Posts by Elongated Muskrat

EU stings Meta for nearly a billion bucks over competition-trampling Facebook Marketplace

Re: "This case entirely distorts" . .

I'd probably describe my political position as slightly left of centre, but the Overton Window has moved so far to the right over the last few decades, that sensible centre-left policies look like communism to these people. I'm not even a member of a union (although I probably should be, and so should you).

If you think about the actual "radical leftism" this country has had in the last century, it would pretty much describe the formation of the NHS and social security. Many of the rights and privileges we enjoy as citizens come from the actions of the radical left, but thankfully well before our time. Things like weekends, the right to a safe working environment, maternity leave and pay, that sort of thing.

Quite frankly, I think we should all be a bit more thankful for the things the radical left have done for us, and appreciate that politics is a constant struggle against the creep towards the right, which, if unopposed, will end up with a tiny number of people owning everything, and everyone else being indentured to them and living in poverty. You know, like the liberal economics of the nineteenth century.

Re: "This case entirely distorts" . .

If Meta hates Trump so much, why is it that every time I report a post containing far-right hate speech, which obviously comes from Trump supporters, it "doesn't go against our community standards" and they don't remove the post. An example, if anyone thinks I'm being some sort of "lefty snowflake", was one in one public group I was a member of (I have since left that group because the moderators have disappeared) involving someone in a MAGA hat pushing LGBTQ+ people off a roof. It didn't get removed.

Zuckerberg is no better than Musk, or Trump, he just has the common sense to not open his mouth, and remove all doubt.

Edit - I'll add, that if the meme in question had involved pushing MAGAs off a roof, that would have been equally unacceptable. Oddly enough, though, I've not seen any memes of that sort directing violence towards the far-right. Perhaps Meta immediately moderates these away, or perhaps the hate speech is all coming from the group that is pretty much defined by its production of hate speech.

Here's how a Trump presidency could change the tech industry

Re: Has no one else noticed

There's some good memes about it going round on social media, basically involving web-coloured Comic Sans text, like it's 2014 again.

It's obviously intentional on the part of Musk, because he thinks it's cool (like making it so the models of his electric cars spell out "S3XY"). There's a reason I referred to him as a man-child earlier, and it's not just a lazy ad hominem, it's because he has the mentality of a twelve year-old, who thinks L337 5p34k is cool.

Re: Cutting $2 trillion

I take it you're the cowardly anonymous rage-voter then? Shouldn't you be busy hiding in your mum's basement after telling women that you own their bodies or something like that?

In all seriousness, for anyone who has had the great fortune to never have been exposed to a narcissist, and therefore doesn't recognise the glaringly obvious narcissistic character traits in both Musk and Trump, and still believes they are both brilliant people: You have my sympathy for that day in the future when the realisation finally dawns on you. I hope they don't manage to damage you too much.

Re: Cutting $2 trillion

*monkeys.

Re: Cutting $2 trillion

Oooh, looks like I made one of their flying moneys angry already.

Excellent. Don't have a rage-induced aneurysm, now.

Re: "regime"

So liberal, they waited three years to decide which side to join in the last world war, and it seems the majority now think they chose the wrong one.

Re: Cutting $2 trillion

The biggest show of 2025 will be the very public breakdown of the relationship between the world's two biggest narcissists. One of the defining features of a narcissist is that they absolutely must be in control. Trump currently thinks he is, because he got elected. Musk thinks he is, because he's the world's richest man-child. The illusion each holds of thinking the other doesn't want to run things will burst. Musk will go back to paying for top-level gear and repeatedly grinding the same Diablo IV dungeon over and over again so he can boast about his ranking to other sweaty man-children. Trump will pretend that he never liked or trusted Musk, which is probably the only true thing he'll say all year. Trump loves only Trump (and Musk loves only Musk).

Results are already in...

It looks like Bluesky has gained 800,000 accounts in the last 24 hours, and this is pretty much a direct result of people getting increasingly fed up with Trump's new First Lady's social media platform.

Edit - it has a block button too, so people don't have to be constantly exposed to the right-wing echo chamber. We could REALLY use one of those here.

Dark web crypto laundering kingpin sentenced to 12.5 years in prison

Re: Open

I struggle to understand the mentality of someone taking the time to register a down-vote for a typographical correction.

The working (or otherwise) of some people's minds is truly alien. At least it disproves solipsism.

Re: Open

s/mes rea/mens rea/, stupid 10 minute edit window.

Re: Open

Also, if you think fear of fascism is weak sauce, I suggest you pay more attention to world news.

Re: Open

This is really weak, kind of "dog ate my receipt, officer, I didn't really steal it, honest" excuse.

You know that, in court, the prosecution is required to prove beyond reasonable doubt not only that there was mes rea and intent to commit a crime, but that what happened was actually a crime, right?

IANAL, but I have sat on a jury, and I'm pretty sure there's need to be some corroborating evidence of criminal activity beyond "it came from / went into this wallet" especially since the article itself mentions legitimate uses for mixers.

Your argument is similar to suggesting that a greengrocer is culpable because they sold some apples to a drug dealer.

Re: Open

"It's like getting paid with banknotes that have serial numbers registered by the police"

No. no, it really isn't. The closest analogy, would be it being like handed banknotes by someone who is being watched by the police.

Bitcoin doesn't have a concept of a "serial number", it has wallets, which have balances, and it has transfers between those wallets. I thought I had adequately explained why a transfer from one wallet to another cannot necessarily be linked to any previous transfers, beyond showing that they came from a wallet that is under suspicion (the mixer wallet) or are going to a wallet known to be associated with some criminal behaviour or another (by linking that wallet address to known criminal activity).

A transfer relates only to available balance (from the sending wallet), and any transferred amount out of a wallet doesn't have to be the same as any previous amount transferred in. Actually, with the concept of transaction fees thrown into the mix, it almost certainly won't.

For example, if the mixer wallet M receives some transfers of 1.04543 BTC, 0.0021345 BTC and 0.02345 BTC from three different wallets, and then transfers 0.0002 BTC to another wallet, show me which originating wallet(s) that came from. Which "serial number" is that, please?

Re: Open

Yes, the wallet transferring to the mixer (let's call it A) can be identified as a wallet making a transfer to a mixer, and vice-versa with the wallet receiving a transfer (wallet B). What you can't demonstrate is whether that person owning wallet A bought something legitimately with Bitcoin and was given the mixer wallet address as the wallet to transfer the funds into, or whether the person owning wallet B sold something legitimately to someone else, and received the transfer from the mixer, because here's the thing about bitcoin - without knowing what the people making transfers from one wallet to another are up to, you can't determine whether it is perfectly legitimate activity (for example, I used some of the bitcoins I mined a decade ago to buy some electronics from Pimoroni a few years back, via a direct transfer), and what is not (for example, a dark web transaction for drugs or access to child sexual exploitation material).

Now, there is of course a case to make that anyone using a mixer in this way might be doing something dodgy, but there is also the argument that they may simply be paranoid, and don't want their transactions traced and recorded on a permanent blockchain ledger for all to see forevermore. The problem is in proving it one way or another. I've never used a mixer, but if I was doing something private or personal with Bitcoin, which might put me at risk from the same sort of people who used to go round in the 1930s rounding up people they didn't like the look of, I might consider it.

Re: Open

X -> M -> Y, where X and Y are large sets of wallets, and M is a single "mixer" wallet. The amounts being transferred in and out are different. You may be able to identify the individual wallets in X and Y but you can't identify that funds going into any specific wallet in the set Y come from any specific wallet in the set X. Hence "mixer". All you will be able to see is that various transfers from wallets in X go into M, and that various transfers from M go into wallets in Y. X and Y will probably have a fair overlap as well.

The blockchain will record the transactions, and the identity of the wallets involved, but that's it.

As the article states, this may have legitimate uses, but it is also used (a lot) by criminals for money laundering.

edit - I'll also add, that it is trivially easy to set up a new wallet address, receive funds into that wallet, transfer them somewhere else, and then never use that wallet address ever again. That wallet address will be recorded in the blockchain, sure, but there is zero context associated with it, unless you can otherwise associate it with an individual. Because the blockchain is decentralised, there's nothing to associate that wallet with any physical location, or IP address, unless you happen to sniff where those transactions enter the network from, which requires previous knowledge of who is doing those things in the first place.

EU irate about geo-locked Apple IDs

Re: It's endemic.

There's a category difference between buying something from a foreign site and importing it into the EU, and buying something from another EU member, through the single market.

As for the "we don't ship to X", I have certainly experienced this, here in the UK, after we were dragged out of the EU's single market due to the vote of people like CJ (who I'm sure is likely to pop up any second to tell us all how the EU is somehow directly linked to Satan). I never experienced it prior to this point when buying anything from any EU country.

In a somewhat related matter, I have a sponsorship of an olive tree with a small cooperative in Spain, which includes receiving a couple of litres of oil each year. This year, the shipping cost from Spain to the UK went up from €5 to €45. They were very apologetic when they contacted me after charging the lower amount, explaining that they were incurring higher costs for shipping which they, quite reasonably, had to pass on to me. Another bonus there for the sake of "are sovrinty".

Musk, Bezos need just 90 minutes to match your lifetime carbon footprint, says Oxfam

Oh dear.

I was giving counter-examples of behaviour, which, in my experience, is much more common than your characterisations.

Yes, of course, people go to gyms. There's a gym opposite my house, I see people going in and out of there all day long. I also see a lot more people walking past it, and the thing is that the sort of exercise people do in gyms, which is predominantly about strengthening muscles and "bulking up" isn't the sort of aerobic exercise that is best for things like heart health, that you get from walking past a gym. And yes again, of course gyms get mentioned in media, it's almost like they're businesses trying to get people's money, or something.

As for my sentence about composting; I think you'll find that if your reading comprehension is up-to-scratch, the syntax and grammar of my paragraph was perfectly well parsable. I'll put it simply for you, as this seems to be a requirement: I live in a privately rented flat, in a city. Allotment provision is sparse, and has a long waiting list, so the available bit of land for me to use is on the other side of the city. My landlord would not be pleased if I attempted to compost food waste either inside, or outside of the building within which I live. Yes, there is something wrong, it's called capitalism, which has meant that available land for growing food within cities has been gobbled up by greedy property developers. Hence the long waiting lists and sparse availability. I feel like I'm repeating myself...

And finally, no, I'm not denying bottled water exists, but nice straw-man argument you've got there, and it's spelt fucking moron, you deeply angry and unpleasant little man. What's the matter? The spittle-flecked rage affecting your hand-eye coordination?

Who is driving 30 minutes to a gym? I don't even go to a gym, I get my exercise from working an allotment. Incidentally, I do need a car to drive there, because it's on the other side of the city I live in, due to availability of allotments, and I don't think my landlord would be very happy about me composting food waste in the building he owns.

It probably says a lot more about you, that you assume people are driving to gyms for exercise, or drinking lots of bottled water. The limiting factors for most people are available time and resources, scarcity, or affordability of public transport, or safe drinking water.

Incidentally, one of the biggest things a lot of industrialised countries could do to reduce carbon emissions overnight would be to mandate that employees can work from home where practicable, rather than commuting to offices. It is hardly worth mentioning that Musk is on the opposite side of this argument, and that commercial landlords and privatised public transport providers have obvious vested interests here.

Re: It's the other eight billion you need to worry about...

Pour encourager les autres is a phrase that comes from a nation that had an innovative and effective solution to wealth hoarding.

Spouting trite dismissals such as "politics of envy," as has predictably been rolled out in these comments already, doesn't do anything to tackle the fact that the difference between wealth and extreme wealth is many orders of magnitude. If I earned £1,000 a day, I'd expect people to be envious of me, as I'd be able to live pretty comfortably on that. It would still take 3,000 years for me to be as wealthy as Musk if I gained wealth at that rate, and he got no richer. Musk could give that much money to everyone commenting on this article, every day, for the rest of their lives, and not materially notice any degradation of his lifestyle.

It has fuck all to do with envy, and everything to do with a system where a very small number of people effectively hoard, and waste, the planet's resources to the detriment of absolutely everyone else, including their simps. For the sake of the future of the human race, those people need to be stopped, and soon.

We know what Musk will probably dress up as this year: A victim

I think technically, it's a state election for the contents of the bit of paper that the electors of the electoral college read out in Congress, and that bit is the actual federal election for the president. So, a kind of federal election by proxy. In this day and age, the whole electoral college thing should be done away with, and it should be a straight vote count across the nation. The electoral college only exists because it was a bodge to make elections across a large nation in a time before widespread telecommunications practical.

Like FPTP for constituency elections here in the UK, it's a system put in place for the needs of bygone times, and which doesn't suit the needs of today. It artificially amplifies the votes of sometimes as few as a couple of hundred people to swing the results of an election that affects 350 million people. Good luck getting people to agree to change it, however, when the system can be exploited to benefit rich and powerful people who can easily influence public opinion on the matter.

Re: Whilst the overall election is federal ...

This is kind of what I was getting at - the electors' role is entirely to report the state's results, and act as a proxy. I believe the point of having several of them, rather than just a single person, is so that if one goes rogue and decides that they will report a different candidate as the winner of the state's ballot, then the others rein them in. This works out, unless, somehow, a bad actor manages to corrupt a majority of the electors, or eve manages to install a fake slate of electors, like the 2020 conspiracy.

The electors themselves shouldn't technically have any choice in who they deliver the result in favour of, and it's a throwback to the times when results couldn't be reported in real time. It's an anachronism that really should have been reformed at the point where telecommunications became practical in the 19th century.

Re: Whilst the overall election is federal ...

I think the electors have a ceremonial role, similar to a returning officer in the UK, and are elected separately. As I understand it (and I stand to be corrected), their role is to present the result of the ballot, which is run at the state level, but is for the president, not the electors themselves.

If elections were statewide, then different states would get different presidents depending on the results of those ballots. That might not be altogether a worse system than the one the US currently has, because you'd end up with two presidents who have to work together in cooperation for the good of the country, rather than an elected dictator. However, adversarial politics is baked into the US (and also the UK) system, so government is always for the good of the one elected, and their party, and any benefit for the people who elected them is purely coincidental.

WRT the slate of electors (who present the state's result of the federal election), one of the issues around the January 5th insurrection was that several states had appointed "alternate" slates of electors who were attempting to present the result that Trump had "won" in those states despite the voted not showing that. Mike Pence was in the process of adjourning to decide their validity when the rioting happened. Once it was over, he rejected them as not being properly appointed, but if the rioting had not taken place, who know whether the same opinion would have been reached? This is part of the problem of having "ceremonial" or "traditional" positions like this, where people can try to subvert the ceremonial aspect of it to break with tradition and take a more concrete role.

Because there are laws that say you can't pay people to vote. It doesn't actually matter whether you are paying them to vote one way, or another, or whether they actually go through with it, the line is drawn at the point of paying them at all, because doing so balances the needs for preventing interference in free and fair elections with personal freedoms to do what you want with your money.

There are similar reasons for not allowing photography at all in polling stations (in most places) and for it to be illegal to photograph your ballot, because such photography can be used as a form of coercion ("you must provide photographic evidence that you voted for me, or the kid gets it" kind of thing).

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Are you asking an anti-vaxxer to apply logic? That's a category error, my friend.

Once again, I yearn for the ability to hide, or block, certain posters so I can read the sensible comments.

The Russian people have, historically, been pretty good at "retiring" their leaders when the propaganda machine breaks down and their failures become apparent.

Re: Presumably, Putin is going to ask his good buddy Trump ...

"Trump would just end their war"

I wonder if his orange eminence would care to share the secret of doing that with us? Because if it's inviting Vlad to roll his tanks into Kyiv unopposed, he may run into one or two teensy diplomatic issues with that.

The problem with simple answers, is that they appeal to simple people. To others, they are simply wrong.

Re: One good sanction deserves another

"This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction."

"No it isn't"

"Yes it is"

JPMorgan Chase sues scammers following viral 'infinite money glitch'

Re: It's not a "glitch"

Yes, so in this case, regulation, in favour of the consumer, would stop this. So what is the argument that is made against regulation? I'm willing to bet it's political.

Re: It's not a "glitch"

In the UK at least, cheques have, for a long time (since the 1980s I think) had security features that have made them machine-readable, at least to verify the sort code, account, and serial number via MICR. One job I held many years ago involved working in a place that printed cheques, using special magnetic toner, because those numbers in a weird "futuristic" font are designed to be recognisable by their magnetic signature when passed through a magnetic reader.

These days, the combination of magnetic verification, and optical recognition (especially of cheques with printed figures on them) should mean that these can be read and verified in seconds. It's very hard to fake a cheque's serial number unless you know the range that has currently been issued, but not yet used, which, for most people, is a cheque book limited to 20 or so numbers at a time. The issuing bank can tell an authorised body (i.e. another bank) immediately if a serial number has been issued but not yet used, and also if the name on the cheque matches the name of the issuing account. There's no reason why a cheque cannot be read by feeding it into a cashpoint, especially with today's image recognition technology, which is a million times better (probably not even hyperbole) than it was in the 1980s. As I said, most banks will verify a cheque by you taking a picture of it in your banking app, which no doubt allows them to perform these exact checks.

If you "deposit" a cheque into a cashpoint, and it needs someone to pick it up and process it manually the next day, then you have to wait overnight fort he funds to clear. I don't actually see that as a problem. If you deposit cash, I'd expect the same thing. Why should they trust you that the banknotes you are saying you are depositing in an envelope actually in there, or are even genuine. If you wanted to deposit cash to a bank and have the funds immediately available, you'd do it over the counter, or use a machine that individually verifies each note as you feed it in, like a vending machine or a change machine in an amusement arcade does. I don't know if any cashpoints offer that facility, I've very rarely had to deposit cash.

Re: It's not a "glitch"

...because "regulation" = "communism", right? I don't think I'll ever quite appreciate how out-of-whack-with-reality the US idea of the political spectrum is, where anything that isn't bordering on outright fascism is seen as communism.

Re: Banksters hate being ripped off by other crooks.

Yeah, because escalating rents are definitely sustainable, aren't they.

What has happened in the UK is that 14 years of subsequent conservative government, pursuing the exact same neoliberal economic policies of privatisation, lax regulation and austerity have continued the exact same pattern, and house prices are now so stupidly inflated that half of all "buy to let" mortgages are now reportedly... toxic debts.

If there's one thing that's inexcusable, it's making excuses for the exact same behaviour that caused the problem in the first place.

Re: It's not a "glitch"

Meanwhile, in the UK, your banking app allows you to take a picture of a cheque below a certain threshold (I think it's £5,000) in order to pay it in, and the funds are usually available pretty much immediately. I don't think the 5-day-wait-clearing system exists at all any more. In some ways, the US appears to be very much behind the times (see also: clinging onto customary units when pretty much the whole of the rest of the world has partially or wholly adopted the metric system, and allowing people to carry weapons in public).

It's not a "glitch"

It's plain old fraud. The bank is stupid to clear the funds from a cheque before it has cleared, but I'm not sure how clearing a cheque should take anything more than a few minutes in today's world, though. Surely, there are only three things that need to be done: verify the cheque is genuine, verify the source account has the funds, and transfer them.

Over here in the UK, it's common practice for ATMs (or cash machines as we call them, we don't call anyone who works in a bank a "teller"), to limit the amount that can be withdrawn in a day, usually to £300, IIRC. There seem to be a couple of gaping flaws in this bank's processes here.

Nevertheless, if someone withdraws funds they don't really have, then the end result is an overdraft. If it's an unauthorised one, it'll probably come with punitive daily fees and an interest rate that would make Chuck Norris break down and cry. As well as the matter of the fraudulent "check", the person doing this is going to be on the hook for paying back the money, plus a whole load more, to the bank, unless they've taken the money, and run off with it, in which case, I hope the perps find somewhere nice to live for the rest of their lives, without a US extradition treaty, and where a few hundred thousand is enough to set themselves up. I think they'll discover rapidly that it really isn't as much money as they thought, and certainly not "infinite".

BOFH: The Boss pulled the plug on our AI, so we pulled the pin on him

Re: Paper jam

Do you have to add pectin, or does it depend on the type of paper you're using?

...and how much the BOfH determines that particular user to be expendable.

Your computer's not working? Sure, I can fix that problem – which I caused

Re: Computer wiped every month ?

Just look at the number of apps on phones and tablets which have regular updates that says "bug fixes and performance improvements".

That's absolutely normal for the sort of abuse of Agile that modern companies make, which is "throw together some arbitrary user stories, pass them off to the cheapest junior programmer you can find, and ship it, QA can wait until later".

NHS would be hit by 'significant' costs if UK loses EU data status, warn Lords

Re: The reality of Brexit...

The weird use of present continuous tense implies he's not a native US-English speaker, either. I guess his sponsors taught him to integrate reasonably well, but not quite well enough.

Re: The reality of Brexit...

When reading Codejunky anti EU whining, imagine it being spoken in the voice of Zippy from Rainbow to get an accurate idea of the average brexiter.

Or a pubescent Andrew Tate simp desperately calling everything he doesn't like "gay". Bonus points for calling his parents fascists for demanding that he clean his room.

Re: The reality of Brexit...

Meanwhile, CJ looks like a goose, steps like a goose...

Lots of people have all sorts of reasons for posting anonymously. Perhaps you should pay more attention to the "anonymous" part, which is pertinent, not the "coward" part which is clearly supposed to be ironic, and not primarily an insult for you to throw around like you've been listening to Andrew Tate.

Re: An article which mentions the EU

Thanks for down-voting me, CJ. Have you changed your opinion of Gina Miller, or of women in general? Do you exhibit any shame?

Re: The reality of Brexit...

We can't, because you ruined it for us. That's on you, not on us, and your trite "if you love the EU so much, why don't you marry it" school yard arguments are tedious. You and your brexiter ilk are directly at fault in this regard, yet you will never even acknowledge it, let alone apply a little self-reflection and humility.

Re: The reality of Brexit...

Importantly, this also excluded UK citizens who had been living abroad in another EU country for (I think) longer than 8 years. This included a family member, who definitely would not have voted to leave the EU. She has had to pay quite a lot of money to assume Greek citizenship instead, as a result of a vote she was excluded (for not good reason) from, because it was explicitly an advisory referendum (otherwise the terms would have to have included all UK citizens). What a fucking bonus, eh?

Re: For the love of god

Maybe he didn't want to wade through pages of CodeJunky arguing with people?

Re: The reality of Brexit...

Hi CJ, called any women "bitches" today?

Re: An article which mentions the EU

It's a "he". The proof, if required, is the post, which got moderated away some time ago, when I reported it, where he called Gina Miller a "bitch". He's a nasty little sexist as well as a RWNJ.

It's acceptable to explain your position, and have disagreements, misogyny is never acceptable. Sadly, that sort of thing that goes with the mindset of superiority of the little-englander who believes that people from his particular country are naturally better, more honest, and more capable than dirty Johnny foreigner. It's the very root of the belief that "Brussels" is somehow corrupt, yet the UK political system is beyond reproach, despite being less accountable, elected by the rotten FPTP system, and having a wholly unelected second house filled with political appointees and representatives of a single sect of a religion that most people in the country do not belong to.

Re: The reality of Brexit...

Why the fuck would anyone want to read through thousands of lines of utter bullshit to prove a negative?

The onus is on you, as the one making the claims, to demonstrate them. Your response is always "I have already proved that", but you never actually have. You really are a tedious and pathetic little troll.

It's a real shame...

...that the forums here don't allow you to block or mute people, because it's incredibly tedious wading through pages and pages of comments from a very small number of commenters, who seem to be determined to have public arguments with anyone who doesn't share their own unpopular opinions. There's one in particular on this thread who seems determined to repeatedly tell everyone about how much he hates the EU. There's another who likes to comment on anything even tangentially related to Russia, with pro-Kremlin talking points.

There might be some interesting, intelligent, opinions posted here, but they're swamped by the same, tired, old lies and right-wing propaganda and xenophobia.

The forums would really be a better place for it. I'm sure the facility to do so would not be particularly difficult, as long as a user is logged in. Store a list of blocked user IDs, filter or hide those posts/replies from those people. Allow us to read the comments we are interested in and not all this drivel.

Re: The reality of Brexit...

A rational discussion has the prerequisite of both parties being rational. CJ has never demonstrated much capacity for rational thought.