I wish I had your optimism. Personally, I feel like the world tends to try to clamp down pretty good on violent activism, and often for understandable reasons. I had hoped this time was different, that this time it was a uniting sentiment despite our many other divides in America. Instead, I often heard my conservative colleagues ironically admonish political violence over the past month.

We can’t seem to agree on a single thing, not even to despise the people killing our friends and family, and robbing us blind.

Won’t tolerate blind alignment with Luigi? Yikes that’s a lot of work, they’re going to have to ban like 1/3 of the entire fediverse.

Like blaze said, both of those are great instances. I will say that I think dbzero’s admin, db0 of course, is more active in the fediverse community, and I tend to find myself agreeing with most of their decisions and stances.

Also, recently db0 has been pushing forward with a lot of initiatives towards user/community feedback and governance, which is refreshing to see. To me, it means they are willing to allow others to hold them ethically accountable, and actively pushing for community mechanisms to allow for that.

Honestly, having voiced this… I need to stop procrastinating on a donation. I spend too much time using instance not to throw them a few dollars for upkeep. db0, keep doing what you’re doing, this random guy appreciates it.

If they were regulated as a common carrier, wouldn’t this be a non issue for them? Shame they fought that so hard, it seems like it would have saved them some money.

I don’t think I quite agree about governments being predatory by nature. I think they can be, have been in the past, and safeguards and checks and balances need to be there to prevent it. But generally a democratically elected government is beneficial, albeit flawed. Often reactive rather than proactive, but not commonly bloodthirsty. I mean, they often can’t even jail executives for criminal decisions or negligence.

In Elon’s case, I do believe governments around the world are going to have to adapt to protect their citizens from popular, but provably false and dangerous propaganda, as well as protect their privacy in the EU’s case.

Also, I agree, we both aren’t lawmakers. So for now I will just have to cheer any attempt at adaptation, and hope that their solution is functional and passes scrutiny.

Gotta ask, what would you propose that would curb Elon from willfully committing crimes as he is?

He continues to do so because he’s proven the system is broken as soon as someone is sufficiently wealthy. He fights the charges, then when that runs out he fights the amounts, and even when he does get his comeuppance to the tune of 44 billion, he’s an even bigger brat cause he finally got stood up to. Do you think that there’s a way to systematically even the playing field?

Unironically, yes. You shouldn’t be able to shield your actions under a different corporate umbrella.

“Oh, guess we can’t fine them much because Twitter is a money pit, so they’ll get to continue breaking the law for cheap”

Nah, make the fine off of his entire net worth, make him cash in some of that stock so he can finally pay taxes and fines. Make it hurt enough for him to consider not breaking the laws of countries he wants to do business in.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Prioritize quality on the sharp things. Works the same way with kitchen knives, not that you have to buy something expensive, but you should always keep it sharp. A sharp knife is dangerous, but a dull knife is dangerous and less predictable.

I worked for an MSP that merged with a copier company. Copiers got more and more capable, and so of course people wanted to use their “advanced” features, hence the merger with an IT company.

When they sold a copier, they would sell limited IT engagements. Things like handing information and help to customer IT, or if they lacked IT, limited help like placing it on the network, installing the drivers to use it as a printer, setting up scanning to network. This was done remotely by a level one technician, Joe this time.

Well, install day came, and after Joe helped out the customer claimed that some computers could print, some couldn’t. And some computers couldn’t access anything else on the network. They hired a local IT guy that threw Joe under the bus, and the customer yelled at my boss. As one of the level 2 techs, I was told to “fix what Joe fucked up” right in front of Joe. Shit boss, different story.

I travel out there, look at their problem, but was told I couldn’t touch anything until their IT guy showed up. So I used the time to ask questions, and tour around since I had a hunch.

Local IT guy strides in 15 minutes late, smug as hell. I talk and lead him to the basement, following the signal strength of a weirdly named wifi signal, and get a solid full strength connection in front of a locked closet. I ask them to unlock it, and ask about the router I see on the shelf, and point out that I believe it’s their issue.

Local IT guy installed a router as an access point, and did it so wrong that it was acting as a 2nd DHCP server on their network, handing out different addresses. In layman’s, their computers had 2 bosses with differing orders. Therefore local IT guy broke it, and blamed Joe cause he didn’t understand what he did.

I praised Joe from that day for being the first technician I knew capable of physically installing gear remotely. He was an excellent tech, and a good colleague.

Oh, billionaires and their submarines. I wish Elon wanted to tour the Titanic.

Kinda drives home another point too. Breaking someone else’s encryption is something you do to enemies. If you’re trying to break my encryption communication or installing a backdoor, you’re an enemy, simple as that.

My eternal thanks to FOSS, and open encryption standards.

Toxic work culture also means dishonest management expectations, wage theft, and generally anti-employee policies.

For example, around 2-3 years ago I heard a fun story about why my old employer lost 3/4 of their IT team(MSP, their product was IT folks). The straw that broke the camel’s back was a management partner asking an employee “are you letting your family get in the way of your job?” This was because they couldn’t get this person to work overtime on the spot because they weren’t going to leave their kid’s sports game.

At that same employer, about 7 years ago, I was told I would have to start my day at the customer’s job site at or before 8AM, and I wouldn’t be compensated for my travel time because “everyone has a commute, buddy”. Problem was, my customers were often over an hour away, and they were going to bill the customer for my travel time anyway.

There’s certainly still toxic work cultures, and while I am glad you seemingly haven’t had to experience it as much recently, you shouldn’t discount other’s struggles just because you aren’t experiencing the same thing.

As you said, friction would introduce more wear and maintenance. This gentleman’s idea is to attach a windmill to drive the rotary induction wheel, which would essentially be “free” heat energy, and an interesting hobby contraption. Entertainment and a sense of accomplishment is probably his main goal.

Its not a brand new idea, just a different application of the principle. Induction generators already exist, and they can indeed be used with windmills, but to generate AC current versus heat energy.

More power to this fun and crazy inventor. Maybe he can find practical and reproducible use for this effect. If not, he’s gonna have the most unique water heater ever invented. With this he could make a fully mechanical hot water heater that burns no fuel and uses no electricity. He would just have to make a mechanism to disengage a clutch at the top temperature.

If the inertia didn’t physically damage more than half of those drives, I would be surprised. I don’t think redundancy is a factor in this scenario. This has 3 likely outcomea. Restore from local backup in a different rack, restore from cloud/offsite backup, or the whole company needs to update their resumes.

Not quite as many as Madoff, but some notable folks and investors.

Those are fair points, but I can’t help but chuckle that they were brought to justice because they stole from millionaires and other billionaires to make their ill gotten gains. Probably woulda got away with it if they just stole from the poor and middle class.

You don’t get to make $100 billion dollars and feign ignorance about how you got it and the damage you caused to obtain it.

Don’t you? I can’t think of any instance of justice truly being served to billionaires, can you?

You’re right. One interesting option right now is the mustang Mach E, dealers are dropping prices and Ford is giving 0% for 72mo. I just bought a California route 1 for 46k at 0%, and I wasn’t planning on electrifying at current prices until that came up.

Thank you for the read. I figured this one was a thorny issue without even considering the locale/jurisdiction aspect.

From the looks of it, this is an issue that is likely to have to be fought in court to deliver some precedent or legislation will have to directly target this… And that’s just the American side.

I’m honestly glad these comedians and the Carlin family were able to come to a reasonable settlement, so that the Carlins themselves didn’t have to be part of this eventual circus. I feel like George himself would find this scenario pointless and loathsome, and I only wish I could hear the real him talk about it haha.

I have a few questions, and I am honestly asking from sheer lack of knowledge on how to even look this up.

From what I have read, you don’t exactly have copyright of your own likeness, but rather rights to how you can restrict its use for privacy/publicity/commercial reasons. But that applies to you alone. Does your next of kin inherit the rights from you automatically? Can you convey those rights after death? Do people actually do that?

I’m genuinely interested to know if this case was even possible. It’s definitely in poor taste, but despite that it is an interesting experiment and admittedly a good mimicry. Should we expect more like this, or less?