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Comment Nope (Score 1, Flamebait) 173

These guys don't actually believe in free speech. During Covid when a democratic governor shut down a church, they sang the song of the first amendment. When tradiional Catholics were categorized a certain way, they sang the song again. But time and time again you can see that these guys don't actually care. No principles. Why would a college student, foreign or domestic, not want to protest? Or speak out about damn near anything? Or have any of a huge variety of opinions? They have to be super careful now about how and what and to whom (or where) they share these opinions? And we're supposed to believe that the current administration will limit this hyper critical treatment of online speech to foreigners wanting to come here to college? Are they promising this is limited to online reviews - by the way its not... they were asking/forcing Harvard to review their cameras... Will they hire spies to go on campus during protests to gather video and further intel? I'd almost guarantee that they will/have/do. Will there be a Palantir database for this too? Will citizens accidentally be pulled into this dataset?

And just to further cement the absurdity of all of this, Republicans on J6 carried the flag of traitors all over DC. But they're not "foreign terrorists", just domestic. I'm not even sure if that's sarcasm or sadness. I just can't understand anything these days.

Comment Re:Nightmare Workplaces += AI Bullshit Story (Score 1) 150

Say what you want about Biden but he did more to "stimulate" and build manufacturing in the USA. Señor TACO acts tough like he is bringing manufacturing back but this completely remains to be seen. What little jobs that could come from modern manufacturing takes sincerity, capital, incentives/rebates/grants/cheap-loans, and an educated and available work force for this to happen. The administration is not inspiring me in any way on these. The modern republican party only knows how to sow the seeds of a culture war, deregulate, and pass a tax cut. These won't be enough.

For a further anecdote, I know someone in parts manufacturing for manufacturing and they have been very busy for a year plus. They have a hard time hiring good people that can do the work and stay on. So to say Trump will accomplish more than Biden makes me very suspicious. And then think about what they're gonna do to interest rates if all the treasury market/bond worries play out with an increase in deficit spending and federal debt? Now it'll be harder to get the capital, do the buildouts, hope your investments pay off, hope the tariffs are stable enough to incentive on shored production?

If you kick out significant numbers of able immigrants, you pressure the available work force even more. Now you need to train/hire them for modern manufacturing - and if this in particular rings any bells that would be because that's the talk of a Democrat, not a Republican! You think Republicans are going to talk about helping kids go to tech school w/ subsidized tuition?! There are SOO many questions to all of this.

Comment Re:Nate White on Trump (Score 1) 218

Oh horse shit. I heard on a podcast, talking about Canadian vendors (and avoiding American products btw), saying how their customers would just stare at the prices of European cheese being sold. They would be in shock saying, you want us to pay that, for that!? So, whatever. I'm sure European organic, location of origin, cheese, wine, everything, is already expensive and have their prices already jacked up. You can enjoy your expensive beef. Frankly, as a liberal/centrist American I hope that we don't sell any of our American beef anywhere else, its too expensive, herd counts are down. I feel for the general situation. Some prices are up. Some (like commodities, soy, alfalfa, etc) are down. It is gonna be a K shaped shitty economic situation for a while. But keep some context please. Like we're jacking up your prices, whatever.

Comment Re:Targetted by DOGE? (Score 1) 127

He won because he said enough nice things to a broad enough coalition to get angry people to vote for him. Mad about inflation well I'll get groceries down. Mad about your school library book choices well I'll defund them. Etc. Democrats were mad at their leadership and so their only choices were to vote third party, not vote, or plug their nose and vote for their chosen next in line. Republicans were mad enough to have one of many reasons to vote for the orange clown show. The real story is that in the first Trump term he was surrounded by enough establishment conventional Republicans that there were sane voices in the room. They're all gone. Now it is yes men, yes women, and only those self selected by their indiscriminate loyalty to him. They no longer hear the voices from the center or anywhere else. It's all about the Stephen Miller and the Breitbart flood of shit. Their base no longer consumes sane/centrist/other media. These are farmers who will tariff their own (or their neighbor's) farm out of existence to own the libs. And then not even second guess their fat government check when they plant soy beans again anyways. It is insanity. No one thinks critically anymore. Idiots everywhere. I hope the left can learn from this and return to the center instead of talking about drag shows and reparations all the time. Democratic candidates can win in Montana, Minnesota and all these rural mostly conservative states when they run centrist liberals and mostly stay in the center as a party.

Submission + - Dave Täht has passed away, aged 59 (libreqos.io)

TheBracket writes: Dave Täht, the driving force behind the Bufferbloat project and a contributor to FQ-CoDel, and CAKE in the Linux kernel has passed away. Dave spent years doing battle with Internet latency and bufferbloat, contributing to countless projects. In recent years, he's been working with Robert, Frank and myself at LibreQoS to provide CAKE at the ISP level, helping Starlink with their latency and bufferbloat, and assisting the OpenWrt project.

Some of his work: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bufferbloat.net%2Fpr...
His Wikipedia entry: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

Comment Re:Smart watches are such shit though (Score 2) 29

Yes, but they're amazing for running. I have an older (series 3?) apple watch. The core OS no longer updates, but the app for nike run club sure did. It broke itself. The NRC app depends on a newer version of the OS. I refused to buy a new one out of spite. I now run a lot less than I did in '23, I'm a hair over 40 years old and now I just take the dog on more walks. But it still sucks, I loved running with the watch and the NRC integration. Our dog is a Beagle so he is pretty near impossible to take on jogs with me in spite of rather excellent stamina. Point is, I will soon be deciding if a running watch is worth the purchase.

Submission + - Fifteen Years Later, Citizens United Defined the 2024 Election (brennancenter.org)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: The influence of wealthy donors and dark money was unprecedented. Much of it would have been illegal before the Supreme Court swept away long-established campaign finance rules. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 decision that swept away more than a century’s worth of campaign finance safeguards, turns 15 this month. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it the worst ruling of her time on the Court. Overwhelming majorities of Americans have consistently expressed disapproval of the ruling, with at least 22 states and hundreds of cities voting to support a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Citizens United reshaped political campaigns in profound ways, giving corporations and billionaire-funded super PACs a central role in U.S. elections and making untraceable dark money a major force in politics. And yet it may only be now, in the aftermath of the 2024 election, that we can begin to understand the full impact of the decision.

Submission + - Anti-Trump Searches Appear Hidden on TikTok (ibtimes.com)

AmiMoJo writes: Searches for anti-Trump content are now appearing hidden on TikTok for many users after the app came back online in the U.S. TikTok users have taken to Twitter to share that when they search for topics negatively related to President Donald Trump, a message pops up saying "No results found" and that the phrases may violate the app's guidelines. One user said that when they tried to search "Donald Trump rigged election" on a U.S. account, they were met with blocked results. Meanwhile, the same phrase searched from a U.K. account prompted results. Another user shared video of them switching between a U.S. and U.K. VPN to back up the user's viral claims, which has since amassed more than 187,000 likes.
Crime

Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Pardoned (bbc.com) 339

Slashdot readers jkister and databasecowgirl share the news of President Donald Trump issuing a pardon to Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. An anonymous reader shares a report from the BBC: US President Donald Trump says he has signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold. Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had called Ulbricht's mother to inform her that he had granted a pardon to her son. Silk Road, which was shut down in 2013 after police arrested Ulbricht, sold illegal drugs using Bitcoin, as well as hacking equipment and stolen passports.

"The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me," Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening. "He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!" Ulbricht was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking. During his trial, prosecutors said Ulbricht's website, hosted on the hidden "dark web", sold more than $200 million worth of drugs anonymously.

Submission + - Trump Pardons Silk Road Founder (nypost.com)

databasecowgirl writes: President Trump announced Tuesday night that he had granted a âoefull and unconditionalâ pardon to Ross Ulbricht, founder of the notorious dark web site Silk Road.

Submission + - Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy (404media.co)

An anonymous reader writes: If it wasn’t already obvious, the last 72 hours have made it crystal clear that it is urgent to build and mainstream alternative, decentralized social media platforms that are resistant to government censorship and control, are not owned by oligarchs and dominated by their algorithms, and in which users own their follower list and can port it elsewhere easily and without restriction. [...] Mastodon’s ActivityPub and Bluesky’s AT.Protocol have provided the base technology layer to make this possible, and have laid important groundwork over the last few years to decorporatize and decentralize the social internet.

The problem with decentralized social media platforms thus far is that their user base is minuscule compared to platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, meaning the cultural and political influence has lagged behind them. You also cannot directly monetize an audience on Bluesky or Mastodon—which, to be clear, is a feature, not a bug—but also means that the value proposition for an influencer who makes money through the TikTok creator program or a small business that makes money selling chewing gum on TikTok shop or a clothes brand that has figured out how to arbitrage Instagram ads to sell flannel shirts is not exactly clear. I am not advocating for decentralized social media to implement ads and creator payment programs. I’m just saying that many TikTok influencers were directing their collective hundreds of millions of fans to follow them to Instagram or YouTube, not a decentralized alternative.

This doesn’t mean that the fediverse or that a decentralized Instagram or TikTok competitor that runs on the AT.Protocol is doomed. But there is a lot of work to do. There is development work that needs to be done (and is being done) to make decentralized protocols easier to join and use and more interoperable with each other. And there is a massive education and recruitment challenge required to get the masses to not just try out decentralized platforms but to earnestly use them. Bluesky’s growing user base and rise as a legitimately impressive platform that one can post to without feeling like it’s going into the void is a massive step forward, and proof that it is possible to build thriving alternative platforms. The fact that Meta recently blocked links to a decentralized Instagram alternative shows that big tech sees these platforms, potentially, as a real threat.

Submission + - TikTok is censoring anti-Trump content (newsweek.com)

smooth wombat writes: After going dark for 12 hours in response to a U.S. law saying it must divest from Chinese ownership, TikTok came back on line when the new administration took office. However, once up and running, users found one unexpected change. Anti-Trump content is now being censored. Words, phrases, and videos which were readily accessible pre-blackout were now unavailable or being removed entirely.

A post on X, formerly Twitter, which has received 4.5 million views at the time of reporting, claims that "TikTok is now region locking Americans from looking up things like "fascism" and "Donald Trump rigged election"."

The post includes two screenshots of the TikTok app. The screenshot is of the search page, and in both the search term is "Donald Trump rigged election." The post states that: "On the left are results from a device in America, and on the right are results from one in the UK."

The post on the left shows a results page stating "No results found," while on the left it shows two videos of the President.

Another post from the account Dustin Genereux said that, "Censorship on TikTok is at an all time high with accounts being deleted, posts going back years being flagged, people losing access to the creator fund for saying anything Anti-Trump, MAGA, Elon, etc. But free speech and all that right?"

Earth

Great Barrier Reef Hit By Its Most Widespread Coral Bleaching, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 15

More than 40% of individual corals monitored around a Great Barrier Reef island were killed last year in the most widespread coral bleaching outbreak to hit the reef system, a study has found. The Guardian: Scientists tracked 462 colonies of corals at One Tree Island in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef after heat stress began to turn the corals white in early 2024. Researchers said they encountered "catastrophic" scenes at the reef.

Only 92 coral colonies escaped bleaching entirely and by July, when the analysis for the study ended, 193 were dead and a further 113 were still showing signs of bleaching. Prof Maria Byrne, a marine biologist at the University of Sydney and lead author of the study, has been researching and visiting the island for 35 years.

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