In non-clown world, this would justify shutting the site down.

I hate instagram and the like. My gym posts updates on facebook and instagram. Every time I just want to figure out if their open or if anything changed it wants me to log in. I'm not giving my information to some evil company so I can just get status updates for a gym too small to justify hiring a web dev to keep their site up.

In all seriousness, who did they think this ad would work on? Are there really that many people who are skeptical of the vaccine but trust these presidents?

I almost wonder if they're trying to get certain people to trust the vaccine less, but maybe I am overthinking it.

the fact the millions of gun owners would not comply and revolt

I hope so but I have doubts. It would be a slow boiling of the frog like so many other things. Just like with speech online, they would start with going after people who seem kind of reasonable to go after to most people. Like they'd start by just confiscating the guns of a few outright Hitler hailing "death to all jews, race war now" people to see the reaction from the public. Then do it to a larger group of the same type of people. Then go after the ones who are white supremacists but who are saying "no violence, work within the system". Maybe they'll even confiscate from some Antifa types in order to decrease the angry reaction from the right. Then they'll go after people who are not exactly all white supremacists but still more edgy than Tucker Carlson. Like the "Groypers". They'll just gradually work their way out like that.

Even if a large group did decide to revolt, it seems that the government does not need to be too concerned about a revolt that would actually threaten their power because they have thoroughly infiltrated the opposition. It's interesting that both of the groups (Proud Boys and Oath Keepers) that are being charged for conspiracy in relation to Jan 6 had a federal agent or asset in leadership.

Another thing, I notice that even many people who are very pro second amendment only go as far as to say that they'll shoot any ATF agent who tries to take from them. In other words, stand by while they're taking from other people. Hopefully enough would defend their own guns to make the law unenforceable but realistically, there could eventually be a need for some people to "aim higher" than the boots on the ground enforcers. And it will be increasingly harder to get away with something like that as surveillance and government use of AI increases.

Side note to any feds reading: No, I am not planning to "aim higher" myself. Lol.

Interesting. I can definitely understand where support of him is coming from then. But even people who hate him should be able to see that removing him for stating some opinions is a slippery slope.

His comment about the woman who had sex with a 14 year old saying he wishes he had been "abused" that way is messed up but a pretty common sentiment. A lot of guys find it hard to understand how that could be psychologically damaging and if he is autistic, that would make it even harder for him. I also can see how someone with autism could be particularly annoyed at laws where the difference being a rapist or not is a 1 day difference in age, or a few months, or which country it happens in. It isn't very logical but most people don't dwell on it because they have no interest in having sex with someone younger than 18. Most people who do dwell on it are pedophiles or ephebophiles, but it's possible that he just takes an interest because of his tendency to criticize anything that doesn't make sense to him. Even I, who supports statutory rape laws and the age of consent law being 18 can see that it's weird to have a sudden cutoff even though legally the cutoff has to be somewhere. But imo a 30 year old who has sex with an 18 year old is about as slimy as one who has sex with a 17 year old. I think a 30 year old would be able to see how immature an 18 year old is. Consent is a tricky area to legislate. There are lots of ways to get questionable consent while being legally in the clear.

You are right that many things are taken out of context. I looked at his site to see his thoughts on child porn in context. I think looking at child porn with real children (not drawings) for pleasure is an extremely evil thing to do and I'm glad people who do it are punished. So I was disturbed by his comment about there being "no reason" possession should be illegal. I'm glad to see that he seems to mainly be concerned with the affect the laws have on freedom. Though, I worry that if possession were made legal, it would be much harder to go after pedophiles.

These quotes are from https://web.archive.org/web/20210325014131/https://stallman.org/archives/2014-jul-oct.html

A man in the UK has been sentenced for prison for having a cartoon depicting a fictional child in some sort of sexual situation.

The advocates of this kind of censorship started by saying they were trying to protect real children from being abused in order to take their photos. Making such photos should be a crime, and is a crime, but that is no reason to prohibit possessing copies of the photos.

However, they have already gone far beyond that. No child was harmed in drawing the cartoon.

To criminalize possession of copies of anything published — no matter what it is — is oppressive, and leads to many other forms of tyranny.

"Child pornography" is an all-purpose excuse to attack human rights on the internet. The FBI and Holder are now using it as an excuse to demand to be able to snoop on everyone's computers. This "cure" is worse than the disease.

Germany imposes internet filtering on routers (which I suppose includes those in ISPs as well as those in people's homes), blocking sites with no trial, and claims that the names of the censored sites are a "secret".

A site that posted the list of blocked domains was threatened with blockage itself.

Germany also made a rather shocking claim that posting this list in the US is illegal under US law, on the grounds that some of the censored sites display "child pornography".

Some works are disgusting, but censorship is more disgusting.

Illustrating the evil of making it a crime to possess pornography, a man in the UK was convicted of the crime of not knowing how to delete all copies of a disgusting video sent to him by a stranger.

OMEMO[1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO

For those that need a TL;DR: if you have a CDN, like VanwaTech, you don't need lazy loading.

Will get struck down, as it should. If not for the unconstitutional nature, then for the fact the millions of gun owners would not comply and revolt.

If passed, they'll make the requirements vague enough that confiscation due to mental health could be for anyone and weaponized.

Share a meme of Pepe? Extremist ideologies, unfit for firearm possession. It'd be abused to no end.

The age old problem of hiring henchmen that ain't too stupid to do their job.

Well, reddit over VPN probably works better, unlike 4chan, which doesn't work over Tor, VPN, proxies, or whatever. But still, if you can, delete your reddit account. And uhh, don't be like me, who had to make a second reddit account just because I screwed up my phone, somehow, and I had to factory reset it, therefore losing my two-factor authentication codes. And if you're an EU citizen, make sure you don't use the normal deactivation process. Make sure to back up 2FA!

I felt sad when I learned it was corrupted lost and down.

I now feel much happier with the world.

I am glad you are back.

I don't really care about that, seems like 4Chan level bickering at that point. I care more about the poor code pushed out.

Me too.

That said, lots of fun memories hanging around some skilled FreeBSD programmers in San Francisco years ago, with me busting their chops.

Their biggest complaint? Any cool driver fixes for "pc platform" USB , Audio, Network Cards, etc was lifted, duped , forked to OpenBSD , etc, then rapidly "stolen" AND COPY-LEFTED with GPL and shoved into Linux with new restrictive headers rubber stamped on all files... and crippled by GPL.

They REALLY really believe in totally free software and puke at hypocritical GPL2 GPL3 etc.

See, there were no kids in the 2010s, so that's why it's missing.

Yeah, Stallman is a hard one to judge. On one hand he´s an ultra-principled free software activist with strong views about things. He has been fighting for software freedom for decades and never compromises on his principles. I´m 95% sure he has some form of autism and is, from what I heard, quite a pain to deal with. I think that the media backlash he got was totally unjustified and people took his comments wildly out of context, something that´s quite easy to do with someone who is as literal and outspoken as him. As far as I´m concerned he´s entitled to holding controversial views - such is the nature of free thought. Provided no laws are broken, of course.

So, no, I don´t think he should be removed for his views and the surrounding controversy. However, I can absolutely imagine that he´s a pain to work and communicate with in daily life. I think that it is fair that the people who work with him frequently have a right to decide whether he´s unwelcoming and whether he´s a good figurehead for the FSF. I´ll copy some stuff from the support letter:

An Unlikely Icon

“Stallman… is a hard man to like. He is driven, often impatient. His anger can flare at friend as easily as foe. He is uncompromising and persistent; patient in both.”

• Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law Professor, democracy activist

I have had 3 lunches, 1 free software event, and 1 long car ride with Richard Stallman and can vouch for Lessig’s view. In that span of time he managed to confront and berate me countless times. He is by far the most disagreeable person I’ve ever met.

Richard Stallman has an often extreme bristliness about him and an intense propensity for confrontation, which can repel many. However, it is this same uncompromising nature that has led to his firm adherence to his principles. Even when his ideas were ridiculed, even when faced with piles of cash to be made in proprietary software, Stallman stayed on the side of software freedom. He has been preaching software freedom since nearly the origin of software and he adheres strictly to his own moral code. That is what has earned the respect and trust of so many concerned about digital liberties.

Once Stallman comes to a logical conclusion on an issue, he sticks by his views, does not matter the outside pressures. This could be his stance on neckties - symbols of corporate subservience, he won’t wear them. Or his stance on pronouns - "they” is always plural though he champions and frequently uses singular gender-neutral pronouns. Or his controversial views on age of consent laws, the term “First Nation,” prostitution, and other incredibly sensitive topics. Stallman will not, cannot keep a view - however unpopular - to himself.

The paradox of Stallman is that while his pointedness and stubbornness leads many to dismiss him as a jerk, his stubbornness and confrontations are actually rooted in his life-long obsession with morality. Though you may disagree, there is ample reason to believe he has come to hold his views from a concerted, rigorous, good-faith effort to be a voice for good in the world.

Ironically, given the smears against him, one of Stallman's core tenets seems to be consent! He has dedicated decades to arguing for free software, which protects computer users from nonconsensual activities being done on their machines (amongst other things). There is plenty of evidence that Stallman consistently applies his values of consent and freedom to romance and other relations. I find the claims that he is an “abuser” and “predator” online particularly misguided.

I have to wonder whether he might be a pedophile or at least an ephebophile given some of these comments. https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

The allegations that he harassed women are concerning, but at least I didn't see any allegations of sexual assault.

I can see why people would feel uncomfortable working with him, and it might drive some talent away from free software. But the same could be said for any project that has an Antifa member / supporter on the board of directors. That would make some people uncomfortable and drive away some talent too.

I really dislike some of his views but I don't think anyone should be removed for expressing opinions since that leads to self censorship. If he is ever found guilty of some serious crime like sexual assault or possession of child porn, it would make more sense to remove him in that case.

https://vimuser.org/
My eyes crashed! XD

That's why I kept my old printer from the 1980s or so. Can only print black and white and no bullshit added. Though, these days, I rarely print. Maybe once a year.

What surprised me is that Leah Rowe signed the support petition.

After the whole drama with stallman and libreboot's withdrawal from gnu, this was the last name I expected to popup on the petition.

I knew about metadata but this was new to me

The different sensitivities of the photosites creates a type of imperceptible image watermark. Although unintentional, it acts like a fingerprint, unique to your camera’s sensor, which is imprinted onto every photo you take. Much like snowflakes, no two imaging sensors are alike.

In the digital image forensics community, this sensor fingerprint is known as "photo response non-uniformity". And it's "difficult to remove even when one tries", says Jessica Fridrich of Binghamton University in New York state. It's inherent to the sensor, as opposed to measures, such as photo metadata, that are "intentionally implemented", she explains.

This is good to know too. I always suspected that printers had something like this.

When considering these privacy issues, we might draw parallels with another technology. Many colour printers add secret tracking dots to documents: virtually invisible yellow dots that reveal a printer's serial number, as well as the date and time a document was printed

I have heard that the Thinkpad X200 is a good laptop for people who want to install libreboot and disable the Intel Management Engine.

This is another article about the IME. It lists libreboot compatible computers

Despite all Intel's efforts to make the Management Engine inescapable, software developers have had some success with preventing it from loading code. For instance, the Libreboot project disables the Management Engine by removing all the code that the Management Engine is supposed to load on some Thinkpad computers manufactured in 2008, including the R400, T400, T400s, T500, W500, X200, X200s, and X200T.

Also, many Intel computers manufactured in 2006 have the ancestor of the Management Engine which is disabled from the start, such as the Lenovo Thinkpads X60, X60s, X60 Tablet and T60, and many more.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/the-management-engine-an-attack-on-computer-users-freedom

I only remember hearing it once, when I was asked it. I was very confused about how to respond lol

It’s an interesting question.

I think the percentage of asian-on-asian violent crime is low partially because asians are commiting less violence in general compared to other races.

Table 12 shows the ratios of offenders to population, and also the ratios of victims to population.

From page 13:

Based on victims’ perceptions of the offenders, the offender-to-population ratio shows that the percentage of violent incidents involving black offenders (22%) was 1.8 times the percentage of black persons (12%) in the population. In contrast, the percentage of violent incidents involving white (50%) or Hispanic (14%) offenders was about four-fifths (0.8 times) the percentage of whites (62%) or Hispanics (17%) in the population, and the percentage involving Asian offenders (2.5%) was about two-fifths (0.4 times) the percentage of Asians in the population (6%).

On page 12 it says the percentage of violent incidents involving asian victims is less than their population.

The victim-to-population ratio varied by race. The percentage of violent incidents involving white (66%) or black (11%) victims was similar to the population percentages of white (62%) or black (12%) persons. About 14% of violent incidents involved Hispanic victims, which was about four-fifths (0.8 times) the representation of Hispanics in the population (17%). Similarly, a smaller percentage of violent incidents involved Asian victims (4%) than the representation of Asians in the population (6%).

The table on page 12 says that the asian population is 6.3%. Aside from asians commiting less violence, I also think that partially because they are a small minority, they are more likely to have interactions with people of other races in daily life and / or live in an area where the population is mostly non-asian. Therefore, there is more potential for violence from someone of another race.

From what I understand, there is tension between the asians and blacks partly because asian stores are seen as siphoning off money from black communities.

But also, for some economically motivated criminals, asians are perceived as being a good/easy target. https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=BMwMtl_gQvA

The funny thing about the narrative that Trump has sparked a wave of white racial hatred against asians is that for reasons you mentioned, among others, it seems like most white supremacists like asians. Actually many of them seem to like asians more than they like most white people, at least the ones I see online anyways.

Donenfeld identified numerous problems with Macy's code, but rather than object to the port's release, Donenfeld decided to fix the issues. He collaborated with FreeBSD developer Kyle Evans and with Matt Dunwoodie, an OpenBSD developer who had worked on WireGuard for that operating system. The three replaced almost all of Macy's code in a mad week-long sprint.

A good response.

This went over very poorly with Netgate, which sponsored Macy's work. Netgate had already taken Macy's beta code from a FreeBSD 13 release candidate and placed it into production in pfSense's 2.5.0 release. The forklift upgrade performed by Donenfeld and collaborators—along with Donenfeld's sharp characterization of Macy's code—presented the company with a serious PR problem.

Not a great response.

This combative response from Netgate raised increased scrutiny from many sources, which uncovered surprising elements of Macy's own past. He and his wife Nicole had been arrested in 2008 after two years spent attempting to illegally evict tenants from a small San Francisco apartment building the pair had bought.

I don't really care about that, seems like 4Chan level bickering at that point. I care more about the poor code pushed out.

Finally I'm back :D

Glad to see it's back.