IHeartBadCode

I just want to note here for those about to journey into this conversation, there's a major hiccup that didn't exist before. The Supreme Court placed an new expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment in the 2008 Heller case. This has significantly altered how the second amendment is read in the United States. So what may seem like "brain dead easy" things to do, likely cannot be done as they would be unconstitutional.

I say this because the question posed simply indicates "Present + Congress" which seems to imply, "which laws would you pass to fix gun control issues" and post-2008 that is no longer a thing. Any discussion needs to include at this point a conversation about the Supreme Court, the new understanding of the 2nd Amendment, and that the Justices currently on the bench will likely enforce their new expansive interpretation for their term on the court (which is a lifetime appointment).

We are now at a point that we cannot fix this issue without a Constitutional Amendment, a reorganization of the Supreme Court (packing, impeachment, etc), an incredibly careful tip-toe around this new understanding of the second amendment, and/or talking about the underlying issues that surround gun reform (economic and societal issues).

And we are seeing the consequences of Heller in things like 2022 Bruen which SCOTUS indicated that a "historic standard" should be applied to new gun regulation. This has lead to US v Rahimi where the Court of Appeals for 5th Circuit has removed the Federal protection that folks charged with domestic violence can still obtain a gun as "domestic violence" had no historical standard on which to base on. Which is an absolute astonishing level of logic there.

We are no longer at a phase where legislation alone along the strict lines of "just gun reform", this new understanding of the second amendment has forever (or at least as long as those Justices sit the bench) altered how we can approach this issue. We cannot just simply say, "let us figure out ways to regulate gun ownership in itself" that is no longer allowed. We can approach the issue indirectly: how do we increase the cost of Interstate gun ownership, how do we regulate the the dissemination of ammunition, how do we address the various issues that draw people into violent crime, how do we address the issue of school shootings at an societal level. But we have been cut off from direct approaches that regulate guns themselves except in the most extreme cases and even then, advocates are continually being handed new tools by the Supreme Court to bring about new challenges for those.

Any meaningful debate about gun control needs to include the Supreme Court. Because given the current Court's propensity to expand gun rights and the understanding of the second amendment, any law that might get introduced to fix the issue today, could and very likely would be overturned by the court. This has become a new chess piece in this game to be considered since 2008, prior yes this could have been a Congress and President issue alone, but post-2008, the Courts must be considered in the discussion. The Supreme Court too strongly embraces the new understanding of the second amendment to let any direct law be allowed to go unchallenged.

It absolutely could. Heck, RPMs and DEBs pulled from random sites can do the exact same thing as well. Even source code can hide something if not checked. There's even a very famous hack presented by Ken Thompson in 1984 that really speaks to the underlying thing, "what is trust?"

And that's really what this gets into. The means of delivery change as the years go by, but the underlying principal of trust is the thing that stays the same. In general, Canonical does review somewhat apps published to snapcraft. However, that review does not mean you are protected and this is very clearly indicated within the TOS.

14.1 Your use of the Snap Store is at your sole risk

So yeah, don't load up software you, yourself, cannot review. But also at the same time, there's a whole thing of trust here that's going to need to be reviewed. Not, "Oh you can never trust Canonical ever again!" But a pretty straightforward systematic review of that trust:

• How did this happen?
• Where was this missed in the review?
• How can we prevent this particular thing that allowed this to happen in the future?
• How do we indicate this to the users?
• How do we empower them to verify that such has been done by Canonical?

No one should take this as "this is why you shouldn't trust Ubuntu!" Because as you and others have said, this could happen to anyone. This should be taken as a call for Canonical to review how they put things on snapcraft and what they can do to ensure users have all the tools so that they can ensure "at least for this specific issue" doesn't happen again. We cannot prevent every attack, but we can do our best to prevent repeating the same attack.

It's all about building trust. And yeah, Flathub and AppImageHub can, and should, take a lesson from this to preemptively prevent this kind of thing from happening there. I know there's a propensity to wag the finger in the distro wars, tribalism runs deep, but anything like this should be looked as an opportunity to review that very important aspect of "trust" by all. It's one of the reasons open source is very important, so that we can all openly learn from each other.

You know I heard a saying once. The wheels of Justice are slow but grind exceedingly fine. Yeah, it takes a hot minute to get through everything, but when the arguments run out and the verdicts are handed out, boy are they crushing.

NOTE: This is to add some context to the whole Special Counsel argument.

28 CFR 600 is what covers all the ins and outs of a Special Counsel appointment. Note the CFR there? That stands for Code of Federal Regulations. Regulations are created by the various Executive offices, but you might ask yourself, how can the Executive create something without Congress being involved, and this gets into the fine details of how the US Government works.

As you know LAW requires that Congress pass a bill in both chambers and then send it to the President for a signature or a veto. And if vetoed then Congress can override it with a ⅔ vote. LAWs usually don't get into a lot of detail, they'll usually do something along the lines of:

The United States Department of Defense shall build unto Congress an army worthy of Mordor and it shall not exceed the cost of $14 bazillion. Additionally, the following units are required to be purchased (insert a lengthy list of things Lockheed-Martin sent to Congress)

And that's about it. Now the exact method for "who's going to the local fighter jet store to pick up a few F-15s, who's building the antitank missles, where is this all being delivered to, etc" All of that falls into whoever was named, in this case it's the DoD. So now the DoD will begin issuing RULES and REGULATIONS on how to get that LAW done. How that happens is way longer than I want to talk for, but it's complex.

Okay. So we've covered CFR. There is also USC which stands for United States Code. This is those LAWs "codified". A law comes out of Congress as Public Law (or private law, but we're not going to cover that). This is usually listed as Pub. L (Congress number)-(Number of law that has successfully been enacted). We are currently on the 118th Congress, thus the first law passed by this Congress would be called Pub. L 118-1 (note this does not apply to public law prior to 1901) All public, private, and everything else that comes from Congress gets put into a giant collection of books called the United States Statutes at Large (Stat), this is everything that has ever come from Congress. It is in the format of (volume) Stat. (numbered item), so the 5th thing in volume 23 is 23 Stat. 5 All of this eventually get codified so if one Pub. L cancels another prior Pub. L or amends it or whatever, the sum of all of those changes are in a final form in USC. Which that format is (title) USC (subsection). A title is a BROAD (and boy do I mean that word) subject matter. So like Title 16 is "CONSERVATION" and that is like National Park, endangered species, and just a smattering of all kinds of other things that remotely relate to that subject. Title 26 is all about taxes!! Subsection is a great way to drill down to a single thing in USC, but there's also Chapters, Subsections, and so forth. And each title uses it's own little scheme of subdivision, so boy oh boy is it fun to go through.

So quick recap, Congress passes various kinds of bills, the public law bills that get enacted are Pub. L, those are filed into Stat., and then any that cancel/update/amend/change previous ones are coalesced into USC. So you'd find all the historic tax brackets in Stat., you'd find the current tax brackets in USC. And all of those were established by Pub. L.

Okay, so I think that's everything background you need. Sorry if you already knew it.

So 28 CFR 600, since its a regulation, has to state whence it gets its authority. That's a requirement of all regulations. 28 CFR 600 cites the following:

• 5 USC 301
• 28 USC 509
• 28 USC 510
• 28 USC 515-519

5 USC 301 is a broad grant that basically says each department head may create regulations that they are granted power by law to do. It also bars, by default, the withholding of information from the public (but that's not material here).

28 USC 509 and 510 are things about what the Attorney General (AG) can do and says that the AG is officially cleared to cite Title 5 powers (see that whole 5 USC 301 thing).

28 USC 515 is the first time we hear about Special Counsel. 516 to 519 indicate who can summon up one and who a Special Counsel can talk to etc. So specifically, all the various paragraphs in 28 CFR 600 fall into 28 USC 515(a) for Trump.

The Attorney General …, or any attorney specially appointed by the Attorney General under law, may, when specifically directed by the Attorney General, conduct any kind of legal proceeding, civil or criminal, including grand jury proceedings and proceedings before committing magistrate judges, which United States attorneys are authorized by law to conduct…

Which Trump's legal team says the President cannot be one of those brought under this law. Because separation of powers.

So since 28 CFR 600 cites power from 28 USC 515, which cannot possibly have a President in there, 28 CFR 600 fails because 28 USC 515 fails. Or at least that's the theory.

This gets complicated because the media does indeed summarize it as just simple "Presidential immunity" but Trump's lawyers are approaching this legal theory from various angles all which have different underlying basis.

There are two cases to note here. A civil trail related to the January 6th attempted coup and a criminal case related to the same event. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit denied cause for dismissal in that case based on the legal theory that Trump was immune from CIVIL prosecution on that mater for having been once the President. Trump was granted the ability to carry the three judge ruling to SCOTUS to which Trump's legal passed on moving on that appeal by allowing the time period to elapse.

The criminal case is being handled by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, that is in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and is being handled by Judge Tanya Chutkan. Trump's legal team has recently filed with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit a request for dismissal based on the legal theory that Trump is immune from CRIMINAL prosecution on that matter for having been once the President. That is pending schedule upon the docket.

Okay with that background. This case is being heard in the United States District Court Southern District of Florida, this is related to criminal charges that Trump mishandled classified documents in violation of the Presidential Records Act. This story circles around Trump's legal team filing a request with the aforementioned court, a request for dismissal based on the legal theory that Trump is immune from questioning about the classification of records for having been once the President.

Interestingly, part of the cause for dismissal that was also filed in this filing were the following (and no, I shit you not):

• The law is vague and cannot be ruled upon, therefore the law should be ruled unconstitutional. (Basically vague laws = unconstitutional).
• The law targets Presidents to which, a law cannot regulate Presidents and thus should be ruled unconstitutional. (Presidents cannot be restricted by laws passed by Congress)
• Special Counsel appointments are not well founded in law and are therefore unconstitutional. (* I'll have a second comment on this if you really, really want to know the basis for this one.)
• The Presidential Records Act in it's entirety is unconstitutional. (Kitchen sink attempt.)

There were additional motions filed with the court but those were done via email and have not been released by the Court at this time.

Yeah, it's easy to be confused because there's a lot of this going around. But so far, SCOTUS hasn't actually ruled on the matter to put the nail into the proverbial coffin. But we don't hear about the Trump legal team basically starting every court case thus far with a motion to have the Judge recuse themselves because it is impossible for them to be fair. Why is it impossible for them to be fair? Changes from Judge to Judge, but the most recent one was because of an opinion the Judge had shared in her personal capacity that Trump's legal team felt was too Democrat-ish to render fair rulings. It was summarily dismissed.

So Trump's legal team uses a lot of various arguments with slight changes a lot in various venues. So that might be why you keep hearing them in the news.

The thing is online access can happen anywhere and because hardware is firmly in the hands of the user, the user controls the dissemination of the data. There's plenty of AI out there that can generate valid driver licenses with complete PDF417 barcodes related to the state in question.

There's no way Florida is going to commit the required funds it would take to police every single aspect. And social media sure as shit isn't going to bend over and have that policing thrown onto to them freely. At some point Florida will require telephone carriers and ISP to play ball to some degree and then POOF, you're now in Federal territory.

That's why all this state level law making is so bunk. It's not a problem that can be solved by just saying "Oh, well <16 yo cannot get on." Unless the State has some really deep pockets to invest in their own technology, Good Luck playing wack-a-mole.

Additionally, there's zero ways I would be scanning a driver's license into some random website. Not with how every other day they leak massive amounts of information. So a lot of these states start getting what pornhub and what not are doing, "Oh you're from Utah? Okay, well I guess you're paying for a VPN for your porn." And that's ultimately what happens. Everyone just starts using a VPN because the State wanted to pass some "token" law to look like they were doing something.

It's all people ignorant of how technology works attempting to legislate technology. They are never going to be successful in any of this, but I guess whatever plays well for your base.

QA for a 3PL. Apparently QA didn't prior to my arrival try things like entering words in zipcode entry boxes, typing 65537 letters into an address field, or holding the shift key when selecting which State to ship to.

I made a lot of, well not what I would call enemies but I wasn't exactly friends with any of the developers.

Well seeing how Chávez marched Venezuela into the oil crisis, side note to everyone: diversify, and Maduro basically said, "Fuck it! Let's go into the forest and mine the shit out of everything to save us from this economic crisis that totally wasn't our fault." That it has taken this long to get such a massive loss of life (human life, obviously the rain forest has just been taking one for the team here) is actually impressive.

Kind of a reason Venezuela is, until pushed down a spot by Cuba in 2023, the second leading nation (now third) of folks attempting to enter the United States illegally. But Maduro swears there's no such crisis and that political opponents are the reason there is/isn't (yes both at the same time) a crisis.

See kids, this is why you don't pardon someone who attempts a coup d'état, eventually they become President and run your country into the fucking ground so that his buddies can become mega wealthy. Then his lacky comes around after he dies, because he's a fucking old fart, and blames the opposite team for all the woes and attempts to indicate that anyone who disagrees with him are all in a conspiracy and should be locked up.

AI is like spicy autocomplete. People need to understand that AI is basically that Excel meme but with pictures.

US Military (NATO) moving closer to Russia was a provacation that started decades ago

Because Russia during the Soviet era gave Europe every reason to believe the Russian desire to return to 1850s borders. Which that was distinctly something that wasn't going to happen because it would prompt the exact same situation that begat World War I.

So yeah. Duh! After World War II one would think that "oh let's finish this as oppose to leaving it hang like we did in WWI" would be something of paramount importance. Much to the chagrin of Russia who thought that they'd get a nice fat cut of the spoils with Germany's defeat. Surprise the other two members of the Alliance wanted to kind of go the other direction and dismantle colonial Europe and Africa. That's why Africa post WWII became, well, what it is mostly today.

NATO and the response thereafter has been to ensure independent nations within Europe. Russia has wanted to revive the "glory days" of the Muscovy. So you tell me, who's being provocative of who? Russia is still angry they didn't get a lion's share of Europe post-WWII seeing how they sent the most lives to die in the war, and the US was tired of having to deal with Europe every so often and isolationism just wasn't fucking working.

Have you seen that we have 800+ military bases outside of the US

Yeah have you also seen the UK's or France's? Note anything about those countries and who's who in WWII? Russia still wants that good old colonialism. I'm mean you need no further evidence of such than Crimea, or Russia's attitude towards Georgia, or we we can keep going on and on.

Now. The other guys UK/France/US, see they have moved on to, let's call it economic colonialism. Now the Nation doesn't technically have foreign governments dictating policy per se, but they use the allure of the dollar to ensure there's a bias towards being friendly. Is it a better system? It's pros and cons. It's sort of how Russia attempts to play that same game with Baltic nations and energy, to which they're abjectly losing on that front. US kind of top tiered the banking industry early in the game, which pros and cons to that too (see Housing Crisis and how US banks can bring down the world's economy).

But the point being is the military bases that being an argument for... What? There's an economic investment that a lot of nations have put in, Russia included, why do you think they have bases in Libya and Sudan? Why do you think Turkey has the relationship it does with Russia even though it's an EU member?

Our US politicians/military would need to be for negotations, which they are not for, at least majority are not.

Putin doesn't want to negotiate. Just full stop. There is a projection of strength that Putin has to maintain to keep the level of support he has. The second he says "Oopsie! I guess I got a lot of our fellow citizens killed for no reason." Is the second his key supporters turn on his ass.

endless wars that are pushed for profits

Who do you think is pushing Putin? You keep going on and on about the rich in the US, you keep forgetting rich assholes are the world around. Until the entire planet gathers around for Kumbaya and unites to destroy greed, guess what we're going to have to deal with? It's not a unique US issue, everyone likes to think that the US has some sort of monopoly on rich asshats, they do not. Putin has territorial aspirations and the rich are looking to profit from that desire. So don't give me this crap that only rich US fuckers want war in perpetuity. There are rich shitheads in every country looking to provoke their nation du jour into some conflict that potentially enriches them. It's just fun to punch on the US versions of them because the US has a lot of them, with the whole banking system being as it is. But they're everywhere, Russia included.

You seem to be going on and on about wars and rich people and I've got no complaint there, but how the fuck does that even fit into your "Oh NATO be provocating!!" Russia be doing it too. "Oh rich people just want to profit!!" Russia has that same fucking problem. I'm not seeing your argument for why the US and Russia aren't exactly what I just said.

if person A is acting shitty and person B is acting shitty, why are you expecting non-shitty behavior to come from either?

Your commentary on rich vs poor, yeah cool. What's that got to do with the price of tea in China? Russia wants it's land, taking all that land would set us up exactly like what led to World War I. That, to me, does not seem like a good idea to let happen. Russia needs to fucking chill. NATO gets to stay because Europe needs integration not separation. The latter just keeps leading to global conflict, which seems less than ideal to most people.

Because Government officials are expected to operate at a higher standard. Submitting very clearly erroneous evidence is indicating that they are not operating at that higher standard.

Now does that mean the case altogether is bunk? No, of course not. But it allows defenders to sow mistrust in the presentation by the prosecutor. That’s the entire point. And that’s why it’s important for officials to do things “by the book”. When they start going off rails that technically allows defense to ask “what else did you mess up?”

Good lawyers go after every advantage they can offer their client. When prosecutors mess up, defense lawyers are allowed to file with the judge the question of “Hey they made a mistake, may I be allowed to inform the jury of this mistake?”

It’s up to the judge to allow that or not. But good lawyers file these kinds of motions. Now will it have major ramifications on the case as whole? Who knows? But the entire point is this, bringing a case to court needs to be airtight and things like this are reasons why. Same reason why folks like Matt Gaetz seems to continually avoid prosecution. If it’s not airtight small mistakes can completely derail getting a guilty verdict. You just need one juror out of twelve to be sympathetic on some sticking point, and mistrust of the government is a good sticking point for some people.

I get where you’re coming from, but shit, I’ve seen people walk free on more damming evidence simply because defense was able to sway on some particular mistrust.

Putin is much more than a boogeyman because, as is currently on demonstration, he follows through on his desire to conquer.

It’s fun to say boogeyman because it attempts to put our current events as infantile. But Putin is indeed marching in Ukraine, so he’s distinctly NOT a boogeyman when he’s actually doing that whole war thing.

pushing for endless wars

The wars can end on that front the second Putin decides to go home.

As for the US military industrial complex, cool, we can have that conversation when fucksticks in Russia are no longer acting like fucksticks. But they’ve sorta been doing that whole being a giant douche since WWII ended.

That’s not to justify America’s shitty logic, but to point out if person A is acting shitty and person B is acting shitty, why are you expecting non-shitty behavior to come from either?

So it’s endless wars until BOTH countries stop collectively being shitty. Which that’s kind of hard when Putin gets a continual erection from being shitty to Europe.

So you tell Vlad when he’s ready to stop buttering his nipples on making sure Europe live their lives in continued fear and inflated energy prices, we can talk about that whole endless war thing.