NSA Director Paul Nakasone confirmed such purchases in his letter to Wyden, saying the data collected “may include information associated with electronic devices being used outside - and, in certain cases, inside - the United States.”
You can do both. You always get the same shitty options to vote for because most people don’t vote, and even fewer of them vote in primaries or participate in the political process in other ways.
The reason you only get to vote for the “lesser of two evils” is because you don’t participate in primaries (assuming you are talking about the US system here). If MAGA can get a psycho like Trump to be their party nominee, you can get your kind of psycho nominated as well.
Primaries are where you actually get a chance to express what kind of candidate you want. Hell, you can even run for office! Generals are where you hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils because otherwise it’s an automatic vote for the worst of the two evils.
I agree voting seems pointless sometimes. But it’s still important. But it’s a lever of power you have access to and nobody can take it away from you no. And you can spend the 364 other days of the year impacting politics in other ways.
There was some shady stuff on behalf of the DNC but he legitimately lost. He didn’t get the votes. Because his voters didn’t vote in the primaries. A number of reforms have been made to the primary system since then, a bunch of the people who oversaw that primary got fired, and many states are now moving towards ranked choice voting which will eliminate the need for primaries entirely. If half the people who complain about how voting is useless actually participated in the primary process, our political landscape would look a lot different. I used to be one of those people, I get it, the whole damned thing is a bit of a racket, but it doesn’t change that voting takes 5 minutes and has a concrete impact on who runs the government.
Edit: And that’s the presidential race. You can make much more of a difference, and the rules are much less wonky, in local and state elections. Hell, many of those positions are entirely uncontested.
As a tech-savvy mom, managing work, household responsibilities, and personal commitments can be overwhelming. Having access to a reliable and user-friendly operating system is vital in ensuring a smooth experience…
I’ve always felt guilty by taking for granted the rare breed of virtuous humans that provide free excellent software without relying on advertising. Let’s change that and pay, how much would I “lose” anyway?
Same. Any place asking for donations that supports Bitcoin lightning is an instant donate for me, I always give something even if it’s a small amount. Lightning fees are so low that I’m happy to give small amounts whereas otherwise I’m worried my $3 donation will turn into $0.50 by the time it reaches the organization if it’s through Paypal or whoever.
Hey folks! I’m getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I’m planning to convert into a “cyberdeck” with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in...
Every linux enthusiast should try Qubes at least once. The architecture is totally different, vastly more secure in many ways than most Linux distros. It’s definitely not for everybody, but if privacy and security rank high on your priority list it’s worth a look. It never ends up in Linux top ten lists for some reason, but it’s an incredible OS.
Love GNU software stack, but they’re about 15 years too late on this one.
Bitcoin can:
Transfer internationally or across the room
Confirms in less than one second (with Bitcoin lightning, otherwise can take a few minutes but still much faster than most banks, especially internationally)
Pay less than one cent in fees per transfer (with Bitcoin lightning, otherwise cents to dollars on main chain)
No middlemen
Operate with 24/7 uptime, 365 days a year without single protocol breaking hack because it’s some of the most widely reviewed code on the planet.
Entirely open source software and protocol
Is available to anybody with a network connection and a cell phone regardless of whether or not they have access to safe, stable banking infrastructure, which billions, with a B, do not. No barriers, no credit requirements, no nonsense.
Has been doing this for 15 years running.
Can’t be printed at the whim of politicians and governments. Has a fixed supply which means as the Bitcoin economy grows, all who have Bitcoin benefit, not just those in charge of monetary policy and whomever they decide to pass the benefits onto. Nobody can split your BTC in half and give the other half to somebody else, which is exactly how supply inflation works.
Using <1% of global electricity, often from renewable resources as renewable and over-produced electricity tends to be the cheapest
Each year it gets easier to use, gains more users, increases market cap, and generally adoption continues to grow.
Personally I’m excited to see Flatpak become more widespread and usable, fixing some “rough around the edges” aspects of it. I’ve been using it quite a bit this past few months and I think it presents a really coherent, simple vision for how to do package distribution that solves a lot of pain points. The sandboxing functionality is critical and easy to use, I don’t need every app to have access to everything in my home directory.
hi I’m still exploring stuff and I was thinking about nix, with all his stuff, what do you guys think? maybe someone with experience can tell me if I should stay away from that or could be a good choice for privacy, anonimity and security
Even in single instances of trust there can be advantages to using blockchain for those applications:
Decentralization can give you better uptime/availability of those documents. If the DMVs website or authentication service goes down, documents can still be authenticated since they and/or their signatures stored in a distributed manner. The internet can go down at your bar but if you have a recent copy of a chain, you can still verify somebody’s ID.
It can make them easier to transfer between parties, and creates a digital “paper trail” which can conform to whatever requirements one might have. For example, you could easily require several parties to sign off any time the document is moved or assigned to a new person.
You can use those documents and their signatures with smart contracts or other decentralized apps. For example, you could sign up for an account at a bank or a platform like eBay using your NFT’d digital ID and the bank could accept it would needing to manually verify if the id “looks fake” or if your blurry phone picture is going to cut it. They don’t have to call up the government and ask them to verify it or pay some third party to match your address against their database of known people, etc.
Maybe you need better transparency in how many documents are issued and (potentially) to whom. Voting systems, for example, are a use case for this. It could be used for shareholder governance structures, etc.
Blockchains can enforce rules which centralized entities can’t, which is important to consider. An example of how this is useful: imagine the government has a digital ID system and it’s run in a centralized fashion, which makes sense, because they are the issuing authority right? Now imagine that centralized system gets hacked and an attacker starts printing and authenticating a bunch of fake ID requests. In the time between when this attack happens and when somebody figures it out, which could be hours to days, banks and other entities could be relying on those fake documents and potentially lose millions. An example of a rule a blockchain can enforce is “this ID issuing authority cannot issue in a single day more than 10% above it’s daily average of issuances over a six month period”, limiting the scope of an attack. One may say “Well, but blockchain can be hacked too!” which is true, but it’s less likely because the software for these networks has thousands of eyes on it whereas there may only be a couple system admins approving changes to your state-run ID database. Open source software is more secure than proprietary for this reason. Additionally, a security flaw needs to effect 51% of the network which isn’t likely to happen when you have a diversity of software versions.
Many smart contracts need ways to protect against sybil attacks (ie one person pretending to be multiple). Quadratic funding being used for charity fundraising is a perfect example. By using credentials issued on chain by centralized authorities, they can verify a person is not multiple people. Quadratic funding is an awesome way to fund public goods.
Nobody who is knowledgeable about crypto ever thought dogecoin was anything but a meme coin or pump and dump scheme. They would have known it offered zero benefits technologically over existing cryptos. Some may have bought it to cash in on the crazy market surrounding it, but they never thought doge was the future or anything. The people who thought that were the “i read one article and I’m a crypto expert now” crowd referenced in my original comment.
Scams/theft: person has the wallet lost through scam or left, how do you invalidate the lost credentials or tickets.
In these examples, we are talking about credentials issued by a central authority. That authority can re-issue new credentials and invalidate old ones. Easy peasy.
If we’re talking about the risk that people have their crypto stolen in general, yes it does carry that risk same as cash. There are several strategies to mitigate this: people can park larger amounts at institutions if they want or they can use things like multi-sig wallets. You have one smaller pot of money which is your everyday spending wallet which you (or somebody who gains access to it) can spend from whenever you want, and one which is “multi-sig” meaning at least one of your trusted friends/family members/etc also has to sign off if money moves out of that account. You can have multiple people on the multi-sig wallet and set the rules for example 2 of 5 friends or what have you. You wouldn’t leave $10,000 in your phone’s mobile wallet just like you wouldn’t carry a briefcase with $10,000 in cash on the subway. Small money in your spending wallet, big money in your multi-sig.
This is similar to how one stores money normally. You have some cash in your wallet and you put the rest in a bank. In order to withdraw significant money from your bank account, the bank is going to undertake some kind of investigation to make sure it’s actually you. This might be checking your ID at the teller for example. They might also include some type of fraud guarantees where they will cover any losses you experience. That kind of a system is not incompatible with blockchain and I expect with time industries will appear to mitigate these kinds of risks from an insurance perspective.
Also, generally speaking, no system is going to completely eliminate theft and fraud. 99% of the fraud and theft committed over human history has been done using traditional currency, including the kinds of fraud that aren’t even called fraud because the “right people” are doing them like bank bailouts or market manipulation. Even highly-credentialed systems like Paypal are rife with fraud, ask any ebay seller. So we can’t expect crypto or any other technology to eliminate it either, there will always be some. The best we can do is try to find technological, social, and educational methods for reducing it.
Wallet loss: loss through any number of means: fire, incompetence, computer being destroyed, loss of account to cloud backup etc
Same risks as cash, multi-sig or institutional holdings as explained above can solve this.
Issuer need to invalidate: if tickets/credentials were purchased by fraud or an issue occurs where they need to invalidate
FWIW nobody who is actually knowledgeable about crypto ever thought anything positive about NFTs. It’s all just wallstreetbets types who read one article and think they’re economists now. The tech is interesting and has applications but monkey jpegs are what idiots spent millions on for some reason.
I am working on creating deb/rpm packages for an OSS tool I use. So far, I have been manually testing each deb/rpm in a virtualbox live cd version of that OS but it’s tedious to do that for every release. This is a GUI tool, I basically just need to confirm that the apt install goes correctly and the program can actually...
Show up in every election and vote (and be engaged in other ways politically). It’s very easy to ignore people who don’t vote. Don’t like your options at the polls? Participate in primaries and donate to campaigns pushing ranked choice voting.
A man who grabbed our concept of a centralized internet by the balls and squeezed it so hard that the Lemmy’s user count 65xed in a 3 months period. Thank you for your service
NSA Buys Americans’ Internet Data Without Warrants, Letter Says (www.reuters.com) Portuguese
NSA Director Paul Nakasone confirmed such purchases in his letter to Wyden, saying the data collected “may include information associated with electronic devices being used outside - and, in certain cases, inside - the United States.”
Linux Mint 21.3: Empowering tech-savvy Moms with the Perfect Desktop Experience (ameliaslyfe.wordpress.com)
As a tech-savvy mom, managing work, household responsibilities, and personal commitments can be overwhelming. Having access to a reliable and user-friendly operating system is vital in ensuring a smooth experience…
How I like my pi (sh.itjust.works)
Edit:...
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What if I paid for all my free software? (www.cynicusrex.com)
I’ve always felt guilty by taking for granted the rare breed of virtuous humans that provide free excellent software without relying on advertising. Let’s change that and pay, how much would I “lose” anyway?
OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations (codeberg.org)
Just saw the discussion around the Haier Home Assistant takedown and thought it would be good to materialize the metaphorical blacklist.
"Must Try" distros and DEs?
Hey folks! I’m getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I’m planning to convert into a “cyberdeck” with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in...
NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone (taler.net)
A bit hyperbole headline, but good to hear that GNU Taler got some NGI funding.
What are you most excited when it comes to linux in 2024?
For me it must be kde plasma 6 and the wayland driver for wine....
NixOS
hi I’m still exploring stuff and I was thinking about nix, with all his stuff, what do you guys think? maybe someone with experience can tell me if I should stay away from that or could be a good choice for privacy, anonimity and security
I value this meme at eleventy billion and won't take a cent less (lemmy.world)
Testing packaging which targets multiple distributions?
I am working on creating deb/rpm packages for an OSS tool I use. So far, I have been manually testing each deb/rpm in a virtualbox live cd version of that OS but it’s tedious to do that for every release. This is a GUI tool, I basically just need to confirm that the apt install goes correctly and the program can actually...
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OBS Studio 30 Released with Support for Intel QSV H264, HEVC, and AV1 on Linux (9to5linux.com)
A moment of appreciation for a man who is undoubtedly the world's most successful promoter of Lemmy and the fediverse (lemmy.ml)
A man who grabbed our concept of a centralized internet by the balls and squeezed it so hard that the Lemmy’s user count 65xed in a 3 months period. Thank you for your service
🇪🇺 How the EU Feels about (lemmy.ml)
Context: Chat Control 2.0: EU governments set to approve the end of private messaging and secure encryption...