1cvmask

She got it back after the NY Times reached out to FB/Meta:

On Dec. 2, a month after Ms. Baumann first appealed to Instagram to restore her account, The New York Times contacted Meta to ask why it had been shut down. An Instagram spokesman said that the account had been “incorrectly removed for impersonation” and would be restored. “We’re sorry this error occurred,” he wrote.

Two days later, the account was back online.

Excerpt:

Five days after Facebook changed its name to Meta, an Australian artist found herself blocked, with seemingly no recourse, from an account documenting nearly a decade of her life and work.

In October, Thea-Mai Baumann, an Australian artist and technologist, found herself sitting on prime internet real estate. In 2012, she had started an Instagram account with the handle @metaverse, a name she used in her creative work. On the account, she documented her life in Brisbane, where she studied fine art, and her travels to Shanghai, where she built an augmented reality company called Metaverse Makeovers. She had fewer than 1,000 followers when Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, announced on Oct. 28 that it was changing its name. Henceforth, Facebook would be known as Meta, a reflection of its focus on the metaverse, a virtual world it sees as the future of the internet.

In the days before, as word leaked out, Ms. Baumann began receiving messages from strangers offering to buy her Instagram handle. “You are now a millionaire,” one person wrote on her account. Another warned: “fb isn’t gonna buy it, they’re gonna take it.”

On Nov. 2, exactly that happened.

They have already being known to log emails when enforced by the Swiss authorities:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/06/protonmail-logged-ip-addre...

https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/

——

In case you trust Swiss companies blindly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-12-06/swi...

It is eDNA or environmental DNA. Basically a lot of distinct markers. eDNA is easier to identify in aquatic systems than airborne ones.

This original scientific paper is being presented at this conference:

https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/events/ecology-acro...

American exceptionalism (different in meaning to exceptional) as a concept and usage predates over a century. It was in fact a American communist construct:

The earliest documented use of the specific term "American exceptionalism" is by American communists in intra-communist disputes in the late 1920s.

…..

However, the specific term "American exceptionalism" seems to have originated with American communists in the late 1920s. The earliest documented usage cited by the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Daily Worker, 29 January 1929: "This American 'exceptionalism' applies to the whole tactical line of the C.I. as applied to America."[8] In turn, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (who was likely aware of this earlier use) condemned the "heresy of American exceptionalism" in a tense discussion with Jay Lovestone of the Communist Party USA, after Lovestone echoed the arguments of other American communists that the U.S. is independent of the Marxist laws of history "thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions."[8][10] The term later moved into general use by intellectuals.[10][11] "American exceptionalism" was rarely used after the 1930s until U.S. newspapers popularized it in the 1980s to describe America's cultural and political uniqueness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

That cause we not only own .com we even own ICANN at it’s true root. We have nuclear powered carrier groups with real projection of power. Europe has nothing in real terms to compare. A simple example is two formerly grand colonial European powers both invaded and attacked Libya. They literally ran out of mumitions and ordnance. Obama had to come and save the day to destroy Libya. Another example is we left Afghanistan and Britain protested. They still could not stay there alone. And NATO only exists to serve us and help us sell more arms to client states. Europe is not an empire or close to it by any means. The 20th century was Pax Americana. The 21st started as us being sole game in town.now after multiple lost treasure after multiple wars we are slightly injured. But we are still much more powerful.

As for freedom of speech we don’t really have it when it is against the national security state and imperial ambitions. We jailed Eugene Debs the politician for advocating against entering the first world war. We imprisoned the director of Spirit of ‘76 for making a movie on Yankee Doodle which was supposedly anti-British. We now have multiple tech censorship platforms instructed by politicians and the media to censor and deplatform even more.

We have the dollar as the global reserve currency and we can export our inflation. If a country threatens the dollar as a reserve currency by trying to sell their petrol in different currencies we bomb them to hell.

We have a great medical care system for the rich. The lower and middle class need not apply.

We have more flags on display than anywhere I have traveled to in Europe (maybe I missed their national holidays). Just come to Fleet Week in San Francisco to see the flags and uniforms on full display.

Posted this older piece because it is one of the better written articles on the dangers of shares in private companies that don’t pan out the way we would hope for and the risks involved.

Reminds me of the great article by Matt Levine on how Good employees suffered from the not-so-good acquisition by BlackBerry:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-12-23/good-t...

Every other year there is another prediction on the death of YC. It was super small and not elite in the beginning. Now that it is famous more companies apply by definition and they by nature of the class being small turn away very good ones as well. I see no reason why they can’t expand to 1000 companies per year now that we are on Zoom and global in more senses than one.

There is also the similar prediction of the dollar ending as a reserve currency every year. YC has even hedged themselves against that by going global now and investing in crypto companies.

Every YC friend speaks very highly of it. I can’t say the same of most other investors/angels/VCs etc….

My favorite interaction of Orwell with another writer is that with Aldous Huxley. Aldous Huxley wrote this in a letter to Orwell in 1949:

Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large-scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.

Regarding Truman:

In September 23, 1946, Robeson and a delegation representing the ACAL met with President Harry Truman to push for an anti-lynching agenda. Robeson demanded that Truman issue a public statement expressing his views on lynching and recommending a set of legislative and educational measures aimed at eradicating mob violence. Truman turned down these requests, claiming that timing and political circumstances made these measures difficult to implement at the moment. Robeson was disappointed by this and found it troubling that the US government was at the time willing to actively engage in the Nuremberg Trials while it turned its head from racial injustices at home.[5] Delegations also met with US Attorney General Tom Clark as well as the Democratic and Republican national committees. The delegation's program included the creation of a federal anti-lynching bill, arrest and punishment for all lynchers, and preventing Ku Klux Klan members from joining Congress.[6]

Many prominent intellectuals were members, including Albert Einstein.[7] Other notable supporters of the organization were Max Yergan, Joseph Curran, Canada Lee, Jack Kroll, Lena Horne, and Oscar Hammerstein II.[8] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been long concerned about socialist and communist movements for their instigation of social and labor unrest. Having noted communist support for African-American civil rights before World War II, the FBI characterized the "Crusade" as a "communist front." Robeson and the ACAP were thus both put under investigation by the FBI.[9] The FBI classified members such as Einstein as communist sympathizers; and developed intelligence files on them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Crusade_Against_Lynch...

Regarding Franklin Delano Roosevelt (note I wrote whose husband):

https://www.aier.org/article/how-fdr-killed-federal-anti-lyn...

https://www.history.com/news/fdr-eleanor-roosevelt-anti-lync...

And the Ken Burns documentary on the Roosevelts if you have 6 hours to spare

https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-roosevelts/

That was so funny and clever.

Humans display similar outcomes in the Ganges river. But it is dangerous for outside tourists for sure and it seems the locals are immune or inoculated to all the e. coli bacili in the river. The humans there believe the river to be purifying the soul and spirit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganges

https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/fatal-bacteria-like-e-...

A boycott would mean the players would not go like the real boycotts of 1980 Moscow or 1984 Los Angeles. This fake boycott of diplomats is not even performative art.

I expect to see a lot more of this in the next couple of decades as the world adapts to American (and to a lesser extent Western) tactics. The term whataboutism was invented to deflect international charges on killing and lynching of Blacks or genocide of Native Americans when say the Soviet Union was attacked for human rights violations at the UN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

Anne Rice was behind Interview with the Vampire:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampire_Chronicles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview_with_the_Vampire

Maybe it doesn’t make financial logic for the brand and it’s reputation in the long run. (Punnery not intended)

In many parts of the world government schools are often free or close to free. But the private universities are not and most governments do not offer student loans for private schooling as there is the freeish government alternative (if you pass the university entrance exam). That’s why many of them are both harder and more prestigious than the private sector ones. Some countries have mandatory service for a couple of years for free medical schooling though.

How about having an explicit exam only transparent admissions policy with overt extra points for say preferred disadvantaged groups? India has a similar system for entrance to universities with quotas for the lower castes. Or is that much more radical than Abolish Yale because rich white elites can’t get their children in through fencing and rowing teams?

It’s at 76% now. In 53 minutes since the post it has gone down 4%. So say roughly 5% per hour as a back of the envelop calculation. That’s roughly 20 hours on a full charged cycle.

It would be good to know if there is a fast charge capability of the battery and how long would that be. An hour of full sun a day? Or two hours of partial sun?

Raising money is never standard or plain vanilla. The devil is in the details and governance clauses and ratchet clauses. The majority-owning founders (70 percent) of Cisco were kicked out by minority shareholder VC Sequoia (30%).

For payments you can look at solutions like Stripe and for auth solutions like acmelogin and keycloak. For hosting there are even credits available for startups from IBM, Azure, AWS and Google Cloud. AWS and Google are most popular with startups. Azure most popular with old companies.

My favorite quote on inflation is:

“There are four types of economies: Developed, developing, Japan & Argentina.”

—-

Japan in reference to deflation and Argentina to inflation.

Let’s see if they can prevent US incursions into their terriorial waters as the US did to the Soviet Union in the early 1970s in the Sea of Okhotsk:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells

It’s interesting to see how sports is orphaned in academia in the rest of the world. You either leave school to be a real sports athlete or stay at university and do sports on a more ad hoc intramural level. The sports staff and coaches, if any, make a paltry salary compared to other staff in the university.

Apple has a vested interest in giving less business to Samsung which it competes with on mobile phones and had also sued separately in the past for alleged copying the iPhone.

Clearly they get their inspiration from our political leaders and their super responsible parties:

https://nypost.com/2021/08/08/dj-posts-pics-of-obamas-birthd...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/14/us/elections/french-laund...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/S-...

The Chinese company Geely owns Volvo. This might be one of the first reports I have seen of a Chinese company being hacked to have their IP being stolen.

Agree completely. It is always NOT given to the deserving party based on it's prima facie claims. Of course the agenda is completely different to the stated one and hence their choice of the undeserving and oftentimes murderous vile people.