While I doubt that the opposition nor the powers that want them in charge are above reproach here, the arguments as to why what they’re saying is false and based on a western agenda don’t stand up to the most basic logic seive either.

It is fully possible for the incumbent to have run a fully corrupt campaign complete with ballot stuffing and intimidation/misinformation AND for the observers to not be objective either. One doesn’t cancel out the other.

The big question is: were the elections provably legitimate and above reproach, and will the majority of Georgians respect the results?

I feel your pain. I have maintainer roles for a few projects where things could be slowed down by a week or more if I didn’t have direct commit access. And I do use that access to make things run faster and smoother, and am able to step in and just get something fixed up and committed while everyone else is asleep. But. For security critical code paths, I’ve come to realize that much like Debian, sometimes slow and secure IS better, even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment (like when you’re trying to commit and deploy a critical security patch already being exploited in the wild, and NOBODY is around to do the review, or there’s something upstream that needs to be fixed before your job can go out).

They haven’t been removed from the community though — just the maintainers list. Now they need someone else’s review to commit code to the kernel.

Personally, I think even maintainers should be required to have that — you can be the committer for pre-reviewed code from others, but not just be able to check anything you want in, no matter your reputation (even if you’re Linus). That way a security breach is less likely to cause havoc.

It’s worth noting that a sizeable number of Tor exit nodes are actually run by the German government. Meaning: they know exactly what’s going through those nodes.

So all they need to do to unmask a Tor source IP is control the first hop too. They’re in a position where they can narrow searches down to activity they’re actually interested in without significantly decreasing the privacy of other Tor users, and then they can peel back the onion.

This has been the case since shortly after Tor was created.

I doubt it’ll happen… but just imagine if once Biden hits Lame Duck in a couple of weeks, he actually does something about all this, once it won’t affect elections.

Yes; that is the problem.

I’d be interested to know what sort of “you people” you think I am.

The problem is, the only thing worse than tweaking a strategy that’s never worked in the past and expecting change is choosing a new strategy that logically will never work, by design, and expecting change.

Look at history and tell me what was needed to stop the governments of the most powerful nations from supporting genocide overseas.

Or… take a longer view and follow the strategy I outlined.

The Palestine/Israel situation didn’t just start this election cycle; voting third party isn’t going to fix it, or even help the victims at all — in fact, it will likely harm them. But strategically voting over the next four cycles or so could go a long way to improving not just that issue, but many others.

Weird that you think voting third party will accomplish that.

Although I’d argue that now is definitely the time to vote third party locally, and independent for senate.

Once the Big Two lose their dominance in those two areas, it will be time to target congress. Then once that’s done and legislative reform is in place, it will be time to target the executive and judiciary.

I guess they’re not single issue voters then?

Georgia is populated by western liberals?

Google implemented WebP because they can control it without having to pay anyone else. Apple then bungled the client-side implementation.

TL;DR: the incumbent pro-Russia billionaire is asserting he won the election.

Funny… I did the same thing. Chose Grand Central as my provider… who were then acquired by Google and became Google Voice :-/

These days I still have my GV number as it’s a known number, but I never call out on it. When possible I use Signal; I’ve also got burner talkatone numbers that change regularly, and Matrix/Element for any regular communication.

I figure the combination means that no provider has a full picture and all of those providers are unlikely to aggregate to the same databases.

The Beelink ones come with Windows 11 Home; since this is a privacy community, it should be obvious that that’s not all that great for privacy.

For wireless keyboards; I just got a cheap Bluetooth one with a trackpad because I knew it would be abused.

Take a TV, strap a mini PC like one of those BeeLink ones to the back (it comes with mounting hardware), plug an HDMI cable between them. Connect a wireless keyboard with trackpad, and congrats! You’ve got a big screen computer.

The next bits really depend on your technical know-how. What I did was wiped Windows from the PC and installed Linux, then installed Jellyfin and Firefox.

Jellyfin works as a media server so I can stream my own collection of videos/images anywhere im my home, and Firefox with uBlock Origin means I can log in to any streaming service I want, without the ads. And I can log into my (on-device) Jellyfin server the same way.

I’ve tried all the interfaces like XBMC/Kodi and Plesk etc. and find it’s more of a headache than just having a keyboard handy.

So… doomed?

You know what? The atrocities in Ethiopia don’t get coverage either, nor the ones in Myanmar, and nobody’s talking about the Uyghurs anymore, and even discussion on Ukraine is muted. Same goes for Burkina Faso, the Mexican cartel crisis, continuing fighting in Syria, Mali, DR Congo, Yemen, Haiti, Pakistan, and Colombia.

Each one of those has claimed more casualties than Palestine, although only a few of them are as focused on genocide.

Well… it requires not being in a border dispute for x amount of time to join. That’s going to be an issue for Ukraine for a good while to come.

I had this experience once in an Ikea, of all places. I calmly told the clerk that according to local laws (which I cited), it was illegal for them to demand that information from me (phone number and post code) to sell me anything, and if the computer wouldn’t let them do it, then they should call a manager for an override.

When the manager came, the clerk said “this person refuses to give me their info” — to which I added, “your computer refuses to comply with the law; please override and then notify HQ that they are in contravention of the law and liable for significant fines.”

The next time I went in, they still asked me for the info, but the clerk was able to override. I suspect they just put in fake info for everyone who refused to supply it.