I like burner phones for setting up accounts that require a phone number these days....like Google.

Whenever I set up a new account with them, I go buy a sim, plug it in , do the verification and then days later that sim runs out, etc....

Americans had better take steps to preserve their democracy before it is too late.

The US is a Constitutional Republic....people/representatives are democratically elected to represent our states/people.

That being said....I dunno where the fuck all this "losing our democracy " shit is coming from....more was being done to destroy the US and suppress speech under Biden and the Democrats than anything going on now.

The "democracy" is working just fine here...in fact it's doing very well....I'm quite happy with it....

How many American companies have ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex?

Well those companies are not a risk to the US govt.....China is an enemy of the US, and all companies in China have 1st allegiance to China govt and are required to aid in any way.

US companies, not so much.

Everyone in the US needs to get it through their thick heads...People's Republic of China is not our friends in fact it is an active, antagonistic enemy that is actively pushing for the US's downfall.

Always treat them as such.

Thank you VERY much for the info!!

Meta has run out of new ways to monetize information they're collecting from their own apps, so they're branching out into collecting all your activity across the net to give them new information they can aggregate, process, and sell.

I have a Mac Pro tower...I might try to repurpose at some point with Linux.

So, there's no problems with any of the Apple "security" hardware on the Mac boxes with respect to installing Linux and having full access to SDD, memory and other fun hardware stuff for computing?

And here I thought that the way to appease Trump was with a Golden Shower...

Ah...the Russian Hoax documents generated by the Clinton campaign still run STRONG with this one....

Hmm....trying to figure what to do with a 2019 beefy Intel Mac Pro...?

Can one put Linux on those? I ask due to all the Apple hardware "security" chips I understand are in there....

Seems it would be nice if I could eventually repurpose it with Linux, maybe throw in a couple of NVIDIA cards to be a local host for some larger AI models...?

I just KNEW it was a good idea to hang on to all those old roadmaps from days gone by...

Oh sure they'll be outdated in some aspects, but largely, roads and highways don't just get up and move themselves....

And they laughed when I said I don't wanna throw them all out....

Russia is pretty much a joke. The entire Ukraine invasion has proven they:

1) Can't keep a modern navy afloat, let alone actively engaged with an enemy.

2) Can't keep an army feed and supplied beyond their own boarders, zero logistics capability

3) Can't muster serious troop strength, they are literally running out of conscripts, and even low quality ones like prisoners and men generally beyond their best fighting years in age.

4) Don't have the manufacturing and supply chain capability to produce replacement weapons and armor, and their stocks of old mid-century junk are even rapidly dwindling.

About the only thing Russia has is ICBMs that _probably_ work. They have exactly nothing that has even the slightest chance of intercepting or blunting the harm of the inevitable reprisal if they used them in anger, so they can't unless they are at the murder suicide stage rather surrender level of insanity.

There is no need to for NATO for the US not even as a staging area to counter Russian forces. As far as Western Europe is concerned, Finland and Norway can probably defend themselves and the Russians would run out of food and fuel before they reached anywhere else. Never mind that most of the EU "powers" have proven they are as incapable and decrepit militarily as Russia with their little Libya attempt. Any conflict will be a sad little show of hasbeens slapping at each other with drone strikes on childrens birthday parties.

The 21st century power struggle will be in the Pacific.

Well, of course Meta is going to remove it from the app; they don't want the common users to be aware of how much data their smart glasses are collecting and sending to Meta's servers to be processed and monetized. Now all the biometric data will simply be silently uploaded to the cloud, where Meta, having virtue-signaled their 'rectitude' by removing it from the app, will be publicly above reproach.

This creates a covert listening device, which a crime to operate it in many places and a crime to own in some. That includes the US under 18 U.S.C. 2511. But rest easy, the maximum penalty is only 5 years in federal prison and a $250'000 fine. Nothing to worry about.

You are missing a nuance here in the Federal law.

This is with reference to INTERCEPTING conversation / communication. Federally, it is considered a one-party consent rule situation....as long as one person in the conversation knows, it's ok....so if YOU are recording it is presumed YOU know you are and consent is satisfied.

This law is primarily considered for wiretaps, bugging places, etc.

The problem with this approach is, it only works as long as someone does the checking. In practice everyone turns on 'safe update channel' and nobody actually tests the bleeding edge, ten days elapse, and the malicious code flows into the 'safe channel'.

It is like sending for help in a first-aide situation, you need to point at someone specifically, make eye contact and say "YOU! go get help" if you just shout 'someone get help' and go back to recuse breathing or whatever you're occupied with everyone will stand around on-looking assuming someone else is doing something.

I love Ruby, it is an elegant language and it has made great performance gains in resent years, but but bundler and the drama around rubygems is a really problem, for anyone trying to make commercial use of it. I hate to say it but if Ruby is going to survive it probably needs to find another major patron besides Shopify, that is willing take some ownership and investment in the outside the standard library supply chain. Bandages like this are not going to cut it, and pure community lead effort isn't likely to be able to keep up with the evolving threat landscape. Unless your project is Linux, Samba, Bind, Apache, level deployment scale it just does not work with the degree of attack surface something like package/module repository offers.

Legal to do covert, hidden recording? I doubt that.

Happens all the time in the US my friend...please do research this, it isn't like in EU.

Many if not most states in the US have the one party consent laws....so if one person in the conversation knows it's being recorded, no problem.

How do you think all these undercover news stories and blogs get these undercover footage and audio to back up their stories of corruption, etc?

Anyone can do this...and no, there is not a "special carve out" for being a news reporter. There's no special "news reporter license" over here in the US, anyone can report what they want.

For a simple example...how do you think all these undercover footage citizens over here get away with ring cameras and the other myriad of cameras set up to record their property and anything within view of their property?

Please believe that is is true, that in the US, you are largely able to record anything almost anywhere in public without consequences.

I was about to say "Fuck the Moon".....we need this tech for riding a motorcycle in summer here in southern Louisiana area (New Orleans)....

It's barely June and already sweltering....80+F by 7am these days....