• 14 Posts
  • 89 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • I read this on the 14th or so and did a face palm. Floridaland is for the alligators apparently.

    Additionally, the federal government has failed to provide sufficient data to support the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 boosters, or acknowledge previously demonstrated safety concerns associated with COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, including:

    • prolonged circulation of mRNA and spike protein in some vaccine recipients,
    • increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections, and
    • increased risk of autoimmune disease after vaccination.

    And my favorite:

    • Potential DNA integration from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines pose unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients.

    Apparently we are at risk of covid immune babies!


  • Exactly true in the newpipe comparison. Same with YT-dlp variants.

    I’m an always on VPN sort of guy, but most are not. So yes the fingerprint tradeoff is one I accept within my ability to deal with inconvenience. Mostly upside at this point with no ads, just sponsors that slip through sponsor block.

    My fingerprint it’s perfect, but I know it’s working as I can see other peoples feeds are more adaptive and directed then whatever I get. I know I have a hole when I see something spammy too.

    https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ always worth a check.







  • I appreciate the cogent context and solution oriented post.

    I’d also say though that from a privacy standpoint self-hosting invidious is still allowing GeoIP info to be attached to downloaded videos, which is a fingerprint which can be used by data mining. Admittedly rather abstract as in this case the primary point of deplatforming might just be to de-ad, or give better video control, etc, and not obfuscate for privacy sake.

    As I said though great points!


  • While I agree, I have a hard time seeing how people will stop using it until the field changes. Maybe in 10 years it will the the MySpace of the sitcom era, but right now it’s still growing. That growth is giving it carte blanche to manipulate the users as it sees fit. Regulation might impact it, but it’s still a bit of a Goliath.

    • Compared to 2023, YouTube’s user base has grown by 20 million this year, representing a 0.74% increase. From Global media insights

    Also the active user base is 2.7 billion people in 2024 from the same source above.

    The alternatives are out there, but just not in the same league.



  • Economists at JP Morgan, the largest US bank by assets, published a research paper on de-dollarization in 2023.

    In reference to the global economy as a whole, they concluded that, “while marginal de-dollarization is expected, rapid de-dollarization is not on the cards”.

    However, they argued that, “Instead, partial de-dollarization — in which the renminbi assumes some of the current functions of the dollar among non-aligned countries and China’s trading partners — is more plausible, especially against a backdrop of strategic competition”.

    The JP Morgan economists added, “This could over time give rise to regionalism, creating distinct economic and financial spheres of influence in which different currencies and markets assume central roles”.

    This seems inline with the Chinese leadership game of influence, as well as the clown show that the US has become. Even with the interest still there from the US standpoint two decades of GWT, the lack of prioritize spending on following our so called values, the very high debt to GDP ratio we are running, the lack of real legislative ability, plus other challenges, all make the fundamentals seem less fundamental. Although China very much has it’s own issues such as an excess of manufacturing, a housing bubble, and a very steep demographic bubble. So their fundamentals are seemingly similar in question, but they have a marked ability to pivot quickly and do seem to be using their status as the 2nd largest economic to garner the same level of influence.

    Whether either has staying power of economics and global influence for the next 50 years is a very interesting question.

    I certainly don’t count the US out yet, but even if the election settles things down, there is some real work to do which has little to do with the current hotly discussed policy topics. I’d be curious about your opinions?


  • True, but worth reading their about page and privacy page. Not saying it’ll stay this way, but the way they are running is something that makes more sense then being sold as a product to Google. And you aren’t getting much of an incognito these days with all the fingerprinting they are doing.

    I will admit kagi search isn’t the highest performer, but it’s viable. DDG, Start page, etc. Might give you more privacy, or not (hard to tell with DDG these days), but it might be worth trying a different model for a while.

    I miss the days when the internet was truly free, but in lieu of that we have to have something better. Kagi is a start.


  • That’s an interesting example, I’ll have to look it out and see if the context bears it out. I say that as although yes he might have only gotten 43%, the question is how many registered voters didn’t vote and how many eligible but unregistered voters there were.

    Vermont has a fairly high voter turnout, but looking at Vermont’s Secretary of State 2016 had a voter turnout of 63% of Voting Age Population from census population. So that 185k of 505k thousands people who didn’t vote.

    Also if I have the right numbers from Vermont’ SOS, that’s 43% of the state total 63% who voted.

    I’ve read other demographic breakdowns on those who don’t vote which is worth looking into, but it’s hard for me to see someone say that there isn’t a mass when we have this huge population of American citizen who don’t vote. Something between 35-45% of the US just doesn’t. That’s a huge swath of disenfranchised people.