Just remember everyone: the real victims the armed jackbooted thugs holding a populace at gunpoint in honor of rapists and nazis. And if you don’t Support The Troops then you are literally worse than hitler

And legit creditors just need your SSN, address, and maybe an old address. They run a credit check (hence why you freeze that shit) and then you are driving away in your 4k a month pickup truck.

And less legit creditors… don’t ask too many questions other than where you live and where your loved ones love.

But hey. Feel free to throw a hissy fit rather than think through why that plastic card actually doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as you thought it did. I mean, it would be nicer if you could actually sit and think and learn. But this is the 2020s. Ain’t nobody doing introspection.

Huh?

If you go to a bar with an ID you cut out of printer paper, they are going to throw your ass out Jazzy Jeff style. The actual ID isn’t useful without a LOT of additional resources… at which point your photo means almost nothing.

As for stuff like addresses? Again, that is basically EVERYWHERE because just about EVERY org has a data breach at least once a year. You might as well be saying people need your long form birth certificate to know what your name is.

Like… I’mma be blunt with you. A lot of the “your photo ID is the most important secure thing ever” nonsense comes from republican chuds trying to disenfranchise voters who live in cities. It is the idea that your photo ID is some magical artifact that protects you when the reality is that it is basically just a way to tie your name to your face. All the pertinent information is everywhere else.

Like… photo IDs tend to be one of those weird cases where we are ACTUALLY using biometrics (in this case, appearance) as a login rather than a password. Anything of value will just use that to cross reference you with an entry that is already in a system.

And in terms of the actual avenues for fraud? That ID doesn’t mean shit.

What is the stretch? That he registered at kiwi farms and even got his account verified so he could shitpost with them, make fun of “lolcows”, and tell them to use more slurs? Or that he himself actively did not deny it and even joked about how people who think that is a bad idea have bad teeth?

Your “government photo ID” really isn’t all that useful unless people are skilled enough to make fakes (which is a whole different mess). What matters is your SSN, your credit card number, your address, etc.

And those are basically everywhere.

As for the DMV thing: You sweet summer child.

And there are so many of those these days that a new one genuinely doesn’t matter.

If you haven’t been offered a free year of identity theft insurance recently? Some company/org is plugging their ears.

SSNs are a fundamentally broken system (look it up). Photo IDs? I will guarantee you that if you go to ANY city there is someone at the DMV who will look up whatever you want for fifty bucks. The ONLY reason credit card fraud is less massive than it is (and it is MASSIVE) is because the CC companies put in the effort to monitor that and lock it down.

EVERYONE should have their credit records locked unless they are actively applying for something.

No. the issue with these is that we live in an increasingly christofacist society where even looking at porn makes you Unclean. And if you look at the wrong porn? Off to the reeducation camps with you!

It is fundamentally a waste of the little time that congress even pretend to do their jobs. And it provides ammunition for “We want to do X Y and Z but the Democrats are just being so obstructionist and wasting everyone’s time”

But yeah. There are arguments that it is GOOD to waste congress’s time and prevent them from making things even worse. And it says a lot to know that there actually IS an opposition force.

Which is the problem with Jeffries and Schumer. They are… decent “peace time” leaders. But they are acting like there is just a friendly disagreement on the tax level rather than a christofacist takeover that is dismantling the country week by week.

Ironically? If we were a less prudish society this genuinely wouldn’t matter.

“Oh no! Sarah likes threesome porn. Uhm… okay?”

Just to answer myself a bit:

It is a bit jank and is not a true Lutris replacement as it is still just a prefix manager, but installing standalone games in Heroic seems pretty painless. It can generate a steam entry if I want to launch it that way and their logic for fetching icons seems pretty seamless. Just reinstalled Guild Wars 2 in it and grabbed Guild Wars 1 in prep for Reforged tomorrow.

It DOES raise the problem of also being where I install my GoG games and my tendency to use GoG for some adult playtime games (will never understand why anyone plays those on Steam. We know why you went offline for 15 minutes…) but that feels like more of a me problem.

I dunno. If Faugus can find a way to take advantage of user scripts for the more janky/modded installs, that would be awesome. But if all it does is set up a prefix and let me pick a few options? I already got that?

There are layers to this.

Yes, there is zero chance any of these investments are going to turn a profit.

But research and technology is fundamentally built around developing capabilities for long term power (soft or hard). That is WHY governments invest so much into university groups and research divisions at companies to develop features of interest. You are never going to make back the money that funded hundreds of PhD students to develop a slightly more durable polymer compound. But you will benefit because you now have hundreds of new graduates aligned with fields of interest AND a slightly better grip on your military grade sybian.

And, regardless of what people want to believe, AI genuinely does have some great uses (primarily pattern matching and human interfaces). And… those have very big implications both in terms of military capability and soft power where the entire world is dependent on one nation’s companies for basic functionality.

Of course, the problem is that the “AI craze” isn’t really being driven by state governments at this point. It is being driven by the tech companies themselves and the politicians who profit off of them. Hence why we are so focused on insanely expensive search engine replacements and “AI powered toaster ovens” rather than developing the core technologies and capabilities that will make this more power efficient and more feasible for edge computing.

And… when one of (if not ) the super powers is actively divesting itself of all soft power at an alarming rate… yeah.

That is a distinction without difference. It doesn’t matter what mechanism is used to collect those metrics. The fact is they are there

And, at a glance: Forgejo/Codeberg definitely has stars and watches and fork tracking as well

Which is all fundamentally the supply and demand aspects of consumerism. It is the idea that people can identify what there is a high demand for and work to provide a supply. Which is not at all a bad thing and extends far beyond capitalism.

But it goes back to the previous poster’s comments about how they don’t like that netflix analyzes everything they do and greenlights projects based on that. That extends FAR beyond netflix and well into even open source projects.

Speaking of Linus Tech Tips, here is mister sebastien himself just joshing with the folk at <checks notes> kiwi farms. And… telling them to use more slurs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1pbp23m/linus_the_other_one_posted_on_kiwifarms_to_talk/ and confirmed by mister tech tips himself https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1pbp23m/comment/nrsdlzk/

So… he has been a pretty mask off piece of shit for years. But… damned if this isn’t a new world record for a collaboration to age into sour milk

Uhm… the brits have a long string of horribly incompetent (and evil) PMs and the royal family is the same level of inbred rapers of children so…

Let’s not try to compare the two and acknowledge we are both horrifically imperialist nations with self destructive tendencies who just happen to be at different points on the curve.

Open source/selfhost projects 100% keep track of how many people star a repo, what MRs are submitted, and even usage/install data. And many of them are specifically designed to fulfill a role that industry standard tools aren’t (or are too expensive for) and… guess where the data on that comes from?

The reality is that you cannot escape consumerism in the modern world. You can pretend you are but… you aren’t. What you CAN do is focus on supporting tools and media that you want/approve of and making your own life better as a result.

And a big chunk of that involves actually thinking through consequences.

I mean… HOV lanes very often take photos at certain points to see if you have multiple passengers. And often those ARE the ones where individuals/duos can pay for access.

It isn’t “normalizing” to acknowledge what reality is. If it makes you feel better? Ignore the surveillance tech that is already there. But don’t get pissy if others don’t live in the same blissful ignorance.

I mean… depending on how new an item is and what “tier” the restaurant is? They are 100% watching for stuff like that and probably making a note that you got up after eating only a quarter of your burger. Because if the burger were good, you would want to finish it. Is it too sloppy? Did you feel the need to wash your hands mid bite? Did it make you nauseous?

Same with taking out your phone. Does it look like you are telling a friend what a great burger you had? Or are you feeling bloated and trying to digest a bit before you eat more?

This level of market analysis is not at all new. Streaming services just have a much easier time automating it but… give it time until startups are selling cameras to monitor the dining area and automate analytics based on who ordered what and did what.

I mean… that IS how restaurants work. If people don’t order the fish of the day then they buy fewer and fewer fishes until it is no longer a thing. Even the speed people eat DOES matter since restaraunts tend to be designed around each customer spending a certain amount of time dining. Too short and they will never order a dessert. Too long and they are costing you money while they nurse that coffee.

And similar happens with even buying blu-rays. If nobody bought Master and Commander in 4k then you can be sure that experiment would be over. Instead? That thing sold like toiler paper during COVID and we’ll likely see more “prestige” releases with a huge dose of FOMO.

As for up fronts versus long tails? Guess what is motivating all those revivals “nobody asked for”?

Don’t get me wrong. I vastly prefer to rip blu rays to my NAS and watch via plex. But the idea that you are somehow no longer part of the marketing cycle is just… wrong.

My understanding is that most airlines will still allow you to pay, in cash, at the customer service desk in the baggage area the day of. But they still require ID and you can be DAMNED sure that about forty different flags went off in a database if you do that.

But yeah. Credit cards are immensely useful. They also go a LONG way towards providing very trackable behaviors for people.

A LOT of his social media included very weird views on human sexuality (e.g. sex toy bans) and outright praise for the unabomber. I’ve also seen a lot of claims that he espoused “anti-woke” ideologies but most of the sources I am finding are sketchy as hell. Although the LA Times article at least links to what I think is his twitter (that I personally can’t verify as I don’t have twitter)

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-12-14/luigi-mangione-politics-united-healthcare-shooting

A LOT of people want to view him as some champion of leftism. And… it is well worth remembering that a leftist political ideology does not mean much regarding views on social justice (as many people of color and trans folk can attest…). But the reality is that he probably is a lot closer to the “groyper” who shot kirk than anything else. Just another kid who got radicalized in deeply confusing and contradictory ways. And while I am not going to lose too much sleep over the outcome of HIS actions… I am increasingly terrified of how many batshit insane radicals with guns are out there whose ideology can be summed up as “4chan”.

I did not need to show ID to hop on the brewster line into grand central.

Because those are public roads. Not high priority roads you pay for access to. Just like fully government funded buses and the like don’t care if you have a ticket or not. Whereas those that are only subsidized tend to still require a pass/ticket/payment.

Also I’ll just point out: Your car has a license plate. It is trivial to read those with an overhead camera. And, depending on the road/day, you can bet a cop will gladly run you down if they spot you have no license plate or decide they care about the polarized screen you put on top of it. At which point you can bet they’ll want to see your ID and won’t take “I am a sovereign citizen and this is a public road” as an answer.

there is nothing special about flying compared to trains

And you need to tie your body to your ticket when you get on a train. We tend to not care anywhere near as much about security with trains (because everyone knows bombs and box cutters only work if you are at least 100 feet above the ground!), but you can be damned sure the ticket machine where you inserted your cash took a picture of your face to go with it.

I genuinely don’t care about what kind of libertarian nonsense you are on about hating the concept of IDs at all. My point was simply that if you think the RealID requirement has ANY bearing on The Man knowing where you are and where you are going then… you don’t actually understand what your exposure is.