Karl Auerbach / is on Nostr

I'm a techie & attorney.

Been on the net a long time.

I have a Norbert Wiener Award for Social and Professional Responsibility, and I've been a Fellow of Law and Technology at CalTech & Loyola/Marymount Law.

And yes, I am that person who was elected to the ICANN Board of Directors and who ended up suing them to see the financials (I won, hands down.)

Everything there is to know about me is on my personal and company websites:

https://cavebear.com/
https://iwl.com/

searchable

Personal Website: https://cavebear.com/
Company Website: https://iwl.com/

Last Notes

2024-08-31 21:02:31

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I have never read the Twitter terms of service.
First, one has to ask "do those terms actually come into force or was there a failure to form an enforceable agreement?" I ask that because I assert Do Not Track and the newer privacy restrictions via my web browser and I assert that it the web service ignores those then the terms of service also do not come into force.
Second, in those terms of service we could look closely at the rights assignments to see if the copyright of the authors (the users) can be revoked or limited.

2024-08-31 18:23:28

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People far too often forget that trademarks are a consumer protection device, so that consumers can make informed choices regarding the source and identity of goods and services.
Trademarks exist not to benefit vendors (although they do, as a side effect) but to protect consumers. (This is an area where ICANN went completely off the rails with regard to domain names.)
So it is entirely in our right as buyers and consumers to not refer to a thing by its trademark. The only constraint is that we can't enter commerce and try to use someone else's trademark on our own offerings.

2024-07-08 05:47:20

By-the-way, is anyone still asking/demanding that TFG publish his tax returns?

2024-07-06 18:33:20

I just watched the film The Zone of Interest.
Much of my family vanished into those camps during the early 1940s. Over the years I have been contacted by others with my last name who are looking for traces of ones with our name who vanished.
My grandmother always badgered every German with the question "You knew, what did you do about it?"
The film faces that question squarely and answers "yes, they knew, and they did nothing."
The film was subtle - the sounds of background gunfire and screaming were barely noticeable at the start but increased slowly as the film progressed. And I missed the significance of the FLIR reverse video scenes of the girl with the potatoes.
If the trump era has taught us anything it is that here in the USA there are many among us who would readily and happily assume the role of the Hoss family as they live their pleasant lives on the bodies of others of us who they do not consider human.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_of_Interest_(film)

2024-07-05 18:02:20

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Tell me how this passed building code at either planning, building, or final inspection?

2024-07-04 23:04:42

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My favorite version of that song - a song that ought to be our National Anthem - was the version done by Sharon Jones (with our without the Dap Kings)
https://youtu.be/JH3pAuGYZBs

2024-07-04 23:01:30

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One might thus wonder which Biden, the one Newsom met or the one the rest of us saw at the "debate, will be answering that 3am phone call made famous in that Hillary C. ad from 2008.

2024-07-04 16:03:30

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Correct me if I am wrong, but this is merely the availability of the update, leaving it up to each administrator whether and when to deploy the update.

2024-07-04 01:03:06

With regard to the notion of Biden withdrawing from the race for President.
I would be totally happy if he did so with an explicit and strong endorsement of Kamala Harris as the nominee.
(Harris was my first choice well before the primaries even began. I know that she has some rough edges, and also that some people do not like prosecutors. One thing about prosecutors - they are in a much better position to get rid of bad cases than are defense attorneys. And there are a lot of people who do deserve to be prosecuted - such as TFG.)
Imagine if it had been Kamala H., rather than Biden, on the debate stage a week ago. She would have left TFG as a smoking ruin.

2024-07-01 18:03:50

Well, I think we can now move Dred Scott from from the top of the list of worst ever SCOTUS decisions.

2024-06-29 00:46:03

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I agree; that's why in my mind the pool of possible replacements is quite small.
And it is risky - I wouldn't suggest doing it at all were it not that I more than strongly fear that Biden is doomed to lose.

2024-06-28 23:18:46

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My criteria for an alternative to Biden is a low bar - he/she must be able to beat TFG. I'm not looking for anything resembling "best" or "wisest"; I'm only looking for a winner.

2024-06-28 03:14:01

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Playwright Athol Fugard once wrote (paraphrase) "The saddest words in your language are 'too late'."
I am not willing to say that it is too late to change, that it is too late for Biden to put country over ego, and withdraw.
So who to replace him - we have several names from the 2020 race (I like Klobuchar or Harris, although I admit the latter is disliked by many.)
Now is a time for the D-party to be bold. Legally they have dug themselves into a deep hole. But Biden has the sword to cut that Gordian Knot.

2024-06-28 01:25:09

Did TFG just call Biden "Brandon"?
I wonder if Biden is going to directly remind everyone that TFG killed hundreds of thousands of Americans with his Covid stupidity.

2024-06-14 17:07:58

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I used to use hundreds of PC-Engines APU4 units, I loved 'em but the processor is now beyond end-of-life. I ran FreeBSD and, occasionally, Linux on 'em.
I have switched to a unit based on Intel N5105 (x86/64 arch) with four Intel 2.5gbit i226 NICs and two M.2 slots. (Vendor is a company called Moginsok, they are on Amazon.) I am quite happy with it (although I add a fan) as an APU2 replacement (actually it is far more powerful than the PC-engines platform yet costs me less.)
I have quite successfully run out-of-the-box FreeBSD 14.0 and Linux (Fedora) on 'em.

2024-06-13 20:36:16

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There's more to the story - as we drove north we had to cross the Sierra, somewhere, but the passes kept being closed by the snow. I can't remember whether it was Ebbets or Carson pass that was open - it was the one that has two summits. We got over the first summit when the storm really hit and we were almost trapped in the valley between the summits - we at times had to push the car (no tire chains) to get it moving again (we did sink the car in mud later that day after we got out of the mountains - we were a dirty mess!!)
(I also have a story of carrying and pushing a steam locomotive with two large trucks over Carson pass - it was too tall to be carried over I80 and a single truck did not have the power for the job.)
As for the Owens Valley - one foggy night we pulled off the road because we simply could not see. When dawn arrived and it cleared we discovered we were parked/sleeping on the runway of the Lone Pine airport.

2024-06-13 17:58:42

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In the 1950's and '60s my uncle (a marathon runner) would run up to the top of Whitney and back. (He at least once ran the entire John Muir trail.)
One October I brought some people from the UK to the Owens Valley. It was night when we drove from LA to Lone Pine. Overnight there was heavy snow, but the dawn was sunny and clear - and my friends until that moment ha no idea that there were mountains nearby. It was an impressive surprise for them to see the eastern Sierra scarp covered with fresh snow.
By-the-way, the Guardian has been running a series of articles about the latest ravages by Los Angeles' Dept of Water and Power on the people in the Owens Valley.

2024-06-11 03:02:34

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When it comes to Thunderbolt 4 cables, I have found there is a correlation between price and quality. That's why I buy 'em from places like Cable Matters or OWC.