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Comment Re:Why is this even a critricism? (Score 1) 67

Legally speaking, threats fall under "assault". If I raise my fist to you and step up and punch you, I'll probably be charged with "assault and battery". Where "assault" is the "imminent, credible threat of physical violence" of raising my fist and approaching you, and "battery" is my actually hitting you, (and if I miss or you dodge, that trades n the Battery for a second Assault charge) It's an important distinction because the laws and consequences differ

A threat of physical violence must be credible to be assault. That usually places the bar at "a reasonable person would genuinely fear for their safety as a result of the words and actions".

"Remote threats" are handled a bit differently. They used to go through the US Mail and so were addressed with "mailing threatening communications" (part of 18 U.S. Code) although that requires a lot more investment and consideration. Get out pen and paper, think about what you're going to write, draft the threat, stuffit in an envelope, add a stamp, take it to a mail box. That involves lots of time to reconsider, plus the investment of time, paper, envelope, stamp, and finally time to go mail it. (all while reconsidering and being able to change your mind) Most threats never made it into the mailbox as tempers cooled and emotion gave way to reason. But if it made it all the way through that process, a reasonable person would more easily be able to conclude the threat was credible

Now, it's fifteen seconds of "furiously type a line or two of rage and click Send." And it's handled by the FCC now since it's using an interstate communications network. There's a separate "legal bar" for it to pass, but it's essentially the same thing. The laws are much more recently authored, and so require a bit more since courts now rely more on letter of the law than interpretation by a judge. They're looking for Intent (specifically, are you venting, intimidating, or announcing your intentions), does the message describe a credible threat to the victim, and is it specific about what's being threatened.

"I'm gonna dance a jig the day someone ends you!" - lacks intent
"if I get my hands on you l'm going to launch you into space and watch you suffocate!" - not credible
"you're going to regret the day you pissed me off!" - not specific

(Law Abiding Citizen demonstrates masterful avoidance of legal classifications by careful choice of words)

Although as mentioned above, power and money can press a thumb down on the scales of justice and get an investigation launched regardless of established legal standards.

Comment Re:Why is this even a critricism? (Score 1) 67

To be fair, you don't have to DO anything criminal, you just have to be a suspect, or piss off someone with power and money. (like Patel) Then they get a court order, and then information is legally required to be handed over for investigation.

And so as long as you didn't actually do anything criminal, your identity should stay private and only visible to the investigators, and get swallowed by the system as the investigation gets closed. (unless above power/money pushes for a public arrest/hearing, regardless of merit)

Comment Re:Mac Studio is a redesigned Mac Pro (Score 1) 76

Thunderbolt (4 etc) has been leading to things like external graphics cards and external PCI slot boxes hitting the market. This may end up taking a significant share of the "expandability" crowd away from the "internal upgrades" market.

I see this as especially significant with laptops. For years I've been using a large thunderbolt dock with my laptop at home, making it a pretty good desktop machine when I'm at home. It adds a 24" display, big external speakers and bass, camera, conference mic, external storage, gig ethernet, etc. And yet I can pull a single plug, stuff it in the bag, and hit the road with it, something not easy to do with a desktop computer. (not that it stopped us from hauling towers, monitors, keyboards, etc to LAN games in the 90s!)

I'm a little surprised I haven't seen performance CPUs or additional ram available via thunderbolt 4 yet. (or does it exist and I've just missed it?)

Maybe the next "mac pro" won't be a stand-alone computer, but instead it'll be a plug-in accessory that turns ANY mac into a mac pro?

Comment Re:Blessing in disguise? (Score 1) 76

I got one around 2008. They were the best of the non-premium 1080p HDMI screens at the time.

The one I got had slightly better test review scores on display quality than the LG that year. The Sony was 20% better for 3x the price.

It lasted about twelve years and by then a bigger 4K with much brighter colors was half the cost in nominal dollars, so probably 1/4 the cost in real terms.

And by then cheap flashable streaming sticks were available as was pihole and fairly easy outbound NAT rewriting rules to keep the beasts contained.

Comment Re:ed-tech (Score 1) 88

Plus the whole 'fucking dystopian' angle. On the one hand we've got people bitching about 'civilizational decline'; but we want 'robot philosophers' teaching children? I'm not against the occasional scantronned multiple choice test; but outsourcing philosophy to save on those oh-so-expensive adjuncts seems like the sort of thing you only do to children being groomed for mindless servitude or because you've entirely given up on humanity as anything but an ingredient in pump and dump schemes.

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