Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | fn-mote's commentslogin

Cited elsewhere in this thread. [1]

> First, numerous other individuals have challenged recent administrative subpoenas in court after receiving notice, and the Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn those subpoenas before reaching a court decision.

They don't want a ruling against them.

> [The subpoena would have been quashed because] there are facial deficiencies in the subpoena, including that the subpoena is missing a “Title of Proceeding.”

[1]: https://www.eff.org/files/2026/04/13/eff_letter_re_google_no...


I’m really hoping this leads to criminal convictions once these clowns are voted out of office.

Congress needs to retroactively eliminate the presidential pardon, or (more realistically) states need to pass laws allowing them to prosecute members of the federal government (the federal government already did this to the states; the result would be symmetric, and likely survive legal challenges.)


The underlying problem is that the presidency is just a non-hereditary elected monarch. If you make a "CEO of the military", you have made a king. We need to get rid of or neuter the presidency.

The reason why we have this defective executive structure is because the Founders wanted separation of powers and thought Parliaments were inherently corrupt. In a Parliament, the executive is fundamentally a creature of the legislature and cannot disobey it. The Founders wanted an independent executive that couldn't be overruled by normal legislative actions, because the executive is supposed to be calling out the legislature when they do a tyranny. And since that executive executes the law, they also need control over the military. Congratulations, you have made a king.

Separation of powers failed the moment America got a party system: why would a Republican Congress check the power of a Republican President? Likewise, the process for removing a rogue President is laughably difficult to execute. In almost every party system in America, impeachment and conviction would require a complete collapse of party support for their own President. This rarely happens, because Congress is reliant on the Presidency to send votes downballot[0]. Voters do not reward political traitors for saving the voter's asses.

So in my mind, the only ways to fix this would be to either:

1. Replace the President and Vice President with an Executive Council (ala the EU Commission) where there is one member per department and every member is a separate elected position.

2. Make impeachment convictions a 50% majority matter.

3. Abolish the executive branch entirely and have Congress elect its own to do executive functions (i.e. become a Parliament).

I can see problems with all three, but they seem less problematic than just letting one guy run everything with term limits as the only check on their power.

[0] In general, there is a problem with Congressional and local elections not getting as much attention as they should be. I've found that mail-in ballots actually make it a lot easier to vote downballot. Even if I don't recognize the name off the top of my head, I can look them up and have a decent idea of what I'm voting for. If you have to do this in a ballot box, you aren't going to have a lot of time (there's a lot of people behind you) and will just skip the downballot races.


No, just charge for the amount of storage they use on your server. Not the amount of data you think you’re storing. In non-special cases these will be the same number.

Makes sense.

Would there be any engineering/management pushback on the customer side? "we have to write a tiny script", "this is non-standard" / "why are you the only ones who charge us for filenames?"

(have limited knowledge here)


Out of curiosity, what does happen?

Your ISP sends you a "strike" letter, and eventually cancels your service if you continue to receive them.

AFAIK not much in most of the world, in Germany you get a letter from lawyers wanting ~1000 EUR

In Australia the court ruled that they can only sue for the cost of renting the movie, so they don't bother trying to recoup their ten bucks

That's interesting. Do you have further reading? I've seen AFACT v iiNet, but that doesn't look to be the source of "cost of renting", just that the ISP isn't responsible for their users.

Yep, check out Dallas Buyers Club v iiNet

Here's some commentary on it:

> Justice Perram discussed the idea of speculative invoicing within Australia

> Representing to a consumer that they have a liability which they do not may well be misleading and deceptive conduct within the meaning of s 18 of the Australian Consumer Law and it may be equally misleading to represent to someone that their potential liability is much higher than it could ever realistically be. There may also be something to be said for the idea that speculative invoicing might be a species of unconscionable conduct within one or other of s 21 of the Australian Consumer Law or s 12CB of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 (Cth).

> Further, even if speculative invoicing was deemed to be lawful within Australia, the damages that the individual may be liable to are often calculated differently to that of the United States. In Australia, damages are compensatory in nature, meaning to compensate the plaintiff for the loss suffered. One Intellectual Property Lawyer has been quoted as saying, ‘If a film costs $20, the damages would ordinarily be expected to be $20.’

https://www.kells.com.au/insights/business/dallas-buyers-clu...


Canada is capped at $5k for noncommercial infringement, and even at that amount it still isn't worth it for the copyright holder to go to court.

Frankly, the entire world is now paying for what is happening in the US.

Were you talking about specifically how do you restrain the power of massive corporations to harm people? AI is coming but a lot of the other things that are happening are preventable - like the rise of no-benefit gig work.


> My mum actually told me that she talked to some AI.

You have no argument here. Make an argument then we can talk. Right now it’s going in circles.


I added talking points like the one were i state that people call support just to fix issues they could fix themselves.

My point with my mum should imply that it was successful but for sure at least you are pointing something out and now we can talk about it: My mum talked to an AI and it helped her.


Ill-thought out logic.

The company that deployed the LLM is lying to you. The people who made that decision are the ones who are culpable.

We both agree that it’s terrible.

I think it’s important to have an enforcement mechanism to force companies to do what they are responsible for doing. An Anti-Kafka Law, so to speak.


An important distinction to make, and I whole heartedly agree.

It’s not LLMs replacing workers, it’s people. People who have a lot of money and don’t sell their labour for a paycheque. And the systems that compel them to such actions.


Sorry, I really cannot tell if this is sarcasm or not.

One of the TOTP apps had a periodic test that you still knew the paraphrase. It started frequent and then backed off to like once a month. There’s definitely a benefit even if it’s annoying.


That’s not sarcasm and it doesn’t allow any backup, it literally just to make sure you didn’t forget the PIN. It’s once a week, forever. It’s a good way to make sure people don’t activate 2FA.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/1278661612895630/

> WhatsApp will regularly ask you to enter your PIN as a reminder. As long as you don't reset the PIN, you will get a reminder once a week.


It depends on whether one has it stored in a password manager or not. If stored, there is no benfit. Giving users a choice would be better.

That app was authy by Twilio. Twilio screwed over everyone using that app

It sounds like you’re hinting at being unhappy with the lock-in forced by the ecosystem.

The flip side of the coin: any possibly avenue to exfiltrate data and do (advertising) tracking by app developers will be used. The restrictions also protect my privacy.

And my phone battery.


Clearly they don't protect your privacy as evidenced by the post we're commenting on.

> the actual plaintiffs only get $0.05

This isn’t true at all. People where I live got $300 settlements from Facebook.

Parent post seems like anti-class action FUD.


I've been in at least a dozen class action suites and the payouts are measured in cents. I'm glad someone got something more, but that's not common.

> after the other guy has folded, continuing with your threat just to be petty is kind of dumb

Your community is still going to be paying whatever the cable company wants to charge for the service. There's definitely a reason to run it yourself.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: