This kind of stuff got legalised in Germany: Banks said that e.g. Sofortüberweisung was instigating their customers to break their TOS and should be shut down, anti-trust then said “nuh-uh you can’t just shut down legitimate business” (Sofort is indeed legitimate) and instead put third-party systems under banking regulations, and required ordinary banks to have APIs allowing third parties do do sensible things.

…which theoretically could mean that you’re sent to your actual bank to authorise and thus getting rid of the normalising phishing problem, dunno, haven’t checked I’m boycotting them out of principle for going down that route in the first place. Don’t serve any purpose now that we have real-time transfers, anyway.

The tracks are A.I. generated from lyrics and musical compositions that I have created. The A.I. samples are then mixed and edited by me.

Generated from human compositions, human-mixed, human-edited, there’s plenty of songs which have less human input. Even I can steal beats from a frying steak.

This isn’t the “automated AI slop” that you’re looking to complain about.

As to “intention to mislead”: That has nothing to do with AI. Passing off a new composition as a 1974 track on first sight is peak retro.

ROMs back then got erased by UV light, EPROM. EEPROMs are a bit newer (though still ancient) and can be erased electronically, nowadays it’s a very sane idea to just throw flash storage at the problem. I think you can get modern replacement for pretty much any ancient form factor.

The way those things are used are basically big logic tables: Instead of using a bunch of logic gates, you store the output that’s expected given a certain input. Completely ancient technique, the limiting factor is storage space and sensibility – storing all addition results of two 32 bit numbers uses a lot more transistors than a 32-bit adder, but if what you want to put in there isn’t a thing that can be implemented few standard TTL components throwing storage at the problem makes sense even if you never plan to reprogram it because burning a custom set of transistors onto silicon is expensive.

Some more technical info.

It’s an legit 8-bit CPU implemented with TTL chips, what makes it a different beast than what they did back in the days is that its microcoding isn’t kneecapped. It would absolutely have been possible back in the days to build exactly such a thing, even from precisely those components. At least the TTL part, that is, I bet there’s wibbles around VGA etc. And because I already hear the detractors yes, 8-bit CPUs were microcoded: They decoded single external instructions into a stream of “load from memory, fetch from register so and so, switch on the ALU, put what’s in the ALU output somewhere”. They kept it as simple as possible and it wasn’t reprogrammable but that stuff there, that’s microcode.

Implementing CPUs in TTL chips also isn’t a new idea, that’s how early minicomputers were made (later on they got some specialised chips). And those things also used ROMs for their microcode. So you could say that this is a minicomputer capable of pretending to be different 8-bit microcomputers.

FPGAs are a completely different technology, those allow you to arrange logic in a (more or less) arbitrary topology. That is, looking at that board with all those TTL chips, it’d be the equivalent of being able to re-route all the board traces as you please.

Replacing /usr/bin/firefox doesn’t fix anything if you don’t restart Firefox itself.

On my box updating firefox and then restarting it won’t even launch the new version because NixOS knows I’m logged in and won’t just change things in my environment. But unless there’s a kernel update yes nixos rebuild switch followed by logging out and logging in is equivalent to rebooting as it will automatically shut down and restart all system services, I think even systemd itself. Modulo some wibbles around kernel modules but those fall under kernel updates in my book.

Contrast Ubuntu, which really likes to prompt your for reboots. The difference between a distro primarily for desktop use and one that can also do desktop because also devops want a desktop. Hey I could spin up 1000 cloud instances of my desktop with a couple of keystrokes isn’t that impressively useless :)

He’s accused of tolerating such distribution even after being alerted of the fact so, yes, he’s accused of distributing it. For an online platform “we didn’t know about it because we don’t moderate proactively” is a valid defence, “authorities told us about it but we didn’t feel like doing anything about it because can’t be bothered / frozen peaches” isn’t.

According to their privacy notice you can opt out of that (the targeted advertising bit). Certainly legally required in the EU, if you’re not in the EU and they don’t give you the same option then I guess you have something to complain about.

And, yes, I very much do think that the Mozilla manifesto is generic and vague and wishy-washy. If you disagree, I suggest you contrast it with this.

Quoth the manifesto:

Individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.

Yes, it is. In fact that language is so generic and vague everything compliant with the GDPR should easily fulfil it.

Also you don’t need to avoid FakeSpot, you can simply be blissfully unaware of it. As in not seek it out.

Go iron your tinfoil hat it’s getting crinkly :)

Don’t install it, then. There: Voila, manifesto fulfilled because it’s all opt-in. It’s still an extension, they bought it, they didn’t build it into the browser. How did anything change? Before the acquisition, people had to install the thing and agree to privacy terms, after the acquisition, people have to install the thing and agree to privacy terms.Find something relevant to complain about.

The board is the Corporation.

No.The board is the board, an organ of the corporate body, but not the corporate body itself.

Why would they be bound to the Mozilla manifesto?

Foundations are bound to their bylaws, as set out when they were founded. Why? Because law, that’s why. It’s what foundations are for.

They seem to be destroying its spirit right now.

According to you.

If “just sue them” is the only way to hold Mozilla accountable, how low they have fallen!

You can also complain. Like, with that Brendan Eich situation, the community complained and he left.

And an executive is suing them. For discrimination.

That seems to be standard corporate stuff: The two sides disagree over the reason for a non-promotion. Should Mozilla lose the case you can be quite sure heads will roll because unlike other boards, Mozilla actually has to give a fuck about stakeholder opinion. See, well, Brendan Eich.

OTOH, blanket “they’re doing stuff wrong” “criticism” like yours will be ignored. That’s like filing a bug report saying nothing but “Doesn’t work fix noaw”

Why would the foundation have members? It’s not a coop, after all. It’s not the Linux Foundation model, either, which is “bunch of companies get together and decide on how to spend their money”. It’s much closer to the Bosch or Zeiss model, “We’re doing business but are owned by noone and instead of handing out dividends we throw money at some charitable stuff” – though Mozilla is way more charitable than either of them.

The board is bound to the Foundation’s statutes, and it can’t just change them. They’re required to steer the foundation such that its actions benefit the free and open web, if you think they’re doing something else, sue them. Or get oversight bureaucrats to investigate or however that works in the US.

What is real and physical about Harris being black when looked from one perspective, and as white when looked at from another?

I’m talking about inherited physical characteristics.

That’s genetics.

You can choose the former to an extent, but the latter is biologically inherited.

So Obama isn’t African American, got it.

The point is, people inherit physical characteristics common to their enthnicity

Ethnicity is not genetic. Are you one of those yanks spewing nonsense such as “I’m 23% French that’s why I like mayonnaise”.

“race is imaginary”

That anyone said that is something you’re imagining. Also just because we’re imagining something doesn’t mean it’s not real. A judge is just a human in fancy clothes imagining to have power over you, try telling them that as a defendant they’ll be impressed at your reasoning skills. The bailiffs? Only imagining that they have to follow the judge’s orders.

Nationality =/= ethnicity.

I never claimed them to be equal. Also, “Nordic” isn’t a nationality, Norwegian would be. If Harris was born in the US, moved to Norway when she was 3, went to school in Norway, studied in Norway, then returned to the US, what ethnicity do you think she would identify with? And yes bi-ethnic people exist, very common in fact because people do move around.

You force migrant Africans to drown in the Mediterranean, get off your high horse dude.

Did you just call me Italian. Or Greek. Or whatever. You force migrant Latinos to drown in the Rio Grande.

You take a set of physical characteristics and common heritage and you classify people based on that.

Why would you connect such unconnected things as phenotype and heritage? Why not have separate classifiers for both things? Why, then, on top of that, sort people into subcultures based on those classifiers?

That’s the whole point of the phrase “race is a social construct”. Attacking the validity of race as a concept.

Democracy is a social construct. Freedom is a social construct. The only thing that’s getting attack, and should and must be attacked, is a purported biological basis for ascribing properties to people based on phenotype because that’s complete BS. And with that, I repeat the Epictetus quote:

These reasonings are unconnected: “I am richer than you, therefore I am better”; “I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better.” The connection is rather this: “I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;” “I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours.” But you, after all, are neither property nor style.

Do you now, finally, understand what he’s saying there? The connection is not “You have black skin, therefore, you are African American”, the connection is rather “You have black skin, therefore, you get sunburnt less easy than me”.

As I have said, picking individual outliers does not invalidate a category.

I didn’t say anything about validity.

Probably not, but even if she could, she doesn’t have any Sicilian ancestry to my knowledge, so it would be inaccurate to call her Sicilian.

So it would be inaccurate to call Obama African American because he has no slave ancestry?

“African American” is a subculture identified with people freed from slavery. It is not a thing of ancestry, or Obama wouldn’t be part of it. It is not a matter of phenotype, or Harris wouldn’t be part of it. And both aren’t outliers, they’re simply prominent examples. At the same time, you have more recent African immigrants to the US who very much insist that they are not part of that group identity. Dunno how Obama’s father identified but he had that kind of heritage.

Noone, at least no American, is questioning Harris’ and Obama’s identity as African American, and that’s precisely because it’s neither about ancestry nor phenotype but subcultural belonging. They’re African American because they stay vibing that way.

She could call herself Nordic and we would laugh at her.

Plenty of people with much darker skin in the Nordics. If she had gone to school and studied in Norway or something Nordic would be absolutely accurate. See here on the other side of the Atlantic we don’t sort ethnicities by phenotype because phenotype has nothing to do with ethnicity. Correlation, yes, causation, fuck no. Double triple fuck no. This man is Oldenburger. How could I claim otherwise his Low Saxon is better than mine! …and Harris is African American, even she doesn’t fit the phenotype, because it’s only correlation, and Obama is African American, he fits the phenotype and chose to vibe that way, but also might’ve chosen otherwise. Which probably would not have exactly been the path of least resistance because America, overall, is racist AF with their subcultural identifications.

YOU JUST FUCKING ASSERT THIS. FUCKING A PRIORI.

No. Case in point: I mentioned how Harris has lighter skin than many a Sicilian, and also very much has a temperate climate nose. These are not, in the slightest, phenotype traits typical of sub-saharan Africa mostly Nigeria thereabouts where most of the slaves trafficked during the Atlantic slave trade where from.

If you can’t see that then I suggest you visit an optometrist.

If you pass as white you are, for all intents and purposes, white.

Then why is Harris considered black? What does “passing” mean, here? Does it really have anything to do with phenotype, or is it cultural?

But some humans have different numbers of fingers! Some have four,

That’s a misexpression, the genome codes for five. And even then: Having six fingers is a physical, objective, trait. Harris being black isn’t, phenotypically she could just as well be Italian.

Or are Arabs Hispanic, too?

Phenotypically? Yes, they’re very close. The whole Mediterranean is which shouldn’t be terribly surprising. I guess the reason USians use “Hispanic” and not “Greek” is because Mexico speaks Spanish.

The reason Europeans can reliably tell Sicilians and Arabs apart is not because of phenotype, but because Arabs tend to look like they visit the barber five times a day. Probably because they do.

Well by that definition fucking everything is a social construct.

Nope. That humans generally have five fingers is not a social construct, it’s an (emergent) property of our genome.

Whether Harris is sorted into “white” or “black” OTOH is based on a social construct: The US’s conception of race is not based on physical traits but social realities. It harkens back to the one drop rule which is complete BS when it comes to biology, what matters in her being sorted into “black” is not her phenotype (quite light skin, temperate climate nose, …), but that a portion, at least a drop, of her ancestry comes from black slaves. That’s a social context, not a biological one.

Even more obvious is Obama, actually: He’s not a descendant of slaves. So it’s not even heritage which dictates whether you’re black in the US, but whether your phenotype looks like you possibly could be.

Let me end with Epictetus:

These reasonings are unconnected: “I am richer than you, therefore I am better”; “I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better.” The connection is rather this: “I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;” “I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours.” But you, after all, are neither property nor style.

So you’re saying race == phenotype? Then you also have to say that race is a continuum, and, therefore, any arbitrary line on that continuum a social construct.

Which is btw blindingly obvious to Europeans, Harris is white in my book: There’s plenty of Italians with darker skin. Funny how perception changes if you actually consider skin colour to be skin colour and not some grand overarching signifier for an in reality culturally defined group.