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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • I lived through a campus shooting last year. As I watched college students climb calmly out of windows to escape the building, I realized this is a generation raised on constant shooting drills. That might explain why 38 percent of students who study on campus said they were worried about gun violence at their schools. Campus gun policies mattered at least somewhat to 80 percent of those surveyed. And of those who cared, students who wanted more restrictive gun policies outweighed those who preferred looser policies by five to one, according to the report.

    “Campus gun policies” don’t stop shootings. Safe space gun bans didn’t stop the campus shooting mentioned by the author. The “safety” described is an illusion.

    Maybe we should spend less time criticizing the government for not infringing on our freedoms and more time educating prospective students about how to actually be safe?








  • frogmint@beehaw.orgtoPrivacy@lemmy.mlThoughts on Cryptocurrency?
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    3 months ago

    BTC, ETH, and XMR are the only ones that matter. Some stable coins (USDC, GUSD) are okay, too.

    BTC (Bitcoin) is good because it’s the most widespread. If a vendor accepts crypto, odds are they accept BTC. However, the blockchain is easily traceable.

    ETH (Ethereum) is good because its blockchain is far more versatile, so it can be used for other things than just crypto payments. However, it’s less widely used for payments than BTC and is also easily traceable.

    XMR (Monero) is excellent. It’s extremely difficult to track an individual user. Your transactions are private. There are some possible attack vectors for the future, but they’d require that you be an actual target to be worthwhile. Someone that’s going to track you is going to find a different way than XMR to do it. XMR isn’t as widely used as the others, though, and it’s also not on as many crypto exchanges. Kraken has it.

    However, crypto as an investment is not a good idea. Spend your crypto.




  • I don’t think this is the same for something that is:

    • true

    and

    • within the individual’s control

    and, in part,

    • actually bad or against the law

    We can keep words to say that people have made a choice without needing to change the language every 3 years. Felons are people that have committed felonies. Criminals are people that have committed crimes. Terrorists are people that have committed terrorism.

    Your other examples are slurs because they’re used to insult people over something that’s out of their control and isn’t actually a bad thing. Racial slurs are slurs not because they identify someone as a particular race but because using it indicates the speaker (incorrectly) believes there’s something “bad” about that particular race. And, race/sexuality/age/etc… aren’t even a choice, so the slur user is insulting the person about something that they can’t even control.

    Of course, there’s a debate to be made that illegal immigration was the “right” choice for that person at the time to escape their situation or that some undocumented immigrants didn’t have a choice (children or trafficking victims), but at a basic level we’re talking about people who have immigrated illegally, by choice.


  • Actually that’s not correct. Media isn’t like other products, it’s protected speech. This is why even though we’ve sanctioned Russia, you can still go and read Russian Times. Even foreign media, which Tik Tok is, would be protected under our free speech laws.

    Yes, while speech is protected, but the platform’s operations, websites, and apps are not. No foreign entity has a legal right to operate commercially in the United States. We’ve had sanctions and tariffs for years. 1A applies to free speech of Americans.

    This is why this “ban” isn’t a ban, which the senators keep repeating. It doesn’t block Tik Tok or it’s website from being used by Americans. All it does is block Tik Tok from being distributed by American app stores.

    Not true. Read the bill. Websites are addressed.

    With the new EU ruling, Apple is going to have to allow third party installation anyway, so you’ll still be able to use Tik Tok as if nothing happened.

    Not relevant to USA because Apple could allow this only in the EU. And not applicable because websites are covered by the bill.


  • If this is about banning a platform that can ban you, then it isn’t about banning free speech. Just because speech exists on TikTok does not make it a platform for free speech.

    The 1st Amendment recognizes the right to free speech in the USA. It does not recognize the right for a foreign entity to operate a restricted speech platform. The government is not stifling your speech here.

    And, this bill isn’t even all about the “speech” aspects of TikTok. The other aspect of it is that this gives the government the ability to block the app by declaring that TikTok is straight up malware, collecting all the data it can on you and sending it to servers outside the regulatory power of the US. Apple and Google won’t ban TikTok because it’s too profitable, but the app is malware.


  • The law is freedom of speech from government persecution. Which is literally what banning Tik Tok is.

    Except that’s not what this bill is. It’s about banning certain apps and websites which are under the control of an adversarial government. The speech is fine, but the platform moderating that speech isn’t, and the 1st Amendment doesn’t protect foreign entities. The Supreme Court upheld in Bluman v. Fed. Election Commission that limits on foreign entities’ speech can be greater than what would be constitutional for US citizens. And this isn’t even about speech, it’s about the platform of that speech.

    It’s the government persecuting a company for being Chinese.

    True, but only if “Chinese” means “operated in part by the Chinese government/CCP.” This isn’t about the the race or ethnicity; it’s about the government.

    We have similar bans in place for other constitutionally-protected activities involving other countries. Import of Russian firearms and ammo is banned despite the right to keep and bear arms.

    What the law does not protect is private persecution. If you come to my house and announce you’re a pedo, I can kick you out of my house for that. Just like tik tok can ban you.

    You can kick them out for any reason because they dont have the right to be on your property. This article is touting that the bill is an attack on free speech as a right, but TikTok and other social media platforms are not examples of free speech. Instead, this bill is about limiting the ability of foreign powers to control the spread of information in the US, similar to how we already limit the ability of foreign powers to finance our elections.




  • It’s working fine for me. I like the improved icons and slightly adjusted layout, and the auto-hide panel feature is great.

    Issues with my setup: window title applet isn’t yet updated to support KDE 6. I know there’s a version on the AUR that should work, but I’m waiting to see if it hits the Arch extras repo soon. My Papirus icons don’t seem to be applying, so all my folders are Green but Dolphin’s icon itself is blue. I also did get a weird temporary black box when moving a window out of the way from an auto hide panel, and the auto hide causes a stutter when it comes back into view.

    1050 Ti laptop running X11 (optimus-manager) through HDMI with lid closed