Governments don’t hate privacy intrinsically. They just don’t think it’s important. Violating privacy using mass surveillance has no visible downside to the uninformed public. Policy makers just notice that destroying privacy makes it easier to catch cybercriminals and decide it’s a worthwhile trade off. You probably disagree with that. But there are far too many people who just go along with it.

It’s pretty rare for good people to become immensely wealthy and stay good people. Money corrupts, and once you’re to a point where money is no longer survival but a high score, that starts to drive your thinking.

Honestly, I think there’s actually a good chance that the fine’s bigger than the profit here. What a lot of people don’t realise is that data is only valuable because there’s usually a lot of it. The value of your average Facebook user’s data is like ten dollars a year and Facebook spends a lot of time trying to increase that to eleven dollars because when multiplied by half a billion users, then it becomes something meaningful.

But still, a fine needs to hurt in order to be effective. $12 million is likely less than what they paid the lawyers.

Contabo is cheap but has some weird quirks. I pay about five euros a month. My server got mysteriously rolled by two days and they denied anything happened to it. I restored from backups but it was odd.

Luna is the only moon in the Solar System which is appropriately-sized relative to its planet’s distance from the Sun and its own orbital distance to create impressive total solar eclipses. If a moon is too small, it won’t cover up the Sun fully, and if it is too big, it will cover up all the light and you would see nothing but darkness.

“Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is just capitalism with extra steps and a red paint job.

If you’re talking about the Mao Zedong era, that was also a disaster but at least they did try to run the country according to communist principles. They were just very bad at it.

leader of a communist party warns against starting a communist revolution

mrw

Riemann sphere has entered the chat

Pope Leo is weak on crime

Technically, Vatican City has the highest crime rate in the world, fluctuating between 1 and 1.5 crimes per capita. But this is mostly pickpocketing committed by foreigners against other foreigners. Vaticans themselves mostly commit financial crimes and religious crimes. Obviously the solution here is to build a big, beautiful wall along the border and make Italy pay for it, to keep out all those foreign criminals.

He was too young to vote in 2016. He voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024. I asked him a week or so ago whether he plans to vote Republican in the upcoming election. He says he plans to throw his ballot into the bin.

Since there’s not really that many Christians on Lemmy, I took the liberty of showing my former college roommate that image. He is a devout Catholic and also a two-time Trump voter, though I will note he has since soured on Trump since his re-election (for these and other reasons). His reaction was that the image was insulting to the Catholic religion and blasphemous.

Last year, I had also asked his opinion on Trump posting an AI-generated image of himself as pope when Pope Francis died, and he said that post was “not cool”. He said that to imply one could simply become pope without first rising through the ranks of the Catholic Church, especially someone as unpious as Trump, was disrespectful to those who dedicate their careers to the clerical service, and he found the image offensive.

This is not “one country, two systems”. This is “one nation, two countries”. It’s not an irrelevant distinction.

The words are phrased extremely carefully to avoid subjugating Taiwan to Beijing. Perhaps it makes more sense to those who know Chinese. The entire situation is basically a word game at this point. Nobody really seems to want to disturb the status quo, but words have to be said.

Honestly, I don’t know what China has to gain from taking Taiwan by force versus what they can gain much more cheaply by just befriending and trading with it.

They could arrange an on-paper reunification. The key is to choose your words carefully to avoid upsetting anyone and give as much lip service as possible to Beijing while giving many of the “real” benefits to Taipei.

• The Republic of China is dissolved. The government in Taipei will continue and is renamed to just “Taiwan”. All legal documents will be issued under the name “Taiwan”. Former officials of the Republic of China continue in office as officials of Taiwan. The leader of the Taiwanese people is the president of Taiwan (台湾总统) and the administrative organs that govern their portion of Greater China (大中华) is the Government of Taiwan (台湾政府). Other than that, the status quo is acceptable and shall continue indefinitely.
• Taiwan acknowledges it is a part of Greater China (大中华) and that Taiwanese people are members of the Chinese nation (中华民族). Note that the Chinese terms used here refer to the cultural idea of “China” and not the country.
• In international affairs, all instances of “Chinese Taipei” (中华台北) are replaced with “Chinese Taiwan” (中华台湾). Note the use of the cultural “Chinese” rather than “Chinese” referring to that which relates the People’s Republic of China. All mainland publications will adopt the Xinhua News Agency’s style guide recommendation of referring to Taiwan as merely “Taiwan” rather than “Taiwan Province” (台湾省).
• The People’s Republic of China recognises that Taiwanese people have a right to self-government and disclaims all rights of government (政权) to the people of Taiwan. Taiwan does the same to the mainland. Sovereignty (主权) is held collectively by the Chinese cultural nation (中华民族) as a whole and cannot be exercised unilaterally, but the respective governments have the right to defend the Chinese nation’s sovereignty on their respective territories against external threats.
• Taiwan’s right to build up its military for the purposes of deterring external threats is recognised. Taiwan and China agree that their respective militaries will not be used against each other. Each military defends its own side of the strait and neither is obligated to help the other in any conflict whatsoever.
• The Taiwanese people will decide when they would like the adopt the socialist system. There is no deadline for this to occur. The mainland respects the right of the Taiwanese people to choose and will not force the matter nor will it interfere in the internal politics of Taiwan.
• Taiwan agrees to publicly support Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea, agrees that such region belongs to the Chinese nation, and disclaims all interests whatsoever beyond 22 km from its coast (note: equivalent distance to a country’s territorial waters). The portion of the exclusive economic zone of China east of the island Taiwan and west into the centre of the Taiwan Strait is reserved for the sole use and benefit of the Taiwanese people. Anything more than 22 km south of Cape Eluanbi is disclaimed by Taiwan and for the exclusive use and benefit of the mainland. Taiwan is not obligated to use its naval forces to enforce any claims laid to portions of China’s EEZ not reserved for it.
• The People’s Republic of China will respect the Taiwanese government’s ability to interact with foreign nations even if such interacts disagree with the way mainlanders choose to relate with that nation. To that end, the PRC will support Taiwan’s participation in international organisations as a member non-state entity. If such a designation is not allowed by the organisation’s rules then Taiwan will apply as a state but never style itself as such once admitted, always referring to its delegations as representing “Chinese Taiwan” (中华台湾).

Ah yeah, that’s a pretty good contender.

In general, we accept that the Government already knows who you are, how old you are, and where you live. That’s already a given. The purpose of a zero-knowledge age verification scheme is to allow a third party (not the Government) to be confident that a person is an adult, without being given any additional information or being able to deduce any additional information from what they’re given. So essentially, they get only 1 bit of information: whether the user is an adult (true/false). In practice, a perfect system is not possible, since the fact that you receive a response also means you get the answer to related questions, like whether the user possesses a Government-issued ID (obviously “true” if they can successfully complete the verification).

So, here’s how such a scheme might work. There are many possible implementations.

In the United States, we have (optional) digital ID cards. These are added to one’s digital wallet in a similar manner to payment cards and can be used for things like buying alcohol, getting through airport security, and driving. This digital infrastructure can be re-used.

1. An organisation which wants to perform digital identity verification generates a cryptographic key pair and registers the public key with a Government server ahead of time. The public key is published to a Government-run public keyserver.
2. A website who wants to verify a user’s age sends a verification request to a Government server, digitally signed with their private key. The server responds with a request ID, which is a random, but unique, string of characters.
3. The website provides this string to the user. The user copies the string.
4. The user opens their digital wallet, selects their ID card, and then opens the age verification feature. The user pastes the request ID into their digital wallet, which fetches information about the request from the Government server. Because the request which the request ID is associated with was signed using the organisation’s private key, the Government can tell the user who initiated the request.
5. The user is asked to confirm/deny the age verification request. If the user confirms the request, then a biometric will be required to access their private key (these are stored in the device’s keystore), sign the approval response, and then sent that response to the Government server. The Government server checks that the signature is valid and tied to the key associated with that ID before marking the verification request as completed.
6. After confirming, the user returns to the website and clicks a button which says “I’ve completed the verification.” The website then queries the request ID with the Government server (again, signing the request with their private key). The Government server responds with “completed” if the user has accepted the request, or “not completed” if the user has either not yet accepted the request or denied it.

What did they do?

It’s not Jesus that caused people to not listen to science. Humans are just naturally superstitious. Religion has existed in every human civilisation since the beginning of history. Even if Christianity never arose, humans would just be following some other religions.

My favourite scene in The Death of Stalin is when the rest of the Poliboro decided that they’ve had enough of Beria’s shit and have him shot after a ten-second “trial”.

It’s not a guarantee, but generally, digital ID systems live on the phone of one person only and require a screen lock to use. You’re right though, that there is nothing preventing someone else from borrowing another’s identity.

A more comparable situation would be if German shopkeepers had a habit of questioning French euro coins and regularly refused them by saying they’re valid only in France (even if that statement is wrong).

They may legally be worth the same, but the shopkeeper can choose to not accept them because they have the right to accept payment in any way they want. Just like a shop can refuse to accept a 500€ note when you’re only trying to buy a 1€ chocolate bar.