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morgan814

Take playbooks from large criminal organizations. Protesting may not be criminal, but it is increasingly being treated as such.

Organized crime deals with this stuff constantly. Meet in person. Vet everyone. Being willing to keep lips tight and risk imprisonment.

Posting all over BlueSky is just snitching on yourself. It doesn’t matter if protesting is a cornerstone of our democracy when those in charge don’t care. As the water heats up, protestors will need to reassess how they view their own actions.

The primary downside is that operating like this sucks. It’s inconvenient at best. It requires modifying your own behavior.

> Linux is better still.

Linux as an operating system is easily better than macOS. Third party software is lacking though. There’s really nothing that compares to Bear, Things, DEVONthink, Transmit, etc. What I also missed in Linux was the prevalence of what Apple calls “x-callback URLs” [0]. They are incredibly useful and great for glueing different pieces of software together.

With some of Apple’s recent decisions, I do wonder if we’ll see this change in the future. Little Snitch put out a proof of concept for Linux. While it exposes itself as a fairly rough webpage, someone is thinking about it. Linux culture would need to accept paid software, though.

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[0] https://x-callback-url.com/

It was good but I feel like he missed the point somewhat. These tools are inaccurate, sure. But even if they weren’t we should still oppose this type of surveillance. Even if these cameras stopped all crime. He touched on more ideological grounds briefly but wish he spent more time there. There’s nothing in the Constitution that makes me think warrantless (mass) surveillance should be legal.
Re:The End of an Era on Friday July 31, 2026 @02:10PM (#49126678)
Wow! Crazy to see you here.

I found out about Silo a few weeks back. That damn rock I live under. Couldn’t get into the TV series but tried your books. I have not been able to put it down. My partner may be a bit jealous. Last night I made it to Dust and am stoked to see where this goes!

Feels like America has been on this road for quite a while. It’s frustrating to think how upset I was at some actions of previous administrations and believing we needed to do less fascist things, not more.

Then Trump shows up and just absolutely accelerates this all at an unbelievable pace. Sometimes I think we give him too much credit. He’s an absolute danger to our country but he sure as shit didn’t come into office with that checklist completely blank.

I don’t know. All we are ever given is shitty candidates. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe most Americans like the options they’re given. Maybe most are fascist. They voted for Trump twice. And I think that’s most scary. That we’re here because this is what people wanted.

Which leaves me wondering - should domestic travel be treated the same as international when it comes to securing your devices?
I would be very interested in how you did this / where you ended up. Feels like an impossible task every time I consider it.
Oh, well, we have our top guys on this. How does the third reboot of Guardians of the Galaxy 17: Part 4 Mass War sound to you? It has explosions, one-liners, and that famous actor!
> Native software is incredibly difficult to build well.

Sure. But if Zetetic, the SQLCipher[0] guys, can maintain native independent releases of Codebook [1] on all platforms there’s no excuse.

Big tech serves the shareholders. Building native applications across platforms is hard, but not “put man on the moon” hard.

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[0] https://www.zetetic.net/sqlcipher/

[1] https://www.zetetic.net/codebook/

> leaders

Don’t play their game and call them leaders. They are management, bosses, executives.

> They are making decisions about things that they just don't understand. And are completely unworried about it.

Clowns, even.

> Just blindly following whatever the news cycle is about AI.

But followers might be most apt.

——

This is such a huge pet peeve of mine. Describing management goofs using their language that makes them sound all-so-brilliant. We constantly watch these people do the dumbest shit and then they go around describing themselves as “thought leaders” and “servant leaders”. When, really, most are just clowns with fragile egos.

And, while I’m rambling, they’ve tried to take away the fact we are workers by calling us individual contributors. Using language to attempt and hide the hierarchy and power dynamic at play. It just…bothers me so much.

Re:Jerome Powell Responds on Monday January 12, 2026 @04:01PM (#46594258)
Oh I agree and I vote. More people need to vote. But I understand why people feel little motivation to.
Re:Jerome Powell Responds on Monday January 12, 2026 @02:09PM (#46592803)
> Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low

I understand why my age group has low turnout. It's a disgusting chore that I force myself to do.

In part, it might be a chicken and egg situation. My age cohort doesn't vote because candidates suck. Candidates suck because they pander to those who do vote.

Now to show my political biases:

In 2016 Sanders had a huge amount of support from young people but the DNC did everything it could to tilt favor away from him. He ran a hugely successful grassroots campaign taking small donations from individuals. Where did it get him? On stage with Biden - the anointed candidates with SuperPAC money. That is no small feat. His campaign ended only after the DNC guilted him into quitting as to "not steal votes". That's my perception at least. I temporarily changed my registration from unaffiliated to Democrat to vote for him in the primaries. Young people put in effort and showed up. It bought them exactly one legally rigged primary.

So every election I put on my clown makeup [0] and pretend like any of this is actually real democracy.

[0] https://rimgo.privacyredirect.com/ZUiVLyz

Re:On Getting Hacked on Friday January 09, 2026 @01:23PM (#46557149)
> I still have my sense of smugness

Crappy SMS 2FA or not. Losing your number is a huge pain. Because phone numbers are treated as identity, it also allows the person who took your number to impersonate you by calling into $X service. At least in America.

Re:On Getting Hacked on Friday January 09, 2026 @01:07AM (#46550599)
Not all too long ago I had someone port out my VOIP number. They had it for a few hours. This was after I had spent extensive effort attempting to secure my digital life. VOIP was SIM-swap resistant sure, but I totally missed that port out requests default to failing open.

Thankfully the VOIP operator alerted me and pulled the number back. Then I set a port out code.

Who knows how many other holes I have. I lost my sense of smugness that day.

Re:The Anti-Homeschooling Mind Virus on Thursday January 08, 2026 @04:16PM (#46546598)
For a differing opinion, I was homeschooled for six years during and it was damaging. There is plenty I missed out on and I wish my childhood was just a bit more normal.

There are legitimate reasons to homeschool I'm sure, but the article itself is garbage.

Re:Many Hells of WebDAV: Writing a Client/Server in Go on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @01:00PM (#46529900)
JMAP[0], which has in-progress specs for calendar and contacts, is supposed to save us. It can't happen soon enough - if it happens at all.

[0] https://jmap.io/spec.html

The “killer app” would be to open up the system. Apple won’t do it. But I’m not strapping a MacBook to my face for a few grand just to have a locked down iPhone experience.
You can always use AnonAddy, SimpleLogin, or similar to receive emails at your domain then forward them to Posteo.
Re:NextDNS is my new favourite DNS service (2020) on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @12:02AM (#46429707)
I somewhat begrudgingly switched to ControlD after years with NextDNS.

The NextDNS web UI is flippin fast and very simple. Feels more akin to HN. ControlD’s is slow and feels so heavy. Maybe more like new Reddit.

ControlD offers Hagezi’s TIF list and allows custom lists to be set. NextDNS’s built-in TIF is very opaque. This was really the deciding factor for me. Unfortunately.

Re:Ask HN: How many HN'ers Celebrate Christmas vs. ? on Friday December 26, 2025 @02:35PM (#46395362)
> war oriented society

Christianity loves going to war to “spread the word”. See the Crusades. See what’s going on in Israel. See Manifest Destiny. Or, I presume, those “don’t count” because they weren’t “real Christians”.

> and likely die or be enslaved in the next clan war

The Old Testament is full of slavery references and doesn’t indicate a problem with it. Yes, I know slaves must be set free after seven years. That doesn’t suddenly make it okay and it’s painful to watch people use that as a justification.

> technological achievements of the last centuries

Christians love to claim these advancements for themselves as long as it fits their story. Much of our mathematical advancements come from the Muslim world. And plenty of scientists that changed the world were under prosecution of Christianity.

But it is convenient that a doctor (who has spent years learning about the human body) can remove your bad gallbladder then attributing it to your god. Unless you’re a type of Christian that doesn’t believe in surgery, then it’s “of the devil”.

> without risk of being scalped alive?

Well, as long as you’re not a Palestinian trying to survive a genocide that is in part supported by fundamentalist Christians on the other side of the planet.

Frankly, your comment reeks of “white Jesus saved the world” or what many might refer to as racism. Your example of scalping really, really gives you away.

These judges are downright anti-American. I’m not particularly patriotic but this country wasn’t fought for and bled over so tyrants could abuse their power with loopholes.
Re:How did DOGE disrupt so much while saving so little? on Tuesday December 23, 2025 @01:51PM (#46368067)
> We all fall into this trap, thinking we can do better than others.

It took me a while to learn this lesson about complex systems.

First week at a new job? It’s easy to identify all the ways things are done wrong. Six months later you begin to understand why they were done “wrong”.

While I certainly drink coffee for the caffeine, black coffee is 100% my preference. Sugar in coffee tastes absolutely horrid to me. Milk is fine but it doesn’t do much for me.

People taste things differently and it’s at least partly genetic. See TAS2R38 for example [0]. It’s fascinating how we all perceive the world a little differently.

Years ago, long before I was of age, a science museum had a little demo on this (not sure if it was related to the aforementioned gene or not) using strips of paper with some chemical on it. Some people were pretty grossed out by the flavor. It didn’t bother other people at all, including myself.

On the flip side of things I’m highly sensitive to sweetness and find anything other than the smallest amounts to be off putting.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6949464/

> The point of drinking is to get a buzz

Once a week I hit the local pub for exactly one pint. Usually preferring lower ABV. Why do I stop there? Anymore than that gives a buzz that I usually am not in the mood for. I’m sure one drink has some effect on me, but not enough to consciously realize it.

> Most alcoholic drinks taste bad anyway

Speak for yourself. Beer is hands down one of the tastiest damn drinks. I seriously love German and British styles for their flavor and low ABV. They make great casual drinks.

You don’t like alcohol. That’s fine. And, honestly, you’re likely healthier for it. But claiming that people drink just to get drunk - I stopped doing that in college.

Re:Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem? on Thursday December 18, 2025 @01:00PM (#46316194)
> never pay for something with DRM you cannot remove

I take this to mean to sail the seas but I have apprehension over running modified binaries from random people. Is there anything that can be done to alleviate this worry?

Re:Framework Raises DDR5 Memory Prices by 50% for DIY Laptops on Friday December 12, 2025 @09:23PM (#46251411)
Used to be someone had to crack the whip. Now the workers do it to themselves.
If you have the money definitely get yourself a passport card. Stores can’t scan them and they only contain a pointer to personal info in some government database.
Re:How to break free from smart TV ads and tracking on Friday December 12, 2025 @02:13PM (#46247609)
Time to turn your house into a giant Faraday cage
Re:Bad Dye Job on Monday December 08, 2025 @07:44PM (#46199872)
> Here is an unpopular opinion, how about Craig Federighi replaced with Scott Forstall.

I'm with you there.

Forstall's skeuomorphism gets a lot of hate. It certainly got pretty weird visually. Especially on OS X where a leather-bound Calendar had to interact with other normal windows. But unlike what Ive and Dye have given us, Forstall's UX remained functional overall. I'm glad skeuomorphism is gone, but much of it was done to help the user. Just maybe a bit misguided.

Re:Congressional lawmakers 47% pts better at picking stocks on Wednesday December 03, 2025 @04:20PM (#46140307)
This is why neither party will truly save us. Candidates from both parties seem to mostly focus on social issues (Democrats are 110% preferable here imo). There are very few politicians who speak to the level of corruption and economic inequality we all see.

The way America was designed may have been pretty novel / innovative at the time but we've learned so much since then about how to build better democracies. Switzerland has a council of seven members as their executive branch, not a single person. It's brilliant stuff. I worry that the only way to do better is through an incredibly painful collapse of things. Unless politicians start deciding to write laws that force them to give up power. Which seems almost humorous to suggest.

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