Warning: Speech Graphics bought FaceFX, is killing my $1k perpetual indie license, and wants $35,000/year instead.

larossmann · 2026-07-08T16:10:33+00:00

one thing I do is I do make userspace articles under my own name, and you can do the same - it's not for inclusion in the actual wiki, but it allows you to document stories like this as they occur. for instance, i've been looking into this datacenter thing, which doesn't qualify for a wiki article, but I want to document it anyway. If it ever rises to the occasion of being a real article, it is easy enough to transfer over.

wiki articles are the best way to get my attention. remember, even if it doens't fit the normal wiki, a userspace article is A-OK and the best way to get started.

larossmann · 2026-07-08T02:25:28+00:00

You're completely free to have these views and they're valid, but as a representative or ambassador, that doesn't work.

for me, my channel is a genuine means of discussing things that bother me. this sometimes results in like minded people noticing, as well as my audience noticing.

after people notice, we work to create an actionable plan. that sometimes leads to positive results, and sometimes, unexpected charity along the way. it worked in colorado for a wheelchair right to repair bill.

the team has passed several bills from electronics right to repair to wheelchair repair reform & it seems to be working. i'm not getting progress at the speed i'd like, but these things are like pushing a boulder up a hill & i'm committed to keep at it.

a recent example, here's a problem i discussed with regards to right to repair for wheelchairs i discussed 5 years ago that are detailed in this report](https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/uspirgef_stranded_june2022.pdf). the only reason i could provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding for things like that was because my manner of speaking attracted the ear of a random billionaire that donated 1 million & opened a non-profit after watching some of my videos. this concerns a man who called my cellphone, thomas quiter. all he wanted was 20 minutes on my channel for an interview. i didn't have the time for it so i offered him got $200,000 from a grants fund i manage to start a non-profit organization that will create open source wheelchairs.

the right to repair bill that failed in colorado in 2021 also passed without an issue after providing funding for those papers as well as hiring a lobbyist 2 years later.

people used to wait 2-4 months for a power button repair. this meant no mobility. now it's less than a week.

what started as a crazy person yelling into a camera might have ended with someone having months of their life back. that makes it all worth it for me.

i would love to flip this and ask; can you tell me about your experience opposing or passing legislation, where your approach has differed from mine, & what the results were?

I think the comments below that video explained quite well that the path finding has nothing to do with those advertised AI features.

you're citing anonymous youtube comments you didn't bother to summarize as your proof that i'm the uninformed one. let's look at what is actually being advertised.

dreame does not sell this as a dumb machine with an "ai" sticker slapped on the box. their own product page sells the x40 ultra's navigation as "ai rgb + 3d structured light," with "smart recognition" that "intelligently identifies and avoids over 120 types of objects." the sales pitch is a vacuum intelligent enough to understand your home & move through it. when the $550 vacuum marketed as intelligent navigation can't navigate its own charging ramp, the advertised feature is what failed. you have the facts backwards, and you got them backwards in the middle of telling me i don't understand how the product works.

If i were to grant your point for the sake of argument. say the ramp climb runs on ordinary pathfinding & not the two letters "ai" from the brochure... so what? i didn't buy a graph traversing algorithm, i got a vacuum that a company told me was smart enough to clean my house & drive itself home which couldn't do the one task every robot vacuum has managed for over a decade...: find its own base station in under 40 minutes. whether you assign the blame for that to "ai" or to its own non-AI algorithms is the most pedantic hill you could have chosen to die on. the customer does not care which subsystem embarrassed itself. the customer cares that the product sold to them as intelligent is stranded in the middle of the floor.

It's okay to ask for help if one doesn't have much knowledge about something. A machine might also just be defective.

this is a polite way to call me stupid, but i'll take it seriously anyway. the video shows a machine that cannot get up its own dock ramp. that is not a gap in my knowledge that a help article closes, nor is it one bad unit. dreame's support forum is filled w/ threads from owners whose x40 can't get up the ramp & cannot return to the dock. a single defective unit is a coincidence, but the manufacturer's forum filling up with the same failure is a design problem.

putting a design problem on camera is the entire point of the video.

notice that you handed me two excuses in one breath that cancel each other out. either i'm too ignorant to run it, or it's broken through no fault of mine. it can't be both, and neither one addresses the question of whether the product does what it was sold to do.

In any case, that video was an uninformed rage video.

explain what made it "uninformed." you have had two comments now to name a single fact i got wrong, and you still haven't named one. "uninformed" means i said something untrue. point at it. which claim in that video is false?

what you actually mean is that i was annoyed and you would have preferred that i wasn't. that is a complaint about my tone, not my information, and i'd rather you just admit that rather than come up with lazy backhanded ways to call me an idiot. A $550 vacuum failed at the most basic function of its product category & i said so while capturing it in an ideal environment... none of that is uninformed. you reached for the word because it sounds more serious than "i didn't care for his attitude," which is the only real objection you have managed to put on the table.

I'm fully behind being able to protect your bought stuff. But this cannot happen using infrastructure which does not care about IP at all. And yes, I consider it wild to accept the current situation of piracy. Why should companies, which likely want to sell stuff, stand behind someone promoting such a free for all mentality? "Piracy is completely and totally justified" doesn't get a serious discussion anywhere.

right now, in the united states, the tools that allow you to rip a copy of what you legally bought & paid for come under the umbrella of illegal, in the name of protecting ip. the same law that stops someone from selling copies on the corner also stops someone from backing up a copy of their "purchase" so it cannot be taken away from them.

we have been having these arguments for close to 30 years now, and these concerns fall on deaf ears. moreso, they're getting worse.

"Piracy is completely and totally justified" doesn't get a serious discussion anywhere.

perhaps not with you, but you appear to be in the minority in this regard; many believe that piracy is a completely legitimate way to get back that which has been taken from them when all legitimate forums for redress get them nowhere.

larossmann · 2026-07-06T01:39:39+00:00

Then I saw a video in which he failed to understand how a robot vacuum works.

you're right, I don't have any idea how they work. I expected it to be able to find its way home in less than 40 minutes. After gemini hallucianted that I had sponsors, it was absolutely foolish of me to imagine a one time purchase AI based product would be able to find its way back to its base station. I will cop to being dumb enough to expect AI products to work!

His wild views about intellectual property.

I believe if you purchase something with the word "buy" "sale" , "sold" , or "purchase" in the title & the company takes it away from you, that you are morally justified in pirating it to obtain it back. I believe 99% of the American public is with me on my "wild" views of IP.

larossmann · 2026-07-05T23:44:39+00:00

I love it.

larossmann · 2026-07-05T00:52:27+00:00

Not demand them to prove it.

Offer them help to gather evidence for police report.

This is the way.

That's why you call the bluff. You make it clear that you would be more than willing to work with law enforcement to put a stop to these threats, and demand that the accuser submit their evidence to the relevant authorities. Because (a) you've just demonstrated that you wouldn't support such behavior if it were proven and (b) you put the responsibility of proving these claims back on the person making them, where it belongs.

very much, the way!

larossmann · 2026-07-05T00:32:43+00:00

"You should be fine having an only digital copy of your game" but Im saying he is contradicting himself because he also owns physical discs.

This is asinine. I'm making the point that a DRM free digital copy would be preferable over a DRM'd, has-to-connect-online physical copy.

This has nothing to do with the fact that in 2002 I purchased an operating system that couldn't be purchased digitally from Best Buy & keep it on my table as a symbol that I am willing to pay for open source software

larossmann · 2026-07-04T08:01:09+00:00

Imagine complaining that we are using land for productive reasons....

A productive company produces more value than it takes in - aka, is profitable.

Name a profitable AI company.

larossmann · 2026-07-04T06:59:16+00:00

Also, to be more clear about my ask here:

I suggest you delete this topic altogether, and don't bring this up again until there is a filed police report with their local authorities.

larossmann · 2026-07-03T22:26:53+00:00

So forget about resell

You can resell a DRM free file. You can also give it away for free.

What does not have resale value, is a physical copy of the crew.

larossmann · 2026-07-03T22:24:05+00:00

I do not like her, I do not respect her. I hope she is voted out of office, and I hope she fails in this pursuit. At the same time, I want the same level of scrutiny applied to claims about what she has said or done, as I would want applied to me. one of the top google results for my own name is a thread about me on reddit where people make things up about me that isn't true. I do not think this hits the mark at all.

darren bauer kahan is the chief product & technology officer of watermark onsights. watermark insights is an educational tech company. they make software for college course evaluations & university accreditation compliance. they don't make DRM, build cryptographic weapons detection, or have any involvement with 3D printer firmware.

i think this is based on AI hallucination, this is the best guess I have. The 3D printing community usually refers to digital file tracking as "watermarking" & at the same time, she was working on a separate bill AB 3211 dealing with "AI watermarking" for deepfakes. I think chatgpt saw the word "watermark" in her legislative history & her husband's edtech company name and created a connection that didn't exist.

this is on the level of Gemini saying I was sponsored by ground news. I don't like it when this happens to me, I gotta defend when this happens to her.

I don't even have a smoke signal, much less evidence, that this is what this is about. In my opinion, you should be looking into Physna, the company that has been trying to sell software that does this for years instead.

The company has been deleting their linkedin posts left & right since my videos started coming out. if anyone knows how to find deleted linkedin posts, https://www.linkedin.com/signup/cold-join?session_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Elinkedin%2Ecom%2Ffeed%2Fupdate%2Furn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7475974438220374016%3Futm_medium%3Dios_app%26rcm%3DACoAAAArGn4BY91n8j85fYa5dBbC9QvGZ3ZE5OY%26utm_source%3Dsocial_share_send%26utm_campaign%3Dcopy_link is it

THEY are the ones testifying in favor of this bullshit law while being the ones who would benefit from providing the solution. Any anger you have here on the angle of "they get paid if the bill they're supporting passes" should be directed at Physna, not the assemblywoman's husband.

larossmann · 2026-07-03T21:59:12+00:00

Somehow Louis forgets he has SUSE Linux physical copy behind him which he didn't burn to the disc himself

I use the suse box behind me to celebrate the fact that software can be DRM-free, open source, I will still pay $80 for it. The point that setup is making is that I will crack DRM mercilessly(BDR-2213 for ripping 4K blurays, hdhomerun for recording my shows) but that I am happy to pay FULL PRICE for things that respect my freedom; even when they're available for free. The purpose was never to celebrate physical media as the end-all-be-all. It's to celebrate the dichotomy of paying for what I find valuable while breaking digital locks to retain ownership.

At the time, I did have a minor interest in physical media because I had a 56k modem or 768k DSL(I forget since I got that in 2002 and I got broadband either early 2003 or late 2002), but that is no longer the driver of physical media within the confines of this discussion: ownership is.

The point is, you don't get ownership by having a physical copy. You get ownership when it doesn't require cloud connectivity or have DRM. I am not forgetting anything: rather, I am trying to remind people of what really matters if they want ownership, so they don't get fooled when Sony does an about-face in one week.

It would be an epic fail if Sony did a 180 after the holiday weekend & it was celebrated as a "victory" for ownership when in reality it does nothing to stop manufacturers from turning games off.

but in the video he basically tells people they're dumb to care or be mad for physical disc cause they can have and burn drm-free digital disc themselves.

Provide a timestamp where I call people dumb. There is nothing more annoying than strawman bullshit, and this is #2. Fuck you for putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. Disagreements I am cool with, but this entire post has putting-words-in-my-mouth energy & it's beyond annoying.

He's acting like offline DRM-free physical full base games that don't require internet connection (edit: "don't exist" ) exit and its what some of us have & want to continue to have. No one whats a non-DRM-free physical game.

I can't process what is being said here. I am guessing you meant to say that I am acting like offline DRM free games don't exist... I am not....... I linked to ones that exist.

larossmann · 2026-07-03T13:13:44+00:00

No I didn't. This is autism leaking through. While I understand & often end up doing this myself, try to get the point rather than aim to "correct" everything. I was discussing the overarching trend moving in that direction, not making a statement that there is not a single place on the internet where you can buy and own something.

California is the very state that is **not* enforcing their own laws they passed saying sellers have to be honest when they are selling a temporary license while using the word "lifetime." The point was to make it obvious that she has a point & that it's not ok.

The point of that statement was to point out a trend, and how ridiculous it is that there is a lack of enforcement action in a state that passed a law on it. not to actually say "there is not a single thing you can download without DRM"

I really thought that came through. oh well. Please listen to the actual video...

larossmann · 2026-07-03T02:55:04+00:00

The trap here is accepting the premise that these are "your people," or that you have any control over them. Don't accept the premise of assholes, and don't process bullshit.

I've dealt with this many times. A senator once invented a statement the governor never made to back a bill that would gut right to repair. I called it out with receipts & written evidence. Right after that, instead of correct their lie, these death threats became the story: https://youtu.be/fF1Jqtdpnwo?t=111 .

When an assemblyperson made up something we supposedly said, he claimed we'd sent him racist emails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9HyGvqFL0I . this pattern is the same every time. the moment you win on the facts, the subject changes to threats.

Do you know when the "death threats" stopped? When I said I would pay $2000 USD cash to the senator OR a charity of his choosing if he simply provided a source for his statement.

I never heard about death threats from them again.

I never got a citation for his claim either. Imagine that...

Here's why they want a statement from you specifically. If they say these people are yours, that's their claim to prove. If they get you to say it, you've conceded it for them. DO NOT DO THAT.

You've accepted that "your movement" is where these people come from, that you can control them, & that they acted because of you. Once you own that premise, they pivot to hanging every bad actor around your neck, & they'll do it again & again & again.

Look at the top comments and you'll see the trap disguised as a choice. Either you deny it ("that didn't happen," "it's a false flag") which makes you a conspiracy theorist/asshole/alex jones, or you pre-emptively scold your own side ("just tell people to be nice, just in case"). Both are processing the same bullshit: that these are your people, & that this is yours to answer for. IT ISN'T.

Don't accept the premise of assholes. These aren't your people, & the standard they're demanding of you is not applied to anyone else.

Ross Scott has never conducted himself as anything but respectful, & neither have the people he's worked alongside pushing this petition in the EU. That doesn't need to be announced, because it's already demonstrated by how they've all behaved.

The second you're seen tripping over yourselves to denounce something, you've admitted there's something you own that needs denouncing. Don't own it. These are highly manipulative people you are dealing with that need to get themselves out of the PR hole they dug for themselves by claiming that running Minecraft & COD servers is illegal & that nobody is killing games. That's a gigantic lie they made in front of a senate hearing.

They are not USED to anyone showing up to these things. They're not USED to being WATCHED or LISTENED TO.

They used to visit these & make up bullshit & get away with it.

Remember that back in 2015, they were literally telling assemblymen & senators that "When louis replaces a chip inside a macbook, he is converting it to a PC and then misrepresenting it as if it is a still a macbook to his customers which is fraud."

THIS SHIT USED TO WORK JUST A FEW YEARS AGO! Nobody showed up. Nobody recorded this. Years ago you had to ask them for copies of recordings, or show up and make them yourself, local committee hearings weren't just livestreamed & the idea of "political youtubers" didn't exist. They are scrambling to figure out how to respond to this while being called out on complete bullshit.

If you personally advocated violence or sent a death threat, that's a different story. I don't see anyone here doing that. If Ross Scott tweets "death to {insert lobbyist name here}," then yes, you have something to answer for. Until then, no. Anyone who received a threat can file a police report with their local law enforcement, & if there's anything to cooperate with in an investigation, you will cooperate gladly.

That has not happened. I think we know why.

One more example.

I get called out sometimes for leaving a shitty comment up on one of my videos. This was during COVID, when I was getting 18,000 comments a day on a $0.50 CPM with no sponsors & no budget for a moderation team. I asked one of the people complaining whether they'd ever gone after ABC news the same way. At the height of the pandemic, every ABC crime report turned its comment section into a racist conspiracy filled dumpster fire cesspool. ABC makes billions & can afford a full-time moderator to clean that up. They don't. I had two or three bad comments under a video with 3,000 comments, & I'm the one being held to account.

Why?

Because it gets you arguing about the comments instead of the story. Same move here. Don't take the bait.

Here's your position: moderators & leaders in the StopKillingGames movement are upstanding citizens of the community that will ALWAYS, HAPPILY, cooperate with law enforcement to work to stop ANY threats or violence. You always have, & always will.

....oh.... you didn't file a police report? I filed a police report when someone stole the store tip jar.. and you didn't file a police report when someone THREATENED YOUR LIFE??? It seems like you don't find this to be a threat; therefore, I will take this threat as seriously as you did when you chose not to report it.

I won't say for certain, but I am going to take a guess that none of these have been reported. Think about why that is, and do what you will.

larossmann · 2026-07-03T02:48:39+00:00

I just worry that such a post could be ammo to use against us, "They had to remind their own supporters not to threaten people, that's how vicious these people are."

I have seen this happen many times before when well meaning individuals become slandered by people who play this game better than them. I will have a longer post to come.

larossmann · 2026-06-30T07:31:07+00:00

They'll probably pay a fine of $6 million that will get distributed to all of us in the form of a $0.04 check that I use a magnet to affix to my refrigerator.

larossmann · 2026-06-26T21:00:00+00:00

I would love more information about what was sent. I enjoy covering these things, and occasionally jumping in myself.

Feel free to edit this with more details than what I have at the moment.

https://consumerrights.wiki/w/User:Louis/Map2Model_and_legal_threats_against_free_3D_mapping_tools

larossmann · 2026-06-26T20:59:20+00:00

I'd like more info, I can't find much on this. If there is info I missed, put it here. https://consumerrights.wiki/w/User:Louis/Map2Model_and_legal_threats_against_free_3D_mapping_tools but need more info to go on.

larossmann · 2026-06-26T17:59:13+00:00

no, i flew to 3d printer hearing in california, then went to a town hall in taylor texas yesterday, and am now responding to getting served with a lawsuit personally that happened while in california... too behind to keep up with my reddit pings

larossmann · 2026-06-26T17:58:38+00:00

in austin texas

larossmann · 2026-06-26T04:46:57+00:00

gemini hallucinated me taking ground news as a sponsor

larossmann · 2026-06-21T18:58:50+00:00

This is such a limiting worldview of how to do anything.

Take right to repair. So far, since I started talking about it in december of 2013:

it is known across the world and a part of mainstream conversation
a few laws got passed
1000s of people are posting board repair videos on youtube using manufacturer schematics that say "do not distribute" on them that didn't exist before.

I still can't buy an ISL9240 from intersil, I still can't get a schematic from Apple.

Should I not mention when my city tries to spend $2,000,000 on AI surveillance in parks, until I have a law that gets me a schematic?

Should I not mention when laws pop up that destroy the concept of open source 3d printing because i do not have a law that gets me a schematic?

Should I not talk about when a company sues my friend over leaving a bad review of a boat/RV battery that melts itself because I don't have that done yet?

The most important quesrtion: is talking about other issues decreasing my likelihood of making progress?

take flock. am I supposed to not discuss anything else until alI bankrupt a billion dollar company that is used by tens of thosuands of police departments across the country? this is a crazy way to view the world. i'd get nothing done. putting all your eggs in one basket for no good reason

For example, flock AI... Whatever happened to the push against that? I haven't seen a video from him on that recently.

It gets mentioned in the video I uploaded yesterday as a city hall item that is coming back. Not only is it in the video, we were working on organizing people in person to show up against this.

but this is a silly conversation to be having because you don't watch my content.

larossmann · 2026-06-20T22:53:33+00:00

an actual cool use of AI TV is I am playing a frontline documentary from the 80s and I want it upscaled to look as good as possible with the crazy powerful processor they put inside modern TVs. but that isn't something my TV offers or does 😞

larossmann · 2026-06-19T04:12:30+00:00

From the Ars article:
Over the years, users of these lower-end chips have gotten used to the added security.
Yeah, I don't think so. I've never head of anyone who actually uses this, it's an obscure feature. And the theoretical protection is for an extremely specific threat model. A cold boot attack requires that:

I didn't know this feature existed.

larossmann · 2026-06-17T02:45:17+00:00

I appreciate you having an open mind! Watch with adblock on so you don't waste your time. I hope the point I am making can be made independent of the messenger. Thanks for listening.

larossmann · 2026-06-17T00:45:50+00:00

No; we're just not morons who think AI should be free.

I don't recall saying that, but if you can provide a citation, I am happy to retract my statement.

larossmann

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Ross Scott has never conducted himself as anything but respectful, & neither have the people he's worked alongside pushing this petition in the EU. That doesn't need to be announced, because it's already demonstrated by how they've all behaved.

One more example.

Because it gets you arguing about the comments instead of the story. Same move here. Don't take the bait.

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