robpegoraro · 7 months ago
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This could be the least-appreciated aspect of D.C.'s convention center
For D.C.-area types of my age, the obvious advantage of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center over the old Washington Convention Center is that the facility that replaced that grim concrete hulk in 2003 isn’t a beige fortress that deadens multiple city blocks. But in addition to greeting Mount Vernon Square with a mostly-glass facade and leaving space (not all of it filled) for retail and…
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terrinakamura · 9 months ago
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Social Media’s Impact on Kids – What’s Next for Tech? By Terri Nakamura
Thank you for visiting my blog. Your feedback is welcomed and appreciated.
Keeping kids safe on social media. Photo: Unsplash with Andrej Lišakov Social Media’s Impact on Kids – What’s Next for Tech? During my four days at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), I had the opportunity to attend only one panel discussion. I’m grateful that I chose to listen and see this particular one in person. A lengthy queue of eager attendees had formed, all looking forward to hearing…
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blossomtalent · 2 years ago
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The beautiful Michelle working #blackhatusa 🎩 @mandalaybay 📍Las Vegas, NV Black Hat is an internationally recognized cybersecurity event series providing the most technical and relevant information security research. . . . #cybersecurity #cyberattacks #dataprivacy #blackhat #blackhat2022 #governance #BHUSA #picus #talentagency #boothhostess #model #hostess #professionalstaff #staffingagency #blossomtalent #lasvegastradeshow #lvcc #mandalaybaylasvegas (at Mandalay Bay Convention Center) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChKqYlnuZb0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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m-sciuto · 1 year ago
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TNMT
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oneknightlight · 2 years ago
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Oh howdy I’m in for a big convention season this year huh
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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago
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The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it
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I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).
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If you are even slightly plugged into the doings and goings on in this tired old world of ours, then you have heard that Google has lost its antitrust case against the DOJ Antitrust Division, and is now an official, no-foolin', convicted monopolist.
This is huge. Epochal. The DOJ, under the leadership of the fire-breathing trustbuster Jonathan Kanter, has done something that was inconceivable four years ago when he was appointed. On Kanter's first day on the job as head of the Antitrust Division, he addressed his gathered prosecutors and asked them to raise their hands if they'd never lost a case.
It was a canny trap. As the proud, victorious DOJ lawyers thrust their arms into the air, Kanter quoted James Comey, who did the same thing on his first day on the job as DA for the Southern District of New York: "You people are the chickenshit club." A federal prosecutor who never loses a case is a prosecutor who only goes after easy targets, and leave the worst offenders (who can mount a serious defense) unscathed.
Under Kanter, the Antitrust Division has been anything but a Chickenshit Club. They've gone after the biggest game, the hardest targets, and with Google, they bagged the hardest target of all.
Again: this is huge:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-is-a-monopolist
But also: this is just the start.
Now that Google is convicted, the court needs to decide what to do about it. Courts have lots of leeway when it comes to addressing a finding of lawbreaking. They can impose "conduct remedies" ("don't do that anymore"). These are generally considered weaksauce, because they're hard to administer. When you tell a company like Google to stop doing something, you need to expend a lot of energy to make sure they're following orders. Conduct remedies are as much a punishment for the government (which has to spend millions closely observing the company to ensure compliance) as they are for the firms involved.
But the court could also order Google to stop doing certain things. For example, since the ruling finds that Google illegally maintained its monopoly by paying other entities – Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, AT&T, etc – to be the default search, the court could order them to stop doing that. At the very least, that's a lot easier to monitor.
The big guns, though are the structural remedies. The court could order Google to sell off parts of its business, like its ad-tech stack, through which it represents both buyers and sellers in a marketplace it owns, and with whom it competes as a buyer and a seller. There's already proposed, bipartisan legislation to do this (how bipartisan? Its two main co-sponsors are Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act
All of these things, and more, are on the table:
https://www.wired.com/story/google-search-monopoly-judge-amit-mehta-options/
We'll get a better sense of what the judge is likely to order in the fall, but the case could drag out for quite some time, as Google appeals the verdict, then tries for the Supreme Court, then appeals the remedy, and so on and so on. Dragging things out in the hopes of running out the clock is a time-honored tradition in tech antitrust. IBM dragged out its antitrust appeals for 12 years, from 1970 to 1982 (they called it "Antitrust's Vietnam"). This is an expensive gambit: IBM outspent the entire DOJ Antitrust Division for 12 consecutive years, hiring more lawyers to fight the DOJ than the DOJ employed to run all of its antitrust enforcement, nationwide. But it worked. IBM hung in there until Reagan got elected and ordered his AG to drop the case.
This is the same trick Microsoft pulled in the nineties. The case went to trial in 1998, and Microsoft lost in 1999. They appealed, and dragged out the proceedings until GW Bush stole the presidency in 2000 and dropped the case in 2001.
I am 100% certain that there are lawyers at Google thinking about this: "OK, say we put a few hundred million behind Trump-affiliated PACs, wait until he's president, have a little meeting with Attorney General Andrew Tate, and convince him to drop the case. Worked for IBM, worked for Microsoft, it'll work for us. And it'll be a bargain."
That's one way things could go wrong, but it's hardly the only way. In his ruling, Judge Mehta rejected the DOJ's argument that in illegally creating and maintaining its monopoly, Google harmed its users' privacy by foreclosing on the possibility of a rival that didn't rely on commercial surveillance.
The judge repeats some of the most cherished and absurd canards of the marketing industry, like the idea that people actually like advertisements, provided that they're relevant, so spying on people is actually doing them a favor by making it easier to target the right ads to them.
First of all, this is just obvious self-serving rubbish that the advertising industry has been repeating since the days when it was waging a massive campaign against the TV remote on the grounds that people would "steal" TV by changing the channel when the ads came on. If "relevant" advertising was so great, then no one would reach for the remote – or better still, they'd change the channel when the show came back on, looking for more ads. People don't like advertising. And they hate "relevant" advertising that targets their private behaviors and views. They find it creepy.
Remember when Apple offered users a one-click opt-out from Facebook spying, the most sophisticated commercial surveillance system in human history, whose entire purpose was to deliver "relevant" advertising? More than 96% of Apple's customers opted out of surveillance. Even the most Hayek-pilled economist has to admit that this is a a hell of a "revealed preference." People don't want "relevant" advertising. Period.
The judge's credulous repetition of this obvious nonsense is doubly disturbing in light of the nature of the monopoly charge against Google – that the company had monopolized the advertising market.
Don't get me wrong: Google has monopolized the advertising market. They operate a "full stack" ad-tech shop. By controlling the tools that sellers and buyers use, and the marketplace where they use them, Google steals billions from advertisers and publishers. And that's before you factor in Jedi Blue, the illegal collusive arrangement the company has with Facebook, by which they carved up the market to increase their profits, gouge advertisers, starve publishers, and keep out smaller rivals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
One effect of Google's monopoly power is a global privacy crisis. In regions with strong privacy laws (like the EU), Google uses flags of convenience (looking at you, Ireland) to break the law with impunity:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town
In the rest of the world, Google works with other members of the surveillance cartel to prevent the passage of privacy laws. That's why the USA hasn't had a new federal privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling newspaper reporters about the VHS cassettes you took home:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act
The lack of privacy law and privacy enforcement means that Google can inflict untold privacy harms on billions of people around the world. Everything we do, everywhere we go online and offline, every relationship we have, everything we buy and say and do – it's all collected and stored and mined and used against us. The immediate harm here is the haunting sense that you are always under observation, a violation of your fundamental human rights that prevents you from ever being your authentic self:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/14/nsa-prism
The harms of surveillance aren't merely spiritual and psychological – they're material and immediate. The commercial surveillance industry provides the raw feedstock for a parade of horribles, from stalkers and bounty hunters turning up on their targets' front doors to cops rounding up demonstrators with location data from their phones to identity thieves tricking their marks by using leaked or purchased private information as convincers:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy
The problem with Google's monopolization of the surveillance business model is that they're spying on us. But for a certain kind of competition wonk, the problem is that Google is monopolizing the violation of our human rights, and we need to use competition law to "democratize" commercial surveillance.
This is deeply perverse, but it represents a central split in competition theory. Some trustbusters fetishize competition for its own sake, on the theory that it makes companies better and more efficient. But there are some things we don't want companies to be better at, like violating our human rights. We want to ban human rights violations, not improve them.
For other trustbusters – like me – the point of competition enforcement isn't merely to make companies offer better products, it's to make companies small enough to hold account through the enforcement of democratic laws. I want to break – and break up – Google because I want to end its ability to bigfoot privacy law so that we can finally root out the cancer of commercial surveillance. I don't want to make Google smaller so that other surveillance companies can get in on the game.
There is a real danger that this could emerge from this decision, and that's a danger we need to guard against. Last month, Google shocked the technical world by announcing that it would not follow through on its years-long promise to kill third-party cookies, one of the most pernicious and dangerous tools of commercial surveillance. The reason for this volte-face appears to be concern that the EU would view killing third-party cookies as anticompetitive, since Google intended to maintain commercial surveillance using its Orwellian "Privacy Sandbox" technology in Chrome, with the effect that everyone except Google would find it harder to spy on us as we used the internet:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/googles-trail-of-crumbs
It's true! This is anticompetitive. But the answer isn't to preserve the universal power of tech companies large and small to violate our human rights – it's to ban everyone, especially Google, from spying on us!
This current in competition law is still on the fringe, but the Google case – which finds the company illegally dominating surveillance advertising, but rejects the idea that surveillance is itself a harm – offers an opportunity for this bad idea to go from the fringe to the center.
If that happens, look out.
Take "attribution," an obscure bit of ad-tech jargon disguising a jaw-droppingly terrible practice. "Attribution" is when an ad-tech company shows you an ad, and then follows you everywhere you go, monitoring everything you do, to determine whether the ad convinced you to buy something. I mean that literally: they're combining location data generated by your phone and captured by Bluetooth and wifi receivers with data from your credit card to follow you everywhere and log everything, so that they can prove to a merchant that you bought something.
This is unspeakably grotesque. It should be illegal. In many parts of the world, it is illegal, but it is so lucrative that monopolists like Google can buy off the enforcers and get away with it. What's more, only the very largest corporations have the resources to surveil you so closely and invasively that they can perform this "service."
But again, some competition wonks look at this situation and say, "Well, that's not right, we need to make sure that everyone can do attribution." This was a (completely mad) premise in the (otherwise very good) 2020 Competition and Markets Authority market-study on "Online platforms and digital advertising":
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fa557668fa8f5788db46efc/Final_report_Digital_ALT_TEXT.pdf
This (again, otherwise sensible) document veers completely off the rails whenever the subject of attribution comes up. At one point, the authors propose that the law should allow corporations to spy on people who opt out of commercial surveillance, provided that this spying is undertaken for the sole purpose of attribution.
But it gets even worse: by the end of the document, the authors propose a "user ID intervention" to give every Briton a permanent, government-issued advertising identifier to make it easier for smaller companies to do attribution.
Look, I understand why advertisers like attribution and are willing to preferentially take their business to companies that can perform it. But the fact that merchants want to be able to peer into every corner of our lives to figure out how well their ads are performing is no basis for permitting them to do so – much less intervening in the market to make it even easier so more commercial snoops can get their noses in our business!
This is an idea that keeps popping up, like in this editorial by a UK lawyer, where he proposes fixing "Google's dominance of online advertising" by making it possible for everyone to track us using the commercial surveillance identifiers created and monopolized by the ad-tech duopoly and the mobile tech duopoly:
https://www.thesling.org/what-to-do-about-googles-dominance-of-online-advertising/
Those companies are doing something rotten. In dominating ads, they have stolen billions from publishers and advertisers. Then they used those billions to capture our democratic process and ensure that our human rights weren't being defended as they plundered our private data and put us in harm's way.
Advertising will adapt. The marketing bros know this is coming. They're already discussing how to live in a world where you can't measure clicks and you can't attribute actions (e.g. the world from the first advertisements up until the early 2000s):
https://sparktoro.com/blog/attribution-is-dying-clicks-are-dying-marketing-is-going-back-to-the-20th-century/
An equitable solution to Google's monopoly will not run though our right to privacy. We don't solve the Google monopoly by creating competition in surveillance. The reason to get rid of Google's monopoly is to make it easier to end surveillance.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve
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Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
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aulia-m · 2 years ago
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The LVCC Loop is a Glorified Theme Park Ride
This is someone’s idea of a revolutionary rapid transport that’s supposed to beat the traffic. Sure, it’s currently only a prototype, just a showcase of an idea, but it looks very much as if the future of transport is a Disneyland ride or a glorified Uber pool. Other cities have much more efficient and safer versions called a bus route, a metro, or MRT.
You may have read about last year’s Tesla jam in the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop so there’s no question that it can happen again.
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vintagelasvegas · 17 days ago
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FBI plane lands at Las Vegas Country Club, October 12, 1981.
Las Vegas bureau chief Joseph Yablonski told the Review-Journal that agents Rick Smith and Don Owens had taken the Cessna 172 up for a routine test flight when the engine quit on approach to McCarran airport. The agent were successful in landing the plane on the fairway and ended up in the water while avoiding a golf cart.
The event was fictionalized in the movie Casino. In 2019 members of LVCC put another plane on permanent display.
Black & white photo by Wayne Kodey. Color photo via News8. D. Russell. FBI plane lands on golf course. Review Journal, 10/13/81.
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the-final-sif · 3 months ago
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Are you gooning at DEFCON again this year?
Yep! I'll be a SOC goon! My mom's also finally gooning again, so I'll get to be on shift with her which will be fun!! This year we've finally moved to the LVCC which I'm honestly so excited for, it's gonna be a bit of a cluster fuck, first years always are, but god we'll have so much more space and we won't be spread out over 5 different hotels anymore.
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hiro-doodlez · 5 months ago
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REMINDER TO FUTURE ME TO CHECK ON LVCC
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robpegoraro · 2 years ago
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CES tips for rookie reporters, 2022 edition
CES tips for rookie reporters, 2022 edition
This January will mark my 25th trek to CES and will be my 26th CES overall, counting the 2021 virtual edition of the show. A quarter of a century of CES practice may not have taught me how to escape having this pilgrimage to Las Vegas tear me away from my family right after the holidays, but it has given me some insight into making the gadget gathering produced by the Arlington-based Consumer…
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sab-cat · 2 years ago
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Inside the Las Vegas Loop: Transportation Game-Changer, or Complete Waste of Time and Effort?
Perhaps you've heard about the Las Vegas Loop, an invention of Elon Musk's THE Boring Company, currently connecting the three main halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) with Teslas as the vehicles of choice. Today's video gives you a first-hand look at the LVCC Loop, looking at how the tunnel system operates, asking whether it's useful, and looking at future plans. What this video does NOT include -- which you might've seen in viral videos around the time of the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show -- is a Vegas Loop traffic jam. In fact, what your intrepid videographer uncovered was exactly the opposite: either a little-used system on what should have been a busy convention day (the National Automobile Dealer's Association), or a system that was simply shut down for the day. We'll look at long-range plans for a 51-station network of Tesla tunnels centered around the Las Vegas Strip, and we'll investigate the next phase of Las Vegas Loop: a one-way tunnel from the Las Vegas Convention Center's West Hall to the new Resorts World casino hotel, a quarter of a mile away on the Strip.
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onenettvchannel · 6 months ago
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BREAKING NEWS: New Trailer of 'Helluva Boss' unveils final 5 new episodes in Season 2 at the 'LVLUP Expo 2024' in Las Vegas [#OneNETnewsEXCLUSIVE]
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LAS VEGAS, NEVADA -- Fans of 'Helluva Boss' at 'LVLUP Expo 2024' given in a sneak peek into the last 5 episodes of Season 2 in a thrilling and bloody twist of events. The public online release of a new trailer on Saturday afternoon (April 27th, 2024 -- Maryland local time) showcased it as an emotional rollercoaster that sets up for what is promised to be an action-packed final stretch.
Season 2 began to stream in the late-July 2022 with its premiere episode titled "The Circus", setting the stage for a wild and unpredictable journey for the crew of Immediate Murder Professionals (IMP). These next 5 months in chronological dating order that will keep them on the edge of their seats at home, or travelling on the go, wherever you are watching them from!
For those didn't know about, 'LVLUP Expo' is a 3-day dynamic event filled with gaming tournaments, cosplay contests, collectible vendors and artists from all over the world coming together under one roof! This year's convention held at the 'Las Vegas Convention Center' (LVCC) in 'West Hall, Paradise Road, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States of America (U.S.A.)', was a hub of creativity, passion and competitive spirit. With more than 50 special guests and influencers, such as voice actors from the universes of 'Hazbin Hotel' and 'Helluva Boss', along with YouTubers and Twitch streamer stars. It provided fans with a wide range of opportunities to meet their online idols.
During the 'Helluva Boss' panel this past weekend, an attendee who had paid for access to the event streamed snippets of upcoming episodes on YouTube LIVE (owned by Google's Alphabet). These clips and experts of voice actors and actresses gave viewers a taste of what they can expect from this dramatic and thrilling season. The panel included behind-the-scenes stories and exclusive content from the creators and voices behind the show, exciting local and global participants even further.
In an industry-shattering move made via the 'X Network' (formerly known as Twitter) and a YouTube trailer… Ms. Vivienne Maree Medrano, who is a show creator and indie animated production company of 'SpindleHorse Toons', shared the titles for the last 5 new monthly 'Helluva Boss' episodes. Starting with Episode #8 until #12 – 'The Full Moon', then 'Apology Tour', 'Ghostfuckers', 'Mastermind' up until Sinsmas; which is expected to be gripping Season 2 finale later in December 2024. This roster guarantees to push the boundaries of the Immediate Murder Professionals (IMP) squad in a way that has more being unprecedented, creating a perfect package and a setup for a remarkable finale to the season.
Looking ahead of it, regarding the 3rd Season of 'Helluva Boss', talks are already happening as independent sources told local Maryland media reporters. The news comes from a virtual panel that took place on 'Streamily' last year in the late-March, and the autograph signing event that could span across the U.S.A. These aforementioned panels and events were held to celebrate the end of Season 2 of the televised web series.
The show captures viewers with its funny, action-packed episodes that fills with a heart, so it's no surprise that fans can't wait for more. And while we don’t know what Season 3 will bring, this only means there are endless possibilities in store for us.
The final 5 new episodes of Helluva Boss releases next month! They will premiere monthly starting in May. Streaming exclusively free-of-charge, only on YouTube!
AMATEUR SCREENGRAB COURTESY: Maria Quevedo via YT LIVE VIDEO BACKGROUND PROVIDED BY: Tegna
SOURCE: *https://collider.com/helluva-boss-new-shorts/ [Referenced News Article via Collider] *https://www.facebook.com/LVLUPEXPO/videos/189224880857260/ [Referenced Promotional VIDEO via LVLUP Expo] *https://animecons.com/events/info/21659/lvl-up-expo-2024 [Referenced Event Listings via AnimeCons website] *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZTI5OWypAg [Referenced YT VIDEO via VivziePop] *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytc1Bxk7qqw [Referenced YT LIVE VIDEO #1 via Maria Quevedo] *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlZx4ZhnnK4 [Referenced YT LIVE VIDEO #2 via Maria Quevedo] *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2QesyMfJ2M [Referenced YT LIVE VIDEO #3f via Maria Quevedo] *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCStQllkvM0&t=1050s [Referenced YT LIVE VIDEO via Streamily] *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circus_(Helluva_Boss) *https://twitter.com/impmurderpros/status/1532884688414486528 [Referenced Captioned Post via X Network] and *https://twitter.com/VivziePop/status/1686066475474567168 [Referenced Status Post via X Network]
-- OneNETnews Team
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exhibitrentalcompany · 8 months ago
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Why Trade Show Booth Rentals in Las Vegas Is the Best Exhibiting Option?
Trade shows were, are, and will remain a powerful platform for brands to connect with their potential customers. These gatherings display new offerings. Exhibitors here generate leads. Las Vegas, with its glitz, glam, and unparalleled showmanship, is a top destination for these events. Numerous companies offer trade show booth rentals in Las Vegas. These companies have shown to be beneficial to young enterprises by aiding with cost-effective display. 
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Why Should You Consider Opting for Trade Show Booth Rentals In Las Vegas?
Las Vegas is a city that never sleeps. It is a magnet for trade shows. Las Vegas is a top U.S. trade show destination as per the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR). This city can offer a global customer reach in large numbers. While venues like LVCC facilities & accommodate events of all sizes, but not every new exhibitor can afford to display their offering due to the limited budget. This is where trade show booth rentals in Las Vegas become a lifesaver. It is an alternate displaying option for conventional booths. Rental booths help you to exhibit without worrying about the budget, especially if you are a newcomer in your industry. Plus, you are not making any long-term commitment while opting for a trade show booth rental in Las Vegas. 
The Potential of Rental Booths
Now, let’s discuss why renting a trade show booth in Las Vegas is the smartest move for your business:
Best Option for Flexible Exhibiting Space
If we compare it to owning a booth, trade show booth rentals in Las Vegas are the best option when it comes to flexibility. You have free will to choose a booth size that aligns with your budget & exhibit needs. Additionally, rental companies typically offer a diverse range of pre-designed and modular booths. The pre-designed booths can be a perfect displaying space that matches your brand identity.
Doesn’t Become a Hindrance When It Comes to Budget
Renting allows you to avoid the upfront investment that is associated with purchasing a booth. This is particularly beneficial for businesses participating in a limited number of trade shows. Trade show booth rentals in Las Vegas are also beneficial for those who want to test the market. 
Customize or Brand Your Rental Booth Your Way 
Companies offering trade show booth rentals often in Las Vegas also provide customization options for the booths that you rent as well as conventional displays. This could include adding company logos, graphics, multimedia elements, etc. These elements create a visually impactful exhibit space. That means you will get a booth that reflects your brand and resonates with your target audience.
Renting Like a Pro: Key Considerations
To make sure that you experience a successful trade show in Las Vegas by renting a booth, you must consider these key factors:
Booth Size and Location 
You will have to think strategically. The size of your trade show booth rental in Las Vegas should accommodate your display needs. It must facilitate the attendee flow. We suggest you consider factors like foot traffic patterns within the venue when selecting a location.
The Right Rental Partner 
Researching potential companies offering trade show booth rentals in Las Vegas is a strategic approach to minimize the risk of loss. That means you need to look for companies with experience in your industry. We would suggest you to go with a reputable company that is capable of providing high-quality trade show booth rentals in Las Vegas along with excellent customer service.
Negotiate Your Way to Success 
Once you have identified a suitable rental booth provider, don't be afraid to negotiate! Go ahead and discuss pricing options. Also, ask about the potential add-on services. You can also explore early booking discounts offered by many companies.
Planning Your Booth with Messe Masters 
As mentioned earlier, Las Vegas trade shows attract a massive audience, So, booking your booth well in advance will secure your desired location and ensure availability. For this, you can connect with Expo Stand Services. We have been a leading trade show booth rental company and contractor in Las Vegas for years. We offer all kinds and sizes of displays to own as well as for renting purposes. Apart from this, you will get a comprehensive package of services related to trade show booth building and design. We help you in everything starting from designing to dismantling your trade show booth rentals in Las Vegas. We also assist you in storing your display if needed.
Ready to take your brand to the next level? Explore trade show booth rentals in Las Vegas and start planning your next show-stopping exhibit. If you have any doubts you can connect with Expo Stand Services, our professionals will solve your all doubts related to the trade show.
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oneknightlight · 2 years ago
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Ok fuck it I’m building Sneo
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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago
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A profoundly stupid case about video game cheating could transform adblocking into a copyright infringement
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I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).
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Here's a weird consequence of our societal shift from capitalism (where riches come from profits) to feudalism (where riches come from rents): increasingly, your rights to your actual property (the physical stuff you own) are trumped by corporations' metaphorical "intellectual property" claims.
That's a lot to unpack! Let's start with a quick primer on profits and rents. Capitalists invest money in buying equipment, then they pay workers wages to use that equipment to produce goods and services. Profit is the sum a capitalist takes home from this arrangement: money made from paying workers to do productive things.
Now, rents: "rent" is the money a rentier makes by owning a "factor of production": something the capitalist needs in order to make profits. Capitalists risk their capital to get profits, but rents are heavily insulated from risk.
For example: a coffee shop owner buys espresso machines, hires baristas, and rents a storefront. If they do well, the landlord can raise their rent, denying them profits and increasing rents. But! If a great new cafe opens across the street and the coffee shop owner goes broke, the landlord is in great shape, because they now have a vacant storefront they can rent, and they can charge extra for a prime location across the street from the hottest new coffee shop in town.
The "moral philosophers" that today's self-described capitalists claim to worship – Adam Smith, David Ricardo – hated rents. For them, profits were the moral way to get rich, because when capitalists chase profits, they necessarily chase the production of things that people want.
When rentiers chase rents, they do so at the expense of profits. Every dollar a capitalist pays in rent – licenses for IP, rent for a building, etc – is a dollar that can't be extracted in profit, and then reinvested in the production of more goods and services that society desires.
The "free markets" of Adam Smith weren't free from regulation, they were free from rents.
The moral philosophers' hatred of rents was really a hatred of feudalism. The industrial revolution wasn't merely (or even primarily) the triumph of new machines: rather, it was the triumph of profits over rent. For the industrial revolution to succeed, the feudal arrangement had to end. Capitalism is incompatible with hereditary lords receiving guaranteed rents from hereditary serfs who are legally obliged to work for them. Capitalism triumphed over feudalism when the serfs were turned off of the land (becoming the "free labor" who went to work in the textile mills) and the land itself was given over to sheep grazing (providing the wool for those same mills).
But that doesn't mean that the industrial revolution invented profits. Profits were to be found in feudal societies, wherever a wealthy person increased their wealth by investing in machines and hiring workers to use them. The thing that made feudalism feudal was how conflicts between rents and profits cashed out. For so long as the legal system elevated the claims of rentiers over the claims of capitalists, the society was feudal. Once the legal system gave priority to profit over rent, it became capitalist.
Capitalists hate capitalism. The engine of capitalism is insecurity. The successful capitalist is like the fastest gun in the old west: there's always a young gun out there looking to "disrupt" their fortune with a new invention, product, or organizational strategy that "creatively destroys" the successful businesses of the day and replaces them with new ones:
https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-capitalism/
That's a hard way to live, with your every success serving as a blinking KICK ME sign visible to every ambitious person in the world. Precarity makes people miserable and nuts:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer
So capitalists universally aspire to become rentiers and investors seek out companies that have a plan to extract rent. This is why Warren Buffett is so priapatic for companies with "moats and walls" – legal privileges and market structures that protect the business from competition and disruption:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-explains-moat-principle-164442359.html
Feudal rents were mostly derived from land, but even in the feudal era, the king was known to reward loyal lickspittles with rents over ideas. The "patents royal" were the legally protected right to decide who could make or do certain things: for example, you might have a patent royal over the production of silver ribbon, and anyone who wanted to make a silver ribbon would have to pay for your permission. If you chose to grant that permission exclusively to one manufacturer, then no one else could make it, and you could charge a license fee to the manufacturer that accounted for nearly all their profit.
Today, rentiers are also interested in land. Bill Gates is the country's number one landowner, and in many towns, private equity landlords are snappinig up every single family home that hits the market and converting it to a badly maintained slum:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston
But the 21st Century's defining source of rent is "IP" – a controversial term that I use here to mean, "Any law or policy that allows a company to exert legal control over its competitors, critics and customers":
https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/
IP is in irreconcilable conflict with real property rights. Think of HP selling you a printer and wanting to decide which ink you use, or John Deere selling you a tractor and wanting to tell you who can fix it. Or, for that matter, Apple selling you a phone and dictating which software you are allowed to install on it.
Think of Unity, a company that makes tools for video-game makers, demanding a royalty from every game that is eventually sold, calling this "shared success":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics
Every time one of these conflicts ends with IP's triumph over real property rights, that is a notch in favor of calling the world we live in now "technofeudalist" rather than "technocapitalist":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital
Once you start to think of "IP" as "laws that let me control how other people use their real property," a lot of the seemingly incoherent fights over IP snap into place. This also goes a long way to explaining how otherwise sensible people can agree on expansions of IP to achieve some short-term goal, irrespective of the spillover harms from such a move. Hard cases make bad law, and hard IP cases make terrible law.
Five years ago, some anti-fascist counterdemonstrators hit on the clever idea of blaring top 40 music during neo-Nazi marches, on the theory that this would prevent Nazis from uploading videos of their marches to Youtube and other platforms, whose filters would block any footage that included copyrighted music:
https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/
Thankfully, this didn't work, but not for lack of trying. And it might still work, if calls for beefing up video copyright filters are heeded. Cops all over the place are already blaring Taylor Swift songs and Disney tunes to prevent their interactions with the public from being uploaded:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/07/moral-hazard-of-filternets/#dmas
The same thinking that causes progressives to recklessly argue in favor of upload filters also causes them to demand that web scraping be treated as a copyright crime. They think they're creating a world where AI companies can't rip off their creation to train a model; they're actually creating a world where the Internet Archive can't capture JD Vance's embarrassing old podcast appearances or newspaper editorial boards' advocacy for positions they now recant:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/
It's not that Nazi marches are good, or that scraping can't be bad – it's just that advocating for the use of IP to address either is a cure that's not just worse than the disease – it's also not a cure.
A problem can be real, and still not be solvable with IP. I have enormous sympathy for gamers who rail against cheaters who use aftermarket hacks to improve their aim, see through buildings, or command other unfair advantages.
If you want to tell a stranger how they must configure their PC or console, IP ("any law that lets you control your competitors, critics or customers") is an obvious answer. But – as with other attempts to solve real problems with IP – this is a cure that is both worse than the disease, and also not a cure after all.
Back in 2002, Blizzard sued some hobbyists over a program called "bnetd." Bnetd was a program that provided a game-server you could connect to with the Blizzard games that you'd bought. It was created as an alternative to Battlenet, Blizzard's notoriously unreliable game-server software that left gamers frustrated and furious due to frequent outages:
https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd
To the public, Blizzard made several arguments against bnetd. They claimed that it encouraged piracy, because – unlike the official Battlenet servers – it didn't check whether the copies of Blizzard software that connected to it had a valid license key. Gamers didn't really care about that, but they did respond to another argument: that bnetd lacked the anti-cheat checking of Battlenet.
But that wasn't what Blizzard took to the court: in court, they argued that the hobbyists who made bnetd violated copyright law. Specifically, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bans "circumvention of access controls to copyrighted works." Basically, Blizzard argued that bnetd's authors violated the law because they used debuggers to examine the software they'd paid for, while it ran on their own computers, to figure out how to make a game server of their own.
Blizzard didn't sue bnetd's authors for pirating Blizzard software (they didn't – they'd paid for their copies). They didn't sue them for abetting other gamers' piracy. They certainly didn't sue them for making a cheat-friendly game-server.
Blizzard sued them for analyzing software they'd paid for, while it was running on their own computers.
Imagine if Walmart – one of the biggest book-retailers in America – had a policy that said that you could only shelve the books you bought at Walmart on shelves that you also bought at Walmart. Now imagine that Walmart successfully argued that measuring the books you bought from them and using those measurements to create your own compatible book-case violated their IP rights!
This is an outrageous triumph of IP rights over real property rights, and yet gamers vocally backed Blizzard in the early noughts, because gamers hate cheaters and because IP law is (correctly) understood as "the law that lets a company tell you how you can use your own real, physical property." Hard cases make bad law, hard IP cases make batshit law.
It's more than 20 years since bnetd, and cheating continues to serve as a Trojan horse to smuggle in batshit new IP laws. In Germany, Sony is suing the cheat-device maker Datel:
https://torrentfreak.com/sonys-ancient-lawsuit-vs-cheat-device-heads-in-right-direction-sonys-defeat-240705/
Sony argues that the Datel device – which rewrites the contents of a player's device's RAM, at the direction of that player – infringes copyright. Sony claims that the values that its programs write to your device's RAM chips are copyrighted works that it has created, and that altering that copyrighted work makes an unauthorized derivative work, which infringes its copyright.
Yes, this is batshit, and thankfully, Sony has been thwarted in court to date, but it is steaming ahead to the EU's highest court. If it succeeds, then it will open up every tool that modifies your computer at your direction to this kind of claim.
How bad can it be? Well, get this: the German publishing giant Axel Springer (owned by a monomaniacal Trumpist and Israel hardliner who has ordered journalists in his US news outlets to go easy on both) is suing Eyeo, makers of Adblock Plus, on the grounds that changing HTML to block an ad creates a "derivative work" of Axel Springer's web-pages:
https://torrentfreak.com/ad-blocking-infringes-copyright-ancient-sony-cheat-lawsuit-may-prove-pivotal-240729/
Axel Springer's filings cite the Sony/Datel case, using it to argue that their IP rights trump your property rights, and that you can only configure your web-browser, running on your computer, which you own, in ways that it approves of.
Axel Springer's war on browsers is a particularly pernicious maneuver, because browsers are the best example we have of internet software that serves as a "user agent." "User agent" is an old-timey engineering synonym for "browser" that reflects the browser's role: to go out onto the web on your behalf and bring back things for you, which it displays in the way you prefer:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet
Want to block flickering GIFs to forestall photosensitive epileptic servers? Ask your user agent to find and delete them. Want to shift colors into a gamut that accounts for your color-blindness? Ask your user-agent:
https://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/15/dankam/
Want to goose the font size and contrast so you can read the sadistic grey-on-white type that young designers use in the mistaken belief that black-on-white type is "hard on the eyes"? That's what Reader Mode is for:
https://frankgroeneveld.nl/2021/08/24/most-underused-browser-feature/
The foundation of any good digital relationship is a device that works for you, not for the people who own the servers you connect to. Even if they don't plan on screwing you over by directing your user agent to attack you on their behalf right now, the very existence of a facility in your technology that causes it to betray you, by design, is a moral hazard that inevitably results in your victimization:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai
"IP" ("a law that lets me control how you use your own property") is a tempting solution to every problem, but ultimately, IP ends up magnifying the power of the already powerful, in contests where your only hope of victory is having a user agent whose only loyalty is to you.
The monotonic, dangerous expansion of IP reflects the growing victory of rents over profits – income from owning things, rather than income from doing things. Everyday people may argue for IP in the belief that it will solve their immediate problems – with AI, or Nazis, or in-game cheats – but ultimately, the expansion of a law that limits how you can use your property (including your capital) to uses that don't threaten neofeudalists will doom you to technoserfdom.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/29/faithful-user-agents/#hard-cases-make-bad-copyright-law
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