Google has been collecting call and messaging data about who you talk to or send text messages to for years. There's no opt-out, no notification in their TOS they're doing this.

dsolimano · 2022-03-23T16:07:34+00:00

The only saving grace is that I've been assuming text messages and phone calls are completely compromised for years.

dsolimano · 2022-03-23T16:02:54+00:00

EFF has a form you can use to write to your local Congress Critters to oppose the bill - https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-act-to-save-our-privacy

dsolimano · 2021-10-31T13:15:47+00:00

I think you're entirely correct, the modern left and right are both shall we say, mostly interested in shoving the world into preconceived notions rather than learning from it.

Besides, it's obvious about squids :-)

dsolimano · 2021-10-31T13:12:37+00:00

You're not wrong - the modern internet expects you to "just know" what nameless people are feeling and not offend them.

I have had some success on Freenet's FMS (a pain to set up) and good old Usenet but, the audiences will be minuscule compared to the major websites.

dsolimano · 2021-07-26T02:06:05+00:00

Same, I am easily distracted at my advanced age and need beeps.

dsolimano · 2021-05-24T11:07:39+00:00

I used to got to Opus Dei events fairly frequently in college and let me tell you, it's underwhelming for anyone looking for a world-spanning conspiracy. We did a lot of praying and talked about how to make sure we were doing good things on a daily basis.

Spiritual director sounds scary, but it's pretty common on Catholicism, and generally they are nice old dudes that help you out with your problems, think therapy but without the bad parts. I'm sure there is abuse but, I haven't seen any, though there was one confessor I thought should have been thrown out an airlock.

dsolimano · 2021-05-11T03:51:48+00:00

Clearly the solution is for Labour to dismiss the voters and get a new set of voters.

dsolimano · 2021-04-30T01:43:00+00:00

Remember, run for school board, run for local offices. The rot in government starts at the bottom.

dsolimano · 2021-04-24T11:49:37+00:00

The interesting question is, how long have they just been making up stuff for.

dsolimano · 2021-04-15T12:55:32+00:00

"Police have defended the stops as crucial for fighting possession of illegal drugs, weapons possession, human trafficking and drunken driving." Dang, at that point why don't they just claim the ability to arrest anyone anytime and investigate them, in case they might be doing something illegal.

dsolimano · 2021-04-10T12:21:25+00:00

Fun task is going on Fediverse sites and seeing which other sites they hide content from or refuse to peer with, those are usually some wild sites.

dsolimano · 2021-04-10T12:18:09+00:00

Well, maybe so but maybe not. I wasn't far off from the person described in this post at one point in the not so distant past. I suspect having spent my entire childhood reading books and playing video games is the reason I was pretty useless in the most basic of social situations.

Thankfully however the drive to get with women is extremely powerful and I certainly wasn't asking a girl on a date if I couldn't order a sandwich. So I started with the sandwiches, slowly, and moved up the chain. Now I'm married and posting on Saidit, truly the peak of human accomplishment.

I still get that feeling of wild anxiety sometimes, particularly when I'm about to cold call someone for work, but I ignore it these days.

dsolimano · 2021-04-03T23:01:52+00:00

I personally use Usenet, Gemini, Gopher, and host my own website. Email is a pain but I do use a small provider. It can be done, and if nothing else having a variety of methods to contact people is useful if the overlords decide to nuke social media sites.

dsolimano · 2021-03-29T13:12:38+00:00

I think I pretty much became a "right wing extremist" even though none of my views really changed just because I basically stopped watching TV when I was 18 because I was too busy, with my media consumption basically limited to reading books on the train and watching some DVDs of old shows. Then I wake up one day to find the whole world has gone insane.

dsolimano · 2021-03-27T02:42:53+00:00

I think there was a time when we were actually advancing the cause of freedom to some extent, while making it worse in other places - but once we won in Europe, the entire bureaucratic-military-industrial complex needed to continue to exist to keep getting paid.

If Germany wants to be allies with Russia, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't withdraw our troops and with them a nice day.

dsolimano · 2021-03-03T04:37:38+00:00

Small hosting, self hosting, encourage it wherever you can. Few things are more dangerous than getting sucked into the convenience of the cloud.

dsolimano · 2021-02-25T11:59:02+00:00

Yeah, you raise a good point. I think the way we "own" land in most of the western world is a slight modification of the way in feudalism, the lord owned the land and you had to pay him rent for it, but we call that rent "property tax" now. But the lord, aka the state, is the real owner. There may be some parts of Scotland/Scandinavia where people still really own their property if I remember correctly but don't quote me on that.

dsolimano · 2021-02-14T22:42:51+00:00

The only oath I'm interested in swearing is "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good".

dsolimano · 2021-02-01T18:49:07+00:00

If they were margin shares that makes more sense, due to the vol a lot of clearing firms increased their margin requirements to 100% meaning basically you have to pay cash for the shares. I think normal operations would be to restrict the account ask the clients to wire in more cash, but I guess if they had trouble borrowing money to finance the positions, they could conceivably have to sell the shares with the margin requirements increasing so fast.

dsolimano · 2021-01-30T13:21:00+00:00

It could just be a revenue opportunity for the CCP - pay extra to have a pretty nurse administer the, uhh, test. First COVID test with a happy ending incoming Feb 2021.

dsolimano · 2021-01-28T14:17:14+00:00

Article is very true. One interesting side note is, monopolies in common law are generally required to provide service to everyone, like a common carrier - https://cafehayek.com/2021/01/on-richard-epstein-on-regulating-big-tech.html is an interesting article on the subject.

dsolimano · 2021-01-16T14:08:49+00:00

The joke last summer was the virus would disappear after the election - just off by a few months, the inauguration was the real date.

dsolimano