> the whole modus operandi for desktop environments is not made with e-ink in mind
It used-to be in the DOS and terminal days, and it wouldn't take much to get us back there. Shut off all the eye-candy transition effects. Make your web browser, PDF viewer, etc., always scroll a full page at a time, instead of scrolling 1mm when you click on the button or use the mouse wheel. Just those few changes and you'll have something that'll work pretty well.
Besides, even during DOS days, and generally console days, software such as DB2, Oracle, and all the OS/360 offering, was doing absolutely okay. With all the UTF glyphs available to us now (not to mention the chat interface), I can totally imagine super useful and distraction-less TUIs to front business systems. And e-ink/e-paper would suffice most use-cases for the software which brings actual value to industries.
I call BS. NOBODY ever LIKED to type on T9. Maybe you well-tolerated it. Maybe you got reasonably good at it. But not LIKED. There's a reason text messaging really took over when smartphones came in... because T9 was no longer needed. It was objectively awful.
My old Sony Ericsson T616 was inferior to my smartphone in so many ways, but I could tap out SMS messages on that keypad without having to look at it. It was handy to be able to take notes on long drives.
My brother is Christ, call BS all you WANT. This is T9-esque and we have comments in here being interested in going away from full keyboards on their phones in favor of cramming multiple letters onto buttons and letting the software do it again. Time is a flat circle and all that.
Chinese state TV treated him like a protester, and spun it as an example of what nice guys the Chinese Army is:
CHINA TELEVISION ANNOUNCER: [subtitles] Anyone with common sense can see that if our tanks were determined to move on, this lone scoundrel could never have stopped them. This scene flies in the face of Western propaganda. It proves that our soldiers exercised the highest degree of restraint. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/etc/transcript.html
I've seen things going the opposite way. It's only recently that an average person could jump on eBay and get assembled low-level electronic module/boards for cheap, and assemble into their project.
Yes, you'll probably have difficulty walking into a STORE to buy PC components, but only because online shopping has been killing local shops for decades now. You'll find it easy to get that stuff online, for better prices.
PCs, since the very start, have been going through a process of being ever more integrated each generation. Not too many people install sound cards, IDE controllers, etc., anymore. CPUs, GPUs, and RAM are about the only holdouts not integrated on the motherboard these days. It's possible that could change, if CPUs and GPUs becomes fast enough for 99% of people, and RAM gets cheap enough that manufacturers can put more on-board than 99% of people will need. And while you might not be happy about that kind of integration, it comes with big price reductions that help everyone. But we're not there yet, and I can't say how long down the road that might be.
Not my experience. I've been able to go to a local store to buy PC components for more than 35 years now and last did to upgrade the RAM in the laptop to be eligible for Win11. Online only was not cheaper and local store had it available same day. Local store does have online presence and is a chain tho.
Mouse replacement on a weekend coz old one broke same story (button smashed in and not usable at all any longer). Online not cheaper, no same day available at any price, Amazon delivery without Prime no next day either. Local chain store had it for immediate pickup and I was gaming again in 30 minutes.
In many cities in the US, there's Microcenter, where you can walk out with every part you need. We also still have smaller stores that can build clones for you/hand you the boxes, but they don't quite have the same variety of parts.
Microcenter is one of the very few local DIY stores remaining. Best Buy has some stuff like hard drives but, even in the Boston area, I can't think of many other examples at this point.
Of course, you have Newegg and other online stores.
In some cities.
I happen to be from one of them.
Now I live in a far bigger city (Los Angeles) and the closest Microcenter is 2 hours away. Worse with traffic on a Tuesday afternoon. They’re only in a handful of states, sadly.
There are not many places that offer a reasonable selection of boards that are close. Fry’s was the last bastion for many folks. Best Buy sometimes has a few options. But today is a far cry from the days of Circuit City, Computer City, CompUSA, RadioShack… not to mention dozens of mom & pop stores. Online is the main way nowadays.
> I'm curious where you live. Anecdotally, this is the opposite to the experience of everyone I know.
Actually, his experience is the standard PC enthusiast experience for the vast majority of DIY'ers in many nations. And is now subject to threat if businesses catering to consumers shut-down.
> Actually, his experience is the standard PC enthusiast experience for the vast majority of DIY'ers in many nations.
I have to genuinely question this. I haven't heard of anyone I know buying PC components at a physical store in like 20 years, and I know people from various nations.
There are still physical stores in most cities so I guess they are still selling if they aren't out of business. They cater for a more enthusiast/gaming oriented population than in the past but still.
You have to take into account that same day delivery from amazon and the likes is only a real thing in the USA. Most other markets do not have the same service, even with accounts such as Amazon Prime. There is only one online store I know that is providing same day delivery in my area in Spain and it is a physical (and rather expensive) chain, El Corte Inglés.
I'm in Melbourne, I can ride my bike a few kilometers and buy standard PC parts. Not everyone here lives that close to a store, but there are multiple established chains with stores all over the metropolitan area. Even so these stores probably do the bulk of business in online sales.
I am guessing you purely stick to the mobile-phone/corpo-laptop crowd then ? Finding PC enthusiasts should not be that difficult. They are legions of them all over the world - not just in the developed nations.
Even normal folks upgrade RAM. My aunt did so last year for her old desktop PC. PC components are available in the local computer hardware market of any nation. (Though admittedly, most people buy parts online nowadays and local hardware markets are shutting down)
> I am guessing you purely stick to the mobile-phone/corpo-laptop crowd then ? Finding PC enthusiasts should not be that difficult. They are legions of them all over the world - not just in the developed nations.
No. I'm a PC enthusiast myself, as are most of those people I know. I run an online (PC) gaming community.
> (Though admittedly most people nowadays just buy online and local hardware markets are shutting down)
Then I misunderstood what you were saying. PC community has actually increased over last few years as people have become dissatisfied with the big-2 consoles.
I usually buy my cables there since the price difference for brand cables is negligible and I like to have my cable actually do the rated specs. Full pc parts no, but then again I usually buy niche parts not widely available. I usually go to the small repair shop first, and if they don't have any to the big brand. Small shop is a bit more expensive but the guy can order specialized small parts (printer memory module comes to mind) if you ask nicely and even directed you to other shops. Medium sized 100k+ city in NW Europe.
A couple of years ago, one rainy Saturday morning, I woke up with a devastating hangover and nothing else to do - so I decided to build myself a PC, like in good old days. Turned out it wasn't at all difficult to find a local store; only two-three hours later I was already driving home with all these sexy looking boxes filled with hardware. That was in Sweden.
Last local walking distance shop closed earlier this year (city in Germany). Used to go there for parts needed on short notice: mouse, cables etc. Not sure if there are many left now in this city that stock components like motherboards, gfx cards or RAM.
> Used to go there for parts needed on short notice
Which is why they shut down - the addressable market of people having an emergency need for an item from a limited selection of electronics isn't that big, and that's becoming the only market.
It's not your fault that you don't want to pay over the odds for everything when you're not in a rush, and it's not their fault they need to pay commercial rent, utilities, payroll, insurance and all the other overheads.
But the outcome is simply that staffed local physical shops have a lower efficiency ceiling in terms of getting items to customers.
Aren't mediamarkt still selling computer parts in Germany? Maybe not ram and mother boards but in my city in Spain Mediamarkt still sell all the peripherals, some internal drives and cabling at the very least.
Microcenter has a total of 29 stores across the US. Yankee Candle has almost 10x as many locations (240).
Yes, Microcenter "exists", but primarily through selective cultivation of their locations. From a pure market footprint perspective, they are outclassed by a candle company, and many other niche businesses.
At no point was I entirely denying that some people go to physical stores to buy components. I was just countering the idea that a majority of people do so, as opposed to ordering online.
30 years ago you would buy what was available locally, possibly you could obtain from the shop owner that he orders a part from his distributor's catalog and that was it. And we weren't giving it much second thought.
Now when we know we can obtain any brand or any model online we are much more picky about our component choices. I know for me it is the same in other areas I am knowledgeable like bicycle parts. Regardless of the price more often than not the local bike shop doesn't have the exact tire model I want so if I am not in a hurry I order online. I wasn't unhappy buying whatever was available back in the days as it was just not a possibility and I had less knowledge about what was available, even when receiving magazines every month. Ignorance is bliss sometimes.
I'm not the parent poster, but in my experience it depends on the location. I live in the Bay Area. We had Fry's Electronics before it closed, and when Fry's closed I shifted to Central Computers. We finally have a Micro Center in Santa Clara now! I find Central Computers and Micro Center to have reasonable prices that are competitive with online stores. However, it can sometimes be a difficult drive through traffic getting to these stores, and so it's often more convenient for me to order something online. I've had nothing but good experiences shopping from Newegg.
When I was an undergrad at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 20 years ago, I relied heavily on Newegg, since there were no large electronics stores in San Luis Obispo back then for computer enthusiasts. Best Buy today has come a long way and is now a great place for PC enthusiasts, but this wasn't the case 20 years ago; it had much more of a consumer electronics focus back then. Four years ago I was visiting Cal Poly friends in Santa Maria; we were building my PC together. I bought the wrong power supply online, and so we ended up going to Best Buy in Santa Maria, where I was able to find the correct power supply for a good price!
Even with Best Buy's improved selection, nothing beats Micro Center in either Silicon Valley or Irvine, but if you're in neither location and Best Buy doesn't stock what you need, then you have to order online.
As much as I love Micro Center, though, nothing beats Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara, Tokyo. That store is electronics heaven, at least for new components. For used components, I peruse Akihabara's alleys, which are filled with small shops specializing in used and retro gear.
In the small-town bits of Ohio I've lived in for most of my life, computer stores come and go from time to time. There used to be more of them but they still exist.
The one that my first PC came from (in 1988) was open for something like 20 years. Another that still remains has been there for 33 years.
Plus, I mean: Best Buy stocks some PC parts. So does Wal-Mart. They're not "local," but they're nearby and they have stuff.
I have complete confidence that I could leave the house in the morning with nothing but some cash, and come home with enough parts to build a performant and modern PC from ~scratch in about an hour or two -- including travel.
And that's Ohio -- it's flyover country, full of corn fields and cowpies.
Microcenter is headquartered here in Ohio. Arguably the best PC focused "brick and mortar" store still in existence. I feel like I stepped back into my childhood every time I go into one of their stores
Yes. Microcenter was founded in Columbus, Ohio -- IIRC as a shop on High Street most of a lifetime ago. The present headquarters are, IIRC, just up the road in Hilliard. They maintain an excellent and enormous retail store in the area. There is an amazing (and not at all cheap) Greek restaurant across the street.
But after I drive to Microcenter and shop there and drive back, I'm fuckin' tired. I won't want to build a PC when I get home. I'll want to think about either getting a pizza or going to bed, and the bed will probably win.
So usually, I don't shop at Microcenter at all. I adore that place (and yeah, I'm impressionable: Keeping Raspberry Pi Zero W's in stock at every checkout register and selling them for $5 made an impression on me), but it's just too far away from where I live.
What usually happens instead, despite still having much more local alternatives, is this: I order the stuff. It shows up on my porch a day or two later. I build it at my leisure.
Yes. According to my understanding of the lore: Microcenter was once just a small computer shop on High Street. A little mom-and-pop place -- you've probably been to one at some point. It got bigger. (That was all before my time, too.)
The Greek place that stands out so favorably in my memory is Lashish the Greek. It's right across Bethel from Microcenter, in the strip mall behind the McDonald's. Looks like it's still running. I should stop in there again sometime.
Last time I was there it was empty except for us and the owner. Friendly dude. He stopped at our table after we had some time to finish eating and we chatted about food, food quality, and the Gipsy Kings album that he was playing.
It's a quite wonderful area to empty one's pocketbook. I really do miss living near(ish) to there.
Lots of memories, and all of them are good.
(Including that one time when a buddy and I bought a used 3D printer out of the trunk of a fellow geek's sedan, in cash, in the Microcenter parking lot. We actually went to Microcenter looking to buy a resin printer, and we definitely succeeded -- just not in the manner in which we had expected to succeed. That's been a solid little machine for a few years now and was precisely as it was described.)
I love Microcenter. Built my current gaming rig with all parts purchased there. It's been about 8 years, so not sure if they still operate this way... but when I built my PC, I:
- Went online, ordered everything for pickup (didn't pay yet)
- Drove there, they had it all bagged and ready
- I showed them online prices for some of the parts
- For the ones they could verify (I think it was all of them) by going to the website and checking, they matched the prices
- Then I paid and took my stuff home
I also got my M1 MBP there (it was 25% off when the M2 models came out).
Please, if you have a Microcenter near you, give them your business. I don't want them to go away. Once all this memory madness dies down, I'm going to go there to build a new gaming rig.
I'm not the same person, but I live in Denver and I go to a store to buy my components. We have a Micro Center here and I enjoy having a physical location I can go to, so I make sure to give them my patronage when I purchase stuff.
In Canada, BC's lower mainland (and parts of Ontario, Alberta, and a few others I can't speak of first-hand) have both Memory Express and Canada Computers. We used to have NCIX as well, though they've left (at least) BC
Unfortunately, the aggregator website is basically no longer updated. So now you have to go door-to-door to check their prices. Also, with all the talk of counterfeits flooding Amazon and whatnot, I'm no longer that comfortable buying expensive stuff from random stores.
But, I guess, if you need a mouse right now and don't insist on the absolute best price, they're still there, yeah.
In practice, I live two streets away from there and yet I do all my shopping online (not that I buy that many parts anymore).
You're lucky then. Hardware availability has increased by orders of magnitude for me — not an exaggeration. Even 10-15 years ago I'd be happy to have access to two motherboards, three CPUs, three video cards — all of them at least a generation old, and Intel + nvidia, nothing else — and cheap noname RAM/SSDs. Over the past 5-8 years I've mostly been able to get access to the same hardware y'all are buying, thanks only to increased pervasiveness of online shopping.
Brick and mortar stores are as useless as they've always been. Even now they're selling old hardware (couple of generations old or older) for more than it was ever worth. For example, one such store not far from me has been trying to offload a 12-year old LCD monitor for several years now, for two times of its original price. I wonder why.
Online shopping is almost 30 years old itself. Before that there was mail order; I have a couple of mid 80s PC mags which are almost entirely adverts for parts.
> It's only recently that an average person could jump on eBay and get assembled low-level electronic module/boards for cheap, and assemble into their project.
People have been tinkering with electronic/electric modules for decades:
> Yes, you'll probably have difficulty walking into a STORE to buy PC components, but only because online shopping has been killing local shops for decades now.
Rather: very commonly the local shops don't stock the parts that I would like to buy, and it is often hard to find out beforehand which kind of very specialized parts the local shop does or doesn't stock.
True story concerning electronic components: I went to some electronic store and wanted to buy a very specialized IC, which they didn't stock. But since the sales clerk could see my passion for tinkering with electronica, he covertly wrote down an address of a different, very small electronics store including instructions which tram line to take to get there (I was rather new to the city), which stocks a lock more stuff that tinkerers love. I guess the sales clerk was as disappointed with the range of goods that his employer has decided to concentrate on as I was. :-)
On the other hand, lots of former stores for PC component now have whole lots of shelf rows with mobile phone cases instead. I get that these have high sales margins, but no thanks ...
Thus, in my opinion it is not online shopping that killed local shops, but the fact that local shops simply don't offer and stock the products that I want to buy.
Seems like they did it the by-the-book way for the commercial, rather than the panicked-escape real-world way... i.e. I'd do one vertical cut in the middle, then I'd be frantically pulling the glass shards out by hand (or claw hammer if available).
It's a shame AAA's testing wasn't more extensive. They should have determined the best tool for a quick exit... Crowbar, wood saw, large serrated knife, or can opener for example.
Multitools with glass breakers seem likely to be more durable and not fall apart like the cheap plastic hammers. e.g. Leatherman SIGNAL and $35 clones like B0BRRXVW9T. They also have knife blades, saw blades, pliers, and can openers for a good selection of alternative options to test out.
> What's the point of buying something if the other person is allowed to steal it back.
If you can't make a profit off of a licensed property after 35 years of exclusive control, you've done something horribly wrong. If you sit on a licensed property and do nothing with it for decades, it should be allowed to revert to someone else, or better yet go into public domain.
The issue is, what happens if you have a work where e.g. the music and the script were written by different people? If one of them can terminate the license then you create a situation where nobody can distribute it because nobody has the rights to all of it anymore.
Of course, what they should do is have the copyright expire after 35 years. Then if the original creators want to make sequel at that point they're entitled to -- just like everybody else.
> what happens if you have a work where e.g. the music and the script were written by different people?
This happens ALL THE TIME. 2001 A Space Odyssey, Heavy Metal (1981-Blue Oyster Cult), Rocky (1976) airing on TV without Eye of the Tiger, It's a Wonderful Life was public domain but distributors needed to pay for the soundtrack. TV shows like Married with Children and Dave airing in syndication with different opening theme songs. etc.
All over archive.org you'll find tons of classic films but with the soundtracks stripped out.
Interesting. The article certainly gave that impression. It's strange that the process isn't automatic when the main requirement is simply submitting a notice.
> Japan has neither and it's dubious whether the United States would step in.
There is NO QUESTION the US would provide a full defense of Japan against any aggressive party.
The US has multiple military bases in Japan, with 35,000+ military personnel. Japan pays the US billions every year to support the US military presence there. Japan is also a too-big-to-fail economy (4th in the world) and US trading partner. And strategically, what do you think the US "pivot to Asia" means, if not defending close US allies in the Asia-Pacific from unprovoked aggression?
For over 60 years the United States-Japan Alliance has served as the cornerstone of peace, stability, and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region. The U.S. commitment to Japan’s defense under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1960 is unwavering. https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-japan/
The Budapest Memorandum (1994) gave assurances, that the U.S. would militarily intervene or defend Ukraine under attack like an alliance-treaty.
Ukraine surrendered the sharpest tool in its arsenal for those assurances, its inherited nuclear arsenal, the world’s third-largest at the time.
But the loss was broader than warheads; it was the surrender of a strategic future.
America first means America first.
All politicians will say one thing and do another, always check the incentives…
The Budapest Memorandum did no such thing. It is completely and totally incomparable to the US-Japan alliance. At most, it calls for a weaselly "security council action to provide assistance".
>Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Just price, I'd say. AMD / Intel are used to a certain margin on their products, and the low barrier to entry to create ARM CPUs, and fierce competition from giants like Broadcom, keeps margins very thin in this market.
The original smart phones like the Nokia Communicator 9110i were x86 based.
AMD previously had very impressive low-power CPUs, like the Geode, running under 1-watt.
Intel took another run at it with Atom, and were able to manage x86 phones (eg: Asus Zenphone) slightly better than contemporary ARM based devices, but the price for their silicon was quite a bit higher than ARM competitors. And Intel had to sink so much money into Atom, in an attempt to dominate the phone/tablet market, that they couldn't be happy just eeking out a small sliver of the market by only being slightly better at a significantly premium price.
I don't think it is price. Intel has had a bigger R&D budget for CPU designs than Apple. If you mean manufacturing price, I also doubt this since AMD and Intel chips are often physically bigger than Apple chips in die size but still slower and less efficient. See M4 Pro vs AMD's Strix Halo as an example where Apple's chip is smaller, faster, more efficient.
I have not seen any evidence that Apple's chip is smaller, faster and more efficient.
Apple's CPU cores have been typically significantly bigger than any other CPU cores made with the same manufacturing process. This did not matter for Apple, because they do not sell them to others and because they have always used denser CMOS processes than the others.
Apple's CPUs have much better energy efficiency than any others when running a single-threaded application. This is due to having a much higher IPC, e.g. up to 50% higher, and a correspondingly lower clock frequency.
On the other hand, the energy-efficiency when running multithreaded applications has always been very close to Intel/AMD, the differences being explained by Apple having earlier access to the up-to-date manufacturing processes.
Besides efficiency in single-threaded applications, the other point where Apple wins in efficiency is in the total system efficiency, because the Apple devices typically have lower idle power consumption than the competition, due to the integrated system design and the use of high-quality components, e.g. efficient displays. This better total system efficiency is what leads to longer battery lifetimes, not a better CPU efficiency.
The Apple CPUs are fast for the kind of applications needed by most home users, but for applications that have greater demands for computational performance, e.g. with big numbers or with array operations, they are inferior to the AMD/Intel CPUs with AVX-512.
You say you've never seen evidence that Apple's chips are smaller, faster, more efficient but you confidently proclaim that Apple CPU cores are typically bigger on the same node.
Where is your source?
There's plenty of die shots showing that Apple P cores are either smaller or around the same size as AMD and Intel P cores. Plenty of people on Reddit have done the analysis as well.
Qualcomm has a massive "value add" because they own the modem. As well as a doom stack of patents on all things cellular.
You need a modem if you want to make a smartphone. And Qualcomm makes sure to, first, make some parts of the modem a part of their SoC, and second, never give a better deal on a standalone modem than on a modem and SoC combo.
Sure, AMD could make their own modem, but it took Apple ages to develop a modem in-house. And AMD could partner with someone like Mediatek and use their hardware - but, again, that would require Mediatek to prop up their competition in SoC space, so, don't expect good deals.
Yeah, I noped-out when I saw eBay's writeup on tariffs owed by the buyer (not paid by the seller):
"Shipping carriers or US Customs usually charge $5–$30 in processing fees. Add the item price, import fees, and processing fees to estimate your final cost."
Not something I'm doing for a $5 item... I'll sit back and wait until the Supreme Court finds the tariffs are illegal, and the Fed has to pay every cent back to the businesses, suddenly sending the US spiraling into the biggest budget deficit in history.
Tariffs do not always 100% immediately get passed on to buyer.
If there's a $100 product you'd like to purchase and there's a 100% tariff, it won't be $200.
That product was made abroad, let's for $20. So the tariff should be $20, not $100.
The US-based owner will go to the supplier, say they're getting squeezed by tariffs and first they'll try to see what they can do to recategorize the tariff, or negotiate with their supplier to absorb some of the expense. Let's say that got it down to $15. The owner still doesn't want to increase costs by 15%, so they'll hold off for a while and absorb, and then eventually maybe increase 5-10 and absorb further; perhaps eventually going the full stretch - maybe not.
Squeezing the supplier may work in the short term, especially for goods already ordered, and produced, which can't be sold elsewhere.
But in the short-medium term it creates uncertainty for the supplier. (The on / off / on nature of these tariffs doesn't help.) For some goods this means suppliers will develop new markets, or will adjust prices up for American purchasers.
For example, say I have an orange farm. Say I have been selling to the US for ages. Simple, reliable sale, no need to look for other customers.
This year there's turmoil. We take a hit because US buyers need a discount (or might cancel the order.) OK, I'll take the hit. But I'll also put out feelers for other markets for next years crop. Maybe Saudia Arabia is looking. Maybe Europe is looking. Next year, do I develop those relationships, or do I reserve my crop for my US buyer?
Tariffs are not necessarily the problem. They are an important long-term tool used to support local production. Uncertainty though is a huge problem- it's easier to sell elsewhere.
> tariffs are surely paid by the buyer, not the seller.
The US has declared import tariffs are to be paid by the importer/shipper, not collected from the end purchaser after... The opposite of the rest of the world.
If you look through eBay, at items coming from China, you'll see most are noted as:
Import fees: Includes import fees
This item includes applicable import fees—you won’t pay anything extra after checkout."
So they are being paid by the seller/importer/etc.
It seems to be a rare exception that you'll see the seller is not paying the tariffs:
Import fees: Import fees due prior to delivery
Due to US customs policies, the buyer of this item will need to pay import fees to the shipping carrier prior to delivery.
I expect nearly all foreign sellers have increased their prices to cover the tariffs. However, there are items selling for less than eBay says an individual will be charged in fees, so it's not just a you-pay-or-I-pay thing. Either eBay is exaggerating, or sellers are finding a way to get a better deal.
It's a minefield for eBay buyers who likely won't notice the footnote means their $5 purchase will cost them $20+ in fees. They now have something else to lookout for that doesn't show up in the table of search results. Something only in a small note on the item's product page. Something that might mean significant extra cost if you aren't careful when shopping.
I actually expect quite a lot of smaller foreign sellers have just stopped bothering trying to sell to the US, because the price plus the hassle isn't worth it. Large companies of course still will, with some price increase.
> Knowingly downloading CSAM is very likely illegal.
Put CSAM in a banner ad, and arrest everyone who was served that ad?
Post a CSAM photo behind plexiglass on a wall in a public space, and arrest everyone who walks by and glanced at it?
Just how stupid do you think lawmakers, judges, prosecutors, and police are? People get arrested for paying for, or sharing CSAM, not just stumbling on a website that might have something questionable. It is illegal to possess, but just loading a website is hardly possession... If it was, all of Facebook and Google's content moderators would be facing life-sentences.
> Just how stupid do you think lawmakers, judges, prosecutors, and police are?
Very! Unimaginably so! A friend of mine from Germany received a GIF that contained ONE FRAME of CSAM from someone in a group chat, Whatsapp auto-downloaded it into the gallery, something auto reported it and a month later, cops showed up to take away all his electronic devices. This is apparently a thing people do there, like americans SWAT livestreamers. I think it took over a year for them to return his devices. He had to pay for a lawyer and buy a new phone and laptop. He wasn't charged with anything, but because the report was automated, there wasn't even anyone to sue for a false report.
There is no such thing as not to sue anyone. Police can squeeze and lie as much as they want, but there are laws about the abuse of power, false police reporting, obstruction of justice. But it will be expensive as effectively you are going to the court against a state.
Also of course there is a person somewhere behind a keyboard who wrote the software which flags, correctly or incorrectly, files. Their name (Thorn) is kept strictly away from any public testimonial with NDAs with police, because eventually there will be class action lawsuits against them in the USA.
The thing is, it was technically a correct report. One frame of that gif did correpond to a known piece of CSAM (presumably they use some kind of perceptual hashing). The facts that 1) the gif was clearly a sick joke (he described it as a slow motion bullet shot from a movie, landing in something/someone and then flashing the one frame, presumably the intention being "haha, get shot with the child porn bullet"); 2) it was only one inconsequential piece, not a whole collection; 3) it was downloaded automatically from a group chat... are not in scope of the "did this user just upload CSAM to our servers" function (from what I understood, it was triggered by the picture being backed up to Google Photos or Apple's equivalent).
These are all things that, in a functioning system, the police officer receiving the report would take into account. If it's a first report, diaregard. If it's a second, check the file name that was also presumably in the report, see it's a Whatsapp folder and disregard it. If it's a third report or there are multiple pieces, get a warrant to run a CSAM scan on the person's device, go to their apartment, run it, see there's nothing else, close the case. If it's a clear "prank", start investigating the person who sent it.
But since the police are, in general, trigger happy lunatics, you get a full raid instead. And since computer forensics is hard and doesn't pay well, the investigation took many months instead of an afternoon. The fuckup was squarely on the law enforcement side, as well as in the law itself.
>(he described it as a slow motion bullet shot from a movie, landing in something/someone and then flashing the one frame, presumably the intention being "haha, get shot with the child porn bullet")
That's the slippery slope nature of these laws. For sure a CSAM is "out there" and easily acquired. And now it some sort of toxic, radioactive content that destroys systems, corporations, and most importantly, invididuals if weaponized.
I suppose these people with good intentions, seeking to wipe CSAM off the face of the earth with religious fervor ... I suppose they never realized that such thing as a troll exists on the internet who will gladly point their fervor as the troll pleases like a firehose of seething
This is one good reason we should not tolerate our devices auto-snitching on us to the police. Any tool can be weaponized. The legal system has a presumption of innocence, but it grinds painfully slowly, and the mere investigation can be extremely disruptive, even assuming they don't find anything further to pursue once they turn the eye of Sauron upon you.
Quite stupid, actually. Stuff like CSAM is not to be messed around with. Having it in your cache is considered possession by police forces, even if the judge won't convict you if you can explain it. Even if the police doesn't come after you, it's the exact point in almost every jurisdiction where someone else's content suddenly becomes your problem, legally speaking.
You won't go to jail or life most of the time if you can explain how or why, but there are extremely strict rules around CSAM that you need to deal with. One of those is "don't look at it unless absolutely necessary". For AdGuard, I doubt this use would qualify for "absolutely necessary". Even police forces use dedicated software that doesn't keep too many copies around, and restrict how many people are allowed to look at the screens for screening computers.
The people applying mass censorship are using CSAM as a weapon. It'd be unwise for AdGuard to give them the extra ammunition by (admitting to) checking the CSAM content themselves.
Furthermore, if the complaint has merit and the content linked does contain CSAM, there is some pretty bad shit out there. I'm not prepared to look at pictures of raped babies or tortured children but I know full well that that content is out there on the internet.
Arrests aren't the only way a company can be harmed. Being flagged or investigated is enough of a legal burden and reputational hit that it could be catastrophic. "Stumbling" is not a part of any network protocol. Over a network, viewing a link is indistinguishable from downloading its contents.
Illegal to possess, and you would have accessed it to view content that is illegal to access as well?
The people who do this as part of their job do so under strict supervision, legal guard rails AND mandatory counselling. Which happens to include a number of content moderators.[0]
There's another reason: the criminal justice system is structured in such a way that it requires material evidence to prove someone is guilty and punish them. It would be unacceptable to send an innocent person to prison, and you can't prove that someone has merely viewed content.
We need a rule that people who haven't had to deal with the police and courts need to shut up about how police and courts work.
Even if nobody involved commits a crime and just does their job resonably well, getting your apartment raided, all your neighbours seeing that, your coworkers hearing about it, having to pay for a lawyer, losing all your electronic devices for months if not years and having to buy new ones, not being ablo to make proper plans because you never know when they might throw another court date at you...
But more often than not, they don't do their job well. They're sloppy, indifferent, they don't really understand computers or technology... You might get convicted just because a judge doesn't understand what downloading actually means.
And then you also get the ass-covering. They spent all this time and effort, but now it looks like you're innocent. Their bosses would be pissed, maybe you could even sue them. So they do their best to make even the smallest and dumbest charges stick. They look for other potentian crimes. They threaten you until you take a plea deal. They dissect and twist everything you said. Just so they don't have to admit they made a
"Innocent until proven guilty" might be true in the most technical sense. But being innocent doesn't help when your entire life is thrown upside down, everyone you know thinks you're a criminal, you're spending thousands on legal costs...
It used-to be in the DOS and terminal days, and it wouldn't take much to get us back there. Shut off all the eye-candy transition effects. Make your web browser, PDF viewer, etc., always scroll a full page at a time, instead of scrolling 1mm when you click on the button or use the mouse wheel. Just those few changes and you'll have something that'll work pretty well.
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