I’ve assumed for years now that they had at least some access to it but him getting arrested (batshit insane btw) might show they didn’t or didn’t get what they wanted anyway.

I just figured all those “we got inside info on this right wing plan of attack from a telegram leak” news stories were “the FBI gave us this and told us to say it wasn’t from us.” Apple/Google engage in similar obfuscation of what access the feds have. With Google, well, just assume “all.” With Apple it’s probably also “all” but they insist that isn’t the case. It seeks almost certain though they do quietly cooperate with feds to help unlock devices and then feds just cite some technology without mentioning Apple’s probable role in creating it.

Shit sucks, the NSA (among many) should’ve never been allowed to exist. It’s all getting worse too. 20 years ago an arrest like this (transport back the general idea “some guy makes a program people used for naughty naughty”) would be a headline for maybe a month at least. It would be discussed for sure and hogs and dipshit ghouls would defend it and nothing done about it. Now it’s just “oh? Russia? Huh. Oh. Ok. Yes, m’lord…”

Thanks I hate it

Most obvious monopoly since Ma Bell. Even worse than Microsoft which was also obviously a monopoly. Break them all up. Microsoft, ATT (for the… 4th time? Maybe just abolish them at this point…), Comcast, Verizon, Google, Apple, the list goes on. All those food corps that end up being 3 parent companies owning everything else. Break it all up. Force unionization also while going through the legal processes.

What if I told you… that’s a feature, not a bug?

It’s far too much to type and way too philosophical for anyone to give a shit about, but, tldr: the US (and arguably the world) is on a freight train speeding at absolute destruction. No one in power is pushing the stop button. (In the US) one party is (sometimes) pushing a slowdown button but the other party is always slamming any button they can find that doesn’t say stop on it. They know where it leads, and this is what they want. Everyone “knows” the current institutions and systems are failing, but the only politically relevant (so, in the US, not the actual left) force with power is the far right wingers who desire destruction and their only resistance is the left and right wing liberals in the middle going “noooo the institutions!” but no one actually cares about the institutions, besides other liberals. They lack any ability though, due to their political ideology, to actually fight for the beloved institutions. They can only rely on the powerful far right to “come to their senses” and stop pushing the death button. Unfortunately for them, the far right will not stop without someone stopping them- forcefully. And since the far right and liberals effectively eliminated the far left and even the center left for the most part… there’s no one to counter that far right fascistic death drive.

But you don’t even need that accurate assessment of things to understand the situation. Just know they want to abolish public education, medicine, doctors, anything related to “science” broadly, any non-Christian religions, non-white people, LGBTQ+ people and anything tangentially related to gay stuff (imagined or real), etc. pretty much infinitely.

These people are the proto-Nazis of our time. Not everything will align perfectly, but it doesn’t have to. They want to burn medical information, they want to destroy what they see as “perverted secular society” burn it all away and cleanse the land for some great rebirth of a Christian Nationalist theocracy where white men are elevated above everyone and your white male status plus property owning status is all that matters. I know this all sounds cliche and overstated at this point… but they keep proving it true every chance they get.

The worst part is that ultimately they’re the only side making progress towards their goal because their goal is aligned with the way things are going and must go. But the difference is we can arrive at that destructive moment, whenever it is, and come out the other side in some Christian theocracy nightmare world or something much better than we can currently imagine possible. As it stands right now, that nightmare vision seems to be the only viable conclusion. Which is rather depressing…

What extensions does chrome have which are useful that Firefox doesn’t?

My only recurring issue with Firefox, which may have been fixed I dunno, is it for some reason it “isn’t officially supported” or whatever exact wording to use hardware security keys (like yubikey, which I use on every account that allows it). It’s only certain websites that don’t want to work though. Like google, Microsoft and many others were fine but I think paypal didn’t want to work properly but it does work on Edge, Chrome, probably Brave. Overall annoying as fuck at times but I deal with it to be out of Google’s-world

That 74 is kind of tricky and my vision is “normal”

This reminds me of a time I was taking one of these colorblind tests. The person administering it was flipping (way too fast) through the numbers and I was reading them fine. A trickier one came up which I could very clearly read, like this 71/74 one, and I said (because fucker was flipping way too fast) “71… no, 74 actually.” He marked it wrong. It felt like a real life Seinfeld incident after that where I kind of stopped the whole test and was saying basically, as nicely as I could, “hey. I said 74. Mark that correct.” MFer didn’t even vocalize a response. I can’t remember but I think he did like two more numbers, said I passed with whatever number of tests with one incorrect. I had to get my eyesight examined after that (this was for some pilot shit. Like a physical) and I told the doctor and he kind of shrugged it off too like “you passed it. It doesn’t matter.” IT MATTERS TO ME GODDAMNIT

Thanks for triggering this random traumatic event from over a decade ago.

Very clearly obviously it’s propaganda based on the western projection that the commies were the same as Nazis and Nazis were famous for the “show your papers” thing.

Ironically the US police have always treated block people the way media represents the Nazis (and communists, inaccurately). Don’t ask Americans about why that’s ok but some old Soviet Union border guard asking for a passport was supposed to be representative of…anything more than what it always is