grazhero99

I think it should be fairly obvious to most here, but it bears repeating that any service which requires a phone number for 2FA is to be avoided like the plague.

Do you guys think there's any realistic hope today (not accounting for what kind of horrible stuff might be possible in the future) of being able to keep your 'genuine' online activities separated from your public facing, sanitized ones? Such that no company's HR department would be able to tie your real life identity to your real online activities? I imagine it could be possible if you're serious and rigorous about it.

Or am I being naïve for even entertaining such a thought?

I don't think this is about competition. It's about a belligerent foreign government posing a threat to national security.

Now you could argue that's a classic Dubya style ad hoc excuse designed to mask the government's true intentions with this, but I really don't think so. China's behavior is a legitimate threat for which shrugging and saying "let the free market handle it" seems an incredibly dangerous stance to take in my opinion.

Ok. That's an argument for why this is unconstitutional, but not for why congress would be unable to declare it so.

Why would congress struggle to pass it through a constitutional review?

Plenty of Trump's EOs have been ruled unconstitutional. He may feel that his authority extends beyond checks and balances, but it doesn't. His attempts to abuse his power have been duly mitigated and stopped about as well (or badly depending on how you look at it) as the last few presidents, as I see it.

I'm more worried about the effect this will have on the overall public perception of the TikTok issue than anything else.

During a time of such intense civil unrest, when people are letting strong emotions and groupthink guide them in lieu of reason, I have a feeling this that many will be quick to jump on a bandwagon that's unduly sympathetic to TikTok.

I think I have a pretty good idea of how the media (both social and mainstream) is going to portray this. They'll suddenly forget about the long list of legitimate reasons why TikTok is majorly problematic, and present it as being something where poor little TikTok is being unfairly targeted by big evil xenophobic Trump.

You could make a legitimate argument for why it's unconstitutional or sets a bad precedent for Trump to do this, but that unfortunately doesn't change the one-dimensional way most people are gonna see this.

> advanced persistent threat to US democracy

I don't see what this has to do with our electoral system.

That seems like a rather narrow and emotionally charged stance to take on this issue in my opinion.

Well, I can think of at least a couple examples where Microsoft or a subsidiary tries to do stuff like that. The big difference I think is that they almost always fail at it, due to how out of touch the higher ups are with how people actually think. Everyone pretty much knows that Microsoft is not, nor will they ever be, your friend.

I think this would probably one of the better outcomes for this situation, outside of somehow convincing every teenager in the world to stop using garbage spyware apps (good luck with that).

Microsoft and the US government are at least more of a "devil you know" than China I'd say. Obviously far from ideal, but cutting off the CCP's direct access to the personal data and impressionable minds of millions of young people seems a pressing matter to me.

I mean ultimately my hope is that this dumb fad app's relevance just passes in 1 or 2 years. But considering how we've seen similar such abusive, shallow apps have long term success, that may be overly wishful thinking on my part.

I bet Apple's really banging their heads against a wall right about now.

Antitrust nowadays is just a buzzword politicians throw around every couple years in reference to household names like FAANG in order to get reelected. Unless your average grandma knows the name Nvidia, don't count on those in power to even pretend to do something about this.

I'm not defending the mob. I'm just trying to make the best I can of this shitty situation we all have to deal with.

I think people generally give a lot of undue clout to what Elon says, just because they pattern match "Elon Musk" with "smart guy". Granted, I think the hate bandwagon against him is just as silly.

I just think he's a fallible human like the rest of us, as unrelatable as he may be for various reasons. And he clearly has trouble keeping it together sometimes if his twitter is any indication. Him being terrified of something is all the more reason to be skeptical, because fear indicates a heightened emotional state, which is something he has a problem acting rational under.

That said, I firmly believe AI is gonna be a big fucking problem. Not necessarily because they'll gain sentience and enslave us, but because of how humans will use them. I trust that I don't need to go into detail about the utterly terrifying, civilization destroying disaster associated with anybody being able to create entirely fabricated, fake video, indistinguishable from reality, on a whim.

I could be wrong, but lately I've been taking the approach that as long as I state my beliefs with as much reasonability and clarity as I can possibly muster, and am willing to admit when I'm wrong, I'll ultimately be vindicated if a groupthinking hate mod were to target me.

The intense fervor that fuels those mobs can't last forever. I've seen this play out many times on the internet, and it seems a common thread is that the targeted person in these situations is often unable to keep it together while under the intense stress, and ends up making the situation way worse for themselves.

Learning how to stay level headed and when not to engage will take you a long way.

I agree. It seems to me that the best course of action at this point is to continue aggressive safety measures. I'm not a virology expert by any means, but it kinda makes intuitive sense that natural herd immunity will build over time. I mean I've been being as careful as I reasonably can, but it's doubtful at this point that I haven't been exposed to the virus many times by now, at least in some capacity. I think some people underestimate the multifaceted nature of your odds of survival if you catch this thing. It's not just a roll of the dice; things like your viral load and your overall health matter immensely. So doing our best to make sure people aren't doing things like spending long periods of time in close proximity to one another with recycled air flow seems like what we should continue doing.

I find it interesting how this situation is beginning to feel normal to me. I'm only 20, so I've never really consciously lived through a world event of anything even approaching this magnitude before. I'm finding that my whole outlook on life is being majorly altered by all this. As utterly horrible and tragic as everything is right now, I'm hopeful this will ultimately turn out to result in some positive lifestyle changes for me at a personal level, as long as I don't die.

>Maybe so that the backends could be independent?

Funny, I misread 'backends' as 'backdoors'.

I disagree that Windows is the only platform for gamers. Obviously wine isn’t perfect yet, and getting banned from online games can certainly be a problem, but it’s gotten to the point I can say that Linux is viable alternative. The compromises you have to make are incredibly reasonable compared to what they used to be.