Do you have a reference for that? All I've seen is visas for the ultra-rich.

Besides, since trump has been happy to cancel student and work visas for people who say things he doesn't like, more visas would not help.

Both can be true, actually. As an aside, Russia truly lost in Ukraine in the first six weeks; most of their goals failed. Even if they were to take all of Ukraine, it would be so Pyrrhic as to not be a "win".

But, for the two statements: First: Russia cannot win in Ukraine. "Winning" is defined by history. There are lots of ways to end the war that will have Putin apologists claiming 100% victory, the best victory, everyone walks up to him and talks about his great victory, he's so powerful! So Russia is unlikely to take large amounts of Ukraine now; they have already taken the easy parts and are stuck on the medium parts. But if you change the "win" condition, he can easily win just by claiming victory (and having enough gullible fanatic to parrot his lines).

Second: Russia (well, Putin) will not want to stop at Ukraine once he declares victory and finds a few more Georgian votes. That seems likely, but he may have to stop, since Russia's military and economy is in terrible shape (as always happens after a long war). Putin is old, his allies in Russia are unhappy with the war, and his ability to wage war is far less than it was before he invaded.

As others have said, Thread is IPv6 so it is theoretically addressable from the Internet (though current border devices don't allow that). But since "protected subnet" is not the primary security mechanism for Matter, we'll likely avoid Skynet Over Thread.

If I understand you, you believe that IoT is the biggest threat on the internet? Uh, no, the internet has way worse threats. And you think that I hurt your security by installing them?

So, I think that you are terrified of things you don't understand, and "things you don't understand" includes most technical issues. So, you screech and whine loudly about those things. "Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand". Also "those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves." And Thread is not even in the top 20 current issues covered by that song...

Sounds good. Thread is available for anyone and is a mesh, so the more you deploy, the healthier the network becomes. Matter gives actual security, not "you can't easily get to the network so we assume it's safe". And it all works locally, without needing to talk outside your house. Plus, matter + thread controllers/routers are available in all Amazon/Apple/Google controllers, so you don't need Yet More Random Devices to make things work.

If you don't want smart devices in your house, no worries. Please stop moaning and whining every time they are mentioned; we know. And the world has so many real problems that we don't have the bandwidth to listen to problems solved by "well, I won't install any and I'll shut the fuck up." But if you do want convenient control over your house, and are willing to trade off some security for some functionality, this is an improvement.

Ha, businesses would just assign them to individuals with revokable contracts, and SCOTUS would side with the businesses. Besides, corporations are people, my friend. Honestly anything up to about 30 years is fine; much longer will give the same problems we have now.

Most of the problem comes from the copyright period being so insanely long. Make copyrights expire after ~30 years or so, and much of this problem evaporates (as well as many other problems).

Anti-fluoride and anti-vax started in the lunatic left fringe, yes. The difference is that Democrats realize that those bozos are not qualified to be city dog-catchers, much less head of HHS. Note how nobody from the lunatic left is elected to positions of power. Mainstream Republicans took the stupidest ideas from the lunatic left and made them the center point of their platform.

So no, your "both sides are just as bad" whining is as accurate as RFK Jr. Have you been checked for brain worms lately?

It sounds like your argument simplifies to "Texas juries consist of gullible idiots who rule based on the skill of the lawyers rather than on facts" which simplifies to "Texans are gullible idiots". Also "SCOTUS rules based on ideologies rather than on facts and on the constitution."

This is a strong condemnation of both Texans and of the SCOTUS justices. But... this seems well supported by reality. I'm sad but have to agree with you.

I mean, it's fine to define "open standard" as "MUST HAVE no license, no patent issues, complete and perfect documentation, and a perfect open implementation". And hey, all of those are good and are preferred. But saying "ha ha not open because it doesn't meet my definition of open" seems disingenuous. (And let's not even start with the arguments about "is this open implementation REALLY open by my definition of open"; I've seen enough of those BSD-vs-GPL arguments for a lifetime.)

So, saying "This standard is 0% open" is simply false. If the standard is available and has enough information to implement it, it fits a reasonable (if limited) definition of open.

The standard seems 100% open, including the E2EE piece. There is no open source implementation, but that is a completely different thing.

Note that I have never tried to access the RCS standard to prove its openness, because I really don't care. But I've seen multiple statements that the RCS standard is open, so I suspect you're just abusing the term "open standard" to mean "open implementation" to bash Google (or RCS, or E2EE, or just to whine, I have no idea).

Also: I am not happy that there are no open source RCS client or server implementations. I'm also unhappy that everyone is choosing to use Google's implementations (except Apple client, which is instead purposely excluding E2EE for now so that they can claim to be pro-privacy to the gullible.) But it seems to me that the one person in this mess who is NOT to blame for this is Google, unless your theory is "Google should have a shitty client so all of the clients can be shitty!" which would be odd.

"Proprietary extended version" is exactly how every open protocol in the world has ever worked. You implement the base protocol so that you can interoperate with everyone, then add your optional extensions with the hope that the extension will be a part of the protocol in the future. And "proprietary" is doing a LOT of work here given that Google's E2EE has been open from the beginning, and is now well documented and will likely be in a future version of the protocol.

Also, do you have a source for "default to Google/Jibe, even if the carrier has a valid server"? I cannot find anything to support that, and the RCS Wikipedia page says "Google Jibe provides RCS service directly if carrier does not" which I parse as "default to carrier server, fall back to Jibe". Not that Wikipedia is authoritative, but absent any other evidence...

It sounds like your preference is that RCS should not have E2EE, so that Google would also have access to the contents of every message? Or that protocol extensions should always be implemented by slow committee rather than "rough consensus and working code". You seem to really hate privacy, dude.

The page you linked is "RCS Business Messaging" and is a marketing front page with zero technical details and no mentions of "server" or Jibe. Maybe try providing a link that actually says what you are claiming?

The Wikipedia RCS page says "Google Jibe provides RCS service directly if carrier does not" which seems to directly contradict your whiney conspiracy theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

As far as I know, Google only "forces" RCS through Google's servers when the service provider has decided to not provide their own servers. Google only made their own servers because service providers were not providing them, and now some of them are still not providing them. (And I think a few have contracted with Google to use Google's servers.)

I think that iPhones will only use RCS if service providers have designated RCS servers.

If you have evidence that Google "forces all Android phones to send their RCS messages through Google's own servers" I'd be happy to hear it. Otherwise, please consider providing facts rather than pathetic conspiracy theories.

That's kinda like bragging that Ford makes amazing cars because they can use gas from *any* gas station. Is there a non-niche browser which CANNOT change the default search engine in less than 30 seconds?