference with AI compared to other technological shifts, prior shifts displaced specific type of jobs but currently they are trying to cram AI into every type of job - mostly white collar jobs, ie that's the middle class taking a hit which in turn will affect blue collar jobs. Some projections suggest that in the US 50% of all entry-level positions will be gone in 5 years but other projections say 10-20%, which means between 9 to 46 million workers will be displaced or unable to get a job. I doubt a fraction of those will find jobs in content curation.

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