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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Obligatory IANAL, but…

    Generally a search warrant needs to be issued by a local authority, and that requires the crime to be prosecutable in the place where it was issued.

    So in theory, California is potentially able to refuse requests to search for things that are not illegal in California but may be illegal somewhere else.

    That being said, it looks like there are specific practices in place making it easier to issue warrants for electronic data like this scenario, even across state lines.

    And in this particular circumstance, the alleged offense is even illegal in California (abortion of a viable fetus), so it’s a bit of a moot point anyways. A Californian judge would have issued this warrant if a local police department requested one.





  • Facebook/Instagram (Meta) is one I am not sure how to get a read on. They are branching out a lot, but I have no idea what they’re doing to remain profitable. It seems like they’re in “Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” mode, hoping that they find a new niche before their sizable warchest from the 2010’s runs dry.

    They severely downsized once this year already and I have a feeling that won’t be the end of the story. Wouldn’t surprise me if they sell off/shut down Oculus in the near future.

    Tiktok, meanwhile…well it’s already undergoing enshittification (it is the subject of that original essay) and old people are starting to use it, so I feel like it’s only a matter of time before it’s no longer cool with kids and they lose a sizable chunk of their revenue stream and content.





  • Just to add onto this good answer, you are really only expected to tip for sit-down restaurants with service and bars.

    For takeout, cafes, fast food, etc., you don’t need to tip. A lot of places these have payment machines that just ask if you want to tip by default. You can safely hit “No tip” on these if you don’t want to.

    Ostensibly it’s just to replace the tip jar for those who don’t use cash, but the prompt appearing every time you pay by card has convinced a lot of people that tipping is what you’re supposed to do in those situations, when in reality you have no obligation to.


  • Probably close to 20 years ago at this point, when visiting the official forums for a game I loved, my computer was infected by malware delivered by a malicious ad. This was not some seedy part of the internet, but a website hosted by a major game publisher whose product I enjoyed.

    Try as I might, I could not revert the damage caused by the virus, so the only recourse I had was to just blank slate wipe it clean and start over.

    Today, I acknowledge that most websites more tightly control the ads they host, but the trust is forever broken. As soon as the option became available to me, I installed the best adblocker I could find and never looked back. No exceptions.

    The truth is that every ad is malicious, to small degrees. They want to commodify your eyeballs and take up space in your mind. They’re trying to create a need where one does not exist, and will use whatever tactic they can to try to part you from your hard-earned money. They’re a barrier between you and the content you want to enjoy—in many cases content that you paid to enjoy.

    Even if it’s in the name of supporting a website/service I enjoy, I can’t confidently turn off my ad blocker anymore. It only takes one malicious ad to sneak through the cracks to cause disaster.

    There has got to be a better way of running an online business without having to completely fill the space with ads.


  • I’m assuming by that point, you wouldn’t have people driving anymore, it would all be automatic. Likely hooked into some sort of flight control system that would allow the vehicles to navigate around each other and avoid collisions.

    Plus, look at it this way. Accidents are common now because roads restrict cars into shared paths of travel, requiring drivers to successfully avoid colliding with other people moving very close to them. If you are able to fly, you’d be able to beeline from point A to point B, distributing vehicles across a much broader area of travel. Plus, the added vertical axis means you won’t even necessarily collide if your vehicle can just move up or down around potential midair obstacles.





  • But even then, however, what’s to stop an army of bots from just ChatGPTing their way through the application process?

    I went to a website to generate a random username, picked the first option of polarbear_gender, and then just stuck that and the application questions for lemmy.ml into ChatGPT to get the following:

    I want to join Lemmy.ml because I’m really into having meaningful discussions and connecting with others who have similar interests. Lemmy.ml seems like a great platform that fosters a diverse exchange of ideas in a respectful way, which I like.

    When it comes to the communities I’d love to be a part of, I’m all about ones that focus on environmental conservation, wildlife preservation, and sustainability. Those topics really resonate with me, and I’m eager to jump into discussions and learn from fellow passionate folks.

    As for my username, I chose it because I’ve got respect for polar bears and how they live with the environmental challenges they face. And throwing in “gender” is just my way of showing support for inclusivity and gender equality. Building a more just and fair society is important to me.

    I don’t know the full criteria that people are approved or declined for, but would these answers pass the sniff test?

    I’m just worried that placing too much trust in the application process contributes to a false sense of security. A community that is supposedly “protected” from bots can be silently infiltrated by them and cause more damage than in communities where you can either reasonably assume bots are everywhere, or there are more reliable filtering measures in place than a simple statement of purpose.


  • The Sync community turned toxic when the dev implemented an updated UI a couple years ago. The new UI was beautiful and much more in line with the evolving visual design of Android, but the average user hates change. The dev version spent a while on the new UI while it was being refined, but the free/pro version was not upgraded until I want to say probably a year or more later, the developer having gone radio silent for a while under all the criticism.