Ever since we started seeing traffic cameras showing up at intersections 15 or 20 years ago and recording license plates, I’ve had an uneasy feeling that these data pools just become a tool to move against people at any time in the future.

I’m not opposed to enforcement of rules. I want there to be rules in society and it’s important that we have resources dedicated to the enforcement of rules.

What I don’t want is a goliath unfair advantage that can be easily used to hurt people - even inadvertently - by ill-trained or malicious authorities.

The government has unlimited resources to prosecute people and destroy lives through the process. And it’s extremely expensive for people to defend themselves, even when falsely accused. The risk to everyday people, many who are following the laws, is just too high.

And if the wind blows towards fascist tendencies, that pool of data on you just became your worst nightmare.

The Fourth amendment was created in response to abuses by British authorities. At one point we wanted to protect individual privacy and property rights from government overreach.

Americans are not free if they are being detained for “probable cause” because some database + opaque lines of code said there is probable cause.

I now avoid all videos showing deaths or serious injuries (if I know that kind of content is coming).

Feels better to not have those images in my mind.

This thread is actually really depressing.

Wasn’t there an incident where Pelocy was begging for the national guard to be called in? Or maybe one of the cabinet members. And Trump kept declining.

So the only people to do the shooting were the limited number of capital police. I don’t think they’re set up for riot defense and it’s a lot to ask them to individually put their lives on the line by just shooting into the crowd.

Once they are following, I’d think you can begin to convert them to higher tiers of support through private channels?

It’s all about control of reach.

If I was an influencer and using Patreon (I’m neither), it’s a simple decision:

Total reach * conversion rate * platform commission = income

Apple’s app store has a fuckton of desirable reach - they monopolize (arguably literally) all the easy payments from iphones and kill anybody else who tries to redirect eyeballs. They are too strong. But what else are you going to do if you need Patreons or app customers, etc?

You can’t ignore the reach, and you’d have to pay or work harder to get eyeballs another way too unless you can get free publicity by being crazy or something and pull people into your own payment/ download channels.

If the incumbent knows the new guy will put him in jail, which is a common thing in parts of the world where power is not often transferred gracefully, he will fight to the death to hold on to power.

If the new guy lets the old guy slink away, it reduces political polarization. Who cares about the old guy at that point? Because everybody benefits from less polarization and more unity.

Side note: this being a rarity is probably a net good thing. History shows that when the old guy and the new guy fight, it doesn’t bring unity or peaceful transfers of power which are arguably more important than the bad one getting whatever they deserve.

Huly is worth checking out. We’ve been on it for about a year. They’re in super active developments so features are coming rapidly, sometimes breaking or requiring migrations.

They have both a SaaS version and self-hosted version.

Handful of Windows desktop apps that don’t work well on Wine - WeChat desktop, LINE app desktop. I do tons of copy pasting of mocked up screenshots and stuff. It just doest work as well as in windows.

BBS Prodigy CompuServe Slashdot Fark Kuro5hin Digg Reddit Lemmy Digg?

Say it ain’t so

I’d love to see all kinds of resistance to this.

If an armed militia shows up on the same street as ICE, but in greater numbers, there’s a pretty good chance these imposters leave.

I hope somebody’s working on building an app for recording everything possible and centralizing that information - license plates, photos, videos.

Perhaps homemade stingray devices that grab IMEI/IMSI numbers from agent’s phones, so that it’s easier to identify and link these agents between locations.

More people following them around to report on location and activities. Report on where they stay so that protests and obnoxious deterrence can be set up so that fewer businesses are willing to service these people.

There are so many more citizens than there are ICE agents. Doesn’t seem like it takes much to overwhelm them and push them out, so long as it’s coordinated.

If the country has another federal election, heck… if the country survives past this at all, I think there’s going to be a major conversation about states rights versus federal rights. What we’re seeing in Minnesota is wild, bordering on something that could spark a localized civil war if people start violently standing up against this. The states should be able to come together and defeat the federal government at any point.

The Constitution grants the federal government the right to exist, and it belongs to the people. Not any one leader. Evidently some of that power needs to be pulled back.

I wonder if I’ll soon be able to just lean back and bark orders at my PC.

I’m no China expert but I lived In South China for a while between 2016 and 2024. The Chinese people I know are mostly hardworking, very motivated to succeed, and well capitalized. In their major cities you might be surprised to learn normal guys who earn half what you do are living a higher quality of life than you are, in terms of access to technology.

Their government is no doubt using uncouth methods to give their country unfair advantages. They don’t play well with others.

But holy shit there is one thing this Chinese government is doing well: effectively driving growth with targeted investments in the economy. They have been focused on that one mission consistently for a long time.

While democracies fuck around trying to decide if they should tax themselves to build public transportation, China installs 10 new ultrafast subway lines in just a few years in every big city. Covers the country in a network of high-speed rail. Drives the price of shipping goods around the country to almost nothing.

A kind of monoparty like China has is very likely a net negative when we look at world history, but for moments of time, if it’s the right one, amazing things can happen.

Survival I guess. Sometimes the best strategy is to just outlive your enemy.

It’s great to be prepared… But I don’t think you have to prepare a stash sufficient for an alcoholic.

For anybody new to this, perhaps assume 3-4 standard drinks/person, plus some factor to account for surprise extra guests, and then add a buffer of 20% or so of your good alcohol

Then it never hurts to have a 12 or 24 pack in the bottom of the fridge of something cheaper.

ZIP drives were a game changer at the time. We had no other (fast) way to move larger amounts of data in one shot without compressing / archiving over multiple disks.

Last year I dug a couple hundred zip disks out of my parents attic and bought an old zip drive off eBay so I could read them. They all still worked. My old data got moved to the cloud and the zip discs + drive went back to the attic. Perhaps in another 20 years I’ll dig it out again if we still have USB ports on our systems haha.

Anyways, the USB thumb drive business killed iomega overnight.

I have a laptop and a handful of desktops between my office and home. Some run Windows and some run Linux. I simply choose which one matches my task best.

Systems where I’m writing server-side code are going to be Linux. Systems that run jobs in the back end such as my self hosting stuff are all Linux. Systems where I’m doing email, documents, and general web browsing are going to be Windows.

Of course, my Windows systems have WSL, and my Linux systems can run Windows apps in virt. These days the line is super blurred and it would no doubt be possible to use only one if I were willing to give up some native app running.

No conversation about UBI is complete without also discussing the source of the funds and how other government programs might be effected.

I think UBI sounds great on the surface but I worry that it could alter our basic survival incentives which may have unintended consequences for the group of people who aren’t needing UBI.

Should UBI replace existing food and housing programs? Should UBI replace other things that are designed to mold the economy such as subsidized public transportation or small business loan guarantees? What about income tax incentives designed to encourage saving and growing money carefully versus consumption (capital gains versus income tax, tax-deferred retirement savings accounts).

I suspect there’s a fairly significant carry-on effect from shifting resources away from these types of programs to a UBI program. But what I’m not clear on is how that might impact other behaviors from well resourced people who may start to play the game, so to speak, by a new set of rules.

For example, do we see inflation around inelastic needs such as rent prices and grocery bills? If we did, UBI is not much more than a grocery store/landlord stimulus program. It’s hard to imagine that we wouldn’t see this unless controls are placed on those businesses which in turn, removes incentives to own and grow businesses.

It seems like a UBI program would promote an economy based on consumption and not on savings and investment. Why save your money if you’ll get topped up again next month, and every month for the rest of your life? By investment I’m not talking about Wall Street, I’m talking about finishing college degrees, investing in new ideas, chasing startup ideas, those people who stay up late at night working on inventions that they think could bring them rewards.

Perhaps the most fundamental question to be answered is this:

To what degree do we, as the human race, find benefit in helping the less capable of our species survive. Potentially at a cost - not to the strongest and most capable - but instead placed mostly on the shoulders of the slightly-more-capable.