Just comes with the downside that I can’t take part in every day life, talk to my friends, stay connected with old friends, borrow an electric bicycle, transfer money easily… I have to drive to a shop only to see it’s closed and they posted that on Instagram… I mean there’s a whole world out there which I don’t just want to disconnect from and become some sort of hermit…

Here’s the link: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage/

Maybe you want to think for a moment before clicking. I think it’s relatively harmless information. But visiting the CIA’s website will get your IP address into their server logs.

I don’t really know what to say. Try not to allow them to get to you. Because that’s part of the game. To spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. Maybe break people’s spirit and make them panick. And it’s also harmful if people feel overwhelmed and that there’s nothing they can do. Because that’s an instant win for the dark side once they have manipulated the regular people enough so everyone thinks it’s futile and won’t even try to fight back. In theory, the citizens/people have power. But yeah, I have no clue, so don’t take advice from me. And I think an overreaction is warranted.

Honestly, I don’t think this is common practice in non-oppressive countries. I mean sure, this happens in North Korea, Iran, China… But I’m relatively free to consume what I want with a few minor exceptions. For example we don’t import food that isn’t food-safe by our standards. Regardless if it’s common practice to eat it in other places. Also food may not be able to enter the country due to laws on animal cruelty. Similar things apply to electronic devices that aren’t up to code. And some select few things are banned altogether and you can’t have them and neither can someone import them. Other than that, regulations aren’t super strict. I can use all American social media platforms despite them stealing my personal data and violating European privacy laws regularly, can use Russian or Chinese websites… I think I live in a free country.

Helping domestic economy is done with tariffs / import tax. And not by banning things and putting people in jail.

And mind that this isn’t about the service that collects your data and gives it to the Chinese government. This is about downloading the model file and using it all by yourself. So no data gets transferred to a foreign country. And it’s not because people could get harmed or anything. This is just because the vice president doesn’t want it personally. Like in some dictatorship. Otherwise they would have banned transferring data into foreign countries, if that’s what it’s about. But they didn’t do that, because it’s not about protecting the people.

Or did I miss something and there are other examples for limitations on import?

Well, I certainly hope they do double-entry bookkeeping, off-site backups, versioning and keep old records… Plus any sane agency and companies have procedures in place so not even the boss can’t mess up everything permanently with one mouse click. It’ll pop up somewhere as part of the procedure. And there will be ways to reverse things. Yes, it’s massively concerning that he wields that amount of power from within the government. But I think this is an extremely unlikely scenario. And Musk isn’t even the type to do it this way. Plus even if… The treasury is the entity who invents the money. If Musk takes their money hostage, it’d mess up things for a while. But ultimately they could just lock him away and print new money.

I don’t want to play it down. I think there will be some very bad consequences because of this. But I really don’t think Musk is the main concern. He’s not malicious in the same way as other politicians. He’s also a memelord, likes attention, he likes to be popular and be liked by the people. I think that’s amongst his motivations. And the latter makes it a bit unlikely to attack the whole population so bluntly.

And I don’t think the same thing applies to other people in power. Some of them are plain evil and don’t give a f… about being liked. That makes them free to commit any malicious act. And for example the president can write executive orders and mess up anything he likes. Immediately. He can bring nuclear doom upon us with a push of a button. The vice president also has quite some power. And while he seems like a complete toolbag to me, he’s a very dangerous mixture of stupid?/determined? and evil. And we have some more unfortunate people in high positions.

I think I’m far more concerned with that, than with specifically Musk. But yeah, all of this is super dangerous and we can just hope for the best. Up until now a few uncomfortable things have happened. But some fears didn’t manifest. I don’t think it’s doomsday yet.

Agreed. And he’s willing. And useful and has a ludicrous pile of money available. I still wonder if Musk is pissed that his special government position turned out to be glorified computer administrator. But there’s likely more going on behind the scenes.

Yes. But not Elon Musk. He can’t follow a coordinated plan. In fact not really any plan like he’s proven over and over. And he won’t listen to other people. Maybe he’s doing it in the short term and on accident. But I don’t think he’s a very reliable puppet. Neither is he the puppet master. He seems to have a good financial advisor though. And lots of money.

I think this is about apps and not the operating system. But yeah, the stock ROMs also phone home to Google. You’d need to patch that. For example like custom ROMs like GrapheneOS do. I don’t see another viable alternative. But that still leaves you with the issues with the apps mentioned in the article.

Wow, bold choice to ban the import of technology and knowledge. Usually governments are worried about export, so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Btw, how is the Nvidia stock price doing?

It needs to have a different name than other games. It means you can’t pick the same name somebody else already picked for their game or product.

Sure. Piracy and archiving can be related. But what kind of object/shape would that be? Ultimately every digital file is threatened with vanishing. Unless some people keep it around. But that’s a very broad statement about how the world works in general.

Thx. Explains why I haven’t heard of any of that. I’ve stopped accumulating every hobby out there at some point, and I didn’t make it to figurines and 40k.

Btw, can anyone explain what piracy in 3D printing is about? Is this about some proprietary and costly replacement parts for a specific use? Or Patreon art/designs by independent creators? And what’s Materize? Some underground platform?

I’d agree. At that age it might to be more appropriate to learn how to ride a bike, explore the real world, practice social skills, dexterity, balance, learn to read and write… And kids have lots of energy and sitting on their butt in front of a screen kind of takes away from other things. It might be better to wait until they’re 10 or 12 or something. But yeah, I think at 6 you should be able to hold scissors. Or cut the meal on your plate with a fork and a knife.

Same, same. But the occasional app refusing to work due to missing Play services, all the Instagram posts everyone except me took notice of, and all the hoops I have to jump through, kind of remind me of that regularly.

Figure out the ratio of your incomes and everyone pays that ratio? Not that hard. I’m not sure if it’s super healthy to pay for sex in a relationship. I mean you do you…

I think it’s more: “Don’t use a smartphone”. It’ll send those requests through any internet connection. No matter if it’s a VPN or Tor.

Maybe you can use letsencrypt’s DNS-01 challenge. That works without an HTTP connection. But ultimately, I don’t think you need a certificate on the server, doesn’t Cloudflare tunnel the traffic (unencrypted) and terminate the HTTPS on their side?

yunohost has a dedicated page in the admin ui for you to configure your domains and certificates. default is a self-signed one unless you generate a proper one

Last time I checked, all the regular harddisk manufacturers were kind of similar in reliability. You can get lucky or unlucky with a specific model series or specific drive… But it’s not like there was a manufacturer to recommend which outperforms the other ones.

(Though the hdds aren’t all the same. There are definitely smaller and bigger ones, fast and very slow ones, some meant for 24/7 operation and consumer drives.)