I know. And many of the comments are coming from the US, so I’m trying to help American readers see what US law would dictate in a similar situation, because they might have instincts that are inconsistent with US law.

In the US, the 4th Amendment says that’s unconstitutional. Fortunately. Too many dirty pigs out there.

In the US, the cops need RAS to handcuff you. The standard was never and is not “until they know what’s going on”. And RAS depends on the current cop knowledge. Even if they had legal grounds to break into your place, what they see in the next ten seconds is still relevant. For example, if someone said you attacked them with a knife, when the cops see no victim, knife, or blood, their legal authority ceases.

Of course it’s all highly dependent on specific details.

(On traffic stops, often they already have RAS. That’s why they pulled you over. So don’t be fooled by other comments about that topic.)

In the US, property records are public records. Easy to find someone’s address online if you know their full name and the county they own property in.

Go try it!

The legal standard in the U.S. is if there’s exigent circumstances. Detailed 911 calls are typically sufficient to meet that standard. Not always.

Right now, we cannot tell if the officers did anything unlawful. Need the call recording or call logs, plus the body cameras.

(I think the exigent circumstances standard is BS, easily abused, but that is the current law of the land.)

My company will let me purchase software, but it won’t let me donate to FOSS. Budgeting says it’s “unnecessary”. So screwed up. (A tiny amount money on my end, but still, it would be nice to help out a little.)

It’s curious that you claim privacy and anonymity are clearly differentiable but didn’t bother to define either of them. Is your claim accurate? We have no idea, because we don’t know what you’re talking about.

George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, and Corey Doctorow already covered the basics, and two of those authors did so decades ago. Why are you asking this question now? What is it that you want to hear that they didn’t already say? Or are you asking us whether we’ve read those authors?

You’re the one who brought in a personal political view, and basic history realize your claim, which is why you didn’t actually cite any.

I mean, what’s a good example of cancer culture? If some white guy says something horribly racist, and then he loses an election, he complains about cancel culture. But that’s a good thing, because we don’t want racist bastards in office. Of course he doesn’t see it that way. So he looks for some new term to describe the phenomenon, some way to make himself a victim.

The term itself was created by right wing people who decided to deploy it against those they didn’t favor, as an excuse to justify their own bigotry, but the idea of public shaming and goes back centuries if not millennia. Quite naturally, the establishment has a strong interest in public shaming if it will keep them around longer.

If you really are so hopeless with computers that you can’t figure out a modern popular Linux distribution, then you should not build your own computer, because that’s much more complicated.

Who is “we”, my friend? This all depends on your research and expectations. IMO Linux works great, but you should consider it before you buy a machine. Make sure your graphics card and other hardware is going to work. When in doubt, buy from a reliable shop that preinstalls Linux for you.

I find that the default settings and programs of Debian (or whatever major distro) do 95% of what I expect and want, and maybe 5% involve some customization. In other words, it’s much simpler than getting Windows or Apple and then purchasing or downloading all the extra programs. But this depends on what you wanna do.

The article itself proves you wrong on this one, my friend. The situation is less simple and more subtle than you’re claiming.

Of course ego is a factor. That’s true for every organization in the world. But there are many other highly relevant factors in play here.

“on its own” is an empty qualifier. Nothing is on its own.

You can do DNS in multiple ways. The question is what you try to do, or what your software tries to do.

Joke’s on you. Many of us stopped buying TVs years ago.

Of course he keeps his credit card number and such private. So he cares about privacy.

What you are talking about is related to privacy, but about others’ actions. How can companies and governments abuse us by spying on us? That is where we see interesting things. If I wanna fix my car with a $50 part but it’s off brand so I gotta pay $500 instead, that’s not cool. If McDonald’s charges me more for a Big Mac right after pay day, that’s messed up. If the grocery store charges more for a box of eggs because their ID system knows the customer is poor, that’s messed up. And this is the present and future. These examples are all about privacy, control, and equality.

You know corruption is there somehow. Revolving doors, friends of friends, that kinda stuff is unavoidable. We can try to limit the effects, but it will never totally go away.

Actually no. People read a book and then behave the irrational ways, all of which is okay, but the problem is that their actions make our lives worse. We have a problem with their actions. We care about their actions. We don’t care about the book they read.

It sounds like you have isolated yourself. That is a choice you made, that you can change in the future.

Also, words matter. Meaning matters. You might die alone many decades from now, but almost certainly you won’t be executed. When you’re feeling down and you intentionally choose words that are false, you’re feeling your own state of mind.

I used to enjoy watching, but after you take a few years off, it’s not something you’d casually pick back up.

You didn’t tell us what you think the usual 9 to 5 pays. Are you asking whether a tech job pays more than minimum wage? Many of them do. Also, when you’re interviewing, and even when you’re writing a cover letter, try to avoid the term power user, and instead provide details of things that you’ve actually done. Anyone can call themselves a power user, but what does that even mean? If you say you’re a power user, if you’re lucky the interviewer will ask you for details, and if you’re unlucky they won’t, because they’ll assume you’re just grandstanding. So you’re better off providing a little extra information up front, and not gambling on them asking for it.