Thing is, privacy isn’t binary; it isn’t even a spectrum. It’s an amorphous 3-dimensional cloud.

Total privacy means that nobody else knows you even exist. Nobody wants total privacy, even if they think they do.

What most people want is for governments and corporations to not be able to track their day to day activity, malicious actors to not have access to their identity and financial data, and individuals to only have the information about them needed to connect and relate in society.

The first thing anyone needs to do is create their own privacy and threat models. Identify your personal risks within those models and adapt as needed.

For instance, using a cellphone of any type means you’re using a location tracker. Same goes for any vehicle with a built in cellular device. That information is available to specific corporations as well as government agencies and sometimes third parties with money.

Is it worth giving up that level of privacy to be connected to other people in most places you’d be likely to go? That’s up to the individual.

Same goes for libre software and hardware.

The important bit:

Those joining from unsupported platforms will be automatically placed in audio-only mode to protect shared content.

And I presume everything except Windows 11 Teams will be considered “unsupported”.

Imagine a camera on the bottom of the body instead of where the eyes would be. Now have it circle like an eagle, flapping as needed. Telephoto lens.

The one thing it has going for it is covert surveillance.

Unfortunately, tape can’t mute the microphones.

Based on current spending, it will most likely be spent getting drinkable water to the majority of the world’s population.

I don’t like how he got his money, but he’s been reasonably responsible with it since his divorce.

That said, he has over $113b dollars. If he gives away 99% of it, he’ll still have over a billion dollars.

It all depends on goals. If your goal is to fake it into a high paying job, cheating works. If your goal is to enrich your knowledge, it’s useless.

But in order to always do the second, you pretty much have to have enough confidence in your ability to have a soft landing when you graduate that it isn’t worth it OR already have a better grasp of the subject at hand than the average intelligence distilled by an AI.

Buying with cash is useful, or else someone is still selling your purchase patterns.

And turn your phone off before you go in the store.

Well, DOGE already fired a significant amount of the staff that wasn’t focused on private sector interaction. There’s nobody left who could take time to police online speech. So a large portion of that cut just means that there will be a hiring freeze for positions focused on government security and investigations.

The guards and administration want him alive.

People like Epstein die in prison because showing up in court runs the risk of taking down powerful people. People like Luigi always have their day to be dragged through the mud in court before they rot away forever in jail, with random reminders that they’re still alive and suffering.

What exactly does “spun off” mean here? Doesn’t Comcast still have a stake in the new org? Isn’t this just changing the lipstick color on the pig?

I’ve got an ancient laser printer. Toner is cheap and it just works. Anything more complex? I send it to a print shop and let THEM deal with the suffering. I just get the results I’m expecting when I expect them, without wasting time and money on printers and ink and all the things that can go wrong with them. Works for me….

Why are people generally in prison? Usually because they’re violent, drug addicted or at odds with the status quo.

Luigi is in prison accused of killing a man responsible for getting people hooked on drugs, marginalizing the already marginalized and poor, and ruining the lives of millions.

I think the inmates would be more likely to treat him like a hero.

Disqualifying? No. However, he’d run up against similar prejudices that make it difficult for a woman to win the presidency.

Remember that Pete Buttigieg was in the running at one point.

Just so you know, I’m a fellow Voyager user on lemmy.ca and I don’t see that anywhere I’m not a mod.

I wouldn’t. I’d set up at least four groups and let them run autonomously from each other. I might not even let them know that there’s other groups on the planet.

More chance of survival if there’s different groups trying different things. Strength in diversity.

You missed “make my computer work” and “get me movies for free”.

Knowing stuff can be a curse, especially when you’re 10 steps ahead of everyone else in the room and you know they’re just going to need the time to figure it out on their own.

But being smart means you know how and when to apply your knowledge. So you can provide the information when it’s actually useful and not when it just gets blank stares.

And knowing stuff but NOT talking about it all the time, and not using “told you so” means that when you DO speak, anyone who matters will listen and take you seriously.

I find that slipping useful knowledge into self-deprecating jokes is a useful way to get people to listen to it.

Of course not. That would be wasteful.

Germans don’t smile with their mouths; they generally do smile with their eyes. People who only look at mouths generally miss that.