Well I can’t speak to what its like in places I’ve never been.

without telling me you’re from the US.

I… mentioned the US in my comment?

Oh for sure I just wouldn’t want anyone having my face scan personally. I’d love to have a law passed that designated biometric data as personal property requiring a warrant or explicit consent to collect.

Some of them they don’t even ask anymore. When you enter the US at certain ports of entry now they scan everyone as you walk up and they won’t even ask to see your passport because they know who you are and will just wave you through. Because that’s not fucking creepy at all.

Firstly, it is not true that fascism is only the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. There is just as little ground for thinking that Social-Democracy can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organisations; a bloc, which arose in the circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, and which is intended for combating the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie cannot retain power without such a bloc. It would therefore be a mistake to think that “pacifism” signifies the liquidation of fascism. In the present situation, “pacifism” is the strengthening of fascism with its moderate, Social-Democratic wing pushed into the forefront.

• “Concerning the International Situation” by J. V. Stalin (1924)

Sadly if you want to travel these days face scans are unavoidable. I still avoid them for commercial services, but yeah. Fly to europe or any major US city and you are going to be made to submit to a face scan to get through security.

Right? I wish we had the Great Firewall ffs.

If it weren’t in a US jurisdiction this would matter to me, but since it is it’s irrelevant. US law basically makes privacy on any server within the US an illusion. Because they can issue a gag and log order to the server operator and you’d never know as they’d be legally barred from speaking on it.

Well kind of. But it’s more like touch DIFFERENT grass. Like whereever you live I bet there’s a river or creak or lake or whatever within a 30 minute drive. Go there. Check it out. Sit next to it for a minute. Let yourself be an ape for a minute. It’s what we are. Just follow your whims. See a cool rock? Go check that shit out.

Agreed if you read through the forum posts of the founder a lot of it is him bending over backwards to justify this very thing. But I figured most people wouldn’t be as convinced by the technical aspect, and I’m not qualified enough on it to like fully break it down myself either so just didn’t speak on it.

I do think that it seems a bit worse than just an extra layer tho. It is literally moving your actual Identifying data (payment info and IP) into the hands of a US based company and out of the hands of Mullvad. It is protecting you from Mullvad, and exposing you to the massive fucking Five Eyes surveillance state, and US jurisdiction which is one of the most draconian in the world in regards to digital privacy.

Is this just a money grab? Maybe. Does the founder believe in what he’s doing? Maybe. But does this also look exactly like what I would expect a US Government backed Honey Pot service to look like? Yes.

Also, if you don’t trust Mullvad, use TOR.

Step outside of your routine. Drive 20 minutes down the road on a whim and go to the park. Go for a walk. Break the monotony of life in small ways all throughout the day/week. Less screen time too.

I wanted to gauge like how much people read outside the main ML theory. I have dozens of books like this physically on my bookshelf myself. But I’ve never heard like an ML mention the Art of War when recomending things to read. So was curious what people thought about it. One reason I find it interesting is modern China actually does incorporate a lot of Sun Tzu and Confucian style thinking into how they do things and it works quite well for them, but it’s not something I see highlighted often.

How could I know the answer to my question when my question was what other peoples opinions on the topic were?

Well I’m not just talking about critiquing them. Some do deserve it, but I think they also just have a lot of useful information regarding strategy, mindfulness, and tactics that transcends ideology.

The Latitude 7400 (Non 2-in-one version) is genuinely an amazing laptop if you underclock the CPU a bit so it doesn’t sound like a jet engine. I run Debian on it and the thing gets 12 hours of battery life, and does everything I need. Build quality is pretty good too. I got it for like 200$ refurbished.

Red Star OS

Refer to your toes as your “little piggies”

Finally! I can download more RAM!