Yea, it’s just that every one has something problematic IMO. So for say torrents cheap and available is worth more than an app I don’t have to use. I of course don’t know a about if say PIA is better or whatever.

Where was that reported?

IDK, I think we should be looking beyond Signal for these sorts of things. Signal is great for when the metadata doesn’t risk you, and when you control your device, but there are likely better options out there if the government is actually out to get you.

Personally, if I was worried enough about various tracking, I’d want to use the configs with known vetted third party FLOSS apps vs their own built app. For instance, one of the concerns with SurfShark in those sites is the app isn’t vetted and has some custom analytics. Using openVPN plus configs kills app level analytics.

IDK how much I ought to or should not trust any VPN provider, but for what I need, SurfShark has been great and pretty cheap, though for other reasons I’m a bit disappointed no port forwarding. I would use other tech than commercial VPNs for “deep” privacy.

I’m not even sure I’d call the mass deportation in the US Ethnic Clensing. Part of the problem is it targets minorities, but not one specific minority, and the extent it targets minorities under cover of law is targeting non-citizens. Now, I think the whole thing is horrible, and bad policy. But it seems different to me from openly taking a specific group that are citizens and deporting them en masse.

Now - it’s made worse by the wink and nod the US sort of used for decades and never actually made good / modern immigration policy.

I think it’s possible to be someone who’s for mass deportation of people not legally in a country and not be someone who supports genocide OR ethnic clensing. It can actually be a simple “rule of law” sort of position. I don’t think MAGA is that sort of person, or at least many seem to be perfectly happy with ethnic clensing as an idea, but I also don’t think they’re actually happy to stop at non-citizens. It’s just they haven’t gotten through the “illegals” yet.

Maybe a good thread the needle would be if you’re in the country for 10 years (or some amount of time) without getting deported, a “statute of limitations” has then expired and you’re now a citizen. I’m sure that wouldn’t pass many people’s politics, but it would to my mind hold that if the government didn’t care for that long, you can’t be that much of an actual problem, and shouldn’t be kicked out anymore because you’ve also likely integrated into communities etc.

This is likely because PDF became the “file that everyone can open”, just in their web browser. It’s the next best thing to a web page for non-techie consumption. Yes, there’s no reason people can’t open pptx in most cases, but I bet various endpoint protection and just not understanding how to even pick the right program to open the file steps in.

Well, if your KPI is how much you use an LLM like in some reports - this is an easy way to get those good indicators. Also, LLMs are super easy to use to parse things, whereas many special programs like IDK grep isn’t exactly user friendly. Not to mention not finding patterns really. Though here I’m thinking things like looking at various logs on computers.

Well, from Microsoft sure. I have been pretty impressed with Hermes agent, though not the cost. Claude Code was also pretty good, I think a bit easier to control the API costs in my limited testing, and had more repeatable security gates than Hermes seemed to. Then again, I think Hermes could do more.

I question the security and the cost of agents.

Though I’d say there’s also a difference between banning phones in school and saying you can’t use them during class. We couldn’t just read our favorite fiction paperback or comic book in class back in the day either. No one ever (that I recall) suggested banning them from the school. I don’t see much compelling evidence that social media is a cause, much more obvious to me is schools having become mostly worthless in the US.