It shouldn't surprise you. Once a company starts bribing politicians with campaign funds, they have a foot in the door.
Once they have the paid lobbyists, then they present company-written policy documents and laws that just need a sponsor.
Those laws are crafted explicitly for specific holes only the company can effectively navigate. But on its face, looks completely fair.
Law gets passed, and the law is really a moat 'pulling up the ladder' for any other company trying to encroach on their space. Naturally, its written such a way that will pass basic scrutiny.
For example, EU has effective definition of electric bicycle, electric moped and electric motorcycle. It is three different classes of vehicles, with strict technical thresholds for properties. You always can say what you see.
These three classes of vehicles require different licenses (no license for bicycle, AM or B for moped and A1/A2/A for motorcycle), different insurance, different equipment (helmet). They can be ridden on different roads (and bicycle roads), etc.
Here, in the Netherlands teenagers (their parents) buy "Fat bikes". Thy are effectively electric mopeds (1000W+ of power, mode when you don't need to pedal, etc), but of course it is hidden mode, and "by default" they are limited as electric bicycles. Only saddle is not adjustable, they weight 20+ kg and it is impossible to ride them as bicycles, you will damage your knees very quickly.
So, all teenager ride them as if they be bicycles (no helmets, no license plates, no insurance, no nothing, on the bicycle paths), in moped mode: very fast (faster than 30km/h), powerful, etc.
Everybody sane hate them. Every city discuss how to ban them completely. Every magistrate want new regulations. But each new definition of "fat bike" is leaky!
There is NO any bribing or "sponsors".
But everybody wants some new regulations when there are perfectly clear regulations. Problem is, you need to do checks of these bikes. You need confiscate vehicles which violate rules, you need raids. Police don't want to do this.
Ok, some Magistrate will come up with definition of "Fat bike" to ban them. What will change? Nothing. Now police has all legislations to regulate this madness. But it don't want to spend resources for this. What new definition of "fat bike" will change? Nothing.
But lying in Congress IS perjury. He should be in jail for contempt, and then then personally tried for perjury. Its a felony with punishment up to 5 years.
Absolutely, yes. When China's civil war with Chaing Kai-Shek happened, the communists won.
After that, landlords, business owners, and industrial owners were presented with an ultimaturm, of which many took. And that was to return to being a worker, or be jailed.
Given how capitalists amass wealth and options to evade all governments, this does seem like a valid solution.
A modern viewing is after Jack Ma (CEO of Alibaba) publicly criticized the monetary policy of China. He lost most of his standing, and the attempt of an IPO for his payments company. Note that he lives and is still CEO, just not as a Influential power in China.
Even the Chinese admit that the anti-science was a wrong choice. So were the witch-hunts for perceived-West-ness.
But it was "has anybody dealt with monied elite". I was pointing out a case in point that there was a situation. And the choice to the elite was "be a worker, or be jailed".
I recently watched Animagraffs' videos on Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam. It's interesting that no one has asked, "was anything analogous to that ever done before"? Remember, we're talking about USA here.
Of course everyone is ultimately responsible for what they purchase but with the commission earned on a few % off a 500k+ transaction I would expect them to do it.
How boomerish of you to bring in the red scare and boogeyman of communism.
I'm looking at China pretty seriously, and for the evil "Chinese Communist Party", I'm over here seeing us languishing in basically every area.
Public transit is non-existent.
Power grid is fracturing at the seams.
Power generation is basically "gimmee coal and oil".
Robotics is what I watch China excel at, and the laughable Muskbots to do great pratfalls.
Great priced EV's are available everywhere, but in the USA.
So yeah, bring on Chinese style communism. I would love to be able to switch to electric, have great power and water grids, and high speed rail everywhere.
you can have public transit without a totalitarian police state, i’d rather keep building up western civilization through our values than to throw it all away for your promise
The USA, right now, has a totalitarian police state.
We just had Amazon Ring run an ad bragging about mass surveillance for "your dog". Most of us know that "your dog" is a dog whistle for brown people (aka immigrant looking).
Ring partnered with Palantir. Or maybe not.
Corporate social media is partnered with Palantir and that Israeli company that Discord is sending ID data to.
"Credit" is a system that the US capitalists came up with, not China. Now Credit is used to even verify whether you get jobs, or fly in a plane, or get a bank account. "Social Credit" ala China was the big scary propaganda, of what our system perfected by the 1990s.
The western nations have way way more cameras that 'Evil Capitalist China'. In fact, London is the most surveiled of anywhere. I'm guessing Washington DC is close behind.
And those 'less than lethal' weapons? Look at Minnesota. They sure as hell look lethal to me.
But yeah, keep blaming the Chinese. Although the last few times this world dealt with fascists, it was the Communists who finally broke them.
Basically, instead of developers developing, they've been half-elevated to the management class where they manage really dumb but really fast interns (LLM's).
But they dont get the management pay, and they are 100% responsible for the LLMs under them. Whereas real managers get paid more and can lay blame and fire people under them.
> For obvious reasons, I am not naming the product/company here, but have reached out to inform them about the issue.
Coward. The only way to challenge this garbage is "Name and Shame". Light a fire under their asses. That fire can encourage them to do right, and as a warning to all other companies.
Doesn't disclosing this to the world at the same time as you disclose it to the company immediately send hundreds of black hats to their terminals to see how much chaos they can create before the company implements a fix?
Perhaps the author is not a coward, but is giving the company time to respond and commit to a fix for the benefit of other owners who could suffer harm.
So your plan is to let the blackhats in the know attack user devices, rather than send out a large warning to "Quit using immediately"?
If we applied this similar analogy to a e.coli infection of foods, your recommendation amounts to "If we say the company name, the company would be shamed and lose money and people might abuse the food".
People need to know this device is NOT SAFE on your network, paired to your phone, or anything. And that requires direct and public notification.
I did consider naming, but they were very responsive to the disclosure and I was not entirely familiar with potential legal implications of doing so. (For what it's worth, it is not Luuna)
It's good that they were responsive in the disclosure, but it's still a mark of sloppiness that this was done in the first place, and I'd like to know so I can avoid them.
Even if naming and shaming doesn't work, I sure want to know so I can always avoid them for myself and my family. Thanks for the call-out and the educated guess.
The "hacker" here is a soulless techbro willing to sell more parts to make a buck. Of course, since he has no more parts of his own, he sells yours. Naturally, theres no permission.
They want all this artisnal hand written prose under the candle light with the moon in the background. And you are a horrible person for using AI, blablabla.
But ask for feedback? And you get Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde. Aka ghosted. But boy, do they tell a good story. Just ain't fucking true.
Counter: companies deserve the same amount of time invested in their application as they spend on your response.
I reported the bot to GitHub, hopefully they'll do something. If they leave it as is, I'll leave GitHub for good. I'm not going to share the space with hordes of bots; that's what Facebook is for.
How do you report that account to GitHub? I believe that accounts should be solely for humans and bots (AI or not) only via some API key should be at all times distinguishable and treated as a tool and not part of the conversations.
Which profile is fake? Someone posted what appears to be the legit homepage of the person who is accused of running the bot so that person appears to be real.
The link you provided is also a bit cryptic, what does "I think crabby-rathbun is dead." mean in this context?
Once they have the paid lobbyists, then they present company-written policy documents and laws that just need a sponsor.
Those laws are crafted explicitly for specific holes only the company can effectively navigate. But on its face, looks completely fair.
Law gets passed, and the law is really a moat 'pulling up the ladder' for any other company trying to encroach on their space. Naturally, its written such a way that will pass basic scrutiny.
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