I imagine that they could find that leeching is illegal if you upload anything to any other torrent clients. I think Meta was claiming they were literally in the clear because they were being assholes and configuring their clients not to share at all.

But yeah, keep your ratio above 1, or you're a jerk.

e-note be like ~~telegram~~ ~~memorandum~~ memo but not on paper, on ~~computer~~ magic blinky box.

Repository: a collection of related computer code, like related files in a filing cabinet

Fork: a copy of a repository at a certain point in time, like a fork in the road, they diverge from that point

Pull request: a request that a repository owner incorporate your changes into their files.

When you're on the information superhighway, in cyberspace, sometimes you want to send someone some information (datums). Sometimes an electronic mail is too formal or cumbersome for that, so you instead send them digital text messages, basically cybernetic telegrams, called e-notes.

AFAIK it was more about getting away from Thomas Edison's patents.

AFAIK, you don't actually need actually need an LLM to do it, as long as you do what Meta did and not upload anything at all. The one who did the copyright infringement is the one who supplied the data to you.

Even ancient non-domesticated kings didn't have the power that Trump is currently wielding. Not since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215.

Americans have a weird idea of what a king is or does.

That seems like a great reason to not like the guy. He takes our money whenever he visits. If I visit another country they don't pay for anything.

The monarch visits about once a decade. The King came by for 2 days recently to open Parliament. The last visit by a monarch before that was a 1 week visit by the Queen in 2010. One estimate I've seen is that the entire funding of anything Royal in Canada, including every expense related to the Governor General amounts to about $50m/year. That's about 0.01% of the Federal Budget. If Canada had a president (even a ceremonial one) instead of a Governor General those costs would barely change. A ceremonial president would cost roughly the same. Germany has a largely ceremonial president and his office costs the country 30m euros per year.

Basically, the amount spent on the royals / the governor general is tiny compared to the entire federal budget. Is it worth it? Who knows. The GG basically acts as an ambassador for the country and I'd argue many of them have been useful, and that's where almost the entire royal-related budget goes.

If Canada decided to switch to a republic without even a ceremonial president, the cost of that change would be equivalent to decades worth of spending on the GG / royals.

"Soft power" is another term for influence, so the king still has power.

Yeah, but so do TikTok influencers.

Yeah, the so-called "lawful access" parts of Bill C-2 are especially bad. Here's constitutional law professor Michael Geist's take on it:

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2025/06/privacy-at-risk-government-buries-lawful-access-provisions-in-new-border-bill/

"the bill creates a new “information demand” for law enforcement that does not require court oversight."

In other words, if Bill C-2 passes, the police are allowed to demand information from an ISP about someone without a warrant, and it's illegal for the ISP to refuse that demand. There's no oversight mechanism of any kind, and the only requirement is that the cop has a hunch that maybe a crime might be committed. What crime? Any crime.

Know what's a crime? Lying to a cop. So, if a cop has a reasonable suspicion that you lied to them, or will lie to them in the future, that's legal grounds for them to get access to this data from a service provider. You know that every cop going through a divorce will be using this to get info on their spouses. Why not? It's perfectly legal.

Why are these so-called "lawful access" provisions being considered? It's a sore spot with the US that Canadians have a bit more privacy than Americans. And, for some reason, despite the US being incredibly hostile, the government still wants to work on that relationship by giving away Canadians' rights.

So-called "lawful access" is a terrible idea. The supreme court already decided that Canadians have a right to privacy and that giving away this data violates that privacy. These rights shouldn't be given away for any reason, but especially not to curry favour with the US, given that the US is already violating their treaties with Canada. But, even if someone might disagree and think "lawful access" is necessary, give it its own bill. Don't tack it onto a bill about the border. This has nothing to do with the border, and it's an important enough discussion that it shouldn't be hidden in a border bill.

How many are still alive? That excuse has long expired.

It's not individual guilt, it's institutional guilt. In many other cases that's a good thing. We want German kids to grow up learning about the holocaust and thinking "we can't allow that to ever happen again". I don't think what's happening in Gaza could happen in Germany because of what Germans are taught growing up.

OTOH, in Israel they seem to only be taught that jews are victims and can never be perpetrators.

You can thank the CIA for that.

Yeah, they were involved. They were saving the world from the dangers of communism. Looking back, all the west really had to do was sit back and wait for the communist system to collapse. But, I wonder what the middle east would look like without the CIA's interference. It sure seems unlikely it would be a land of healthy, stable democracies. Look at all the places where the CIA didn't interfere. Countries ruled by strongmen is the rule rather than the exception.

But, however we got here, that has been Israel's traditional role. It was a democratic country with somewhat similar values to the west, nestled among Islamic Arab countries with very different values.

Do you mean governments or people?

People don't have much power here. Other than boycotts, what can people do?

For governments, Israel is fairly powerful. They have powerful lobbyists, and aren't shy to leverage claims of antisemitism against anybody who speaks up against Israel. In many cases, there's also the guilt over how jews were treated in WWII. This is one reason Germany is so incredibly pro-Israel. Then there's the fact that Israel is still more-or-less a democracy, which makes it unique in the middle east. It's the one country in the region pushing back against various Islamic fundamentalist goverments, movements and terrorist groups. Many countries don't want to lose that "friend".

And then there's spyware. Most of the best spyware in the world is produced in Israel. Some cynical people would say that countries don't want to lose access to the world's best producer of spyware. Some even more cynical people would say that that spyware has already been used on politicians and Israel is using it for blackmail. Who knows what the right level of cynicism is.