It’s lost the right to be a country

That seems rather extreme. It’s never really been a thing to wipe out other warmongering, genocidal countries. Why them?

don’t be surprised when you don’t get served beer cause you ain’t Japanese

I lived in Japan for a few years. In the entire time I lived there, there was two instances I could say I experienced discrimination based on being a foreigner

Instance 1: I had a few friends visiting that don’t speak Japanese, and we went to Sapporo. We were looking for a place to eat on the outskirts of the city, walked in a small ramen shop and were immediately told, in English, that the shop was closed (we had been speaking English among ourselves). In Japanese, I passive aggressively said, “Oh, I saw the sign saying the shop was open… sorry, I’ll leave”. It was like 6:30PM. They had their “open” sign on the door. The shop was almost certainly open

Instance 2: A bar in Shinjuku had a sign saying “No foreigners”. I popped my head in and politely asked the master, in Japanese, what was up with the sign. He sit up when I spoke in Japanese and said because he doesn’t speak English he didn’t want to deal with the hassle of customers that can’t speak Japanese

Which is to say, as a white foreigner from a high income country, the discrimination I’ve faced is public businesses that don’t want to deal with customers that don’t know the language and etiquette. Many of the other foreigners I’ve talked to had similar experiences, although outright racism or discrimination is not unheard of

Japan’s population crisis is caused by its young people being too overworked and overcharged to want to have children

While this may be a contributing factor, there is obviously more to it. Japanese workers actually work less than the OECD average hours per year. Take a look at a handful of countries such as: Mexico, South Korea, United States, Finland, Germany, and Japan (generally representative of their respective regions and income levels)

Then compare those country’s hours worked to their fertility rate

Mexico works the most hours of any of those countries by far, only behind Colombia in terms of hours worked, yet has the highest fertility rate of any countries I listed

South Korea works a lot of hours, second highest of those countries, just above the US. They have by far the lowest birth rate. A bit over half that of Italy and Japan, the 2nd and 3rd lowest birthrate countries, yet both Italy and Japan work far less hours than South Korea

Germany and Finland, famed for their quality of life and lower working hours, both have relatively low fertility rates. Far less than the US and Mexico, countries with far more hours worked, and far fewer legal protections to workers - especially pregnant women

In short, when comparing different countries, I don’t see a substantial correlation between hours worked and fertility rate

While true, that’s an inherently unsustainable model. Pensions need to be self-sustaining, rather than relying on the next generation to pay for them. It’s ridiculous that one generation basically got a free generation and now every generation afterwards is paying the previous generation’s retirement

Disclaimer: The app is closed source, so all we can go off is the developer’s word, although the fact the government removed it is a strong indicator they don’t have access to data from the app

The developer stated they do not even retain any identifying data, so the only data the government could get is public anyway. Through Apple they’d be able to see who downloaded it, and likely when it was used. Your defense would be easy enough though: “I just wanted to make sure the libs weren’t harassing our fascist patriotic ICE agents near me”

Both iPhones and Android phones can be configured to your desired security level. Both are used by various government agencies around the world for their most important secrets. Neither are secure out of the box. You have to harden them to your desired level of security

Arguing whether Android or iOS is more secure is a bit like arguing whether an SUV or pickup is safer. It doesn’t matter which you pick when basic security steps are magnitudes more important: Wearing a safety belt, having a functioning air bag, driving a safe speed, not driving drunk, etc.

No sideloading and no unlocked bootloader means you can’t sideload malware or install malware-preloaded ROMs

It’s a simple configuration change to disable it and can be done with any corporate MDM system, making this a moot point. Not to mention too many people don’t understand security, so Android is taking away sideloading anyway, FoR sEcUriTY

No root also means you can’t just install malware that uses root access

The vast majority of Android phones do not come with root access. For both, you generally have to elevate access yourself

Long OS support means fewer people run around with iPhones that are 5 OS versions behind

If you’re running an out-of-date OS, clearly security is not a priority

There’s no tiny boutique iPhone manufacturers who sell phones that come pre-loaded with malware

Supply chain attacks absolutely can happen to iPhones as well. There are plenty of re-sellers

You missed the actual security benefit over iOS that Android cannot compete with: Apple controls the entire software chain from security patch to OTA update. This allows them to patch and release a fix for critical vulnerabilities far faster than any Android device possibly could. Apple does not need to get the approval of an OEM (such as Samsung), and, due to special deals, they do not need to get the approval of a carrier (like Verizon). Android devices typically need to get approvals from both before releasing updates (although Google flagship phones can bypass one, and can fast track the other)

The downside there is there are no checks on Apple. They could release a horribly vulnerable patch with no additional checks in-between

In terms of security alone, iPhones easily beat most Android phones

That’s not how security works in the modern tech landscape. No major OS is going to meet a high security standard out of the box. All of them have to be configured to the desired security level, then be added to ongoing security efforts. Every major OS can be secured to the highest security standards

The primary difference is how much effort each takes, but even then there isn’t much of a difference. You’ll find tooling and in-house expertise makes a much larger difference than the OS

The myth that some OS are inherently secure really needs to die off

Usually when people complain about DNS, they’re talking about stability issues. In this case I think he’s pointing out how centralized it is, and how a bad actor could cause significant issues

At a local level, the most common issue I know of is ISPs blocking sites at the DNS level by feeding in fake information that redirects you to one of the ISP’s blocked/parked domains. Usually implemented to prevent customers going to piracy sites. It’s not much of an issue to subvert currently, as you can simply use any public DNS provider

That being said, much of that has been consolidated into a dozen or so tech companies. In the current political climate, I could see a coordinated effort happening between those tech companies to block sites deemed non gratis. Obviously there’s still ways to subvert it, but the vast majority of user’s won’t be able to

Republicans, specifically Donald Trump, have more government power than any administration in modern history. Control of the white house, senate, house, and supreme court, in addition to simply acting outside the law with impunity

Yet they’ll still blame Democrats for the shutdown

Yes, but Oracle’s stock skyrocketed based on the unprofitable OpenAI promising to buy >100B worth of AI data center space from Oracle. Nvidia stock also surged on the news, since Oracle builds those data centers with Nvidia chips

Obviously OpenAI doesn’t have the money to pay Oracle themselves, so Nvidia has helpfully given them the money

So now we have an incredibly large cyclic corporate dependency of money from Nvidia -> OpenAI -> Oracle, then back to Nvidia. Definitely not a financial disaster waiting to happen

Can you afford not to get paid for 2 weeks? If so you’re in the minority. Most people can’t.

The general strike is being planned for almost 3 years out. We would have to save less than 2% of our paycheck to more than cover 2 weeks without being paid. We need to normalize preparing for a general strike, and be willing to help each other if needed when the time comes

As always, Republicans lead the pack, with more Republicans supporting political violence than Democrats. The scary part is how much the Democrat statistics have gone up, and the fact they’re getting close to the levels of support seen in Republicans

America is fucked up. I don’t have a solution, just pointing out the sad state of affairs

Hot take: Congress should be paid during a shutdown

The wealthy members of congress don’t care about their salary. They already have large amounts of money made even bigger by insider trading, bribery, and the promise of a lucrative “consulting” role when they leave congress

The honest, working class members of congress rely on their salary. Taking away their salary would give a powerful tool for the wealthy congress members to force the working class members to vote with the wealthy members. It would also incentivize more corruption. Insider trading looks a whole lot more tempting when your income suddenly disappeared and you have $3,000 in rent due tomorrow