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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: March 6th, 2021

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  • Also worth noting that #Ubuntu and #Mint both moved substantial amounts of documentation into Cloudflare (the antithisis of the values swiso claims to support). I have been moving people off those platforms.

    BTW, prism-break is a disasterous project too. You know they don’t have a clue when they moved their repo from Github.com to Gitlab.com, an access-restricted Cloudflare site. There are tens if not hundreds of decent forges to choose from and PRISM Break moved from the 2nd worst to the one that most defeats the purpose of their constitution.

    It might be useful to find dirt on various tech at prism-break, but none of these sites can be trusted for endorsements.

    The prism-break website is timing out for me right now. I would not be surprised if they were dropping Tor packets since they have a history of hypocrisy.






  • Mastodon is not niche. Mastodon is a diverse community of nerds and low tech people, artistic brains and analytical brains, white collar workers and blue collar workers. A substantial portion of Mastodon is from Reddit refugees. Reddit is no more niche than Facebook.

    The greater Mastodon venue who that poll reached lacks right wing conservatives, who tend to stay in their bubble of extremist networks. That does not make Mastodon “niche”. Running the same survey on a right wing Mastodon node might be interesting, but we can see from the linked poll that political affiliation is generally orthoganol on this issue.


  • Why do you think 210 is statistically insignificant? Is there a reason why the central limit theorem does not apply in this case?

    If you’re more fixated on the samples coming from Mastodon, can you explain why you might expect cashless proponents to be even fewer in populations outside of Mastodon? IMO, a Mastodon-using population is more likely to embrace individual rights and condemn imbalances of power that favor giant corporations like banks. I believe if the same survey is carried out outside of Mastodon, the 26% will be even bigger, if different.




  • Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Spain. Banks in those places will freeze your account easily, like a doc on file expiring.

    US banks are more trustworthy with your money than European banks, but US banks are less trustworthy with your data. Exceptionally, there is a pitfall where you can lose your money: dormancy. I recall a woman in California who had a safe deposit box that she did not access for a number of years. The bank declared it “dormant”, drilled it, and gave the property to the state’s unclaimed assets, who then auctioned off her stuff.




  • If you deposit money at a bank, it is covered by federal deposit protection insurance (up to some limit that varies by country but generally in the range of $100k-$250k), so you are guaranteed to be able to get it back no matter what.

    Time matters. Those insurance claims take months to process and they only cover bankruptcy (which is the least likely reason a bank denies you access to funds).

    The copy of my ID card that the bank had on file expired. I renewed it on time but did not think to update the bank with a new copy. The bank’s way of communicating to me that their records of my card were out of date was to freeze my account. Boom, just like that, I have no money all of the sudden. I don’t recall the time of day it happened, but if it had happened on a Friday night I would not have access to my money until I appear in person at the bank Monday morning — assuming it’s even possible to get off work. At that time, I kept an empty fridge… only eating on the go. Had I not had cash on hand, getting food could have been a struggle.

    Even if the bank fails. Banks are subject to extremely strict regulation to protect consumers and make sure you have access to your funds

    LOL! Those so-called strictly enforced banking regs are not for us. Banks are scared shitless of AML/KYC shit hitting the fan. Banks laugh at the consumer protection variety of regs with reckless disregard. It’s a joke. I’ve reported banks in breach of consumer rights. The bank’s regulators do fuck all. One reculator responded to me and said “why don’t you switch banks”. I shit you not. That came from a regulator who’s job it was to enforce a law that the bank was breaking.

    PayPal is not a bank, it’s an EMI (e-money institution), but those are heavily regulated to protect consumers. Your funds are not covered by deposit protection insurance, but as an EMI they have to keep your money in a safeguarding account at a real bank and they can’t use it themselves, so in case PayPal fails you will still get your money back.

    No, that’s not how it is. PayPal has a reputation for copious extremely out of whack “anti-fraud” false positives. I was burnt by it. Paypal blocked my acct and kept my money. There are many similar complaints.

    https://git.disroot.org/cyberMonk/liberethos_paradigm/src/branch/master/rap_sheets/paypal.md


  • In case of domestic violence, you go to the police.

    What a bizarre disconnect from reality. You have waaay too much confidence in police power (and assumptions about actionable evidence), capability, and motivation, and no idea about battered women living in fear of the next attack, which a restraining order does not necessarily stop, if you can get one, especially if the next attack is a bullet. A cop who checks on a battery victim will be told “that big bruise on my cheek is from falling down the stairs”.

    Domestic violence victims need options. You’re advocating for taking options away. That’s fucked up.