Russia is no more totalitarian than any Western "liberal democracy", their elections no more rigged than ours.

Ahahaha.... Very funny. Can you please tell me how many politicians are imprisoned for their dissent in western democratic countries? Maybe there is a liberal democracy where the same person has been a president for 20 years plus 5 years as a prime minister? Or a democracy where a single party held majority in federal parliament for 21 years with last 8 years having more than 2/3 votes? By the way, it allowed them first to increase a presidential term from 4 to 6 years to let that one president to rule longer between elections, then to change Constitution to let that one president to be elected for his 5th term and potentially for 6th. Hey, what about a country where it is a crime to publicly say something about armed forces that contradicts what government tells people via government owned media? Up to 3 years in prison for that, you know... Like in any other western democracy, right? And that country has quite a few more laws criminalizing various public activities.

I get what you are saying about ruling class status quo, etc. Maybe from a perspective of someone who wants a radical change of the political system, Russian system might look not that different from western democracies. But totalitarian state feels very differently for people living in one. There is no political freedom, no freedom of speech, no choice, no chance to protest. Say something wrong and go to jail. It's not an exaggeration, there was at least 3.5k prosecutions for social media posts or sometimes even for likes. The situation with freedom got much worse in last couple of years since the war with Ukraine began.

I gave maybe an oversimplified answer. I agree with you that a single person doesn't control everything. But the government system is built to control what political entities are allowed to exist and express their views publicly. So, again naturally, the only parties that remain exist only because they follow president and party lines.

All independent parties have been stripped of the party registration or removed from all elected positions. Independent politicians get "foreign agent" status, forced to immigrate, get jailed or killed. Rigged elections don't let almost anyone to be elected without government approval.

If we focus this discussion on LGBTQ topic, then I agree that many people in Russia are not "allies", but as you mentioned yourself it might be caused by media (which is also far from being free) and the fact that there are laws in Russia making support of LGBTQ a crime. However, even with that, according to 2021 survey about a 1/3 of people there believed that LBGTQ people should have equal rights. Here is the link to that survey, they also have some details on trends of public opinion on the topic: https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/10/19/the-attitude-of-russians-to-the-lgbt-community/

Anyways, don't judge people living in totalitarian state for the lack of progressive views.

Just ignore Mironov and his party. There are no independent parties in Russia, it's all just a facade for Putin and his administration.

You still may find naive young members in Social Democratic, Communist, and even United Russia (the ruling party) that got ideas tey can do something but they either adapt to party lines or drop out over time. Mironov is a leader of the party and naturally he will say what Putin's administration let him or tell him to say or what he thinks they like him to say.

Yeah, agreed. If I needed a filter for allergens I wouldn't trust noname brand too

Air filters. For car, HVAC, etc. Branded or OEM stuff is usually overpriced.

Yeah, apart from what another person said about alternative apps... Events organized by local communities or businesses are often advertised in Facebook only. I know of a few local businesses in my area with Facebook being their only online presence.

Maybe it's because they have to? Keeping in touch with older relatives, following local events, etc

Garmin. Works reasonably well without connection to the phone. Some models supported by Gadgetbridge

Edit: corrected app name

Do you talk to your friends in Russia? If so, what do they think about you leaving the country? Do they support you or envy you or hate you for that?

Well, they are saying they bring home $11k, not $17k a month, not sure where you got that number. With $11k of income, spending $5k on mortgage is less appealing. Especially if you consider a risk of layoff.

Still not Europe or Asia, innit?

Yeah... And the second source cited in article, VChK-OGPU "outlet" is an anonymous channel in Telegram, that published information from "an anonymous source". Doesn't sound trustworthy.

That's what I love Lemmy for - a new perspective (and down votes, of course). Thanks for the link, it's an interesting read. I also looked up details on their taxation system and it's not that crazy, especially on business side. If someone wants it, here is the link to the article which compares Nordic countries tax system to US: https://taxfoundation.org/blog/scandinavian-social-programs-taxes-2023/

It seems that my opinion about lack of innovation was caused by me not knowing or hearing about big names of Nordic companies. No Scandinavian Apples or Googles around.

But as much as I enjoyed this conversation, I feel we have ventured way too far from Tim Walz...

I'm not saying you cannot have both. I'm saying that US and Nordic countries are like on opposing poles of economical systems spectrum. And in my opinion the better options are somewhere in the middle.

Yeah, CEO salaries are often outrageous. Wealth taxes should be implemented to curb that, and not just high bracket income taxes.

I stand corrected on this one.

Nah, Nordic model is not a good choice. It's all fine to drill some oil, collect a lot of taxes and give that money away to people as welfare, while enjoying innovations produced by evil liberal capitalists.

I can't think of anything advanced after Nokia that is built in Scandinavian countries. No cars (Saab is dead, Volvo is sold to Chinese), no microelectronics, no innovative drugs. To be fair, they have IKEA and LEGO, but this is not what makes humanity progress.

I feel there is a lot of options on the left spectrum that is less radical but still beneficial for broad population. Think France or Germany as an example.

The header is misleading. Read the article and the details of that research. To make it work they propose to add 3.75% sales tax on everything except necessities, wealth tax for >$1mil net worth, tax capital gains as ordinary income, and keep existing Medicare paycheck tax same and employers contributions but slightly smaller.

It might be fairer system, and it will be more humane system for lower middle income folks who cannot afford health insurance and don't qualify for Medicaid.

But it's a lot of new taxes. They say that for top 20% earners the net healthcare cost will be higher. And all the lobbying from insurance business... i just don't see this could pass.

Why don't you read the article? The proposed system still has employer payments, but promises reduction of these payments which should give a good boost for businesses.

Not sure if this applicable in Canada, but in US you can take a loan backed by home equity. It's called HELOC and is independent from your mortgage - it will not change interest rates. The rates on HELOC are higher than current mortgage rates, but lower than credit card rates. The available amount depends on how much equity you have in your house.

Oh, sorry, I've assumed that you are in US since you posted an article about FTC.

I don't know if there is a similar service in Europe. I think you could get a virtual card linked to a crypto wallet, but this obviously comes with downsides

There is Privacy.com that gives you virtual cards to use for purchases. Money go from your bank account to them. Destination is visible on payment description still, but it may fool bank's algorithm. Or you can get paid plan from Privacy.com and mask destination completely.

Government: Only criminals use cash and crypto! Privacy advocates: Actually, this is not true... Government: makes cash and crypto illegal what do you say now, punks?

For a less than you pay for a cup of coffee, you can evaporate 10 or even 50 people!

Because we all know that a sergeant and soldiers can't even hit a starship from 10 meters. Yes, Stormtroopers, I'm talking about you. What, this is what community again?

Raising the cost will reduce demand, and prompt producers to either reduce supply to avoid overproduction or find a way to keep costs down.

In first case, there will be less cow farts, and less meat and milk on the tables of poor people. There will be public health consequences, but emissions will be reduced.

In the second case, the government will get more taxes, emissions will be the same, and there will be possible public health issues due to lower meat/milk quality resulted from cost cuts.

In both cases, big manufacturers will likely keep their profits, small farmers will be impacted more and may go out of business, and public health will be at risk.

Where am I wrong? I have no economic expertise and no data, and the government should have both, at least in theory.

Maybe it was to remove people from the photo. The place looks weirdly empty for a sunny day at the seashore

It's an ad for a sex toys store with zero evidence

I guess there is a chance to see some of code, but I doubt about it being properly open sourced.

While we’re publishing the binary images of every production PCC build, to further aid research we will periodically also publish a subset of the security-critical PCC source code.

Source: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

Yeah, doesn't seem that the proposed bill offers meaningful improvements. The article says

Under current New Hampshire law, voters are asked to provide proof of identity and age (usually a driver’s license), proof that they live where they want to vote, and proof of citizenship (either a birth certificate or a passport) in order to be able to register and vote.

It's only if a person doesn't have a proof of citizenship, they can sign a sworn affidavit to register or vote, which will be checked by attorney general office after elections.

This looks to me as a solid system already. One cannot vote by impersonating someone else, one cannot vote if you are not living in the district, one can only lie about citizenship with a significant risk of that lie to be exposed after elections with all legal consequences.

Unless you belive that damn liberals moving buses of illegals with forged IDs to steal the elections, there is nothing much to be worried about.

Apple's PR is better. With Microsoft all news titles were like "OMG Windows will take screenshots of all you do and send it to AI", and with Apple it's more like "Apple is carefully adding AI to their products, respecting user privacy as they always have been".

Of course, when one looks into technical details they would find that MS Recall is strictly local and runs only on special hardware that people don't even have yet.

Apple Intelligence does send your data to cloud and scans everything you have in Apple ecosystem, not just screenshots. Of course they say it's done in very privacy respecting ways, and provide a lot of technical information to back this claim. But at the end it's closed source and is subject to change at any time.

Having said that, Apple users are used to and value that Apple magically takes care of everything, so they are happy to pay premium for Apple's products whatever the company does.

Quite happy on lemm.ee

The guy looks suspiciously like Sean Austin (Sam from Lord of the Rings)

Natural teeth roots promote bone regeneration around them, while implants don't. Therefore bone loss with age is worse around implants

Yup. Files and Memories mostly, but also planning to add some sort of a task management app

No, I didn't say that. It depends on your risk model. If you are an average Joe don't worry that services are charging your credit card. If you are hiding from government then better use less online services, and if you must then find ones that accept crypto

Nextcloud, I think

TLDR: "privacy" services can't be bothered and you shouldn't too if you are not doing illegal stuff.

These "privacy-oriented" services are businesses that need to earn money, not scare away potential clients and avoid legal issues. Accepting cash or crypto is a risk for legal and accounting reasons. They just don't think it's worth it.

Now, to link a particular activity on a particular service with you via your payment is not a trivial task. Government can do it, but it really matters if you think you are or will be targeted by it. Data miners can correlate bank payment with an account at a service provider only if both bank and service provider sell or leak data, which is less likely if you are using a privacy a oriented service.

Yay, I can get some targeted ads about data center hardware!

People's Breeding Dungeon