Rekall Incorporated

It sounds like he has way too much money and time on his hands.

This is definitely senior goons at Block engaging in some opportunistic PR.

has said he does not want the company’s A.I. to be used to surveil Americans or in autonomous weapons, saying this could “undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”

This is how we know this is all PR bullshit (perhaps crafted ad-hoc, but still essentially a propaganda operation).

This was probably a requirement of some sort. I doubt the government would bother with something like this on their own initiative.

That being said, there are some really good sources for “unofficial” content in Ukraine. All the major international and local streaming content and major blu-ray (Rips/Remuxes) release in one spot and with speeds that allow streaming torrents (at least in Ukraine).

Some of the more niche content can be difficult to find (smaller country, local sites have requirement that Ukrainian dub/VO/subs must be included in addition to the original audio track), but you’re not going to find that content on mainstream US media sources.

Government overreach (or corruption and enablement of oligarchs) is the responsibility of the citizens.

You can’t trust any American oligarchs or large American companies.

The “shadowy cabal” rhetoric is funny considering how there is zero real judicial overcite if US technology companies due to corruption in all three branches of the government.

Perhaps, but if anything they should have used this as a cover to ban twitter. I do not find American style ostentatious “freedom polemics” to be convincing, but on top of that Musk has been found to meddle in local politics to benefit the far right and promote UK criminals.

With US oligarchs “threats” and discussions do not work. Only action and the type of action that hurts them personally.

Macroslurp

Has there even been regime change in Venezuela? It looks like the current regime will stay, but they’ll have to give Trump and his oligarchs a cut (perhaps a large one).

Not surprising at all.

US will remain a chauvinistic plutocracy until Zuckerberg and all his goons are caught and put in ball and chains.

And that’s just one case, there is also Meta’s enablement of the Rohingya genocide, which is arguably a far more serious crime than systematic enablement of mass scale fraud.

Looking forward to checking it out, I mostly use the windows desktops client, but updates on all platforms are great!

I have mixed views on this.

On one hand I agree with you, especially when it comes to dealing with Palantir or really any company that can be influenced by the US, but on the other hand there are legitimate uses for such technologies in the sphere of national security and even public security.

I would argue it’s the citizens’ responsibility to make sure that the usage of such technologies is done in a framework of checks and balances (i.e. in a responsible manner).

I don’t believe in rhetoric about “the state infinitely expands surveillance capabilities”. The state is a reflection of the voters and there is no laws of physics or chemistry that guarantees such expansion via Brownian motion or what have you. If you do have institutions going overboard (be it the state or corporations), the root cause are the citizens (examples like NK or Eritrea notwithstanding).

Incredible that they’re still contracting an American company (one that is known to be controlled by particularly corrupt oligarchs) instead of building out their own capabilities.

The best you can do is help them install uBlock Origin and FB/Insta Lite (not great options, but better than the mainline apps).

HBO Max isn’t really a thing in my country. Although I was surprised to find out that they do allow you to sign up; Shudder which I would be willing to pay money for gives me a page with following text:

Sorry, we are not available in your country

That’s the whole page. Well, I will continue to use alternative sources for procuring your 1st party content if you don’t want to take my money.

From what I remember, downloading, installing and logging in worked, but we couldn’t play any videos. Logging in worked on the WebUI too. That’s why initially thought this was some sort of technical issue specific to my setup or perhaps even a bunk unit (even though it could play multiple containers/codecs from the NAS).

I was honestly shocked to discover that Netflix requires per device licensing. I can sort of understanding quality restrictions on some devices, even though the DRM is broken albeit the crack is not fully public (you can easily find even 4K WEB-DL copies on the internet), but per device licensing for playback is ridiculous. They don’t even allow WebUI usage!

Who do they think they are? This is clearly an example of oligopoly corruption, on par with the russian oligarchy that de facto operates in the technology services sphere with state management (even though from my experience, the US commoner would strongly disagree with such a characterization).

For DV it’s understandable. IMO Dolby and DTS are kinda of a scam (e.g. their lossless codecs). They are welcome to make authoring tools, but the standards should always be open and not subject to unaccountable entities that operate in a unreliable jurisdiction.

The reason I am asking about Netflix is because we got a relatively powerful Chinese Android set-top box (that is supported by a local distributor) and it couldn’t play videos in the Netflix Android app or even when logging in via web browser. The distributor said that Netflix support requires a license. After doing some research, this seems to be true for many non-American brands.

We cancelled Netflix and we are not buying any new subscriptions from American firms. I am just curious about the whole license issue.

ugoos am6b+ works great and can playback basically anything but av1 natively if you flash Coreelec, the android side can still run streaming apps if you insist or iptv apps like tv mate since iptv support in kodi/jellyfin suuuucks

Not Netflix though, right?

We cancelled our Netflix subscription earlier this year, but I am just curious. To my understanding to install Netflix you have to use trash tier HTPC devices.

So you’d have to either raise prices or accept a lower profit margin.

Isn’t that the point and the main benefit of competitive markets?

Agreed, regarding barriers to entry though. They need to be addressed.