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  I am looking for someone who can help me find and clear out excess data on one of my...

I was wondering if you might give my little women’s (boomers) some guidance as to a beginning graphic novel for...

Platform.sh removes a major pain point for developers: having to invest time in managing servers, virtual machines, or containers. Instead, Platform.sh enables developers to focus 100% of their time on their code. Since the beginning, Platform.sh has provided instant cloning capability, so dev teams can work on perfect copies of their production sites in the cloud for every Git branch. Now, in partnership with Lando, we’re extending that capability to the desktop.

Xdebug is an indispensable tool for every PHP developer. PHP’s favorite real-time debugger, it supports breakpoints, more detailed debug output, and deeper introspection of PHP code to determine just what it’s doing (and what it’s doing wrong). Sadly, it comes at a huge cost in performance, though, making it unsuitable for production. Not on Platform.sh, though. Xdebug is now available on all Grid environments, secure and without a performance loss.

For well over a decade we've talked about the many problems that arise when copyright is compared to "property" -- and people try to simply move over concepts from physical, tangible property into the world of digital. A key aspect of this: when you "purchase" something digital online, is it really a "purchase" or is it a "license" (especially a license that could be revoked)? If it was a true "purchase" then you should own it and the seller shouldn't be able to take it back. But in practice, over and over and over again, we've seen stories of people having things they supposedly "bought" disappear. The situation is so crazy that we've referred to it as Schrödinger's Download, in that many copyright holders and retailers would like the very same thing to be a "sale" some of the time, and a "license" some of the time (the "times" for each tend to be when it hurts the consumers the most). This has, at times, seeped into physical goods, where they've tried to add "license agreements" to physical products. Or, worse, when some copyright folks claimed that buying a DVD means you don't actually own what you bought, but rather are merely "purchasing access" to the content, and that could be revoked.

Anyway, I'm amazed that we don't see more lawsuits about this kind of thing -- but one was recently filed in California. Someone named Amanda Caudel is suing Amazon for saying that you've "purchased" a video download, which Amazon might disappear from your library whenever it wants. As the lawsuit makes clear, Amazon directly says that you are buying the movie (as opposed to renting it). From the lawsuit filing itself:

And, they point out, in your account there's a listing of "Your Video Purchases & Rentals." But, the lawsuit claims, what you purchase doesn't seem to behave like a real purchase:

Reasonable consumers will expect that the use of a “Buy” button and the representation that their Video Content is a “Purchase” means that the consumer has paid for full access to the Video Content and, like any bought product, that access cannot be revoked.

Unfortunately for consumers who chose the “Buy” option, this is deceptive and untrue. Rather, the ugly truth is that Defendant secretly reserves the right to terminate the consumers’ access and use of the Video Content at any time, and has done so on numerous occasions, leaving the consumer without the ability to enjoy their already-bought Video Content.

Defendant’s representations are misleading because they give the impression that the Video Content is purchased – i.e. the person owns it - when in fact that is not true because Defendant or others may revoke access to the Video Content at any time and for any reason.

In so representing the “Purchase” of Video Content as true ownership of the content, Defendant took advantage of the (1) cognitive shortcuts made at the point-of-sale, e.g. Rent v. Buy and (2) price of the Video Content, which is akin to an outright purchase versus a rental.

Though some consumers may get lucky and never lose access to any of their paid-for media, others may one day find that their Video Content is now completely inaccessible. Regardless, all consumers have overpaid for the Video Content because they are not in fact owners of the Video Content, despite have paid extra money to “Buy” the product.

The plaintiff (or rather, her lawyers) are trying to make this a class action lawsuit, and are arguing that (among other things) this is false advertising. I am, not surprisingly, sympathetic to the plaintiff -- and remain disappointed at how copyright and similar restrictions are being used to chip away at ownership and actual property rights. That said... I'm not that optimistic the case will get very far. In the past, companies have been able to wiggle out of similar claims, and I'm pretty sure that Amazon tries to push disputes like this to binding arbitration, meaning that the lawsuit may be dead on arrival.

Still, it's yet another reminder of how copyright is chipping away at real property.

Kelly Loeffler is, by far, the wealthiest elected official in Congress, with an estimated net worth of half a billion dollars (the second wealthiest is Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte (famous for his body slamming a journalist for asking him a question and then lying to the police about it)). Loeffler may be used to getting away with tearing up the red tape in her previous life, but in Congress, that often looks pretty corrupt. In just the last few months since she was appointed, there were concerns about her stock sales and stock purchases, which seemed oddly matched to information she was getting during briefings regarding the impact of COVID-19. She has since agreed to convert all her stock holdings to managed funds outside of her control (something every elected official should do, frankly).

Now, the NY Times is noting another form of what we've referred to as "soft corruption" -- moves that might technically be legal, but which sure look sketchy as hell to any regular non-multimillionaire elected official. In this case, Senator Loeffler received what was, in effect, a gift worth $9 million from her former employer, Intercontinental Exchange (the company that runs the NY Stock Exchange, and where her husband is the CEO).

The key issue was that since she was leaving the job to go join the Senate, she had a bunch of unvested stock. For normal people, if you leave a job before your stock vests, too bad. That's the deal. The vesting period is there for a reason. But for powerful, rich people, apparently the rules change. Intercontinental Exchange changed the rules to grant her the compensation that she wasn't supposed to get, because why not?

Ms. Loeffler, who was appointed to the Senate in December and is now in a competitive race to hold her seat, appears to have received stock and other awards worth more than $9 million from the company, Intercontinental Exchange, according to a review of securities filings by The New York Times, Ms. Loeffler’s financial disclosure form and interviews with compensation and accounting experts. That was on top of her 2019 salary and bonus of about $3.5 million.

The additional compensation came in the form of shares, stock options and other instruments that Ms. Loeffler had previously been granted but was poised to forfeit by leaving the company. Intercontinental Exchange altered the terms of the awards, allowing her to keep them. The largest component — which the company had previously valued at about $7.8 million — was a stake in an Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary that Ms. Loeffler had been running.

The entitlement factor oozes out of the statement put out from her office in response to this:

“Kelly left millions in equity compensation behind to serve in public office to protect freedom, conservative values and economic opportunity for all Georgians,” said Stephen Lawson, a spokesman for Ms. Loeffler. “The obsession of the liberal media and career politicians with her success shows their bias against private sector opportunity in favor of big government.”

No, Stephen, that's not the issue. The issue is that normal people who haven't vested yet, don't get to have the board change the vesting rules as you're leaving to go legislate in order to give you a $9 million windfall you didn't earn because it hadn't vested. If it had just been a question of compensation, no one would be complaining. If she had played by the rules that everyone else played by, lived up to her end of the contract and vested the equity, then no big deal. The problem is the last minute changing of the rules to get her a pretty massive payout (perhaps not by her standards, but by anyone else's).

Indeed, the details show that this wasn't just a timing thing, like a standard vesting deal, but that Loeffler was supposed to reach certain milestones to be able to get the equity. She didn't, but she still gets it. That's the part that has people concerned.

In February 2019, Intercontinental Exchange gave Ms. Loeffler a stake in a limited liability company that owned a stake in Bakkt, according to a March 2019 securities filing. The company at the time estimated the award was worth $15.6 million. But Ms. Loeffler would be able to cash in on the award only under certain circumstances, including if Bakkt’s value soared or if it became a publicly traded company.

When Ms. Loeffler stepped down from the company less than 10 months later, she was poised to forfeit much of that Bakkt stake. But Intercontinental Exchange sped up the vesting process so that she got half of it immediately.

The company, of course, puts a nice spin on it, saying "We admire Kelly’s decision to serve her country in the U.S. Senate and did not want to discourage that willingness to serve,” but what else are they going to say anyway?

Still waiting for that supposed swamp draining we keep hearing about.

This seems to be something of a thing. Our last "Tales From the Quarantine" post focused on how television celebrities had taken to offering people help on Twitter with their virtual home decor in the latest Animal Crossing game. This post also involves Animal Crossing, but in a much more direct way. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are enormous numbers of people who have suddenly found themselves without jobs or regular income. And, so, they've turned to irregular sources of income instead.

Ars Technica has an interesting interview with one of many people who have taken to the internet to indirectly sell Animal Crossing's "bells", the currency of the game.

In the midst of COVID-19, some New Horizons players are turning to World of Warcraft-style gold farming methods to make ends meet. In early April, Lexy, a 23-year-old recent college grad, created a Twitter account offering up bells (Animal Crossing’s in-game currency) for real-world cash (she requested we refer to her by a nickname to avoid potential reprisal from Nintendo). “I got laid off due to COVID so I'm farming bells in ACNH,” she wrote. “I really need to make rent this month so I'm selling 2 mil bells per $5, please message me if interested, I'll give you a discount the more you buy.”

Before setting up this unorthodox income stream, Lexy had been working at a supermarket while developing her animation portfolio. She began exploring the idea of turning bells into cash after showing friends just how much in-game income she’d been making. “One of them asked to legitimately buy some for me,” she recalled in a Twitter interview. “I did some research and found some people selling bells on sites such as eBay, but for pretty ridiculous prices.” (Current prices on eBay seem more competitive, with some sellers offering rare gold tools and gold nuggets to sweeten the deal).

The threat from Nintendo is probably real. After all, unlike some other games where people do this sort of thing, Nintendo's game doesn't include any method for selling in-game resources for real currency. Nintendo is also notoriously prudish about things like this. And, finally, to make an effective go at this sort of thing, it takes some manipulation of the console in a way that is somewhat controversial with gamers generally.

Understandably, Lexy adjusts the clock on her Nintendo Switch to speed up the game’s slow, “natural” money-making cycle of harvesting daily fruit, digging up bells from the ground, and planting a daily “money tree” that can yield big profits. This kind of in-game “time traveling” is controversial practice among casual Animal Crossing players, but it's a practical necessity to maximize real-world bell-farming profits.

As for how much money people like Lexy are bringing in, it's in the four figures, but she wasn't any more specific than that. Payments are made through digital apps like PayPal, after which she visits the game islands of others and deposits the bells.

That all of this is going on during a global pandemic that has some folks farming bells to make ends meet and others with apparently enough disposable income to be buyers is all, of course, deeply strange. But it's also just yet another way technology is having an impact on our lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is great confusion among Christians about the unforgivable sin. Jesus talks about it in Matthew 12:31-32. This brief study summarizes what the unforgivable sin is, and how you can know you have not committed it. This study is an excerpt from my Gospel Dictionary online course.

Lots of people are very confused about the topic of Forgiveness in the Bible. This study looks at what the book of Acts teaches about forgiveness, and in this way, we see a glimpse of what the Bible teaches about forgiveness. This study is an excerpt from from my Gospel Dictionary online course.

In Matthew 12:33-37, in the context of warning the religious leaders about the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, Jesus talks about good fruit and bad fruit. Is Jesus telling people to look at the lives of other teachers to see if they have good works? No! Not at all. Listen to the study to see what Jesus IS teaching and why this is important for properly understanding the gospel.

Just posted to Slate, by Isaac Butler: The Disappearance of John M. Ford. Key takeaway to Making Light readers who...

I recently travelled to Pittsburgh, USA, to present the paper “From Playing Games to Committing Crimes: A Multi-Technique Approach to Predicting Key Actors on an Online Gaming Forum” at eCrime 2019, co-authored with Ben Collier and Alice Hutchings. The accepted version of the paper can be accessed here. The structure and content of various underground … Continue reading From Playing Games to Committing Crimes: A Multi-Technique Approach to Predicting Key Actors on an Online Gaming Forum →

The platforms, providers, and infrastructures which together make up the contemporary Internet play an increasingly central role in the business of governing human societies. Although the software engineers, administrators, business professionals, and other staff working at these organisations may not have the institutional powers of state organisations such as law enforcement or the civil service, … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: The role of intermediaries, platforms, and infrastructures in governing crime and abuse →

Software Guard eXtensions (SGX) represents Intel’s latest foray into trusted computing. Initially intended as a means to secure cloud computation, it has since been employed for DRM and secure key storage in production systems. SGX differs from its competitors such as TrustZone in its focus on reducing the volume of trusted code in its “secure … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: What’s Intel SGX Good For? →

Very '90s kit was everywhere – and it saved Apple's ass too

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At last, we can write headlines with all the letters intact

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Advertise your open positions here for free, no catch, and find opportunities within

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