Holly crap: The leading socialist figure in America (Bernie Sanders) appears to have just introduced one of the most libertarian sounding bills if the description below is to believed that I've ever encountered:
"on Friday U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Ban Flock Act. The proposed bill bans federal agencies in America from using automated license plate reader systems 'without explicit statutory authorization'. The bill also lets certain federal agencies (including the Homeland Security Department) withhold grant money from State and local governments that use automatic license plate readers."
It's NOT perfect, but it's as solid as anything I've heard proposed before, or probably close to it:
"covers any and all ALPR systems. The bill allows exceptions only for toll collection and for uses that Congress approves in future legislation, which would have to limit data retention to no longer than 48 hours."
New Hampshire might have a slightly better restriction on ALPR cameras already as it also limits the time the data can be retained by police and is very short.
I'm watching this Al Jazeera video (not something I do very often, but it's good to get in a bit of non-totally western aligned propaganda once in a while in addition to Russia Today and other outlets) and one thing I can say about non-western aligned outlets is they'll throw on socialist and libertarians here and there and it creates some really entertaining videos.
Here both sides make some good points. Social Security is failing even if it's not a total collapse. The socialist insists it's not stealing if we start forcing billionaires to contribute more, and they think, he thinks it'll solve the problem, but in reality it won't. It gets us part of the way there and it is theft. It's a new tax on billionaires so to speak. Social Security has always been essentially a pyramid scheme. On the other hand the socialist is right in saying the wealthiest have stolen from the rest of us. The question is how they're doing it and they're doing it through copyrights, patents, and similar artificial creations created through law.
The solution is partly an end to copyright/patents. You don't need to steal from the billionaires via taxes. Foster real competition by not protect the 1% from 'piracy'. IP laws don't protect the masses. IP funnels the wealth to the top 1%. This will not totally solve the 1% taking near everything, but it's a start. Monopolization by other means exist and it can't be solved this way as a short monopoly granted in the 80s is still paying dividends because no one can come in now and compete. It's a type of 'first mover advantage'. This is when your debts were long ago paid off so you can outlast any new competitor that might dare enter the market. If someone tries you just drop prices till they go under.
This is entertaining:
"The European Commission has rolled out Element Pro as a self-hosted 'sovereign back-up' to Microsoft Teams and the reviews aren't great. Politico reported that several officials questioned its usefulness and usability, with one calling it 'absolute shit.'"
So they rolled out a self-hosted Matrix solution. I'm not sure how well it was rolled out, but I've been using Element and Matrix for several years, including hosting a self-hosted server. It's a PITA to maintain and keep up and really it collapsed in on itself after ~5 years. It was complicated and lacked solid documentation to maintain.
The user-complaints are very general, but I think the reality is the solution does overall work and is comparable in terms of features to Telegram.
The interface isn't great, and it is built off one of these new fangled development solutions. It uses rust and Electron. Both of which are garbage by comparison to properly written software based on languages like C/C++ that have officials standards. Rust is ever-changing with no standard and it's bloated. Electron apps are similarly garbage- a cross platform solution.
The good news is Matrix is end to end encrypted, feature rich, decentralized, and there are clients written in proper programming languages that while not entirely ready for prime time are MUCH better.
Right now you probably will have to suffer with Element if you use Matrix, but I do believe at least one of the C/C++ alternative clients will come of age at some point and there are some other aspects to like about Matrix. There is support for at least one of these other clients properly written packaged for distributions like Debian already.
Overall it's probably the way to go for decentralized self-hosted solutions.
"at some point the tech companies have to be held responsible because ultimately they are providing the tools"
So are we going to start requiring an ID before someone can purchase a hammer? I mean seriously. Just because folks are doing something bad with a tool is a poor excuse to ban or restrict or ID everyone else.
In this particular case this is regards to a kid killing themselves over a scammer exploiting fear of religious nuts finding out about a sexual photo he sent to a scammer when at the time he believed they were a potential romantic partner.
I'm going to repeat what I said the other day: Your not paying social media / tech companies to be your kids babysitter. It's YOUR responsibility as the parent to whatever degree there is a responsibility here to watch your fucking kid.
The real problem is conservatives pushing religious ideology bullshit that nudity and sex are somehow evil and taboo. Stop abusing your kid and maybe they wouldn't have killed themselves.
It's also worth pointing out that it's almost certainly the parents that provided the tool, the phones, the computers, and so on. The tool was literally provided by the parent to whatever degree you can blame tech companies for providing the 'tool'. YOU provided them with internet access. YOU should have known the internet had 'bad stuff' on it.
It's far easier to blame TV or games or music or the internet or tech companies or cryptocurrencies or scammers than it is to recognize your own mistakes. Particularly when they're this big.
"There should be friction like an ID" [to get on social media]
Why the fuck should the rest of society have to put up with your bullshit though? It's NOT the companies responsibility nor anyone else's responsibility to babysit your fucking kid.
Like seriously.. scammers are using addresses such as:
"web361.cc"
If you don't understand technology at such a fundamental level maybe you shouldn't be investing in it.
People make stupid investments all the time and yet we don't make them whole when the investments fail. Why should anyone feel bad for someone who didn't take even rudimentary steps when the scams should have been easily spotted even by folks with little technical know-how???
It's sick that people work hard for their money and then those who don't and 'get lucky' the rest of us are suppose to reimburse through socialist programs after they make stupid lazy 'investments'. You took the risk, it's your responsibility. Not anyone else.
If you want insurance on your stupidity you pay for it. It's not some social responsibility of everyone else.
Whatever 'social responsibility' might exist aught to be those who can't defend themselves and of whom it's no fault of their own (blind? Fine. Cancer? Fine. 'victim' of a scam where you thought you were 'investing' and didn't take even rudimentary steps to investigate ??? hell no). Not those who choose the lazy route.
'Crypto' in and of itself should NOT set off alarm bells. However someone demanding payment immediately online or over the phone???? Or via 'gift cards' (that have NOTHING to do with the place your paying for that matter)? Sure. Crypto is a legit payment mechanism, but folks should understand that it like everything else has some risk in so far as you can't just undo it, but that also is true of wire transfers and similar in most cases. So it's not like it's traditional payment mechanisms magically make you safe either.
Victim of scam:
"paranoid, questioning everything"
aww yea, that is how you should have been before.
It's the fucking internet. Did you do zero research before going online? Do you not understand that the world is full of bad apples? I mean seriously.
Your fucking television is spying on you. Corporations are doing all sorts of evil shit.
There are people out there who are actually victims through no fault of their own (maybe it is cancer, or being born into poverty or a religious household, or any number of things.. having a disability ...). It's sickening that 95% of the problem is self-inflicted by lazy people advocating for 'protection' rather than taking responsibility for their own actions.
If your genuinely stupid I can understand... but 95% of this is people being lazy stupid not that they're incapable stupid.
"Investigating the Online Scam Epidemic"
I am watching this documentary on scams and they're talking about how 'kids' (really teenagers.. but.. hey.. lets not go overboard on criticism) are being scammed and committing suicide as a result. The thing is they're failing to understand or address the real and maybe harder problem(s).
The scam is intended to extract money from those with mental illnesses and/or those in areas where mental illness is ripe (aka religious areas).
The way the scam works is the scammer pretends to be a girl and gets the guy to send sexual photos of themselves to the scammer. The scammer then demands a ransom else the photos will be publicly released and sent to friends and family.
In at least some instances the victim of the scam can't pay up and the pressure is too great. The victims then in some instances kill themselves.
The underlying problem is religion and authoritarianism. A scam like this only works because the persons being threatened are made to feel like they have everything to lose. The reality is mental illness in society and authoritarianism holding peoples options back.
The scam isn't the real problem. Religious nuts and those advocating "protection" are.
When youth/people have options that don't involve suicide they'll take those options. When you tie young people/anyone to parents/or forced schooling/etc they become vulnerable and victims.
Stop tying kids to adults and giving others authority and these problems literally wouldn't exist.
When young people have options, like working (ie 'child' labor laws), and aren't forced to live in abusive homes with mentally ill parents (religious) there is no longer a reason to commit suicide.
This panic is over a ~50 suicides.
The world is getting crazier and crazier. There is a proposal for the EU Kids Act that would effectively ban personal servers.
It's not just crazy rules and regulations like this, but even real humans that are nuts.
I was in a parking lot today and driving extraordinarily slowly just in front of a strip mall style store. This women who isn't paying attention to where she was going walks into the parking lot from the sidewalk without even taking a cursory glance. I'm pretty far away considering how slowly I'm driving, but well within eyesight for a pedestrian taking a cursory glance around them. Well, she's halfway between the part of the parking lot where cars (ie street, immediately in front of store) drive and the first parking spots before she looks up and sees me. I'm still pretty far away, but she stops and so I take that as an acknowledgement to keep going because she's waiting for me to pass to continue forward.
As I pass her she starts yelling at me! If she had continued I would have stopped (though she probably would have gotten to the first parking spots before I reached her had she just continued), but here she was standing in the middle of the "street" in front of the store where cars drive.... crazy. If your going to cross a street you look both ways, then either continue walking until you get to the other side, or you wait for the cars going by to pass. You don't walk halfway blindly then stop in the middle and yell at the driver who was literally watching you BLINDLY walk into the street without looking.
Babying everybody isn't good for anyone. Better to let the stupid die out, or learn a lesson earlier in life. This is the same reason we have 60 year old grandmothers foolishly sending cash to Nigerian princes.
I always find it humors in what tech reviewers, tech enthusiasts, and the tech industry think matter vs what your average user cares about (like stuff actually working):
"And while the inclusion of OLED across the range is a major draw to the new OmniBook, the base config only has a passable 1920 x 1200 resolution and 300 nits of max brightness on its non-touch panel."
You don't need a 4k screen on a [probably] 14" notebook and the difference between 1920x1080 and 1920x1200 isn't that great. The benefit on such a small screen is basically zero as far as I can tell. The main draw to 1920x1080? Developers stopped caring about 1336x768 resolution screens and so you end up not being able to see the full window on some apps [humorously].
I get that not everyone gives two shits about their privacy... but that is also a market segment and a seemingly growing market segment. I guess it's not enough of an appeal to enough users to make a company real money... but it certainly would be nice if people cared enough to spend their money where it mattered in that regard.
I am not convinced cloudflare is the solution ... it seems like I see more connectivity issues with cloudflare in the picture than before sites add cloudflare to the picture. I get it... it's a firewall of sorts for sites... but if the complexity is such that it causes more downtime than not... is it really the best solution to the problem?
"Singapore's government is trying its hand at matchmaking again. The country's Government Technology Agency (GovTech) has launched FirstDate, a pilot dating service for singles aged 21 to 35."
It's no wonder we have a baby crises (not enough babies born to replace those retiring in terms of social security and the like, or for the matter sustain population levels).
If you convince young people not to reproduce and they manage to not reproduce before they hit 21 chances are your not going to be successful at convincing them to reproduce.
Your "First Date" solution needs to be focused on IDK actual youth in school. That's probably somewhere between the 5th-8th grades for US students which is probably in the 11-14 age bracket.
It's crazy to think that conservatives demonizing sex was so effective as to result in a baby crises 20-30 years later. Then again the aids crises probably didn't help any. A baby is one thing, but death.. eee that might be a stronger argument against it. The problem is the system over-sold the danger and created or contributed to a major modern crises.
Maybe something positive will come from this... like the downfall of authoritarians and socialism, but somehow I doubt it. People are fucking stupid ... and selfish.
I'd like to point out that about 5.74 billion investors (70% of the worlds population) lost about $1.14 trillion on their entertainment purchases over the last 12 months.
I bring this up because of the negative publicity California is bringing and laws they're pushing to ban public officials from creating memecoins or anyone from using public officials likeness in producing memecoins.
The question is why are people permitted to invest in (translation buy/rent/subscribe/etc) other entertainment, ya know like hollywood's movies and tv shows/streaming content/etc, but when we start talking memecoins it's an 'investment' and has to be regulated or even banned????
I say this as someone who would NEVER buy a memecoin and I don't 'invest' in memecoins. I do however use cryptocurrencies as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin were intended (not that I am a fan of BTC, it's not privacy friendly, Monero is better). That is as a means of transferring value/ease conducting business:
"The governor's office pointed to reports that about a million investors lost an alleged $3.8 billion on their purchases of the memecoin released by President Donald Trump in 2025 as a the motivation behind the new rule."
This should probably concern everyone. They're falsely arresting people on the basis of AI matches and not even catching 'bad guys':
"A six-month British Transport Police trial of live facial recognition at London railway stations scanned more than 500,000 faces, cost over 320,000 pounds, and produced just one alert with no arrests directly resulting from the technology. That one alert ended up being a false positive.
Despite those results, BTP has extended the pilot through November and expanded it to selected Underground stations."
Ohh wow, the story gets entertaining:
"Fraser Sampson, a former biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner for the UK, said the police needed to show that the use of the technology was proportionate."
So lets see.. 1 false arrest of 500,000 faces and 0 positive matches that were good of 'bad guys'.
Remind me again why people don't perceive the police as the 'bad guys'? hmm I guess all that money that goes into brainwashing the masses and teaching our kids generation after generation policeman = good from a young age.
Not to mention the mass brainwashing scheme that they call 'public education' organized via government and theft ('taxes'). The masses would have the money to educate their own if not for theft via taxation of the masses. People really have no concept of just how much of the value they produce which is stolen through government scheming (taxes). It's in the over 90% range. A lot of it is NOT public knowledge because it's taken through things like duties and via smaller amounts as percentage that largely go unnoticed. Just a handful: Saves taxes, gas taxes, vehicle registration fees, corporate taxes, income taxes, offsets to taxes via other government schemes that turn into 'association fees'.