A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official's phone records and use Mexico City's surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency's informants in 2018, the U.S. Justice Department said in a report issued on Thursday.
This should absolutely be held up as the example for people that say "I have nothing to hide."
The world isn't fun time sunshine lollipops, kids. It's literally inevitable that your data gets leaked or stolen.
You either naïvely trust the service you give data to more than you should, or you naïvely trust criminals to skip you when given the opportunity. There no evidence of a middle ground or other options in the matter.
The main goal here is to keep my device's IMEI number private, so that it appears to the service provider as if my phone has never used cellular data. By hiding the IMEI, the provider won’t be able to associate the device with me when I use it solely on public Wi-Fi such as in a café, or be able to track me with IMEI if my IMEI number is leaked by some service or app that I accidentally used. They might see that a new device is connected, but they won’t be able to identify that it belongs to me.
Now that I think of it twice I think you got a point Solely connecting to WIFI doesn't seem to leak my IMEI number. But I'm not sure what else will except for using SIMs.
I guess I just don't like the idea that a persistent number could be used to identify me.
Though I'm still curious about:
May I also ask how much information is carried to the second device by using hotspot? By this I meant the phone with IMEI will be able to know my device name, but what else? Will the phone with IMEI also be able to know the device model?
I cannot find any reliable source that says personal hotspot can see the device model connecting to it, would be really great if someone could clarify this here.
But, some wifi access points can detect your device model anyways. My Xfinity gateway will show my Phone’s name and what model of phone I have.
I believe this is true as there is browser plugin for spoofing device model
I can't tell you if you should or not. I can tell you I DO NOT have it enabled and mapping service work just fine. Also I would recommend using something like CoMaps and not Google Maps.
CoMaps is a recent fork of Organic Maps. So those two are pretty similar at the moment in terms of functionality. Osmand I would say has a lot more features and customisation options, but Organic/CoMaps is faster and more responsive.
could you elaborate their difference? what information is send to what servers?
In my opinion WIFI scanning / Bluetooth scanning / Network Location is only used within system and shared with apps inside the profile if given permission. If I use open source maps I can't see how my personal information is going to leak
The thing that help you navigate inside buildings is called "Network Location".
Google and Apple provide this functionality by collecting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth network data from all their users and creating a massive database.
By default, "Network Location" is disabled in GrapheneOS. If you have Google Play Services installed, you can use Google's Network Location service by enabling those options.
Fortunately, GrapheneOS provides an alternative using Apple's network location services. There is an option to use GrapheneOS proxy server instead of connecting directly to Apple. Of course, whether you use this feature should entirely depend on how much you trust GrapheneOS developers. This one works using just Wi-Fi data and I use it daily.
though could you briefly explain the term "Network Location"? what does this "network" represents? How is it going to help with location and geopositioning? My understanding is that by enabling "Network Location" the location defined with "Network" is sent to SLP server as assisted data for geopositioning.
I would assume "Network" represents cellular data, hope someone could confirm
You need a direct line of sight with satellites for GPS to work.
Of course, this is almost impossible indoors. Here's how network location works to my understanding:
Another person outdoors uses GPS to locate themselves. This person has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled and their device can see your home/office network. Google and Apple save this information to their databases. When you request your location indoors, your device sends Wi-Fi information of nearby access points. The servers know approximate location of this Wi-Fi network and can give you your approximate location, though with a large margin of error.
This would be really neat, however it's not trivial to sell those everywhere. If you're lucky to live in a country or even city where they can get those to, you're golden. If you don't, you're screwed.
Unfortunately, as much as I love the idea and tech behind Monero, actually accepting it is not practical at all, as the coin is used a lot for criminal stuff and is thus very strictly followed by many agencies. We don't know if they can break it, but even they don't, businesses can get a rough treatment just for accepting Monero. It's perfectly understandable if they'd rather not do it.
Scratchcards are sold at ecommerce sites which makes them significantly more accessible. If you really want to be "anonymous" (with very big quotes) you can buy gift cards for those sites with cash then order to a collection point. Otherwise, sure, it's not as good as paying with cash but all there's a trail for is that you bought Mullvad credits that cannot be tied to any account.
I don't think it's that easy. the CEO Andy Yen talked about this briefly in this podcast, it boils down to financial auditors not liking cryptocurrencies. he said even just by accepting bitcoin most of the auditors won't agree to audit their company, all the while they are legally required to have regular audits
I sit down with Andy Yen, founder and CEO of Proton, to discuss the release of Proton Wallet, the decision to focus on Bitcoin despite its lack of privacy, why they don’t accept Monero, and much more.
Well, maybe that person didn't have permission to speak like that, but they said that they would get it into the summer plans in a screenshot right on the page.
does proton want to be constantly harassed (aka investigated informally without charges nor warrants) by fbi, police, mi5, mi6, Interpol, Europol, etc etc via kyc laws and money laundering laws because a few hundreds/thousands petitioners said "do this"? they would receive even more requests for user data (which often don't require warrants in many countries btw) than they already receive.
or would they rather continue to enable millions of users to escape censorship while still making lots of money and only sometimes harassed by LE?
in other words do you think proton is a conscience with software attached? or are they a money-making company that has slightly better values than certain other companies?
(rhetorical questions. i know the answers already)
Their user voice post are constantly not listen to. I just changed to tuta instead. They are at least trying to implement cryptopayments. ( Just have one for my public domains anyhow there. VPN with mullvad accept crypto Including XMR and cash.
IIRC, they've stated that they won't accept Monero because it means they would fail external financial audits they need to remain in operation in Switzerland. Sign all you want, they won't do this.
Plus - y'all, email is not secure anyway. Even Proton. Why would you sign a petition to make the payment method more anonymous than the service they provide? Just send them cash by DHL.
It can be pseudoanonymous if you use it that way. If you login to it via tor for example and only use it to communicate to people who aren't related to your IRL identity.
Besides cash and mail is still much easier to track than Monero
No, don't create a bigger market for the anonymous cryptocurrency. Crime is a bad thing (although with the state of things on war crimes I may have jumped the gun proclaiming that).
Monero is used mostly by criminals. Crime and porn are basically the only reasons you'd want an anonymous crypto-currency, unless even the online stores you visit (not just the contents of your order) are of privacy concern.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a while. Cash I assume is bad as well? You know those paperthingies that doesn't register when hands changes? Saying you don't care about privacy cause you got nothing to hide is like not caring about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Also crime is a good thing sometimes. A lot of really bad things are legal on other side. And let's do a body count of all the crimes you can think of .
Privacy and security are in conflict. I think privacy of thought and privacy of association are important (so social media and messaging) but privacy on where you spend your money leans a bit too far into the privacy side of things.
I admit crime can be a good thing. Piracy for example. But if you're doing crime for money rather than just for the love of the craft, that's where I draw the line.
Honestly what I do with my money is none of anyone else's business.
There was a time when this was the norm. What have happened is that its gone so far that people feel it's not a big deal and are happy to have their data har harvested without a thought. It is however fucking extreme to hear for someone just a few decades ago.
Go argue the privacy is bad to someone getting hormones or abortion pills. Or just shopping a book online and having Facebook match you, and your friends, up with your psychiatrist and sell all your data to highest bidder. Or get deported to an Ecuadorian prison.
Feeling you are safe when your data and habits are with the government and corporations are a privilege. A fake notion as well, haven't considered the fact that any data collected are available for sale or theft?
imagine the Nazis having all the information that exist on you , not even need to beat it out of you. Would be a lot different world then.
I do crime for a lot of things, money included, it pays for some mutual aid here among other things. If I could get away with it I wouldn't think twice of breaking the law for many reasons in many scenarios. Fuck I admire the guys that broke in to the airbase in the UK and fucked up planes that is legally used to commit genocide.
I was gonna respond, but after realizing you're going out of your way to be unnuanced about this I had second thoughts. I looked into your profile and of course you're pro-Russia.
Cash by physical mail. Letters are traceable, bank notes are traceable, and physical objects you have been in contact with are virtually guaranteed to have both your fingerprints and DNA on them, no matter how hard you try to prevent that.
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The Gaza government media office on Friday condemned the discovery of oxycodone pills reportedly discovered in flour bags distributed by “American-Israeli” aid centres.
“We have so far documented four testimonies from citizens who found these pills inside the flour bags,” it said in a statement, warning of the “possibility that some of these narcotic substances were deliberately ground or dissolved in the flour itself”.
Oxycodone is an opioid meant to treat severe and long-term pain, often prescribed to cancer patients.
The drug is highly addictive and can have life-threatening effects, including breathing complications and hallucinations.
The media office’s statement comes after several social media posts shared images of pills purportedly discovered in flour bags in Gaza.
I imagine that other news outlets don’t agree with the allegations of this being to poison people in Gaza. If someone was trying to poison the food, uncrushed oxy pills in flour is a pretty dumb and expensive way to do it.
I imagine that other news outlets don’t agree with the allegations of this being to poison people in Gaza.
Other news outlets aren't there, they rely on feeds from the AP/AFP/Reuters cabal and their subsidiaries. So if those three don't pick the story up it doesn't get reported.
You're assuming that the uncrushed ones were the intention and not that there is far more crushed up in the flour and the ones we see didn't get processed.
Opioids are also one of the more common tools of spreading addiction in order to manipulate the people for a reason, it's effective.
They didn’t say that there were actually narcotics ground up. That claim was an unsubstantiated “possibility”
possibility that some of these narcotic substances were deliberately ground or dissolved in the flour itself
People are jumping to conclusions without evidence, and are ignoring the fact that this is one of the few paths in for smugglers, and there is a massive demand for painkillers.
You are also jumping to conclusions. The only fact is that there was opioids in the flour.
Neither of us know why.
I can't help but believe that the absolutely oppressive and evil genocide regime has resorted to poisoning the populace through the tiny amount of aid they let through.
You choose to optimistically believe that this is the result of smugglers accessing those same few aid sites and using them to smuggle needed medicines.
Idk why you're so dismissive as if this would be beyond the scope of Israeli evil.
Agree. Unless you find the people who did it, you'll never know what the motivations are.
That said, we have a lot of reporting that has shown smugglers have been looking for creative ways into gaza, and we have a lot of reporting that shows Israel's blockade has turned hospitals into a hellscape without proper painkillers.
If your mom’s dying from cancer or if Netanyahu blew off your brother’s leg, and the hospital can’t get you medical grade opioid painkillers, are you just going to do nothing? Or are you going to try to work with a smuggler to help them out?
Israel has created a meat grinder and isn’t letting medicine in to hospitals. Desperate people are trying to do whatever they can.
There is a tremendously strong need to get painkillers into Gaza. And smuggler’s drones have been getting shot down. Aid is one of the few channels in. I would expect that someone is going to try to leverage that.
There are also addicts that are trying to have stuff smuggled in. Prime example of this is something as simple as cigarettes. There are quite a few articles about Israel stopping and intercepting people smuggling in cigarettes.
But poisoning or getting random people hooked on opioids? It was loose pills, and a more expensive opiate. If this was a scheme to poison or hook people, it’s a complex and dumb one. If you know anything about opiates, you know there are far better and cheaper to hook or kill people if that’s your goal.
Yeah, they were worried about flour being contaminated, and they implied that US or Israeli actors may have also crushed up oxy into the flour. But they didn’t actually test the flour to see if someone actually did that. They just threw out a hypothetical on social media, and people piled on without evidence to back that up.
And they kind of ignored the fact that Israel has created desperate conditions that smugglers are capitalizing on, and there is a lot of reporting about the smuggling and medical shortages.
It’s a brutal war and medical supplies are being rationed, if they exist at all. When hospitals don’t have meds, or can’t give rationed meds to lower priority people who are suffering, those desperate people resort to smuggling.
I’m sure there are also addicts who can trade influence or high value items for oxy, but my money on this being for the sick and dying.
Stop calling it a war. It's a genocide, a planned massacre, pretty similar to what the Nazis were doing. For it to be a war, there would have to be two sides fighting which isn't the case.
I was just thinking about how tricking investors into putting money into mineral rights and privatized state assets in already lost territory is someone's money printing scheme. Just like the insurance payments for the factories that get blown up there.
Just a heads up for those who are using GrapheneOS. If you log into 2 (google or other) accounts on an installed app even on different profile, the service provider will still be able to link between your 2 accounts using MediaDRM. (Google will still know that both of the 2 accounts have been logged in on the same device)
I always assumed this was the case. Hence why you shouldn't be using any apps beyond what's strictly necessary and obviously avoid classic corpo slop anything like Facebook etc
Geto uses shizuku (an app that allows for adb/shell functionality) to change settings that are usually hiddden or inaccessible, or to give/deny apps permissions or features, or, as in the screenshot to change certain keys values. This allows you to change the environment and settings of the app on launch, and revert them on app close.
You can see all the current settings by using adb:
adb shell settings list [ global | secure | system ]
Or in termux with shizuku:
settings list [ global | secure | system ]
In the following screenshot I enter the shell using shizuku (rish) list global settings and find keys with adb. I change the value of adb_wifi_enabled (wirelese debugging) from 0 to 1 and set {1} as the default value. Then I list again to show the change.
This is what geto is doing. But it assigns it to the action of launching/closing an app. While doing it manually via terminal set those values system wide.
Sometimes, though, you may want a system wide change (like if you want to change the accent colors or theme from RAINBOW to VIBRANT).
(There are other configs and properties you can viewed and modify using other commands. (in shell try
cmd -l
For a list of services. Some have user modable options. Be careful. If you don't know, don't touch. Every setting can be searched . there are hundreds or thousands .)
Would you recommend everyone to turn on this DRM setting? Is there any downside? This seems like a perfect option to prevent MediaDRM tracking and I'm suprised it's not default turned on
This might be useful to use temporarily when you add an app that you know will read these values on install.
You may be able to use an app like geto to have this option toggled so that it only uses the developer settings option when the app is launched and returns to hardware when it closes.
Keep in mind there are a host of other identifiers on your device that can also be used to track and identify the user and device.
EDIT: turning this option on can only generate a random mediaDRM for different apps, but the same app will still have the same mediaDRM across different profile
so you can login to 1 accounts on google and also login to bank app they wont link you through mediadrm
hopefully someone could give a solution to spoof mediadrm for the same app across different profile
On June 9, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made an announcement that finally obliterated his promise to end Canada’s old relationship with the United States.
The years that followed were marked by increasing resistance against military rule, exemplified by pivotal moments such as the Gwangju Uprising in May 1980 [~2000 dead and 3,500 wounded]. This tragic event highlighted the extremes of martial law, as the government responded with violent repression against civilian protests. The brutality of the military’s response drew international condemnation and led to widespread activism against authoritarian rule.
By the late 1980s, public discontent grew considerably, prompting a change in governance. In 1987, after immense pressure from civil society and pro-democracy movements, President Chun Doo-hwan announced the end of martial law,
Life expectancy was pretty much the same, after the post war recovery, until the, partially sanction induced, famine of the mid 90s.
I get that I am going to be downvoted for this, but please hear me out.
I live in the US and my impression of North Korea has been shaped by that media exposure. However, I've never really looked to deeply at it. I'm not saying that I disagree with the portrayal of North Korea in western media, but I would like to see some sources. Preferably from a variety of countries.
If you can help me find those, I would greatly appreciate it.
Over time, the southern half of Korea is becoming more and more divided and radicalized. It's utterly dominated by monopoly capital, and some of the most far-right individuals in the world. At the same time, labor organizing is on the rise, and they just elected a soc-dem that is trying to normalize relations with the DPRK and PRC while distancing a bit from Japan and the US (though not a full pivot).
I think as the US Empire wanes, the trends in the ROK point towards either peaceful reconcilliation with the DPRK along the lines of expanded trade and cooperation, hopefully an actual merge of the two along the lines of the "one country, two systems" approach, or revolution outright in the southern half. The DPRK is far less divided politically, and the ROK depends on the US Empire's millitary too much to remain stable as the US Empire fades.
They're money worshippers and utterly plastic today because they got infected with the Western European/American virus, sadly. Not surprised they're not having babies, it comes with the illness. And you're probably right, but it'll take at least 2 generations and a strong fever to make Korea healthy. And who knows if America, instead of fighting proxy wars everywhere decides to focus solely on China and intensifies its presence in SK? Let's hope every neighbour makes peace and the troublemakers become more and more isolated.
It's not that they got "infected," they got occupied, and were under a brutal fascist dictatorship for decades. The brutal repression has resulted in a starkly divided ROK. I have a lot of sympathy for the southern half of Korea, and those trying to kick out US Imperialism.
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New research shows southern resident killer whales grooming each other using kelp they’ve modified, and researchers think it’s the first time researchers have documented marine mammals making tools.
The 2025 China-Europe Seminar on Human Rights opened in Madrid, Spain, on June 25. Centered on the theme Human Rights in the Era of Digital Intelligence, the seminar explored both theoretical and practical approaches to redefining human rights protec…
A new version of fontconfig release recently with the added option to disable bitmap fonts. If you're using a rolling release distro, this might break bitmap fonts for you. It definitely does on Arch (and likely Arch-based distros) because they opted to disable them by default for some reason (AFAICT upstream gives the choice but does not recommend one way or the other).
This'll cause fontconfig to skip bitmap fonts, your apps won't be able to access them.
I'd recommend a user-level fontconfig file. Create $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/fonts.conf with below contents and you get your bitmap fonts back. This negates the file in /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps-except-emoji.conf. This is the first time I'm configuring fontconfig so there may be a better way ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This should've definitely been news imo especially because this is not the default behavior of upstream. I shouldn't have to read fontconfig PRs to figure out why my fonts broke, even on Arch.
To allow users to choose one of 70-yes-bitmaps.conf, 70-no-bitmaps-and-emoji.conf, or 70-no-bitmaps-except-emoji.conf for default installation. Fixes https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/-/issues/474 Changelog: added
Trump’s June 4 travel ban included Sudanese nationals, while the administration also imposed sanctions on the country facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Fedora Silverblue -- a very good balance of immutable distro and user friendliness. Stability and reliability of being immutable without low-level hacking like in Nix / Guix.
Bazzite has been working so well that even the wife has converted over. It cured my distro hopping so I haven't played much attention to how other distros have been doing.
A question - can I use Bazzite for uses other than gaming? I game on my laptop, but most of the time I'm writing code. Could I use it for that or should I go for something like Fedora, Debian or Arch?
I would say that development is the one thing that can get very annoying on immutable distros.
Flatpaks can only get you so far (as seen by the VS Code Flatpak's limitations that have to be worked around). I don't even use VS Code, so I can get around that pretty comfortably, but I have to use Distrobox for a lot of miscellaneous developer tools, and even then, I still run into problems and I can't install container tools inside of the containers that I'm already working in.
Not to discourage you from trying. I can still get by with some dev work on Bazzite, but it's waaay easier to do the same dev work on CachyOS (Arch-derivative) because I can just install shit normally and it will work.
The whole of Fedora atomic distros are interesting in an exercise in getting good with layering and distrobox. Pop_os 24.04 just to see if a third pillar of Linux frontends with GTK and Qt is viable. People are always pissy about Manjaro but they seem to have an interesting present being pre installed on the Orange Pi Neo handheld
I use immutable distros for the stability, and the nixOS approach isn’t for me.
You can install whatever you like using a tool called distrobox, which allows you to run containers easily.
I have an arch Linux container, and I have access to the entire AUR if I so please. I use that container to run Steam, and performance was the same as on Bazzite using the natively installed Steam.
The Arch derivatives, CachyOS and EndeavourOS. They’ve really done a good job with Arch and cultivating their own communities. It’s paid off for them and Arch isn’t really seen as just a hobby distro like 15 years ago, or a meme like the last 5 years.
Bazzite, for both general desktop use or dedicated for gaming. Just strength to strength from the project. I hope Fedora’s proposal to remove 32-bit libs doesn’t hurt them. By far the best, just untouchable, atomic distro.
Linux Mint for the first time in about 10 years is being seriously recommended to new users and not laughed off as a Linux Windows clone. That team has never stopped putting in the effort and deserve it. I don’t know how they’re going with/plans for Wayland, but I hope smoothly.
Fedora. I’ve never used it personally. But since starting with Linux in 2006 I’ve only ever seen or heard of it as kind of “being there” but not really talked about much. People are talking about it now as being a reliable and solid choice for new users and intermediate users.
Debian. I do see Debian mentioned now a lot more than it has been in years. I think people generally are becoming more satisfied with the idea of a stable OS, ages not writing it off as being left behind, constantly out of date, can’t run latest AMD graphics, etc. In my mind, flatpak helps that a lot, since you don’t need to wait years to get the latest versions of programs, but I don’t know for sure that is helping this current wave of success.
On the other hand:
Tumbleweed seems to be stagnating. They’ve made some changes and moving away from yast for the first in forever. The switch to selinux has affected proton usage in a way that it’s not super “new user friendly”. Even amongst people wanting to try out Opensuse, you often see “I’ll give Slowroll a try.”
PopOs’ cosmic desktop is still in early stages, and you do hear good things, but popos seems even less talked about now. They might have hit their peak 3-5 years ago, or maybe it will come around again for them like some of the distros above.
Nobara was massively talked up a few years back. But not so much now. And you do see discussions like “Nobara had too many problems on this machine, I just went straight-up Fedora”.
The other main hobby/enthusiast distros that were getting discussed more in the last few years - NixOS, Void Linux, Alpine. Not so much anymore. NixOS definitely did take off a lot more than the others, but it still just doesn’t come up as often as a couple years ago.
Debian. I do see Debian mentioned now a lot more than it has been in years.
I haven't noticed much difference, Debian has always been the go to distro if you wanted reliability and repositories that cover almost everything. Debian has always been an excellent choice for productivity. It's not by accident that Debian for more than 20 years has been the distro with by far the most derivatives.
By that standard Arch is the only distro that has achieved something similar, and it may be somewhat telling that SteamOS switched from Debian based to Arch based. Arch is way smaller in scope, and more nimble and easier to maintain. But AFAIK they do not have the democratic process Debian has, so I'm not sure it can really be called community based distro like Debian. Arch has more of a top leadership. Debian is probably the most true to the Free and Open Source ideals among the big distros.
Oh yeah, there’s a big difference now in distro conversations.
Debian was never talked about as a serious contender in distro hopping, discussions around “best distro for me”, starter for new users, etc. Just an occasional; “of you’re going to choose Ubuntu, just pick Debian and go straight to the source”.
But it was often pointed out that Debians pros is what made it not recommended for general end-user. It’s strong for servers and productivity. But its stability meant kernel and mesa updates were slow, many programs lagged. Gaming performance suffers and new hardware support is weaker. It was recognised that Ubuntu and Mint would add convenience for everyday use cases on top of Debian.
Especially the early to mid 2010s was all about “bleeding edge/rolling release is too likely to break, Debian is too stable to get updates, pick something in between”
Now, this problem is being lessened, at the same time people are liking the stability for general desktop use. Bleeding edge became highly recommended 5 - 8 years ago, and now in 2025 people care less about that and it’s easy to make stable distros work for your needs just as well.
Now people will regularly say “use Debian, it’s solid and reliable” and not follow up with “you’ll have to deal with old packages though”
That's the thing though you really don't have to deal with old packages. The ones that count are in the backports repo and for everything else there's is flatpak. Plus I think the reason steamos switched from Debian to arch was the methodology changed from being mutable to immutable and making it more for a handheld vs installed on many systems. It had nothing to do with the quality of the distro.
I’m not discussing quality of distro here, but people’s changing perception of Debian over the years. The way that people currently use/suggest/recommend distros has put Debian more in favour than say 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
It’s always been good depending on use case, but people currently are recommending it more for general use than has been typical before. And I think it is, as you said, that some of those past limiting factors are not a big problem anymore. I did suggest that in my first post.
Debian was never talked about as a serious contender in distro hopping
Back in 2005 when Ubuntu was all the rage, the first alternative to Ubuntu was almost always Debian. Only later when Mint became a thing, that was also an obvious alternative, because it was similarly focused on being easy to use.
And also PCLinuxOS and Mandriva, those were the big recommendations as well. But we’re pre-dating the common distro hopping discussions I think we had in mind by going back that far too.
But we’re pre-dating the common distro hopping discussions
No we aren't, Linux fora were full of them even before Ubuntu more than 20 years ago. Debian, Suse, Fedora, Mandrake, Mepis, PCLinux. Distro hopping was always a thing people debated.
The rest of that sentence is a bit confusing, who are we? And how am I supposed to read minds? And going back was kind of where we started, because you claimed it was a new thing for Debian. Debian was definitely recommended to general users, for many good reasons. Stability and huge repository among them, but also user friendly install procedure, and good package manager, that handled dependencies way better than Suse and Fedora.
Fedora has gotten much more stable and reliable in the past decade. 15+ years ago it was generally regarded as nice but unstable. I'd say nowadays for a moderately technical user it offers a better experience overall than Ubuntu or Mint. There are still unfortunately some pitfalls for new users (media codecs come to mind). In fact, the only issues i've had in most of those 10 years have been related to GNOME plugins or the Plasma 6 transition, problems that also occured on Ubuntu.
I have 2 computers: one running Ubuntu, one Fedora. This has been my setup for over a decade. I have lately been finding Ubuntu more and more cumbersome to use, with less of the "just works" experience i remember having in the past. Perhaps the focus on cloud computing has caused the desktop to languish a bit.
I would like to try Pop!_OS, but i haven't had a free evening for a while to do a backup and reinstall on one of my computers. It's also been a while since i used Mint, so my impression could be out of date.
The nice thing about Linux overall (compared to macOS and Windows) is that each update generally improves on the experience. On commercial platforms the experience gets worse as often as it gets better, usually both at the same time. GNOME and Plasma are both overall much better than they were a decade ago (despite a few regressions) while macOS and Windows are both worse in general.
I started my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then switched to Linux Mint for a while and dabbled with Manjaro for a hot minute, and ultimately found my home on Fedora Workstation for the past several years. Once set up with rpmfusion and 3rd party codecs it's a very solid and reliable distribution. The new atomic projects (and derivatives) look very interesting too.
This is not entirely true. Is there overhead? Sure. But, if the distro used for the container provides (somehow) faster or more performative packages to begin with, then running software within a fast container can be faster that running it natively on the slower host. Link to the comment in which the link to the above benchmark can be found as proof. As can be seen, the Clear Linux container performs better in 90% of the benchmarks. And, the Fedora container is only negligibly (so within margin of error) less performative than the Fedora host.
Hi all,
after I've added support for Clear Linux containers to distrobox (http://github.com/89luca89/distrobox), I thought that it would be a nice experiment to show the performance benefits of Clear Linux even on non-Clear distributions.
While Void isn't exactly under rated ( it is very highly rated on distro watch for one ), for someone looking for a systemd free distro or a light weight one in general, it is a decent choice. The repos aren't as broad based as Arch but they do have newer versions of the software that they host.
I could be wrong, but aren't Linux Mint and Pop OS ultimately based on Debian? (Mint is based on Ubuntu which in return has a Debian base). Debian was my main entry way to the Linux world and there is a reason why so many distros are built on it. Very old as well (not as old as Slack ware but Slack ware isn't exactly noob friendly).
All those packages, but terrible/lacking documentation and LSP support 😭 And, yes, I've tried nixd and nil, and they're not even close.
I've tried to learn Nix multiple times, and even got by okay running NixOS for a year or so, but doing almost anything that isn't just adding a package to a list in a nix file or flake was like pulling teeth because everything is documented so poorly (or not at all). It would take me hours to do what I could have done in seconds with any other package management tool or configuration management because I'd have to scour hundreds of search results to find someone that did the thing I'm trying to do because there was little-to-no documentation for it.
Nix is a tool with amazing promise that could solve so many problems if they could get their documentation and LSP support up to the standard of something like Rust.
I discovered they have a Matrix server where people will literally debug your config for you and help you solve issues. But you are right, if you try doing it yourself without help you'll be pulling your hair out
Love Fedora with KDE, my new daily driver. Tested Endeavour, Manjaro and also Mint and openSuSE but finally went with Fedora. Debian (on the other side) is my preferred base for servers and services.
Ton of comments, and I havent read them all, but I wanted to ask if you really meant popular or if you wanted something for a specific reason. Easy for new ppl to linux, good for desktops, etc etc.
I dont really use GUIs on linux, except for when I want to have a fancy pants riced network monitor type situation. I am a big fan of NixOS except for python Dev stuff. Big fan of being able to clone a machine or recover a machine with a single conf file.
If the only thing holding you back from NixOS is my python comment, my issue was with Numpy, which really really demands that you install it globally. Pretty sure you can make it work by using a dev-shell, installing it globally in that shell, then doing everything else in that dev environment normally. I was newish to nixos at the time.
Otherwise I tend to fall back to ubuntu server, but only because it was something I knew. I prefered Centos7 back in the day before RedHat killed Centos. NixOS was my move from there. Been using Alpine as the os in my docker images, but havent really explored a lot of other recent linux os's at the moment.
We don't know and, let us be frank, due to the nature of the community, it is impossible to know... Distros could report the downloads but if it became a KPI, it will be abused right away.
Fedora is well funded and probably the best overall. Now, its ties to US and IBM/Red Hat will keep it constrain in growth.
OpenSUSE is a second contender in funding and best overall, but German branding has taken a deep these last years... I know the government actions should be separate but, in reality, is that SUSE as a company will be constrained in growth too, therefore OpenSUSE. Its community need to be more global too.
Debian is king still. Much of development depends on the previous 2. However, in spite of huge progress lately, still not the best for new Linux users. That is why Linux Mint, Ubuntus, TuxedoOS still exist, but their growth won't be much as Debian gets better and better, but always a step behind the corporate funded ones. For today
The Chinese Linux offerings are becoming well funded are very interesting... but there is a bridge to cross that most of the world still not ready to cross... partly, because there are reasons to be skeptical since the community developing it is highly regional, partly is just plain racism. It is a pity, because these would have the biggest potential for a mayor breakthrough with all that money and human capital pouring from different companies, but I don't see it capable of breaching that regional aspect.
Finally we have Arch. I see it better positioned for future than Debian TBH, but we are talking 5 years down the line. It won't be Arch though, it will be some new variant like CachyOS is doing today that brings Arch to the public... maybe KDE's new bet?!
I haven't play much with them but this is my take:
Deepin. (Just released v25) Based on Debian. Community distro. Very well done and very modern look. It is heavy though and the beta I tried had glitches. Being primarily developed in Chinese though one can tell English was added later. If they only dedicated a bit more effort on languages it would be amazing. It is as much different from Linux Mint as it gets... for better or for worse, but I like their take.
Ubuntu Kylin. Institutional cooperation with Canonical. Haven't tried it. It is just Ubuntu catering their offer to the Chinese market. If you like Ubuntu's or Mint and you language is Chinese, this is for you.
OpenKylin. Fully Independent (No Debian, Arch...). Community distro. Its usage for now seems to be more for institutions though.
There are others but for niches.
China, of course, it want to get independent from MS and Apple so in the next years is going to push heavily for alternative OS so it will be interesting to see what, and for sure, our FOSS community will benefit from that as DeepSeek benefited the AI.
Q: Would a normal system (read: I'm not talking about Guix System or NixOS) allow you to install multiple branches/versions of the same software natively without introducing a lot of headaches?
A: No. This is literally unsupported.
Then, if using containers (or any other similar platform) allows one to breach that limitation, would it be fair to call containers (and their like) to be strictly limited/limiting in customization?
Sure fam. This is actually a situation that might come up a lot. Basically any instance of dependency hell caused by conflicting dependencies would be resolved if two different versions of the same software could coexist. - Peeps that are maintaining packages probably have to deal with this every once in a while as well. Especially if the packaged software relies on some very niche (and possibly questionable) dependencies*. To point towards one of the most openly discussed cases of this, consider watching by Brodie in which the takedown of the unofficial packages of Bottles is being discussed. - E.g. whenever one tries to compile software themselves OR install/use them as/from binaries/tarballs. - E.g. installing packages as PPAs or other third party repositories (like e.g. the AUR) can also come with dependency hell and are often the reason why breakage occurs.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Excellent choice fam! However, as much as I adore Fedora Kinoite, it might not provide the best onboarding 😅. If you're fine with that, then please feel free to go ahead and embark on your journey. However, I would suggest you to at least look into uBlue's offerings:
All operate within the paradigm of providing a so-called "batteries-included" product. So, going through the whole mumbo jumbo of RPM Fusion's Howtos to see what's relevant for you to apply and painstakingly waiting for them to be applied can be skipped.
Furthermore, based on your precise needs, you can choose to adopt more opinionated variants:
Bazzite, on the other hand, is their game ready variant that defaults to KDE
Or, if you prefer a minimal installation, you can choose to install their base images instead. These basically offer Fedora's images (including Kinoite) with the absolute minimal of hardware enablement and other essential uBlue goodies.
If you are a system crafter at heart, then perhaps you're more attracted towards creating your own bootc image. This can be achieved by uBlue's own image-template OR through the community-effort in BlueBuild.
Regardless, fam, enjoy! And please consider to report back on your findings 😉! I would love to read your adventures of venturing the exotic waters of Fedora Atomic 😊!
Universal Blue manufactures a diverse set of operating system images to provide the the reliability of a Chromebook, but with the flexibility and power of a traditional Linux desktop.
Apologies for the 'spam', but I was afraid editing my previous message would be in vain. If you desire/crave for decent documentation, then Bazzite deserves another endorsement. While its documentation isn't as expansive as the excellent ArchWiki, it should be more than able to answer your questions.
Secondly, if you happen to come across an issue that has been painstakingly difficult to resolve, then please consider consulting its many community channels for support. There's a Discourse, a Discord and an AnswerOverflow. So pick your poison 😉. FWIW, I've always had great experiences on their Discord.
Garuda absolutely nails it with their helper app that sets you up with a choice of popular software, handles updates, and gives you easy access to common settings.
It makes it very approachable for people new to Linux.
Whats the purpose of gentoo over arch and when do you draw the line of diminishing returns? It sounds like gentoo is a lot harder for not much more reward.
İçimden, "Bunca lafın üzerine kankim asaletine yakışanı yapar da bir teşekkürü esirgemez herhalde," diye düşünmüştüm. Ama maalesef, Türkiyeli olması hasebiyle daha level atlayamamış 😂. Olsun, demek ki henüz kalkınma vakti gelmemiş 🤣.
Tried Manjaro and Opensuse for a presentation machine lately: issues over issues, that just shouldn't exist on new installation (problems with USB disks, input). Came back to Debian asap because Debian, weirdly, "just works (tm) now.
I daily drive Fedora and I think it has the best Gnome desktop.
But in terms of "best at what they do" I'm blown away by Mint as an apporoachable easy to use "just works" OS. It instantly became my recommendation to new linux converts. Everything is easy to set up. It's remarkably user friendlly. Good software store, flatpack support out of the box. Brilliant hardware support. I like the aesthetics as well.
I have an old Core 2 machine and I tried to get every potato grade distro running on it. I tried Puppy, and Linux Lite, and AntiX and all the "this will run on your toaster" type distros and had problems with every one of them. Mint XFCE installed no problem. It ran beautifully. I pressed my luck and installed a Quadro K620 and an old firewire card (trying to back up old Mini-DV videos). It handled ancient hardware perfectly. Butter smooth 1440p desktop computing and light video editing on an 18 year old machine.
I've started using Nobara recently, and I like it a LOT. Makes it really easy for a noob like me to both play games and edit videos. I actually made a Monster Hunter video entirely in Linux with Davinci Resolve, and it worked really well. I've been an adobe tool my entire editing life, but I really like the switch I recently made 😀
NixOS is amazing, but it's also got a crazy learning curve. Once you grok it though, it really changes the way you configure your computer.
Fedora is always my favorite big name distro, they're constantly pushing the envelope and adopting new features that need some stability and exposure to mature.
I'm currently using Pop!_OS, which is a great desktop distro.
I was using MX Linux a lot which is amazing for both times when you need a portable distro with lots of features and when you need something that will still run well on older machines.
Facebook users opting to upload their photos for “cloud processing” are inadvertently giving Meta AI access to their entire camera roll, including photos that have not been uploaded to Facebook’s servers.
I'm a huge skeptic of the idea that the US would ever do anything to legitimately "make the world a better place" without having some sort of ulterior motive for fucking over poor people of color in the global south, but there's no fucking way I'm reading an article published by RT.
Yes but nothing as bad as the Raddle guy. He sent me over 300 DMs over the course of an hour because I called out his deranged sockpuppet website. So far, the world guys just seem to get drunk and mad or do vote manipulation
"Purposefully" is debatable, but whether intentional or by happenstance, damn it really is odd that so many descendants of Nazis are all over my imperial core countries that backed tons of fascist coups over the past 75 years.
Thought I would share my simple docker/podman setup for torrenting over I2P. It's just 2 files, a compose file and a config file, along with an in-depth explanation, available at my repo codeberg.org/xabadak/podman-i2… And it comes with a built-in "kill-switch" to prevent traffic leaking out to the clearnet. But for the uninitiated, some may be wondering:
What is I2P and why should I care?
For a p2p system like bittorrent, for two peers to connect to each other, at least one side needs to have their ports open. If one side uses a VPN, their provider needs to support "port forwarding" in order for them to have their ports open (assuming everything else is configured properly). If you have ever tried to download a torrent with seeders available, yet failed to connect to any of them, your ports are probably not open. And with regulators cracking down on VPNs and forcing providers like Mullvad to shut down port forwarding, torrenting over the clearnet is becoming more and more difficult.
The I2P network doesn't have these issues. The I2P is an alternative internet network where all users are anonymous by default. So you don't need a VPN to hide your activity from your ISP. You don't need port-forwarding either, all peers can reach each other. And if you do happen to run a VPN on your PC, that's fine too - I2P will work just the same. So if you're turning your VPN on and off all the time, you can keep I2P running throughout, and continue downloading/uploading.
I2P eliminates all the complications and worries about seeding, making it easy for beginners to contribute to the network. I2P also makes downloading easier, since all peers are always reachable. And it's more decentralized too, since users don't need to rely on VPN providers. And of course, it's free and open source!
A fair warning though, I2P is restricted in some countries. And in terms of torrenting specifically, torrents have to explicitly support I2P. You can't just take any clearnet torrent and expect it to work on I2P. And the speeds are generally lower since there are less seeders, and the built-in anonymity has a cost as well. However I've been surprised at the amount of content on the I2P network, and I've been able to reach 1 MB/s download speeds. It's more than good enough for me, and it will only get better the more people join, so I hope this repo is enough for people to get started.
I probably should have mentioned this in the post, but don't forget you can run this on desktop too! All Fedora-based distros (Kinoite, Bazzite, etc) have Podman pre-installed. You just need to install podman-compose/docker-compose. If you're on an atomic distro you'll have to layer, or use a distrobox (either install podman-compose and use host podman or just install both podman and podman-compose inside a distrobox), or convert the compose file into individual Podman commands like podman network create --internal ... and podman run ..., but it's definitely doable in an hour or so.
I really want to build an i2p router, and have started a couple times, but the lack of control of what goes through my hardware stops me every time. It's a cool project and, sadly, looking more necessary every year.
It's weird I don't have these hang ups for other systems. Running a meshcore node doesn't give me the willies. Just for i2p I worry how much csam is going through my router.
It's true, you never really know what will be going through your router. I guess I just got over it after a few years of struggling with VPNs and port-forwarding. Just felt like the noose was getting tighter, especially after Mullvad stopped providing the feature. My stance is that if I ever knew that such content was going through my PC I would block it, but if it's all encrypted then what can I do? Same reason why I support encrypted messaging apps - they can be used for harm but is that the fault of the tool? Though I recognize it's a complex issue.
Agreed. I'll get over myself one day and build one. For now Airvpn supports port forwarding at an affordable (to me) price, so I let them deal with the moral dilemma.
It's coming though, i2p is where my server is headed, even if I keep a VPN up too.
tbh, looked at the thing some while back and noped out when I saw "java" in there; absolutely irrational, I know - just can't stand the thing. cool that there's an alternative.
It's not just the router. The officially recommended I2P torrent client, called I2PSnark, is also in Java and its a pain to get working in Docker. It's not a bad torrent client, just feels like the official I2P tools still don't have great support for modern Linux devops. Now that qBittorrent supports I2P the whole stack feels much more at home.
Might test this out, this looks great. Mullvad is my VPN provider of choice for a lot of reasons, but recently ran into the port forwarding issue so I switched to Proton, a company that I'm very uncomfortable with given their CEO's politics and such. This would let me stick with the former without losing any functionality, if I'm following correctly
I remember reading about I2P back in the day. I am old school. If my old memory serves me correctly, I think there are some vulnerabilities with using I2P instead of say a VPN? (Now, I am going to have to go down that rabbit hole again to refresh my memory.)
Edit to add; The list below describes some of I2P’s main disadvantages. - Complex configuration process: It necessitates a drawn-out installation procedure and specific browser settings.
Must-have logging: The I2P user interface must be logged in for users to access their material.
Severe vulnerabilities: Over 30,000 users were made vulnerable by a zero-day vulnerability that I2P experienced in 2014. Later, a 2017 study found that several more I2P flaws may also be exploited.
A much tiner user base than TOR: As a result, I2P has fewer network nodes and servers and is more open to intrusions.
Less anonymity when browsing indexed sites: I2P does not ensure that users' browsing of indexed sites is completely anonymous. The use of VPN services may be able to address this issue.
Thanks for the info, I would not claim to be an expert about I2P so some of this is definitely new to me. Though I think the situation has improved quite a bit.
Complex configuration process: It necessitates a drawn-out installation procedure and specific browser settings.
If you just want I2P without the torrenting, you can use the official I2P router, which is just an HTTP proxy that runs on your PC, just like Tor. The 3rd-party router used in my guide, i2pd, has a Flatpak as well. So as far as installing the router goes, it's a few clicks. You are correct that it does require configuring the browser though, you are correct. This is explained in my guide and also on the official website. Not as easy as clicking an "Install" button, but only takes around 5 minutes. I wish there were an official I2P browser like the Tor browser though.
Must-have logging: The I2P user interface must be logged in for users to access their material.
Not sure what you mean by this. I've never had to log into anything to set up I2P.
Severe vulnerabilities
I have no doubt. But Tor has had many vulnerabilities too. Both have gotten much better over time.
A much tiner user base than TOR: As a result, I2P has fewer network nodes and servers and is more open to intrusions.
Definitely true. In fact it makes me suspicious how fast TOR is despite how many users there are, and how the relatively high requirements to be a relay (not to mention an exit node). AFAIK TOR is heavily reliant on rich and generous patrons, which makes me wonder about the motives of these patrons. I believe I2P has the potential to be much more decentralized, since every user is expected to also be a router, and Techlore has also raised this point (though I don't have the video on me right now).
Less anonymity when browsing indexed sites: I2P does not ensure that users’ browsing of indexed sites is completely anonymous. The use of VPN services may be able to address this issue.
Good info here. You will have to read the author's article to answer your questions, I marked as 'source' above. I did read on a more recent article that I2P can be a little slower than a VPN because, I guess it is decentralized, all those node paths the info has to travel?? Believe me, if something happens to the company that hosts my "lifetime" VPN purchase, I will most likely switch to I2P.
It's also slower simply because it's basically a bunch of VPNs running on consumer hardware. Actual VPN providers can provide big powerful servers. This is why I think torrenting is a great fit for the slower speeds of I2P - waiting a little longer for a download is bearable, as opposed to waiting for a webpage to load.
And in terms of torrenting specifically, torrents have to explicitly support I2P. You can't just take any clearnet torrent and expect it to work on I2P.
are you sure about that? for public torrents you just add the postman tracker and done. if libtorrent gets support for DHT over I2P, even that won't be needed
hmm I'm not sure I understand you. qbittorrent allows you to set whether you want to also use I2P or only that, globally for all torrents. but I2P peers who are in mixed mode, they can work as a bridge, getting the pieces from internet peers and redistributing it on the I2P network
Is there a way I can do this without docker? I just run Qbit on my regular windows computer and don't wanna delve into Docker. Would Love to share the 5k+ torrents I have on the I2p network.
You could just install the i2pd windows client, and then configure it to enable "SAM". You could use the i2pd.conf file in my repo as a reference, just make sure to use 127.0.0.1 instead of 0.0.0.0 so that only applications running on your computer would be able to access i2pd (0.0.0.0 is only needed for docker). Then you would configure your browser and qbittorrent the same way detailed in my repo, except make sure to enable "mixed" mode so that your torrents are seeding over both clearnet and I2P. Lastly, even though you'll be seeding your torrents over I2P, nobody will be able to find them unless you post them to an I2P tracker like Postman. I don't know how to submit torrents to Postman so you're on your own for that one
Thank you! I just randomly found your guide in another Lemmy post and this kind of setup has been in my to-do list after I became "pro" with gluetun and qbitorrent (inside Docker) and thought the same could be done for i2pd but haven't had the time.
I have some questions
I have been very happy about qbitorrent finally opening to i2p but recently found out that because it is using libtorrent it doesn't support DHT for i2p (while the official i2psnark client does). Don't you think is better at this point to still use i2psnark (and you would have the commodity to also have the browser included?) despite being in Java...
For some reason, I would still feel insecure in using i2p without a VPN. It is said there is no need, ok, but what if I still want to use it. I guess it shouldn't harm? Like affecting speed or other factors? I would like to remove as much as possible any chance of my ISP sniffing on my connections.
PS: I have an improvement for your guide 😁You could add an extra container with Mullvad-Browser (still from linuxserver) to access Postman.
Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world today, known for employing folks that need to pee in bottles to comply with Amazon's inhuman procedures or face losing their jobs, buys The Washington Post
"They will hold the truth and journalistic integrity in high regard, and I can certainly trust them to prioritise them before financial gain and anything that can be done to achieve it."
I am sorry but since when is German left leaning public broadcast the same as fox news?! I understand that sometimes some topics are generally over- or underreported, but putting these next to each other is nonsensical.
Funny that you tie that to the skin color of the people. Most people including me make the distinction based on the following criteria: 1. Does the government have direct control over the broadcast? 2. Is the channel allowed to criticize the government? 3. Is founding decided by the government? 4. Are you at risk for not having the same stance on a topic than the government?
In the case of Germany, all of these are not true. In the case of authoritarian regimes, they are. That is the key difference.
The government obviously has some influence, that is undeniable. But it's limited and saying that they don't criticize the government is just wrong. You can watch many channels on YouTube. You can look at it yourself. They do that and it is undeniable too. Also, the government is prohibited by law to decide the founding. They have minimal influence on the total budget, but they can't decide who gets how much.
I'm not talking about the YouTube algorithm, I know that there are many problems with that. I just wanted to make the point that anyone can watch a show like Extra 3 or the Heute Show and see that they, in fact, do criticize the government a lot. May right-wingers say that they are leftist propaganda and apparently leftists thing they are conservative propaganda, which I find quite interesting. And I obviously also don't like all the shows either. There is a reason why I stopped watching Kurtzgesagt years ago.
I was referencing nation states in general, not a subsection of the working class. Don't get me wrong, rightoids are unbearable. I wish I could vacate this planet and leave them to play their shitty reindeer games with each other.
These institutions (nation states) garner a level of devotion much like religion, regardless of their ideology. Tribalism.
Nation states path to power is the capability to muster greater standing armies then other more decentralized ways of life. That is why the working class is so heavily divided through these imaginary lines on the globe.
It is nice to see the western propaganda machine start to fail. I never thought I'd see the general public recognize Israel is a genocidal settler apartheid state until the last couple years, even though the propaganda machine has been working overtime for it. Hopefully other areas in propaganda start to crumble as well.
Usians don't like being told that their stolen land nation started by slave owners who then held a "freedom revolution" so these oligarchs to have to pay taxes while tge rest of their population does, isn't such a great place after all.
The majority of the world, notably Islamic countries, who've been bombed by US and british planes for almost a century now, disagree with you. Only the countries aligned with the US empire are buying this line.
You can also just go to Xinjiang, and see for yourself, unlike the main person peddling this narrative, Adrian Zenz, an anti-semitic evangelical who works for the US government, and doesn't speak a word of mandarin.
Classic US foreign policy propaganda. It's not Uyghurs, it's specific fanatical jihadi separatists among Uyghurs who made a guest appearance among the other head choppers in Syria after the government fell and are openly looking for international support to do the same in China. You're completely wrong if you think that all Uyghurs want to live under Sharia law in some Uyghurstan.
The fact that you only do this "all lives matter!" style equivocation in one direction.
Fuck ALL corporations. Fuck ALL governments. Is that clear enough?
Oh? So can I get a "fuck the government of Ukraine"? How about "fuck the government of Taiwan." How about "Fuck the republican party AND the Democratic party, neither of them are your friend, they're both out to squeeze you"? (The last one being very different from what you were saying during the election, where, for some reason, your "everyone is bad, maaaan!" stance was nowhere to be seen...)
To be an anarchist you actually have to consistently hold anarchist positions. Not being a liberal 99% of the time and only bringing out the facade of anarchism when you need to justify acting like a western chauvinist.
You can't be an anarchist and a fanatical supporter of the democratic party at the same time
Bold of you to assume I am American, did you not check the instance I am from ?
Yes, there are many lies about China, but don't get stuck in second opinion syndrome. China is both worse and better than you know.
The fact the government lies about China, while China is still bad behind the scenes, can both be true. During the cold war, both sides accused the other of being evil, and both were right.
Don't let anyone who puts a "communist" sticker on their own forehead fool you into supporting them.
Something like a one-party political system with dear respected leader, concentration camps, surveillance, social rating system, GFW?
Note how I don't say anything about propaganda from every crack. That's because western propaganda has successfully evolved in the conditions of outright censorship not being allowed. Like killing cockroaches in a building again and again you make them evolve for the poisons used in the past.
If you are going to pick the "all this is not credible" line, then don't bother. Also credible is a synonym for "believable", and nobody can make you believe things you don't want to believe.
The USA is a one party system in many ways so is the EU when it comes to imperialist and neoliberal policies every single party is on board doesn’t matter who you vote for.
This person wouldn't believe the sky was blue unless you linked a study proving it.
The Huyghur genocide. Not recognizing the independence of Taiwan. The entire way their "democracy" functions. The lasting damage the "one child policy" has done to their demographics (by their own reporting, not the wild exaggerations of the West)
You don't need to pick between the sides you're being offered today, don't fall for this false choice fallacy. Freedom isn't choosing the correct master to serve.
If you disagree, I invite you to go to Tiananmen square wearing a Winnie the Pooh T-shirt and see what happens.
I can't read that as it's paywalled. Anyway here's a lot of links about this topic, several from African leaders and diplomats on the difference between Chinese trade and development in Africa and actual imperialism as practiced by western countries:
With the US establishment’s attention firmly fixed on the impeachment hearings in Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seems to have expanded NATO’s mission into the Far East, to oppose the Communist Party of China.
It's not paywalled. I think you didn't even bother to click "read full article" or whatever the button name is. They might ask you to register witb a free account.
If you want to use other people opinions as an argument, I'm going to ask you for what you asked for - studies. Preferably published in journals, not essays by socials celebrities like Caitlin Johnstone, nor articles in Chinese newspapers, nor Reddit. And that's because a deluge of weak sources is worthless - that's how US propaganda works and enforces itself.
Extra points if the studies are not from China or it's close Allies, just so that you have exactly the same requirements as the ones you asked for.
If you're not logged in they give you a button to log in through your institution. Alternatively they seem to let you create an account to view a limited number of articles per month.
If they want an account you are paying with your data whether they use it or not.
It could still be a good source I just wanted to portray the not logged in view.
Was Leopold bloody years of terror vastly worse? Yes. Who is arguing with that? Is China benevolent and non exploitative? The African studies done by locals tend to say no.
Many studies have been conducted on China-Africa relations, including those written by Fairchild (2020), King (2020) and Nyadera, Agwanda and Kisaka (2020). This article builds on the latter studies to confront the real myths and realities of China‘s Africa policy. Firstly, It is worth noting to highlight the significant contributions of Fairchild (2020)‘s research study that revisits how sub-Saharan African countries especially those of the continental coastal democracies with abundant mineral resources engage with China for equal mutual benefit particularly in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Okay, so of the 3 major contributions to this study, at least one, seemingly the most significant, states that Chinese diplomacy (particularly BRI) is mutually beneficial.
After a careful critical analysis of China‘s Africa engagement in the context of the three highlighted countries, FairChild (2020) argues that even though BRI has been presented historically as a debt trap diplomacy, a mere interpretation of BRI as neo-imperialist risks analysing China through the lens of European history that discounts the active role of African countries. Forthright, he says that it is unfair to choose a one-size-fits-all understanding of China‘s practices in Africa.
So Fairchilds (2020) study, argues that interpretation of BRI as neo-imperialist is a reactionary Eurocentric view which both applies European imperialist intentions to China and removes the agency of African countries. Also that you can't take a "one size fits all" understanding of Chinas involvement.
It is not far-fetched that this argument is rendering FairChild (2020)‘s research to sound more like a study conducted from a Chinese perspective that did not compare China‘s involvement in the coastal democracies with the likes of In-land African countries of Zambia, Angola and Kenya. Therefore, leaving us with a gab as to how come this stance is not broadened and compared. Hence, this study aims to build on top of Fairchild‘s study whilst disagreeing on not choosing a one-size-fits-all definition.
So they accuse Fairchild (2020) of basically being a China simp for not researching and comparing inland African countries. They aim to disagree with the premise that you cannot apply a "one-size-fits-all" analysis to Chinas involvement.
There is also the Study conducted by King (2020), that discusses the human resource traditions of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and those endorsed by the BRI with particular attention to the Education Action Plan for the BRI published by the Chinese Ministry of Education in the year 2016. The research article‘s value contribution stems from explicitly comparing the FOCAC HRD pledges with the recent ones related to Education Plan under BRI. A review of the same context is done under FOCAC VI and FOCAC VII that compares the discourse of action plans of the different plans, goals, and pledges in the implementation in various African countries including in Ethiopia and Kenya. A clear generated scholarly view from the study highlights that King‘s study supports the two plans undertaken between both China and the African States by indicating that social welfare is important to the development and also quotes Xi in 2017 who highlighted that ―Improving people‘s livelihood and well-being is the primary goal of development‖ (2020: 233). And additionally, supports his argument by quoting (Frankopan, 2018: 242) who has described China-Africa relations as ―win-win‖ through the mutual benefits and using cooperations combined with incentives to weave countries, peoples, and cultures in a so-presumed win-win scenario.
So now we establish that King(2020) also takes the view that Chinese diplomacy efforts are mutually beneficial after analyzing human resource traditions and those proposed by the BRI, particularly the education aspect of the plan.
It also references another study Frankopan (2018:243) who also describes Chinas relation as Win-Win and mutually beneficial.
We should then understand that the current article seeks to differ completely with the above highlighted of presenting China and Africa relations as win-win and add several relevant empirical findings that render his article relevant but short-sighted and best limited and myopic particularly looking at how China is not engaging in a win-win in the countries under study.
So this study is specifically trying to argue against these previous significant contributions as being short sighted, particularly because China is not engaging in "Win-Win" under the countries they will research. Harkening back to their prior insistance that you can apply a "one-size-fits-all" analysis.
The study of Nyadera, Agwanda, and Kisaka (2020) engage the attractiveness of China's Africa engagement has raised some of the controversial perspectives and views recently. Also, this is a tale that continues to be welcomed with mixed feelings, from disquiet to confusion. They all show that China‘s Africa engagement is driven by its demand for minerals and oil whilst it delivers Africa‘s infrastructural needs. In Non-Economic drivers of China‘s Africa engagement, they all pinpoint at personality traits of Xi. They quote Cabestan in 2012 who understand XI‘s personality traits as driven by his ―realistic, efficient, and relaxed Party Secretary, conscious of the need for China to move towards a market economy‖ (2020: 09) that is useful in analysing his approach to Africa. Prominent former and current African leaders are understood to be in good books with Xi including Robert Mugabe (Late and Former Zimbabwean President) who described XI as a ―true and dear friend‖ of Zimbabwe. His personality and leadership credentials and work have earned him his first honorary degree by the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in 2019. He is also understood to be having the choice of words, outspoken in nature that increased his interactions with African leaders. The second reason relates to the decline of Western countries‘ major investments in Africa in the post-second world war.
So basically, we establish that yet another study, Nyadera, Agwanda, and Kisaka (2020), frames this relationship as Win-Win "we get infrastructure they get resources". Which is partially informed by Xi Jinpings own established personality as a "realistic, efficient, and relaxed Party Secretary, conscious of the need for China to move towards a market economy". It also establishes that Xi is highly regarded among African leaders and institutions, and vice versa.
.........
If you read the article you can know I'm not nitpicking positive aspects, I'm not jumping around, this is the start of the study.
To avoid making this comment as long as an actual breakdown of an entire academic article, having demonstrated my willingness to engage with the work, can you go ahead and state some of what you believe to be the more valid points against Chinese involvement/framing Chinese involvement as imperialist from the study.
Exactly. That is what bothers me about most anti Americans here in Europe. The US absolutely did many terrible things, but that does not automatically mean that the Russians are the good ones. They did many terrible things too.
Historically, Western Europe has been just as bad as the US, especially France, Germany, and the UK. Russia hasn't been as bad historically, especially not when they were Socialist, when they were inarguably one of the most progressive countries in the world.
The period where the Soviet Union supported Cuba, Palestine, Algeria, Vietnam, China, and countless other liberatory struggles? Where the Soviets sent the first human to space before the US? Where the hard effort in building up an industrialized society was beginning to pay off greatly despite the devastation suffered during World War II?
Yes, the Soviet Union was far more progressive than the US and Western Europe in that period, where the western countries were busy committing genocide, colonialism, imperialism, and more. I don't need your "help" if your worldview fundamentally rests on excusing genocide and twisting a country that aided in the liberation of many countries as worse than that, somehow.
i find it more horrific that the US supported head chopping jihadists in afghanistan to prevent a soviet aligned democratic goverment there. and in every other interventions, the US found themselves on the reactionaries side, and still continue to do so to this day with the headchopping wahhabis in Syria for example.
No one has ever said they were, it's just a lazy strawman westerners use so they never have to justify always treating their countries as the good guys.
The meme assumes the Western context. We don't trust the US government because of the centuries of violence and exploitation. We had to go looking for that information because it is minimized and buried at every turn by the compliant national media.
On the other hand, the supposed abuses of the Chinese government are loudly broadcast at every turn. You'll find if you go looking outside of Western sanctioned sources that all of those criticisms are absurd fabrications.
Therefore, someone in the western context who says they don't trust the US or China is trusting the US media for information about China but not about the US itself. Does that help?
Yeah, I think it does. But I still don't get it why the man in the third image is with nearly closed eyes. Is he answering the question by mimicing a Chinese face, meaning China told him not to trust what China says?
Description: Eye squinting happens when the eyelids are compressed together serving to constrict the eyes. It can sometimes occur in just a fraction of a second before disappearing.
In One Sentence: Narrowing the eyes is due to physical or emotional pain.
How To Use it: When you do not like what is being said or seen, simply narrow your eyes. This tells others that you do not like what you are seeing or hearing. You may perform this eye language in brief within just fractions of a seconds. While people may not consciously perceive the signal, it will likely still register subconsciously. If the person for whom the cue is intended, notices, they may revisit their proposal and add additional incentives to ease your negative judgment.
Context: General.
Verbal Translation: “What I’m seeing is causing me emotional or physical pain and to prevent all that negativity from coming into my body I’m going to squint and block to resist.”
Variant: See Anger Facial Expression, Hand To Eye Gesture.
Cue In Action: a) A person will wince when reading objectionable portions of a contract. b) She winced when the student missed the correct note on the piano. It caused her visceral pain.
Meaning and/or Motivation: An eye blocking form of body language designed to prohibit distasteful images or even thoughts from being received at full view. Narrowing eyes indicates contempt, distaste and anger. A person will not only squint from seeing objectionable sights, but also negative thoughts or sounds.
Wincing falls into the category of microexpressions since it can happen in only fractions of a second before disappearing, yet it remains full of meaning.
I'm a little confused because the comic only has two panels? Additionally, in the second panel the character's eyes are still round not any other shape - I don't see squinting at all? (If you were trying to draw a head that small with eyes that were squinting, you would use angled lines, not circles)
In any case, I believe the interpretation of the comic intended by the creator is: "Panel one represents what Western liberals say about China. Panel 2 represents the media environment they swim in"
He’s saying anyone that claims to not trust the West nor China only distrusts China because they were propagandized by western news sources.
I don’t find that particularly compelling because I think assuming someone’s information diet and discarding it in order to invalidate their view is lazy. I’ll leave it at that so I don’t get put in timeout.
"Oops! I killed 15 million people, but it was an accident. My bad. Who knew forcibly moving all the farmers to the city and making them work in factories would cause a famine?"
-Mao, probably
PS: 15 million is the low end number. 15-55 million is the commonly accepted number, with some estimates as high as 70 million.
At some point you'd think he'd look around and notice.
It matter for the same reason a tribunal need to know the motive of a crime to give it appropriate punishment. It's not about the morality of the action, it's about a logically sound and coherent picture of the event.
Peoples doing something bad for terribly bad reasons is coherent, peoples doing something bad for no reason at all isn't. The fact that you don't have any explanation as to why an entire government composed of thousand of peoples would do such a thing -like it or not- is a very big hole in your narrative, and rise some serious questions about it's consistency and therefore about it's likelihood (because an incoherent statement can never be true no matter what).
Insisting that the event happened the way you say it did without providing any rational or cause-effect relationship and becoming defensive when explicitly asked to provide one puts both your narrative and your argumentation in it's favor in the same category as those of conspiracy theorists who insists that "they" lie to us and immediately gets mad when asked to explain why "they" would.
You're talking about narrative, spin a story about tribunal, and then spin a story that I'm defensive. I'm not.
Insisting that the event happened the way you say it did without providing any rational or cause-effect relationship
Literally what the first commenter gave - there was a widespread famine in China, it's caused by Mao agricultural policies.
What are you contesting here? There was no famine? Famine is the narrative? Or that it wasn't caused by policies but by... What? Weather? Weather was good.
I don't understand your point, please clarify it, in a way that isn't just calling your interlocutors stupid or defensive.
I’m sorry, but why would that matter? We tend to judge people by their actions, not their intent, when it comes to mass deaths.
Right?
Right?
Maybe it's my autism but dismissing a relevant question by implying that the person who asked it is immoral/unempathetic for even asking it seems pretty defensive to me, and is a non-argument regardless.
Literally what the first commenter gave - there was a widespread famine in China, it’s caused by Mao agricultural policies.
Now that one is on me, I could have worded that better. By cause-effect relationship in this context I meant the cause who's effect was that the government chose to take whatever course of action you believe is responsible for the famine. Peoples take decisions for reasons, bad reasons sometimes, yes, but reasons nonetheless.
It's not about agreeing with the reasons, it's about coherency. That an entire government, a group formed of thousands of peoples, would act all in concert with no motive, especially for a project on such a large scale and which would take so many resources, is nonsense. If you can't present either proof that they really took the conscious decision to manufacture a famine or a motive to explain why they would want to do that, the claim that the famine was intentional is extremely dubious at best.
Also, speaking of a government's actions as if only the one person at the top was to blame is something peoples trying to speak about politics and history seriously should avoid.
What are you contesting here? There was no famine? Famine is the narrative? Or that it wasn’t caused by policies but by… What? Weather? Weather was good.
There was a famine. But it was not man made with the purpose of killing a large portion of the population, again, as the other commenter pointed out, why would they do such a thing? And why did they stop doing it? It makes no sense.
The famine was the produce of a great number of different factors, inefficient and backward agricultural methods, bad weather, compound effects of WW2 + the Chinese civil war, mismanagement, trade embargoes, etc... But others could explain it better than I can.
An other point we disagree on is the number of deaths from the famine. Numerous western academics intentionally inflate the death tolls of countries ruled by communist parties, most infamously "the black book of communism" and the "victims of communism foundation" who literally count Nazi invaders killed by the red army and peoples who could potentially have been born but weren't as victims of communism.
I don’t understand your point, please clarify it, in a way that isn’t just calling your interlocutors stupid or defensive.
I called you defensive but I did not call you stupid, nor did I imply it.
The famine was the produce of a great number of different factors, inefficient and backward agricultural methods, bad weather, compound effects of WW2 + the Chinese civil war, mismanagement, trade embargoes, etc… But others could explain it better than I can.
Would the governing body of PRC in 1962 attributing the famine to government errors convince you otherwise? Would the Chinese government 20 years later confirming the same and reiterating it was the Mao policy that was faulty at the core convince you?
If not, can you imagine a fact that would convince you, that the responsibility for that famine is on the then Chinese government? What is it?
Would the governing body of PRC in 1962 attributing the famine to government errors convince you otherwise? Would the Chinese government 20 years later confirming the same convince you?
I'm not sure where you're going with this. That the famine was accidental and (in part) caused by bad policies and mismanagement is what I'm saying happened. You're agreeing with me there.
If not, can you imagine a fact that would convince you? What is it?
If you think the famine was accidental but the government's bad policies caused it/made it worse, I already agree.
If you think that the famine was intentional and the government was trying to kill peoples by starvation, I would need proof that they at least discussed it internally in order to be convinced. Leaked internal documents, testimony from peoples who were there (and can prove that they were), recording of meetings between party officials, that kind of things.
The Great Chinese Famine was an enormous tragedy but it very obviously wasn't deliberate.
Also important to note, after a constant cycle of famine throughout its history, this was China's last. The CPC worked hard to make sure something like it would never happen again.
The following is a slightly expanded version of a speech given by Carlos Martinez at a recent event marking the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong. Giving a short assessment of the life of someone like Mao Zedong is not an easy job.
Getting people to read even short articles is impossible.
Just be honest with yourself any say that you're not looking to challenge your orientalist biases, that you just want things to confirm them.
The communists were the ones who defeated fascism in ww2, Mao being one of the most important leaders in that fight against japanese fascism. To equate Mao with nazis or the axis powers, who they shed so much blood to defeat, is sickening.
And you are impartial, saying someone you do not know has an "orientalist" bias. Throwing out pejorative words, linking to lengthy fringe arguments like a Trump supporter telling me to watch Hannity.
I see you're defending your heroes by parsing words and cherry-picking books and news and rallying your arguments (and propaganda) to defend them. I expected nothing less from you; it's exactly the same thing a Trump supporter would do.
Carry on, comrade. Enjoy yourself. You have the evangelistic fervor of a Baptist preacher.
The People’s Republic of China oversaw the largest increase of quality of life in human history, and the previously mentioned famine would be the last in a region where they have frequently occurred throughout history.
The PRC’s legacy is not one of causing famine, it is of ending it.
everyone knows that china was perfectly alright before the communists came, no one died of hunger and no one was addicted to opium, also no one died by the hands of the japanese nor it was occupied by other western powers.
The following is a slightly expanded version of a speech given by Carlos Martinez at a recent event marking the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong. Giving a short assessment of the life of someone like Mao Zedong is not an easy job.
That covers recent history. What about Egypt, or the Roman Empire?
You didn't mean increase in quality of life for everyone in the world, just for the people under that government?
There's a lot of candidates in "human history".
I'm pretty sure there was no comparative research involved in your assessment, but you might look at Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_… but there's no mention of China there at all.
Probably because Wikipedia is orientalist and just a Western megaphone. But you quoted them, so maybe not.
If you have to go back to the time where agriculture was first being developed to find a jump in quality of life comparable to what Communism brought to China, does that not show that Communism brought about an enormous improvement to the Chinese people? Even if it technically isn't the most significant improvement in all of history (which is still kind of a fuzzy thing to quantify)?
And how is it relevant that they only improved the quality of life of their own people, beyond just being pedantic about the claim "largest increase of quality of life in human history"? Like, was it necessary for Mao to invade all the neighboring countries and modernize them too so they could qualify? Very strange way to move the goalposts.
I see you're defending your heroes by parsing words and cherry-picking books and news and rallying your arguments (and propaganda) to defend them. I expected nothing less from you; it's exactly the same thing a Trump supporter would do.
Meanwhile you do something a million times more honorable and simply refuse to confront new information, dismiss it all as propaganda, and say your opponent is equal to a Trump supporter (for what? for having principled stances that he backed up with multiple sources? How often do Trump supporters back up their claims with sources that aren't PragerU videos or AI generated images?). You're implying that Dessalines is being intellectually dishonest when he has done nothing incorrect in this conversation: he made a claim to counter your unsourced claim, cited his sources, and when you refused to learn anything at all he's just calling you out for falling back on Western propaganda. Is any of that wrong?
This kind of post-truth nihilism is completely fruitless. If you dismiss evidence that contradicts your preconceived notions on the basis that evidence against other unrelated facts might also exist, then the only valid beliefs are the ones you already have. You've arrived at an epistemological position that rejects all new knowledge and positions all knowledge you already have as infallible.
Why not evaluate the claims and their evidence, instead of starting from the position that any defense of Mao is comparable to defending the Nazi Holocaust? Not to mention, if you did come across a group of Holocaust deniers, is this really the weak response you'd give them? Not even going to produce any evidence in support of your own claims?
Yeah lots of people died but the cultural revolution and Great Leap Forward but it has been over for 50 years now, meanwhile how many millions of people have had their lives ruined by US sanctions or wars in the last 70 years? Imperial countries export their misery so that people like you and me can live nice comfortable lives. Meanwhile we point at other countries who were deliberately impoverished for our benefit. When leaders in those countries try to take back their wealth they’re assassinated, when trade unionists try to organise to give the workers better rights they’re tortured and then assassinated. At least the Great Leap Forward only negatively impacted Chinese people, meanwhile you get to sit smugly on your computer or phone and eat your chocolate bar that was built or farmed with the blood of poor labourers in Africa and when those poor people try to rise up to better their conditions our governments and their fascist lackeys will be there in minutes killing them for you so you can keep getting cheap treats.
Also do you really think there is no political repression in the west? I recently read the obituary of a guy who was in my local communist party who was denied work his whole life because he was an „unteachable communist“ being on the wrong side of the ruling classes ideology sucks no matter where you are.
ITT: people saying "the US and China both seem bad" and being told that they obviously just want to kiss America square on the lips because China has never done anything bad ever
Capitalism good (and make sure you know NOTHING regarding economic theories!)
Women dumb
Non-Europeans (ethnically, and even then the Germanic tribes are at the top of the chain [Anglo-Saxons included, evidently]) bad and/or dumb
Gays bad
Christianity good (only when antithetical to the message of Jesus)
(white) America good
Israel good
Have I captured the essence of the 'classic' ignorant and angry white American? Honestly, it fits pretty well for FN and EDL dudes in France and the UK, respectively...
Losurdo really drives home that white/western supremacy has been a global project that's gone through many phases, not just limited to one country.
The word untermensch for example, comes from lothrop stoddard, a US white supremacist and eugenicist who greatly inspired the nazis. They also took lebensraum from manifest destiny, and openly wanted to emulate what the US did to its native population, in eastern europe.
After the nazis broke the rules and attacked westward and started western infighting by attacking britain and france, then lost in ww2, the US took up the mantle of the west's leading country who would keep the non-white populations of the world in check, by bombing anyone who dared to challenge colonialism or neo-colonialism, or impede their control of resources and prevent the spice from flowing.
From the "civilizing missions" of the British, French and the Dutch to the theft, plundering, pillaging and desecration of indigenous lands and its people in the "New World", with all of it mirrored today only this time with different targets, it's clear as fuck that a majority of today's US' white population do not stray far from their European colonialist ancestors and don't want to...
Maybe I'm doomposting but I genuinely don't know how this vicious cycle of white supremacist entities scratching each other's backs and evolving in the process of doing so could end..
I personally don't think there's much hope for the imperial core countries at least, but they're a minority of the world's population. The rest of the world doesn't want a leading country, they want trade on an equal basis, and a multi-polar world with international bodies that can resolve disputes impartially. Capitalism isn't even as sustainable as feudalism, and will likely have a much shorter lifespan. Enriching a few at the expense of the many isn't sustainable in the long-term, because the many will fight back and eventually win, as they have done and will continue to do.
Empires generally have a long, whiny decline into obsolescence... I think ancient Rome (after all the civil wars, imperial overextension, instability, famines, civil unrest) it eventually emptied out to ~1% of its peak population before it was conquered. If it isn't politically stable, doesn't inspire people, and no one's willing to fight for it, it can't last.
Yeah. But also a quick test to see how far gone American society is: if the Dems get elected it means that, at least for the sake of optics and spin, morals play some sort of role still.
The liberal brain, gentlemen. Tou Thao was convicted for keeping bystanders from intervening while not doing anything himself. He might've been less worse, but he still deserved to go to prison. And he remained unrepentant to the end. Of the four cops he got the second worst sentence despite never laying a hand on Mr. Floyd precisely because he refused to admit any culpability. It really is a good comparison, seeing this comment.
It's really a great representation because if Floyd actually overpowered Chauvin, you know for a 100% fact that Thao would have resorted to the same direct violence himself, he just didn't have to because someone else was doing the dirty work sufficiently.
Yeah...they are watching and doing nothing...a failure and an accessory. The results are the same whether they are there or not, when they could prevent atrocities.
This who is better bullshit doesnt matter, they are complicit.
If we remove the Republicans, things get better. If we remove the Democrats, things stay the same. It's not a question of who is better, but who is worse. Until we change the voting and representation systems (hello Approval Voting and Sequential Proportional Approval Voting) picking the lesser evil is the only logical and moral choice.
They are complicit by only striving to be less evil. Would you be happy between choosing a rape and murder of your parents or just a murder? One is clearly less than the other so we should be happy with that over the alternative.
One is clearly preferrable, neither is acceptable.
Dems had power for enough time to change elections and did not, thus enabling this regime.
It's no accident, I'm sure. They are better, as they're not helping the killers, but they're nowhere near as good as is necessary to stop them. Pretty much the perfect definition of the average democratic politician these days: you vote for them to stop the killing, but you know that - whether by choice or not - they won't do anything to prevent more deaths when the killers come back into power.
I'm happy we're electing people like Zohran Mamdani, but we're going to need a lot more of them before our leftmost viable party can be considered even a little left. We need politicians that make change, and when the system doesn't let them, they band together with the rest of the population to force it, instead of just complaining about how they wish they could make change but can't. The leaders need to be leading the charge, to battle if necessary.
That doesn’t matter at all. He won the primary with a grassroots campaign, so he doesn’t need their funding. Being in the blue/Working Families column will win the know-nothing vote in NYC.
The key is for us to seek out the progressive on the primary ballot and vote. We shouldn’t be rewarding the candidates that have the financial means to find us in our living rooms. Sign up for mailers if you forget to vote. Sign up for mail-in ballots if you have an irregular schedule.
It's less about funding, and more about the fuckery they can do by making Cuomo run as an independent. Electoralism will never be the permanent answer, revolution is still necessary, but Mamdani is still good for now.
That's the thing; most democrat politicians hate him nearly as much as the republican ones do, as they're more similar to one another than either is to him. There are a few exceptions, but we're going to need people aligned with Mamdani to be the norm rather than the exception if we want the democratic party to become a real force for good.
Better in a vacuum, yes, but as /u/disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world pointed out, a huge amount of voters pay absolutely no attention, and just vote for whatever color they've always voted for. Hell, a bunch of people searched "Did Joe Biden drop out?" on election day, because they paid so little attention that they didn't even know about Harris. That's an extreme example, sure, but it's just not a realistic expectation to think people will really think hard about a 3rd party, especially when it won't get a proportionate amount of attention even if it got a huge amount of support, thanks to the billionaire-backed media.
If we don't get someone into one of the 2 established parties, we're crippling ourselves, likely to the point of immediate failure. It would be significantly more viable to change one of the parties by flooding it with new socialist politicians than it would be to build up a new platform based on socialism from the start.
Nah, entryism is a proven failure. As conditions worsen, people pay increasingly more attention to politics. Reformism in general is a lost cause, revolution is necessary, but entryism is especially bad.
It can’t have been proven without participation. Congressional primaries haven’t seen more than 15% attendance in over 40 years. We’ve been allowing retirees from the Silent Generation and now Boomers to decide our candidates. Gen X and younger need to actively participate in primaries and attempt to take the party over before we can actually say we’ve proven anything.
The US does not have a unique set of physics that only it applies to. We have a wealth of historical experience proving the ineffectiveness of entryism, even in the US. People have tried this, it doesn't work, and even if it did miraculously work we would have a worse party than if we put all of that effort into building up PSL.
It matters because the party isn't the people, it's infrastructure. It's buildings, it's support staff, it's mailing lists and payment processors
It's getting a special (often unfair) place on the ballot in all 50 states. It's 50 (often flawed) primary processes that follow local laws
And it's a banner. Not one people like, but it's one banner. A banner that theoretically stands for democracy and the common man
The left is not organized. Do we rally behind a fresh, ideologically pure banner? Which one? How long to work out which group is the best? How long until we can build up that infrastructure?
Fuck that. Winning is what matters.
The people are on our side for now, there's so much anger and energy. How long until they adjust to the new normal and go back to refusing to believe in a better world?
We have a chance right now. The next 18 months. In one sweep we can take a tattered banner and get in control - before people get cold feet. While they're still just screaming for someone to stop Trump.
We can use the momentum to unfuck our democracy once we take control, but we can't get distracted. There's no room for purity or lofty ideals. We have to take what is offered and exploit every opportunity. We have to use the system against itself.
The infrastructure and design of the DNC is built from the ground up to service its donors, wealthy people. There isn't anything about a bourgeois party we need. Just join a party like PSL and learn from the success of other Socialists around the world. It isn't about ideological purity, it's about practicality, and what you're describing has never happened, ever. Entryism does not work, again.
The US never had a democracy. Trump is about as bad as every other president, only more honest about how evil it all is. The system cannot be used against itself, the state must be smashed and replaced entirely.
I understand that you have a lot of anger and energy, and I think it would be fantastic if you channeled that into studying successful leftist movements, read some theory, and join a good org, rather than try to repeat something that has never succeeded, ever.
Socialism isn't on the table. We're so incredibly far from that. Let me know when the revolution is coming and I'll be there for it... Until then we very real issues that we can make a bit better. Not good - we're totally fucked - but we can make things less horrible
There's a genocide in progress. We're going to go through a depression. We can tea party the Democrats to be more progressive... There's no time to build up something new
I can't impress on you enough how many people are going to die
I don't think you understand. Your plan of entryism is not a feasible solution. It isn't that it isn't as good as socialism, it's that it can't work to begin with. The DNC cannot be "tea partied." Entryism does not work, the infrastructure of the DNC is made to be resistant to it.
The most likely path to stopping the genocide in Palestine is revolution, and failing that, a third party electoral victory. It isn't about the purity of the solutions, but the feasibility. We cannot make things less horrible by relying on a system designed to never move in a more progressive direction.
Again, join an org like PSL, read some theory (I made a Marxist-Leninist intro reading list you can check out if you want), and study historical leftist movements and how they came to power. Don't fall for the endless trap of entryism.
It's time to read theory, comrades! As Lenin says, "Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle." Reading theory helps us identify the core contradictions within modern society, analyze their trajectories, and gives us the tools to break free. Marxism-Leninism is broken into 3 major components, as noted by Lenin in his pamphlet The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism: | Audiobook
Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Critique of Capitalism along the lines of Marx's Law of Value
Advocacy for Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
As such, I created the following list to take you from no knowledge whatsoever of Leftist theory, and leave you with a strong understanding of the critical fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism in an order that builds up as you read. Let's get started!
Section I: Getting Started
What the heck is Communism, anyways? For that matter, what is fascism?
Breaks down fascism and its mortal enemy, Communism, as well as their antagonistic relationship. Understanding what fascism is, where and when it rises, why it does so, and how to banish it forever is critical. Parenti also helps debunk common anti-Communist myths, from both the "left" and the right, in a quick-witted writing style. This is also an excellent time to watch the famous speech.
Section II: Historical and Dialectical Materialism
By far my favorite primer on Marxist philosophy. By understanding Dialectical and Historical Materialism first, you make it easier to understand the rest of Marxism-Leninism. Don't be intimidated!
Further reading on Dialectical and Historical Materialism, but crucially introduces the why of Scientific Socialism, explaining how Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for public ownership and planning by centralizing itself into monopolist syndicates. This is also where Engels talks about the failures of previous "Utopian" Socialists.
Section III: Political Economy
That's right, it's time for the Law of Value and a deep-dive into Imperialism. If we are to defeat Capitalism, we must learn it's mechanisms, tendencies, contradictions, and laws.
Best taken as a pair, these essays simplify the most important parts of the Law of Value. Marx is targetting those not trained in economics here, but you might want to keep a pen and some paper to follow along if you are a visual person.
Absolutely crucial and the most important work for understanding the modern era and its primary contradictions. Marxist-Leninists understand that Imperialism is the greatest contradiction in the modern era, which cascades downward into all manner of related contradictions. Knowing what dying Capitalism looks like, and how it behaves, means we can kill it.
Section IV: Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
Can we defeat Capitalism at the ballot box? What about just defeating fascism? What about the role of the state?
If Marxists believed reforming Capitalist society was possible, we would be the first in line for it. Sadly, it isn't possible, which Luxemburg proves in this monumental writing.
Excellent refutation of revisionists and Social Democrats who think the State can be reformed, without needing to be replaced with one that is run by the workers, in their own interests.
Section V: Intersectionality and Solidarity
The revolution will not be fought by atomized individuals, but by an intersectional, international working class movement. Intersectionality is critical, because it allows different marginalized groups to work together in collective interest, unifying into a broad movement.
Critical reading on understanding misogyny, transphobia, enbyphobia, pluralphobia, and homophobia, as well as how to move beyond the base subject of "gender." Uses the foundations built up in the previous works to analyze gender theory from a Historical Materialist perspective.
De-colonialism is essential to Marxism. Without having a strong, de-colonial, internationalist stance, we have no path to victory nor a path to justice. Fanon analyzes Colonialism's dehumanizing effects, and lays out how to form a de-colonial movement, as well as its necessity.
Solidarity and intersectionality are the key to any social movement. When different social groups fight for liberation together along intersectional lines, the movements are emboldened and empowered ever-further.
Section VI: Putting it into Practice!
It's not enough to endlessly read, you must put theory to practice. That is how you can improve yourself and the movements you support. Touch grass!
Mao wrote simply and directly, targeting peasant soldiers during the Revolutionary War in China. This pair of essays equip the reader with the ability to apply the analytical tools of Dialectical Materialism to their every day practice, and better understand problems.
Congratulations, you completed your introductory reading course!
With your new understanding and knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, here is a mini What is to be Done? of your own to follow, and take with you as practical advice.
Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to us to protect ourselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there's an org you like more near you and join it.
Read theory. Don't think that you are done now! Just because you have the basics, doesn't mean you know more than you do. If you have not investigated a subject, don't speak on it! Don't speak nonsense, but listen!
Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground, let nobody be forgotten or left behind. There is strength in numbers, when one marginalized group is targeted, many more are sure to follow.
Be industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well.
Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. Liberals will not save us, we must save each other.
Be persistent. If you feel like a single water droplet against a mountain, think of canyons and valleys. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.
"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a national organization of revolutionaries fighting for socialism in the United States. Our home is in the working class.
I'm not. I'm saying the strategy of entryism is far less likely to work than revolution would be, and would be less likely than a third party winning on a more progressive platform. Again, Entryism doesn't work, it's a fantasy, and the more energy we waste on it the less likely we are to get to a better world.
I know you know better comrade. They're stuck in the endless loop of trying to fix something that's broken, while it's functioning perfectly at keeping the status quo.
When I read that, again 🙄, I like to post this, from 1871
"It is well known that the Americans have been striving for 30 years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and that in spite of all they can do they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be. "
..."we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends – and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it. "
Not exactly. The mass pig expansion program across the country in the 1990s was spearheaded by Bill Clinton. The pro pig Dems are just as actively racist and murderous as the pro pig Reps.
if you still think that reps and dems are the same after Trump's actions during his current term, then you must not be reading any news or you're willingly blind to his atrocities.
"willingly blind to his atrocities" Says the Blue MAGA character that for a year at least didn't want to see the painfully obvious mental state of Genocide Joe(IDGAF) but worse, his atrocities in occupied Palestine or the kids he put in cages in record numbers. Complete hypocrite.
Let me guess: You didnt vote for Harris and wouldnt have voted for Biden? You still call him genocide Joe showing how completely stupid you are. Under Biden Gaza got some help at least. Trump wants Gaza to be cleared of Palestinians to built his Hotel there. Why dont you call him genocide Trump?
You are responsible for everything that is happening to palestinians under Trump if you didnr vote for the only candidate that could have beat him.
I don't live in your embarrassing banana republic. I just make fun of you idiots. He will eternally be Genocide Joe bcs he did absolutely nothing to end it, on the contrary he helped tand armed those genociders. The Pissraelis said it themselves. OC you in your infantile campist reasoning want to make it about Trump. Trump bad, our side good! Any criticism means you're from the other side. And I love Trump, yes he's a slightly more fascist AH than Blue MAGA but he's very good at destroying your shithole. Expediating the demise of your warmongering shithole. This is the best thing that can happen for the world. Since 95% votes for 1 of 2 MAGA sides you all deserve it. I feast on your tears. Please cry more.
Secretary Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security announced $94 million in federal grants to over 500 Jewish-based organizations across the United States.
I recently sat down with Rabbi Sanford Akselrad from Congregation Ner Tamid, who told me the temple spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on security.
"The fight against hate against the Jews would morph yet again, um, so when someone says that they are, they, they love Jews but they, but they hate Israel and you get a little deeper, what do they mean by that..... and usually when they go into the territory not of being critical of Israel which is fair game. But they say Israel has no right to exist at all now.... we get into the area of antisemitism," Akselrad said.
I mean we can generally agree that China is worse. That doesn’t mean we should willingly donate our data to the US, but if you have to choose between amputating your foot or your little toe it’s an easy decision.
I run deepseek locally so obviously I appreciate that they made that decision, but let's not pretend that something can't be given away for free with bad intentions. People running LLMs locally are a drop in the bucket compared to people just downloading an app.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make. That means they have good intentions with the data they're collecting about the users of their mobile apps?
The point I'm trying to make is that I don't think the CCP cares about the users of deepseek mobile app when they already have an ocean of data from tiktok. That's the real trojan horse.
Mobile access to an LLM is a similarity. The big difference between chatgpt and deepseek is the open model weights.
You think them already invasively farming user data from tiktok somehow makes them less likely to do the same thing with another app, and not more likely?
If someone stole $1000 from you and then asked to borrow $20, would you give it to them? Surely they won't steal that too, they already have $1000.
It does not mean that at all. Nothing about choosing to release a model for free or not has any bearing on whether or not the app will respect the privacy of its users.
OpenAI could feel like they're making enough money off of their proprietary model that they don't need to collect data (I'm not saying this is likely), while DeepSeek could have released the model for free hoping mass adoption leads to more app downloads and more data to harvest. I don't assume either has good intentions.
Thanks for putting other word in my mouth. I never told any of both have good intention, but at least deepseek didn't promise to release the model to change it's mind and close source it. Feel that it is a little better than chatgpt, since they didn't shit on the face of the community yet. I am sure both collect data, and I wouldn't thrust them with sensitive informations.
France, Mistral. There are also many others in US and worldwide.
China is worse when comparing many other factors, but if ALL you care about is whether the model weights are os, then it is usually not decided by countries, but rather companies.
Then why are you asking binary questions about countries? Meta released open source models and weights way before DeepSeek, but I guess that wouldn't fit into your "China is better" narrative so we'll just pretend Llama never happened.
Only people who don't have their heads buried in the sand. You can't possibly believe China is not much much worse than the US. I literally don't believe you. You're a bot or a paid actor.
When it comes to AI models, China is streets ahead in openness.
No one was talking about openness, we were talking about data collection.
All openai data goes to the NSA
Online deepseek data goes to the CCP. Local models stay private.
You're comparing online models with local models. Local OpenAI models are also private.
The only people believing that Americans are superior in everything are Americans.
Good thing no one said that. It's not just America either. Most countries are significantly more free than China (and Russia and North Korea), and if you don't believe that, you need to open your eyes.
Okay at this point its pretty clear you have no intention of good faith discussion and want to constantly redirect the conversation to a strawman argument so I'm going to bail.
There's plenty of nuance but that's not relevant in generalities.
there’s a lot of good happening there too.
No one said it's all bad. There's lots of good everywhere. That doesn't mean everywhere is an equally good place.
Have you been to China? If not, you should 100% go and check it out for yourself!
What am I going to find out by going there that I can't read about? That I've been lied to? That the CCP isn't blocking information about Tianenmen Square and other govt atrocities? That the mere act of protesting isn't illegal? That they aren't murdering dissidents? Privacy in it's entirety isn't illegal?
chatgpt and gemini gather data for the US govt, which is the one actively fucking europe over at the moment. so clearly, deepseek is what they need to worry about.
AFAIK per EU law the collected data has to stay in data centers in the EU, ChatGPT and Gemini at least pretend to conform while Deepseek explicitly states that the data is stored in Chinese data centers.
Germany’s going hard right again. Severe crackdowns on civil rights are escalating. They’re arresting people for posting criticism of political efforts online, ramping up their military, pushing far-right politicians into office, etc.
Naive take on this point tbh... Germany is being forced by its allies to do its share for the alliance. I am sure Germany's nazi nepo baby leadership would rather be buying Russian gas right now to drive its industrial base but geopolitics are a bitch lol
This is so pathetic now. US companies does " pretend" to storage data in Europe, then, 4 years later a couple of them are found out they did not (others did too but were not found to doing so) and an investigation and lawsuit is brought up and 6 years later found guilty and penalized a maximum of 10% of profits for that year (so effectively 1% profit/yr cost of business). Profits brought by the breach of European safeguards... tens times more than the potential penalties. Any CEO has to, by law, give the maximum profits to their investors, and they are just doing that.
But of course, the EU just won't do that litigation dance with the Chinese companies, the EU knows well it is just a scam to pretend doing something to protect europeans... to Chinese companies, because US does not like, the EU just ban them. The EU will never ban a US company, no matter how many violations they do.
Oh for sure! No doubt, at least makes people conscious of that. Now, the larger companies don't have any problem bypassing the EU law and the incentives are mainly untouched for them to change.
Exactm every company in the RU is forced by law to fullfit the minimum of the GDPR to be able to sell their product, the fines are high, even for Google, MS and META, Nusk even said taking X out of the EU (I would approve it).
US want to ban TikTok, because it's a Chinese company, it has nothing to do with privacy, while in the EU a service must fullfit the GDPR to be allowed to offer their service in the EU and DeepSeek, among others, don't. This has a lot to do with the privacy rights in the EU, those which in the USA don't exist, not with censorship. Privacy is a basic right in the EU and not even the Police can access sensible personal data or track your activity without an court order, less aprivate company for advertising reasons or for training their AIs. But yes, right wing politicians in Germany want to change this, but this isn't so easy in a working Democracy where it need to be approved with a majorit in th Bundestag.
In a response to an article written for Bloomberg by Jason Schreier investigating the ten year "development turmoil," lead level designer Brian J. Audette refutes the notion that the game was "compromised" in a post on their bluesky account.
The full post reads:
Reposting without comment except: I refute that we made a bad or compromised game. We made the best version of what we released, warts and all. I'm damn proud of it and the team. We couldn't have made a better Dragon Age, only a different one.
Reposting without comment except: I refute that we made a bad or compromised game. We made the best version of what we released, warts and all. I'm damn proud of it and the team. We couldn't have made a _better_ Dragon Age, only a _different_ one.
I thought the game was alright overall, but it certainly did not feel like a Dragon Age game. The overall story was decent, however a lot of the dialogue was hamfisted. The real problem was that the gameplay felt like Jedi Survivor without the refined combat mechanics. As a result, combat quickly became tedious and repetitive. I also found that the NPCs were more or less fungible, and it really didn't matter who was in your party. This is a stark contrast with previous Dragon Age games where the whole fun was in scripting the behavior of different characters and coming up with clever ways of combine their abilities. Simply having kept the original mechanics, warts and all, would've resulted in a far better game in my opinion.
I installed Linux Mint on my Lenovo Yoga 7 laptop and it's been great, with the one exception of not really having a tablet mode when I flip the screen. Its not a huge deal, but I watch shows that way and sometimes miss an on-screen keyboard.
The actual keyboard stays active when flipped, which is fine until I pick it up or have it on my lap and accidentally hit some random key.
It seems from some looking around that Mint doesn't do great with this and I'm open to a different distro that's fairly beginner friendly, but even better if there are some options I'm missing to keep what I have.
I use archlinux with KDE and I had to tinker with it for hours if not days for it to properly have an automatic on screen keyboard that is not complete bullcrap. But since then it works. Even on LUKS decrypt during boot.
mint uses X11 which should be considered legacy at this point. wayland (Gnome, Plasma) has all the touch and dock/undock and rotate and pen etc goodies. try it out from a liveUSB and decide for yourself.
Why is mint even recommended to new users at this point. Cinnamon is nowhere near Gnome or Plasma and both of these provide much simpler and more unified experience in things like settings
Well done comrade
anomnom
in reply to technocrit • • •hansolo
in reply to technocrit • • •This should absolutely be held up as the example for people that say "I have nothing to hide."
The world isn't fun time sunshine lollipops, kids. It's literally inevitable that your data gets leaked or stolen.
You either naïvely trust the service you give data to more than you should, or you naïvely trust criminals to skip you when given the opportunity. There no evidence of a middle ground or other options in the matter.
ShinkanTrain
in reply to technocrit • • •blargh513
in reply to ShinkanTrain • • •robotElder2 [he/him, it/its]
in reply to technocrit • • •