Joined the Mayqueeze.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The American fear of a proper ID system is puzzling to me. It’s constant fear mongering of overreach by the man and not enough appreciation of the benefits. The first one is a self-updating voter registry that eliminates the process of registering or having to check on your registration to make sure you didn’t get knocked off for no good reason. All people need to update their home addresses when they move. Another benefit is - if implemented well of course - that everybody could have a 2FA-quality chip in their pocket to allow for many services to be done reasonably safely online. The dreaded lines of the DMV come to mind. Another benefit is you could prove very quickly who you are, especially if fingerprints are on the chip, to counter mistaken identity arrests that may or may not have been instigated by a so-called AI.

    So the government knows everything about you, sure. But it’s not a one-sided deal. And frankly, even if the government did not have this information on you before it turned tyrannical, it would ID you as a possible malcontent in no time. Your data is already available for sale on various data broker sites.

    I realize that me preaching the benefits of a proper ID system to the Americans in times of 47 and ICE raids is a bit wonky. I am not going to speculate if the self-updating voter registry could’ve prevented 47. And ICE under 47 might find its job “easier.” But from what I’ve read and heard they haven’t exactly been detail-oriented public servants. When the rule of law breaks down everybody gets effed. And so-called illegal immigrants also have phones and use the internet so their information was also available for sale before stable genius returned to the orange office.

    Of course there are dangers that need to be addressed. Access to the database needs to be tighter than a sphincter and every query needs to be logged. Every system will be abused. Checks and balances need to be there, ideally with a right to find out who looked you up and for what reason for everyone. I’d prefer a system embedded in law over internet data brokers.


  • Some of the technical info flew right over my head in the first article. What I took from the piece is that he has valid points so far as I can see and understand it. I would say nevertheless the author was a bit biased as well. And it’s 3 years old. It may still be accurate, IDK.

    I use F-Droid and have been for a while and I’m not aware of any issues this could’ve caused me. But I’m also not using it for essential systems. Not for browsers, VPN, etc. I have downloaded games, a couple of notes apps, that sort of thing. I would never recommend you get all your apps from there. It’s an addition to Google or your usual poison.

    Security experts will never be happy; that’s their job. The author is also talking about your threat model. Are you okay with certain risks? The truth is also that somebody could screw you over on Google Play. It may be less likely comparatively but not impossible. So you try to jump from rock to rock hoping no alligator catches you. So far no alligator got me.


  • If we needed everyone we want to name anything after was required to be a saint, we wouldn’t have anybody to name stuff after.

    Churchill - the man who rose to lead his country through WW2 - was a big colonial killer in India before. Both the reformator Luther and the philosopher Kant were raging antisemites. A non-insignificant number of US founding fathers held slaves. Bill Clinton balanced the budget while molesting an intern (and allegedly worse). It’s rare that we already know the president is a sexual predator before he gets elected. Yet, there will be a probably very small library named after 47 if there isn’t one already. It’s probably the best library in the world!

    History goes through many hands before it gets whittled to a generally agreed upon narrative. Churchill was lucky in real life. Daystromn was lucky in canon. And while sympathies may change over time, I’m not expecting a name change in trek Okinawa.




  • Whether you like it or not, they probably already know who you are too. They’re collecting shadow profiles of people who haven’t signed up through various means.

    If others have posted pictures of you on a meta service, there is a good chance it already knows what you look like and they know it’s you even if you’re not tagged.

    People who allow them access are just less work for them. And now they have info to train their so-called AI models. Now it’s a question about what are they going to with them. The application is wide. Create fake pictures, create fake profiles, etc. And at some point we will find out about a massive data leak that happened because the company is run by unapologetic sociopaths.



  • I think there are a couple of reasons. STIX and STX were failures, one so bad it ended the franchise. Also, IIRC Avery Brooks wasn’t happy about the Sisko ending and he has pretty much stayed out of the limelight since DS9. While it was on the air the viewing figures weren’t extraordinary. Worf was thrown in to get more TNG fans interested in the same way Jeri Ryan was put in a catsuit on VOY. DS9’s last two seasons were binge TV before we knew that existed, it was ahead of its time, which explains why it’s a sleeper hit and fan favorite. But not a great financial success at the time.




  • I think with Disco S1 they attempted a reset that didn’t work. They all looked the same. Nobody really liked it. So they reverted to giving them hair and there’s a throwaway line in S2 by Burnham that’s tantamount to admitting failure by the show runners. And then we don’t hear anything about it again. My guess is SNW will continue with ridged Klingons and just never explain it.

    If they really wanted to go into canon, you could say there was the augment era during ENT, then they fixed their ridges with a hypospray, and then just before SNW reaches TOS times, there was a recurrence of the augment craze on Qronos. Or a COVID like virus escaped from a lab. It would be odd because all the characters we know from TOS never comment on this oddity - Spock, Kirk, Uhura have all seen ridged Klingons, then the smooth kind, and then ridged again in the movies. But stranger plot points have been ignored in Trek. Borg Queen anyone?


  • I think these two are almost if not entirely exclusionary. It cannot be Federation space if the inhabitants are pre-warp.

    There are prime directive eff-ups. Like the flower bed trespasser assassins of S1 TNG. The Fed is in contact with the Edo although they shouldn’t be but somehow s happened. We don’t really know where they’re located in reference to everything else in the Fed or the universe. But even if everything around them was warp hopping mad, the system of the Edo or at least their planet Rubicun III should be an exclave. In the scenario where the Fed would have to defend them from a hypothetical anti-prime-direxxer it could be a protectorate but not Fed territory.

    I can think of two other instances with the PD that come close to this scenario but are no cigar. Data’s long-fingered pen pal Salenka or something like that and Worf’s adopted brother trying to save his knocked up pre-warp Penny Johnson. In both cases I don’t think we know if the territory was Fed, Fed adjacent, or something else. And it’s a moot point anyway because they were defending against natural disasters, not other species.