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Comment Europe is free to rearm and STAY armed. (Score 0) 147

Feasting on the sugar teat of US military welfare has consequences like voluntary national weakness. Europe is amply wealthy enough to afford rearmament (and free to cut spending wasted on anything which does not benefit European security).

Trump did the EU an unwitting favor. So did Putin. What it does with that teachable moment is a matter of choice.

Submission + - FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones By Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customers' IDs (404media.co)

An anonymous reader writes: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to make it effectively impossible for people to buy what many call burner phones — a phone not explicitly linked to your identity at the point of purchase — which would impact privacy-conscious people, to domestic abuse survivors, to journalists, and many more. The FCC plans to do this by legally forcing the country’s telecoms to store a wealth of personal information about essentially all phone customers, including a government issued identification number and their physical address, alarming privacy advocates and civil rights activists who compare the measures to those from authoritarian countries where it can be difficult to buy a mobile phone plan without giving up your identity.

The proposed change would drastically shake up how people obtain phone plans in the U.S., and have all sorts of privacy and cybersecurity knock-on effects. The FCC is proposing the data collection partly as a way to combat scammers, with telecoms being required to collect other information on business and foreign customers like the intended use case of their bulk phone plan purchase and their IP address. But the changes would mean telecoms collect data on all new and renewing customers, and the FCC provides a long list of other things that the collected data could help authorities with.

In a synopsis of the proposed changes, the FCC writes, “Specifically, we seek comment on requiring originating providers to, at a minimum, obtain and retain the name, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternate telephone number of any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services.” The goal of collecting this data, the FCC writes, is to deter some scammers from getting onto a telecom network in the first place, and so “enforcers will be better able to identify the scammers when they do.” The FCC compares the changes to the sort of data collected by banks to prevent money laundering.

One section stresses that the newly collected data would help “law enforcement to more easily identify callers that use the network to perpetuate crimes by ensuring that voice providers have accurate and complete customer information.” It goes on to ask if the data would help identify people buying and selling illicit goods; the investigation of “fraud, espionage, or influence operations that undermine national security”, and “address abuse in text messaging networks.” “Criminals continue to leverage the anonymity provided by phone calls and texts to defraud Americans and exploit communications networks to further other crimes,” one section reads.

Submission + - macOS 27 Golden Gate breaks Asahi Linux boot access (nerds.xyz)

BrianFagioli writes: Apple may not officially support Linux on Apple Silicon Macs, but macOS 27 Golden Gate is making some users feel outright unwanted. The latest beta reportedly causes Asahi Linux installations to disappear from the boot picker and Startup Disk utility, prompting the Asahi team to warn users not to upgrade. While the Linux partitions themselves are still intact, the situation highlights just how much control Apple maintains over the boot process on its own hardware.

To be fair, Asahi developers believe this could simply be a bug rather than a deliberate attempt to block Linux. Still, incidents like this are exactly why many open source advocates remain skeptical of Apple Silicon as a long-term Linux platform. When one macOS beta update can suddenly hide an entire operating system, it becomes painfully clear that Linux on Apple hardware exists only as long as Apple allows it.

Comment Fear of misused science is legitimate, but... (Score 1) 35

That doesn't make functional improvements intrinsically wrong.

As human labor becomes worthless there will be no need for an underclass thus no incentive for less capable humans to reproduce for economic reasons.

Bringing new life into the world to exploit its labor is common and cruel. Unwanted life, often females for economic reasons, is often sold into de-facto slavery, prostitution etc. Who does not exist does not suffer.
Free humanity of economic incentives to spew out defectives then humans can make informed choices.

Make those humans increasingly intelligent and they'll be more capable of acquiring wisdom. Of course eugenics will be abused to some extent, and of course those ideologically committed to lowering all humanity to the same level will be offended, but if they're out-competed by their betters nothing of value is prevented.

Comment At 89 be glad of death's mercy. (Score 4, Interesting) 74

We evolved to cling to life and suffer as long as possible, but old age is fucking horrible (I'm old) and modern refusal to face that is degenerate. In more practical times easy deaths were appreciated.

In other news, heart attacks aren't a bad way to croak (I've had one). Instead of pretending we should fight death so we can suffer longer and die anyway, a more nuanced view is wise.

The original Trek cast are only mourned because they're a token of viewers long death youth. Their work is long finished. It's OK for fans to let go.

Comment Corporate "good" is not local public good. (Score 4, Insightful) 23

Data centers squander increasingly valuable common resources and do not need to be located where they burden local communities or aquifers.

AI data centers are not a public good. NIMBY in this is legitimate.
Sacrificing resources to serve corporate masters is silly while general opposition is logical and wise.

Epstein class investors can put data centers distant from anything that matters. When the hardware then later the structures go obsolete that distance keeps them where they can (as many will be) left basically abandoned with nil community impact.

Reasons do not exist for the public to support the rich getting richer off community water supplies. Reasons do not exist to trust the Epstein class to be good stewards.

Democracy includes the right to oppose social parasites for any legal reason. There are no personal negative consequences for opposing AI data centers as fraud, waste and abuse they are. Just say no.

There are plenty of places to put them where they aren't serious public burdens. The US isn't short of unoccupied land (see night time satellite images if in doubt).

Comment Beware false equvalency. (Score 1) 48

Neocon warmongering does not invalidate NeoSoviet Putinist warmongering, preceding post-Soviet, Soviet and or Tsarist warmongering.

The Russian body count is vastly higher among their own people and those they invaded. Note that Russians fleeing NeoSoviet imperialist conscription hauled arse for NATO countries, and that formerly neutral Sweden and Finland joined NATO in response to standard Russian behaviours.

Comment Re:Yes They are taking the piss. (Score 1) 92

"Taking the piss" is a coarse way of saying "personalized water conservation". Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter

Employee catheterization and stoma output harvesting are communal ways Google can proactively involve staff and even local communities in resource reharvesting, plumbing being a solved problem.

Comment Good for FOSS therefore good for US consumers. (Score 3, Interesting) 87

The more global consumers are alienated by US software and others business practices the more all customers benefit from alternatives. The US is free to compete or not as it chooses.

US culture is now inherently anti-consumer, pro-kleptarchy and anti-personal freedom. As a USian that does me zero good while FOSS does me and other informed users much good, in my case since early this century.

US exports mostly enrich the kleptarchy while US milfare mostly enabled US economic competitors thus facilitating offshoring and domestic job destruction in other than miltary and related businesses.

The US is free to end restrictive arms sale conditions and behave like adults. Weapons sales should not come with a leash unless the objective is domestic job destruction.

Comment New hardware is nice but not a need. (Score 2) 28

I buy mostly buy used hardware, there being no need for perpetual performance improvement unless profit is at stake. No one needs a "new" gaming toy because it's a toy therefore a discretionary purchase.

The retro gaming community especially remains well served and adaptable as do "home lab" enthusiasts typically running business class used hardware, new tiny and SFF PCs etc.

Hardware used to be expensive yet the PC revolution carried on.
Games do not require constant performance improvement to be enjoyable.

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