averysmallbird

This is OpenAI and Meta using their leverage over the White House to screw over their competitor.

It’s clear from this post that Anthropic doesn’t believe this is legal, but is complying for the sake of it. Federal law doesn’t generally have broad authorities to send demand letters like these.

This isn’t so heavy handed. The purpose of age signaling is so that a parent can set in one place an age, and then federal privacy protections under COPPA and state protections under the AADC kick in.

It’s only enforced by the CA Attorney General, and I’d be surprised to see a threat, let alone a lawsuit, against Linux on this. Not to say this is ideal.

The response to GP is a credit to HN though too.

They are attempting to find the Starlink terminals so they can machine gun protesters without accountability or documentation, not because they have a regulatory issue with SpaceX.

I appreciate your engagement!

The most compelling reason I've read so far is that because the US sells weapons to Israel, though I think there's some good reasons to sell weapons too so it's not all negative.

Some of it is also memetic: a couple of decades ago Tibet was the cause celebre, after that it was Darfur and recall Kony 2012. Issues become important because there's active conflict and human cost, and then people discuss the issues that are getting discussed. And then sometimes those become signifiers for larger issues, e.g. anti-system politics as whole, liberal hopes, or conservative culture wars.

I appreciated your exchange in this subthread about the difference of the U.S.'s involvement versus Iran. However, I want to push back even without drawing that distinction, so I do it here.

I think private individuals and even civil society organizations, no matter how noxious or loud they can be, have a right to have specific passions without being expected to be universalist in application or having to account for why. Particularly when it comes down to the individual, people have a right to say, I find this cause very moving for whatever reason and I don't think then there's an obligation to answer for everything else going on in the world. Especially outside of governments, international organizations, and civil society groups that claim to be universalist in their cause. If anything we should be glad people have passions outside their narrow world.

I believe that as a general principle, but also because in practice that criticism tends to get waged, dare I say weaponized, against particular causes. I don't tend to see people focused on Somalia, Haiti, or Cuba being denigrated for not caring about Iran. I don't see people shouting down advocates for Christians in Nigeria over supposed silence on the Rohingya. I think its punitive for believing in a cause, generally specific causes, rather than about integrity.

I would venture to guess you can also find ample examples across the world, and that selectivity is simply a part of human nature rather than some defect of western psyche.

As someone very vocal on Iran, I find these recriminations shallow and generally intended to be punitive about those positions in those others places.

By the same precedent, it opens up Iranian human rights activists to the same endless accusations — when were you vocal on M23, Haiti, Kashmir, Kurds, Muslims in India, etc etc. I don't think it's countless silent organizations, and those organizations or activists are generally not in position to be able to influence the IRI or IRGC.

I think you have distinguish between feckless organizations like the ITU, and say, college student campus activists.

There's no single mechanism. Iran's internet is diverse at the edge, and bottlenecked at the international gateway.

Censorship, throttling, and (presumably) surveillance occurs at both layers. In some cases, also the region matters (Sistan and Baluchistan for example have experienced extended blackouts). In part that heterogeneity is because they still ideally want to keep businesses or VIPs online to mitigate the economic loss or logistical issues.

Consequently, the actual means of blocking tends to be on an ISP basis: some will simply drop packets, some will have left certain endpoints open, some will leave international DNS open, etc etc. All that changes when activists notice, exploit the opening, and then the ISP finds out. And then sometimes the TIC (the gateway) will impose blanket limitations or throttling.

My impression is that Iranian intelligence cares less about means than effectiveness, and ISP operators want to keep their license, livelihoods and lives, so they figure out how to meet the mandate. Given that this is something like the fourth blackout in recent years, they've gotten enough practice that there's few options out (that aren't Starlink).

This cannot be done by Executive Order anyway.

CFPB was created in part because of the failure of the FTC during the financial crisis. I’d suspect this specific issue would still be more under the remit of FTC, but no need for pedantry on the overall point. Sad to see enforcement agencies decimated — expect more of this.

think you mean the FTC.

What are the chances that this is made possible because of the DMA?

The pro-age verification folks have been talking about ZKPs for years now. Here’s one of the legal proponents of the Texas law, and now General Counsel at the FCC, referencing ZKPs[1]. More sophisticated folks have been pitching actual implementations for a while.

Setting aside whether age verification is desirable or a net benefit, some of the discourse is colored by folks that want to make it as painful and controversial as possible so they don’t have to do it.

[1] https://americarenewing.com/issues/identity-on-the-internet-...

Gershad — not sure it’s super active but seems like it still has a user base. https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/12/10977296/gershad-app-iran...

Not quite as clear cut. The EO triggers a national emergency under IEEPA, which is the basis of sanctions — so there is a well established legal underpinning. Unclear whether Microsoft has standing to challenge the designation of the ICC, and the courts give a lot of deference to the President on foreign affairs/national security. Microsoft is more “stuck” than “feckless” I think.

Same same. SMEX is based in Lebanon — (S)WANA is an obnoxious term that’s going around for MENA.

This is an April fools joke.

Your general premise is valid, but the specific theory doesn’t fit the relationship between the merchants and the credit card companies. See the fight over the Durbin/Marshall swipe fees bill: http://merchantspaymentscoalition.com/merchants-support-sena...

But your point about support — eg reversibility and fraud prevention — is very valid. Credit cards aren’t merely transactions in databases, but a set of customers and services.

Great book.

Nice to see this posted. Understated in this is that BND also helped North Dakota avoid the worst of the mortgage crisis, and that the student loan program (combined with decent state universities) make education more affordable. As far as banks go, BND is a gem.

Louis Rossmann doesn't seem to understand the FTC Act or its rulemaking authorities, especially after Loper Bright. Can't speak for Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, but the reason behind the zero dollar penalties under Section 5 violations is because of statutory limitations.

There’s a difference between screen time and social media usage.

It’s the Fifth Circuit. Coinbase steered the case there given its record of judicial activism. I wouldn’t take the outcome for granted.

Not sure this title and tweet is quite accurate. This was a veto of an act of congressional disapproval of an SEC rule. I’m not familiar with the underlying rule but the CRA itself might not have actually set proactive rules for firms. This wasn’t like FIT-21, where it’s a new regulatory regime.

Telecom mergers are handled by the FCC and DOJ, not the FTC, and the FTC has been bringing plenty of other industries than tech.

It does not create an age verification requirement. A platform only has obligations to provide safeguards when it has knowledge that a user is 16 and under. It also provides statutory direction that it does not require further steps to infer or collect age.

(I'm staff that cowrote the bill.)

The ESP32-C5 is supposed to have 5Ghz. https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32-C5

NLRB decisions in unfair labor practice cases can be appealed to a US Court of Appeals?