TWeaK

No, it isn't. The website is offered free of charge, regardless of whether you provide them data or content. The exchange for data/content is a second transaction tucked away in the terms and conditions, and the website offers nothing in return for that.

The reason the 2nd exchange is hidden in the terms and conditions is to intentionally hide what the user is giving away, such that the user cannot make a fair value assessment. It is fraudulent and deceptive.

The TOS shouldn't hold up in court. A contract must be an exchange of two things, eg money for a product or service. You can't say "Our service is free of charge!!!" And then in the fine print "(((But also you agree to give us everything we can take free of charge)))".

The issue is how everyone does it. Facebook and Google started when data had no value, now they're amongst the wealthiest businesses in the world. Now, Microsoft have joined in, *even though you already pay for their products and services anyway!"

However, the other aspect is that everyone is a victim. Lawmakers are the victim. They still haven't quite yet realised how much is being taken from them (at least $50 per year, probably more like $1,000 per year if not more for prominent figures) but they are still being abused.

It's like that form of bank fraud, where the criminal takes pennies from accounts, hoping the user won't notice and the bank will write it off. Do it to enough people and enough times and you can make millions. They do this to everyone and they make billions.

Either the data is public domain and they don't have to pay for it, but also cannot charge others for it, or the data is private and they must pay the author a fair share.

There is legal standing, IMO. You can't take something without consideration, and access to the website was granted free of charge while the data collection was squirrelled away in the fine print. That isn't a lawful contract, the fine print is for technicalities about the main transaction of X in exchange for Y. You can't say "we'll give you X for free!!!” then sneak into the fine print "(((you also give us Y for free)))". The structure is clearly deceptive in a manner that is designed to prevent a fair assessment of the value being exchanged.

Insurers have to provide a "key facts page" where they summarise in plain English what you're paying for. The fine print gives the detail, but the front page is still "we give you X in exchange for Y".

You can't build a car without paying for the nuts and bolts. Tech companies have placed themselves amongst the wealthiest businesses in the world without paying for the nuts and bolts we provide.

Hell, even Microsoft is in on it now, even though you pay for Windows and Office 365!

I did the same, but we're both fools if we think reddit didn't keep every character we typed (yet alone submitted) in a private, proprietary database.

We weren't paid for our data. We were given access to a website free of charge. The consent we gave was supposed to be for the operation of the website, not for training AI.

They should fucking pay us.

Federal judge: "Fuck you, you lowly state judge peon."

The officer is responsible for his own actions, but responsibility isn't divied out into neat percentages.

The officer is 100% responsible for their actions and their gross excess speed. They are a highly trained driver, and they should know better. However, that doesn't mean there aren't other factors of responsibility: eg, the road being poorly designed for 25mph, while allowing 75mph as a practicable speed; the girl crossing the road without paying attention; the general attitude of police as a profession chasing drug calls as a source of point scoring, rather than serving the public good.

In particular, it is not illegal to be high on drugs. The crimes are possession and intent to supply. Having drugs in your system is not a crime, and having drugs in your system does not legally imply a crime has been committed. It might be somewhat likely that you'll find drugs with someone who has taken them, but that's just probable cause for a search, and not something an officer should be racing towards.

However, you should not be able to drive down a 25mph road at 75mph. It should feel wrong and sketchy well below that speed, and be completely impossible at that speed.

A 25mph road should not be a wide open straight road. It should force drivers to slow down to manoeuvre around traffic calming measures.

That's because they didn't. What happened was someone subsequently released info about Russian corruption, and Wikileaks didn't publish it, citing the fact that Russian corruption was obvious and not newsworthy.

A comment replying "Source?" is not contributing to the conversation, and criticising someone for writing more than 1 word in reply is also bullshit.

It really gets on my wick when people thing saying "Source?" is a sufficient challenge in online conversation. We're not writing academic papers here, we're chatting shit on the internet.

If you have an argument to make, make it.

If you have a counter-argument, make it.

If all you want to do is shit on someone for not writing an academic article with citations[^1] but don't actually contribute anything yourself, go suck on a turd.

[^1]: Wow, look, lemmy has a citation function! If only the hyperlinks actually worked...

However, it should be said, @Shalakushka@kbin.social has probably got things wrong. I don't think Russia provided emails from the Republican party. The argument doesn't even make sense - why would Russia provide arguments on both sides if they wanted one side, their Republican tiny-handed man, to get into the White House?

Rather, what happened, as I recall, was that Assange also received intel on Russian corruption from somewhere else, then elected not to publish it. That is perhaps dodgy, but at the same time the reasoning I recall him giving was that it is obvious that Russia is corrupt - it simply was not newsworthy.

Assange got e-mails for both Republican and Democratic parties from a Russian hacker and then specifically chose to withhold the Republican e-mails

but that’s not what he or his employers wanted.

Why would Russia give him information on both parties if Russia wanted to support one party over the other?

I think you've got things confused. I think the controversy was that he released information on the Democrats, provided by Russia, but then subsequently did not release information on Russia being corrupt. This was then construed as him being in support of Russia, when, by his argument, he simply did not think reporting on Russian corruption was newsworthy - of course Russia is corrupt.

If you can please provide evidence that Assange or Wikileaks were provided evidence of Republican corruption by the Russians, that would be appreciated.

Dude, no.

But they also know how to show a good poker face. "Have a nice day!", while they fleece you.

Yeeeahh but the $6M man was kinda wank, really. Give me some Knight Rider, Airwolf, hell even some classic Mission Impossible.

But Thunderbirds and all the UK puppet shows were far better.

Stingraaaaaaay, STINGRAY!!

Edit: Oh man, I'm about to fall down a rabbit hole now.... I almost forgot about Captain Scarlet!! (Unfortunately ITV have apparently killed off videos of the actual intro, their "full intro" video is anything but. Commercial non-public broadcasting bastards!)

In terms of toy rankings (which was always the best ranking), it goes: Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Stingray.

The Mask was somewhere between Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. Transformers had a similar spot, maybe neck and neck with Thunderbirds. But then, Power Rangers came along in the 90s and took the crown. I even made my own custom Lego Power Rangers/Voltron type things out of random spaceship models, that could combine together into one big robot.