Notices by Mr Penguin (mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com), page 2

@xianc78

@wowaname

Dell selling Linux was/is a publicity stunt. Never on the front page always hidden. They were actually undermining adoption by shipping garbage that didn't even work. I had customers at the time they started who got their first models and they shipped out non functioning PCs. Then they shipped systems that stopped working or only worked with some homegrown crap. That isn't GNU/Linux. It is some retardation. I can't say that isn't also the case for most 'Linux dealers' too.

@Forestofenchantment

You have a weird definition of 'good oem computers'. I mean, sure they are probably better in a lot of respect than Apple, but that is a super low bar to hit. i also couldn't buy HP, Sony, Apple, or Toshiba if half of these companies even made computers still for the same or similar reasons.

@wowaname

No, they were never on my radar to begin with, but DRM advertising is not 'innocuous'. Lets see why else not dell? They lock down the wifi slot so you can't upgrade or replace your wifi card with another. They have a history of undermining GNU/Linux this way and I use GNU/Linux, but even if I didn't fuck any company that forces me to buy replacement parts through them. They have also had a history if shipping proprietary crap like power supplies on desktop PCs. Bundling malware...

It's still wayyyy too hard to buy a PinePhone. :( Someone needs to explain to the Pine64 folks that Coinbase ain't crypto and there is customer demand for them to take Monero.

What the hell is wrong with people. What the hell is wrong with the people at Coinbase? What the hell is wrong with the people at companies and websites that utilize Coinbase. Do people not understand that Coinbase is NOT crypto. You can't even pay a merchant who accepts crypto via Coinbase with crypto. It's freaking insane. They only support specific wallets and that isn't crypto. Like Bitcoin has a standard and a QR code for it and if you actually take Bitcoin you got to show that QR code. When you use Coinbase there is NO option for Bitcoin! Like, umm I don't have one of the 6 wallets that your supporting and I have never even heard of and almost certainly wouldn't use EVER.

#boycottcoinbase

See democrats and republican are stupid as f'. Like listen to Trump complaining about an activity his administration pioneered! This is debanking people for their politics. Yea, the left did something similar against conservatives pertaining to the IRS, so don't go thinking you should vote for the left/democrats now. BOTH are evil. I don't disbelieve him in this instance and I'm sure he's correct when he says conservatives have been debanked.

https://reclaimthenet.org/trump-order-banks-political-debanking-excludes-payment-processors

Here is what trumps complaining about now that is soo stupid given his own administrations participation in this debanking system:

"The order’s language is strong. Trump, who has a personal score to settle in this arena, told CNBC’s Squawk Box, 'The banks discriminated against me very badly. They totally discriminate against – I think me, maybe even more, but they discriminate against many conservatives.'”

And meanwhile his administration continues to pursue people like Ian Freeman (did little more than sell Bitcoin and even implemented KYC despite not being required to, yet government for political reasons went after him, he is the reason crypto took off, syndicated radio show on ~200 stations was first to cover Bitcoin), Roman Storm (Tornado Cash, software developer, software helped people preserve their privacy, never held anyone's money, still charged him with money laundering related offenses and unlicensed money transmission despite not doing any of it, and complying with regulations, but criminal prosecution made an absurdly broad interpretation of the law and went after him for political reasons anyway), Roger Ver (big proponent of BTC in the early days, led to crypto in the real world, now they're extraditing him despite the fact he relinquished his US citizenship).

@codrus Yea, I'd avoid Dell, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Apple, and at least Sony. I realize like two of these companies don't even sell computers at this point, but... aww got to keep boycotting evil. Basically all these companies have instituted DRM on wifi card slots and/or designed their systems such that you can't utilize standard components. The goals were pretty apparent in that they are or were trying to force people to buy replacement parts from them. They were trying to copy the 1980s US care company model. Produce crap, then charge to repair it, or at least force everyone into their ecosystem to whatever extent they could (Apple in particular, but it's definitely not exclusive, I mean, Dell also did it back in the 1990s with proprietary power supplies and crap like that). Actually I was looking at servers the other day and realizing other companies like Super Micro also pulling shit like this. Though they do have some standardized motherboards (ATX, EATX, etc) and I probably can't be 100% certain the reason for it. There might in this particular instance be some technical benefit/reason for why they do it. I doubt it, but... maybe.

Executive orders change with the presidency and I wouldn't hold my breath that government will stop debanking people particularly given I believe it was trump's own administration that debanked "sex traffickers". For those who aren't aware you need to be super skeptical of anyone using the word "sex trafficking" . They're putting it up as if it means what you think it means (people being forced into slavery), but in reality it's being manipulated and usually used in a way that is purely hostile to anyone who dare not share a conservative extremist viewpoint. When they debanked "sex traffickers" for instance anyone who ever worked in the sex industry- be it selling it, working as an actor in porn, or even just stripping down in a movie, well, they all got debanked. It was I believe the first trump administration that did it. Under his leadership a segment of his conservative base (some people think ? feminist ?, but either way they're anti-porn, anti-lgbtq, etc) pushed him to have his regulator send out a threatening coded letter to suspend the licenses of banks if they didn't debank "sex traffickers" or something along those lines.

Don't for one moment think that this bigoted group has only been successful with trump. They've gotten most of the political class on board with passing other laws like creating liability for websites. If someone posts a sex for sale coded message which may not even be obvious to the site administrator the site becomes liable for "sex trafficking". Keep in mind not everyone selling sex has even been trafficked, or forced into it. Some people actually like their job and if you don't then don't sell yourself for sex!

https://reclaimthenet.org/trump-order-banks-political-debanking-excludes-payment-processors

Someone needs to explain to Italy that it doesn't have the power to regulate what DNS and VPN providers external to its jurisdiction do or don't do:

"Widened scope: VPN services and publicly available DNS providers are required to deploy blocking measures consistent with those already in place at ISPs. The requirement to block within 30 minutes applies regardless of a providers’ location or residence. "

Just to clarify my company (ThinkPenguin.com) will not be complying (we offer our PenguinVPN service if you go to the networking section of the site you can find a product subscription offering) with Italian law. We don't operate servers in Italy and have no bank accounts, employees, or similar in Italy. If Italy wants to block their citizens from accessing our services they are free to do so, but we're not complying with laws that aren't applicable or enforceable in New Hampshire and/or the United States.

I also have no plans to travel to Europe let alone Italy. Hell, I don't even want to leave New Hampshire and I'm a big advocate of NHexit. That is New Hampshire declaring independence from the United States.

New Hampshire independence is likely a bit of a ways off still, but we did see the number of house representatives supporting it go from ~13 to ~24 in just the past ~1 year or so. And this is actual reps voting on constitutional amendments and related bills. We may be a bit far off from independence, but unlike every other state we're heading in the right direction. Every year we see an increase in the number of libertarians or free staters elected. About 25% of the house and 20% of the senate currently. It's not that these numbers are huge it's the rate of increase that matters and that is significant enough to see freedom in my life.

@Deckard @sister_sam

We're working on improving it... if you mean the server anyway.

And people continue to buy from Dell why?

@fu

Ha, yea, I can kinda see where they are going with that one. However pets suck. They are wayyy too much work and zero real reward. I was once gifted a guinea pig when I was about 11 and all I thought when I saw it was "really?". I had never once in my life hinted that I wanted a pet. My younger brother on the other hand had wanted a dog. Glad my parents never got a dog, but at least if they had gifted him a guinea pig he'd at least initially had been excited about it until he realized how much work one was. I comparatively had to grin my teeth and pretend like I was happy while thinking about the next 7 years of hell (they live about 7 years, and while you keep em in a cage ya kinda got to feed and clean the cage at least once in a while). And yea they kinda are hard to kill. I did the absolute bare minimum in terms of feeding and cleaning. They won't eat them selves to death like gold fish will, which meant I shoved as many pellets in the bowl so I didn't need feed it often.

I got a new found respect for the danish. Apparently they have no qualms about feeding their pets to predators. A zoo asked for donations and apparently it's not a problem, but revealed a 'culture issue' in at least the United States. There was such an insane reaction the Zoo had to mute its social media page. LOL. I am definitely on the side of 'it's how the world goes round' and this comes off to me as this delusional fantasy land so many people live in today. I get it is a pet... but come on. If only people were this upset about like actual people being murdered and caged by their governments.

@fu

I think Visa/Master Card should be able to do what they like, but the problem is ultimately the government regulations inhibit competition within the market place for payment solutions and that ends up eliminating free market competition. I am against the regulations that enable the psycho religious or feminist groups the power to sway politicians (and the bureaucrats they put in power) into using said regulations (they have threatened every financial institution, specifically the suspension of licenses to operate) to threaten financially regulated entities into doing their political bidding of stopping others these fringe groups don't like from being able to receive payments online.

@sister_sam Yea, yawn, kinda. My company sells VPN subscriptions, but we don't offer renewals. That is automatic renewals. You can pick 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 2 year, and 3 year options, but each is paid up front. When the subscription expires you have to go back and renew the subscription. I understand that some things are just more optimal with automatic renewals, but I think that's also a poor excuse to do nothing.

@sister_sam Yea, I mean, this doesn't solve any real problem and just funnels money to this abusive industry. I don't disagree that it can at time get around various types of problem, but we should be avoiding these companies altogether. I am under no illusion that is a big ask, but you also don't always need everyone doing something to have a positive impact. For example even a small loss of revenue from folks using cryptocurrencies more can result in companies and industries thinking twice or undoing bad policies.

So I was right for anyone questioning whether it was top down (coming from visa/master card/etc) or an act of the payment processor alone to kick NSFW games from Itch.io. This regulation of the financial world is extremely dangerous for democracy and free speech (yes, I'm a democracy skeptic even if I'll give you that it appears to be the least bad solution thus far tried/implemented by comparison to things like kings and dictators):

"Itch's founder told the gaming news site Aftermath that it was a notice from Visa that led to the sudden deindexing of so many games."

What is happening here is that religious nut-jobs (some appear to be using the term feminists or some niche thereof) have lobbied for a crack down on porn and sex that they see as taboo. They push it as a crackdown on "sex trafficking", but sex trafficking today is a code word for going after the sex industry (porn primarily, but voluntary non-forced prostitution, etc) rather than a small percentage of violent thugs using violence to achieve their financial objectives. The state is itself a far more violent actor in crushing the lives of peaceful sex workers and peaceful actors in the porn industry than the pimps and actual sex traffickers (ie using violence).

If it's OK to use violence, threats, and force against those involved in this industry that consists of mostly peaceful voluntary interactions than it can and will be used against political rivals. And we have already seen that with censorship filters (often used to try and stop piracy) in some countries and banks shutting off access to debit/credit/bank accounts of persons in Canada during what became known as the 'trucker protest'. These were protests against prime minister Justin Trudeau for excess COVID restrictions.

@sister_sam Better to complain and then not use said services/sites.

@sister_sam

Yea, no doubt I wouldn't put a ton of faith in Trump to do the right thing or issue a pardon even, at least of his on vanacular, but we theoretically have access to Trumps ear... so there is a possibility here. I believe it is via the same person who pulled off Ross Ulbricht's pardon. So we will see...

@sister_sam

Yea, I am familiar with virtual cards. I am not a huge fan as they are more of a distraction from better more genuinely privacy friendly solutions that put users in control. Monero for example is way better than a virtual card.