AinderS

Those Dell systems are "not for the general public, and had found their way to the website only inadvertently. The laptops are available only by custom order and only to military, government and intelligence agencies", and the other two have to hack the Management Engine, fighting Intel every step of the way.

That's basically an admission that the ME is a backdoor, and calling ME-free systems something any individual can purchase is farcical or malicious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Commer...

As much as I appreciate the article trying to stem the tide of racism by pointing out the El Paso shooting, I don't think such arguments are fruitful.

Firstly, that shooting doesn't mean immigration is good for the US (or, let's be blunt, for whites in the US), just as the lack of such a shooting wouldn't mean immigration is bad.

Secondly, an opponent could simply point to (anecdotal) murders perpetrated by immigrants as a counter-argument (well, counter-ad-hominem, since the El Paso shooting isn't really an argument for or against immigration). And in fact many publications do just that - the Daily Mail, NY Post, and Fox News to a lesser extent.

In the end it boils down to who can shout the loudest, regardless of the underlying truth. This might not be the case if they used statistics, but they prefer emotionally-resonating anecdotes, which, in a country of 330 million, are meaningless - you can find anecdotes to fit any preconception.

So what I would suggest is using arguments where truth, not just volume, provides an advantage. Instead of merely calling replacement theory "false", substantiate that with demographic statistics, showing that nobody is being "replaced". Anything less is simply yelling "nu-uh" - completely unpersuasive, and much more ineffective than manipulating people with cherry-picked crimes.

Unfortunately journalists are notoriously allergic to statistics, so we have little hope of laying this "debate" to rest.

The rise could be due to the bar for "hate crime" being so low that leaving tire marks on graffiti on a public road qualifies [1] (and an even lower standard is used in Canada [2]). Regardless, two things are lacking in the article.

One is the population covered by the police departments submitting the data [3]. Without normalizing for that, we have no idea if hate crimes increased, or if we are simply counting hate crimes among a larger population. The article heavily implies that the rise would be even worse if the "thousands of agencies" that did not submit data in 2020 had submitted it. But it doesn't actually tell us whether more or fewer agencies submitted data in 2020 than in 2019, 18, 17... The honest thing to do would have been to give us normalized values to begin with.

The second issue is that, despite how granular the statistics are for the victims, not one word is spent on the perpetrators. I wonder why... [4]

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/santa-cruz-police-...

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/hate-messages-univer...

[3] Law enforcement submit this data to the FBI of their own volition, and in 2020, thousands of agencies did not submit their crime statistics.

[4] https://www.newsweek.com/hate-crimes-documented-police-dispr...

> British colonial rule

Keep going. What makes "colonial rule" different from rule by an aristocrat that inherited lands, if people have no concept of nationhood, and one aristocrat is as good as another?

> Back then there was no concept of nations and nation-states, which only evolved a couple of centuries later.

Just because the power structures didn't perfectly reflect nations, doesn't mean nations didn't exist. Look at, for example, Catalonia, that still has a concept of its own nationhood despite being ruled by Spain.

Or look at the British Raj, for that matter. Britain and India were both ruled by the same royal family, yet no-one pretends their people's identities weren't distinct.

> Its pretty explicit in the agreement terms that you need to separately click to agree on every purchase:

It's okay to lie everywhere else, as long as they tell the truth somewhere inside the small print nobody reads? And we are supposed to know which parts are lies and which the truth?

It's like a bad joke, isn't it? Ask for less immigration, get an expansion of the surveillance state instead.

> Europeans typically are not racialized and do not identify as white, instead as Italian, German, etc.

This is obviously false, as shown by the different reactions in Europe to immigration from countries within Europe, to those outside of Europe.

> The following has no place.

I don't follow. Why do the results of their study have no place in the abstract?

And merely sarcastically re-stating the findings of the study is not a counter-argument.

That is precisely my point. The ability to prevent you from buying a loaf of bread will be used for control.

According to the article, the main problem of a financial police state where you cannot so much as buy a loaf of bread without permission and surveillance from the payment system, is that not everyone is included.

I don't think norms about politeness are comparable to expert public health recommendations.

White Americans are descended from Europeans, and the post was talking about being proud to be white, not "white American". Though I don't see why oppression is a requirement for pride - does achievement not suffice?

And "white fragility" is simply a way to dismiss objections without addressing if they are factual. So in that sense, your use of the term is correct. Any resistance is "white fragility", and the only way to avoid that accusation is to submit to and agree with every attack against whites.

On the other hand, those US laws, if they carry comparable sentences as she is facing, are equally unjust. If this case is what it takes to realize how disproportionately cruel the US laws are, and to get them changed, then so be it.

I will also speculate that most of the people agitating for her release are also opposed to those US laws you mentioned, so it's not hypocritical for them to lobby for her release, even if it may be hypocritical for the US as a whole to focus on her, without releasing the many non-violent low-level drug offenders they imprison.

No, only those they dislike, and only when they dislike them. They don't object to classifications when it comes to measuring oppression, for example.

That's odd. Their graph shows almost no reduction in immigration during 2016-2020. There's a dip in 2019, but it looks largely compensated by the spikes in years prior. I thought Trump was a xenophobe that promised a crackdown on immigration? Yet voting for him does not seem to have even dented immigration - only the pandemic had a significant effect.

> The idea of being "proud" to be white only conjures up one thought for even the most lightly informed about our nation's history.

Twice defending Vienna from Ottoman sieges? Retaking Spain from the Moors? The failed last stand at Constantinople before the city, and Byzantium itself, fell to Muslim conquerors? Ending the Barbary slave trade, that raided Europe for centuries, kidnapping two million slaves into the Muslim world? Holding off the Mongol invasion? Or maybe you mean inventing antibiotics and the tractor? Or germ theory and the transistor?

Of course you're right. The trans-Atlantic slave trade (ignore the Arab trans-Saharan slave trade) is the only thing "white pride" conjures up. The propaganda has been incredibly effective, erasing all white history from the public mind except that which can be used to shame them.

> White people as a group have not been systemically oppressed.

Yes, all the barely or not-at-all held-off invasions I listed aren't oppression. Nor was the blood tax much of eastern Europe had to pay the Ottomans [1], nor the Pontic genocide [2]. It was always all sunshine and rainbows for the white man, that has never faced an external threat in all of Europe's history.

You could say this is the founding ideal of the US ("founding" since 1903, when The New Colossus Poem was mounted on the Statue of Liberty). All the battles for freedom and survival are reduced to "storied pomp", and the Colossus of Rhodes, built to celebrate the defence of that city, is re-interpreted as an ode to violent conquest, "With conquering limbs astride from land to land;". Your country has asked you to believe that Europeans and European-Americans never faced an external threat, never had to fight for survival, never lost such a battle, and never contributed anything to the world but violent conquest.

And you obliged whole-heartedly obliged, because you are a good person.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide

> While it is true that unsustainable tourism has skyrocketed since Hawaii has lifted COVID-19 regulations, the effects of settler colonialism are an insidious rot that spreads throughout Hawaii’s statehood and colonization.

On the other hand, mass immigration to countries that haven't been colonized is entirely beneficial, and completely unlike what is happening to Hawaii. Because of.. uhmm... nuanced reasons.

> For years, kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiians) and non-Indigenous longtime residents have advocated limiting outside influence on the islands. [..] Hawaiian culture is deeply rooted in land stewardship. Hawaiians see the land not as property owned or sold, but as family, something newcomers often fail to recognize.

Right. Blood and soil. A uniquely Hawaiian idea.

But now the searches are extended into homes. I'm sure schools will argue that the laptops are school property and therefore children (or parents) have no rights on them, but let's think through what is happening here. I hate to use libertarian phrasing, but it will paint the clearest picture:

The state takes money from parents. Money the parents now can't use to buy laptops for their children. Instead, the state buys the laptops, but now families have no rights on the laptops their money bought.

Given that these laptops are paid for by tax dollars, and the monitoring continues at home, outside school hours, doesn't that make it unconstitutional search? That it's part of mandatory education only makes it worse. Do only families that can afford a second laptop (for each child) deserve privacy? Is the 4th amendment only for those who can afford to pay (in dollars, in addition to the price in blood and lead that getting rights in the first place requires)?

If not, why? If the police required their own monitoring software on each school-issued laptop, that would be an obvious search. But schools have less authority than the police, not more! If a mere school can do this, that makes the infringement even more egregious!

> The "DOJ has not found, nor does it allege, that the combination will reduce competition in the sale of books", Daniel Petrocelli, Penguin's lead attorney in the trial, said in a statement.

> "We are confident that the robust and competitive landscape that exists will ensure a decision that the acquisition will promote, not harm, competition."

I would love to hear the lawyer's reasoning for how fewer competitors in an already highly consolidated market will increase competition. Is it "because they paid me to say so"?

> But like ads and product recommendations, internal combustion engines are overwhelmingly used for good

Without internal combustion engines (at least until electric replaces them), billions will starve as tractors can't plow fields, and trucks can't deliver food.

Without online ads and spying...?

> the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird, it really does just seem like sinophobia

"It's so weird how scared people are of falling under the control of a foreign government. Don't they know their own government is just as or even more corrupt?"

Granted social media have less influence than a government, but that doesn't make the risk go away. And yes, the same logic applies to US (social) media in other countries, though the relationship between countries should be taken into account when assessing that risk. Though that relationship is itself influenced by media..

Don't pretend this is a victimless crime. He was tricked into wasting his time due to false advertising, and honest dealers who advertise the full price lose customers to fraudsters.

Submitted because a news article portraying book burning in a positive light was very unexpected.

“Where one burns books, there one eventually burns people.” - Heinrich Heine, probably referring only to books that you like, so it does not apply in this case.

"We want to bring back the past regarding ecosystem integrity. We want to move forward with unsustainable fishing and oil drilling."

Because they don't say "bring back the past wholesale" - you are twisting their words. What they say is "bring back the past in these specific cases, and not others". But a motivated listener can always find ways to misunderstand.

I see. So for example, India's government revoking Kashmir's independence and imposing demographic change on it [1] is progressive, and resisting it is conservative. Likewise, unifying China is progressive, while ethno-religious resistance by the Uyghur's is conservative. The Republicans efforts to advance from a country of immigrants, to a country of natives, is progressive, while Democrats wishing the US remains a country of immigrants is conservative.

But these are just a handful of counter-examples, sorry, exceptions, sorry, sleight-of-hand. Add more epicycles to your theory of how your ideological opponents are just irrationally evil and want to bring back all the worst parts of the past, and all these exceptions will be explained away, and we shall see that the Earth stands still.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/08/kashmirs-new...

It's unethical for companies to try to exert control of where or how their goods are used, since that infringes on basic user autonomy. That includes importing a (paid-for!) stream from one country to another.

Resistance to this trend of diminishing user autonomy is not only ethical, but our duty. Not circumventing these limits is what is unethical.

They could have used any number of other criteria for "arbitrary" weeding. Academic or research record, number and impact of publications, years of experience...

Regardless of how arbitrary you claim the filtering is, the effect is the same - it makes commitment to diversity the most important, primary criterion.

And antibiotics? And anti-X-ray? There's a million different medical advances, you can always find someone against (or suspicious of) a few of them. That doesn't mean all of conservatism is against all of them, as woodruffw would have you believe.