ricecake
@ricecake@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on If I cut up pictures to arrange things in a way that when traced over create something "new," is that a copyright violation? 2 days ago:
If just pasting it’s more arguable, but still likely permitted. If the copywriten characters are the central focus it’s more likely to be infringement.
Adding tracing makes it more transformative, and less dubious. Because of that and the “create a more homogenized image” part it’s closer to a new character inspired by the fusion of others. You’re not using anyone else’s assets, you’re transforming them via cutout, and transforming and adding your own creative work by blending them.
- Comment on A Judge Accepted AI Video Testimony From a Dead Man 5 days ago:
I feel like I could be persuaded either way, but I lean towards allowing them during sentencing.
I don’t think “it’s an appeal to emotion” is a compelling argument in that context because it’s no longer about establishing truth like the trial is, but about determining punishment and restitution.Justice isn’t just about the offender or society, it’s also indelibly tied to the victim. Giving them a voice for how they, as the wronged party, would see justice served seems important for it’s role in providing justice, not just the rote application of law.
Obviously you can’t just have the victim decide, but the judges entire job is to ensure fairness, often in the face of strong feelings and contentious circumstances.
Legitimately interested to hear why your opinion is what it is in more detail.
- Comment on A Judge Accepted AI Video Testimony From a Dead Man 5 days ago:
Hearsay is allowed in sentencing statements, and Arizona allows those statements to be in a format of their choice.
It’s the phase of the process where the judge hears opinions on what he should sentence the culprit to, so none of it is evidence or treated as anything other than an emotive statement.
In this case, the sister made two statements: one in the form of a letter where she asked for the maximum sentence, and another in the form of this animation of her brother where she said that he wouldn’t want that and would ask for leniency.
It’s gross, but it’s not the miscarriage of justice that it seems like from first glance. It was accepted in the same way a poem titled “what my brother would say to you” would be.
- Comment on A Judge Accepted AI Video Testimony From a Dead Man 5 days ago:
Reading a bit more, during the sentencing phase in that state people making victim impact statements can choose their format for expression, and it’s entirely allowed to make statements about what other people would say. So the judge didn’t actually have grounds to deny it.
No jury during that phase, so it’s just the judge listening to free form requests in both directions.It’s gross, but the rules very much allow the sister to make a statement about what she believes her brother would have wanted to say, in whatever format she wanted.
- Comment on A Judge Accepted AI Video Testimony From a Dead Man 5 days ago:
Jessica Gattuso, the victim’s right attorney that worked with Pelkey’s family, told 404 Media that Arizona’s laws made the AI testimony possible. “We have a victim’s bill of rights,” she said. “[Victims] have the discretion to pick what format they’d like to give the statement. So I didn’t see any issues with the AI and there was no objection. I don’t believe anyone thought there was an issue with it.”
Gattuso said she understood the concerns, but felt that Pelkey’s AI avatar was handled deftly. “Stacey was up front and the video itself…said it was AI generated. We were very careful to make sure it was clear that these were the words that the family believed Christopher would have to say,” she said. “At no point did anyone try to pass it off as Chris’ own words.”
The prosecution against Horcasitas was only seeking nine years for the killing. The maximum was 10 and a half years. Stacey had asked the judge for the full sentence during her own impact statement. The judge granted her request, something Stacey credits—in part—to the AI video.
From a different article quoting a former judge in the court:
“There are going to be critics, but they picked the right forum to do it. In a trial with a jury you couldn’t do it, but with sentencing, everything is open, hearsay is admissible, both sides can get up and express what they want to do,” McDonald said.
“The power of it was that the judge had to see the gentleness, the kindness, the feeling of sincerity and having his sister say, ‘Well we don’t agree with it, this is what he would’ve wanted the court to know’,” he said.
I don’t like it, and it feels dirty to me, but since the law allows them to express basically whatever they want in whatever format they want during this phase, it doesn’t seem harmful in this case, just gross.
I actually think it’s a little more gross that the family was able to be that forthright and say that the victim would not want what they were asking for, and still ask for it.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Chromes decision actually makes a lot of sense, from a security perspective. When we model how people read URLs, they tend to be “lazy” and accept two URLs as equal if they’re similar enough. Removing or taking focus away from less critical parts makes users focus more on the part that matters and helps reduce phishing. It’s easier to miss problems with www.bankotamerica.com/…/login_portal.asp?etc=etc&… than it is with bankotamerica, with the com in a subdued grey and the path and subdomain hidden until you click in the address bar.
It’s the same reason why they ended up moving away from the lock icon. Certs are easy to get now, and every piece that matches makes it more likely for a user to skip a warning sign. - Comment on 1 week ago:
The final piece is that often each of those services would be on a different computer entirely, each with a different public IP address. Otherwise the port is sufficient to sperate most services on a common domain.
There was a good long while where IP addresses were still unutilized enough that there was no reason to even try being conservative.
- Comment on To whom it may concern 2 weeks ago:
“these days”? I take it you weren’t paying attention during the whole “explorative credit” thing? We had to make the consumer financial protection bureau to, amongst other things, make them be a little less shitty? The bureau they’ve been desperately trying to get dismantled because it moderately limits their profits?
Have they ever been better than “kinda bad” at best?
Anyway, I didn’t specifically decry credit issuers. I implied that spammers are shitty, which I stand by and is far from a new sentiment.
- Comment on What's the point in getting married? 2 weeks ago:
It’s a shorthand for all those other legal arrangements, in a pragmatic sense. You can build the same thing with documents that confer the different legal relationships, or you can use the pre-packaged bundle. A lot of the one-off arrangements require a lawyer and filling fees for each document, where the bundle can be done for a $25 or so fee, and a judge or the clerk who collected the fee, depending on your jurisdiction.
There are also social and relationship perks to a public declaration of commitment. It doesn’t change anything, but a public declaration can make things explicit on all accounts.
Rings are just a social shorthand to communicate that to others passivelyThey also don’t actually need to be expensive. They became expensive because people are usually willing to shell out a little more for a special occasion, and a lot of people wedged themselves in and argued that without them it wasn’t really special. If you can’t put a price on love, then how can $10k be too much?
If you’ve decided to make a public commitment, a little party to celebrate is legitimately fun. You just need to separate what you need for the party to be fun and feeling like the scale of the party is a testament to your love or sincerity.
When I got married the ceremony was five minutes and done by a friend of ours, we had our friends and the closer circle of relatives as guests and we didn’t need to save up for things because we only got what would make us happy for our party. Our rings were cheaper than most because we talked to a jewler and had them make something according to our designs, and neither of us like diamonds. (Mine is a metal reinforced piece of a beautiful rock we found while rock hunting at a favorite camping spot, and hers is her favorite color, laid out well to avoid snagging on clothing.)
- Comment on To whom it may concern 2 weeks ago:
But they also work for the bad company, so my sympathy is limited. Not super limited, else I wouldn’t point out that they’re inevitably hourly employees, and a long day cleaning glitter creates an annoying backlog that creates even more overtime.
Punishing the worker for working for spammers, but also putting money in their pocket at the cost of the people making choices.Biggest issue is the cost of glitter. Easier to get dirt or rocks.
- Comment on I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket? 3 weeks ago:
Ah, choosing to ignore the territorial annexation that took place during the war or annexations that failed? And China?
- Comment on I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket? 3 weeks ago:
To be fair on that one, Puerto Ricans seem torn on what they want.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Proposed_political_status_for_…
Up until Trump the US has been reasonable about independence questions since WW2, for the most part. (Highlighting that independence is different than being free from interfering)
- Comment on I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket? 3 weeks ago:
en.wikipedia.org/…/Territorial_changes_of_the_Peo…
en.wikipedia.org/…/Military_occupations_by_the_So…
en.wikipedia.org/…/United_States_territorial_acqu…
Notable examples would be places like “Tibet”, several Baltic states, and an attempt on Finland. Hell, Russia is currently trying to annex Ukraine.
- Comment on I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket? 3 weeks ago:
They specifically said 20th century, and were obviously referring to the post world war period.
After the wars, the US sought soft power, not territory.
Aligning with them was often a more safe move. - Comment on CVE Board members launch the CVE Foundation, a dedicated, non-profit to continue identifying vulnerabilities, after the US ended its contract with Mitre 3 weeks ago:
Cool. You wrote an opinion that perfectly matched the opinion of a particular demographic that’s common on the site, and are now very offended that no one knew you were someone less common.
Which also entirely draws the conversation away from you saying it’s good that the government pulled funding from an organization that’s doing something good because government messes everything up.They’re already a non-profit. Why are you upset that they got money from the government? Wouldn’t the ideal to you be an NGO that got money without being under government control, and was therefore free from business influence as well?
Linux is a great example. It’s backed by a non-profit foundation, under the direction of mostly corporate advocates. That’s what people talk about when they talk about a non-profit being beholden to corporate money.
The shape of Linux has steadily been pushed towards being more and more focused on server and data center operations, since that’s what the people in charge of funding allocation care about, and that’s what they’ll direct their parent organizations to contribute developers to working on.Your government sucks. I get that. It doesn’t mean I don’t expect more from mine, and it doesn’t mean that I reject the notion that I should have say in the management of the things around me.
The NGO that you envision will do a better job managing the drainage where I live doesn’t answer to me, and I have no recourse if they mess up and flood my house.I’d like something like the NGO you envision, but with public accountability. This is often called a “government”.
- Comment on CVE Board members launch the CVE Foundation, a dedicated, non-profit to continue identifying vulnerabilities, after the US ended its contract with Mitre 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, the lobbying question is a complicated one.
In an ideal world it would be much closer to how the standards committees work. The issue isn’t people sharing their opinions and desires for how the system should work, it’s when they use inequitable means to bias the decision. My industry, security, has lobbied for official guidelines on security requirements for different situations. Makes it easier to tell hospitals they can’t have nurses sharing login credentials: government says that’s bad, and now your insurance says it’s a liability.
The problem is that lobbying too often comes with stuff like a “we’re always hiring like minded people at our lobbying firm, if you happen to find yourself in the position to do so, give us a call.”.
It’s too easy for people with a lot of money to make their voices more heard.It’s not that the wealthy and business interests should be barred from sharing opinions with legislators, it’s that “volume” shouldn’t be proportional to money. My voice as a person who lives near a river should be comparable to that of the guy who owns the car wash upstream when it comes to questions of how much we care about runoff going into the river.
- Comment on CVE Board members launch the CVE Foundation, a dedicated, non-profit to continue identifying vulnerabilities, after the US ended its contract with Mitre 3 weeks ago:
So you want it to be run like it is today, but with less money? Do you think they’re going to spread whatever incompetence you see them having via funding?
Usually when people celebrate the removal of government from a public service it’s because they think it should be arranged to turn a profit.
You didn’t list your stance on every issue in your comment so I can only assume that you have the rest of the beliefs that I’ve always seen go with that opinion.
- Comment on CVE Board members launch the CVE Foundation, a dedicated, non-profit to continue identifying vulnerabilities, after the US ended its contract with Mitre 3 weeks ago:
people will always mess stuff up. Government is just the group of people you have a say in.
When the public good gets messed up, I’d rather it be by the people I can vote out than by the people who only answer to shareholders.
I just don’t understand the persistent belief that a profit motive will magically make something more aligned with the public good.
- Comment on CVE Board members launch the CVE Foundation, a dedicated, non-profit to continue identifying vulnerabilities, after the US ended its contract with Mitre 3 weeks ago:
I think you might be overestimating how complex the system is. This isn’t collaborative, and it’s barely even dynamic. It’s essentially bookkeeping around a list of numbers and a zip file of text documents.
github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/…/main.zip
The reporting of the issues is already done by other people, they just rely on a central group to keep the numbers from colliding.
www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-3576
Not a whole lot there.
Significantly more worrying is the nvd.
nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-31161
There’s additional data attached relating to not just the vulnerability, but exploitation and the system configuration that’s known to be exploitable.
Up until now it was benign, as well as entirely unavoidable, for so much of the infrastructure of the Internet to be closely tied to the US government.
- Comment on CVE Board members launch the CVE Foundation, a dedicated, non-profit to continue identifying vulnerabilities, after the US ended its contract with Mitre 3 weeks ago:
Even corporations understand the value of having a seat at the table. A significant reason for corporate sponsorship of standards groups and such is so that if it comes up, they have a person there who can argue for their interests.
Not even in an interesting or corrupt way.
“Our engineers think it would be better to do it this way, any objections?” And then everyone talks about it.Leaving means you only get to use what others put together. If your needs don’t fit you just have to cope.
Corporations love getting stuff for free, but if all it takes to solve a technical problem is cash, that’s great too. Cash is a better way to solve a technical problem than time and engineers.
- Comment on DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse 1 month ago:
It’s worth noting that one of those organizations is IBM. Mostly relevant because they’re the ones that originally built a lot of that cobol, the mainframes it runs on, and even the compilers that compiled it.
They’re basically the people you would expect to be able to do it, and they pretty quickly determined that the cost of a rewrite and handling all the downstream bugs and quirks would exceed the ongoing maintenance cost of just training new cobol developers.My dad was a cobol developer (rather, a pascal developer using a compiler that transpiled to cobol which was then linked with the cobol libraries and recompiled for the mainframe), and before he retired they decided to try to replace everything with c#. Evidently a year later their system still took a week to run the nightly reports and they had rehired his former coworkers at exorbitant contractor rates.
- Comment on One in five Americans want their state to join Canada amid escalating trade war: poll 1 month ago:
That tracks. I currently have better regard for Canada than I do the US, and while Canada has problems like anywhere else, they’re not charitably described as “your countrymen elected a felon who already did a bad job” as president. And the healthcare system is just… Better.
- Comment on When Your Threat Model Is Being a Moron 1 month ago:
I actually wouldn’t be shocked if it was possible with modern smartphones. A significant amount of money is available to be made from federal security work, and meeting the NSA criteria has benefits that extend to companies that work in the federal security space as well.
- Comment on How exactly are people lighting Teslas on fire? 1 month ago:
It’s most likely gasoline. It’s very difficult to engineer upholstery and rubber to be resistant to prolonged exposure to an open gas fire. Usually the best you can do is get to a minimum safe time for certain temperatures.
The highest standards you’ll run into day to day are baby clothing, bedding, and residential wall insulation.
The reasons for those being specifically regulated should be relatively obvious, and are respectively heartbreaking, scary, and sensible.Cars tend to be going fast when they encounter issues, and there’s a lot less ability to make a lot of assurances. As a result, cars tend to be designed for controlled failure rather than resilience. This allows to car to fail around the passengers, hopefully resulting in the car, which is totaled anyway, absorbing the damage the passengers would have otherwise gotten.
We can make a car that can take a 45mph collision with an oak tree. We just don’t know upfront that that’s how it’s going to crash, and the squishy people inside can’t be made to tolerate a 45mph collision with the dashboard. So instead of making a perfect fuel tank, we just make sure that if it breaks it tries to rupture the fuel away from the passenger compartment. Instead of making the upholstery incapable of burning (which comes with downsides like “expensive”, “uncomfortable”, “ugly”, “smelly”, or “even more toxic than current flame retardants”) we make it able to resist burning for as long as it would take for the air inside the vehicle to become deadly hot. It doesn’t matter if the seat fabric is unscathed if the fire is hot enough to warp the metal.Beyond all that, Tesla’s are notoriously poorly engineered, and in that category the cyber truck is best in class. I do not know, but would not be surprised, if accelerant was simply able to seep into the more flammable parts of the car from the outside.
As for surveillance catching the people, covering your face, obscuring identifying marks, and simply being far away by the time anyone notices the fire is a good bet. The police might try a bit harder because it’s an expensive property crime, but it’s ultimately a property crime where no one is going to be building their career on it, so there won’t be real incentive to go above and beyond.
- Comment on The Pebble Has Been Brought Back 1 month ago:
… What?
Your screenshot has the founder saying it’s reparable. It also has him telling someone with unreasonable expectations that they would be disappointed.
If you literally take his comment out of context you can construe it as him saying they didn’t consider repairability or lifetime. But why wouldn’t you look at the context that’s right there?
- Comment on The Pebble Has Been Brought Back 1 month ago:
In the context of him saying the device is repairable, the top comment talking about repairing it, and the comment in question replying to that thread, it seems a bit weird to say “he didn’t say it in this comment, so the comments where he says it’s repairable don’t count”.
- Comment on The Pebble Has Been Brought Back 1 month ago:
Sure have!
He told someone not to buy it if they expect more than five years without repairs. That person seemed to think spending more than $100 should get them a product that lasts a lifetime, and was irritated the founder said he thought it was pretty good that a piece of low cost consumer electronics made it five years before needing repairs.
What part of that says to you that it’s not reparable or won’t last five years?
- Comment on The Pebble Has Been Brought Back 1 month ago:
- Comment on The Pebble Has Been Brought Back 1 month ago:
Epaper and eink are different. Eink consumes no power when idle, and epaper consumes almost no power.
- Comment on The Pebble Has Been Brought Back 1 month ago:
It reads to me like he’s saying that if you expect 5+ years without maintenance if it’s more than $100, you should look at a different product.
The top comments are someone saying that after five years they needed to repair it due to battery failure, and the founder saying the repair process is the same.Five years is longer than the average lifespan of a liIon battery. Expecting to be able to skip repairs that long is unreasonable for a $150 product.
It reads like the founder actually giving realistic expectations. A $150 product will likely need repairs to last longer than five years, and you’ll be disappointed if you expect otherwise.
Can you point to a similar product that costs about as much that fits your criteria?
