project 2025 likely ends with trump and the magats. Because it is almost entirely based upon the idea of a POTUS who actively has no idea how government works and doesn’t want to do anything other than get headlines.

Because under a romney or a cheney? They don’t need project 2025 because steps will already be taken. Just like they have been since reagan with the bushes gradually eroding away democracy.

And… the reality is that it is inevitable that republicans will gain power again. Because The Left will pretty rapidly be at each other’s throats once trump is gone (just note all the Bernie Or Bust crew who still can’t shut the fuck up about the most important event in the past 8 years…). And people will lose interest in voting because they didn’t get exactly what they want.

The hope is that Kamala actually acts and works to restore those checks and balances so that four years of a republican is four years of a mess for Democrats to clean up and not the first four years of Gilead.

Its unclear how many “moderate republicans” will vote for her. In large part because it is unclear how many “moderate republicans” there actually are and it is worth remembering that folk like liz cheney and romney largely voted in lockstep with trump and the magats outside of MAYBE one or two issues that personally impact them. And it isn’t like any of the “former Republican leaders” have particularly strong support bases considering they lost to the magats years ago.

The reality is that this is just part of the republican party trying to prepare for a post-trump election. trump supported candidates consistently lost downballot and the primaries for this election were a shitshow. maga/tea party republicans die with trump so they are making sure they can go back to reagan/bush style “We are the party of decorum and church rights. You need to meet us in the middle and let us kill just a few trans folk per day”

It isn’t about being “evergreen”. It is about having historical evidence.

Because maybe someone will do a study in 2030 and want to be able to compare to your UX research in the 2000s. If you wrote your paper properly they can reproduce your experiments (to the degree reasonable) and actually demonstrate progress.

Its the inherent disconnect between “News” and “Science”.

Science requires rigorous study and incremental advancement. A 2023 article based on 2022 data is inherently understood to be… 2022 data (note: I did not actually check but that is the timeline I assume. It is in the study).

But news and social media just want headlines that get people angry and reinforce whatever nonsense people want to Believe.

It is similar to explaining basic concepts. Been a minute since the last time I was properly briefed, but think stuff like “Do NOT say ‘theory’ of evolution. Instead, talk about how evolution is the only accepted justification based on evidence and research”

And there are scenarios under runoff voting where similar can occur (e.g. two seats, 2 right wing, 4 left wing) and is where the “election theory” aspect of things that certain folk are still bitching about (because that is the most important thing to have happened in the past 8 years, clearly). The party needs to take the results of the primary and downselect who actually runs to avoid splitting their own vote.

No voting system is perfect. But people should really understand what we have and what their NEED improves and fails to improve rather than just insisting “new is better”.

Yup. People don’t realize there is already a not horrible approximation of runoff voting that still avoids the spoiler effect.

And just look at what happened when Sanders realized that. He went from being a meme about how nobody watches C-SPAN to one of the more influential politicians on the Left.

No. There is every reason to “defend yourself”. The key is to actually be aware of what research and efforts are out there and minimizing your risk profile any time you are dealing with a black box.

I mean, it is known that people can pick locks. Do you plug your ears every time you hear someone talk about how doors can be compromised? Or do you give up on everything and remove every single deadbolt in your home?

Or… do you do a bit of research and figure out what you can do to make your home harder to break into. Whether it is sturdier screws, a reinforced doorjam, or other methods?

I can’t speak to monero specifically

But:

• Why aren’t they catching more criminals? They are. They just are finding alternate sources of evidence. Dick Wolf shows love to talk about how cops need to protect themselves from any poison fruit and blah blah blah. The reality is that they immediately go to the poison fruit and use that to make a plausible excuse for why they investigated something else that can confirm information they got from the illegal source. If you’ve ever wondered why they would think to investigate a random unrelated company that ends up being the smoking gun…
• Why didn’t anyone claim the bounty? Because the CIA and the like don’t want people to know they compromised it?

Back in my pure research days it was always fun to guess what the latest “big thing” was actually about. It was especially fun when you would be looking for funding opportunities and see really weird stuff that made no sense for the org sponsoring it but would have made perfect sense for a different 3LA.

It was ALSO real fun to totally never notice when certain funding opportunities dried up and then there was a big push in the news about how we need to outlaw technology those opportunities totally didn’t already compromise.

Like, for the better part of a decade The Big Thing was graph analysis techniques. And the number of kids who had no idea they were basically writing algorithms to process social media (especially twitter) was downright sad. And the people who DID realize what their work was geared toward? They applied for jobs where they got paid a lot more to do exactly that without needing to pretend it is actually about data storage technologies or optimizing cell tower load.

And… let’s just say that most of those algorithms ALSO apply toward cryptocurrencies and transaction logs (since they had great applications for bank transactions…) and even doing a number on tumblers and so forth.

While I agree this definitely feels like more of a threat than an action, it IS worth understanding the many times that tor nodes have been compromised. Exit nodes are a well documented mess (and have many of the same vulnerabilities normal VPNs do) but eavesdropping and traffic analysis are also probabilities based upon how much of the network any given org has access to.

If that NGO was doing hinky stuff or just doing a sloppy job? Those cops might actually have a LOT of actionable data that just needs a bit of processing.

Which is why it is always important to understand what your risks and benefits from a privacy related tool are. People often think “I’ll just put everything through a vpn/tor” which DRASTICALLY increases their risk profiles. But they also don’t understand how tor works well enough to even know what it gives them over a traditional vpn (as opposed to “Dark Web” stuff which is a different mess).

Part of it is that purity tests are at an all time high. In large part because we are constantly inundated with Content to reinforce our world views (or the world view of the Influencer we glommed on to) constantly. So anything different is not just cognitive dissonance: it is an attack on our very core and a lie. So if someone does something we wouldn’t do? They are the evilest of evil people and are knowingly hurting whoever we care about.

But the other aspect? The internet is a great place to meet people with different life experiences. And in a lot of cases (particularly with certain politicians), we and the people we love have been directly harmed by them. All that steven universe bullshit about needing to love everyone and always finding the good goes out the window when you are increasingly watching organizations try to murder you for embracing who you are and to enslave people and turn them into breeding stock.

And the last aspect is that lemmy has a really bad infestation of tankies. Tankies who, useful idiots or intentional, tend to actively argue for destabilizing The West and increasing conflicts. So advocating for terrorism and murder helps with that.

Yup.

It is not an exoneration of the average soldier. A lot did some really heinous shit… like all soldiers in all wars. But a lot were also just there because they were drafted and had no choice. And that is what investigations are for.

People like the black and white of “You wore a uniform, you are pure evil”. And governments ESPECIALLY love that and a lot of media has been funded to specifically reinforce that so it is super easy to Other the other guys (We have always been at war with Eastasia and all that). But when you actually think things through? What is the difference between a conscript terrified in their bunk at night and a civillian who gleefully makes shells and tanks in a factory?

All of which is kind of moot. Because, to reference the great dril: You do not “gotta hand it to them” to ISIS, Nazi German, or Stalin and his cronies in the USSR.

While there is a lot of argument (in both directions) on the culpability of the average german soldier to the Nazis: The way you punish that is through trials. I hear Nuremburg had a few of those.

This was russia abducting enemy combatants and using them as slave labor for a decade. And, like most of stalin’s purges and enslavements, had very little to do with whatever crimes the slaves were accused of.

Again, cats aren’t singing. They understand it is just a different (much less efficient and much more danger prone) method of communication.

Animals are generally good at understanding that not everyone is them.

A great example is the best animal: The House Cat. Cats are pretty famous for catering their sounds to different targets. Mom not paying attention? Squeaky cry. Something needs to be taught who the big err… cat is? Growl. Content and happy? Purr.

Need something from a human? Meow. Because they understand that humans don’t understand purrs and body language to the same degree.

Removed by mod

People bring it up because they are smart enough to understand “we investigated ourselves and found no signs of wrongdoing” is not a defense.

Already explained it elsewhere but, the super short version is: Law firms are nor mandatory reporters outside of the most extreme cases. They are not investigating wrongdoing. They are investigating liability. They are looking for what was done in writing and what can be explained in the event of a lawsuit (and discovery).

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t1mzn/mandatory_meeting_the_after_madisons_departure/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 is james sexually harassing people during the seminar

Here is the verbose “We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing” post https://x.com/LinusTech/status/1793428629378208057 with a real nice bit threatening anyone who ever dares to be a whistleblower again

At this time, we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us. We hope that will be the case, given the investigator’s clear findings that the allegations made online were misrepresentations of what actually occurred. We will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation.

And here is Linus playing the “what about the white man” card https://x.com/linusgsebastian/status/1778165221414347053

Like almost all situations: Demonstrate growth. No, not “subscribers go up” but actually show that you are better.

• I’ll skip the anti-consumer stuff regarding merch because that has always been the brand and they at least learned to not tell people to argue against their own rights.
• Antagonistic behavior toward competitors: They are still doing the “we are the best because we are the best” bullshit in their marketing. They’ve at least started collaborating with Wendell from Level1Techs again which is nice. But just reaching out to the other channels would go a long way. Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed are basically the kings of technical reviewing and would actually benefit Lab for a collab. And GN and HUB are very open about having group discords where all the tech youtubers talk to corroborate strange behavior or let people know that AMD fucked everyone over and they need to re-do all their work for the past week.
• Gross incompetence in their own tech reviews: They apparently have made it a subscriber benefit for Floatplane that people can pay to error check videos which… okay. And they’ve taken down a few videos where they REALLY cocked up basic facts and conclusions. But it is still the same mess they have always been.
• Fucking over small businesses: They eventually gave the cooler company money which I guess was nice? But it looks like they still do a “Linus is made and hates this horrible product” every few months when they want a viewership bonus and it isn’t like they are going to do that to the companies that sponsor the LMG convention…

As for the really big ones? Sexual harassment and assault allegations?

A BIG first step would have been to get rid of james streib. Fucknuts was caught, on (audio part of a ) camera engaging in sexual harassment to the entire company during the fucking sexual harassment seminar the day after his report left the company because of sexual harassment from him and others. Whine about “people out for blood” all you want but that is the kind of cock up where you lose your job. Period. And the fact that people thought to record that meeting AND that linus and yvonne didn’t do a “What the fuck is wrong with you?” to him for that says a lot about what kind of a culture the company has. And putting him front and ecenter on thumbnails shows how little LMG cares.

But also? Their response to multiple allegations of harassment and assault has been to attack and discredit the victim, sometimes through blatant threats toward other employees? Fuck 'em. The brand is tainted and this is the point where you pivot to right wing grifting.

Speaking of which. I forgot to mention the time D-Brand made really racist jokes about a customer’s name and Linus Sebastient went to bat REAL hard with lots of “this wouldn’t be a problem if he were a white man” level responses. So… I guess they already got the memo.

Yes. Everyone and their mother posted that thinking they were clever.

It is also very telling that the concerns over warranties came up when:

1. The previous owner of the company who everyone knew and trusted died
2. There was active concern over the future of the company
3. The person trying to sell them that is a deranged lunatic with a sex pest best friend
4. The company is actively under threat of a hostile takeover spearheaded by people who might have killed the previous owner.

Are warranties foolproof? no. But they give you something so that you are only deciding if a lawyer is worth it when circumstances change significantly. Rather than by default any time anything goes wrong.

I think it was mostly that Naomi dropped it after excessive amounts of harassment. And Linus’s excuse was that she misunderstood him and it is her problem for thinking that a guy saying he would only give her a business opportunity if she came to his bedroom at 3 am was sketchy. And his wife was totally CC’d to some of those emails anyway.

I recall there was a different (not going to speculate on who the timeline would line up with…) case where Linus was accused of sexual assault (possibly outright rape?) where his defense was that he was a virgin until he met his wife which… okay.

As it stands, it is basically proven that the company has severe cultural issues regarding sexual harassment and bad workplace dynamics. The sexual assault accusations are still very much in the “where there is smoke…” range. And it is why I point out that Madison’s harassment claims were corroborated by former employees but her assault claims were not.