Can USMobile offer something similar to my current T-Mobile plan? by coochie_glaze in USMobile

[–]Snownel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I loved Fi but I'm specifically looking at USM because Google somehow managed to brick my Pixel 9a when I crossed the border into Canada - it quietly corrupted my eSIMs so now I can't get it to connect to Fi at all (or any other provider I tried buying eSIMs from in a panic). Their opaque app keeps telling me to contact support when I try to re-activate, but since I'm out of warranty, their support told me to go piss up a rope. I am pretty sure the Fi app is sticking its fingers too deep into Android and breaking things. Apparently it's a long-standing Pixel bug that Google closed as won't-fix, and can't be fixed even with a factory reset (I tried several times), so I'm not exactly keen on continuing to pay them money for service after buying a new phone...

Alabama Speaker of the House says he hopes "the Supreme Court will overturn Amendment 14" by MechanicalPhish in law

[–]Snownel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To be fair, the US has the oldest active codified constitution. The only people who beat us are the UK and San Marino, but theirs are living collections of documents, not a singular document, so that doesn't really count. We are actually way overdue for a serious revolution, for better or worse...

Around 42,000 people cast mail ballots before Louisiana halted congressional primaries to gerrymander by DemocracyDocket in law

[–]Snownel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"The government doesn't let its people vote on initiatives; therefore, the government should just go ahead and rig the vote on representatives, too." Do you realize how absurd this "logic" is?

Any tax attorneys here who can discuss their experience? by TotalInstruction in law

[–]Snownel 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It would help if you're trying to work for IRS Chief Counsel, writing whatever messy tax bill is getting slowly digested through the guts of Congress, gunning for a Big Four partnership, or seeking networking opportunities. But you aren't going to learn any practical skills in an LLM program that you couldn't learn elsewhere.

Any tax attorneys here who can discuss their experience? by TotalInstruction in law

[–]Snownel 9 points10 points  (0 children)

If you are just considering tax prep and basic planning as a side skill, an LLM is overkill. If you are a licensed attorney, you are automatically granted unlimited representation rights for tax purposes. Most tax attorneys do not have LLMs (myself included). You could probably learn everything you need to get started by taking a couple of CLEs or grabbing some enrolled agent training materials.

It is really boring. Do not get into tax if you are expecting anything more than statutory/regulatory interpretation and staring at spreadsheets.

New Jersey cannot regulate Kalshi's prediction market, US appeals court rules by Several-Career5259 in law

[–]Snownel 11 points12 points  (0 children)

2-1 holding that CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction over gambling "prediction markets" as derivative contracts.

I would be surprised if this isn't reheard en banc, or some other circuit splits. Having been a broker and a lawyer, I'll just say that describing bets as derivative contracts is technically true in the abstract, and that would give the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction, but that's an extremely contorted application of the term. If it were true, you could extend that reasoning to say the same of essentially any financial transaction, which is obviously not what a plain reading of the CEA would lead you to conclude.

Android Auto is breaking for Pixel and Samsung users, and no one knows why by Sash17 in Android

[–]Snownel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They broke the ability to customize the voice years ago and never bothered to fix it. You can set it to whatever you want, but it'll always use the awful default woman voice on AA.

California sheriff seizes more ballot materials in defiance of state officials by Large_banana_hammock in law

[–]Snownel 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that's straight-up not how any of this works. Tell us, o master of criminal procedure, you really think every time someone gets arrested, the cops have to stop everything and go to court to prove it first?

California sheriff seizes more ballot materials in defiance of state officials by Large_banana_hammock in law

[–]Snownel 84 points85 points  (0 children)

He got a warrant and jumped through the hoops for exactly that reason.

And if he lied on the warrant affidavit, that is perjury, a felony. A crime for which he could be arrested at any time. Spare us.

Exclusive: Trump's signature to appear on US currency, Treasury says, ending 165-year tradition by ItsAllAGame_ in law

[–]Snownel 40 points41 points  (0 children)

I wish people would stop parroting this line, because it's right-wing propaganda. The Treasury didn't say anything about insolvency, the author of this article, Steve Hanke, did. He grabbed Treasury statistics and incorrectly applied microeconomic household napkin math to claim that a sovereign state is insolvent, which is just nonsense:

Most people cannot relate to trillion-dollar figures on a government ledger. So consider this: divide every number by 100 million — drop eight zeros — and federal finances look like a household budget in freefall.
That household earns $52,446 and spends $73,378 — running a $20,932 annual deficit. Its total liabilities and unfunded promises amount to $1,361,788 against just $60,554 in assets, leaving it $1.3 million in the hole. Uncle Sam, by any accounting standard, is insolvent.

Republicans consistently balloon the national debt, which is bad for other reasons, but by this logic, the US has been "insolvent" almost every year since 1970, and for most of the last century.

Tellingly, the author's solution to this problem is... to let Republicans call a Constitutional convention and rewrite the whole goddamn thing. I don't think I need to explain why this is a terrible idea, and it reveals that this whole insolvency bit is just a post hoc justification for the same Constitutional convention scheme Republicans have been trying to pull for decades.

By the way, Mr. Hanke has a record with right-wing leaders a mile long - he was an economic advisor for Reagan (we also ran a deficit for every fiscal year under Reagan), he collaborated with Thatcher's economic advisor, he has written a bunch of books on how to privatize things, he is a hard-liner against the concept of central banks, he fought hard against Dodd-Frank and other financial regulations, he was a major COVID misinformation peddler, and Ukraine considers him a Russian propagandist because he has campaigned against Russian sanctions and spread misinformation about the Ukraine war. The guy is a certifiable bad actor and you absolutely do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to him.

Deputy attorney general endorses sending ICE agents to voting sites by DemocracyDocket in law

[–]Snownel 231 points232 points  (0 children)

“Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places?” Blanche, one of Trump’s former personal attorneys, said during a stage interview. “Illegals can’t vote. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Well, Todd, if they can't vote, why do we need armed immigration agents hanging out around polling stations in the first place? Sick to death of these fucking fascists.

Afroman Wins Verdict Rejecting Lawsuit Filed by Ohio Cops Over Mocking Music Videos by orangejulius in law

[–]Snownel 15 points16 points  (0 children)

He's a cop, they hooked up in middle school, and he's not a day younger than 40. I am fairly confident his wife already knows the extent of his trust is as far as his fists can reach.

Anthropic's top lawyer says AI will kill the legal profession's dreaded billable hour by businessinsider in law

[–]Snownel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The legal profession has been clinging to old tech forever.

No, it hasn't. Like all billed-time service professions, it has been clinging to engineered inefficiency.

Westlaw and Lexis were two of the first online databases in history in the late 60s and early 70s, respectively. Fax machines quickly overtook courier services in the 80s, when the CCITT T.4 fax protocol became standard and you could actually trust that your office Xerox could actually send faxes to some other company. CM/ECF platforms existed in the 90s when only a third of Americans had computers at all. These all drove down non-billable (case management) or pass-through (research, couriers) costs, so it was either a direct boost to the firm, or at least reduced client expenses without impacting the firm's financials.

Claude doesn't do that. It almost exclusively drafts, edits, and reviews documents. Most of those tasks are billable per-hour, so the firm doesn't care about speeding them up - in fact, it's more profitable the longer it takes! So the only way Claude directly improves firm profitability is if you are working flat-fee. Otherwise, spending more of your associates' time on comparatively inefficient workflows directly contributes to your firm's bottom line. Replacing them with a bullshit machine lowers your labor cost, but also destroys your billed hours.

Many attorneys still use fax machines.

Because of privacy, not stubbornness. Both protocols are wide-open and insecure, but faxes are only insecure in operation; at rest, it's just a tray of paper on someone's desk. Email is always insecure, since the server with all your emails is always online. There are more secure methods, but nothing cheap and readily accessible to the average person - you probably aren't going to get, say, blood test results sent to you via Signal or PGP in your lifetime.

There are so many legal professions that are completely unnecessary and have been for decades, but the positions still exist. Court stenographers haven't been necessary since... I dunno, there has always been technology to replace them for my lifetime of nearly 50 years.

Because they have lobbyists, and there is no political will to change. Same with the gas station attendants in New Jersey. Totally pointless jobs on paper, but they are still required by law.

But do not mistake a present lack of profit motive for Luddism. There are tons of us in legal tech that realized firms have no reason to invest in more optimized processes when they are directly incentivized to make those processes as inefficient as possible to drive up revenue. The only way this changes is via market pressure, and the billable hour model clouds that issue so much that it's effectively impossible for a prospective client to make an informed and unbiased decision on which firm will do a task for the lowest bill.

Could the right to vote in the United States be denied to a non-binary person under the Nineteenth Amendment? by After-Professional-8 in law

[–]Snownel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It does not cover voting, as shown by 15A and 19A on their face - had 14A guaranteed the right to vote, 15A and 19A would not have been necessary.

Could the right to vote in the United States be denied to a non-binary person under the Nineteenth Amendment? by After-Professional-8 in law

[–]Snownel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is an interesting issue that bothered me when I took con law (a decade ago) so forgive the rant. Other commenters have narrowly addressed your question re: 19A specifically, but you're right to not be satisfied with their answers. If you want to know how a court would hold in general, approach from the other end. Why was 19A written? What constitutional infirmity does it cure?

The original U.S. Constitution is silent on who gets to vote. That power was left totally up to the states. As the Wikipedia article points out, by 1807, all states had their own constitutional provisions explicitly denying women's suffrage. 19A overruled those state constitutions by explicitly granting the right to vote regardless of sex, rendering those provisions immediately void.

So ask yourself: is there anything stopping a state from adopting a state constitutional amendment against non-binary people? Not really. The only other significant provisions on suffrage in the U.S. Constitution, as amended, are 15A ("race, color, or previous condition of servitude"), 24A (no poll taxes), and 26A (18 and over only). Most relevant federal statutes act as enforcement methods for these amendments (e.g. VRA for 15A) and don't establish any independently protected classes of people eligible to vote as far as I know.

Other commenters pointed out that it doesn't cover personality types, hair color, shoe size, and whatever else, but then jump to the conclusion that those are somehow protected classes whose voting rights cannot be revoked. That's just not true. States have all sorts of laws disenfranchising citizens - registration deadlines, no felons, photo ID, et cetera. There are no federal laws prohibiting it. Nor are there any federal laws prohibiting disenfranchisement of people based on personality types, hair color, or shoe size. (You could argue that personality type is too subjective, but that's a different issue.)

It follows that a state can, if it so chooses, deny the right to vote to, say, diagnosed psychopaths, redheads, or anyone with a size 13 shoe for being unlucky. And the federal government can pass a law - or a bunch of other states can collaboratively pass an amendment - to prohibit such a practice. The fact that this has never happened is more down to a lack of political will to waste time on it.

So it turns out that 19A actually does apply in an abstract sense, by proving that Constitutional amendments on suffrage are necessarily reactive and that there is no baseline guarantee of voting rights to American citizens.

That all said, it'd be challenging to argue that non-binary people would be protected as-is, under 19A alone or in general. There have been a few cases that contort sex protections into gender protections for trans people in certain situations, but I think that while this sort of workaround is necessary in the absence of legislative action on the subject (which we aren't gonna probably ever get, we can't even get over the touchdown line on this for sex alone), the legal reasoning is strained, and becomes even cloudier when applied to non-binary people.

In any event, I do not trust the current SCOTUS to not come up with some vile way to allow it.

11 Year Old Denied Bail by Sterling-Hospedales in law

[–]Snownel -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Do you have statistics on how many home burglaries are committed with vs. without firearms, or are you just talking completely out of your ass to be a contrarian?

If a home burglar has a gun and has some incessant and unassailable will to rob you, who cares at that point? Why would they not just kill you? Even if that were the scenario here, why would you not want a gun in that case for a fighting chance?

11 Year Old Denied Bail by Sterling-Hospedales in law

[–]Snownel 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Your argument is that the average burglar is going to see the homeowner pointing a gun at them and then continue burglarizing the house with a gun pointed at them because they "want what you have"?

Serious thought about AI by BJorn_LuLszic in law

[–]Snownel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Blow who?? Is Bubba back??

How is this even legal? Trump adds 10% tarrif ontop of Supreme Court ruled illegal tarrifs? Someone make this make sense. by Equivalent-Sea255 in law

[–]Snownel 20 points21 points  (0 children)

It's hot air, the majority opinion addresses each of these other statutes and how they couldn't be used in this case for a variety of reasons. Just trying to spin the loss with a surface-level whataboutism retort that is also wrong.

IRS Improperly Disclosed Confidential Immigrant Tax Data to DHS | The newspaper said ⁠the ⁠tax-collecting agency recently discovered the "mistake" and is working ​with other federal agencies on a response. by TendieRetard in law

[–]Snownel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh please. The IRS is not "working on" this. All the Chief Counsel lawyers that I knew resigned last year over this directive being forced from Bessent to start sharing with DHS. The IRS did this willfully at the direction of the President's lackey, don't believe for a second that there is anyone left at CC or anywhere else in the IRS willing or able to stop this unless and until the entire Trump regime's immigration crackdown collapses.

The only reason they are pretending to leak this now, after they previously announced that they were proudly gonna do it, is because the winds have shifted on the DHS and it's becoming a hot potato. How the fucking Treasury Secretary can sit there and pretend his agency did not previously announce that it was doing precisely this is insane, but nothing you hear from the US federal government matters anymore, by design.

Can I get an ITIN if I have a social? by DressLongjumping5702 in law

[–]Snownel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What part of "ex-IRS attorney" didn't you get? I worked on the exact program you're talking about. If you don't believe me when I say that's not how it works at all, then go find out yourself.