deleted by creator

That is clearly whataboutism.

It’s not a story about the USA, and there are other countries affected, including all of Europe, some middle eastern countries, and most of Asia (and many countries that do not have an adversarial relationship with China, such as lendees of the BRI).

You’re free to criticize the USA. US News outlets are also free to do so, and do it all the time; they also don’t, or may honor or not honor a request from the white house to publish or hold back a story. They are publishers and allowed to do that (NPR included).

This story is specifically about an accusation of the Chinese government influencing articles seen (not moderation of ToS breaking, or illegal content) on the U.S. version of TikTok.

NCRI said in its report that “our findings, which, while not definitive proof of state orchestration, present compelling and strong circumstantial evidence of TikTok’s covert content manipulation.”

TikTok has repeatedly said the Chinese government has no influence over its U.S. app, and proving otherwise would be difficult — something that the Department of Justice has acknowledged in discussions over a law that could ban the app.

Meta is another story; they are free to moderate/censor content, but if they start curating content, and not letting an algorithm decide what to show users based on their behavior, then that is another story. It is still legal for them to do, but they may also be determined to be responsible as a publisher.

If Meta advertised themselves to users as a curation of ‘conservative news’, or ‘US propaganda’, and that’s what their users are signing up for, then that is fine. They advertise themselves as social media, with what people see being based on user behavior and posted content. If Meta was US Government owned, or funded, then they are welcome to do that in other nations as well, as long as they follow that nation’s laws regarding the matter, otherwise foreign governments are welcome to act on it in their nation has appropriate. (Meta is not US government owned, they actually have quite a few legal battles and inquiries by the US government, and are a self-interested greedy corporation).

The same applies of TikTok. If they advertised themselves as a Chinese propaganda source and registered as a foreign agent (as is necessary when a foreign government has content control of the medium in question in the US for political purposes), then that would be fine; they explicitly denied that though, and push the value of their algorithm, and that they are social media.

The US famously does have foreign state funding TV networks, and US Citizens are allowed to watch it if they so choose, just that they need to register as such:

The Justice Department announced the registration just hours after RT’s chief editor said the company had complied with the U.S. demand that it register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The move doesn’t restrict the channel’s content, but the network is required to publicly disclose details about its funding and operations as well as mark certain content distributed in the U.S. with labels.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/69e84148c8a44512bdc648b1bcac4f34

China has also had such TV Networks in the US since the 1990s.

Phages are pretty cool, but bacteria do develop phage resistance as well. Phages also can evolve to evade those resistances, in a co-evolutionary battle, but also Phages can still be seen as antigens to our own body.

A recent case-study: https://www.upmc.com/media/news/021424-phage-therapy

To avoid reading the whole article: Antibiotics no-longer worked for a patient in 2020 that developed an infection after needing immunosuppression for treatment of an autoimmune condition, so they tried phage therapy.

quote from the phage treatment section:

Within 24 hours of receiving phage therapy, the patient’s blood infection had resolved and she could go home, where she continued the phage and antibiotic combination. She developed a few short-lived breakthrough infections, which indicated the bacteria was getting around the therapy, so the researchers found an additional phage that targeted her bacteria.

With the addition of the new phage, the patient was blood infection-free for four months and able to travel out of state for a for a family beach vacation.

However, just over six months after starting phage therapy, the blood infection returned, and the phage-antibiotic combination was thought to be no longer effective. The patient died in 2022.

In order to learn why the infections recurred despite the combination being previously effective, laboratory testing revealed that the patient’s immune system had likely activated in a way that blocked the phages from attacking the bacteria.

I’m not disagreeing with the benefits of Phage Therapy, just that it isn’t likely a magic solution all on it’s own, and can still suffer similar resistance issues as antibiotics have. I’m a fan of multipronged attack vectors, to reduce the chance of developing progressive resistances (ie. wipe out the whole colony), and the more tools we have for that, the better.

Caused me to look back: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

Before Trump every Supreme Court Justice was approved by over 60% of the senate (except Alito and Thomas). After Trump took office, most are close almost 50/50’s. None of them manage to reach 60% anymore. Goes to show how controversial Alito and Thomas were BEFORE things became hyper partisan.

It’s more a joke. At this point ISPs really should be designated a telecom.

But, if Chevron Deference is the reason it’s on hold, that’s not likely to change until either the legislature passes something to say otherwise, or the supreme court swings the other way/toward normalcy. Which, if Harris wins this election and next election, there is a reasonable chance at. Other than their bitterness, some of the oldest and worst on the supreme court are just hanging on until a conservative takes the executive branch again.

Edit: good reason to get out and vote. Not just ensure Trump doesn’t win, but also need the Senate to approve supreme court replacements. Otherwise conservatives will just hold up nominations for 4-8 years until they can nominate someone like Alito or Thomas.

Edit Edit: Additional plea to get out and vote for Senators: even if Trump does win, if conservatives don’t hold the senate, he can’t put another Alito or Thomas on the court. I don’t think dems have the backbone to indefinitely block an appointment, but they would approve someone more moderate probably, that can be pursueded on matters such as net neutrality, abortion.

The courts blocked that rule already I think. net neutrality is on hold indefinitely.

I specifically found their lifetime plan reasonable to park a more professional sounding email address long-term to attach to resumes and the like, but not enough storage on that plan as my primary email.

I honestly don’t have much experience with it, I just set it up to have to use with my domains, without having to pay a monthly fee.

Unfortunately, I have no input on their other plans

I didn’t know about the tuta IMAP thing. Makes sense, unless they open it up for development from third party providers, but that is unlikely to ever happen. I can definitely see that as being a deal-breaker, and why I’ll probably stick with fastmail

I only learned about quarantine the other day. Specifically I think it was me sending short messages that make sense when emailing yourself, like a photo with no body text, or just “test”.

Going through there, found my Gmail, my personal domain, and my @fastmail domain all going there until I approved one of them.

I had my personal domain on a lifetime mxroute account before this, but wasn’t using it. Made the move to fastmail to seriously move away from Google. I have my purchase ebooks backed up there, and they could close my account someday because of it, even if it’s a personal backup of purchased items and not sharing with others.

Also making a wasabi account and using rclone to sync my library, so can move away on that front too. though Wasabi has a perfectly usable web interface. i have my reasons for choosing them over backblaze.

I’m a recent fastmail user:

Pros: First off, they put me on a 30 day trial, so had a full 30 days to try out; I would suggest trying their trial as one of your first things.

I do love that I can make so many aliases for different email things.

I do love I can add an API key to my bitwarden account to auto-generate email masks for things: https://bitwarden.com/blog/use-bitwarden-to-generate-email-aliases-with-fastmail/

Offer’s a reasonably priced family plan for up to 6 users (50 GB per user - after using Gmail from day one, including non-email storage, my Gmail is only up to 35 GB), and they have annual plan options which give you a discount over monthly for a better deal.

Has a calendar feature, and notes, for which I am putting stuff I used to text to myself, or message to my wife on discord.

Use multiple of my own domains (purchases elsewhere), and just set the nameservers to FastMail, and they handle setting up everything for modern email like DKIM, DMARC, and stuff. Though you are not obligated to purchase a domain, they have many you can choose from. They allow you to use a ton of custom domains (where as some other providers allow like 3, 10, or 30, depending on your plan).

They have an import feature from your old mail accounts. I did not try it, as I decided to start fresh. I’m trying to move away from gmail incase they lock me out someday, but my account is in good standing, and I have access to everything there as storage; just proactively moving all my important accounts over to my own domains.

I’ll put this at the end as it is a pro or con depending on your outlook: I trust FastMail to not use my data like google, and am okay with our business relationship. Because of this, I am okay with my data not being so hard locked down that FastMail is able to restore access/help users getting locked out of their accounts. For a true End-to-End encrypted option, I question if that recovery would be possible (which can be a good thing, if your purpose is protecting your data, even from warrants/court orders/subpoenas); they may have recovery keys, but what if you lost those?

Con: Found out after my trial ended, that when I email my work, my emails go to Quarantine. Our work uses Microsoft Outlook, and they have a quarantine feature that keeps stuff from hitting even the spam folder; my work has phishing set to ‘aggressive’, which is what is quarantining my emails. Once i passed one email through quarantine, i’m recieiving them fine now. Also if the user adds the email to their contacts list.

After looking around, this appears to be an ongoing issue with microsoft from fastmail emails. You cant email email the recipient to inform them of the quarantined email, because all emails are quarantined. Not a deal breaker, as it’s microsoft’s doing, not FastMail, but still annoying, especially if you have to tell them to add you as a contact first. May get better after your domain builds some reputation with their servers, I don’t really know yet. More of a reason for me to avoid recommending Microsoft as an email provider; quarantine is great for protecting users, but unless you have an IT person regularly checking and approving quarantined emails, it is so easy to miss legitimate emails from clients. I’ve also seen an email from my gmail account in the quarantine system, so it can catch up even big email providers.

A lot of people recommend https://tuta.com/ as a more privacy conscious option, and if I did decide to leave FastMail, they are probably what I would switch to. They do have a free email. Tuta also has family options, which can be more generous storage wise depending on your plan, but their family option appears to just be pay the full price of your plan for each user to add them to your family plan, and Tuta (at least from their pricing page), only has monthly as an option, no discounts for commitments.

For fastmail, I pay $132/year ($11/month equivalent - actually $14/month if on a monthly plan) for 50 GB for 6 users (300 GB total), For Tuta it appears to be €3/user/month for 20GB, or €8/user/month for 500 GB (so for 2 users, you are either paying €6 or €16). Ultimately I found FastMail to be a better choice for me. If you switch to business, they do have a €6/user/month option for 50 GB /user, which would be €12/month, so comparable to FastMail’s family plan if you only have 2 users, but less comparable if you need more than 2 users. Due to tuta’s pricing structure, you could just get each user the plan they need (not sure if that requires separate accounts, or if can be done on a family plan, which does have domain sharing implications, but maybe everyone wants their own domains).

My recommendation would be to make a FastMail trial, make a free tuta account, and try both for a month, then make your decision.

Thank goodness, hope it stays dead. I’m in figurative pain from agreeing with Rand Paul.

If you search for “home owner insurance non-renewal drone”, you should find tons of stories about it.

They may be hiring third parties, or doing it themselves, but regardless, it is happening.

Once again, to clarify, the smart camera thing has just been sitting in the back of my mind, not an accusation, just a concern as a possibility. Would probably be a fun investigation for an investigative journalist. Or just someone scouring those fun terms of service policies for language that might indicate such things.

Edit: Would actually be fun to get all of those companies to publicly state on the record that they do not, and will not ever do such a thing, your data is private, and will not be shared with anyone other than law enforcement, and/or without a warrant (or other legal court order).

My latest concern these car stories have brought on, is that Ring, Nest, Eufy, other smart home camera systems, are selling data.

No evidence to it atm, but Ring used to provide access to police; not a huge leap to selling collected data to data brokers and insurance companies.

Currently, insurance companies are deploying drones to check out properties, and terminate and/or non-renew home owners insurance based on the footage. It’s not a huge leap for smart camera providers to provide snapshots for this same purpose. It would be a huge betrayal of trust, and tank the brand, especially since many people set cameras up inside their home, but extracting pennies now, in exchange for losing several dollars per month subscription fees and hardware purchases, sounds just like something a lot of these companies would do.

I did try to get literal with reCAPTCHA a while back, and it just never finished. “Select every image with a bicycle in it” or motorcycle or stop light. I would select the images that only had a WHOLE in it, not the broken up ones into several images. It doesn’t like it when you try to answer it’s question properly.

Anyways, there’s several other captcha and anti-bot services now days, really would recommend people use a different provider, I hate reCaptcha so much.

pile of pennies < Single Bill < stack/bundle of cash < pile of cash < scrooge mcduck cash dive vault

or

bronze coin < silver coin < gold coin < pile of coins < gold bar < stack of gold bards < fort knox

I’ve had this discussion come up in meetings recently.

CustomGPT is like $500/month for 5000 queries… that limitation and price (if you have a reasonable amount of customers), kind of just means you are better off hiring one employee. I’m not going to ping them for pricing for their enterprise plan beyond that, as going to cost an employee anyways.

For sure good advice. I do trust the registrar I am on though. They are not US based, I have been with them for like 15 years, they are well known, automatically provide domain privacy without paying extra, and are not godaddy.

No matter who people choose, just remember to keep your domain locked when not changing registrars, and protect your registrar login with 2FA. Treat your registrar like you would treat your primary email or bank account.

That I really couldn’t say, only a few weeks in on emails that were not being used before, so not really getting “unsolicited spam”.

I am getting a lot of messages related changing my accounts over.

Their spam filter is configurable though:

They also have complex filters you can set up to either auto-label, or auto-sort non-spam into folders, from basic usage, up to complex regular expressions; depending on your level of dedication.

All I set up for now is an auto-filter any email with ‘unsubscribe’ somewhere in the body to be sent to an ‘subscriptions’ folder. I will get around to it more eventually.

I’m currently on the last 2 days of a free 30 day trial. I’m going to do annual pay for their family plan though, so I’m sticking with them.

I just switched to FastMail a few weeks ago with my own domains to move away from Google, to prevent this vary possibility.

I realize how screwed I am if my email carrier arbitrarily decides to cut me off. Haven’t changed every account, but I started with my bank/financial accounts, and basically intend to change them over time; every time I log into an account for something, I plan to change it.

Edit: Of course, not an advert for FastMail. They are simply who I choose; I own the domains, so I can easily switch to another provider in the future if I so choose without cutting off my accounts. I know more privacy focused people tend to prefer Proton Mail or Tuta Mail. I’m fine with the choices fastmail makes in comparison to the other providers, for the specific features they are able to offer for giving up E2E encryption, a reasonably price family plan, and some more generous offering for value/price.

If someone requires the extra privacy, for sure go for another provider.

I dunno, I watch YouTube on desktop with a premium account.

Since they began experimenting with ad injection directly into videos a month or so ago, I no longer use YouTube really. Videos rarely load proper the first time. Often takes 7 or 8 reloads of the page to get a video to start, sometimes stopping mid video.

Clearly since I can get it to play, it feels like a Google problem. Could be because I’m on Firefox, or Linux though (maybe even an update to something else, but all other video streaming services work just fine). Turning off uBlock Origin and uMatrix do not help at all.

Even if it isn’t Google’s fault, it’s still causing me to not use their service anymore. Feels like they are just trying to drive away users in general.