The way I read all of this and th decision is that they are saying that this law specifically only applies to bribery. They define it as a quid quo pro in advance of an act.

In this particular case, you can't charge the guy with bribery because it doesn't meet the definition.

That doesn't mean a "tip after the fact" isn't corrupt. That doesn't mean that's not in violation of some other law. It's saying that you can't apply this law to this case. This court is threading a fucking needle in an attempt to make this a state issue and say the Fed law can't apply.

Justice Jackson's dissent is amazing though:

Snyder's absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today's Court could love."

The Court's reasoning elevates nonexistent federalism concerns over the plain text of this statute and is a quintessential example of the tail wagging the dog," Jackson added.

Officials who use their public positions for private gain threaten the integrity of our most important institutions. Greed makes governments—at every level—less responsive, less efficient, and less trustworthy from the perspective of the communities they serve,"

Where are these docs? No one ever links to them or says where you can find them

Lemmy is gonna lemmy.

There isn't any evidence that they used her voice for the "Sky" voice model. Actually, there is evidence that they paid a voice actress to model that specific actress's voice.

That actress sounds similar to Scarlett, but it isn't Scarlett's voice. Is that illegal? No. Is it grounds for a suit? maybe. Will Scarlett win? Maybe.

Let's put it another way. If you wanted to record an audio book, but you wanted the voice actor to have certain qualities that you think would help your book sell. You think Scarlett has all of those qualities, so you ask her if she would record it for you. She declines.

Well shit, that sucks. But wait! She's not the only person with those vocal qualities. I am sure you can find someone else with very similar qualities. So you hire another voice actress that has all of those--which coincidentally and very understandable sounds a lot like Scarlett. But it isn't Scarlett.

Everyone wants to say "big corp bad!" here, but if they truly didn't use Scarlett's voice and didn't do any sort of manipulation to make it sound more like Scarlett, then why CANT they do it. I get that Scarlett is upset, but she's basically mad that someone sounds like her--and decided to work for OpenAI.

If I wanted James Earl Jones to read my eulogy, but he isn't available or is unwilling. Why couldn't I get someone to sound like him to read it? Why should he be able to sue me for using a voice actor that sounds similar to him?

Think about the 80 and 90 year olds in your life.

Now imagine them making laws and policy and regulations on things like tiktok, social media, artificial intelligence, student loans, minimum wage, housing or literally anything that impacts the millions of people under 40.

He's been in office longer than people under 40 have been alive. He was born in 1933. He legit remembers WWII (in his lucid moments). He could have purchased a home from a Sears catalog with his paper route money.

Being old doesn't necessarily mean you are out of touch--it could just mean you are wise and have tons of experience but add in the fact that you are an old senator who has been in office since 1981--and I can almost certainly say you are out of touch.

What do you have in common with the average Iowan at this point? Would could you possibly have in common?

I know/knew next to nothing about substack 6 months ago.

Now I only associate them as the other platform that allows Nazis on it.

I hurt my back during training and since it really started hurting after-hours I went to the local ER. The same ER all of the serious training incidents go to.

The ER doc eventually said "this seems like drug seeking behavior".

To which I responded. "No shit. I didn't come in here for a hug. I need muscle relaxers and pain meds so I can fake it through PT in the morning."

Which hilariously worked? He gave me what I needed and I left.

You are posting publicly online. It's all scrapeable.

This is so wild. Google allows side loading and 3rd party app stores…and that is the reason they were found guilty.

Unlike Apple, Google allows people to download apps onto phones running its Android operating system without going through its official app store, but the company strikes deals with phone manufacturers to favor Google’s official app store.

So because they strike deals to favor their store, even though they allow 3rd party stores to begin with, they’ve violated the SAA.

Meanwhile, Apple who refuses to allow competition or 3rd party app stores is sitting pretty because…well, they haven’t “favored” their own store over rival stores. BECAUSE RIVAL STORES CANT EXIST. I don’t know how you could favor your store any harder than that??

The legal shenanigans around all of this are frustrating to watch as a lay person.

Cobol devs that we had (while we spent insane money to retire their systems) we're getting 300-500k/year.

I'm sure companies are trying to rip off any young new entrants but 90k seems super low.

Which is the problem she's trying to address. It's become very obvious that precedent is no longer good enough when you have unethical, immoral, shady people in charge.

This is a good article but this:

So there's this unspoken assumption that progressives don't much care about corruption and accountability.

Is an absolutely asinine take. It's like they made this part up so they could talk about it for another paragraph. No one assumed progressives didn't care about corrupt. No one. That's just dumb.

Technological serfdom. You don't own anything anymore. You can perpetually rent from your lord or you can suffer the consequences.