That's a fair point, but DuckDuckGo has been a privacy champion for years, so I would give them far more weight in actually adhering to these policies as a middle-man than to directly trust the others. The priorities are different.
I have a similar experience at my local Best Buy stores. I buy most of my electronics from there because I can't trust Amazon to give me a product that isn't counterfeit or defective to some degree. In general I largely prefer to buy things in person these days than have it shipped. No more Prime.
Just be careful with BB when buying some products, like external hard drives. There are many stories on r/datahoarder from people buying HDDs only to plug them in and find the previous buyer has swapped out the drive, resealed it and returned it.
Yes, it's the same reason that I recommend people just buy stuff from Costco if they have the item.
A buyer at Best Buy or Costco explicitly made a decision to stock the item at the store/warehouse, where shelf space is not free. If that item has a lot of returns or complaints, the store will stop selling the product. It takes up space where a better product could be, and returns waste the time of employees.
Amazon doesn't have these controls. Listing an item on Amazon is cheap and Amazon has no incentive to prune their marketplace of junk. The only controls on Amazon are user reviews which can be gamed.
> Iranians are related to Arabs at the end of the day
Oof, this is a catastrophic screw-up and very offensive. I think you have some serious homework to do. Iranians are very distinct from Arabs in many ways; different language, different sect of Islam (which many of the civilians - particularly the youth - privately denounce), different culture. Iranians are about as much Arab as they are British. The country has been significantly invaded by many other countries throughout the ages, but the ethnicity remains distinct.
This was a fun exercise. I made it through 1300 by reading it in a Scottish accent and being familiar with some basic old Norse characters from a prior trip to Iceland. I watch Scottish shows like "Still Game", and for some reason that combo with the accent and their lingo made it simpler to read. By 1200 I was completely lost; it looks more Germanic to me, which I don't have the knowledge to read.
All of which is meaningless if it's not reflected properly in their legal documents/terms. I've had interactions with the Flock CEO here on Hacker News and he also tried to reassure us that nothing fishy is/was going on. Take it with a grain of salt.
Why anyone would trust the executives at any company when they are only incentivized to lie, cheat, and steal is beyond me. It's a lesson every generation is hellbent on learning again and against and again.
It use to be the default belief, throughout all of humanity, on how greed is bad and dangerous; yet for the last 100 years you'd think the complete opposite was the norm.
> when they are only incentivized to lie, cheat, and steal
The fact that they are allowed to do this is beyond me.
The fact that they do this is destructive to innovation and I'm not sure why we pretend it enables innovation. There's a thousands multi million dollar companies that I'm confident most users here could implement, but the major reason many don't is because to actually do it is far harder than what those companies build. People who understand that an unlisted link is not an actual security measure, that things need to actually be under lock and key.
I'm not saying we should go so far as make mistakes so punishable that no one can do anything but there needs to be some bar. There's so much gross incompetence that we're not even talking about incompetence; a far ways away from mistakes by competent people.
We are filtering out those with basic ethics. That's not a system we should be encouraging
Because the liars who have already profited from lying will defend the current system.
The best fix that we can work on now in America is repealing the 17th amendment to restrengthen the federal system as a check on populist impulses, which can easily be manipulated by liars.
Yes, by state legislatures. The concept was the Senate would reflect the states' interests, whereas the House would reflect the people's interests, in matters of federal legislation.
For those unaware, the German Federal democratic system works in a similar way. They have two houses: the Bundestag (directly elected) and the Bundesrat (appointed by state legistatures). As a outsider, their democracy appears to be very high functioning, which demonstrates this form of democracy can work well.
> their democracy appears to be very high functioning, which demonstrates this form of democracy can work well
This probably depends on your definition of "working well".
In March 2025, after the last Federal elections were held in Germany (February 2025), but before the new parliament was constituted (within 30 days of the results?), the new governing coalition engineered a constitutional amendment which required a supermajority which they would not have in the new parliament, so instead they held the vote in the old parliament.
I added that last line as a honeypot, as part of my ongoing project on HN. No matter what I say positive about some country, culture, or institution, someone will pop into the conversation to say: "Yes, but what about this one incident. See, X is not so great after all." I think we need an equivalent of Brandolini's law for counterpoint of negativity in all HN discussions. It is as though people think they are disproving a maths proof by counterpoint. That's not the way the Real World of Human Society works. Weirdly, I see the same pattern on Wiki pages about living people. There is always a section of a bunch of random one-off events trying to discredit the person.
To react to your specific incident, I think a more nuanced view would be to say that all highly functioning democracies have incidents that are "perfectly legal, but appear as an abuse of process". I don't really think that detracts from the overall statement that Germany is a highly functioning democracy. Moreover, highly functional democracies regularly change parliamentary rules to reduce incidents like this.
> No matter what I say positive about some country, culture, or institution, someone will pop into the conversation to say: "Yes, but what about this one incident. See, X is not so great after all."
Isn't this what's called "balanced reporting"? Life is shades of grey.
Aside: not that long ago, half of Western Europe used to look up to Germany as it was the home of "Made in Germany" and the place where the trains ran on time ... <chuckle> ... VW emissions and Deutsche Bahn, how times change.
> I think a more nuanced view would be to say that all highly functioning democracies have incidents that are "perfectly legal, but appear as an abuse of process". I don't really think that detracts from the overall statement that Germany is a highly functioning democracy.
I suspect we may need to hear your definition of "a highly functioning democracy" to assess that claim.
If - hypothetically - your political worst enemies were to pull the same stunt immediately after losing an election, binding the winners of said election, would you be as supportive?
> To react to your specific incident, I think a more nuanced view would be to say that all highly functioning democracies have incidents that are "perfectly legal, but appear as an abuse of process". I don't really think that detracts from the overall statement that Germany is a highly functioning democracy. Moreover, highly functional democracies regularly change parliamentary rules to reduce incidents like this.
I agree with the repealing of the debt brake (it was a dumb idea that lead to badness, exported right across the EU), but there's no question that how it happened was pretty un-democratic. Like, procedurally it's fine but it was essentially making a big change in a lame-duck session of Parliament.
None of this disputes the notion that Germany is a high functioning democracy, but I guarantee that this action will be brought up again and again by populists in the future, as an example of how the "elites" don't care about democracy. The sad part is, they will be entirely correct in this particular case.
Another idea for the debt brake: What if they set strict limits, like a max of 3% for 7 years, or 5% for 5 years. Literally, you have a "bank of GDP percent points". You can gain them by running a surplus and spend them by running a deficit. Start the initial bank balance at 25%.
> but I guarantee that this action will be brought up again and again by populists in the future, as an example of how the "elites" don't care about democracy.
lol what the fuck, no. Can't believe you look at the current system and think "you know what, political parties should be able to choose senators not the citizens." Good lord.
Yup exactly, if this is the truth then put it on the terms/privacy policy etc... exec's say anything these days with zero consequences for lieing in a public forum.
And if it is not a publicly traded company? Can the CEO in question making statements and assurances on a forum or linkedin or X in communication with a user cause the company to be in a binding position?
Absolutely. I don't know what legal jurisdiction they are subject to, but I could imagine that someone tries to sue an EU division/outpost in an EU court under a GPDR-type of petition, these posts would be submitted as evidence. One could easily argue the CEO is acting on behalf of the company by posting using their real name. (Let's presume there is no identity fraud for these posts.)
And don't forget that Elon Musk was tried in the US for defamation after making a bunch of posts on Twitter against some UK citizens. Assuming that you are posting under your real name, you are definitely legally responsible for those words.
You had me up until now. Turns out your whole point is arguing semantics? You're arguing just to argue and not providing anything of substance on this point. As another person said, this isn't a court.
If X is against law Y the recourse is to seek judgment from courts. If it’s not against the law the recourse is to seek new law from Congress.
The difference is significant for that reason alone. The other reason is that if you’re looking to recruit supporters you will get more of them if you get your ducks in a row. Disorganized ducks impair credibility and create friction.
Not making the distinction between the two is only helpful for the purpose of blowing off steam and the only outcome is outrage fatigue.
As someone that has seen all/most Trek in full (same with the B5 universe), I agree with this strategy, it's a great suggestion. They can always come back and watch the remaining ones later. I would reduce the IMDB rating threshold to about 7.7 though and they can apply that to season 2 and 3 of DS9 as well (don't skip s3x22 "Explorers" though, it's a good one despite lower rating).
Most popular platforms are tracking and spying on you. My friends and I also believe Slack private DMs are compromised as we often times see ads directly pertaining to oddball discussions we don't have outside of Slack.
Most people here probably know this already, but you can minimize some of this by using privacy browser extensions [1], containerized browsing [2], a good VPN [3], and/or Pihole [4].
I'm curious about the Slack thing. I wonder if there could be third parties doing something (browser plugins, third party keyboards for Android, edit: someone using a TV as a computer monitor.)
One thing is for certain, if ad targeting is not being done in ways it shouldn't be, there isn't anything technically preventing it.
It could be as simple as links. People drop links in the slack discussions, other people from Geolocated IP addresses (or same) click on them. Google analytics et. al. hovers a lot of data.
A decent example of why implementing authoritarian policies is a bad strategy for the US; particularly coming from the current administration. We're only strengthening Chinese supremacy at this point and tearing the US apart in the process of trying to claw some back. We don't have what it takes to pull this shit off as well as China does. This is a failure at many levels: the uncoordinated surveillance, the gross lack of security, lack of skills, lack of knowledge, etc. and it extends to many aspects of American governance. Between the US putting significant traumatic pressure on its own citizens and companies doing mass layoffs in an increasingly unaffordable economy, this will push even more brain drain overseas, which only accelerates China's strengthening stance more.
reply