81–90 of 696 posts
Glenn Greenwald is back on substack. Yay! For the past few years, he’s mostly done videos on rumble, and he’s fun to watch, but personally I prefer his writing. In case you’ve been under a rock for 10 years, Greenwald was the guy who published Snowden’s revelations. His focus has always been on censorship, surveillance, and hypocrisy in government.
I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better. I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a cl…
Its an intractable problem because people now have a general expectation that everything is "free". Look at Kagi's success and compare it to Google. It doesn't even register. People need to start paying for things, because if you're not paying for it, you're not in control of it.
It’s pretty amazing when you get the worst of both worlds—total surveillance, yet still rampant crime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Yay" Greenwald is (still) playing footsie down at the Nazi bar. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...
> Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters If we're gonna judge authors for what platforms they're using, does that mean we're all bad guys here on HN too, since a lot of current misery is because of startups and technology companies who used to receive a lot praise here?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who’s making up the homicide and other violent crime statistics and for what purpose?
Which statistics are you looking at? Crime has been dropping since the 90s, with the exception of short term regressions. https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-is-likely-down-an-enormo...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rampant crime is largely made up.
Compared to other major western countries, the US has a serious problem with violent crime in particular.
So, are you using your brain and demanding other systemic changes like free mental-health care and housing? or are you just being a tool and wanting more police violence?
At this point, it's fair to assume that if the US government wanted to surveil you to a nefarious end, they absolutely could, easily, using things you bought to make your life more convenient. The keys then become: 1) Implementing policies discouraging them from doing so at the societal level and 2) Implementing force behind those policies at the personal and societal level DHS isn't getting paid right now because Kr…
I laugh at myself sometimes for things like this: I refuse to provide my phone number to the cashier who promises me loyalty points, then I hand over the same credit card number I use for all my purchases. Boy, I really showed them how much I value my privacy!
I know Ring is getting a bad rap for enabling state level surveillance, but the Ring app offers an option to enable end-to-end encryption between the camera and your phone. The stored video is encrypted with key generated on your phone. You have to be physically close to the camera in order to share the key and complete the set-up. Once encrypted, the video can't be analyzed by AI or used in a broad surveillance effo…
This type of centralization breeds authoritarianism. See also the Iran protests. There’s too many single points of failure in technology. These systems become sources of oppression inevitably. How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms?
> How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms? by making sure that compatibility is enshrined into law, so that competition occurs, rather than walled gardens. It has to start at the top - gov't has to mandate it.
We need resilience that's hard to regulate or undo.
At this point, it's fair to assume that if the US government wanted to surveil you to a nefarious end, they absolutely could, easily, using things you bought to make your life more convenient. The keys then become: 1) Implementing policies discouraging them from doing so at the societal level and 2) Implementing force behind those policies at the personal and societal level DHS isn't getting paid right now because Kr…
I laugh at myself sometimes for things like this: I refuse to provide my phone number to the cashier who promises me loyalty points, then I hand over the same credit card number I use for all my purchases. Boy, I really showed them how much I value my privacy!
But the other holes in the bucket doesn't mean you have to help. From a real opsec point of view a single tiny hole is the same as no wall at all. But from a day to day view less is less. It does at least reduce the spam.
And there is also, say you plug hole A and you can't do anything about hole B.
Some day something may develop that changes hole B (maybe a new law, maybe it's a service that you can stop using, maybe one org stops cooperating with another, whatever).
If hole A has already been wide open for years then closing hole B may not change much. But if hole A has been closed for years when the opportunity to close hole B comes along, then maybe closing hole B actually does something.
I choose to see it as something is better than nothing and it's worth it to apply pressure and be sand in the gears.
It's got to be better for everyone that there is at least some sand in the gears than if there were no sand in the gears.