https://www.reuters.com/technology/bytedance-prefers-tiktok-shutdown-us-if-legal-options-fail-sources-say-2024-04-25/

HONG KONG, April 25 (Reuters) - TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer shutting down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S., four sources said.
The algorithms TikTok relies on for its operations are deemed core to ByteDance overall operations, which would make a sale of the app with algorithms highly unlikely, said the sources close to the parent.
TikTok accounts for a small share of ByteDance's total revenues and daily active users, so the parent would rather have the app shut down in the U.S. in a worst case scenario than sell it to a potential American buyer, they said.
A shut-down would have limited impact on ByteDance's business while the company would not have to give up its core algorithm, said the sources, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

A massive miscalculation from a man who just over a year ago became Scotland's First Minister.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-scotland-68918348

People at the time thought he wasn't up to the job and his time as Health Minister showed his genuine lack of ability to do the job. Quite why he walked away from the Bute House agreement with the Greens when he could have kicked the issue into the long grass was bizarre. Why he didn't game out that he wouldn't get help from the Conservatives, Labour or Alba, let alone the Greens to get any legislation through as a minority government let alone defeat a vote of no confidence just goes to show how incompetent he was to be able to do the job.

https://dominicanewsonline.com/news/homepage/news/breaking-news-dominica-high-court-rules-punishment-of-homosexual-acts-as-unconstitutional/

The Dominica High Court has ruled that sections 14 & 16 of the Sexual Offences Act which punishes homosexual sex, is unconstitutional.

The judgement was made via Zoom this morning.

That decision makes the country part of a global community that recognizes the right of same-sex adults to have consenting sexual activities in privacy.

Cara Shillingford represented the Claimants, the Attorney General Office represented the Defendant, Joelle Harris represented the Bishop of Roseau (Catholic Church) and the Anglican Church, and Joshua Francis represented the Dominica Association of Evangelical Churches as intervening parties.

The ruling effectively decriminalizes homosexual sex in the country. The decision has far-reaching implications for human rights and the role of religion in Dominica.

The case was first brought before the court in 2022 by a gay man who sought to have two sections of the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) that criminalize consensual same-sex activities ruled unconstitutional. The case to end the criminalization of LGBT people in Dominica was supported by Minority Rights Dominica (MiRiDom) and the HIV Legal Network, working alongside the claimant who was not named because of risk to his safety, according to the claimants.

In a stunning attack on the rule of law, the packed Republican Supreme Court declares that Trump is above the law and will engage in election interference by delaying his trial for his failed coup attempt

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4621749-supreme-court-justices-skeptical-of-sweeping-immunity-claims-by-trump/

In shocking arguments Thursday before the U.S. Supreme Court, at least five conservative justices suggested that they would create a new rule providing some form of immunity from criminal prosecution for former presidents and require lower courts to hold additional hearings to judge whether the indictment of former President Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election met that new standard.

The case arrived before the court after the Department of Justice charged Trump with four felonies related to his effort to overturn his 2020 election loss through a scheme involving the submission of false elector slates to Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump asserted that as president he had an “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for all official acts committed while in office, and he asked the courts to confirm his claim. The case ended up at the Supreme Court after a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against his absolute immunity claim.

During Thursday’s arguments, five of the six conservative justices appeared more concerned about hypothetical restraints on future presidents that could flow from hypothetical future prosecutions rather than the actual case at hand. Nor did they appear to consider the hypothetical crimes future presidents could commit if granted “absolute immunity.” And though a majority of the court did appear to reject Trump’s full claim of “absolute immunity,” this suggested a desire to craft a ruling that would grant some form of immunity to presidents in some cases, and then remanding Trump’s case back to the lower courts for more hearings.

>https://theathletic.com/5450064/2024/04/26/nba-broadcasting-rights-amazon-prime-video/
tldr a significant number of boring ass nba games are going to bezos. ESPN/ABC still retaining games. Either TBS or NBC getting fucked. already some nfl games on the cock and amazon. This is significant in that right now the only thing keeping cable tv alive is live sports. not that streaming is any better with the prices, but if live sports move to streaming sites cable will be dead.
I don't watch basketball, its rigged and literally more boring than soccer. I haven't watched live sports since blm ruined all of them

Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Thursday argued that a president could order the assassination of his political rival and stage a military coup without being prosecuted for it.

Jack Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, made the “absolute immunity” argument in a Supreme Court hearing in the Department of Justice election interference case against the former president. Trump’s team has repeatedly claimed that the ex-president can’t be prosecuted for “official acts” he did while in office.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Sauer, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?”

“That could well be an official act,” Sauer responded.

Sotomayor seemed taken aback at that line of reasoning.

“I am having a hard time thinking that creating false documents, that submitting false documents, that ordering the assassination of a rival, that accepting a bribe and countless other laws that could be broken for personal gain, that anyone would say that it would be reasonable for a president or any public official to do that,” Sotomayor said, including other examples from Trump’s lawyer’s argument that could logically lead to no prosecution.

Justice Elena Kagan offered a few more hypotheticals to Trump’s attorney, including if a president would be immune from prosecution if they sold the country’s nuclear secrets to a foreign power.

“Likely not immune,” Sauer said, before adding a qualifier: “Now, if it’s structured as an official act, he’d have to be impeached and convicted first.”

“How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?” Kagan asked.

“I think it would depend on the circumstances,” Sauer said.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-immunity-supreme-court_n_662a6777e4b09d8df9d5b71f?n8g

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4612055-ai-generated-child-pornography-threatens-to-overwhelm-reporting-system-research/

Child pornography generated by artificial intelligence (AI) could overwhelm an already inundated reporting system for online child sexual abuse material, a new report from the Stanford Internet Observatory found.

The CyberTipline, which is run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), processes and shares reports of child sexual abuse material with relevant law enforcement for further investigation.

Open-source generative AI models that can be retrained to produce the material “threaten to flood the CyberTipline and downstream law enforcement with millions of new images,” according to the report.

“One million unique images reported due to the AI generation of [child sexual abuse material] would be unmanageable with NCMEC’s current technology and procedures,” the report said.

“With the capability for individuals to use AI models to create [child sexual abuse material], there is concern that reports of such content—potentially indistinguishable from real photos of children—may divert law enforcement’s attention away from actual children in need of rescue,” it added.

Several constraints already exist on the reporting system. Only about 5 percent to 8 percent of reports to the CyberTipline result in arrests in the U.S., according to Monday’s report.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/25/markets/wall-street-reaction-gdp-report/

"In a stinging dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the majority was “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative,” and said the Court of Appeals was continuing a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”
>NEW YORK (AP) - New York's highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction, reversing a landmark ruling of the #MeToo era. The court found the trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against the ex-movie mogul based on allegations that weren't part of the case.

>Weinstein, 72, will remain in prison because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape. But the New York ruling reopens a painful chapter in America's reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures - an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein.

>While Thursday's ruling was a blow to #MeToo advocates, they noted it was based on legal technicalities and not an exoneration of Weinstein's behavior, saying the original trial irrevocably moved the cultural needle on attitudes about sexual assault.

>The Manhattan district attorney's office said it intends to retry Weinstein, and at least one of his accusers said through her lawyer that she would testify again.

>The state Court of Appeals overturned Weinstein's 23-year sentence in a 4-3 decision, saying "the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts." It called this "highly prejudicial" and "an abuse of judicial discretion."

>In a stinging dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the Court of Appeals was continuing a "disturbing trend of overturning juries' guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence." She said the ruling came at "the expense and safety of women."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/entertainment/york-appeals-court-overturns-harvey-130902489.html