Ronno

Thanks for the insight!

No clue, I’m a Dutch citizen. Do your require to do an iris scan to get a passport in the USA? Might be covered there.

Its been here for decades. It was already mandatory to provide an iris scan upon arrival in the US back when I visited New York in 2013. At the time, I was already baffled it was a requirement and wasn’t happy, but at that moment there is nothing else to do then comply. The US probably has a very big iris scan, fingerprint and passport database of at least the western world.

Every artificially created ingredient has a code, for instance here in Europe we have ingredients listed as E-numbers. These ingredients are often used to replace organical/natural ingredients. You will see that if you buy pasta sauce in the grocery store, they’ve probably added some E-numbers to make the color of the sauce more red. These ingredients are not necessary at all, these are either marketing instruments to make the food look more “tasty” or to replace a more expensive product with a replacement chemical. We don’t know the long-term effects of these artificially added ingredients yet, but what I do know is that I know more and more people with allergies related to these artificial ingredients.

Most countries don’t have free healthcare. But require people to be insured. E.g here in NL you have to have atleast basic coverage costing roughly 140 euro a month

Yeah same, pretty sure the Russian branch of our company is separated now. Perhaps it is mainly represented because contractual obligations couldn’t be broken as easily

The real marketing trick is making you believe it is a cookie, and not some mixture of weird chemicals and ingredients that can only be identified by a code.

It will be difficult to switch my friend groups again, now that they are finally on Signal

I don’t want it to turn into Telegram, just give me a lightweight, secure and privacy focused messaging app.

Well, they need to know your device rotation to serve you the perfect ads! /s
Seriously, I wouldn’t mind them knowing a thing or two about me, when I’m using their services. But tracking everything, just because they can, is just obnoxious. If you would translate this to the real world, you would definitely get arrested when you would stand on the corner of the street, noting down everything you see, every dimension/detail of every person walking by. You would be labeled “creep”. But if Facebook does it, governments go like: You can build your new data center right here, don’t mind the measly peasants that currently live in the village nearby

GDPR is no joke, they can (and should) get serious fines for this.

If any company knows how to fast track their way into bankruptcy, it would be Netflix. Kudo’s for them to try and improve their previous track record!

Ah the infamous wizardry of the backdoor in encryption discussion.

Yeah, imagine running a company, with customers that simply pay the monthly, because it is cheap enough to cancel. But then you start annoying the users and reduce convenience, then increase the price. What could possibly be the end goal here?

IMO, those are very different situations, with slavery their freedom was taken. Most of the migrants (not refugees) are free, they are simply in search for a better life. Which is understandable, don’t get me wrong. But the picture that is painted is too bright, people hop on a boat to “paradise” and are promised a life of riches. The reality is, this is not the situation they will find themselves in. Even if we were to allow them into the country, they would still live poor lives. Sure some will succeed, but most of them don’t have the foundational knowledge/skills/command of the language of the country to get a job and find a place to live.

Meanwhile, looking at my own country The Netherlands, we see that natives are also struggling for housing. My generation is basically fucked, young families cannot buy nor rent a home to start their family in. This will impact The Netherlands for years/decades to come, it will be reflected in birth rate and future workforce. Allowing other people in the country now would be catastrophic.

On the other hand, recently there was an article about an approach by French farmers which I like. They sourced Moroccan workers, that could work in France for a couple months (IIRC max stay was 3 months), during this time, the workers would receive fair pay. After the work permit ends, the workers have to go back to Morocco. Then they are only allowed to go back to work in France after a period of time, with a new workers permit.

The key benefit is that workers bring the money back home, benefitting Morocco financially, and France with workforce. Most of this work by the farmers is seasonal anyway.

Yes it is, where will we house these migrants?

It’s easy to polarize with such a headline/picture. Reality is way more nuanced than this:

Migrants are in fact being saved from shipwrecks, it is (sadly) in the news every week or so. The main problem is that these migrants don’t have communication devices with them to signal emergencies, unlike the submarine. The boat on the surface alarmed emergency services when they lost connection with the sub, starting the rescue operation. It is difficult to rescue a boat of migrants, when you don’t even know that they are in danger in the first place.

Secondly, the harsh reality is that most migrants try to enter a country illegally. Which by definition, is a huge risk on their part. The rich people on the sub were not doing anything illegal. However, in both cases, the people in or on the boat accepted the risks involved in their endeavor.

FTFY: 👏 Do 👏 not 👏 buy 👏 smart 👏 stuff 👏connected 👏to 👏the 👏 internet 👏
Nothing wrong with wanting smart stuff, as long as it doesn’t send your data. For example, I run all my home automation hardware on a local network that cannot speak to the web, yet I can control everything I want just as the next guy with his fancy Alexa, Google or whatever, but my house doesn’t leak as much data.

For cars this is still very difficult to do. The only way we can stop sharing as much data would be if we had legislation that would ban this type of information sharing/data mining. In Europe we tried barking, but we didn’t bite. The GDPR is a joke, forcing people to consent to cookies, net result is nothing. They should have banned data mining, fingerprinting and tracking al together, but the tech lobby is way too powerful for that.

Agree and disagree.
Agree, because it would make things easier.

Disagree, because one of the value propositions of the fediverse is that every platform can be managed independently, while still interacting with the same content. Heck if they call it peanuts in one platform, and oranges in the other, all fine with me

Ah shit, I was about to claim SpezialRedditOperazion