• 41 Posts
  • 23 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2023

help-circle
  • See, this falls apart when there’s another instance that focuses on solarpunk. When some communities on that instance become more popular and active than the communities in your local instance, you’d want to be subscribed to the solar punk communities on that new instance too. Now, your local feed is only showing you solarpunk communities hosted on slrpnk.net but not solarpunk communities on other instances. This distinction is not meaningful because where a community is hosted can be totally detached from the content. The users you know by handle can also be very active, if not more active, on other instances talking about solarpunk than slrpnk.net.









    • Google Image Search removing the ability to go directly to the raw image after Getty complained that web users are bypassing its website and therefore not generating traffic
    • Facebook removing chronological feed
    • Facebook showing you pages that you never followed on your home feed without the ability to turn this off
    • Microsoft trying to introduce ads to Explorer and the start menu
    • Microsoft making it difficult to create a local Windows account by making the process unintuitive, leading the user to believe that a Microsoft account is needed to use Windows
    • Apple dropping support for iOS web apps because it doesn’t want to support browsers other than Safari
    • Reddit and Twitter’s ban of third-party API use that killed nearly all third-party clients
    • EA producing games that require users to be always online, despite the game being single-player, presumably as a DRM measure
    • Ad companies making it easy for you to give consent to data sharing and selling but really difficult for you to opt-out

    Edit: More examples











  • That’s not correct. This is the origin report under the Biden administration from the Intelligence Community. This is the summary:

    […] the IC was able to reach broad agreement on several other key issues. We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way. Finally, the IC assesses China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.

    After examining all available intelligence reporting and other information, though, the IC remains divided on the most likely origin of COVID-19. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.

    • Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. These analysts give weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors.

    • One IC element assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. These analysts give weight to the inherently risky nature of work on coronaviruses.

    • Analysts at three IC elements remain unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, with some analysts favoring natural origin, others a laboratory origin, and some seeing the hypotheses as equally likely.

    • Variations in analytic views largely stem from differences in how agencies weigh intelligence reporting and scientific publications and intelligence and scientific gaps.

    The IC judges they will be unable to provide a more definitive explanation for the origin of COVID-19 unless new information allows them to determine the specific pathway for initial natural contact with an animal or to determine that a laboratory in Wuhan was handling SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor virus before COVID-19 emerged.














  • This is more circlejerk from Von der Leyen. Before Trump became president, she was talking about de-risking from China, reducimg economic reliance on other countries, including Russian energy, and now somehow, all of a sudden, she is boasting the EU’s ability to trade with Mexico and China?

    Seriously, the EU can’t compete with the US because it cares about its people. Its superior economic, human, social, and civil rights come at the cost of strictly regulating businesses, which kills off innovation and profit making by big businsses. The American syatem rewards monopoly, the lack of labor rights, and increasing wealth inequality by not regulating enough. That breeds big tech, big pharma, big tobacco, big oil, and Wall Street, but that’s what’s driving the American economy. The EU is too ethical for that.