Agree but, "might" is the operative word there, though. For a while there all the VPN providers were saying they didn't collect logs, and then turning those "nonexistent" logs over to law enforcement. PIA seemed to be the one genuinely not be keeping logs, but then they got acquired and turned into a privacy disaster. So even a provider that is privacy focused today might not be if they get acquired.

A lot of the comments highlight that it really comes down to whether you trust your ISP, or whether you trust the VPN provider. There are a lot of VPN providers who are untrustworthy and I think most of the time in the US and other countries with at least the illusion of a 4th amendment equivalent you're probably just as well to trust the ISP.

That said, when you're traveling using hotel or public wifi maybe you don't trust your ISP so much. That's when I tend to use a VPN.

I had resisted buying Samsung phones because of the completely unnecessary changes to the user interface. Eventually, I wound up buying a Note 7 out of desperation to try and get something approaching reasonable battery life.

That phone was *incredible*. In a completely different league than anything I had before. I had one more Note and now have a Galaxy S22 Ultra, and they have all been fantastic phones.

They definitely come with lots of crapware and nonsense you have to disable or uninstall and I wish they would stop that. If Samsung wants to differentiate itself with some supposedly fantastic Samsung specific software, they should stop needlessly replacing things like the messaging app, because right now I just disable and ignore anything Samsung because I assume it's garbage. There have actually been a couple things I was curious about, but I didn't want to deal with going down this insane Samsung rabbit hole of interlinked BS. They're just wasting development resources on stuff that isn't needed at all.

The changes to the OS are totally unnecessary but mostly unobtrusive at this point.

I've heard the new Pixel is very good. I will definitely consider it in a year or two when I need a new phone given that Samsung is doubling down on the junkware. They've been able to get away with it because the product has been distinctly better, but I think the days of crazy new functionality in phones is winding down, everyone has finally realized that battery life is important, and maybe they need to shift their strategy a bit. We want reliable, long lasting, simple, functional devices.

I love how people are concerned about this right in the face of several different global resource crises. Hormones gonna hormone I guess.

The reliance on growth is also how the political class in many countries have set their economies up. Convenient, since it helps maintain their advantage in wealth and power.

There's a huge opportunity for everyone to live better, but I'm sure humans will still find some way to fuck it up.

Not really up to you, though, is it? They can bust balls all they like about slights past or present. They manage to exert enough pressure, they win. That's how this country works.

It's also not as if we're not still fucking them over whenever it is slightly more convenient for us. Maybe if we actually respected the agreements we make with them they'd be less inclined to lash out over sports teams and company names.

Sometimes I hear about something like this related to indigenous people and I think, "this is a positive association" or, "who cares?", or "political correctness has gone too far" or, "these are words and concepts in the culture and trying to own them just creates more division".

When I think that, though, I ask myself how I would feel if I were indigenous and was treated the way they people were treated by the US Government.

The answer is, I would be pissed off and try to needle them and claw back my culture at every possible opportunity. It might not even be that I was truly offended, it would be that the history is so fucking horrific and one sided I would be loathe to let them have even one thing. Busting their balls about a company name is nothing compared to how they were treated. I would do it simply because fuck them.

If it was something new created today that got swept up in the cultural zeitgeist, that would be something different. But this is their identity going all the way back to when they first started getting fucked over.

I don't smoke and never have. After they banned it in bars and restaurants (which I wrote a letter against, despite being a nonsmoker) the smell of it has become almost intolerable for me. Cigarette smoke smells like a garbage fire.

That said, the government making decisions about what would be best for my health is exactly the kind of society I do not want to live in. If this is what New Zealanders want, I fully support them having a place on this earth where they can set up a society that works that way.

This is why we have different governments, different countries, though. The inexorable push of power upwards to the federal and even international level concerns me greatly, because not everyone wants the same things from government. Contrary to popular belief, that's OK.

USENET was legendary for trolling and combativeness, but I also had some of the best online discussions I have ever had there. I've been on forums that have degenerated into nightmares, and forums which were great. Same with BBSes.

I had written some other thoughts about group focus and leadership but deleted it all because, in 2022, none of that will stand up to discussing politics. Take a forum of people who get along great talking about a topic they love and the moment you say something political they will be at each others throats.

This is by design. The political class has created a situation where part of your identity is disagreeing with another group of people, no matter how reasonable they are being. It's so potent that foreign governments are now weaponizing it.

Social media creates drive by interactions with people whose knowledge of the topic may be nonexistent, whose interest in learning more may be nonexistent, whose interest in understanding what other people think is nonexistent, and who may just be straight up stupid.

They are there for the dopamine hit that comes from feeling right and putting other people down. They assign an individual an entire belief system based on one comment on one topic so that they can classify them as the enemy and easily dismiss any uncomfortable questioning of their own views.

I miss talking politics online. I found it enormously useful and changed so, so many opinions that I held when I was younger. Now, even smart and knowledgeable people won't engage because it's no longer worth it. I have deleted countless replies because as soon as I started writing, I realized that I would have to spend so long explaining what I *wasn't* saying, it didn't justify the time based on the minuscule chance I would get something useful back.

The most successful groups in any online discussion medium now are the ones who don't allow discussion of politics.

I aged out of the target demographic many years ago, but prices on GPUs are ridiculous now. The technology gets dated so quickly and it's so expensive to replace.

I recently subscribed to GeForce Live and am liking it. I don't play a lot of games anymore, but if you think of refreshing a GPU maybe every 3 years, with Live you pay 600 bucks over those three years to get a close to top of the line experience. You're also getting the entire "gaming PC" as a virtual machine, not just the GPU. That's closer to reasonable. Consoles are still cheaper, but it's much more competitive at least. The performance has been great and I haven't even done anything to optimize it. I'm sure when/if I run a hard line to the Shield I run it on, it will be even better.

That said, I'm mostly playing single player these days. I remember when Quake came out and it supported TCP/IP so you could play people over the internet instead of just dialing up a friend or setting up a small IPX network. It was literally a dream come true. Freshman year of college very non technical people were coming to my room to play it on my computer. I assume that the level of competition online these days means Live would be way too slow, though. I just don't have the time to invest (or the willingness to be called racial slurs by an 11 year old, or deal with cheaters) to try it, unfortunately.

Who can even buy tickets for a show that is destined to sell out from ticketbastard anymore? They're all scooped up by resellers who charge double the price on upward.

The resellers all have the same seats available as well, but I'm sure there's nothing shady going on there.

What is the goal here? To punish the company and the individual victims of identity theft? To inoculate companies from some of the financial impact of a data breach?

I'm sure the goal is ostensibly to discourage ransomware, but as usual the government does not understand enough about cybersecurity to actually be effective.

Strengthen requirements to store PII. Institute mandatory compliance auditing/reporting requirements. Increase penalties for corporations who are breached.

Security improves when the cost of not improving it exceeds the cost of improving it. Otherwise, no one cares.

I do not know anything about this other than the summary. I have not read the article, nor any other article about this.

Nonetheless, I feel qualified to offer two predictions:

1.) This will wind up making the banks more money at the expense of everyone else. It will likely take the form of some hopelessly complicated and obtuse racketeering scheme that will destabilize the entire economy. The government will step in to regulate, because obviously they need to get a slice of that delicious racketeering pie.

2.) This will be a privacy disaster.

Agree 100%. It eliminates nuance and forces people into siloed bullying hot takes. It's the worst thing that has happened to political discourse in this country in the last 50 years.

I understand what the city is trying to get at, but the rules listed in the summary seem vague and nonsensical.

Par for the course for NYC.

I don't need 4 stories on the main page, I don't have any crypto right now, but I'm definitely not convinced cryptocurrencies are no longer relevant.

We're living in rather tumultuous times. The economic situation in the US and the dollar's status as the default reserve currency are not a given.

I think there is also interest in crypto in the financial services industry and in the government...I don't mean investing in Bitcoin, but in cryptocurrency in general.

It could all dry up and disappear tomorrow, no doubt about it, but it hasn't yet.