Yeah. The OS based biometric model of verification definitely has some advantages over a service-by-service form of verification (so long as it’s done in a way that doesn’t make it easier to fingerprint based on device). The biggest concern I’d have though would be what this might do to niche operating systems, like Linux distros or Graphene OS. Will they be forced to enable age verification as well, and if so will they have the means to do that?

The comparison to credit card verification is interesting though and intuitively it seems like it would make it easier for niche operating systems to manage these requirements, since they could largely outsource that functionality (in the same way most websites outsource the handling of credit card information). This model still might make it easier for governments to profile people though. I’d be interested to hear what a privacy expert has to say about the viability or tradeoffs with a model like that.

Nice

What’s the point of owning property if you can’t even do what you want with it?

The university of Toronto has been scoping up some good American researchers in the humanities with the munk school. Not sure what the situation is with the sciences though

Hopefully Canada and Europe can capitalize on this moment and scoop up some US based researchers during this brain drain. It would be a shame if researchers felt the need to go to China instead

Even if they don’t work they still feel a lot easier on the eyes

Judging by the comments here this truly is an unpopular opinion.

Ah okay that makes sense. Too bad the drivers are closed source that might be the cause of a lot of these issues

Nice. Which model is it?

Yeah the self-hosting thing is new, its really clunky and they dont encourage you not to use it. I think (?) they may have even discontinued it.

Its odd to me that Signal is supposedly the gold standard yet it breaks all these privacy 101 rules. Such as requiring you hand over your phone number to a central authority, not really allowing you to self host, and not posting an official app on fdroid. I’ve heard that portions of its official repo are not even open source (though I haven’t verified this for myself). XMPP sounds like the better choice to be honest.

It also might be a dealbreaker from a privacy perspective. It’s weird that Signal, which is supposedly the gold standard, has this requirement.

Yeah do people actually pay in that price range for health care in the US? If so then thats absolutely bonkers

Why are linux options light on the tablet front? It should work the same as on a laptop

Why did you two opt for XMPP rather than Signal Messenger?

Right. But in this particular case it doesn’t make sense. If microbial life were found on, say, Mars then that would be a discovery by NASA, which is a civilian agency. As far as I’m aware you don’t need a security clearance to work at a civilian agency.

On the other hand if the US  found some unknown craft flying in their sky that would immediately become a military matter and so be classified by default

Yeah. If they classify microbial life because it conflicts with religious dogma then you’d expect them to classify any scientific finding that conflicts with religious dogma, which doesn’t seem to be the case.

David Grusch is another, more recent nerd to fall under this category

Why would they classify that information if its just microbial? The motivation for classification is clear if the aliens are flying around in UFOs (so they can reverse engineer their tech without adversaries of the US finding out) but there is no realistic motivation for why they might classify microbial life

Damn so thats why I keep buying potato chips

Why is that?