He lets the worm do the thinking.

I love Evangelion. I don’t love this stupid bullshit.

Funny how all of these social media platforms that were so happy to describe themselves as “the public town square of the internet” or whatever are now claiming that they own everything that everyone ever posted. So, which is it? Because it obviously cannot be both.

I think you’re conflating two very different things here.

1. Reddit _hosting/dissemination user-submitted copyrighted data.
2. Reddit licensing/selling copyrighted data to other parties.

The DMCA covers hosting and dissemination. If a user submits copyrighted data to Reddit that they do not own and Reddit unknowingly (because, to be fair, they can’t know what is or isn’t owned or by who), then Reddit is not liable for copyright infringement as long as they comply with DMCA takedown requests from people who claim to own the original IP.

But again, none of that implies that Reddit themselves (or Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, etc.) can realistically claim ownership over all of the data that is on their website. The reason they are subject to DMCA at all is because there is a globally shared assumption that data that users submit may or may not be owned by some other party, and while the DMCA protects them from being held liable for simply hosting and disseminating that data, it does not magically make them the owner of all data that hasn’t had a DMCA claim made against it.

In other words, if I post a picture of Homer Simpson on Reddit (and there are many), it is ridiculous for anyone to suggest that they have any intellectual property rights over that picture, that character, any trademarks, etc., whether someone has made a formal DMCA take down request or not. And if they don’t own the picture, the character, the trademark, etc., when what exactly are they selling (licensing) and where did they get the right to sell it?

They might not be liable for just hosting/distributing it, but just like you can’t sell someone else’s car, you can’t license out someone else’s IP.

And yet that exact kind of data is all over reddit in ways that are impractical to enforce by case by case DMCA. How many memes are there using footage from popular shows? How much fanart?

More importantly, is that stuff not included as part of the data that reddit “owns” when they sell their data to tech companies? Because whether a DMCA takedown has been requested on that kind of data or not, doesn’t change the fact that they don’t hold the copyright in the first place. How can they sell things that they don’t even own?

Something smells. The logic of this entire industry doesn’t add up.

Their TOS says they own your content in any current or future formats or derivative works.

Their ToS could say they own you and your children and grandchildren, but that doesn’t make it enforceable.

If I post a frame from the movie Akira on Reddit would any reasonable person suggest that they own not only that frame, but also the entire movie that it came from as a derivative work? There is a glut of second-hand data just like that all over Reddit, Twitter, and every other social media network, and I’m willing to bet that’s also part of what’s being sold.

But hey… I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that the idea that they automatically “own” the things that people post on their website is ridiculous. It’s a bit like UPS or FedEx saying they own the contents of your package while delivering it.

“its data”.

Ah yes… of course.

Armed with what?

Guns, knives, blunt weapons, tasers, bear spray, hand cuffs and zip ties.

Taking the stand in the seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four associates, Terry Cummings showed jurors an AR-15 firearm and an orange box for ammunition that he contributed to the so-called quick reaction force the Oath Keepers had staged at the hotel outside of Washington in case they needed weapons.

“I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military,” said Cummings, a veteran who joined the Oath Keepers in Florida in 2020.

https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-florida-virginia-conspiracy-government-and-politics-6ac80882e8cf61af36be6c46252ac24c

But a review of the federal charges against the alleged rioters shows that they did come armed, and with a variety of weapons: stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles wielded as clubs. An additional suspect also allegedly planted pipe bombs by the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties the night before the riot and remains at large.

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters-were-armed-here-are-the-weapons-prosecutors-say-they-used

Online sleuths who have aided in hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions say he is the same man they identified to the FBI who is currently individual No. 200 on the bureau’s Capitol Violence page, which he first appeared on three years ago. Videos and photographs from the Capitol on Jan. 6 showed him with what appears to be a gun in his waistband. As NBC News previously reported, that man, John Emanuel Banuelos, told Salt Lake City police that he was at the Capitol and had been captured on film with a gun. “I was in the D.C. riots,” he told the investigators, according to a police transcript. “I’m the one in the video with the gun right here.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/new-jan-6-footage-appears-show-rioter-firing-gun-air-capitol-attack-rcna138137

And I recall Hillary’s plot to get electors to “vote their concious”

The source you’ve linked quotes Martin Sheen and other “celebrities”, not Hillary Clinton, who conceded the election as someone who believed in democracy would (despite being much more popular than Trump and winning the national vote by millions).

Also, you should know that official electors are not always bound. As a Trump voter I know you’re not big on education or knowledge, but if you want you can read all about unpledged electors here.

Meanwhile, what Trump and his gang of indicted co-conspirators did was to submit a slate of fraudulent and fake electors to the election certification process in order to literally steal swing state electoral college votes and appoint himself President. Or as he likes to say “dictator on day one”.

Here’s a list of the names of the fraudulent electors in each state that Trump tried to overthrow.

Just because he wasn’t charged with treason doesn’t mean he didn’t commit treason by advocating an armed insurrection against our democracy. (See: the US post-Civil War Reconstruction Era for further examples.)

And if you want to why he wasn’t charged for that, it’s because of Republican Special Counsel Ken Starr’s disastrous opinion that sitting presidents are above the law and can’t be prosecuted, and must instead be impeached–which, if you remember, Trump was, not once but twice. Of course now Trump is arguing that he’s still above the law and deserves “total immunity”, which only further shows that he is, in fact, a wanna-be dictator.

Saying “Trump wasn’t charged with a crime so therefore he did nothing wrong” and “Trump can’t be charged with a crime because current and former US Presidents must have total immunity from prosecution” is very clearly circular logic.

He didn’t hurt your democracy though, he didn’t try to keep the opposition off the ballot.

Yeah he just repeatedly called the election rigged and tried to replace the Biden electoral votes with Trump ones by means of an armed insurrection.

But hey, he failed (just like how he fails at everything else) so no harm no foul. That’s how law and society work, right?

What does any of that have to do with LGBT rights? Seems like an ad hominem at best.

Is this the part where y’all jump the shark and pretend like Palestine is a mecca of progressivism and civil rights?

Hardware wise, you’ll be hard pressed to find any even half-way popular computer that can’t run some form of Linux. So I’d say just get something that’s within your budget. Those x86 APU-based mini pcs that you can find for ~$200 are becoming pretty popular for projects these days. Something like a Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi or whatever might also be fine depending on what you want to do with it, just keep your power expectations in check. If you want to spend more money on something with graphics hardware, I’d recommend going for AMD over NVidia, just because the drivers are built into the kernel and essentially no-hassle.

When it comes to software, especially if you’re on x86, just arbitrarily pick one of the reasonably popular distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, PopOS, or any of the other ones you’ve probably heard of. One of the first things to learn about “Linux” is that there’s a whole ecosystem of software projects behind it, and there is a lot of overlap between the software that each distro runs. Yes, there are some meaningful differences between, for example, Ubuntu and Fedora, but I think they are much less meaningful to a noobie (who is just learning the basics of Linux) or an expert (who probably knows enough to bend and customize just about any distro into whatever they want).

Small caveat #1: If you prefer to have a desktop that more closely resembles Windows (like the one of the Steam Deck’s desktop mode) you might want to pick a distro spin that uses the KDE Plasma desktop. On the other hand, if you want to play around with something that’s a bit different than what you’re used to, it might be worth checking out a distro spin that uses the Gnome desktop. I can recommend them both for different reasons, so you might want to check out some videos of them to see what you’re more into before picking. (Other desktops are available, these are just the two big ones! So there truly are a ton of options to explore here if you want to.)

Small caveat #2: At this point in time are you more interested in stability or customization? If you want a truly rock-solid Linux system that’s hard to ever break, you might want to consider one of the new “atomic” distributions like Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite (or others), though you might find some of their limitations annoying. On the other side of the spectrum, if deep customization and flexibility is what you’re looking for, then you might want to venture into the deep end with things like NixOS or ArchLinux, just keep in mind that they can be very technical and overwhelming for noobs. Personally I have been using Fedora Silverblue for a couple years now and I love the stability of it, and I can work around it’s limitations with distrobox.

Another thing to consider is just using what you already have. For example, playing around with Linux in a virtual machine, setting up a Linux-based server on one of the popular VPS services, or just plugging your Steam Deck into a dock with a keyboard and monitor attached and playing with something like distrobox (which you can probably find a guide on how to set that up for your deck).

Modartt’s Pianoteq is a nice Linux native, physically modeled piano plugin.

In my experience yabridge is fantastic. With a bit of initial setup, it’s the closest thing to a native experience that I’ve come across.

You do control it with a CLI interface, so you need to be comfortable with that.

You also need to have already installed the Windows VSTs manually using WINE or whatever, and so there’s a bit of a typical “how well does this work under wine” crapshoot and a bit of a learning curve there.

hostages one of the few ways Palestinians can actually do anything to improve their lives

Genuine question, how has Hamas taking hundreds of innocent people hostage on October 7th improved the situation in Gaza or Israel in any way? Whose life is better today than it was a couple of months ago as a result?

International humanitarian law prohibits taking and executing hostages. Such acts are considered war crimes (GCI–IV Common Art. 3; GCIV Arts. 34, 147; API Art. 75) and can be tried before any national court, under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

The Convention defines a hostage taker as “any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (‘hostage’) in order to compel a third party, namely a State, an international inter-governmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage, commits the offence of taking hostages (‘hostage taking’)” (Art. 1 of Hostage Convention).

The Convention further specifies that not only those who commit such an act but also any person who attempts to commit or who participates as an accomplice in such an act or attempt is accountable and must be punished.

At any rate, regardless of whether you feel Hamas’ jihad is justified or not (it isn’t, in fact), hostage taking is an international war crime. The Geneva Convention is the bare minimum standard on this, and as such our opinions and political leanings are irrelevant.

The bare minimum Hamas can do now is to release the remaining hostages and surrender themselves to the IDF to stand trial, so that the innocent people of Gaza can start slowly putting their lives back together.

Holding civilians hostage for 3 months isn’t “war”, it’s an act of terrorism and a war crime.

Edit: I see I struck a nerve with that one.

They won’t get anything from handing them over

I guess Allah doesn’t reward people just for doing the right thing then?

Well if you really want me to buy even more shit online (let’s be real, from Amazon) this is a good way to do it.

At best I don’t like small talk or dealing with other people through meaningless interactions. At worst I might have minor social anxiety. I hugely prefer to just walk into a shop, grab what I need, check myself out, and leave.

At this point I’m also just as fast (if not faster) than the paid cashiers and baggers (who need and deserve chairs or stools by the way).

So yeah, if self checkout goes away, I’m buying as much stuff online as possible and generally making fewer trips to the store.

I can only imagine being so brainwashed to believe that the Houthis harassing, threatening and attacking one of the biggest international trade routes on Earth, while indiscriminately targeting ships from various countries and ignoring multiple warnings from the UN, Britain and the US, is in any way legitimate.

They attacked civilian ships, they were warned not to, they didn’t stop attacking civilian ships, and now they’ve been retaliated against as promised. Let’s see if they’re smart enough to finally stop fucking with international civilian trade ships.

Do you think America enforces sanctions against Russia by attacking their civilians?

Follow up, do you have a clue how anything in the world actually works?