Yes, that’s correct, Google didn’t do it out of the goodness of their non-existent heart, they made what they think is the best financial decision.

It’s a good one for the consumer though, whether see that or not. It’s good that your every move ever taken is stored in a company’s database.

Don’t worry, they most certainly used it to train a decent model of any typical American demographics movements before scrubbing it.

Oh for sure, I’m just saying they don’t even need to hit any targets and they’d still be winning long term. They are capable of much more, and Israel can’t fight Iran without US.

Satanyahu is betting on forcing Trump to agree to war with Iran on his watch. Avoiding that is thankfully one of Trump’s main priorities, hopefully they don’t succeed in changing his calculus on it.

And they aren’t able to and won’t be able to maintain media blackout much longer, Iran has stated that they will keep going and will go harder, and we’ve already seen some seriously damaged neighborhoods. As long as Iran keeps it reasonable (and what is reasonable has changed tremendously in the last two years of genocide and western media going hard to defend and justify Israeli war crimes), I think Trump can tolerate way more destruction of Tel Aviv than netanyahu thought he would.

Iran has spent decades building an arsenal of cheap drones that aren’t really designed to hit targets, they are designed to financially cripple Israel by expending expensive iron dome charges.

The air tags have batteries…

It’s not hard to find out what’s being pirated, BitTorrent isn’t private.

If you don’t think centralized currency controlled by neo-liberal capitalist states isn’t a problem to solve, we aren’t even in the same plane here.

Just because it’s built on a block chain doesn’t mean they relinquished control and decentralized it. But it’s a platform that allows you to decentralize.

Is this worth it as an upgrade to our existing centrally controlled currency? That’s a different discussion.

Does it solve the problem blockchain provides a solution for? Does it allow for decentralization? It appears the answer is no.

I was hoping to find an answer the original question in this dialog.

There’s a difference between saying “the secure enclave holds the biometric data securely and locally in a verifiable way with no mechanism to retrieve the actual data” and “trust them, don’t worry about it”

It’s okay to be wrong.

They are overlapping areas, but they are “two completely different things”. They overlap by sharing common goals, not by being interchangeable.

Anonymity to me means the message recipient can’t tell who you are.

Right. And Signal doesn’t provide that at all, it ties your private messages to your identity (phone number), it explicitly does not provide anonymity. In fact, it proudly advertises you as a signal user to other signal users that have your number saved. It allows you to post public status updates, it encourages you to save your first and last name on your account.

If a THIRD PARTY (the server operator) can ALSO tell who you are, that’s a privacy failure, not just an anonymity one.

Okay? And? In this hypothetical world where Signal offered anonymity but still tied you to your number for other practical reasons, then you’re be correct that it would be a privacy concern.

But they don’t offer anonymity, they offer private conversations.

No, they said they “ruled out” privacy for “obvious reasons”.

Obviously mockable statement.

Bernie is just a little nicer, he backed Biden when it mattered.

You’re asking good questions, but there’s a bigger picture here.

Keeping the war going does deepen the rift between the “West” and the “rest” (Global South, China, parts of Africa, Latin America) because the longer it drags on, the more global fatigue sets in.

Europe may strengthen militarily, but economically and politically it’s getting weaker… inflation, energy crises, internal divisions (think of Hungary, Slovakia, even parts of Germany), and rising far right movements that don’t necessarily want to give aid to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, countries in the Global South see the West’s endless funding of the war and start asking why wars and genocides elsewhere (like in Palestine, Sudan, Yemen) don’t get the same attention or aid. That erodes Western moral authority globally, this alone is probably why you’re here on this platform today.

China and Russia use that frustration to present themselves as “alternatives” to U.S. and European dominance — even if it’s obviously self-serving.

Also, a prolonged war keeps the U.S. distracted and pouring resources into Ukraine instead of focusing fully on Asia-Pacific (where China’s real ambitions lie). From Putin’s view, even if Russia suffers economically, the systemic weakening of Western unity is a bigger win in the long run.

Walmart is the only self checkout that constantly accuses me of stealing.