I made an automaton. I set the parameters in such a way that there is a large variability of actions that my automaton can take. My parameters do not pre-empt my automaton from taking certain illegal actions. I set my automaton loose. After some time it turns out that my automaton has taken an illegal action against a specific person. Did I know that my automaton was going to commit a illegal action against that specific person? No, I did not. Did I know that my automaton was sooner or later going to commit certain illegal actions? Yes I did, because those actions are within the parameters of the automaton. I know my automaton is capable of doing illegal actions and given enough incidences there is an absolute certainty that it will do those illegal actions. I do not need to interact with my automaton in any way to know that some of it’s actions will be illegal.

You can’t create an automated machine, let it run loose without supervision and then claim to not be responsible for what the machine does.

Maybe just maybe this was the very first instance of their ai malfunctioning (which I don’t believe for a second), in which case the correct response of Brandshield would have been to announce that they would temporarily suspend the activities of this particular program & promise to implement improvements so that it would not happen again. Brandshield has done neither of these, which tells me that it’s not the first time and also that Brandshield has no intention of preventing it from happening again in the future.

If it had been phishing, then going to the registrar would have been the right call, because you want to take that down asap. But according to itch.io it wasn’t, instead it was a a real fansite that was linking to the real website of funko’s game (according to itch.io). Something which most media companies allow since it’s basically free publicity and goodwill, but if they did want it taken down for copyright reasons, then a DMCA takedown request send to itch.io would have been the correct first action.

In the response statement by Brandshield, Brandshield does not deny having send a takedown request for phishing to the registrar (confirming that they did), nor do they dispute itch.io’s statement that it wasn’t a phishing site (confirming that they know that it wasn’t), instead they only speak about “infringement”.

So now we know that Brandshield is knowingly making false accusations that have potentially serious consequences for their victims. And it’s not going to be the first time that they’ve done this, but even this high publicity case will probably not have any legal consequences for brandshield, so it looks like they will continue getting away with it. Unfortunately they’re not alone, it often seems like the entire DMCA industry is rotten.

Why ask the registrar to take down a subdomain of a website?

Those subdomains are not managed or controlled by the registrar, so all the registrar can do is either take down the entire domain or ask their client to take down the subdomain. In this case they asked their client, who took down the subdomain, after which the registrar took down the domain anyhow :D

For a single isolated offence, Brandshield’s first action should have been to report the copyright infringement to itch.io and ask for a takedown of that content, instead they went directly to the registrar and falsely claimed that itch.io was a fraud & phishing site. I suspect that they falsely claim that it’s about phishing and fraud, because otherwise registrars will not take down the site unless there is systematic copyright infringement (like a torrent site). And I suspect that brandshield goes directly to the registrar with their complaint, since that is easier to automate than finding the right contact info on a website.

So my take is that: The registrar was in the wrong for taking down the domain after itch.io removed the problematic subdomain. Brandshield is scum. And Funko is in the wrong for using brandshield.

No real need for further answers from itch.io, nothing new has come to light.

Edit: while under the shower I realized that Brandshield’s posts do contain some kind of news: Brandshield does not deny having used fraud & phishing as reason for the takedown request, thereby confirming that they did. Before we just had itch.io’s retelling of the events, which might have been a misrepresentation by itch.io or due to a cock-up by the registrar, but because of the lack of denial by brandshield, we now have confirmation that it did happen like itch.io said.

An example of ill intent on Microsoft’s part: https://mashable.com/article/windows-10-upgrade-snafu-analysis

If you haven’t used windows in years then you might not know how bad it has gotten, but … it’s bad. Windows update is not just for security updates, it’s also there to change users default browser to edge, their search engine to bing, trick them into using onedrive (too bad if the synced files get corrupted), old features get disabled for no good reason, it hijacks other browsers to show messages and change browser settings, …

All those things are definitely not for security, but rather a way for Microsoft managers to meet KPI, for example: they want more users of a new application, so they remove the old way of doing things and boom, their quarterly report looks prettier. And to top it all off Microsoft doesn’t test updates properly anymore in house, so it’s the customers who are life testing that shit. And because those users have to keep updating windows for security, Microsoft has them over a barrel.

It sounds like republican* atheists are not allowed to make an honest oath. If you have to swear on something that you don’t believe in, what value does that oath have?

• Not the usa party kind, but the ones who want an elected head of state instead of a hereditary one.

Except when it isn’t. If the price of the locally fermented alcohol is lower than the price of imported methanol (not every country has a chemical industry and some of those countries have a really low GNP), then it’s just not going to be the case. And since there have been methanol contaminations in such countries, we know with certainty that it isn’t always caused by adding methanol.

Some scientists heard the same argument (that it was added methanol), thought that wouldn’t always make sense and then did some research: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5028366/

“This study assessed some traditional fermented beverages and found that some beverages are prone to methanol contamination including cachaca, cholai, agave, arak, plum and grape wines.”

The colonists really missed an opportunity imo, the USA could have had such great place names as New Fingringhoe, but instead it seems like only the boring names got copied :(

I’d imagine that a conservative professor of ethics would be the one telling doctors in training that when faced with the dilemma of saving the life of the mother or that of her unborn child, that they must then save the life of the child because it is without sin.

This was taught in a Catholic university near me to doctors of my parents generation, but I suspect they stopped doing that here since about the 1990s. In other places of the world the Catholic church is still at it though.

I had been using YouTube for years without being presented rightwing propaganda in my suggestions. I mostly just watched strategy gaming, history, technology channels and some peculiar travelling blogs. And my suggested was just mostly those things.

Then one day I used my YouTube account to cast kid shows for my niece for the first time. After that I was suggested more kid shows which didn’t interest me personally, but I also started getting suggested cat videos, which I obviously clicked. And the week after that half my suggested feed was rightwing misogynist/racist/culture war misinformation, and it took a lot of “do not recommend channel” to clean it up again.

So now I believe that there is a concerted effort by some malicious actors to train Google’s algorithm to assume that if someone is interested in cat videos, that they would then also be open to becoming a misogynist racist prick.

I remember from an older article that it’s a very small college and the new republican dean/president/chairman (I forgot what he was) is being paid $ 700 000 per year, about $1000 per student. I’m certain that he isn’t the only person making bank from this. It seems to be a grift to funnel tax money into the pockets of friends and sycophants, and while the college board tries to make itself relevant in the eyes of their maga public, the future of the students appears to not be a consideration, because they’re not the ones paying for this circus.

Apparently fighting the republican culture war is very profitable for republican grifters.

I’ve got the impression that Tucker Carlson is going after Alex Jones his audience. Tucker Carlson peddling crazy conspiracy theories right when the chickens are coming home to roost for Alex Jones, imo that’s no coincidence. Tucker never was stupid, he just has no morals, so he never had a problem with publicly stating stuff that he personally didn’t believe in. Grifters gonna grift.

Trump is happening because far right republicans realized after Watergate that if they wanted to get away with crimes in the future, that they needed to have news that presents “alternate” facts that are favorable to their narrative or that would at the least muddy the waters. Roger Ailes his plan worked basically.

Without censoring his appearances, Trump comes across as petulant/weak/selfish/stupid/hateful/… Without censoring his history, republican voters would have known that he was a serial scam artist, serial adulterer, … Basically without that alternate fact media supporting rightwing skullduggery, there would never have been a president Trump.

Imo it’s nonsense to claim that Trump getting elected, is happening because voters are angry because of mysterious reasons that no one can figure out, when those voters are so misinformed that they consistently vote against their own interests and believe stupid conspiracy theories that are being pushed to rile them up against the “other”. As long as that many people live in an alternate reality based on lies and hate, there is no helping them. So the challenge becomes: how do you bring them out of it and how do you prevent it from happening again in the future.

Maybe it’s because it was in the same language group as those others that polish got singled out. People who speak an Indo European language will expect to be lost when first trying to learn a language outside of the group, but might not expect to be so confuddled from a related language. Expectations basically.

The consequences of prolife politicians and their voters: “This corresponds with a 7% absolute increase in infant mortality overall ( ≈ 247 excess deaths; 95% CI, 73-421) and 10% in infant mortality with congenital anomalies ( ≈ 204 excess deaths; 95% CI, 60-348) in relevant months after Dobbs.”.

The excess deaths are still ongoing probably and i’m interested in extrapolating it to a per year statistic, but I can’t make out over how many months this data was, that part of the article reads like a convoluted mess for me and I have no desire to decipher it.

In the next paragraph: “by the time of the Daubert hearing, the printer that Cybercheck had identified in its report couldn’t be located.”. I suspect there never was a printer. If asked leading questions by the investigators, then the company probably fabricates evidence that corroborates the suspicions of the investigators. And the quality of fabricated evidence is probably poor because of how cheap they are. Quality takes time and skill, and skilled time costs money.

Parallel construction requires real evidence though. This company just seems to fabricate evidence to confirm police hypothesises. I think what happens is: Police ask “was this person there at that time on that day”, the company conjures up a report that the person’s mystical digital profile pinged a wireless printer at that place at roughly the right time, but also at a second other time for a tiny bit of credibility (but by only changing the date of the timestamp, which actually makes it more suspect). People go search for that printer, and then there never was a printer.

And given that the only thing that external parties saw, was less than a 1000 lines of code for automatic searches and none for interpretation, it might not even be automated, but just a human pasting together reports. A human pretending to be ai.

I’d call it outsourced fabrication of evidence.

On the other hand, when someone claims something is impossible/something has never happened before/something happens every single time, but you have just 1 anecdote from a credible source that contradicts that claim, then that 1 anecdote is enough to know that they are wrong.

Example: some pundit states: our government has never executed an innocent man. You just need proof that they have executed a single innocent man to show that the pundit has no credibility on the subject and that it’s thus not an impossibility that other executed men were also innocent.

Sometimes knowledge is just an internet search away: https://www.qwant.com/?q=natural+disasters+in+europe&t=web

Or searching for specific kinds of disasters will also supply results, like fe tornadoes: https://www.qwant.com/?q=tornado+europe&t=web

How can you be so convinced of things which are so easily disproven? Why do you not try looking something up instead of just spouting the same nonsense again and again? Why do you resort to insults when it turns out that a belief you held strongly, turns out to have been a delusion? Notice how all this time I’ve been the one providing sources and quotes, while you just resorted to insults and doubling down when what I say doesn’t align with your feelings. You’d look far less like a fool if you would accept that it’s possible to be wrong about something.

I had found a good quote earlier by another American who had actually visited other places, I think now is a good time to share it:

"Americans who have never left their own little reality will tell you that American homes are actually solid… they’re not… I have lived in and visited many countries. American houses are built like shit.

My cousin built a house in Europe out of brick and concrete… and it’s WAY WAY WAY WAY better than the most expensive, nicest house I’ve ever been to in the US. I have anger issues and have punched through my walls on repeated occasions. You can’t do that with brick and concrete… probably a good thing I live in the US.

This is why when a tornado comes around, entire towns are demolished… All that would happen in other countries is some broken windows and shingles would come off the roof.

Americans pay more for their houses in terms of price, property taxes (insanely high), and repairs… to live in the lowest form of construction on this planet second to bamboo huts.

This is all due to American greed. America is a big mall where you get shit quality everywhere you go, but you think you’re actually winning because you are so self-deluded and isolated. Most Americans have never been anywhere else, but yet they will defend their garbage buildings that fall apart in a couple of decades or less. Speaking from my piece of shit house that was built 20 years ago that needs all floors and walls replaced because of mold seeping into the… wood… everything… wood and cardboard. ".

I also don’t get how you came to believe that there are no natural disasters in Europe. We have a stereotype of dumb arrogant Americans who are confidently incorrect, but still, what the hell man :)