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Comment Re:I think SCOTUS were concerned about a trap (Score 1) 89

are automakers responsible when someone breaks the speed limit and kills someone?

What's funny is that there's no such thing as "vicarious speeding" or "contributory reckless driving," but with copyright, there is. Analogously, sometimes the automaker is liable for drivers speeding!

But even so, Cox's behavior didn't fit contributory infringement.

The court just said T17 S501 is an ok law that they're not striking it down or anything like that, but it doesn't apply to this case!

A very good thing has happened.

Comment Re:Illegal (Score 0) 73

It's illegal but laws aren't currently enforced, so I don't know why you're bringing the law up.

Let's perform a natural experiment: keep saying reappropriation is illegal, and then wait for the executive to do it anyway. Then watch to see if Congress gives a fuck, by impeaching the executive (or credibly threatening to impeach if the embezzled funds aren't returned in n hours).

My hypothesis is that Congress won't do anything about it, and is fine with whatever new powers that the president decides he wants.

What's your hypothesis?

Surprise: we're actually going to do that experiment. In fact, we started it last year.

Comment Re:I give this 3 days (Score 1) 77

It's not in society's interests, but it is in government's interests. Society and government are orthogonal teams who often conflict with each other. In the US, we spelled that out explicitly in the late 1700s, but docs go back at least as far as the Magna Carta.

Alas, "spelling out" government limitations isn't the same thing as believing limits are a good idea and enforcing them, as we're occasionally reminded. The Constitution is just ink on a page, until people give a fuck about it. And in America, the constitution is currently very unpopular. Society wants to surrender to government, or if it doesn't want that, it's sure acting like it wants that.

Comment Re:That's Fine (Score 1) 77

That's pretty neat!

The danger with using unallocated space, is that sometimes you might accidentally overwrite it. But if that happens, I guess it just means you need to figure out what your new size needs to be, make a new hidden volume, and then restore from backup. It's that last step that I never remember as a possibility, probably due to my horrible backup habits. ;-)

Comment Re:Touch ID (Score 1) 77

I think that might be a bad idea, because when thugs say "hand over your phone" and you hand them a brand new phone that you have apparently never used, you're going to get wrench-based cryptanalysis. You need to be able to hand them the keys to a realistic environment that looks like it's being used. Thugs wanna see recent timestamps.

Ideally, we need to have some casual, boring (but constantly-touched!) environment that can launch encrypted environments, but somehow not have anything that references those environments.

The biggest problem I see is storage allocation. We need to be able to plausibly deny the existence of something, but also keep it from being overwritten by not-denied environments. How do you hide "don't write to these blocks, because something else uses them"?

Some might suggest hiding in plain sight with steganography, but at some point thugs will notice that everyone they suspect, just happens to have an unnecessarily-large gigaphoto. ;-)

Having alt environments that are detectable, but can be quickly destroyed the way you suggest, might be a decent compromise as long as it keeps an innocent and recently-used one around as cover. You enter the oh-fuck PIN, and it logs you into the innocent host environment but then it immediately deletes its encrypted guests, leaving you with a truly innocent machine as far as anyone can tell. And then you just really hope you can enter that duress code (or you can trick thugs into entering it) before they image your storage.

Comment Re:Next time... (Score 2) 117

The story here has nothing to do with sympathy; it's about incompetence.

"You used a n^2 query on a billions-of-records database?!"

"Well, yeah, but it's ok because the only people who use it are assholes."

That the victims of the breathalyzer's incompetent implementation happen to be people I mistrust, doesn't make the breathalyzer's makers look any less incompetent. They had one job, and they failed.

Comment Re: Heavily Subsidized by CCP (Score 1) 237

China heavily subsidizes its steel industry, providing roughly ten times more support per unit of revenue than OECD countries.

China is aggressively subsidizing its power grid infrastructure to support electric vehicles (EVs), focusing on building widespread charging networks and advanced, two-way Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) systems.

China is heavily subsidizing electricity costs by up to 50%.

https://www.csis.org/blogs/tru...

Comment Re:Heavily Subsidized by CCP (Score 0) 237

No, US cars are not heavily subsidized unlike China. American auto regulations favor manufacture in America, but not American auto manufacturers. That's why foreign automakers such as Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, and Volvo make cars in America for the American market.

The fact that so many auto manufacturers make cars in the US shows your "make the world reliant on a small handful of corporations and subject to the whims of the US Government" statement to be nonsense. The rest of your statement is BS. Comparing China to the US is a joke.

Comment Re:Heavily Subsidized by CCP (Score 4, Informative) 237

Corporations aren't governments. They support their products because they want repeat customers. Yes, they're greedy. They also want repeat business. Due to that, they generally try not to screw over customers too much and ruin repeat business.

Governments are different. Authoritarian governments such as the CCP are the worst of all. They don't give a fuck about anyone outside their country. Hell, it's arguable how much the CCP cares about Chinese citizens. If subsidizing electric cars means screwing over America, Americans, Europe, Europeans, or anyone else in the whole world for the benefit of China or Chinese companies, you bet your ass the CCP will do it without question.

Comment Heavily Subsidized by CCP (Score 4, Insightful) 237

These vehicles have been heavily subsidized by the Chinese government to win market share in markets long dominated by other countries.

Just like everything else from China, it's meant to kill domestic manufacturers and make the world reliant on China and subject to the whims of the CCP.

It's not in the interest of anyone living outside of China to buy these cars. China doesn't care about you. The CCP doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about making a good product. They only want your money. The CCP is perfectly happy to lie, cheat, steal, and fuck over your country to make money, obtain, and hold power.

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