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Comment Getting sucked into one publication's bubble (Score 1) 74

Part of the problem is that there's no way to pay "journalists" as a whole. Because of electronic payment networks' fees per transaction, online newspapers have to sell a monthly subscription, not a single issue they way they would with cash in a vending machine. And a subscription to NYT includes zero articles from WaPo or WSJ. This means readers get sucked into the ideological bubble of the one publication that happens to be part of their subscription plan.

Comment How does interactivity disqualify SLAPS? (Score 1) 244

These aren't even marketed as works of art, they're marketed as video games

I concede that I have not viewed incest-themed video games, as sexually explicit works do not appeal to me. However, US law classifies a video game as an audiovisual work, little different from a motion picture. I'm aware of more than one film adaptation of Lolita, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov depicting sexual abuse of a minor. I'm not aware of any statute or regulation that disqualifies a work of authorship from having "artistic value" solely because it is interactive. Could you give me something to cite about categorical exclusion of interactive audiovisual works from having "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" per the Miller test?

Note that in the Miller v California decision, Miller lost. His conviction was upheld.

The conviction was reversed and remanded. From Wikipedia's article "Miller v. California, section "Opinion of the Court":

The result of the ruling was that the Supreme Court overturned Miller's criminal conviction and remanded the case back to the California Superior Court for reconsideration of whether Miller had committed a misdemeanor.[5]

[5] Beverly G. Miller, Miller v. California: A Cold Shower for the First Amendment , 48 St. John's L. Rev. 568 (1974).

From the opinion of the Court, 413 U.S. 15 (1973):

The judgment of the Appellate Department of the Superior Court, Orange County, California, is vacated and the case remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with the First Amendment standards established by this opinion.

Could you give me something to cite about Miller's conviction having been upheld on remand?

The case introduced a three-part test, which you must have known to quote only the third part of the test.

I quoted the part of the Miller test on which authors and publishers would most likely rely in a defense. The Miller test is not like the fair use test in the copyright statute (17 USC 107), in which the judge is expected to weigh the factors against one another. A work has to meet all three parts of the Miller test to be obscene.

And "serious literary or artistic" value wouldn't pass the laugh test.

This is where we disagree on how the opinion of the Court ought to be interpreted.

Submission + - Google backpedals on goo.gl shutdown to preserve active links (nerds.xyz)

BrianFagioli writes: Google is changing its mind about killing off all goo.gl short links. The company had originally planned to shut them down entirely by August 25, 2025. That decision sparked concern among developers, educators, journalists, and everyday users who rely on these links across the web.

Now, just weeks before the deadline, Google is taking a softer approach. It turns out the company is only going to disable goo.gl links that haven’t seen any activity since late 2024. If your link is still being used or clicked, it should keep working.

This adjustment comes after what Google describes as community feedback. People pointed out that goo.gl links are everywhere. They show up in YouTube video descriptions, blog posts, PDFs, tweets, QR codes, printed handouts, and more. Breaking all of them would have left a mess of dead links across the internet.

Comment Re:How can it happen? (Score 1) 29

The Earth's magnetic field is weakening which is measurable by the accelerating traversal of the magnetic poles. That's why a relatively small CME last year caused the same Northern Lights all the way down to Hawaii as the Carrington Event which was 10x stronger. The beauty is unquestionable but the impacts will cause us difficulty.

There was a recent solar storm which ionized the atmosphere more than we are used to as "normal" in our recent history, which sets up the conditions for lightning to travel further. The physics on it are pretty simple with all variables considered.

We're going to see more of these than we're used to as the pole shift continues to accelerate.

This happens every 6000 years or so and we're right on schedule but we're really unprepared to handle it. Preparing for this ought to be a planet-wide project for our species, and to help out the other species that rely on geomagnetic migration for their reproductive success.

As a kid in the 80's we only needed to update our compass calculations for variance to True North every 20 years or so; now it's yearly.

I wish Humanity could not plant their heads in the sand on this one but I'm planning like we will.

Comment Not offering less common board thicknesses (Score 1) 187

I've noticed that a lot of these US-based PCB fabs that offer manufacturing have a limited selection of board thicknesses, such as 1.6 mm and little else. That doesn't help if you're interfacing with another device that needs a 1.2 mm thick PCB, such as a Nintendo Entertainment System Control Deck.

Comment Re:the lesser of two evils (Score 1) 42

Detractors claim Epic just wanted Google to run the Play Store infrastructure at a loss to increase Epic's profits.

Nobody numerate believes that but they claim Epic did it for that reason which would be shitty except they didn't.

Somebody could probably make a good business out of running a store at 5% markup.

Comment It's about killing small R&D (Score 5, Insightful) 187

They yammer on about Temu but the hardest hit sector will be small R&D shops that get parts and components as the need comes up and now they'll have 2-3 week delays on every order at Customs.

I've seen stuff disappear into the Customs black hole for six weeks and there's nothing you can do but reship and home the Chinese Roulette favors you.

It would be great if Adafruit and Sparkfun were 50x their size but that's not reality and manufacturing was driven out on purpose. It can't return for a decade even if a project were started today.

Watch: the media will say small businesses are complaining about the 15% to try to fool everybody. In prototyping almost nobody cares if an SoC is $10 or $11.50.

Trump's Corporate donors will be just fine and face fewer upstart competitors so it is working as intended.

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