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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: September 8th, 2023

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  • Alright, thank you for explaining your opinion to me. You’re right, while i still maintain my position that i disagree with US policy in this regard, i do recognize that a lot of those countries’ actions also contributed to the current situation.

    And i also recognize that when criticism arises in Lemmy, in particular from certain Lemmy instances, there is a lot of propaganda and anti American sentiment, which i also find grating. Nevertheless I’d like to clarify that I’m not anti American and i do not think America is bad. I consider this statement reductionist of the entire combined work of 330 million people, as you said, and i would like to clarify that i meant that this specific course of action in this circumstance is bad, not the country, nor the people of the US.

    This criticism does not mean to disqualify the US of praise where praise is otherwise due, of course, although i would not agree that the outcomes of Israel relations were positive, but that is another matter altogether that i think would escape the purview of the criticism of CIA actions.

    I apologize for expressing myself in such a black and white way and I’ll try to be more mindful of reminding myself of expressing more nuance in future comments and be clearer of who and what specifically i am criticizing.


  • I’m not a communist. I don’t agree with communism. I’m European. We hate communism. I joined ML because people said it doesn’t matter what instance you join in the tutorials but mentioned one should avoid lemmy.world because it was oversaturated with reddit refugees and lemmy.ml was at the top. I never knew there was this much instance bigotry and tribalism on lemmy, but i am honestly apalled by this culture. That’s the only reason. My post history is public, go read if you see anything about communism, bot propaganda activity or whatever strawmen you’re building there because your arguments are insufficient.

    And yes, things in the middle east would have been considerably better without CIA interventions. Americans want to wash their hands off it because what, it happened 50 years ago, when it was proven in 2020 by dna of a US green beret the US had special forces try the same in Venezuela ?

    Look at Afghanistan right now, it would have been leagues better if the US hadn’t been there for 20 years. Now it’s under the US (previously, when known as Mujahideen) funded taliban. If you know your history, none of this should come as a surprise. But yeah, it was the headscarf and profit and America bad for sure. Everything but taking responsibility for what the US is still doing right now. I’m not anti American culture and people or even economic doctrine, I’m anti policy. Creating an implication between capitalism and instigating officially unsanctioned political destabilization of foreign governments is an intellectually lazy and dishonest argument.

    What the CIA has done and is doing is wrong and brought us here, and it’s acting vastly with impunity and being excused by people like you. I’m not against you. I’m against people giving the place you live in a bad name with your taxes. Acting all defensive and petulant like I’m attacking your culture personally is just silly, when you know many patriotic Americans would agree with my criticism of the actions of the CIA and military interventions overseas.


  • Just to remind ourselves that this woman is paraplegic because the US had to send in the CIA to orchestrate a coup in order to remove its democratically elected president and put a fundamentalist religious nutcase Shah in power that was more friendly to the US, which like all CIA ventures, failed miserably and he ended up being overthrown by worse religious nutcases shortly after, which is regarded as a direct consequence of US involvement.

    Thank you US, for our daily misery all across the world, but especially for turning the middle east into the misery it is today. We will remember it all throughout the likely war between Iran and Israel that the democratically elected governments of the US purposefully worked towards for the last 50 years, by both directly destabilizing Iran and by arming and funding Israel and the Palestinian apartheid and genocide.

    I just wonder how much worse the world has to become until the US just stops “helping”.


  • Well most recently this year i crossed US borders at the Texas point of entry. I was told expressly to always provide them with my devices, as if i said no thank you i would be denied entry to the US and it would go on the record for future visa applications, which could be denied on grounds of that, thus affecting future assignments. When you get a work visa, you have a time limit to enter the US and if you miss it, you need another. I was told i was completely responsible for any data that third parties could obtain and i would be fired and legally prosecuted if sensitive data was seen by people who did not have security clearance and NDA clearance for the data i was carrying, which border security does not have, even though some US government personnel do have those clearances.

    Fortunately my company provided cloud space for any personal or company data i would be carrying and i wasn’t asked for anything because i came from Europe and i guess they weren’t too suspicious about me, so in the end it wasn’t an issue. Nevertheless, i had to take mandatory corporate training to prepare for any immigration interviews and had to sign specific liability agreements for the data i carry since it is highly sensitive.

    I don’t just work as a liason in the US, but this was the most recent. For the industry i work in, this is pretty standard.

    You can say no, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences, in my case I’d lose my job or lose assignments, which would probably mean I’d be put only on European assignments or demoted to a domestic only position, which would be paid substantially less. So in essence, i can’t really say no nor slack on opsec. Being able to feed my family is more important than protesting on grounds of principle for me. Also i could have issues getting to the US in the future, for any reason that may be, since getting a work visa requires grueling consulate interviews and they check literally everything. It’s one of the most annoying places to get work visas to, even coming from Europe. It took me one year of scheduling and attending interviews to be cleared for it. I was even asked to provide all my personal social media account handles.


  • I guess your company trains to different standards than my company then. A multi national globe operating company can never afford to fire employees for refusing to cooperate with authorities during border checks. At most it can train them to secure data during border crossing.

    If the company i work for did what you suggest, they would fire all their employees in the space of a week or have them all detained or refused entry to countries. They’d lose billions in business. Only a domestic or low volume company can afford having their employees routinely detained at borders in such a manner.

    It just doesn’t make any sense what you’re saying, but you do you bud. All the best.


  • You’re free to do that, but seems like a good way to be put on a list to be harassed more in the future. You make a cop/border agent feel stupid and he/she will make sure to make your life harder.

    The records will show you’re trying different ports of entry and if a border guard doesn’t like you, you will be selected for investigation and getting off that list may take years. Worse, you can be banned from entry for no reason and good luck appealing that.

    Personally i like to treat the customs agents real nice. I call them sir or ma’am, i follow their instructions and i show them a squeaky clean phone and they let me off with a smile at the first port of entry. Being combative with an agent will not change the laws. Moreover if you have obligations to a company, they will not look kindly to this sort of attrition causing delays and will pass you over next time they need someone. This of course means you won’t get paid as much (or, depending on circumstances, at all).

    I agree with the other poster, picking battles is the way to go.


  • They will detain you. I know the US procedure because i was instructed as i worked there as a representative for an overseas company in Europe.

    If you’re a national of the US they will detain you and hold you in detention to ask you questions. During this time your phone will either be cloned or confiscated to be decrypted at a later date. You will be released after a few hours. They will likely not bruteforce it, but rather attempt to use security flaws present in your device/firmware. They will do the same to your laptop.

    If you’re not a national of the US, you will be denied entry and flown back to where you came from. This is common practice in a lot of western countries.

    What you should do is not carry sensitive information across borders, by using a cloud service to sync at your destination or use hidden encrypted containers in your device. Unless you’re involved in terrorism, white collar crime, CSAM or drugs, they will never have people smart enough to find out hidden containers on you.


  • Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean you’re cool with it and you’re ok now. In buddhism it is taught that suffering caused by someone creates a debt. You owe the people who made you suffer a restitution for that debt. So in essence, you owe justice or suffering to the killer. But so long as you are trying to collect on that debt, you are suffering the whole time. To forgive is to let go of that debt. You’re not ok with it, you just let yourself stop suffering for that collection (though the suffering of the person missing still remains).

    I think this is what she meant. She managed to let go of collecting that debt faster for the actual murder than the disrespect of the police officers. Maybe because of the position of authority of the police or the circumstances of the murder.



  • Modern sewage water treatment plants to process sewage before it is returned to water courses and more funding to policing and auditing industrial facilities operating near bodies of water would probably go a long way in mitigating this.

    We have the tech and skilled personnel to do it. It’s just that unless pressure is applied, many politicians will flaunt environmental regulations to fix their budgets. Some companies go years dumping into the river before a tip or report finally comes in and they’re investigated.



  • Nobody needs more mod action, especially on stuff like this. Perhaps on CP or bots, but not really here.

    You want lemmy to turn into Reddit and have a super power mod max perma ban you because you didn’t follow rule 54038 of the side bar, but actually it was because the mod didn’t like you and was having a bad day ?

    Me personally I’d prefer someone salty downvoting every post and lose meaningless internet points than having mods riding everyone, increasing the likelihood of runaway abusive mods. The perfect is the enemy of the good enough.


  • Yeah maybe it started out that way for sure, but after so much death people on both sides are starting to consider other options. You can see that in Israel right now, people who are rejecting this narrative of either us or them. Maybe the crazies will always think this way, but over time people will be willing to make concessions. After all what good is it to rule a pile of rubble constantly under attack ?

    A half promised land at peace is better than an entire promised land constantly in war economy. It’s not only quality of life we’re talking about. The entirety of the Jewish people is being blemished and shamed by the current actions of Israel.






  • It might sound like a pretty obvious thing, but have you tried changing the tools into the “Tabbed ribbon” that office uses instead of the classic old 90s organization scheme in options ?

    I have come to notice that when people who don’t really work with computers very well, in particular boomers, say that they can’t stand LibreOffice, they mean they don’t like the layout of the tools, because they can’t find anything they need. I suppose they just got used to where everything is with modern office.

    Just change it and see if she will like it better. Usually solves it for the boomers i help. Nothing is holding LibreOffice back more than their default layout scheme. They really don’t know their target audience’s pain points AT ALL. Just goes to show why you need to study your users using the product without being explained anything.

    I don’t get why their default is a layout that has been outdated for 24 years. Nostalgia or what? Only really old people who used computers in the 90s a lot will intuitively find it useful.


  • Mullvad has written a post about it Here.

    FYI

    The desktop versions (Windows, macOS and Linux) of Mullvad’s VPN app have firewall rules in place to block any traffic to public IPs outside the VPN tunnel. These effectively prevent both LocalNet and TunnelVision from allowing the attacker to get hold of plaintext traffic from the victim.

    Android is not vulnerable to TunnelVision simply because it does not implement DHCP option 121, as explained in the original article about TunnelVision.

    iOS is unfortunately vulnerable to TunnelVision, for the same reason it is vulnerable to LocalNet, as we outlined in our blog post about TunnelCrack. The fix for TunnelVision is probably the same as for LocalNet, but we have not yet been able to integrate and ship that to production.

    I gotta say, i am really impressed with Mullvad. They’re not just a VPN seller. They write security compromise bulletins regularly and as soon as vulnerabilities show up and they actively lobby at the EU organs for more privacy laws. They really work and live their identity in every way.