> At trial, the Backpage defendants were barred from bringing up a 2013 memo by federal prosecutors who examined the site and said at the time that they hadn’t uncovered evidence of a pattern of recklessness toward minors or admissions from key participants that the site was being used for prostitution.
> A Government Accountability Office report released in June noted that the FBI’s ability to identify victims and sex traffickers had decreased significantly after Backpage was seized by the government because law enforcement was familiar with the site and Backpage was generally responsive to requests for information.
Reminds me of a case in Utah of a guy charged with defrauding a bank for doing exactly what the bank told him to do. Couldn't introduce the email of the bank telling him to do that during trial. I'm not sure how anyone is OK with stuff like this.
The prosecution was intended to be a political centerpiece for the California AG, which is why it was carried forward even though their own internal legal opinion was that the crimes the AG wanted charged hadn't been committed. That is why they kept re-prosecution as their initial charges were dismissed by the courts, that's why the continued after a mistrial they created by the state repeatedly trying to taint the jury against the court's explicit orders.
You might have heard of this AG: she's running for president which is why there isn't going to be any useful discussion of the subject because there are far too many people now who are deeply invested in covering for her corrupt and abusive conduct. Maybe after the election.
As to why it was excluded, it was an internal legal work-product-- privileged. Of course, the state could have choose to disclose these facts, and they're ethically and (presumably) legally prohibited from bringing false prosecutions like this. But because of the rules of the game the courts have have to pretend they don't know about it. But we don't have to.
The "money laundering" charge was that the government leaned on their banking partners to cut them off ( e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point a program where the government abused its capricious regulatory power over banks and payment processors to cause them to shut down activity that the government doesn't like but could not lawfully prohibit )-- so the site switched to using Bitcoin. Money laundering rules are so broadly written that doing things that avoid reporting even if you had no material choice can be a violation -- at least if someone in power thinks that destroying you will serve their naked ambition.
I don't think there is any serious contention that backpage used bitcoin for any reason other than the government's abusive exclusion of them from conventional payment rails.
One person dead, another process tortured for years and going to prison over substantially baseless prosecution, with an exculpatory opinion intentionally concealed from the jury. It's gross and makes me embarrassed to live in California.
It wasn't a "false prosecution", it was just legal efforts against prostitution (with all of its accompanying baggage like underage prostitution and trafficking). Like it or not, once you have a goal in mind like shutting down backpage for its prostitution business (pimping), then its game on for attorneys.
"Authorities say the site generated $500 million in prostitution-related revenue from its inception in 2004 until it was shut down by the government in 2018."
That isn't what the charged them with and the AG's office own legal opinion was that the site was an asset in the fight against trafficking. Which was a problem because what the AG was attempting to charge them with was child trafficking. Instead, the only charge that stuck was money laundering due to the aforementioned use of Bitcoin after the government blocked their payment rails.
I'm pretty sure it was the online prostitution that started this, and according to what I can find, there are still prostitution related charges ahead, as well as convictions (and guilty pleas) by others. Remember, it was the nature of the ads that caused him to have to use bitcoin in the first place. Sort of like Capone getting jail on tax evasion lol
They did indeed charge him with the prostitution thing from what I've read, its just in the one trial the jury deadlocked on those counts. Whats more sus to me however is allegations that backpage "managers took an active role in editing ads in the adult section," this is not the way to even appear innocent of the prostitution charges.
I absolutely agree that backpage was more of an asset against trafficking, it makes sense that if you want to fight trafficking, backpage seemed at a superficial level to be able to help here, and obviously the sex business will just move elsewhere and with probably less visability. Its not like prostitution is going to stop, but I'm guessing it can be at least less of a nuisance. I'm certainly not the guy to campaign for a version of the morality police.
I'm just disagreeing with the "false prosecution" characterization thats all, I think it was a legit application of the law, although I'd rather see a more liberal handling of consenting sex between adults.
I was a fly on the wall for a conversation with someone who runs a 12k seat venue. They guaranteed Harry Styles $5 million for 2 nights and made it work because.... "secondary". Even the venues are in on the scalping.
A Windows update restarted a critical server automatically. A core service is blocked from starting by a Candy Crush ad installed by the update. The Crandy Crush ad is somehow expecting a Copilot key to be pressed on the keyboard to let the system keep going.
MS engineers are waiting for an online purchase of a new $400 keyboard with the Copilot key to complete and planning to run to the data center to plug the keyboard.
However, the Bing outage is preventing the purchase to go through, because the payment somehow relies on Bing suggestions to load for obscure reasons.
Very very technically, if RDP is enabled and working, this could be fixed by rdesktop-ing to the machine from a Linux box and using xdotool to experiment with typing raw keyboard scancodes through the RDP session in the hope you figure out the encoding of the Copilot key.
I also appreciate that you prevented me from countering using a guard like "if RDP is enabled and working", and that a follow up answer actually provides the missing piece xD.
MS knows better than to run windows on their servers. They’ve famously been running Linux on their public web facing stuff for years, including when they were publicly discrediting Linux (because IIS and MS server were so good they couldn’t run their web services reliably and securely).
Update: the payment gateway is Stripe, which is not processing any transactions associated with the MS account. A developer has posted the issue to HN in the hope that a Stripe employee will see it and escalate the issue. /s
Yeah, and if that takes a $30B hit to settle past accounting issues, that’s still $30B no longer poised for an acquisition or on hand to settle some EU action next year.
Losing a quarter of your cash reserves for no gain isn’t going to ruin today’s business but it sure will frustrate existing strategies for the future.
>that’s still $30B no longer poised for an acquisition
They accumulate that much cash because there are no acquisitions to be had in the current economic climate. I can't imagine a $30B+ company that Microsoft could acquire without massive regulatory scrutiny.
But I bet a lot of that is in long term treasuries which, if you want to use them as legal tender, are kinda down in price right now (if you don't hold them til maturity). And if they need to take a loan to pay it, those bonds are going to be at fairly high rates. Overall, it's gonna be a stock price haircut for sure. I'm guessing at least 10-20% because of all the money they could have MADE with that money.
Yep. Accounting standards dictate that a cash equivalent should be essentially as liquid as cash from the perspective of the holder. It’s safe to lump it in here.
I followed people who post yet when I open the app my first 2 posts (the only posts visible) are from accounts I'd never follow (right now Paris Hilton and ESPN) and could care less about. I don't want to scroll through their suggested bullshit trying to get to what I actually want to read. Maybe this works when you are following no one.
Meta has no ability to not try to control your attention and divert it toward ads. They are institutionally incapable of anything other than control and divert. It is why I didn’t sign up for Threads and wouldn’t use Oculus if I were given one for free. The only Meta product I have access to is Facebook because my community is obsessed with FB Marketplace and posting upcoming IRL events on FB rather than email. I hate how Meta infiltrated our lives and now cannot be excised.
This is what killed it for me. There was also no obvious way for me to "train" their recommendations, even if I was willing to tolerate an algorithmic-only feed.
Eh. I was expecting something a bit more juicy like flat out transferring csvs loaded with detailed data or something.
"A proposed FTC settlement with BetterHelp includes $7.8 million for partial refunds for BetterHelp customers and conveys an unmistakable message about just how seriously the FTC takes this kind of betrayal of trust."
Um not really. If anything it conveys your remarketing might cost a bit more then you planned.
I've been on various projects in this building for 20+ years. We even had a small office at one point on one of the floors. Back then we were told the upper floors couldn't be converted to data center space. Fast forward to 2 years ago and everytime I went in there a semi truck full of cabinets was being sent up. I have no idea how much weight it can hold but my gut told me we are a moderate sized earthquake away from the place falling to the ground. Called my provider and said we are moving across the street. 2 months later with the help of some friends we did it in I think 13 minutes.
One cool thing was the filming of fast and furious Tokyo drift out front. They spent probably 2 months converting 2 blocks into Tokyo and at night would swap out street signs with Japanese ones. Turns out they actually do race the cars around the corners. Explosions and everything.
Edit: Also they have spread things out around DTLA and El Segundo and even just recently filled plans to build a second building next door. While it wouldn't be good I don't think if something happened it would melt down the Internet as perhaps it may have 15-20 years ago.
> A Government Accountability Office report released in June noted that the FBI’s ability to identify victims and sex traffickers had decreased significantly after Backpage was seized by the government because law enforcement was familiar with the site and Backpage was generally responsive to requests for information.
Reminds me of a case in Utah of a guy charged with defrauding a bank for doing exactly what the bank told him to do. Couldn't introduce the email of the bank telling him to do that during trial. I'm not sure how anyone is OK with stuff like this.