Let me ask you a question. Using your personal, for real situation right now: If Cloudflare decided to ban all the IP's from VPNs and flagged your home and work IPs as bots, along with all the devices you personally own, identified by device fingerprinting, what would your life be like? Could you really get on with any kind of normal life?
Well, governments just started talking about banning VPNs in service to "Know Your Customer" and "Child safety". Do you think they'll try to hunt down every piece of VPN software on the internet, or will they use their "mandate" to force a choke point corporation to use their already ubiquitous scanning to block suspects without any due process or chance of appeal?
Deep Humor on YouTube is a great person to follow for weekly news on this issue. And as he often says, "just because it doesn't affect you now, so you don't care about the issue, the roll-out will be for complete internet ID verification."
►The EU's AI ID age verification social media "Wsocial" is here. This EU social media can't be accessed without AI facial scans, biometric data scanning, or ...
We no longer have the ability to govern ourselves, and the people who do have the ability are using it to destroy our civilization. This all ends in technofascism or luddite terrorism (or a mix of both). I can't see any other outcomes...
" The $16 billion data center... was flat-out rejected by both the town’s board and its planning commission in September. But those votes turned out to be only minor bumps on the project’s path: The developer quickly sued, the town settled, and the construction vehicles rolled in."
Secretary of Forever War and barely closeted Neo NAZI, Pete Hegseth, has been recruiting his own pernicious kind into the military. #ShockedITellYouShocked
This isn't probably going to reach the right audience here, but seriously, if you are still paying to be productized by Windows, just stop.
ZorinOS , which more or less looks and feels just like Windows from an interface and organization perspective, runs wildly faster on my four year old laptop than Windows 11. I didn't have to install a single driver (exception: I needed to get my browser to control my USB ports, which is a weird, uncommon requirement, but I did have to install a driver for that.). It has an app store that actually has things in it I want, unlike the windows store, it boots in thirty seconds, and I found a Linux app to replace every program I commonly use on Windows. It even comes in a "Lite" version for even older tech.
I even got Linux Lite to run on my twelve-year-old laptop in under an hour, and although it's a little bare-bones looking, it plays video and loads web pages just as well as my newest laptop running Windows 11.
I'm no fanboy, but I feel like maybe we're approaching consumer-level Linux...
Gnu/Linux will never be consumer grade, it is professional grade 😀 😉. Users that take their computing seriously have been using Gnu/Linux, BSD or other 'nix (Unix Derivative) for decades. MS/Windows has always been a play OS for beginners in my opinion Now, with its built in spyware people have more reason than ever to upgrade to a real OS.
Zorin is not a bad Gnu/Linux distro though I hate the DM, I do not care for anything resembling MS/Windows though I know that was likely the reason you chose it. I prefer Gnome, it meets my needs perfectly. I am currently using Fedora 44 though that may change when OS level verification hits the scene full force. I may go back to building my own systems.
Wayback is vital to preserving our culture and history. It needs to collect current events to work. Now, the big news outlets are specifically blocking the archive, crippling the archive's ability to preserve data. This has to stop. We're losing big chunks of our history...
It's probably true for most services today, but if you want to see the ultimate evidence that Meta is dangerous, check out what happens if you use their products!
In a fit of desperation and creativity I "invented" sausage and peppers soup. Pictured, the last dregs my kids were fighting over because it was "too good". I think that that is a good thing...
So the old eugenics guys wanted to "remake our species for the better" through selective breeding, but then many of them spent the 20th century building a civilization that breeds people for aggression and stupidity.
Eugenics, historically, have been used in many cultures. Much of Europe nobility practiced as well as most nobility internationally. In Sweden it has been extensively practiced as well. Historically, eugenics in humans and animals has always, in my opinion, had a higher cost than natural selection. There are somethings that we can only manipulate so far before the cost of our influence is greater than the benefits. I would extend this ideology to plants as well with cross pollination being its equivalent to eugenics in animals . To make a better crop we have in some cases created a more shelf durable and sweet product with higher carbs but far less bio-available nutrition than its ancestors.
Perhaps when we know more about genetics, as we learn so much more every decade, this could be of some value. Though thus far I cannot see eugenics as a success as I see the costs greater than the benefits.
Namely, to implement eugenics in animals, which includes humans, inbreeding has often been used to facilitate this. This is an economical approach but one the leads to overall inferior results.
So there's this guy, a musical performer. In 2024, he ran for president on the "Weed Shall Overcome" ticket. This guy got harassed and jailed by police who subsequently stole his money and belongings. He wrote and released a song mocking them, so they sued him for harassment. He won that case, became famous, and is now running for President again.
"Even though the man might kick me when I was down, my integrity tells me not to do the same."
I've been trying not to be alarming, this last year, because I keep hoping anyone will listen, but by next year, between Google and Apple scanning your private stuff, the ongoing proliferation of cameras at every corner hooked up to AI face and plate trackers (We already have dozens in my city), more and more retail corporations refusing cash payments so they can track and squeeze us just a little more, AI companies destroying everything, and a government that no longer follows any laws, I have real, unexaggerated fears about becoming a literal dictatorship just before the economy collapses and destroys us.
But hey, at least some states will let you smoke weed as you fight off the raiders...
We've been on the path for decades. People have fought it, slowed it down, even sometimes held it back for a while. But now the edge of the hole is right there, and we are on a shrinking ledge.
I have the same concern. We will see when the next presidential election is supposed to occur whether our current president steps down or attempts to remain in office. I suspect that he will not willingly leave.
I am still working up my article on why so-called Age-Verification is about ending privacy on the Internet not about protecting children. If allowed to move at its current trajectory then even the Fediverse may become a part of the Internet Archive due to the fact that there is noway all us Independent Instances can afford to comply with UK, Brazil and New York, New York's Age verification requirements. The California and Colorado model does not effect us yet, but after they get legislation in place it is very easy for them to amend it to their own devices.
@Unus Nemo I believe that we only free future is for all services to operate exclusively peer to peer, with no servers to put in jail. Username is a UUID, or some kinda shared key, so the user is only identified if they choose to fill in profile info. Nostr's blockchain paradigm could work if they lost the servers...
It would likely require a UUID and a private/public key. The key to establish a secure connection and the UUID to identify the correct end point. The I2P protocol could likely be a bases to begin from.
Gee. A company which stands to make billions from the resulting military contracts (and P.S. run by two foreigners) wants to tell us how to run our fucking country? FUCK. YOU. RIGHT. IN. THE. FACE.
Wow, this guy is lost in a surreal world of ideology. The idea that because we have had no World Wars for a nearly a century means we have lived in peace? So was I on a picnic in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan? It did not seem real peaceful from my perspective. He neglects to mention the World Wars were not an issue until countries had the resources and technology to launch aggression at that level either, perhaps in his view that was not significant as he make a living selling technology for war. I have to admit that I did agree with some of his ideologies. Though overwhelming ignorance of human psychological development is prevalent throughout his tirade.
The fact that he subscribes to the idea that atomic weapons are a deterrent is a tell. In ancient days when a king saw a crossbow shoot a bolt through plate mail armor he proclaimed that this weapon was so devastating that it would surely end all wars. The same was stated at the demonstration of the atomic bomb. The problem with this ideology is that weapons are not designed to prevent war, they are designed to facilitate war. No weapon will ever bring about peace.
I forgot to mention that he also makes a huge error when associate our military as a volunteer service. No it is not, it is a career choice. When you put all the propaganda aside it is a job or a career that attracts its employees. When I enlisted if they had described my duties and then said "Oh, and it is a volunteer position, so you will not be paid". I would not have enlisted. The metrics most people use when choosing a military career is not serving their country it is the benefits. The same metrics we would use when applying for any job or career.
If I had to settle for a b-list superpower, I'd choose the ability to make spell-checkers and capitalizers become sentient just long enough to experience rending pain. They've been torturing me for 40 years, I'd like to give a little back!
To be clear, if you get a call from the "Tax Help Resolution Agency", letting you know you have a large unpaid tax bill, they are probably telling the truth, except about the "Tax" and the "help" parts...
California's new Snitch-OS age verification law requires that all children be identified as such to literally any app or website that requests it. It also ensures that these requests will be provided with detailed age-cohort information about each child. It can't possibly work the way they want, but here's what it does do: California wants us to paint a corporate marketing and crime victim target on every child's back on line.
This is intended to get a foot in the door. First they say all distributors of Operating Systems must provide an Age Signal. Just like at first only the rich had to pay income tax. It is much easier to amend legislation after you have something in place. Now, everyone pays Income tax. Eventually an Age Signal will not be enough to protect the children. So they will require more proof of Identification to verify age. Along with MS/Windows using a TPM2 to create an absolutely unique identification that can be verified for all MS/Windows users. Which will make TPM2 common place, so other OSes can as well. They are trying to remove any ability at all to maintain your privacy on the internet.
Typically privacy is not my biggest concern when I get on an international network. Except when it comes to dealing with financial institutions. Though this crosses a line that alarms even me. I have even started building my own Gnu/Linux OSes for my machines as after Jan 2027 I will likely not be able to use Fedora anymore.
"The Republican mayor declared a state of emergency Wednesday afternoon, allowing her to mobilize whatever city resources are needed to continue paying Flock for use of its technology .... Mantello has characterized Flock opposition as anti-police."
How can you tell your mayor is a small-town yokel? She thinks that 2% of her entire city electorate showing up to protest something (not just to vote, but physically showing up out in the street) is "a small but highly vocal group [...] much of it rooted in intimidation tactics and misinformation"
Almost one thousand drones recreated the RMS Titanic in Belfast Harbour to mark the day the ship passed its sea trials and left its birthplace forever on April 2, 1912.
After hours of shopping, I've discovered that in Upstate New York, it now costs at least $130 per hour to rent a cheap/small/low quality boat, with a 3 hour minimum. Before the pandemic killed the idea of affording weekends away, I could rent the same boat for for less than $60 per hour, with 2-hour minimums. Looking more broadly, I see this same level of discrepancy with furniture, groceries, cars, housing, etc...
So if everything costs 116% more seven years later, my naive mathing says this means we've experienced a greater than 17% annual average price increase on just living for six straight years. How is this not the BIGGEST news story?
something about the "116% more" bugs me, because it sounds like something that was $10 now costs $11.60, when what you are *actually* claiming is that what cost $10 now costs $21.60 (roughly).
I hate to pour gas on this fire, but i noticed around 2021 that, compared to 2013, everything had nearly doubled in price; electricity, gasoline, insurance premiums, a pound of beef at the store, a gallon of milk.
But because 2010s were "so cheap" compared to now, we didn't really notice?!
something about the "116% more" bugs me, because it sounds like something that was $10 now costs $11.60, when what you are actually claiming is that what cost $10 now costs $21.60 (roughly).
I am not sure how you concluded that 116% more than $10 is 11.60? Please show your math 😉
Calculate the increase: 116% of 10.00 = 1.16 times 10 = 11.60
Add the increase to the original number: 10.00 + 11.60 = 21.60
@picofarad That makes sense. Prices shot up by double digits just in 2020 alone. It wouldn't surprise me if that one year drags the whole previous decade with it...
After four long months of side-hustle, dozens of "chats", and hundreds of AI-assisted iterative prompt refinement passes, I have successfully created an AI agent which will ingest technical product documentation and become a product-oracle, giving detailed answers and correcting/clarifying unclear or incorrect assumptions in the questions. It it accurate. It is thorough. It is the first truly useful thing I have gotten out of LLM AI technology. It is a work of art.
And one time out of 7, it STILL makes up its answer whole-cloth!
Me: How do I delete a custom agent from my AI service account? Agent: Which agent do you want to delete? Me: That doesn't matter, just tell me how to delete one. Agent: It's not necessary to delete custom agents from your account. You can store an unlimited number. Me: Seriously, I want to clean up. Tell me how to delete a custom agent from my AI service account! Agent: I don't think you can do that. Me: ..... 0.o
Hey folks, the vagaries of distributed server systems tanked me once again!
My Friendica account, which I use to manage all my federated social media accounts, was on a server that crashed with unrecoverable backups last week. This is technically a new account with the same name, content, and photo, but it's still me, I promise!
Anyway, follow me. Let me follow you. Help me rebuild my online life once again!
Their motto is deception.
in reply to Blaise • • •Deep Humor on YouTube is a great person to follow for weekly news on this issue. And as he often says, "just because it doesn't affect you now, so you don't care about the issue, the roll-out will be for complete internet ID verification."
youtube.com/watch?v=Admt1nQAzJ…
ID Verification Social Media is Here...
Deep Humor (YouTube)like this
Rocket, Plan-A̵̛͈̬̥̿͋̓͛̕ and Unus Nemo like this.