We need to quickly implement strong new consumer protections for the digital world...
Strongly and unambiguously codify the right of ownership for anything purchased. If a car or any other product includes a feature, even a software feature, it is yours and is unlawful for another party to block your access.
Ban DRM. It is anti-consumer and a threat to ownership.
And a reminder: "Security" is never an excuse to strip people of their rights, including ownership rights.
They won the overall popular vote for the House by 2.8% in a midterm election with a somewhat unpopular President from the opposite party plus economic turmoil. The standard assumption would be that they’d blow it out. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats won the popular vote for the House by almost 10% under somewhat similar circumstances.
The Republicans party is very much elderly people, uneducated people, and religious people.
The old people are dying, religion is on a steady decline.
The thing is that Republicans show up to vote because their bubble is largely fear driven politics.
They also have gerrymandering on their side, they limit polling places, they unconstitutionally use poll taxes that disproportionately affect minorities, they make voting harder by eliminating vote by mail… In short, they cheat like fuckin crazy and rile up their base to get out and vote.
I would not agree that they’re gonna disappear by 2028, but they are waning.
Globally, far right politicians are getting more votes.
It’s not coming back, it never left. We’re seeing them get more aggressive because they know that the newer generation isn’t buying into the ideology as much as previous generations and so their ideals are going to die with them unless they use systemic tools to enforce it.
Everything you’ve said is true. But it was all true in 70s as well. Todays young people aren’t going to remain as progressive - every generation becomes more conservative over time. Hell, baby boomers were hippies. That Karen who votes for Trump and calls the HOA when you forget to take your bins in on time - there’s a good chance she was burning her bra for equal pay when she was in college.
That depends on material conditions. An economic boom doesn’t seem to be on the horizon, and boomers could have turned out very differently without the 80s. Plus, the boomers didn’t have to contend with climate change being obviously real. There are limits to our ecosystem, limits boomers didn’t have to work around, but we do. I don’t think younger people are better than boomers were, but I also don’t think that belief is the only possible source of hope.
Agreed. I deleted my 15 year account. Mods should just leave.
Reddit can’t exist without the free labor.
Other side is I don’t know what the mods that stick it out get. I’m guessing there is some monetary benefit to the bigger community mods I don’t know about.
It's too late for you, but I'd suggest anybody who wants to delete their account consider first editing all of their comments to overwrite the data, there are lots of reports of deleted comments being restored, I've not heard of reverted edits though. https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
Been telling everyone to purge their old content. You can always view Reddit just to lurk, there's no need to let them monetize your old content. Into the bin it goes
I manually overwrote my post about 2 weeks ago and have been checking as subs came back online. a few reverted but most didnt. I deleted my 9 year old account last night and checked and its stills gone
PowerDeleteSuite screwed me over around 6 months ago. I got 2 replies to comments it was supposed to delete but they were still there, user name, content and all, they were just not linked to my account. If I search my username + reddit I still get results. My name is not attached anymore because I deleted my account.
Thankfully I started manually editing and deleting my comments after using PowerDeleteSuite, and those remain gone as far as I know.
I just tried Power Delete Suite about an hour ago. I beleive reddit has slowed down the allowable edit rate, something like one every 5 seconds. PDS runs through as fast as it can, meaning it's a 1 in 10 success at best. I tried Redact as well, but that just blanks out white after giving it permission. I'm not having much success. But Shreddit seems to work OK? Though that doesn't address the undeletion possobility
A few weeks ago I used PDS to edit my comments - using the fork with the 5 second delay. Random pockets of older comments started reappearing after few days. I've been checking all 45 pages of my history every few days and editing the random comments that have reverted from the edited message. It seems like it has mostly stuck now.
I guessing there's probably some broken code/process somewhere that isn't always able to commit changes and once caches expire the comment returns.
The judge already has verified they were not operating with a valid search warrant at the time the search took place. It’s literally a violation of his 4th Amendment rights.
Sounds like they now need to be charged for breaking and entering since their actions were not those of officers following the law.
Talk about burying the lede, the plantiff in this case was a fucking immigration lawyer and used to work for the DHS who got his attorney client privilege denied and got forensically searched (meaning they copied his data). This is insane gestapo shit. They knew who he was. https://www.themalikfirm.com/about/adam-a-malik2/
Just count the news stories about “local person with a bag of cash responds to domestic disturbance call, shoots elderly woman, her grandson, and their dog” or “local person with a bag of cash kills pedestrians in DUI crash, suspended with pay”.
Per comments from Holmes himself, the idea for the name had nothing to do with Tolkien’s works, nor the movie. It was instead to denote royalty and lordship. I have seen nothing in any of the reporting to indicate that this had to do with anything other than the name of the food truck. The truck wasn’t going to be themed after the books or films. There wasn’t going to be any trade dress or vehicle wraps harkening back to those works of fiction. There wasn’t to be a flavor of chicken called “One wing to rule them all.”
So trademark holders being douchebags as usual. The Lord of the Rings isn’t associated with chicken wings in anyway so how could consumers be confused?
In law, dilution refers to the use of a trademark or trade name in commerce that is sufficiently similar to a famous mark that by association it confuses or diminishes the public’s perception of the famous mark.
In dilution, confusion literally is the issue. The point is: literally fucking nobody would be confused.
Just ask Apple Music how well that went fighting Apple Computers for 40 fucking years or so.
It ended with Apple Music putting all the Beatles music catalogue on iTunes.
Nobody was ever confused about Apple Music and Apple Computers.
Just like nobody would be confused by this, considering it has no relation to LOTR other than a name.
Well, I’m only familiar with US law on the subject. NZ might see things differently.
But in the US, dilution of a famous mark doesn’t necessarily mean confusion. For example, you couldn’t use Apple’s famous white apple logo even for a company that had nothing to do with technology.
This isn’t about logos though. This is about the name of the company, which is why I referenced two companies with similar names who had never been confused.
Because yes it’s more easy to be confused if it’s got a trademarked corporate logo somewhere it’s not supposed to be.
It’s not as easy to be confused just because the names are similar. Nobody was going to show up to Lord of the Wings thinking that it was a JRR Tolkein property when the only thing that came close to referencing it was the name, and the name alone.
It’s not like the Elves offered the Hobbits fucking chicken wings instead of lembas.
And this trademark is a phrase, which is not easily confused with another phrase, when taken in context.
Are you being willfully fucking obtuse? We’re not talking about other trademarks we’re talking about this situation.
If you want to go discuss the entirety of trademark law, go for it, somewhere else, please. This is a conversation about a specific incident, which specifically doesn’t include logos and symbols. It uses a phrase that clearly isn’t confusing in respect to LOTR.
The wing truck wasn’t going to have an effigy of the Hobbits on Mt Doom on it. Literally only the name even came close to referencing it. It’s a joke of a trademark dispute and you know it.
I’ve also never understood things like this from a marketing perspective. Like this is definitely dissimilar, but even if it were an on the nose deal with like “Sauron Sauce” or whatever as one of their offerings, you’re still getting recognition.
Even if the Tolkien estate were concerned about the cheapening of their “brand”, who tf cares? It’s obviously not about that, because I just checked and there is a line of LOTR Funko Pops for fuck’s sake.
And if a work like The Lord of the Rings can’t stand on its own (with regard to seriousness and artistic value) with the addition of kitschy wing trucks, I don’t know what else would.
Seems like a win-win to me, but then again, I fucking hate trademarking and patenting laws in general. Intellectual property is a pretty spurious concept at best and courts around the world have consistently shown it is a tool used to quash innovation, promote stagnant wealth, and keep the heel on the middle and lower classes.
Trademarks aren’t copyright or patents. The entire point of trademarks is to identify a brand. That said, I don’t really understand trademarking LOTR at all, it seems like it’s copyright, but IP laws are used so broadly now to just stifle things that who TF knows, and I have no idea about NZ law.
Lord of the Rings has nothing to do with food or chicken wings trucks, so seems like it shouldn’t apply. Usually trademarks are in the same industry, so you wouldn’t want someone else writing a knock off series of books called Lord of the Rings and trademark would help there.
That said, the other thing that seems suspicious to me is trademarks in the US are pretty specific - it has to be the exact wording which is why so many companies “mispell” the names, well that and in the US you often can’t trademark a generic word (though Apple threw a wrench in that one). Or the graphic design has to be extremely close.
You can trademark a generic word, but only in a specific context. Microsoft has a trademark on “Windows”, for example, but it only applies if you’re using it in the name of an operating system.
Like this is definitely dissimilar, but even if it were an on the nose deal with like “Sauron Sauce” or whatever as one of their offerings, you’re still getting recognition.
At least in US Intellectual Property Law there are rules for some areas that once you, as the rights holder, know of possibly infringement you must defend your IP or you risk losing it.
I think the Funko-pops are actually a good example of why they need to protect the trademark. What if the estate does want to start marketing wing sauces? What if they want to sponsor a hot wing eating contest? Or host an aerial stunt show? Would they need to split the proceeds with the guy who owns the food truck?
All of these ideas are stupid, and would cheapen the brand, but it’s their brand. If they don’t defend it, it makes future protections harder. If they don’t fight Lord of the Wings, what about Lord of the Strings? Lord of the Springs? Slings? Things? Blings?
Brand dilution isn’t just about the one narrow use case.
I agree that the Funko Pop example cheapens their property. Doesn’t seem that they care.
And of course it’s not about just one wing truck. Estates like these are not innovating and are not holding air shows or wing competitions. And unless they’re stealing trade secrets of making wing sauces or the intricacies of hosting aerial events, I say let the estate compete in those areas or even choose to sponsor these already established entities who’ve entered the market before the estate did anything with their IP.
But that’s my point. If Tolkien’s great grandchildren want to sell hot wing sauce some day, they shouldn’t have to fight some guy with a food truck because “he thought of it first.” Branding is the opposite of a trade secret, and there’s no free market solution to competition for a name. Trademarks must be defended in court, or you lose them.
That’s why I said it would be a better argument if it were “Lord of Wings” because it conveys almost exactly the same sentiment that the owner is claiming to want to convey, and removing the “the” from the title changes the cadence and format of the title, further separating it from existing IP.
It is literally that simple. I can’t think of a single person that HAS to buy a NEW car. Keep what you have or buy used. Tell the dealerships and auto makers to fuck off! Explain why a person ever has to buy a NEW car.
As long as people are stupid and buy it the auto makers WILL continue on this path.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” – H.L. Mencken
The reality is, individual boycotts don’t do shit because people who care about their property rights are outnumbered by dipshit consumer whores by a dozen to one (if not worse). The only way to actually fix this is regulatory action by the FTC to outlaw this shit as the blatantly obvious violation of the doctrine of first sale that it is.
I will probably continue to buy new cars as I can spend my hard earned on whatever I want. Everyone’s financial situation, wants and needs are different… you shouldn’t bundle everyone else into your opinion.
That said, I wouldn’t buy a car that has a feature that I need locked behind a subscription… I would just buy one that suits. I am not loyal to any particular brand so I don’t care.
Sadly, people are not rational, and will buy the new car because it makes them feel good. They'll give them a year of free features and people will forget all about it because it's a free year and "a $5,000 value!"
I've only ever bought one new car, and that got dieselgated. I will never buy a new car again, and you won't, but there's not enough of us to stop this from happening.
A better solution is to counter market these products. Invest time in spreading content that tells other people how shit these products are. Not buying it doesn’t do much. But spreading the good word does. Its why they pay so much to advertise and market
Enshitification isn’t solved by voting with your dollar. If it did, the printer market wouldn’t be the shit show that it is. You can’t vote for the good if all the manufacturers mutually agree to only produce shit. Only regulation will keep them in line.
(inb4 “brother is better”, I am aware that brother printers are generally better, but they are far from good.)
Especially when the majority of people will litterly drink shit milkshakes every damn day before they ever dream of using something that isn’t their preferred brand or might require accepting some modest trade-offs.
We all suffer from enshitification because the “average consumer” makes it profitable with their apathy, their ignorance, and their laziness. And there’s nothing we can about that. We’re stuck in these markets with them, and they make up the majority, so they set the trends.
I will say, part of that ignorance, apathy, and laziness is an intentional part of our existing society. You can’t spend the time to research every single product you ever buy, because many are stuck working several job, basically everyone is juggling their work, family, and social life.
A couple months back, I tried putting some effort into finding a printer that had all of the qualifications I wanted.
usb printing, no network needed
laser
color
not a brand that will fuck you over (looking at you HP)
within a reasonable budget of $300-$400
And such a product just doesn’t exist. Brother comes close, but the market straight up isn’t producing good things. So at the end of the day all I can do is either get shafted at the local print store, or suck it up and get an inferior product.
But going back to the OP, it’s so much worse with cars because we have a car-centric society. You NEED a car in this place to have a normal life. Our cities and transportation have been intentionally designed to fuck over everyone not in a car.
So there is inelastic demand. The manufacturers can do whatever the fuck they want and get away with it.
I got an 03 Jetta in good trim with a 5-speed (which hardly anyone makes anymore). I’m gonna keep that fucker alive even if I have to turn it into the car of Theseus.
But, My wife drives a 2017 Mirage G4 with a 5 speed, and we are going to keep that thing alive however we can. And it’s fairly easy, because the Mirage is very simple and is made to be easy to repair.
Almost got scammed by Rad Bikes this way. Battery mysteriously failed 10 months into their 1 year warranty. Rad Bikes accused me of sabotaging the battery and refused to honor their warranty, but “generously” offered me free shipping on a $300+ replacement battery. Turns out the off-the-rack fuse they use blew; identical down to the manufacturer to the ones used in cars. Replacement fuse was <20 cents and fixed the problem instantly.
Rad City support could not or would not explain how my battery might have stopped working, but would only say it was “not covered by warranty”. They could also not explain what sort of causes of battery failure were covered by their warranty. It was pretty clear they just didn’t want to cover the expense of honoring their warranty (the battery is probably one of the single most expensive parts on their bikes).
That’s pretty shitty. They’re probably talking internally about the fuse as if it’s some type of tamper seal. But fuses blow sometimes, they’re literally sacrificial. So somebody has told their support techs that anyone with that fuse blown has tampered with their battery and they’re just repeating that line to customers (some guilt of tampering, some innocent).
Or maybe you just got unlucky with a dumb support tech. If that’s widespread, they deserve to get sued.
Apparently some earlier models of their batteries had a user accessible hatch to change fuses, so I’m inclined to think they intentionally moved from a repairable to non-repairable model.
Either that or a small power surge happened. Or the battery was defective. There are multiple things that could blow that fuse, and having a blanket “blown fuse = voided warranty” policy is stupid.
This may be a combo business problem where they don’t have enough technically qualified people to troubleshoot with you. It’s cheaper to pay minimum wage for someone to just do replacement customer service than it is to pay someone with more valuable knowledge and sit on the phone for an hour with you. I have a bad habit of just tearing things open now, assuming the company can’t help me. But it usually works out
Not saying the question shouldn’t be asked, but replacing the fuse should be the first thing. If it blows again, you have a problem. If it’s fine, you probably had a bad fuse. It’s more if you bypass the fuse that you are asking for trouble.
Do you recall the specific fuse? There was someone asking about ebike battery fuses on !micromobility a while back. Wasn’t really sure what to tell them, but automotive fuses make sense.
On my RadCity 5 Plus, it was a 10 amp red mini-blade fuse. I had a “variety pack” in my car that I’d gotten at a local auto part store, but looked it up any way, just in case. This may be different on other models/batteries. Ironically, it did require a warranty voiding opening on the battery casing. :-)
Unfortunately, “the border”, as defined in US customs law, extends 100 miles inland from the coast. That covers the entire urbanized eastern and western seaboards, or 2/3 of the US population.
They've also been trying to claim that international airports are "external boundaries", and that their power extends 100 out from there. So even "safe" places like, say, Denver or Indianapolis or St. Louis wouldn't be safe if they have their way.
My company will give you a blank laptop if you have confidential information on it when traveling to the US. The policy is always to comply and hand over everything if asked so they want to minimize any risks of information falling into the wrong hands.
That policy also applies for traveling to China. So it’s pretty telling that my company thinks the US and Chinese governments are both risks to its intellectual property.
I love how so many comments and replies ascribe some form of ‘guilt’ to this, as if HP employees would feel shame. This doesn’t really mean anything to a company that size.
One of the great things about moving to the UK is that, despite all its problems, consumer protection Europe is so much better than in the US.
It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we’re complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn’t this what we were laughing at 20 years ago? About book burnings and how stupid the previous generations were for fearing and banning media that challenged them?
Dungeons and Dragons. Tabletop roleplaying game. Because it featured demons, magic, etc with elaborate books documenting it all, conservatives condemned it.
More context for OP, AD&D is Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, basically it is the second edition of Dungeons and Dragons before they started using the 3E, 3.5E, 4E, 5E nomenclature.
You’re selling Comcast short there. They put in the effort, they should get 1st place. Please have their medal ready somewhere between 6am and 2pm on Tuesday, if they don’t cancel.
ATT was honing their evil while Comcast was still in diapers. You should look into the history of ATT and just how long they have been around in various forms.
The real impact of the 9/11 attacks: There is direct line from shock and confusion to nationalistic rhetoric and “'OOORAH!”- patriotism to the rise of the Tea Party, the growing influence of the Evangelicals up to the emergence of Trumpism and Qanon.
You should watch the documentary show about the duggars and how they’re part of a huge cult that systemically indoctrinates kids, fucks them, and gets them into politics. It’s disgusting. It’s an organized push of quiverfull fundamentalist shit being pushed into law.
Human nature doesn’t change that much over time. Teenage me thought the future would be awesome because people like me would be in power. Adult me knows that people my age and younger are like everyone before them, just younger.
It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we’re complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn’t this what we were laughing at 20 years ago?
It’s easy to forget because of how quickly the cultural zeitgeist shifted when it finally did, but the early 2000s was still very homophobic. Watching pretty much any comedy from that era reminds you of just how common the punchline to jokes was just, “teehee they’re gay.”
Yup been watching Scrubs and while a still funny show a lot of the time, there’s still a lot of jokes that make me cringe. I’m sure it’s like that for any show in that era.
In the early 2000s it was exceptionally common to hear things referred to as “gay” if they were “bad” in some way. Chandler’s “Dad” in friends is one I look back on and shudder. I understand when boomers say things like “things were different back then, but our ability to reflect and do better is what moves our species forward. Not dig in and scream no!
You ever watch Lily Simpson on You Tube, she does analysis of trans characters and their treatment in older media. Her analysis of Chandlers dad actually showed they weren’t that bad of a depiction.
Of course. Humor is never used to other out-groups so they can be treated as less. Gay jokes are just good clean fun. Like racist and misogynist jokes. /s
techdirt.com
Hot