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Cake day: September 15th, 2024

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  • Social media sites live as advertising vehicles. Being able to show numbers related to users showing links helps them sell advertisements.

    It’s reportedly why Bluesky redirects links in the app to a referrer – so websites can see how much traffic they get from there and have a reason to post on the network.

    Whether or not this is a good thing, and how much tracking is acceptable, is an entirely separate discussion. (Which should really include words like “I regularly donate to my Lemmy instance” or their equivalent…)




  • This is really dependent on how many people are taking the same trip you are.

    There’s a rail line that goes very regularly between my state capital and my state’s eponymous megacity. (And more along the entire corridor on south to the national capital). If it’s just one or two adults doing that trip it’s cheaper to ride the rail, since the two round-trip tickets cover gas, fuel, tolls, parking, and depreciation. Not so if it’s enough people to fill the car.





  • The bible doesn’t say being gay is a sin. At worst, there’s an old testament law against bisexuality (that may just be about not cheating on your wife with a man), and a new testament story about God making some homophobic Romans gay to punish them.

    More importantly than the ambiguity of either the old testament laws or the post-gospel epistles however are the actual techings attributed to Jesus. Each of the four gospels tells the story slightly differently, but two stories are applicable here.

    The first is the story of the Mary who was neither Jesus’s mother nor bestie, but just a random Jewish girl who was caught cheating with a married man and was about to be gang-murdered by an angry mob chucking stones at her until she died. Obvious sexual sin, and apparently the customary punishment. But God essentially says “I tell you what, SURE she’s a sinner, how about y’all get someone who isn’t to start this execution right.”

    ( Which, when coupled with a few later passages about leaving judgement for God, honestly let’s any Christian ignore anyone else’s sin entirely.)

    The second story is a bit more on point, and is contained in all four gospels as essentially the thesis of the new religion. Jesus was asked what the most important part of the law was, and he essentially said “love” twice. To love God with all that you are, and love everyone else as you love yourself. And then went on to imply that one could derive all of celestial law from just those two. Which means any Christian can and should ignore any hateful old testament law if they honestly feel it is wrong.

    (Which can sound like a cop out until you get back to the “we are all sinners” point. It doesn’t matter if homosexuality or premarital sex are sins, because being a hateful jerk or judgemental ass are also sins and the only way anyone gets to avoid hell is if God decides to not give us the horrible fate we deserve.)


    The Christianity I practice is a religion based around the idea that God created everything, loves us all, and really just wants us to not be dicks to each other.

    There isn’t enough room in a life concerned with the “new” commandment to love everyone as we love ourselves to be a dick about anyone else’s sex life. As long as you’re honest with your lovers and do your best to not spread STDs, whether or not your seventy-five member atheistic informal polycule is sinful or not is between you and God.






  • So, if I understand right, basically they assume its correct unless given significant evidence otherwise?

    That’s how it reads to me this morning. Assuming by “given” you meant “they have at all”.

    So like, if this flag is enabled and I visit a website and don’t directly provide personal information, then they have to assume I am a child under CCPA and thus can’t share my data. Right?

    Based on the CA AG’s page at https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa , I don’t see how “the browser reports the user as a child” gives a substantial additional burden on website developers. Presumably, the most they’d have to do to comply is use the flag to change “do you agree for yourself” to “PARENT OR GUARDIAN: Do you agree for the user of this account…”

    I’m missing the part where an adult setting their age category incorrectly for themselves would do more than get a stronger porn block and a bunch of “go get your parent” pop-ups instead of “click here if you’re over 18.”

    Presumably, if Microsoft and Google and Apple don’t get the Digital Age Assurance Act blocked in court, we could see a broad adoption of it as a way to skip paying for third-party age validation for sites like Reddit, BlueSky, and Lemmy, and all of the porn sites on the internet would just ask for the flag in lieu of their current “do we have a cookie where this user clicked that they’re at least 18” code.


  • Not a lawyer, answers based on https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/2025

    1. Under section 1798.501. (b) 4A, wouldn’t this make collection of almost any system information illegal?

    No. Because the terms are defined in 1798.500. They can ask your system directly whatever they want; they just can’t ask Microsofg, Apple, or Google for correlating specifics.

    1. Since 1798.501. (b) 2A seems to require that developers that receive this age flag treat assume it is true, this would at least apply to CCPA, and California Civil Code, right?

    Yes, but only insomuch as laws that protect minors impose additional constraints on those who have “actual knowledge” that a user is actually a child.

    It doesn’t mean they need to trust the OS flag if they have suoerior knowledge as to someone’s actual age. If I ask a child to contact Imgur to delete my account they’d block out my porn stash but otherwise treat the request as any other “delete an adult’s account” request.

    1. Would 1798.501. (b) 2A also apply to COPPA? I know this is state versus federal law, but…

    Statr law can expand upon federal law but not contradict. And it smells like AB1043 is more “add a more explicit signal of user age” than anything affecting data retention relating to children.

    What part do you think is contradictory?


  • a) Explain why the US hasn’t gone back in so long, and why with modern technology it seems so difficult?

    Going to the moon is expensive and has essentially no direct revenue. There are no resources to be had on the moon that provide worthwhile efficiency over what we already have on earth, and most of the basic science was done by the Apollo missions.

    How do you verify moon rocks without having actually been on the moon? How did scientists figure out what a moon rock looks like?

    Getting moon rocks, which have a unique microscopic texture due to no water erosion, was one of those “basic science” bits I mentioned before. They don’t really prove the moon landing except that “they’re from the moon” is the simplest answer for why these rocks have that unique texture.

    Why aren’t the old Apollo designs being reused for a moon landing? (by either the Americans or the Chinese)

    Because thre 1960s were fifty years ago.

    The industrial base to build an Apollo rocket isn’t there anymore than the industrial base to build a 1965 Buick skylark or an Atati 2600. You could throw money and rebuild all those factories, but it’d dramatically balloon the cost even before you start to recon with correcting the inevitable mismatch between the original spec and what your rebuilt factory can make.

    (And even if we did just rebuild Apollo, we’d wind up with a rocket that didn’t have the advantage of 50 years of advancement.)



  • Like the woman who sued macdonalds for getting third degree burns because their coffee was too hot.

    Please never mention this story without pointing out at least one of the following;

    • The coffee was hot enough to cause crippling burns to her genitals.
    • McDonald’s intentionally had their coffee too hot to drink to keep customers from hanging out
    • the woman only asked for medical expenses and did not sue until her complaint was ignored.
    • the eye-popping headline number was calculated as something like one day of the company’s coffee profit.

    There literally isn’t an instance of a US company being sued by a customer more deserving of empathy and horror.