As much as it fills me with joy to see fascists like JD Vance get mauled by their own past words, I hate how much this will be propped up as an argument against him today.

I think we can all agree that people change their minds, whether it be from propaganda, malicious intent, or genuine education, so the only thing he has to do to escape this line of attack is just say “my opinions changed.”

I’m sure that to a degree, he still believes what he originally wrote, but has simply repressed it in favor of being able to do less thinking about his political positions, and garner more public attention and power.

I don’t think they believe it works.

I think they just believe that shootings are bound to happen, because why else would they be happening on such a regular basis?

It’s the constant deflection of responsibility, from our choices as a society, to some indeterminate outside force.

Poverty and increasing cost of living? It’s all those darn immigrants.

Your job not paying you enough? Must be overseas industry.

They don’t think their prayers will prevent a school shooting, they just don’t think there’s other options to prevent it that will actually work without “taking away their freedom” (-to own a gun that’s more likely to harm them than protect them)

The highest usage of ad blockers happens within the age range of 18-24, which categorically includes Gen Z.

The second highest age range is 25-34, and the third highest is 12-17, which is also included in Gen Z.

That said, I would argue that, while knowing how to use a smartphone doesn’t make you tech savvy, knowing how to use an ad blocker doesn’t either. It’s as easy as installing an extension.

I suppose they could, but even cold storage has a cost, and with the scale Discord’s operating at, they definitely have many terabytes of data that comes into the CDN every day, and that cost adds up if you’re storing it permanently.

I also think the vast majority of users would prefer being able to upload much higher resolution images and videos, to being able to see the image they sent with their messages a year ago. I don’t often go back through my messages, but I often find myself compressing or lowering the quality of the things I’m uploading on a regular basis.

They could also do the other common sense thing, which is to, on the client side of things, compress images and videos before sending them.

The thing is, I did have encryption keys set up. The problem was that Element would repeatedly forget the very encryption keys passed by the other user, and would then have to request the keys again. Any historical message history would be permanently encrypted forever, and wouldn’t decrypt with the new view key.

After this happened about 4 times, I stopped using it, because it was impossible to maintain conversations for longer than 1-2 weeks before they’d inevitably be lost, and I’d then have to spend about an hour waiting for Element to receive the new encryption keys from the people I was contacting, even when they were already actively online.

I have no clue what was causing it, but it happened on multiple accounts, on multiple devices, all the time, and there was no conceivable fix. I’m not sure if this is fixed now, but I haven’t had a good reason to go back, especially with other encrypted messaging options out there.

Look, I’m as upset as you are about the enshittification of everything, but this is a bit too far.

There was always legitimate issues with Discord’s storage management, and they at least seem to be taking it seriously now.

I’m not a massive fan of Discord, but this is a bit of an overreaction.

For real.

I emailed them once asking about how they were complying with GDPR regulations if they didn’t allow users a way to delete all their message details, and didn’t even have a procedure for GDPR requests, only their standard, much worse privacy-wise account deletion process. They claimed it was because they had a legitimate interest to keep any messages not individually deleted, so the chats would still look coherent after an account was deleted.

They only delete your message if you delete it individually, so naturally, I was concerned, since you can’t delete messages in a server you were banned from, or left, and Discord provides no way for you to identify old messages in servers you’re not currently in.

They eventually, supposedly, sent my concerns to their data privacy team.

They were then sued for 800,000 euros about a month or two later.

They still don’t allow you to mass delete your message data. They really want to hold onto it for as long as they can.

Matrix is nice, but it’s still very bad UX wise.

I’ve used it on and off for years now, and about 2-4 times a month it loses my chat view encryption keys, and loses me my entire chat history. It also regularly has sync issues between devices signed into the same account, and is relatively slow sometimes to send messages.

Of course, that’s just my anecdotal experience, but I’ve tried many messaging platforms over the years, and while Matrix (and multiple of its clients, primarily Element) is the most feature-complete compared to Discord, it’s nowhere near properly usable long-term for a mass-market audience.

Same here, honestly. I would have thought they’d say something like “hey, we’re going to delete anything 1 year or older starting next month, and reduce that amount slowly down to 6 months with time” just to give people a general warning in case there was anything they were storing through Discord that they wanted to keep.

There’s also just a ton of optimizations they could have done. Are people repeatedly uploading the same file, with the same name and contents? merge them into one CDN link. They’d probably save hundreds of terabytes of data just from reposted memes alone through a hash matching algorithm.

The train also only runs between Erkner Station, and Tesla Sud, which is literally just the station right at the Tesla manufacturing facility in the area.

“It’s also free to not just Tesla employees, but regular passengers as well.”

That’s great and all, but are everyday people taking trains to go see the outside of a Tesla factory, then leaving again?

To counteract the somewhat clickbait-y title:

[the adult] was hospitalized on Aug. 22 and has recovered.

There has been no evidence that H5N1 […] has been spreading from person to person.

the patient in Missouri is the 15th human case of H5 reported in the U.S. since 2022. Since the beginning of 2024, 14 poultry and dairy workers have been infected.

There’s still no indication it’s spreading between humans, and it doesn’t seem to be “raising anxiety,” at least not in any significant way. “This will be of enormous interest” - DR. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert

The Open Source Initiative has a giant list of licenses that anyone can use to make their works fully open-source.

Some are just for code, but I’m sure they could be adapted to things like medicine, if needed.

I would be at least a bit worried too, but unfortunately the only reason this exists is because corporations decided to wall off access to producing their drugs legally so they could continue to exploit vulnerable people for profit.

For a lot of the people using this tech, it’s the only way they’ll get life saving medication, and without it, they’ll die. If that’s the kind of gamble they have to make, a possible risk of impurities or negative reactions is better than the considerably less desirable option of death.

Technically, drug dealers are using the tech (more specifically, other people are using it, then selling the product to the drug dealers, who then sell it to their customers as a ‘service’ included with the drugs)

The thing is, they’re not doing it to make stronger drugs, or for PR purposes. They’re actually adding pre-exposure prophylactics (PrEPs) into their heroin, which then creates the side effect of preventing the contraction of HIV from the needles. (referenced about 1/3rd of the way down this article)

If people are already going to be addicted to these drugs, them not getting HIV from it is just one harm reduction measure that can reduce their risk of serious, permanent illness.

Well that’s the coolest part about this, everything is based on the existing research.

The drugs they’re making are the exact same chemical compounds formulated by the drug companies, and contrary to popular belief, the compounds can actually be relatively simple, it’s the process of finding which compound that takes the most money from R&D.

So if you have 2-3 very standard chemicals, with well known reactions and outcomes, and you have the exact blueprint of what the final result should look like, and you can chemically test it afterward to see if it combined as expected, then anyone who has enough reason to use this instead of traditional means (i.e. being priced out of lifesaving medication completely) can be reasonably confident it will work.

And it’s only made more inspiring by the fact that he has his own personal history with the pharmaceutical industry that didn’t work for him.

I found another article on him and the collective, and there’s this honestly saddening quote:

“A toast to the dead, for children with cancer and AIDS,” Laufer said, raising a glass of bourbon and quoting the hip hop artist Felipe Andres Coronel, better known as Immortal Technique. “A cure exists, and you probably could have been saved.”

It’s even posted up on their page for the MicroLab right at the top.

They could do that, but the drugs are still much too expensive comparatively, and it doesn’t include many drugs, especially the ones that are the most absurdly priced.

For instance, after looking through various articles on him and scraping together some of the data, out of the medications referenced as being some that he’s made:

Misoprostol (Abortion Medication) - $14.90 on CPG - $0.89 via MicroLab

Sovaldi (Cures Hepatitis C) - Not available on CPG (normally $84,000) - $70 via MicroLab

Kalydeco (Treats Cystic Fibrosis) - Not available on CPG (Normally ~$500/day) - $10/day via MicroLab

Daraprim (Treats Parasitic Diseases & Some AIDS Patients) - $2443/30 pills on CPG - $80/30 Pills via MicroLab

Epinephrine (Treats Allergic Reactions, AKA epipen) - Not available on CPG (Normally $650-$750) - Initially $30 via MicroLab ($3/reload after)

The pharmaceutical industry is so screwed up, and these prices only show it more clearly.

As opposed to dying from the disease you already have because the traditional pharmaceutical industry makes the drugs you need out of your price range?

It won’t be a life long ailment for long if you’re going to die from a lack of care soon anyways.

DRM is relevant to the legal redistribution because that is part of the terms of their license agreement and for no other reason.

This is simply not true. If someone takes means to prevent illegal action, in a situation where they can choose to either do so, or not do so, taking those means shows they are attempting to prevent any negative legal outcomes.

The Internet Archive was explicitly, voluntarily enacting similar policy to libraries that directly license books from publishers, because they knew that it would show they were making an effort to lend responsibly. To me, it seems they carried on this set of ethics to when they opened up more copies than they originally had on hand, because that was during a time when library branches were becoming physically inaccessible, and physical resources were becoming increasingly hard to access, thus, responsible lending would include effectively making the inaccessible physical copies in other libraries accessible. That part might not be considered legal, but again, who cares? These publishers saw a substantial increase in profits during the time they were supposedly hurt by the Internet Archive, and continue to squeeze traditional libraries for every penny they can get under exploitative lending agreements. What the Internet Archive did was for the objective moral good of society.

If anything’s illegal, it’s compelling libraries to only license your content directly from you for a higher rate, while trying to discourage them from using the physical copies they can buy once like any other sane person.

Petition for changes to the law. Don’t lie and pretend the law says what you want it to.

I have not misrepresented the law by pretending it says something else. I have given you citations and quotes straight from the letter of the law, directly backing up my claims, while proving your blanket statements that all digitized lending was illegal as patently false.

Petitioning to change the law is not the only way to change it. For instance, I believe piracy from, say, streaming services, is ethical, if those same streaming services are jacking up rates, adding ads, and enshittifying their core product for the sake of making a quick buck. how else are you supposed to change things?

I’m sure you’ve seen the immense public backlash and legislative attempts to fix the rapidly enshittifying entertainment industry. They haven’t worked.

Look, even regardless of all my arguments for how I believe the vast majority of what the Internet Archive did was legal, I don’t care if it was. Because, in the end, If you own a book, you should be allowed to let other people read it. If people are losing access to literature, you should be able to make it available to as many people as possible. If companies are rapidly exploiting the public library system and looting it for everything it has, you should be able to offer an alternative.

These publishers do not deserve my, nor your sympathy.

you’re very conveniently ignoring the “material objects” part of that definition

I’m not, it’s just that the wording of the definition could lead to you interpreting it as such. It does not mean what you think it means.

In essence, it’s saying that if a material object is “fixed” (under copyright law, that tends to mean captured in a medium that allows it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated) it is considered a copy. Copyright law generally considers things like written texts (i.e. transcribing a book onto other sheets of paper) to be copies, but it also includes things like recordings, which are very much nontangible. (although still stored on tangible hardware) Also, note the “either directly or with the aid of a machine or device” section of that description.

DRM is entirely irrelevant. It has no bearing on anything.

The fact you consider DRM to be irrelevant in a conversation about managing legal access to digitally distributed content shows a lot about your understanding of this topic, to say the least.

DRM is highly relevant. If it were not, then all libraries would already be illegally publishing copies under the agreements they sign with publishers when they distribute books through DRM-protected applications like Overdrive or Libby. Legal consequence also does not extend past the original publisher if the intent was clearly not to deliberately allow for further copying. (i.e. if the Internet Archive stated they lent books so users could copy them and later share them with friends, that would be a violation. Instead, they have loan terms, limits, and DRM)

If anything done by a user after the lending of any material, outside of reasonable safeguards (like DRM) was to be considered illegal, then any store would be liable if someone used a kitchen knife to kill someone, and any chemical distributor would be liable if someone in a lab mixed the wrong chemicals together and made an explosion. Liability has an end point, and DRM helps signify that by placing technical restrictions on redistribution of material, while also carrying heavy legal penalties for breaking it, which would not be present if it wasn’t applied in the first place.

Publishers should not be able to sue libraries for lending their books, digital, physical, or otherwise. Especially when the publishers could not demonstrate any material harm.

You are actively defending multi-billion dollar publishing companies suing a library for lending content they legally acquired, using faulty interpretations of the law, and deference to lawsuits as a means of judging the morality of actions. You haven’t made a single point that wasn’t either verifiably untrue, or misinformed.

I would advise you to reevaluate your position.