#vps trial

[tomorrowusa]

The lines at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.

The Trump hush money trial has become a public grovelling pit for Republicans wishing to be Trump's running mate. These people have lost any remaining dignity they might have still had.

VP wannabees: Be careful what you ask for.

[rowanisawriter]

at work lol a few months ago this new VP joined which is always a bad thing because the first thing a new leader does is reshuffle and fire almost everyone and fuck everything up. this one asked every team to come up with a “deprecation scenario” for our products which required us to go into great detail about how the shut down of our product (which is the only reason we have a job) would affect customers etc etc basically we were writing plans for what would happen after we were all fired. when i say corporate work is psychological torture i mean it

[pottlewealth]

Have you invested in Donald Trump's Truth Social stock? Thinking about buying the DJT stock? This might be a good time to sell or hold off on buying, instead. This video covers 6 critically important reasons why DJT's stock price might be heading for $3 per share. We see massive losses ahead. Trump's lock-up period ends in September and there are many reasons he might sell as many shares as possible. Look out, this is going to get ugly. Watch the video and comment on our youtube channel. Thanks.

[seomagicegy]

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Discover why Hostinger web hosting stands out from the competition. Read our guide to see if it fits your needs!

Why Hostinger Web Hosting is Your Best Choice

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Hostinger hosting good for eCommerce websites?

Yes, Hostinger’s Business and Cloud Hosting plans are great for eCommerce websites due to higher performance and security.

[i4uagencyegy]

Why Hostinger Web Hosting is Your Best Choice

Discover why Hostinger web hosting stands out from the competition. Read our guide to see if it fits your needs!

Why Hostinger Web Hosting is Your Best Choice

In the competitive world of web hosting, Hostinger web hosting stands out as one of the most reliable and affordable providers. Known for its user-friendly platform, low prices, and feature-rich plans, Hostinger has quickly gained popularity among beginners and professionals alike. In this article, we’ll dive into why Hostinger might be the best web hosting solution for your needs.

Hostinger hosting good for eCommerce websites?

Yes, Hostinger’s Business and Cloud Hosting plans are great for eCommerce websites due to higher performance and security.

[hostinghome02]

Secure RDP Hosting with Hosting Home

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[asexualjedi]

Me when I’m asked if I want to join a journal. A few days after I submit my memo for the moot court try out and still have to do oral arguments the next month and having to give a response by Friday. Like truly I was like haha I won’t get in or if I do I’ll be able to choose the stuff all at once and see what I think I can do.

[elysianasterism]

checking a bunch of filo news sites because sometimes u gotta verify stuff

[diomedrian]

Set the meeting up using my personal email and not (1) the work one OR (2) the professional one

[rottenpumpkin13]

Absolutely evil idea but: Reno leaves a positive pregnancy test in the Turks' bullpen as a prank. Elena, as the only remaining female turk, is immediately standing on trial. What transpires between the other Turks + Rufus?

*Rude urgently grabs Elena by the arm and pulls her aside*

Rude: Elena, you and this baby have my full support. Whatever you need. I'll babysit. I'll build the crib. I'll learn how to knit.

Elena: …What?

Rude: I don't need to know who the father is. That's not important. I've got you, buddy. I already made a spreadsheet. There are snack charts.

Elena: I'm not pregnant!

Rude: You are, and that's okay.

Elena: I'M. NOT. PREGNANT.

Tseng: Who's not pregnant?

*Rude holds up a positive pregnancy test*

Rude: I found this near Elena's desk.

Tseng: YOU'RE PREGNANT?

Elena: NOT PREGNANT!

Tseng: This is inconvenient. You'll have to go on maternity leave while we're understaffed. And you're so young. Who's the father? Is it—

Elena: Please, I'm telling you, I haven't even spoken to a man in days. The last guy I talked to was the Vice President.

*Rude narrows his eyes. Slowly turns. Locks onto Rufus across the room like a missile seeking a target*

Tseng: It's alright if you are. Shinra offers a generous maternity bonus, complimentary gift baskets, and company-funded daycare.

*Behind them, Rude sprints at Rufus and tackles him like a linebacker*

Elena: Wait, we get daycare? That's… honestly pretty progressive.

Tseng: Indeed. Full medical, paid leave, even a Shinra-branded baby monitor.

*Cut to Rude actively choking Rufus in the background with one hand and shaking a stapler at him with the other*

Elena: Huh. Well, I'm not pregnant, but nice to know HR finally did something right.

Tseng: You're absolutely sure?

*In the background, Rufus tries to army crawl away but Rude yanks him back by the boot and starts stapling him to the ground*

Elena: Positive. But hey… thanks for trying to help. I wonder who the pregnancy test belongs to, though.

*Reno appears int he background and intervenes, telling Rude the pregnancy test is his*

Tseng: I don't know, but surely it'll get resolved soon.

*Rude interprets this as Reno being pregnant and Rufus still being the father, promptly knocks the VP out*

[robertreich]

5 Facts About Trump’s Indictments

Trump’s defenders are still lying about his indictments. Here are 5 crucial facts you can share with whoever in your life needs to hear them.

1. President Biden did not indict Trump.

Four different grand juries — made up of ordinary citizens — indicted Trump after being presented with evidence they found compelling enough to warrant criminal prosecution.

The reason we have grand juries is specifically to help make sure no one gets prosecuted out of a personal vendetta.

2. This isn’t about “free speech”

In all four cases, Trump has been indicted because of what he allegedly did, not what he said. Lots of crimes involve speech, but that doesn’t stop them from being crimes. Even Trump’s hand-picked attorney general, Bill Barr, recognizes this defense is nonsense.

3. It doesn’t matter whether Trump believed the election was stolen

There’s plenty of evidence that Trump knew he lost the election fair and square. His claims of massive fraud were rejected by his own campaign manager, White House lawyers, and his hand-picked Justice Department officials. 

And privately, Trump seemed to admit that he either knew or didn’t care that his claims were false, allegedly criticizing VP Pence for being “too honest,” and allegedly admitting to his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that he lost and wanted to cover it up.

But even if Trump really did believe the election was stolen, that doesn’t give him the right to allegedly commit a criminal conspiracy to try to steal it back.

4. Trump has received preferential treatment because of who he is.

Trump’s defenders complain about a two-tiered justice system.

They’re right about that, but not in the way they claim. Trump has been given special privileges most criminal defendants would never get.

In all four criminal cases, he has been released without bail. He has repeatedly been spared the indignity of a mugshot. He has not had his passport suspended or had limits placed on his ability to travel — even though two of his criminal cases involve direct threats to national security, and even though he has used social media to issue insults and threats against potential witnesses, behavior that would cause many criminal defendants to be held without bail pending trial.

5. Trump was in legal trouble long before entering politics

Some of Trump’s defenders claim the sheer number of criminal charges and civil suits he’s now facing is proof that he’s being targeted for political reasons. But you have to remember that Trump was the subject of about 4,000 legal actions before ever running for president. From his fraudulent Trump University scam to federal lawsuits over racist housing discrimination, Trump has spent his life in court because of his own shady behavior.

Trump is being prosecuted now because, as four grand juries have found, the strength of the evidence against him merits it. If we fail to hold him fully accountable under the law, the precedent will embolden future presidents to break the law, jeopardize national security, incite insurrections, and possibly even overturn an election.

The principle that no one is above the law is only true if we make it so.

[shu-of-the-wind]

summary of the ruling on whether trump can be criminally prosecuted below:

1) presidents have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during their tenure in office

2) an act of congress may not criminalize the president's actions within his exclusive constitutional power (i.e. executive power)

3) not all of a president's official acts fall within his executive powers and that immunity doesn't extend to conduct in areas "where his authority is shared with congress"

4) at minimum a president must be immune from prosecution for an *official* act unless the government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no "danger of intrusion" on the function of the executive branch

5) no immunity for *un*official acts

6) so to hold a president criminally liable you need to determine first a) whether it was an official or unofficial action and b) whether the president had the authority to take that action in the first place, but you CAN'T INQUIRE INTO HIS MOTIVES FOR TAKING THOSE ACTIONS during that analysis because it would put presidents on trial ~for everything~ apparently

7) trump's discussions with the attorney general are "readily categorized in the light of the nature of the president's official relationship to that individual" because as president he's allowed to fire the AG if the AG doesn't do what he wants

8) while it's true that the p and vp are engaging in official conduct while discussing their responsibilities, the question then becomes "whether the presumption of immunity is rebutted under the circumstances" i.e. it's the government's job to argue that applying a criminal law to this wouldn't "intrude on executive power"

9) trump's interactions with people outside the executive (state officials, the public) is a game of who can make the better argument of whether that was within his official or unofficial stance

11) same with public statements on twitter

12) good luck lower courts xoxo john roberts

i plan on reading the full opinion at lunch but i am gonna Throw Up Actually

[warningsine]

Living online means never quite understanding what’s happening to you at a given moment. Why these search results? Why this product recommendation? There is a feeling—often warranted, sometimes conspiracy-minded—that we are constantly manipulated by platforms and websites.

So-called dark patterns, deceptive bits of web design that can trick people into certain choices online, make it harder to unsubscribe from a scammy or unwanted newsletter; they nudge us into purchases. Algorithms optimized for engagement shape what we see on social media and can goad us into participation by showing us things that are likely to provoke strong emotional responses. But although we know that all of this is happening in aggregate, it’s hard to know specifically how large technology companies exert their influence over our lives.

This week, Wired published a story by the former FTC attorney Megan Gray that illustrates the dynamic in a nutshell. The op-ed argued that Google alters user searches to include more lucrative keywords. For example, Google is said to surreptitiously replace a query for “children’s clothing” with “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear” on the back end in order to direct users to lucrative shopping links on the results page. It’s an alarming allegation, and Ned Adriance, a spokesperson for Google, told me that it’s “flat-out false.” Gray, who is also a former vice president of the Google Search competitor DuckDuckGo, had seemingly misinterpreted a chart that was briefly presented during the company’s ongoing U.S. et al v. Google trial, in which the company is defending itself against charges that it violated federal antitrust law. (That chart, according to Adriance, represents a “phrase match” feature that the company uses for its ads product; “Google does not delete queries and replace them with ones that monetize better as the opinion piece suggests, and the organic results you see in Search are not affected by our ads systems,” he said.)

Gray told me, “I stand by my larger point—the Google Search team and Google ad team worked together to secretly boost commercial queries, which triggered more ads and thus revenue. Google isn’t contesting this, as far as I know.” In a statement, Chelsea Russo, another Google spokesperson, reiterated that the company’s products do not work this way and cited testimony from Google VP Jerry Dischler that “the organic team does not take data from the ads team in order to affect its ranking and affect its result.” Wired did not respond to a request for comment. Last night, the publication removed the story from its website, noting that it does not meet Wired’s editorial standards.

It’s hard to know what to make of these competing statements. Gray’s specific facts may be wrong, but the broader concerns about Google’s business—that it makes monetization decisions that could lead the product to feel less useful or enjoyable—form the heart of the government’s case against the company. None of this is easy to untangle in plain English—in fact, that’s the whole point of the trial. For most of us, evidence about Big Tech’s products tends to be anecdotal or fuzzy—more vibes-based than factual. Google may not be altering billions of queries in the manner that the Wired story suggests, but the company is constantly tweaking and ranking what we see, while injecting ads and proprietary widgets into our feed, thereby altering our experience. And so we end up saying that Google Search is less useful now or that shopping on Amazon has gotten worse. These tools are so embedded in our lives that we feel acutely that something is off, even if we can’t put our finger on the technical problem.

That’s changing. In the past month, thanks to a series of antitrust actions on behalf of the federal government, hard evidence of the ways that Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are wielding their influence is trickling out. Google’s trial is under way, and while the tech giant is trying to keep testimony locked down, the past four weeks have helped illustrate—via internal company documents and slide decks like the one cited by Wired—how Google has used its war chest to broker deals and dominate the search market. Perhaps the specifics of Gray’s essay were off, but we have learned, for instance, how company executives considered adjusting Google’s products to lead to more “monetizable queries.” And just last week, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Amazon alleging anticompetitive practices. (Amazon has called the suit “misguided.”)

Filings related to that suit have delivered a staggering revelation concerning a secretive Amazon algorithm code-named Project Nessie. The particulars of Nessie were heavily redacted in the public complaint, but this week The Wall Street Journal revealed details of the program. According to the unredacted complaint, a copy of which I have also viewed, Nessie—which is no longer in use—monitored industry prices of specific goods to determine whether competitors were algorithmically matching Amazon’s prices. In the event that competitors were, Nessie would exploit this by systematically raising prices on goods across Amazon, encouraging its competitors to follow suit. Amazon, via the algorithm, knew that it would be able to charge more on its own site, because it didn’t have to worry about being undercut elsewhere, thereby making the broader online shopping experience worse for everyone. An Amazon spokesperson told the Journal that the FTC is mischaracterizing the tool, and suggested that Nessie was a way to monitor competitor pricing and keep price-matching algorithms from dropping prices to unsustainable levels (the company did not respond to my request for comment).

In the FTC’s telling, Project Nessie demonstrates the sheer scope of Amazon’s power in online markets. The project arguably amounted to a form of unilateral price fixing, where Amazon essentially goaded its competitors into acting like cartel members without even knowing they’d done so—all while raising prices on consumers. It’s an astonishing form of influence, powered by behind-the-scenes technology.

The government will need to prove whether this type of algorithmic influence is illegal. But even putting legality aside, Project Nessie is a sterling example of the way that Big Tech has supercharged capitalistic tendencies and manipulated markets in unnatural and opaque ways. It demonstrates the muscle that a company can throw around when it has consolidated its position in a given sector. The complaint alleges that Amazon’s reach and logistics capabilities force third-party sellers to offer products on Amazon and for lower prices than other retailers. Once it captured a significant share of the retail market, Amazon was allegedly able to use algorithmic tools such as Nessie to drive prices up for specific products, boosting revenues and manipulating competitors.

Reading about Project Nessie, I was surprised to feel a sense of relief. In recent years, customer-satisfaction ratings have dipped among Amazon shoppers who have cited delivery disruptions, an explosion of third-party sellers, and poor-quality products as reasons for frustration. In my own life and among friends and relatives, there has been a growing feeling that shopping on the platform has become a slog, with fewer deals and far more junk to sift through. Again, these feelings tend to occupy vibe territory: Amazon’s bigness seems stifling or grating in ways that aren’t always easy to explain. But Nessie offers a partial explanation for this frustration, as do revelations about Google’s various product adjustments. We have the sense that we’re being manipulated because, well, we are. It’s a bit like feeling vaguely sick, going to the doctor, and receiving a blood-test result confirming that, yes, the malaise you experienced is actually an iron deficiency. It is the catharsis of, at long last, receiving a diagnosis.

This is the true power of the surge in anti-monopoly litigation. (According to experts in the field, September was “the most extraordinary month they have ever seen in antitrust.”) Whether or not any of these lawsuits results in corporate breakups or lasting change, they are, effectively, an MRI of our sprawling digital economy—a forensic look at what these larger-than-life technology companies are really doing, and how they are exerting their influence and causing damage. It is confirmation that what so many of us have felt—that the platforms dictating our online experiences are behaving unnaturally and manipulatively—is not merely a paranoid delusion, but the effect of an asymmetrical relationship between the giants of scale and us, the users.

In recent years, it’s been harder to love the internet, a miracle of connectivity that feels ever more bloated, stagnant, commercialized, and junkified. We are just now starting to understand the specifics of this transformation—the true influence of Silicon Valley’s vise grip on our lives. It turns out that the slow rot we might feel isn’t just in our heads, after all.

[seomagicegy]

Hostinger hosting good for eCommerce websites? Yes, Hostinger’s Business and Cloud Hosting plans are great for eCommerce websites due to higher performance and security.

[i4uagencyegy]

Hostinger hosting good for eCommerce websites? Yes, Hostinger’s Business and Cloud Hosting plans are great for eCommerce websites due to higher performance and security.

[reality-detective]

PRECEDENTS ESTABLISHED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP

1. Presidents and Former Presidents can be impeached

2. Presidents and Former Presidents can be forced to reveal tax and business records

3. Presidents and Former Presidents lose executive privilege

4. Presidents and Former Presidents lose attorney-client privilege

5. Presidents and Former Presidents can be forced to release private phone records and text messages

6. Presidents and Former Presidents can have their homes raided by the FBI

7. Presidents and Former Presidents can be subpoenaed by partisan committees

8. Presidents and Former Presidents can be repeatedly indicted and arrested

9. Presidents and Former Presidents lose their First Amendment right to free speech

10. Presidents and Former Presidents lose the right to a jury trial

11. VP no longer has authority to question validity of disputed electoral votes

12. The losing party no longer has authority to submit contingent electors when results are disputed

13. Presidents and Former Presidents don't have Presidential Immunity

BOOMERANG‼️ 🤔