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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 26th, 2023

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  • Please inform yourself. In these comments and on their website, it is covered that they do not provide books freely. Just like any other library books can be borrowed exactly as many times as they own a copy.

    Just like any other library they sometimes provide a download for Adobe Digital Edition, which manages your lends on books. But as your friend with DRM stripping tools for sure can confirm: DRM is just an annoyance for legitimate customers, it forces legitimate users to use specific applications, while pirates get the freedom to choose how they interact with the not any more protected media. But this is a discussion for another thread as archive.org treats copyrighted books just like any other library.







  • Yes but No. For most people writing this kind of mail should not be a problem. However, for many different reasons it can become difficult to write such things: This mail is some kind of formal letter and alters a contract. Let’s imagine someone with a learning disability, they may be able to sign up for a online service, as they have done it many times. Writing a formal letter they may not have done many times and they cannot map past experiences the same way as a neurotypical person.

    Depending on the local law this may be a reason why forced arbitration has to be opt-in: Typically the law should protect the weaker party. As the barrier for writing this letter is higher than the sign-up process, there is an argument that the chosen opt-out process of discord is targeted against some of their weakest customers.



  • Small businesses can individually refuse to do business with the big shopping mall -> add threads to the block list (‘defederate’ them)

    The big shopping mall is not allowed to put their building at the public square -> threads is not allowed to use ActivityPub

    The first statement is totally ok and a lot of instances do this. However, similar like shopping malls it can pose a challenge for small businesses to stay competitive, while categorically refusing business with the big actor. The second statement would require the towns construction committee to not give the shopping mall a license to build. However, this construction committee is a centralised power and not in the design of ActivityPub.

    I do not like threads and see them as a potential threat to what we have here. Exactly because it could become harder to stay competitive while refusing them. But i don’t see much that we can actively do.




  • I hear you. During the reddit exodus i left without having an alternative and stumbled upon lemmy much later. So i am fine going back to not having social media. However, a social network only survives if there is enough content. And if we are honest, lemmy barely has enough content.

    Ill give you an example: I like climbing and there is !climbing@lemmy.ml with roughly 2 posts a month and !climbing@sh.itjust.works with less. I am happy to see something about my hobby twice a month. But all my friends still are on reddit, because two posts a month are not enough to them.

    If you click on my profile, you will find 4 posts. I am a natural lurker, like most people on the internet, i read, vote and maybe comment. These posts, i made them because i wanted to add some content to this platform. While facebook is federated, there will be much more content. We can see theirs, they can see ours. Sounds like a win-win, right? But it may also make lemmings dependent on facebook content. If there is always more than enough content to endlessly scroll, I don’t need to upload my stuff to the network. However, if facebook pulls the plug after a long time, that leaves barely any content here and lemmy is basically dead.

    I would probably still be around: Angrily clicking on some link about random big corpo, once a month smiling because someone shared a picture doing the same hobby as i. But for sure there are still people on old XMPP instances, while motivated dev’s reinvented XMPP: Matrix




  • Something that sounds like a production flaw to me is how the IRS gets corrupted. Sadly the article did not go too much into detail, but gyroscopes and accelerometers should not be affected by GPS data. Sure, if they do not sync up with current data, error propagation becomes a problem - especially on long flights. But i reckon gradually depreciating data is better than maliciously wrong data.

    The article mentioned, that large plains have 2 GPS receivers. The spooving seems less traditional (sending wrong data with more power), but more sending a lot of incomplete data to confuse the receiver. This should introduce a desynchronization of the two receivers present, and alert the internal systems. Since it is detected, that something went wrong with the GPS, the 3 IRS can calculate the position from recorded data. This is a fallback and accuracy will depreciate. But if the pilot is aware it could still be valuable information. Additionally it is more scalable than air traffic control having to navigate affected planes.


  • I agree, that the snail mail comparison limps. I just included it, since you brought it up initially. Lets drop it for now.

    You are arguing that simply broadcasting an analog signal fulfils delivery, even if no device is receiving it. This deviates from your initial technical limitations argument, but lets assume this is true. If broadcasting a signal without caring whether it is received or if it is, by how many devices, fulfils delivery. Then a streaming service simply needs to make their advertisement available (eg. ads.mestream.com or as clickable content on mestream.com). The ads are available for everyone and no one cares whether or how many devices access them. Most streaming services go further than that and programmatically force people to watch those ads by playing them before the main-content or by similar means.

    But we know that TV stations operate differently from how you described. If no one would care if and by how many devices the signal is received, there would not be any pricing difference. But since the tech allows to know rather accurate how many devices receive a signal, a spot at 8pm is much more expensive than 3am. So we know TV stations and advertisers using TV do care about how many devices receive that signal. I would go even further and say they actually care about how many people see the advertisement. But since the technical limitation does not allow this insight, number of devices is the closest value to monitor.

    I am repeating myself, but YouTube not wanting to provide services to people who neither pay a subscription or watch ads is within their rights. Whether it is a viable business strategy will show. But for you to call using an ad-block theft, that just doesn’t make sense. Unless you also call it theft, to turn off your TV during commercials. If it becomes a technically and legally viable to analyse how many people are watching those ads, it would become theft to close your eyes.

    Edit: changed the URLs, so they do not point to an existing service.