ArmchairAce1944
@ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
- Comment on A succulent meal 1 day ago:
Also they weren’t guzzling wine and ale at all hours and when they did drink it was usually cut with water or what they called ‘small beer’ and very young wine (which didn’t have time to properly fermented and reach full potency) that had limited alcohol content. Also they did drink water. In the same way that in places in the world where they have limited water treatment facilities they still drink water even if it isn’t the best.
Again… they weren’t stupid. They might not have had the depth and breadth of modern medical technology on how alcohol affects you, but people knew what it did and they know what addiction is (even if they made it out to be a personal weakness) and how terrible it was.
- Comment on A succulent meal 2 days ago:
Humans on a stick don’t count!
- Comment on A succulent meal 2 days ago:
Peasants? Even many nobles didn’t eat like that every day.
People think that the typical nobleman in the Middle Ages ate like King Henry VIII. That isn’t true. Did you that they determined that at least at a few points in Vlad the Impaler’s life he was basically living on a vegan diet? They ate a hell of a lot of vegetables and grains because meat was still expensive for everyone involved.
- Comment on Free Tool Says it Can Bypass Discord's Age Verification Check With a 3D Model 2 days ago:
Don’t forget about terminally online single adults, too.
- Comment on Why are people disconnecting or destroying their Ring cameras? 4 days ago:
Exactly. I never used Gemini or gave sensitive information/photos to major AI companies, but my family has, including photos of me.
- Comment on 64GB of DDR5 RAM now costs more than a MacBook Air - memory prices have surged 300% in just six months 4 days ago:
I can’t believe how lucky I was to upgrade my desktop before the surge. This is an outrage!
- Comment on Discord walks back age verification fears for most users 4 days ago:
Already done.
- Comment on Discord walks back age verification fears for most users 5 days ago:
That is even creepier and more stupid. This is why I am deleting my shit and going to move onto a different platform.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 5 days ago:
Yeah, that was the thing. Most people still used VHS tapes back then and many would just reuse the same few tapes over and over, meaning footage from one day would be gone in a few days and since tape degrades eventually the footage will look like shit anyway.
- Comment on Discord walks back age verification fears for most users 5 days ago:
That’s why I am deleting my shit and going to delete my account.
- Submitted 5 days ago to technology@lemmy.world | 130 comments
- Comment on No One, Including Our Furry Friends, Will Be Safer in Ring's Surveillance Nightmare 5 days ago:
The message that needs to be hammered in harder than anything is that times when these are used to solve crimes and find missing innocent people are the EXCEPTION and not the rule. nor are they are the purpose.
Most criminals are just as stupid today as they were 50 or 100 years ago, and despite massive advances in a shitload of surveillance and forensics, not to mention MASSIVE increases in police funding, the rates of unresolved crime have only increased. Crime rates have dropped since their peak in the early 90s, but that is more than likely due to environmental factors and an ageing population more than anything else (crime is generally a thing young people do, by the time they hit middle age they’ve either given it up or gotten so good at it that they know how to evade the system). In Canada for example, despite massive increases in car telemetry and tracking and all that shit, the overwhelming majority of car thefts are unsolved. This is often when the car theft itself is caught on camera and probably the car driving away is also captured by multiple cameras. Unless the car is then used in a homicide, the police rarely care to investigate that much.
The point of all of these is to document any form of organisation, protest, or activism. If some group of people want to unionize or protest an unpopular law being proposed, planning that isn’t like planning a burglary. It necessitates communication and organization, and you need transportation. Most protestors can leave their phones behind at home (with me I’d turn it off and put it in a Faraday bag). Also the whole ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’ is utter shit. A single heated argument, sour facial expressions at hearing certain news reports (if you wanted to see me be visibly pissed off, look at me when I was seeing the horrific reports of how Palestinians were (are still) being killed). They can use this to develop a profile of what kind of person you are. Are you a super progressive person and also have skills useful in tech? Good luck getting that job now, because no matter how or where you apply, the AI will work to exclude your application.
I know some people who are VERY vocal about their views and also have a lot of highly in-demand skills but cannot find any work despite applying relentlessly. Their views also got them fired from their work since the companies they work for don’t like certain… leftist views. Those people are the squeakiest clean people in terms of the law, but that doesn’t mean the powers above like them.
- Comment on 'What a great way to kill your community': Discord users are furious about its new age verification checks — and are now hunting for alternatives 6 days ago:
I’m already making backups and deleting all the posts and DMs I made on discord. Yes I know they probably have everything backed up, but there is always a possibility that they lose that shit or don’t fully back up everything. I am not interesting in playing along with their bullshit.
- Comment on Homeland Security Spying on Reddit Users 1 week ago:
I only lurk on reddit for the porn now.
- Comment on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month 1 week ago:
So long…
- Comment on Taste the flavor 1 week ago:
The skin on your lips is the same as the skin on your asshole. That’s why.
- Comment on CEO of Palantir Says AI Means You’ll Have to Work With Your Hands Like a Peasant 1 week ago:
And China, for all its flaws, won’t throw its people under the bus.
- Comment on CEO of Palantir Says AI Means You’ll Have to Work With Your Hands Like a Peasant 1 week ago:
Indeed. Industrial methods for the post industrial age…
- Comment on Tesla profit tanked 46% in 2025 | TechCrunch 2 weeks ago:
The fact that it isnt completely under is unacceptable.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
They will either adjust or outright ban certain kinds of makeup. They will make the law so vague so they can selectively enforce it.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
Yes, facial recognition cameras and ‘intention detectors’ have been around for almost 12 or 14 years now in the UK. But they are massively increasingly them AND making them more active. Like before you still could go into most places without major ID. Now you’ll need a face scan for many places and probably fingerprints and DNA real soon.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
Nope. You are watched. They watch you. Remember their shit about banning encryption for everyone but politicians and the military? That is the point.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
It is actually worse. In the novel that kind of surveillance was primarily for party members (Winston Smith was around mid-level) regular civilians, the Proles, were not surveilled as heavily. They were kept entertained by abundant football games and cheap beer and cigarettes.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
Reform just ultimately means change. Meaning they can get rid of those pesky things like privacy and search warrants and right to silence. If the AI says you are guilty then you are. No appeals. If it turns out later that you aren’t then you still must serve your sentence but we will correct the problem only if it impacts the provider’s bottom line.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
Yes. I apologize. I should have mentioned it.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
That’s the idea, I am afraid.
- Comment on Le Tits, Now! 2 weeks ago:
I found it and watched it shortly after writing that comment. It is all good.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
But it was. George Orwell knew what they wanted and how they thought.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
They will account for that.
- Comment on Facial recognition to be rolled out nationwide in major police reforms 2 weeks ago:
I remember hearing about how Britain had so many cameras that it was a privacy nightmare as early as 2000 or 2001. The more time passes and the worse it gets and when Snowden even revealed that the UK government was trying to build a master database of all UK citizens internet activity as early as the mid 2000s it became EXTREMELY evident to me where and how Orwell got his ideas for 1984. While it might have seemed unthinkable to many, the ideas that would lead to that kind of surveillance is a lot older than many people think.
And the reason why they didn’t do it earlier is because… well, how do you do it at a time when recording equipment was costly to setup and extremely obvious AND posed no obvious benefit to the person it was being targeted at. Things like wire tapping phones has been possible since the earliest days of telephones (wire tapping became a known police/spy technique as early as 1928 in Olmstead v. United States), but in practice wiretapping all phones at the time was impossible. You couldn’t record all calls and those calls had to be listened to by a human. It was not possible. But today it is absolutely possible to do all that and more.
At least smart phones and the internet are both extremely useful and highly critical things. Having a camera in your home that doesn’t let you use it does not… but you can also use your ring camera that you set up in your home.