USPS’ website does this, sort of.

If their text service is down it’ll let you know and just skip the 2FA process even though normally they offer an option to get the code via email.

The fact that they do this is bad enough, the fact that this happens so often that I’ve seen this at least a dozen times is even worse.

You’re right that a lot of Terms of Service documents and similar agreement documents have language that reserves the right to modify those terms.

At the same time just because something is in the terms doesn’t mean it can stand the test of adjudication and terms as well as changes are often challenged in court with success.

Unity is in a particular tricky situation because the clause that governed modifications in their last ToS explicitly gives the user the option to pass on modifications that adversely affects them and stick with the old terms:

Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1). If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. If a modification is required to comply with applicable law, the modification will apply notwithstanding this section. Except as explicitly set forth in this paragraph, your use of any new version or release of the Unity Software will be subject to the Updated Terms applicable to that release or version. You understand that it is your responsibility to maintain complete records establishing your entitlement to Prior Terms.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/master/Unity Software Additional Terms.md

You can still do this if you use https://www.shodan.io/

It’ll let you find IoT devices and cameras connected to the internet if you know what to search for and an alarming amount of them are locked behind an admin/admin login.

I advise against nosying around because there’s a near 100% chance that it’s illegal to do so in your jurisdiction.

Oh wow, they really closed it down huh?

Not too long ago you were able to change it.

This dumbing things down to prevent customers from fucking themselves over and using up CS resources is getting ridiculous.

Say you need to change some settings but your modem/router isn’t online then you’re SOOL.

Cox, who uses the same gateway, is even worse. They won’t even allow you to enable legacy mode (802.11b) for IoT devices that cheaped out on WiFi cards, not even on a separate network and their customer service can’t enable it either.

I dread moving into a Cox region where there’s no fiber competitor available.

Agreed.

Hold them in contempt of court and let them spend a week in jail all expenses paid.

They’re just trying to run out the clock so that, come election time, they’ll throw their hands up in the air and go “Welp, guess we’ll have to use the old map”.

Having a special master draw up a map is great in theory, until SCOTUS stays the lower ruling and drawn map and decides to not rule on the case until after elections (if they even were inclined to rule in favor of a fair map to begin with).

Cue the nuclear shills that will handwave away any legitimate concern with wishful thinking and frame the discussion as solely pro/anti fossil, conveniently pretending that renewables don’t exist.

ETA:

Let’s look at some great examples of handwaving and other nonsense to further the nuclear agenda.

Here @danielbln@lemmy.world brings up a legitimate concern about companies not adhering to regulation and regulators being corrupt/bought *cough… Three Mile Island cough*, and how to deal with that:

So uh, turns out the energy companies are not exactly the most moral and rule abiding entities, and they love to pay off politicians and cut corners. How does one prevent that, as in the case of fission it has rather dire consequences?

So of course the answer to that by @Carighan@lemmy.world is a slippery slope argument and equating a hypothetical disaster with thousands if not millions of victims and areas being uninhabitable for years to come, with the death of a family member due to faulty wiring in your home:

Since you can apply that logic to everything, how can you ever build anything? Because all consequences are dire on a myopic scale, that is, if your partner dies because a single electrician cheaped out with the wiring in your building and got someone to sign off, “It’s not as bad as a nuclear disaster” isn’t exactly going to console them much.

At some point, you need to accept that making something illegal and trying to prosecute people has to be enough. For most situations. It’s not perfect. Sure. But nothing ever is. And no solution to energy is ever going to be perfect, either.

Then there’s the matter of misleading statistics and graphs.
Never mind the fact that the amount of victims of nuclear disasters is underreported, under-attributed and research is hampered if not outright blocked to further a nuclear agenda, also never mind that the risks are consistently underreported, lets leave those contentious points behind and look at what’s at hand.

Here @JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works shows a graph from Our World in Data that is often thrown around and claims to show “Death rates by unit of electricity production”:

Seems shocking enough and I’m sure in rough lines, the proportions respective to one another make sense to some degree or another.
The problem however is that the source data is thrown together in such a way that it completely undermines the message the graph is trying to portray.

According to Our World in Data this is the source of the data used in the graph:

Death rates from energy production is measured as the number of deaths by energy source per terawatt-hour (TWh) of electricity production.

Data on death rates from fossil fuels is sourced from Markandya, A., & Wilkinson, P. (2007).

Data on death rates from solar and wind is sourced from Sovacool et al. (2016) based on a database of accidents from these sources.

We estimate deaths rates for nuclear energy based on the latest death toll figures from Chernobyl and Fukushima as described in our article here: https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima

We estimate death rates from hydropower based on an updated list of historical hydropower accidents, dating back to 1965, sourced primarily from the underlying database included in Sovacool et al. (2016). For more information, see our article: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Fossil fuel numbers are based on this paper which starts out by described a pro-nuclear stance, but more importantly, does a lot of educated guesstimating on the air-pollution related death numbers that is straight up copied into the graph.

Sovacool is used for solar and wind, but doesn’t have those estimates and is mainly limited to direct victims.

Nuclear based deaths is based on Our World in Data’s own nuclear propaganda piece that mainly focuses on direct deaths and severely underplays non-direct deaths.

And hydropower bases deaths is based on accidents.

So they mix and match all kinds of different forms of data to make this graph, which is a no-no. Either you stick to only accidents, only direct deaths or do all possible deaths that is possibly caused by an energy source, like they do for fossil fuels.

Not doing so makes the graph seem like some kind of joke.

Most doxxers don’t technically release the information, rather they’ve acquired it and point others to where they’ve acquired it or simply disseminate it further.

That’s what I’m saying. In most cases the doxxer isn’t the one who originally provided the info, but rather someone who has found the information online via a Google search or something similar.

Only if there’s a risk at incriminating yourself, and if it’s not immediately apparent how you’d run that risk (e.g. you’re a witness that doesn’t have a direct relation to the crime at hand) you’d have to motivate how it could be incriminating.

Isn’t that a little bit of circular reasoning?

If I doxx someone online then it gets indexed by Google, if someone then Google’s the information it stops being doxxing?

I’d assume most doxxing isn’t done by someone who has unique firsthand knowledge (e.g. “Oh I know John, he lives on so and so road”) and instead is done by finding the information online whether via Google or a different public source.

At least in the US, where a ridiculous amount of private information is deemed “public”.

There are plenty of instances that are open, but it depends on your definition of “censored” if they are what you seek.

Completely “uncensored” instances are rare if not non-existent because most instances will at least try to adhere to the laws of their jurisdiction and in addition will have some rules in place to keep things running smoothly and pleasant for everyone.

Most big instances are run from the EU so they’ll often have rules regarding hate speech.

Depending on your definition your only options might either be Japanese instances due to less strict laws around certain content or right wing instances, but both will be almost uniformly blocked on other instances.

It means no porn, how much that overlaps with anything remotely considered NSFW is up to the admin and you’d have to ask them.

The individual cashier won’t care, but the manufacturer might, especially if they’re returned as defective because they then make their way back as RMA.

Shops will also stop stocking the item if it stands out because more people return them.
They want to make a profit after all and if they have to discount items as “open box” then they’re losing out on profit, especially since the margins on some of these are already pretty low for retailers.

This reads as incredibly condescending, naive and duplicitous, filled with hubris.

For starters, the whole “yeah sure XMPP got EEE’d but who cares, only nerds cared about that, lol” is not only false (e.g. Jabber), but also does nothing to quell concerns.

Here’s an account by someone who was in the XMPP trenches when Google started adopting it.

Notice something? The “omg so cool!”, this is exactly the same as Rochko.

It’s the hubris when you’re a FOSS maintainer who toiled away for years without recognition and now a $700B+ corporation is flattering him by wanting to use/interact with his work.

The blog is a far cry from the anti-corporate tone in the informational video from 2018.

Then there’s the fact that Rochko is extremely tight lipped about the off the record meeting with Meta and consistently refuses to deny having received funds from Meta and refuses to pledge not to accept any funds from Meta.

There’s also the unsatisfactory answer he gave to people who started questioning some dubious sponsors and the fact that he rushed to lock the thread, killing any further discussion.

I genuinely think the dude is just so hyped for the perceived recognition, that he lost the thread.

So much so that he thinks Mastodon is untouchable.

And it’s extremely naive to think that Meta has benevolent motives here or that Mastodon will survive any schemes Meta might have.
What’s more realistic is that Mastodon will die because people will flock to Threads if their social graph has moved over.

Similarly these lofty and naive ideas that people on Threads will make the switch to Mastodon once they get a taste of what it has to offer.

So now all of a sudden the “difficulty” to get started in Mastodon, that is keeping people who want a polished corporate experience away isn’t going to be an issue?

Especially when in the “extinguish” phase Meta will have siloed off from Mastodon and its portability function, having to leave their social graph behind?

It’s all so increasingly naive, one can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional sabotage at this point.

Mark my words, this’ll be the end of Mastodon especially when Meta can outspend Mastodon all day every day to add proprietary functionality.

Sure perhaps years from now a few hundred to a few thousand people might still use it, but it will be as irrelevant as XMPP is to most people, and Rochko with it.

@remindme@mstdn.social in 2 years.

Pro tip: if you do insist on using Google scroll to the bottom until you see a notice like the one below.

You can then click on the complaint to see the URLs that were removed.

They’ve wisened up a bit and now require a (throwaway) email to access the links, but chances are that if you’re looking for something more obscure, the link you seek is still there.