argvargc

Assuming this is an advanced civilisation, this seems highly unlikely.

Our capabilities can be well enough assessed from the comfortable safety of billions of kilometres away simply from watching our relentless broadcasting of them in all directions for decades if not centuries now.

We even sent out devices at the limits of our sphere of physical influence, introducing ourselves and with instructions on how to understand what we say.

Certainly, by simple initial analysis of even our most basic technology they could then monitor our own satellite networks on a whim and see all of the same things about ourselves that we do, in realtime and in totality.

Ingesting our transmissions and emissions and assessing our capabilities would be something they could do far more thoroughly than we can ourselves. They'd likely also be able to project what we'll have ten or twenty years from now in detail.

Sending a craft in can only reasonably be interpreted as "hi" given a context of technological dominance, which by necessity is founded on informational dominance.

Why should a peaceful demonstration of technical superiority terrify anyone?

It's clear whomever, or whatever, possesses this superior technology could fly circles around and/or obliterate us on a whim, but has expressly decided not to, and instead simply announced: "Hey, I have this."

If they/it perceived us as a threat, we'd surely be gone already. That leaves only our hopefully sane response, to influence what happens next.

Being terrified would be exactly wrong.

Sure, but then the fact that specific, detailed postulates made in her paper have turned out to be independently confirmed empirically kind of renders that "analysis" moot.

Not the OP, but since publication, serious concerns detailed in this paper by the MIT researcher (who played a major role in early determination of the risks of glyphosate), have since been indepedently verified:

https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/23/51

For example, this recent Swedish paper detailing in-vitro DNA modification (reverse transcription) by COVID-19 vaccine mRNA, in human liver cells:

https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73/htm

And this is just one of many concerns (and the above paper isn't the only verification of that particular concern). For example the proprietary lipids fascilitating the entry of the mRNA into cells have been shown to exhibit high cytotoxicity.

Coupled with ongoing legal revelations as a result of FOIA requests - https://phmpt.org - regarding what the FDA knew about the safety profile of the shots, versus what they told the public at the time, along with FDA's otherwise bizarre reticence to release such data that is clearly in the publics interest, these shots are seeming less and less "safe and effective" by the day. (Lawyer Aaron Siri does some write ups regarding this FDA case.)

Indeed, it's common knowledge now the "effective" part was mishandled, so it shouldn't be surprising - especially, in a social and media climate actively preventing emergent negative signals - that it might turn out safety was mishandled also.

In several places it's been restricted from being used in certain age groups - due to safety - after being previously recommended for those age groups. I believe in at least one or two countries it's been withdrawn entirely.

Certainly other vaccines released at the same time and presented as analogous to each other have been - all of which well justifies reluctance on trusting any of this new technology that was initially touted as completely safe, and in many cases still is, even after being withdrawn by government health agencies over safety. What?

And for those harmed - there is an understandable addition of anger to the mix.

Do not accuse me of defending this/these persons actions. I am not "defending", and did not, "defend" the actions of this person or persons.

It's a completely abhorrent and utterly stupid and harmful action whether or not it was motivated to intentionally physically kill anyone or not.

As for whether it's one or two people, I make no apology for paying less attention when watching something from legacy media sources who I've witnessed continually falsifying stories on this subject.

I honestly thought I saw one man twice but if it's two it's two, and I update my statement to "lone actors". I'm not going to watch that crap again so I'll just have to take your word for it.

And yes, I did see someone attempt to tie a door shut with what looked like an old t-shirt, it seemed to me much more like someone trying to create the appearance of an attempt at mass murder (and always in the direct line of sight of a camera).

Regardless, the motivations of this person or persons, whether your interpretation or mine, either way does not at all fit the profile of the truckers as I and many others have experienced it.

Anyone who spends any time watching their official announcements, or independent unedited livestreams of what's happening there, can instantly see that setting fire to apartment buildings is not remotely something they'd want to do, nor would it at all serve any of their stated goals and instead only work to utterly dismantle them.

They have bouncy castles for kids to play on. They hold multi-ethnic prayer sessions. They're voluntarily cleaning the streets of snow and ice, laying flowers on monuments, and having hockey games police. In Coutts yesterday the police hugged and shook hands with the protestors (and their kids) and they all sang the national anthem together. Look it up, some of us watched it happen live.

Hence my interpretation that whoever did this crap at the apartment building evidently aren't the same people.

Their most recent announcement was that they have moved some of their trucks closer to the city centre in order to cause less disturbance to residential areas. That's hardly characteristic of murderous terrorists.

They also stopped honking, initially between the hours of 8pm and 8am, and since mostly altogether, and if you bother to watch any of their official announcements they are clearly reasonable and intelligent people - the "story" presented by your "news" source simply doesn't fit. (And the pathetic attempt to portray that story by filming two random people disagreeing on a city street really didn't make the case.)

The truckers stated goals are that they want the (useless, and clearly not-working) vaccine mandates dropped so they can return to work, not to overthrow the government or even cause any further disruption. They've been explicit about this many times. Specifically they've said they want to go home, and when the mandates are dropped they immediately will. But backed into a corner as they feel they are, they're not moving until that happens.

Half of Europe and UK has already dropped the mandates, so it's not at all an unreasonable request given the present situation.

You come across as never having actually investigated or even heard anything they've put out as an official statement. Probably this is because they justifiably refuse to speak to the legacy media that continually mis-portrays them.

But if you search (easier to locate on bitchute or rumble), you'll find their press conferences and quickly realise the characterisation by the legacy media and trudeau, as many here have pointed out, is entirely incorrect.

Almost three straight weeks of multiple livestreamers documenting every aspect of the protest non-stop for hours unedited all day and all night, of thousands of highly-skilled resourceful people with a deep knowledge of logistics and shipping - including of dangerous goods, and including possessing truckloads of fuel - and the best you can come up with is one clearly-unassociated utterly moronic lone actor supposedly attempting to "burn down a building" by lighting a few bits of paper in the middle of a hard floor of a building filled with smoke alarms and sprinklers and in clear view of a security camera and the building residents?

"A mob of thugs"? Really? Type ottawa livestream into youtube, filter by Live and watch. You won't see "a mob of thugs" or even the remotest resemblance, even if you watch for hours. These are ordinary people and their kids.

Your original comment relayed anecdotal evidence. Are you now saying it doesn't prove anything?

Violence does occur in cities, and it will continue to. I've seen no evidence protestors or attendees are violent or even aggressive, and livestreamers passing police and asking them impromptu specifically this confirms it.

There's bouncy castles for kids to play on, multi-ethnic groups dancing together and holding native ceremonies or prayer, people giving out free food, public handing dollars directly to truckers because of the frozen funds - every weekend it's packed with families, smiles and good vibes. And then the "news" comes on and says it's an "insurrection" (yeah, don't they just always have bouncy castles) and Trudeau says they're all racist transphobes.

It's laughable.

If more violence/crime is occurring, a more likely explanation may be the friendly and busy atmosphere his driven drunks/addicts/homeless out of the city centre, and these people are now committing crimes they would ordinarily commit in the city centre in surrounding areas instead.

That would suck for those affected, but all of this could be over in hours if Trudeau would simply remove the mandates and the passport. (Which are the Ottawa's protest organisers only demands, as they've reiterated multiple times.)

The mandates clearly don't work for their intended purpose of coercing people, and instead just motivate people to fight back yet stronger, in this case harming the economy and causing inconvenience to some. That's squarely on Trudeau's governance, nowhere else.

The passport is a completely silly idea given the facts regarding transmission, as many other countries have realised and since dropped.

It's a no brainer on Trudeau's part to simply drop both things. But instead he's chosen to humiliate himself spreading nonsense lies about the truckers and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians who support them.

If the disruption is causing you grief, maybe write to him or your local Liberal representative and suggest he/they drop those things? They're demonstrably no good anyway, so it'd be a pretty simple win-win for everybody.

I kind of agree with some of this - but not the conclusion you seem to have drawn.

The most nefarious weapon invented previously has been around for 75+ years and was developed as far as to reach the capability of completely destroying all human life in a matter of minutes. But... it never has.

And this is despite it being repeatedly under the control of those whom are arguably the worlds greatest and most inhumane psychopaths.

That is, there must be something in human nature, or the nature of life itself, that prevents it from using technology to annihilate itself with it, even when such power is given to those most likely to use it for that.

Not to say there isn't a danger, even a great one. And I could understand being disillusioned by the present state of affairs. But, as with all such dualism, there exists just as strong a pull to catapult the other way.

Just as there were greater, bloodier and more heinous wars prior to the invention of nuclear weapons, it would seem that with such mastery of destruction comes a greater responsibility - that ultimately we rise to embrace.

I believe you're shooting the messenger.

Tyrannical, greedy, and well-resourced psychopaths have been using technology to lead us into an Orwellian hell-hole.

Without them, all of this tech is a fantastic opportunity to empower and connect our world.

And that will happen - they've overstepped their mark and most people who matter know this already.

From a developers perspective the size of a tweet is typically greater than the character count of its text:

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/data-dicti...

If we won't see it coming, and as many commenters have pointed out, it will indeed comprise personally-identifiable information - despite the (absurd?) claims - how does this all fit with the GDPR right to be forgotten?

Some of us are already living an authoritarian nightmare. One that we weren't living two years ago, regardless of politics.

It's not up for debate, it's up for acknowledgement.

As I understand it, battery performance can be somewhat configurable on these, eg by adjusting BIOS settings for thermal controls to keep the CPU throttled.

If you don't mind the lack of gaming controls, they have some Pentium N6000-based models. The P2 Max (2022) with this claims 8 hours continuous 1080p playback.

Still expensive though - would be great to see a more terminal-focused version with a lower power CPU and screen for a few hundred, and presumably a battery life measured in days.

Doesn't basing your conclusion on the two countries that support it, out of a pool of ~200 that exist, seem a bit tentative?

It's at about the same level as the counter argument regarding Sweden (which is one reason I made it).

Have a look through the studies I linked, you'll find several that perform rigorous analysis on a large number of countries, including in some cases specifically regarding excess mortality.

For example, have a look at Figures 2A and 2B from the following study. 38 countries compared by length of initial lockdown measures, versus per capita excess mortality for the period, and then the same measure compared across all states of the US:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28930/w289...

This doesn't support the hypothesis that lockdowns reduce excess deaths.

No, I didn't. I said:

Here is a summary of over 400 studies demonstrating lockdowns are ineffective or harmful:

You're welcome to present studies demonstrating the opposite, but even if you can find 400 of them (and I doubt you can), the best we'd have arrived at would be equal uncertainty either way.

The longterm results of anything for which a long term has not yet elapsed can indeed only be guessed at. The fact I need to point this out to many people is striking in its resemblance to some kind of mass delusion on their part.

Sweden is 62nd on a list of 180 countries on deaths per capita. We can argue back and forth like this but why bother? If you don't care what the studies say, your mind is made up, making discussion with you valueless - for you.

Won't even examine 400 counter-claims? That's "denialism".

Lockdowns working/not-working and/or causing collateral damage potentially eliminating other gains is not even remotely on par with astrology.

Lockdowns used in this manner are entirely unprecedented, and the long-term results cannot be known by anyone, only guessed at.

Your rigid adherence to them as beacons of purity only demonstrates your religious-like faith in them, which strikes me as having far more in common with astrology than well-evidenced arguments by well-credentialed individuals that they might not work or be counterproductive.

COVID what-ists? You mean all manner of people who have all manner of opinions and reasons for them that just so happen to differ from the views presented as scientific consensus by government, media and celebrities?

Here is a summary of over 400 studies demonstrating lockdowns are ineffective or harmful:

https://brownstone.org/articles/more-than-400-studies-on-the...

Prepare a sufficiently convincing argument against each and every one of them, and against the credentials of each and every author, before using the term "denialist" in application to anyone other than yourself.

...of lockdowns?

Even if this were true, it's irrelevant. If a government initiates action that sparks a backlash, the government is responsible. If the government didn't also anticipate that backlash, it's incompetent in its duty to its citizenry.

And if it did anticipate it, well that's just worse.

Yes.

If the way they treat a new customer is to arrest control of my browsing experience and prevent me from leaving their site, I have zero trust in them. And trust is everything.

So, the quine-stion we're all asking now - is there a valid image, that also happens to be a valid executable, that when run, outputs the image?

And/or what about an interpret or compile step in there?

In my case, the back button didn't go back past the root page of the site. It trapped me where I did not want to be. I didn't know about holding the back button down, and I appreciate the tip, but I don't want to need to know it.

The back button not functioning made me:

- feel frustration and distrust

- associate those feelings with the product and its creator

- never want to use the product, despite being interested in it

Clearly, I'm not the only one who felt these kinds of things. It seems to have completely overshadowed the product.

My takeaway is this:

Do not ever alter fundamental UI behaviours of the browser.

Sort of. If someone figures out the right UV lamp will reveal remnants of the marker pen, you'll have to make UV lamps illegal. Or if someone took a photo of the key before it was erased and uploaded it, you'll have to make cameras and the internet illegal.

In our present reality, almost every piece of information - with sufficient intent - can effectively become immutable, owing to our interconnectivity and resourcefulness.

And as I understand it this is the part that matters legally - the law is concerned with that intent.

I often see people claiming an immutable blockchain and all of its users are potentially in violation of the law because someone put something on it that's illegal and therefore everyone around the world with an unwitting copy of that information is breaking the law. But is that how the law works? (Well, when it's working - which it doesn't always, but in general.)

In this example of someone putting illegal content on the Bitcoin blockchain, the system and its users could be more rightly seen as victims of the crime. Just as much as the mall owner is a victim of an act of vandalism, or the github repo's owner.

None of these parties had the intent to host this information.

However if a particular blockchain was specifically created and marketed as a place to host and get bluray keys, and all peers and miners hosting copies of it clearly knew that, then they are showing intent to break the law and would be treated differently.

Now IANAL, and neither is this a perfect metric and it becomes a grey area at times, but as I understand it, this question of intent is fundamental to law and how it's enforced in the real world.

We can think of countless examples of how doing anything else would result in continual and repeated injustices.

Turning an apartment buildings worth of people into criminals would be as simple as putting a piece of paper with a decryption key on it into everyones letterbox.

No. They're the victims of unsolicited mail. It doesn't mean all of them and the postal system should be considered illegal, even if they unwittingly kept the letter in a stack with other junk mail in their room.

By the same, uh, token, could you find a bunch of commits from a large github repo that each form successive parts of the key, post an issue referencing them, and then make that repo - or even all github - illegal in the USA?

If Bitcoin's primary design and purpose to disseminate bluray decryption keys, and provide unfettered access to them to anybody and everybody, and advertise it as such, there may be some kind of an argument to be made.

But as it's not, and there are hoops to jump through, doesn't it make about as much sense as trying to make malls and permanent markers illegal, because someone wrote a bluray decryption key under a mall toilets cistern lid?

Even the CEO of Pfizer recently stated 1 or 2 shots "offer very limited protection, if any" (my emphasis), whilst saying the booster offers good protection. But the booster is the same substance... the formulation hasn't changed. He's literally saying 1 shot of it does nothing, 2 shots of it does nothing, but 3 shots of it is magically great. (And I still remember a time when "fully vaccinated" meant you were done at two, and anyone saying there'd be more was a conspiracy theorist.)

Meanwhile in Queensland which had suffered 29 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, the health minister just announced that 7 more people died overnight, and they were all vaccinated - but not "boosted". Ie, two shots of, as the Pfizer CEO put it, a vaccine of "limited effectiveness, if any". So there we have it, two shots and not three and you're dead, apparently. Who's clogging up the ICU's there?

And have a look out of the proverbial window. Almost everywhere there's more cases, more hospitalisations and more deaths. That is, if the vaccines worked: they'd work.

But they haven't, and don't. In many places we're in a worse position than before we had them.

That is, they're failures.

Meanwhile things that do actually work, and even have their mechanisms of action completely understood underlying why they work, are sidelined, suppressed or even banned.

If indeed in Ireland you have "95% vaccination", why do you have any cases, hospitalisations or deaths? If it doesn't work at 95% take-up, when does it work? How can the R-value even do anything remotely ICU-clogging with a single digit percentage? On the surface, it doesn't add up.

But a little deeper, and it maybe begins to... because when you're counting "vaccinated" people, be sure not to mix up who is "vaccinated" and who isn't, according to the latest shift in the goal posts. In some places for example, if you have been "fully vaccinated" but not had a third shot, you're considered "unvaccinated" again, and will die in that category. Further, were you "fully vaccinated", by whatever definition, but have only been so for 14 days, and die, in some places indeed you'll also die considered "unvaccinated".

Or to put it another way, how many of the people dying and clogging ICU's never had any shot at all, and how many did?

And why?

This depends on which definition of the vaccine you've chosen to adopt. As the product has not changed, only the manufacturers claims about it, the original definition is the most applicable in terms of its success or failure.

What's misleading is to pretend that a product, sold as a "vaccine", sold as originally possessing many of the commonly-understood qualifiers of the use of that term, turns out in reality to possess none of them.

It does not vaccinate against the disease. It does not vaccinate against being infected, harmed or killed by the disease. It is for all intents and purposes, not a "vaccine" by any prior widely-accepted definition.

These "vaccines" limited effects at reducing symptoms (the only remaining claim of late), do not even persist more than a week or two before beginning to wane to nothing. These are at best therapeutic drugs, not vaccines.

That is, they are - broadly - failures. Quibbling about ever narrower definitions of what constitutes the failure bears little useful relevance to the unfortunate reality, instead only seeming to facilitate manufacturer public relations.

So if someone was permanently disabled it's a success? What about in hospital 8 weeks but eventually recovered? It's hard to understand why this needs to be debated. Why is it so bad to simply admit it failed to protect?

Even if we set the bar at death I guarantee someone would step up and say: "Yes, but they would've died even sooner without the vaccine! Oh come ye let us praise it". The religious fervour is bizarre. Let's face it - the vaccines are a bit shit.