jonne

Oh yeah, of course, but it feels like it's never part of the conversation, even among people whose opinions I respect and are, for example, super critical of AI and talking about enshittification and other issues in the online sphere, they never seem to take the step to check out Linux, or get off Twitter or whatever.

Yeah, very disappointed by RMS' creepiness (the Epstein stuff isn't the only thing), but he was 100% right about software freedom.

I can see Microsoft moving to the same sort of thinking as well. Apple already made Mac OS users jump through hoops when you want to install something from the internet or even through a third party package manager like homebrew.

And the open source movement is such a blind spot to the 'left' as well, even though technology freedom is critical if you want to be able to organise any type of resistance in the digital space.

Lemmy users largely get it, obviously, but centre left people will happily let themselves get locked into the Apple/Google walled gardens even though you're just giving that company a ridiculous amount of power over you.

Yeah, those people that think having a businessman running the country would be better are either business owners themselves, or have never actually worked in a business.

Congress has cameras. If you're lying to Congress about factual things, your memory of the event shouldn't matter.

I mean, that's literally a change some states made in response to the Weinstein scandal. If it's reasonable to assume the truth isn't going to come out before the statute runs out, I'm definitely in favour of making it longer. It should probably still exist, but 5 years seems very short for serious crimes, especially considering how slow the justice system works.

Democrats should definitely take something from that playbook, but there's been many cases of someone lying in front of Congress and not facing consequences. It happened in the leadup of both Iraq wars, and I don't think people should just be allowed to get away with stuff like that just because the clock ran out.

Obviously part of the problem is that Democrats don't seem to be interested in prosecuting stuff like that in the name of bipartisanship, but that's how they got where they got now.

The problem is that the DOJ isn't as independent as people would like it to be, so you basically need a change in administration to hold someone to account, which could take longer than 5 years.

I know these particular charges are probably bullshit, but I don't think there should be a statute of limitations for lying to Congress.

Yeah, MAGA is just an expression of the things set in motion by the Powell Memo (in some ways Trump hijacked that infrastructure for his own profit instead of sharing amongst the other sponsors of that plot). All those conservatives in the courts and in safe red districts will just stay where they are and spin up some new 'movement' like the Tea Party before it.

Conservatives can easily be convinced to believe the opposite of what they believed just a few years ago, look at how they turned in George W Bush basically effortlessly.

I mean, you could probably use them that way, but there's no indication that they were planning on doing that. One of those devices is only ~$3000, so if you want to spam all of New York and the upside is a bunch of people sending you their life savings it's not exactly an investment that's out of reach for your average crime syndicate.

State actors would probably hack into the Telco systems themselves instead, which you can do without needing to be on the ground. Or they'd keep their DDoS device in their embassy and do it from there.