WesternInfidels

That's not my attitude at all.

The basic "they really are spying on you" issue at the heart of the Flock scandal has bubbled up before, abuses have come to light before, there was alarm and pushback before, and then nothing in particular changed before, and the surveillance came to be accepted as the status quo before.

I don't want this go the same way. How can we connect this version to a bigger picture of freedom and liberty, instead of letting the news story run its course, letting it fade away, as has happened every other time?

This was my attitude when I was younger. But as my financial arrangements have gotten more complicated, more intertwined with those of other people, as I've accumulated weird experiences straightening out banking problems, I can see that while there is wisdom in the rule, its never going to be enough. I'm human, I don't remember everything I need to remember.

The scammers don't send out "link to confirm your bank details" because zillions of people are stupid, they do it because everyone is a little stupid sometimes.

Maybe the way to fight GMail's outsized power is to stop using GMail. You can do that without going all the way to self-hosting.

The company has partnered with 6,000 law enforcement agencies and 1,000 private customers, leading to terrifying false arrests and even crooked cops stalking innocent women.

How can we make people see that these problems were happening before anyone had heard of Flock? Flock is just amplifying the worst things about American policing.

Flock isn't even the first system of surveillance cameras and ALPR cameras, they're just the first with national-scale panopticon ambitions.

Would a remark like this one count as positive or negative?

...the records reveal the breadth of alleged database abuse by CBP employees...

AKA "criminals." Committers of crimes.

In my rich fantasy life, this announcement is just a ruse, to get Facebook to drop its guard.

Real life is never as good as my rich fantasy life though.

Aw heck I thought that spec said "insecurity coprocessor." My bad.

Flat Earther: Sheesh, looks like somebody's never heard of the Great Jurassic Shake-Up

Why aren't they just making the new version better, so that people are happy to use it?

I appreciate all the work you put into writing about and belittling my experiences

What experiences?

More importantly I’m also empathetic

Heroin addiction will ruin your life. Gambling addiction will ruin your life. Watching your kids get used for target practice by invading soldiers will ruin your life. Watching your friends and neighbors get pancaked by a collapsing apartment block might ruin your life. These things, and other things like them, are really happening in other people's real lives every day.

Flirting will not ruin your life.

Use that empathy of yours to find some perspective.

women don’t appreciate being approached by strange people

This is a very blinkered idea of what flirting is.

Just because you think that learning to flirt with people is a skill worth having...

I don't care at all whether you decide to learn to flirt or not. I'm not telling you how to live.

It is your assertion that attempting it would ruin your life that makes me cringe. It is so utterly self-absorbed, so free of context or proportion, such a "I'm 14 and this is deep" attitude. I genuinely hope you grow up enough to see this one day.

You made it very clear that you're talking about your fears. Not your actual experiences, but your imagined ones.

I'm put in mind of MRA Men, of self described "incels," who are fond of claiming that even a single accusation of sexual impropriety can "ruin their lives." But as far as I can tell, that just doesn't happen.

Believe it or not, you can't die of embarrassment. If one person decides (if a dozen people decide) they don't want to hang out with you (whether they call you a "creep" or not), that's not "ruining your life."

Do you imagine that, given the billions of people who have lived and died before you, you are really a unique outlier, of such exquisite psychological delicacy that even the slightest embarrassment will create permanent psychic scars? It's a fantastically egotistical point of view.