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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)NA
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2 yr. ago

  • surveillance of NATO

    NATO as a surveillance group is definitely a boogeyman created by Russian and Chinese propaganda. NATO countries share some military information with each other, but it's not an intelligence organization.

    You're probably thinking of the Five Eyes, for which there is actual credible documentation of domestic surveillance.

  • Absolutely, that's the problem that Google is targeting here. Republicans like to claim that federal regulation is bad for businesses, but in reality it's state-level regulation that makes it harder for businesses to operate.

    Not to be super pro-Google, this is purely self-interested for them. But it seems like people are interpreting this as Google being anti-regulation in general, and I don't think that's correct.

  • Or have a "tea drinking" session:

    When I was able to speak to Ms. Wu about the "tea drinking" session (euphemism for police harassment), she sharply conveyed her sense of vulnerability due to the lack of interest in her stepping away from her popular Twitter account, stating,

    Literally the only thing that was keeping me online for the past few years was they were worried it would make China look bad if they cracked down on me. Now that they know that I could be dead in a ditch tomorrow and no one would give a shit or say a word I’m 1000x less safe here.

    [...]

    Wu added,

    After years of doing this without anyone saying anything, on June 30th, out of the blue, they send plainclothes thugs to my house. Surprise! They were real cops.

    Why? because she's LGBTQ+, has a Uyghur partner, and has some friends in Western nations.

    reference: https://www.hackingbutlegal.com/p/naomi-wu-and-the-silence-that-speaks-volumes

    https://x.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1177145458503737344

  • I think there's some confusion over the intent here.

    Lawmakers in state capitals across the country [...]

    So based on this, Google is using "state" here to mean a US state and not the more general meaning of government.

    For large corporations like Google, each state having its own local regulations (e.g. privacy regulations such as CCPA) is expensive because they have to account for different rules in different places, which means whole teams of legal experts just to be familiar with each state's regulations and interpret what they mean for operating the business.

    It's also problematic in a technical sense, because on the internet how do you know if a particular user is a legal resident of Texas or Colorado or New Hampshire, and would even knowing that be a violation of their privacy rights?

    So the intent here is to push federal regulation over state regulation, because it makes the legal and technical problems simpler.

    Ultimately this is an argument against the way the Republican party does things, where they reject federal regulations saying that the states should be allowed to regulate themselves and that federal regulation is an overreach. This leads to weaker protections for citizens and weaker enforcement, which is the Republican party's real intent. Every US citizen should have privacy protections, not just residents of California.

  • As they swing past one another (within the central white dot in the Webb images), the stellar winds from each star slam together, the material compresses, and carbon-rich dust forms. Webb’s latest observations show 17 dust shells shining in mid-infrared light that are expanding at regular intervals into the surrounding space.

    [...]

    Like clockwork, the stars’ winds generate dust for several months every eight years, as the pair make their closest approach during a wide, elongated orbit.

    reference: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/webb-watches-carbon-rich-dust-shells-form-expand-in-star-system/

    Basically you're looking at dust showing a pattern of stellar turbulence. There's a nice video clip in the article that shows how the two stars orbit each other. Because the orbit is consistent, it is producing these compression waves every 8 years when the stars are closest to each other.

    Also interesting:

    The dust’s distribution isn’t uniform. Though this isn’t obvious at first glance, zooming in on the shells in Webb’s images reveals that some of the dust has “piled up,” forming amorphous, delicate clouds that are as large as our entire solar system.

  • And that would make what, 3 social media companies between them?

    Suddenly Zuck's recent policy changes make sense, he caught wind of this sale and he's indicating that he's willing to play ball with them, while also trying to maintain the competitiveness of his own social media (his influence over public opinion).

  • If you're posting relevant, quality & especially original content then it's not spam. If you crosspost it to a bunch of communities on the same server that's a little spammy, so maybe don't do that, but I don't think it's spammy to crosspost to similar communities on other servers.

    Also consider defining the scope of your new community differently. It might be the same topic as another community, but is it more focused? more nuanced? what's the niche you want to fill that the larger community doesn't, or doesn't dive deeply enough into?

    And finally manage your expectations. You might have to be the sole contributor for a year or more before you start seeing active participation from other users.

  • Musk & Trump have been talking about defunding CISA, FTC and SEC - that is, removing information security oversight, consumer protection oversight and financial oversight.

    Musk is financially linked to China through EV battery production. It's no stretch of the imagination to think the PRC has some influence over him, which they've been building for more than a decade. So, Musk buys TikTok and expands his reach over social media (public influence), the PRC continues to have access for surveillance and influence campaigns, and Trump also benefits from the surveillance and influence. Everybody gets a piece of the action, and the federal agencies which would investigate, expose and attempt to block these relationships are disabled.

  • because that makes it too obvious you weren’t listening when if she explicitly told you what was wrong.

    If. Not saying it doesn't happen, but it's not common, especially not explicitly. And that's not really a male/female/etc thing, it's an everybody thing - people get upset and usually don't know exactly why. People experience delayed reactions to emotional triggers that happened days or weeks ago. People project past emotional reactions onto present interactions, usually not for any identifiable reason (this is not to belittle or invalidate the emotion, but just to point out that the connection is usually tenuous and vague).

    Getting more angry when someone asks you why you seem upset is typically a defensive reaction - you don't know why you feel so upset right now, at least not for any specific reason you can express in the moment... so being asked why is putting pressure on you when you're already experiencing some anxiety, and the typical response is to try to deflect and defend against that pressure.

  • Better method is to set up a server w/ Syncthing and use that to just sync your Home directory remotely.

    Sure, just set up a server, very convenient. Dude, this advice is for people who have never installed an operating system before.

    Like, yeah, if you're talking about keeping a living backup that is up to date within 30 seconds because you're doing accounting as a home business and you can't afford to lose the last 5 minutes of work, then yeah self-hosted file syncing is great. It's absolutely a better long-term solution for personal data management. But for most people this level of backup fidelity is unnecessary, and a USB drive is a thing you can just buy and start using with no setup effort.

  • Some things that may help you get started:

    1. All of the risk in changing your computer operating system comes from the potential loss of data. Everything else is replaceable/recoverable, including your original Windows install if needed. You can avoid this risk by backing up your personal data to an external drive, which frankly everyone should be doing anyway because hard drives are consumables.
    2. You can try Linux with no risk by running it as a live OS. This loads the operating system files into RAM from an external device (typically a USB drive) and makes no changes to the system hard drive. This lets you test your computer's functionality in Linux without making permanent changes (does my graphics card work? wifi? audio? etc). The mainstream Linux installers do this already for the installation process, but you can just load one up to try things out without running the installation process.
    3. You don't have to completely switch off of Windows. It's fairly easy to install Linux as a dual-boot on an existing Windows system. As long as you have some free space on your hard drive to dedicate to Linux, you can just keep your Windows install and have Linux too. You can even access your files in Windows from the Linux install. All of the mainstream Linux installers have the option for setting up dual-boot during the installation.
    4. I think one of the biggest hurdles for switching over is knowing what software to use in Linux (how do I edit a document? watch a movie? read a pdf? etc). There are options for basically anything you might want to do, but if you don't know what you're looking for you might feel a bit lost. I recommend alternativeto.net for this. You can search for software like Microsoft Office and filter for Linux to get a list of compatible software options that do the same job.

    I’m probably one of the dumbest motherfuckers here when it comes to not setting my devices on fire.

    I know exactly how you feel. I have wrecked so many OS installs I've lost track. I have friends who tell me I have tech problems like no one else. I seem to stumble into edge cases on a higher-than-average basis.

    My point is, when I say that everything is recoverable, that's from experience. I've done it enough times to know there's very little chance of actually making a computer unusable, though it's relatively easy to lose your data if you're not paying attention to what you doing - so backups. Always backups.

    If you try this a couple times you'll start to see your computer as something that you have control over, something that you can completely wipe and bring back or rebuild into a different system as you please. Feel free to reach out if you've got questions.