And all the people saying “but the lower courts get to decide if it’s an official act” are ignoring the fact that the courts are so slow it won’t even matter, all the damage will be long done

Hey, just FYI, the term is actually “moot”.

Not trying to be rude, I just I know I prefer to be told about stuff like this ❤️

Oh boy, let’s take this piece by piece…

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A LAWYER AND THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE

First: let’s talk about the difference between copyright, patents, and trademark

A patent protects a method of doing something - like a novel piece of code, or a newly invented drug formula - from being duplicated and used or sold without your consent.

Copyright protects creative works - like art, books, and computer software - from being mimiced. It literally deals with the rights to copy something

Trademark protects brands - like a logo or company name - from being used by other people for profit. It usually deals with marketplace confusion, as when someone creates a competing product with a similar logo to try to benefit from the logo’s recognition and popularity.

So, with that said, what are YOU dealing with?

Well, since you’re not selling software or utilizing anything from the WatchDogs game universe, you’re pretty much free and clear on both patent and copyright.

What about trademark?

Well, on the one hand, you are not competing with Ubisoft in any way, nor are you attempting to represent yourself as related to WatchDogs. So, by the letter of the law (in the US), they don’t have a valid complaint.

However, trademark under US law has this funny feature where an entity that holds a trademark is required to vigorously defend it when they become aware of potential infringement. This is to prevent the selective application of trademark. That is, if I know John is using my trademark and I don’t go after him, then Steve uses my trademark too, I can’t suddenly claim to have an interest in defending it when I didn’t care before. Steve can point at the fact that I didn’t go after John and say “you already gave up your trademark by failing to enforce it”.

So how does this impact you? Well, unfortunately, even if you are technically allowed to use “dedsec” under US law, if Ubisoft has a trademark on the term “dedsec” specifically, AND if someone at Ubisoft became aware of your use of their trademark, they would likely come after you for trademark infringement just to cover their ass. You might even win in court, but it would cost a whole lot of money that you would likely never be able to recover.

The good news is that the very first step in a trademark dispute is a cease and desist letter. They’ll demand you stop using their trademark. At that point you can either comply, refuse, or offer to settle the matter by selling them the domain.

What you do with this information is up to you.

I’m an effort to get you an answer that isn’t dismissive:

1. Youth indoctrination, social conformity, and cultural isolation. If your parents, friends, and most of your community tells you something is true, you are unlikely to challenge it for a variety of reasons including trust (most of what they’ve taught you works for your daily life), tribal identity, etc

2. People naturally fear death, and one coping strategy for the existential fear of death is to convince yourself that the death of your body is not the end of your existence. Science does not provide a pathway to this coping strategy so people will accept or create belief systems that quell that fear, even in the face of contradictory evidence. Relieving the pressure of that fear is a strong motivator.

3. Release of responsibility. When there is no higher power to dictate moral absolutes, we are left feeling responsible for the complex decisions around what is or isn’t the appropriate course of action. And that shit is complicated and often anxiety inducing. Many people find comfort in offloading that work to a third party.

That it would be viewed as awkward and unwelcome by the other participants. Consent is key, yo

I go for the hug when I see friends I haven’t seen in a long time, or when I’m parting ways with someone I know I won’t see for a while. But it’s definitely not a regular occurrence

No, it’s not socially acceptable. Yes, I wish it were. I don’t know if I’d go for full on snuggling but I come from a physically affectionate family and in general wish people were more comfortable with that kind of thing

Troll mode: Rip the first 5 minutes of each movie then splice in Rick Astley

Troll activist mode: Rip the first 5 minutes of each movie then splice in Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion live reading

Troll comedian mode: Rip the first 5 minutes of each movie then splice in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian

Activist mode: Find a set of movies to rename that teach about the harm religion has caused

Ethical absolutist mode: Refuse to host them, and explain why

Non-confrontational familial support mode: Give Mom a unique user and make the god movies only accessible to that user

In all seriousness it depends on what your priorities are. Is it more important to you to provide judgement-free support to your mom so she knows she can rely on you, or is it more important to try to reduce harm in the world by deplatforming harmful media? Or maybe it’s more important to try to teach your mom what’s wrong with those movies and you can come to an arrangement where she can watch those movies only if she agrees to watch movies you choose in equal amounts (since you can track it) to counteract the propaganda?

What is most important to you?

Nobody is shitting on incremental progress.

Rather, they are rightfully asking “when do we get the rest? Why is it only this increment, when it could be more?”

You do not get a pat on the back and a congratulations for doing less than what is expected. You get a “that’s nice, now finish the job”

EDIT: if your 12yo beats the shit out of another kid every day at school, but today they only shoved a kid into a wall instead of kicking their ass, you don’t take them out for ice cream for “incremental improvement”.

“If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound…” Malcolm-X

That’s a non-trivial number of devices, so I would recommend a decent router that will last into the future, including service upgrades. Especially if anyone in the house is gaming and streaming movies at the same time

I recommend purchasing the modem and router as two separate units.

For the modem, because you have symmetric gigabit service, you’ll need one that supports gigabit upstream. That means the less expensive SB8200 is out. Instead, you’re looking at the ARRIS SURFboard S33. You can also find a comparable product from Netgear, the CM2000

For your router, I personally like and trust Asus. Their user interface is robust but user-friendly, and their firmware is well supported by the home networking community (including a stellar ‘expanded’ version called AsusMerlin that frequently has features pulled into the official firmware)

While you could go with an older model that only supports WiFi 5 (AC), those models have reached end-of-life and will only receive critical security updates. Instead, it’s worth spending a bit more for the WiFi 6 (AX) version.

The minimum you’ll want to support a symmetric gigabit connection like what you have is the Asus RT-AX86U. However, to support possible higher speeds in the future, and to get the most rock-solid performance, I recommend the Asus RT-AX88U. This is what I personally own for my symmetric gigabit connection

NOTE: There are older versions with the same model number that have extra LAN Ethernet ports (8 total) and no 2.5Gbps port. Do NOT get them! There are known issues when using ports 5-8 on these units

Again, you could find a similar product in the Netgear Nighthawk brand.

Anything above that is going to be extra bells and whistles. Things like extra WiFi bands, stronger radios, more 2.5Gbps ports, support for link aggregation, and some one-click gaming features that I personally think aren’t worth the money.

Depending on the size of your home and your personal use case, you may also find value in adding mesh WiFi nodes to your network. Asus and Netgear both have their own implementations here. Asus’ version is called AiMesh and is pretty seamless. All of their modern routers can act as the primary mesh node.

Personally I do not game on WiFi, so I went with 3x Asus ZenWiFi AX Mini (XD4) mesh nodes. They can be connected wirelessly to the main router, or by Ethernet to reduce latency. If I were going to be gaming on WiFi, I would have gone with the beefier ZenWiFi AX (XT8) nodes instead

Hope that helps, and let me know if you have any questions! Happy to go into more detail on whatever you need

Based on your edit, what you need isn’t MoCA. What you need is a cable modem and a router (preferably as separate units, not a combo one like you have. Happy to explain why if you care)

• What is your ISP?

• What is your current advertised upload and download speed for the internet plan you have?

• Do you get TV or phone service through the same provider?

• Is your house wired for Ethernet? Coax? Both?

• How many people live with you?

• How many sqft is your home?

• How many devices well be connected? How many are wired? How many on WiFi?

• What is your use-case? Simultaneous streaming in 4k and latency-sensitive gaming? Mostly non-competitive gaming? Big downloads? Do you plan to stream content from your home while traveling or similar?

Help me help you :p

Just to make absolutely sure: you are POSITIVE that the device you’ve been renting is a MoCA-WAN router, and NOT a cable modem?

In the US at least, most of the single-unit devices that receive a coax input are DOCSIS 3.x, not MoCA. They are combining two pieces of hardware in a single physical unit: a docsis modem and a router.

Prior to having fiber internet, when my provider was Comcast, I owned two separate devices instead of renting the single device from my ISP: a DOCSIS 3.1 modem from Arris, and a standard Ethernet router

Just want to make sure you are absolutely confident about what your ISP is actually providing before you spend money on new hardware :)

“Cool story. Still murder.” I have really serious problems with how FISA has been used in the past. I usually could go either way on authorizing state surveillance but it has been abused too much for me to be comfortable keeping it around in its current form

As far as trump is concerned, even a broken clock is right twice a day

I don’t care how much dirt FISA could enable us to dig up on Trump, the trade isn’t worth it. It’d be the epitome of biting off your nose to spite your face

“Reason” and “morals” are unfortunately not synonymous :(

If your morals say that killing to reduce the costs of accommodating disabilities is okay then your reason will dictate you start killing people in wheelchairs.

This is honestly why I feel like us liberals fail so often: you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. The position “white people are superior” - the starting point from which many of these heinous behaviors begin - isn’t about logic and reason. So trying to use logic and reason to explain why killing minorities is bad won’t work. We act like if we could just explain how unreasonable they’re being everything would be okay. But that’s not how it works.

You have to address the rotten foundations first. Otherwise they will continue to spout off what sounds like reason if you just accepted their premise.

Reject the premise, not the logic used to get from the premise to the behavior

It’s a holiday involving an animal mascot known for its active sex life, and painting eggs in fabulous colorful decoration.

Sounds pretty much on message for Trans Day of Visibility if you ask me 🤷

You are missing the point. I am NOT saying that he isn’t using a dog whistle here. I am NOT saying this isn’t extremely thinly veiled threats. I am NOT giving him the benefit of the doubt.

I am saying that this particular instance is a weak example by comparison to some of the far worse things he has said, and headlines that deliberately exclude context to make it sound worse than it would with the full quote do more harm than good. I am saying that it distracts from the much more easily defensible criticisms, by inviting pedantic arguments and cries of unfairness.

You are literally the person I’m trying to communicate with: Stop making it easy for people to derail the conversation. Stop making it easy for moderates to buy into the “democrats are manipulative too” song and dance. Please. It does us no good

Nani the fuck did you just fucking iimasu about watashi, you chiisai bitch desuka? Watashi’ll have anata know that watashi graduated top of my class in Nihongo 3, and watashi’ve been involved in iroirona Nihongo tutoring sessions, and watashi have over sanbyaku perfect test scores. Watashi am trained in kanji, and watashi is the top letter writer in all of southern California. Anata are nothing to watashi but just another weeaboo. Watashi will korosu anata the fuck out with vocabulary the likes of which has neber meen mimasu’d before on this continent, mark watashino fucking words. Anata thinks that anata can get away with hanashimasing that kuso to watashi over the intaaneto? Omou again, fucker. As we hanashimasu, watashi am contacting watashino secret netto of otakus accross the USA, and anatano IP is being traced right now so you better junbishimasu for the ame, ujimushi. The ame that korosu’s the pathetic chiisai thing anata calls anatano life. You’re fucking shinimashita’d, akachan."

Please, my fellow democrats, I beg that we pick our battles better. This was said in a context that pretty clearly was referencing the impact of a trade war with China. He was talking about car manufacturing in Mexico and tariffs and how it will impact the American economy. There are plenty of quotes where the dog whistle is clear as day. This is not the right example to use when having this argument