Even 1 TB is arduous. Don’t back up your movie collection, let the feds have it if they want. Back up your code, correspondence and encryption keys. :)

A well placed encrypted backup on two separately located microSD cards (in case mice eat the other), located within a few hundred meters of your actual residence, should be beyond the ability of common goons (ICE, cops, impatient FBI agents) to locate. They’d have to engage in long-term surveillance.

If curious kids find one, it’s still encrypted and you still have the other, and curious kids won’t take your primary data carrier by raiding your house either. You just replace the backup then and put it elsewhere.

I replied to your post of the satellite photo in another thread. See my reply here. In short, the strange spill and material has been present in the yard of that building for at least a month. If it’s permanent, it could indicate a washing facility or slaughterhouse. Jumping to conclusions is not a good way to proceed when you don’t check the context of a satellite photo.

Regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, see this post on Twitter, a US senator was able to meet him:

https://x.com/ChrisVanHollen/status/1913034619710034094

Trump can issue an excecutive order and have them executed.

An “insane” ex-employee of a three letter agency can fire a wire-guided missile at his helicopter too, or someone may leave a drop of nerve agent on his door knob. I mean to say: possibilities for violence are endless. They’re an entirely different dish than legal possibilities, which are limited. With violence, imagination is the limit.

The supreme court however - I think they’re not bound by their previous rulings. If the court sees a justification, they can rule differently next time.

The week after that: the same or another person is again found in contempt, because the ruling of the court has’t been enforced.

Some legal interpretations say that contempt of court is not a pardonable offense. I don’t know if those are prevailing in the US.

State employees aren’t specifically beholden to the agency who hires and fires them.

The state has an executive, legislative and judicial branch.

If they follow an executive order but contravene a law, or contravene a court order that they know about (since only the courts make final interpretations of law) - my understanding is that they have no immunity.

Not only that, but the table itself tells a lie.

• first column heading: “tariffs charged to the USA”
• first column content: trade deficit expressed as percentage

They needed numbers to look like other countries are mistreating the US. They made up some numbers. He went on the big screen to tell yet another lie.

For example, the average tariff on US goods in Europe until now is around 4% (probably less). He’s representing it as 39%.

Wow, interesting. :)

Not unexpectedly, the LLM failed to explain its own thought process correctly.

Obvious possibilities:

• he was suspected of espionage and arrested (we don’t know whether he did anything), for some reason it hasn’t been disclosed (it should be disclosed)
• he disappeared on his own, officials are trying to understand what he knew or accomplished

The university de-listing him seems particularly interesting. Clearly they were told something that the public wasn’t told.

Server-wide censorship cannot be allowed. / This eliminates every platform I know of.

Within the I2P anonymous mix network there was an attempt, at some point around 2015, to build a system named Syndie where everyone would have to be their own censor, and servers would host content without the server operator really knowing or caring about what they host.

It failed to take off, but I’m not convinced if the reason was architecture or the main developer leaving.

Indeed, forums are almost gone. In particular, I miss one forum about science fiction, one about aeromodelism, one about electric vehicles (another still exists) and one about anarchism. An interesting hold-out in the country where I live, is a military forum, where rules say that respectful discussion is the only kind of discussion accepted - ironically, the military forum has a peaceful atmosphere. But it could come crashing down much easier than a social media company.

As for why forums disappeared - I think that people became too convenient. They wanted zero expense (hosting a forum incurs some expenses and needs a bit of time and attention), and wanted all their discussion in one place. Advertisers wanted a place where masses could be manipulated. Social media companies wanted people to interact more (read: pick more heated arguments) and see more ads - and built their environments accordingly. Not for the public good.

I think the most urgent job is getting rid of algorithmically steered social media - sites where one can’t know why something appears on one’s feed.

It would be great if the number was 30%, but 20% is enough to wedge a company out of its position on the market. If they persist, this will work.

I’m not from the US, but I straight out recommend quickly educating oneself about military stuff at this point - about fiber guided drones (here in Eastern Europe we like them) and remote weapons stations (we like those too). Because the US is heading somewhere at a rapid pace. Let’s hope it won’t get there (the simplest and most civil obstacle would be lots of court cases and Trumpists losing midterm elections), but if it does, then strongly worded letters will not suffice.

Trump’s administration:

“Agency,” unless otherwise indicated, means any authority of the United States that is an “agency” under 44 U.S.C. 3502(1), and shall also include the Federal Election Commission.

Vance, in his old interviews:

“I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”

Also Vance:

“We are in a late republican period,” Vance said later, evoking the common New Right view of America as Rome awaiting its Caesar. “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

Googling “how to remove a dictator?” when you already have one is doing it too late. On the day the self-admitted wannabe Caesar crosses his Rubicon, it better be so that some people already know what to aim at him.

Tesla dealerships… nah. I would not advise spending energy on them. But people, being only people, get emotional and do that kind of things.

As an exception to most regulations that we hear about from China, this approach actually seems well considered - something that might benefit people and work.

Similar regulations should be considered by other countries. Labeling generated content at the source, hopefully without the metadata being too extensive (this is where China might go off the handle) would help avoid at least two things:

• casual deception
• training AI with material generated by another AI, leading to degradation of ability to generate realistic content