kirklennon

1. Most Americans already knew he was a criminal and either strongly opposed him or strongly supported him, in part on that basis. There are a lot of other people who usually or often vote Republican, but also just don’t always vote. Those people aren’t going to be enthusiastic about showing up to vote for a felon. I think we’re looking at extremely low turnout among non-MAGA Republicans. Optimistically, this scenario can also lead to a blue wave as those same people skip down-ballot races as well.
2. First-time offenders get lighter sentences. He’s going to be convicted in multiple upcoming trials, and in all of them he’s now going to enter the sentencing phase as a felon. We can look forward to extended prison sentences in Georgia and the federal cases.

It’s up to the judge and can range from no prison to four years. A nonviolent first-time offense usually means a lighter sentence, but the judge can also factor in the complete lack of contrition and the numerous egregious gag order violations. These make prison significantly more likely than it otherwise would be.

A fine of less than $1 million is absolutely not what anyone except Google is asking for.

The DOJ can really only ask for treble damages. If Google paid ~$3 million, that’s realistically as good as the DOJ was going to get. It sounds like the initial estimates were just way off. Nobody should be shocked that the inept antitrust division screwed up again. They’re going after big, buzz-worthy names without the facts or law to actually back it up.

The headline is strange. The DOJ sued for money and Google just straight up gave them the money they could have won upfront. That’s not a “pay off”; it’s literally what they asked for. It’s a win for the DOJ. Google’s argument against a jury trial also seems on solid ground. The right to a trial by jury is meant as a protection for Americans; the government itself doesn’t have the right to demand a jury. If the defendant thinks the legal issues in the case are too arcane and a judge is more likely to get it right (and get it right faster, which is cheaper), that’s their prerogative.

A long exposure allows more of the light to be captured but that’s not the reason for the color discrepancy. They really are as colorful as they appear in photos but human night vision is primarily black and white. We just don’t see a lot of color unless it’s sufficiently bright and since auroras are still quite dim in absolute terms, our eyes aren’t capable of recognizing the full intensity of the color.

Of course you can. The iPhone never lost any of the basic features of the iPod and is perfectly capable of storing and playing DRM-free music in popular formats.

How is this relevant to anything at all? If you want a streaming music subscription, you can pay for one. If not, don’t. You can use any service you want on an iPhone, and you can likewise use Apple Music on an Android phone. The availability of services is just a totally separate issue.

No, because aspartame is not unhealthy.

No, my phone went into SOS mode yesterday. No apps, just a button to call 911.

That’s not a thing that exists. The closest thing is the shutdown screen, where the options are “slide to power off,” “Medical ID,” “Emergency SOS” and a cancel button, which requires you to enter your passcode and then takes you back to the home screen.

Sounds a bit sensationalist and doesn’t contradict what I said: if you already added your boarding pass to your phone, it will still be there, regardless of whether you have internet access at the moment. Furthermore, the staff can still pull up your record so nobody is going to miss their flight.

But the stakes are too high to skip the 5 minutes it takes to print a paper copy. I can almost guarantee that everyone else is one close call/missed flight away from doing the same thing, too.

I don’t understand what scenario you’re imagining where there’s a problem. You check in 24 hours before the flight and add the pass to your phone. It’s not going anywhere. How would you ever miss a flight because you didn’t print it? Absolute worst case scenario: they have to look it up at the gate.

Because we have an elected government. If the government causes somebody a loss, voters, and by extension their representatives, and by extension, the government itself, wants to make them whole. Without allowing lawsuits, the only option is passing individual laws for each possible claim, and also creating a way to adjudicate those claims. We already have courts to handle the exact same kinds of issues between private parties. Congress decided to let it apply to the government too, when appropriate.

The government has sovereign immunity and can be sued only when it allows itself to be sued, such as under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

For what it’s worth it’s possible to test the contents of an egg, but it’s moot because it doesn’t actually matter when we know. It exists independent of observation.

No, that’s not right. The species transitioned from the proto-chicken to the chicken. Whichever specific individual we call the first chicken started off as (say it with me) an egg. The mother’s offspring was different enough to be the first chicken.

This is not correct. At no point can the offspring in a single generation be differnet enough to be called a different species.

I’m not saying we should call it a different species but if we’re saying species Y is the direct descendant of species X, then, we can imagine a dividing line, and the line must always begin with an egg because eggs are different from their parents but adults are not different from the egg they started off as.

In reality things change very slowley over a large amount of time and there a no clear transition points.

Isn’t that obvious?

“Proto chicken” in this context refers to a genetic ancestor of the chicken. An egg hatches into the exact same species as the egg itself, but the egg is genetically different from the mother that laid the egg, and in this thought experiment, we’re talking about the mother being different enough to call a different species.

Chickens evolved from earlier animals. The process is gradual, of course, but we can say that at some point some proto-chicken ancestor laid an egg that was different enough genetically that it counts as a chicken. In other words, a non-chicken laid a chicken egg, which eventually grew up to be the first chicken. Therefore, the egg came first.

Do you happen to know a good source for information on this?

Apple released detailed whitepapers and information about it when originally proposed but they shelved it so I don’t think they’re still readily available.

One in a trillion sounds like a probability of a hash collision.

Basically yes, but they’re assuming a much greater likelihood of a single hash collision. The system would upload a receipt of the on-device scan along with each photo. A threshold number of matches would be set to achieve the one in a trillion confidence level. I believe the initial estimate was roughly 30 images. In other words, you’d need to be uploading literally dozens of CSAM images for your account to get flagged. And these accompanying receipts use advanced cryptography so it’s not like they’re seeing “oh this account has 5 potential matches and this one has 10”; anything below the threshold would have zero flags. Only when enough “bad” receipts showed up for the same account would they collectively flag it.

And I was under the impression that iPhones connected to the iCloud sync the pictures per default?

This is for people who use iCloud Photo Library, which you have to turn on.

They discussed something adjacent, not anything that would scan and disclose your encrypted messages.