kirklennon @ kirklennon @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

they can be referred to as "the Americas" then i would deduct that all the objects within those Continents are also "American"

Unfortunately not though, because "American" is already used exclusively in reference to the USA. There is no adjective to refer to things from the Americas collectively. One of these two possible uses is extremely common and the other is extraordinarily rare. If you need the rare option, you need multiple words and can't shorten it.

I think it may have something to do with the fact that the UK is far along in a plan to effectively ban encrypted messaging, and many other countries are looking in the same draconian direction. They want non-techy users (AKA voters) to know about it and to understand that it's super important.

If prosecutors lost more cases, that would mean they were being even more aggressive in over-prosecuting flimsy cases.

No, that's technically stealing. It would be a debt if they agreed in advance to give you an interest-free loan of the beer while in the store.

The criminal justice system is intended to be biased in favor of the defendants as innocent until proven guilty. Consequently, if everything were working perfectly, I'd expect prosecutors to only charge people if they were extremely confident that they could prove the person's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Taking cases without solid evidence and regularly losing at trial would be indicative of a major problem.

In English, "American" by itself refers unambiguously to the United States of America because, (again) in English, there is no continent called "America."

America uses flush toilets unless you're on an airplane. Besides, we can clearly see a huge water tank, which is how flush toilets work.

What happened to “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"?

The key word is debts. When you want to buy something in a store, you owe money if you want it, but you have not incurred a debt. You can just not buy it. You and the seller start at an even place, trade goods/services for money, and end even. If you have a debt, you're starting the transaction at a negative place and are trying to get back to even.

I'm not sure what accidental journey through Gmail's options OP took but it looks to me that they inadvertently started setting up a passkey, which is tied to the hardware but can sync between Apple devices using iCloud Keychain. Apple certainly isn't blocking you from changing Gmail-specific settings.

these “things” that exist on the blockchain are sometimes representations of ownership (think like a deed for property: it’s just a piece of paper that represents ownership. that could easily exist on the blockchain, where the owner of the property is the person who is assigned the deed on-chain)… the you can have a smart contract that automatically releases funds to the seller once the deed has been transferred to the buyer

The idea that property can be accurately recorded on a neutral blockchain is absolutely ludicrous. What happens when the owner of the property dies and they are unable to update the record? What if there is a dispute among the heirs? What if the owner goes bankrupt and their assets are seized by a third-party, but they are still unwilling to update the blockchain record? There is a reason that definitive records for real property are maintained by the government itself. Anything of real value must exist within a legal framework and be subject to a change of ownership under law or court order.

If a judge determines a property belongs to someone else, the sheriff who comes to evict you isn’t going to care when you point to some record on a blockchain. If a blockchain record can’t be unilaterally updated by the government to change ownership, against the wishes of the current owner, then it cannot function as a true record. Consequently, any “smart” contract based on that record is unreliable as well since the seller may not actually own in the real world the thing their blockchain deed says they own.

US: Credit card only, almost exclusively using Apple Pay. If I somehow obtain cash, I deposit it so that I can spend it using a card instead and earn the rewards. I actively use about half a dozen cards, choosing the right one for each transaction to maximize rewards.

Except she did actually get caught manipulating the Democratic primary leading up to 2016

No she didn't. It's hard to combat conspiracy theories since they just shift the claims around but if you're referring to the joint fundraising agreement (my best guess), that's a standard agreement signed between campaigns and the party so that when a nominee is eventually chosen, the campaign and party can work in unison.

The reality is that nobody did more to raise Bernie's national profile than Hillary. He was able to make a serious go at the nomination only because she had already cleaned the floor. And when it came time to vote, actual Democrats overwhelmingly chose her, which is obvious since she was the only Democrat running. Bernie just temporarily pretends to be a Democrat when he wants their money and is unwilling to do any of the ongoing work to support the party and its other down-ballot candidates.

I trust the little guy.

The editor of Gizmodo knows very well that "Apple" gets clicks and in this case he's trying to generate free press for his obscure book. His suit doesn't quite meet the standard of "frivolous," so I don't think anybody is getting sanctioned for it, but it's certainly not filed in good faith. It's not even an issue of "trust." What he claims is inherently ridiculous. You can't copyright historical events, and presenting it as a Cold War thriller isn't some radical creative choice of "tone." The dry facts are pretty thrilling on their own, and the extra-thrilling parts (car chase) are inventions of the film.

How many other people are they doing this to?

Not stealing from? Literally billions of other people are being treated the same way by Apple every day.

due to their coverage on the leaked iPhone 4?

They literally committed a felony, bought what at that point was a stolen prototype, damaged Apple's property, and then tried to extort Apple in exchange for returning what was, again, Apple's own property.

They didn't steal anything. He wrote a non-fiction account of a historical event. The Apple TV+ movie is a somewhat fictionalized account of a historical event with the direct support of the primary people actually involved. They don't owe him a penny. At most his contribution is an inspiration that, hey, this could make a great movie, which isn't worth any money.

For work I frequently need to look up information for patents. The specific data I need is spread around in multiple US Patent & Trademark Office databases. I created tool with Django/Python so I just have to copy/paste the patent numbers into a box and hit submit. It then returns exactly what I need in the exact format I need. It leaves me with more free time to play Cookie Clicker.

RCS the open standard is missing critical features. Google's implementation fixes that, but is not open. I don't think we should give a pass to RCS just because it's open. SMS is a legacy format but it's unconscionable these days to release a new messaging platform without E2E encryption. That's a minimum viable product feature, not a maybe nice to have in the future feature.

The whole iMessage/RCS conversation is really only relevant in the US; in other countries basically everyone uses WhatsApp or Kakao or LINE or whatever the local favorite is. In the US, there is no industry-standard RCS. It's theoretically a carrier-based messaging service but all of the carriers outsourced it to Google so, as an alternative to iMessage, the option is a proprietary extension of RCS running on Google servers, something that is exactly as open as iMessage itself.

If you want a true industry standard way to send messages to people, the iPhone has had that since 2007: email.

There’s no point of a virtual assistant existing except to gather data.

Siri is one of the most-used virtual assistants and its purpose is not to gather data. It's a value-added service meant to sell more Apple hardware.

what do people think of the idea that if the U.S. had not dropped those bombs, a larger-scale nuclear exchange, possibly between the Soviets and the U.S., would have happened because no one would have seen the consequences in 1945.

I still think the use of the atomic bombs on Japan was inherently immoral and unjustifiable, but if I'm searching for at least some silver lining, I do think it's almost certainly true that if those two comparatively small bombs weren't dropped then, more and larger bombs would have been dropped later.

I'm not really concerned at all with when Americans landed in Japan. The US unilaterally established air superiority over Japan and had successfully blockaded the country, bleeding it dry of oil. The Japanese mainland was functionally militarily defeated prior to any land forces making it there.