I have 26 apps on my phone. Of those, four are Safari extensions, one is a PWA and another I wrote myself. I use a restrictive nextDNS profile that also blocks Apple's native tracking (as best they can) and don't use social media. I feel like that's the best I can realistically do.
And you do realize your cellphone is constantly sharing your location with your cell phone company which is more than willing to give it to the government without a warrant.
Whatever you are doing is meaningless privacy theatre
I wouldn't call that meaningless privacy theater. For one, you can buy a SIM anonymously, and make the cell location data essentially useless. Second, protection at the DNS level prevents other types of data exfiltration (such as cross-site tracking by the Meta Pixel). By not using social media and communicating over secure apps like Signal, you can indeed achieve a high degree of resistance against tracking and profiling.
Of course, you can do more, such as running only trusted software (i.e., free software) on your devices, not using Internet-of-Shit devices anywhere in your home, and making sure your car is not snooping on you through it's own cellular modem.
> you can buy a SIM anonymously, and make the cell location data essentially useless
Even ignoring the first part, which will vary by country, I think that represents a failure of imagination.
For example, how many other people-with-phones have a pattern of spending 5+ nighttime hours within 100m of your home, and spending 5+ workday hours within 100m of your office?
You phone company has a pretty good idea where you are all the time. This is well known and therefore there are strict rules, regulations and often laws preventing share this without good cause. As long as telco or law enforcement adheres to the law (hmm) this data is not available for fishing expeditions.
While I love the idea of sticking it to Trump, this is the wrong approach. The right approach (which Zelensky is doing) is for Ukraine to sell defense drones to countries that now need them (US, Isreal, Gulf States).
Ukraine gets money while scaling their manufacturing and everyone else gets drones that actually work and are continually being refined in the field.
Ukraine has been using cheap interceptor drones (models Sting/Bagnet/etc) combined with sensor networks to intercept slower prop driven Geran-2. Then Russia upgraded to jet engine on Geran-3, with higher speeds that are more difficult for prop interceptors to catch. Ukraine switched back to using machine gunners from aircraft to help take those out until they develop faster intercept drones.
If Zelensky wants to turn it into a capitalist enterprise then he should be careful with that game, because US could easily ask to be given hard assets in return for the $100B+ in aid we give them, or just reduce aid by exactly the amount they are charging for their drone help.
US has given more aid to Ukraine than any other country, and has $400M more allocated for this year. So lets cut the bullshit about excluding all the times anything other than $0 was supplied -- it's putting a major spin and presenting things in a deviously false way.
This kind of rhetoric is why we're bitter about it. We give the most out of anyone, yet there is still this sort of welfare queen bullshit of vell vwhat have you done for uz lately when something simple is asked back like some help with drones. Despite giving more than anyone, the best thanks we can get is "but that one time, you gave us $0, so none of this counts" and by the way, if you want drones then fuck you pay me. The sense of smug entitlement is off the charts.
You're unwittingly displaying why the kind of lies Trump told to get elected worked. Of course Trump was totally being fraudulent about his "no new wars" rhetoric (his rhetoric about having Europe pick up their share did have some truth), but there's a reason why his rhetoric worked.
You are anthropomorphizing the government of Ukraine. At the start of the war they needed US money and weapons and asked for it. We gave it to them. They survived.
Then we withdrew support. They survived anyway. Now, they have expertise and equipment that we could really use. Now you want the US government to simply demand the equipment as payment for the help earlier? They will say no.
The money and weapons we gave them earlier weren't wasted. It bought the survival of Ukraine and a bunch of dead Russians. It also bought the existence of a country that has effective and critical defense equipment.
Now, by buying drones from Ukraine, we make our military assets dramatically safer, save money, hurt our adversaries, and increase our effectiveness all at the same time. But you're complaining about Ukraines "tone".
Your terms are acceptable, and you're totally right, what was given before were aid so they have no hard obligation to reciprocate. You want to boil it down to open market operations and I have no qualms with that as that favors the US taxpayer way more than it would Ukraine.
We will buy whatever wish we want to buy at market prices, and if they want more money they can give us their minerals or hard assets at market rate in exchange and eliminate the $400M allocated to them and all the other handouts since this is now a capitalist tic for tat endeavor per your proposal. From here on out, if they want anything, intel, whatever: fuck you pay us. They have a lot of excellent farm land and minerals and transferring those to the US in a purely capitalist trade for any further cash or military assistance could be a fair deal since you're rejecting a reciprocal aid approach.
It is the US government that threw reciprocity overboard, openly and publicly humiliating allies and partners throughout the past year, threatening to invade several NATO allies, publicly mocking soldiers from allied countries who had fought and died in US-led wars, and kicking Ukraine at its most vulnerable moment in an attempt to coerce it into surrender. Not to mention global economic warefare in the form of illegal trade barriers. The US government championed isolationism, and this is what the first taste of isolationism feels like.
For most of the world, the US-Iran war carries minimal upside (the reduction of Iran-sponsored terror groups in the Middle East) for considerable risk (terror attacks on their citizens). Previously, allies and partners were willing to grant access to their airbases and provide other forms of support and put their citizens at risk to maintain good relations with the US, because that meant something. With Trump in the White House, the US has become an unreliable and unpredictible banana republic, where government action is not grounded in sound policy or long-term international relationships, but depends entirely on the moods of El Presidente and serves his personal wallet.
He has made time and time again clear that he is not bound by any earlier agreements and commitments, so it should not come as a surprise when others respond with the same and propose starting negotiations from a clean slate.
Congress has merely secured the financial pool; the decision on whether and how the money will be spent ultimately lies with the Secretary of War (Defense).
This is such a cunningly disingenuous portrayal though when you're just leaving it at that, the US has provided billions in aid already and allocated hundreds of million more for this year. Yet the counter argument here is to just ignore all of that and pretend like they've gotten zero through omission of all the times they haven't, while relying on a totally uncited assertion that none of this year's allocation has been spent.
Sure but the question is are they helping the U.S. that helped them. It's pretty clear that the Trump administration is a completely different beast than typical US administration. Look at things like its pro offensive war stance (see unofficial name change of DoD) or that it does not support Ukraine (see lack of funding/intelligence since Trump). Maybe Ukraine will think it's supporting the Americans that helped them and hurting the Americans that are pro or compromised by Russia by withholding aid and letting Trump wallow in what he's reaped.
I'll add that trump has made clear that U.S. administrations are not beholden to previous international policy decisions and so unless congress reins in the executive or trustworthy actors hold the mantle again other nations should treat the US with short term policy decisions in mind and not rely on long term reciprocation.
Imagine getting so much aid from the US and Europe only to start making ultimatums. If they dare to do such a thing, they should be the next ones to find out.
A more generous term is civil disobedience. I think the argument is the original theft was using tax payers dollars on fancy tracking devices in the first place.
You might wish to do some cursory research before arguing further. For example, as a starting point, the Wikipedia page on civil disobedience has an entire section labeled "Action" listing counterexamples.
> Civil disobedience is the active and nonviolent refusal to obey certain government laws, demands, or commands to achieve social change or protest injustice
Most associated with MLK Jr, who explicitly advocated breaking the law
Civil means nonviolent. There were laws against blacks sitting at certain counters in some areas of the US in the past. Those laws were broken without violence. That's civil disobedience.
Please at least try to understand what you're talking about; you're embarrassing yourself.
I don't remember him calling Linus a terrorist, though there were others that associated anything with a copyleft licence to be the loony left (or the commie left).
He certainly referred to both him and Linux as cancers though, that I do remember. He later changed his mind on that, and IIRC may even have publicly apologised for those statements.
He said Linux is a cancer, which was a stupid thing to say, but not the same as calling Linus a cancer. I say plenty of bad things about software that I would not say about the people who create it. I think Next.js is awful to use but that doesn't mean I think everyone at Vercel is an awful person, for example.
He may not have used the word cancer with respect to individuals, I can't find any such reference in a quick search, but he certainly had harsh words to say about proponents of Linux/OSS/similar.
On iOS there isn't always a choice to not build something native. For example, I can't install Navidrome as a PWA because Apple doesn't properly support audio playback for PWAs. I ended up writing a client that suited my listening habits.
To read ePubs, however, I was able to write a PWA leveraging epub.js because no native APIs were required.
> On iOS there isn't always a choice to not build something native.
Tangentially, even native can be badly designed and developed, performance wise. Even Apple hasn’t been able to do a good job with the Reminders app (one of the several apps ported to Mac with the same level of negligence that Electron brings in). I use a lot of Reminders and lists in Reminders. It’s janky and poorly coded.
Oh absolutely. I hadn’t touched native development in perhaps a decade (and that was Xamarin before Microsoft acquired them). My initial iterations were rough, but I’m happy with where the app is. Choosing an audio app to try native again likely wasn’t the best choice on my part either.
It is not the job of the government to parent in place of people who are not up to the task. There should be reasonable guardrails, but these laws are Orwellian.
I'm not against celebrating the Declaration of Independence. Especially this part:
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.
Most of the Signers of that document were slaveholders.
They didn't care about ideals any more than modern administrations. They were well connected opportunists who saw a chance to create a world that worked more for them: rich white guys.
> They didn't care about ideals any more than modern administrations
They obviously did, just like recent past presidential administrations both D and R did - by at the very least paying lip service to them. There was real value in that, and we took it for granted. The current regime is just as (if not more) performative, but they're signalling vices rather than virtues. Following that example makes for a worse society, regardless of how much we actually live up to the virtues in practice.
I can't speak for the other signers, but Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, was an idealist who didn't always live up to his own ideals, including but not limited to slaveholding.
Jefferson, 1789: I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in any thing else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.
Also Jefferson, 1792: (founds political party to oppose the Federalists)
Machiavelli, ca. 1513: for many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.
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