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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • For those not clear, AppleTalk was created at a time where there was no universal standard in networking. The “standard network” you think of today, a bunch of computers plugged into a router, existed but wasn’t the de-facto setup. There was still experimentation going on.

    Apple ported some of the AppleTalk features, such as Network Discovery, into Bonjour which was introduced in 2002. Once that became mature, there was no reason to keep AppleTalk around.



  • There wasn’t even a maximum on the contract. When I got my first two phones, I agreed to a 2-year cellular contract. If I closed my account or moved providers before that, I had to pay AT&T some amount of money to kill the contract. After those two years were up, I could do whatever I wanted. I was then on a month-to-month payment, like standard cell plans today. They just wanted to make sure to recoup their money over 2 years for subsidizing my cheaper phone upfront.

    Now, the subsidization is more like a subscription fee, where there are additional fees on the bill each month toward the phone and the cell phone company encourages you to get a new one once it’s paid off. You’re still paying full price for a phone. Possibly forever.






  • Scraping itself is not illegal. It’s not until an AI generates a copyrighted IP that it becomes an issue.

    It’s like if I were trying to start an art business. You come to me and ask me to draw a princess. I’ve never seen a princess before, so I go online and look up images of princesses to get an idea what to draw. I go back to the studio and draw you a picture of Snow White.

    Me looking up princess images is fine. It’s only when I sell a Disney® IP without their permission that it becomes illegal. And, even then, it’s a civil matter, not criminal.







  • Apple Kills Its Plan to Scan Your Photos for CSAM

    That headline literally says they’re not doing that. It was a well-meaning initiative that they rightfully backed down on when called out.

    I am one of the first to typically assume malice or profit when a company does something, but I really think Apple was trying to do something good for society in a way that is otherwise as privacy-focused as they could be. They just didn’t stop to consider whether or not they should be proactive in legal matters, and when they got reamed by privacy advocates, they decided not to go forward with it.