spinnetrouble

It’s good to take the principle of “question everything” seriously and to have the tools to do it right

There’s an incredibly important piece of this that doesn’t get enough attention: there is nobody minding the store.

Americans haven’t had any meaningful consumer protection legislation over the internet yet. It’s 2026 and we’re still waiting for things like net neutrality and essential privacy protections. Here’s a hint: they’re not going to materialize. It’s up to American legislators to set out rules on what behaviors are and aren’t allowed by companies trying to sell everything from internet service to underpants and water bottles, and they’re not doing it.

Why not? Because there’s more money to be made from the corporations willing to (legally, through lobbying) buy legislator inaction, and the risk of not getting re-elected grows without those “campaign contributions.” Legislators also have to consider whether the corporations they’ve turned down will decide that they’ll get results they like more by throwing money at whomever runs against them in the next election. Once they lose their seat, they also lose the gravy train of lobbyist money.

Whenever anybody asks in the future how America let themselves decline, how they allowed wealth inequality to spiral out of control, or how they gave up their gross dreams of worldwide hegemony, we can all point very clearly to the legislators who did nothing to protect the people they were elected to serve because of their own greed and self-interest. You’re welcome, world! Our problems are now also yours to live with because we’ve exported our incredibly invasive tech to all parts of the globe.

Invest at home. PLEASE invest at home.

Not Muslim here, but I struggled with rationalizing taking an easier way to get what I wanted. Intention matters: are you borrowing it until you can afford to buy it, and do you follow through? Or are you “borrowing” it until you get bored with it and don’t feel it’s worth the honor anymore? It basically came down to me having to look at how honest I was willing to be with myself in order to get what I wanted.

Halal and haram encourage Muslims to hold themselves accountable to a standard of behavior, right? They’re there as signals for the right thing to do, but you’re the only one who can hold yourself accountable over the things you do that nobody else knows about. What do your own values tell you, versus the values of the people around you? How have those values been influenced by your religious beliefs? How important are your religious beliefs to you? How much deviation from religious laws are you willing to accept from yourself? How about secular or regional laws? Being honest with your answers will help you see your best way through, even if they’re not what others would want you to choose.

This is a matter of personal preference, not something where a consensus opinion helps. Where you’re at, it sounds like 1080p x265 isn’t worth it. Would it become worthwhile to you if you were using it on a different device? With a different set of conditions (like lower battery drain)? If a small change can make it acceptable to you, it’s a hangup, not a standard.

GrapheneOS has a duress password: a different PIN you can type in at any unlock prompt that tells your phone to wipe your SIM and contents

Not off the shelf smartwatches; wrist-worn tracking devices issued by ICE.

“The device was not an ordinary smart watch made by Apple or Samsung, but a special type that US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) had mandated the woman wear at all times, allowing the agency to track her. The device was beeping when she entered the hospital, indicating she needed to charge it, and she worried that if the battery died, ICE agents would think she was trying to disappear, the hospital workers recalled. She told them that, just days earlier, she had been put on a deportation flight to Mexico, but the pilot refused to let her fly because she was so close to giving birth.”

What a fucking dystopia. The only thing that gives me hope for America’s future is knowing that this is part of our established pattern: we’ll never do a right thing without trying all the wrong things first, and we’ll only get there kicking and screaming the whole way. This is part of that wrong-things-first approach, and we’ve got a good deal of kicking and screaming already… I really hope we get to the right-things-last part soon.

But you already don’t have somewhere you like

If you get banned for being under 18, you’ll end up starting from where you are right now. Trying other services, including +18 ones, can give you an idea of what features and things are important to you in a host. Not trying them only leaves you in the same spot without any benefit.

It can be hard to feel guilty about doing something you “aren’t supposed to,” but the feeling is not the same as actually doing something wrong. The feeling is there to help you slow down and think more deeply about the next steps you ought to take.

If I’m coming across as pushy, I apologize. I’m just excited about more people becoming privacy advocates (especially people who have grown up with invasive tech) and maybe a little mad about an age gate keeping you from doing something important to you.

I think I understand your hesitation better now. It feels like you’re calling attention to the fact that your stuff is by someone under 18, is that right? I get why that can feel like an unwise thing to do, but really, it’s super unlikely that anything bad will happen. I think the worst they could do is terminate your account for violating the terms of service, causing you to lose anything you posted. (Keep a backup of anything worth saving and you’re pretty well protected against that.) And it would take someone reporting your account to even get to that point in the first place. All’s I know is that if I were in your shoes, I’d just go ahead and make the account on the instance I wanted. Nobody’s checking IDs at the door, and people of every age and skill level post their anime-inspired art.

Is there something keeping you from making an account on a +18 instance? Not saying this to be obnoxious, it’s just been a while since an age gate has been a hurdle

Incredible, right?! Telling them you’re moving internationally speeds up account cancelation, but they’ll still keep you on the phone for like ten minutes!

When you cancel your Comcast, telling them you’re moving internationally ends things much faster than saying you’re switching providers.

Now we know where reddit took their profit strategy from

Shit, some of them charge the authors to publish.

Summarized a user’s tax return 😬

I feel like IT could yell at OP for a little bit, but would ultimately have to stare the fact that they allowed non-privileged users to just change the operating system square in the face. Like holy hell, 500 employees and anybody can just be like, “Hey, maybe I’ll make a major OS change today because why not?” What else are they letting happen?!