All IP laws are fundamentally “honor system”. The idea of digital locks is a pipe dream, only possible as long as legal threats scare people away from looking too closely at how the lock works.

But every digital lock can be broken, because we only know how to make one type of computer: the turing-complete universal von neumann machine. It can run any program, as long as it’s presented the right way.

So yes, it’s piracy. Just like how the crime of “breaking and entering” means “breaking the seal” and entering without permission (not necessarily breaking a physical lock), piracy just means unauthorized use of IP-law-protected content (not necessarily breaking a digital lock).

Breaking a digital lock is an additional crime on top of piracy, under the DMCA. 5 years and 50k fine for a first offense, I believe.

Now as to whether we should even have a concept of “piracy” to begin with… that’s a reasonable question.

Oh there’s lots of trans people in orchestra

Not sure about Apple-mediated payments, but you can usually support the creator more directly and get an ad-free RSS feed that you can plug into the Podcasts app and it Just Works™. Usually ends up being a better deal for the creator, too.

Generation Zero relies heavily on bikes

I don’t think there’s any disagreement (among you, me, and Molly White) about who the bad guys are.

The question is: What is an effective legal framework that focuses on the precise harms, doesn’t allow AI vendors to easily evade accountability, and doesn’t inflict widespread collateral damage?

Cory Doctorow has a pretty good stab at that: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

Clarification: revenue from advertising their own paid services, not revenue from selling ad space to third parties

People who are discounting this because the project maintainer used sensational phrasing (75%) or because he was monetizing open source are ignoring the important part:

Traffic is down 40%

This is really bad news. All open source projects need attention in order to succeed.

“Wait, not like that”: Free and open access in the age of generative AI

The real threat isn’t AI using open knowledge — it’s AI companies killing the projects that make knowledge free

https://www.citationneeded.news/free-and-open-access-in-the-age-of-generative-ai/

Money-making is an orthogonal issue. LLMs subvert engagement with open source projects, which is important for their health whether or not there’s anyone trying to monetize that engagement.

Conceptual analysis of proximity isn’t exactly what I expected to see when I joined Lemmy

But it’s… 😎 close

Gamehub Lite is pretty wild. It does take some fiddling, but it’s amazing how well (and relatively easily) you can get x86 Windows games to run on a $200 ARM Android device.

I’m 12/13 so far on getting games to work at an acceptable level.

Inexplicably, Vampire Survivors causes the entire device to crash. I guess they pull some pretty silly memory tricks to keep that game responsive with potentially hundreds of thousands of projectiles, so maybe it’s not so surprising.

Nix, but I’d only recommend it if you share my same brand of mental illness

You should have a “fake” network interface for your VPN connection. Your client should allow you to declare that it can only use a specific network interface (probably by binding to its specific IP instead of 0.0.0.0). So it’ll never even be aware of a world outside the VPN.

Be really obnoxious about the ballot format in the Florida 2000 election until they either fix it or news outlets do a good job educating people about how to correctly vote for Gore

I’m always on unstable. Any time I try to stick to stable, I invariably need something-or-other that’s only on unstable.

You must have done something bad to deserve this. Trying thinking about everything bad you’ve ever done. That’ll help.

Technically, BazaarVoice is the one preventing you from leaving a review.

This is actually an example of technology working correctly. Web sites are able to delegate parts of their functionality to other services that are able to act independently. Your browser refuses to interact with BazaarVoice, but Petsmart continues to function.

It’s also an example of markets working poorly. It’s great that companies can use a third party service to handle reviews, so we don’t have to constantly reinvent the wheel. It’s not great that companies like Petsmart are so big that they don’t have to care about who they delegate that job to. They can use a cheap-as-hell sketchy AI service that will grind their users into an algorithmic paste, and pocket the savings, with no worry that you might go elsewhere (what are you gonna do? shop at kind-hearted Bezos’ store instead?)

For a majority of men, probably, but not an overwhelming majority. Which still leaves a ton of people you could be compatible with.

Don’t overthink it and try to be something you’re not. Just take your time, get to know people, be curious and honest. Stay true to yourself. Don’t apologize and adapt just because you assume you have to.

You’re not trying to date everyone, just the right one. So why bother with what the rest think?

You’ll find someone that “just works” with who you already are. When you do, your dynamic will come naturally as a result of your unique relationship, and it won’t be precisely the same as any timeshare sex model you might have tried to plan ahead on Lemmy.

Idk, given the current state of the… everything, it might be an improvement. Let em cook.

Piano masters can improvise a best-selling album on a broken piano, but they can’t overcome their itty bitty fingies

Lemme share the tea for anyone who isn’t aware:

• Owl house is a show by Dana Terrace that ran on Disney
• It slowly developed into big pro-LGBTQ themes
• Disney panicked, cancelled the show, claimed it was unpopular despite excellent ratings
• Dana Terrace left with a bunch of others to form an independent studio
• Their first show (Knights of Guinevere) features a floating amusement park that rains garbage all over the workers below, and robots that have orbs on their heads that produce a silhouette strikingly similar to that of Mickey Mouse