I wrote off ChatGPT/OpenAI because of Sam Altman and those eyeball scan things - so sort of even before all this was a rage and centre stage. Sometimes it's just the gut feeling, and while it may not always be accurate, if something doesn't "feel" right, maybe it is not right. No one else is all good either, but what I mean to say is there are some entities/people who repeatedly don't feel right, have things attached to them that never felt right, etc., and you get a combined "gut feeling". At least that's how it was for me.

OP might have meant that it asked for camera permission. Or OP might have set camera permission to auto allow but then that is also stupid (more so).

And gets harder in a country where even the judges are political appointees and apparently that’s by design. (I resisted adding a smiley here because this is rather sad)

The courts are actually striking down a lot of government overreach recently. The tariffs were just overturned, and the administration was blocked from using the national guard for law enforcement. In fact this administration has lost more Supreme Court cases than any other administration at only 1 year in.

A friend (he is from mostly warm and sunlit South India) who moved to Canada from California says he just can’t take that weather anymore. So maybe weather is a huge factor? You deal with that not everyday in your life but every hour..second and year round.

victoria itself is a sunnier, drier seattle. from LA or san diego is real different, but as you go north it all gets abuut the same.

if they went to toronto or montreal or something, that would be wildly different

> even a third of Republicans supported anything

As if at this point "the Republicans" have a say or want to have a say in almost anything. They are either scared shitless of who he will come after next or just want the transfer of power to be absolute and are enjoying this unchecked power and want to reap all the benefits. I don't think they want this surreal spectacle of grab and abuse of power to end. So is this a disconnect? Or do people still believe the USA's ruling party and head of state and his select lackeys are doing things by process?

I just want Apple and Linux to offer ASAP:

1. Extremely granular ways to let user control network and disk access to apps (great if resource access can also be changed)

2. Make it easier for apps as well to work with these

3. I would be interested in knowing how adding a layer before CLI/web even gets the query OS/browser can intercept it and could there be a possibility of preventing harm before hand or at least warning or logging for say someone who overviews those queries later?

And most importantly — all these via an excellent GUI with clear demarcations and settings and we’ll documented (Apple might struggle with documentation; so LLMs might help them there)

My point is — why the hell are we waiting for these companies to be good folks? Why not push them behind a safety layer?

I mean CLI asks .. can I access this folder? Run this program? Download this? But they can just do that if they want! Make them ask those questions like apps asks on phones for location, mic, camera access.

> I mean CLI asks .. can I access this folder? Run this program? Download this? But they can just do that if they want! Make them ask those questions like apps asks on phones for location, mic, camera access.

Basicaly an EDR

Indeed, the world would be a much nicer place if only firewalls and Unix permissions existed...

When you delete a message after that the old message remains selected and so if you hit delete again thinking the last time didn’t do the trick, you deleted another message and now go to deleted messages and try to find what you deleted.

The app has a phantom message even in empty folders that it keeps selected. Unread bubble and nothing else, an empty message. You can’t even delete it. Sometimes it persists between app restarts.

It shows unread count on a folder just because it feels like it.

It’s a long list.

If a Govt decides that I am pretty sure they won't stop at anything but TLD level banning. Besides I don't know about other countries (or EU) but I won't be surprised if our giant industrious neighbour already has infrastructure in place just for such Trumpian shenanigans :)

At this point US has close to zero (if not negative) "soft" power.

This is what democrats and Hollywood are for. Some people still believe in them.

Access to US market? Is that a joke you are trying to crack? An “access” that literally depends upon how loud the orange fool farted on the commode that morning — that access and that market? I mean do you really not see what’s happening or you are just being a nice contrarian? Because this baffles me.

It's still a very rich market and I'm mostly looking to a post Trump world. I completely understand other countries are going to be much more dubious about giving things up permanently for long term promises but things like not blocking sites or allowing US access to the markets both of which can be easily in response to another Trump-esque flailing is a much easier ask and negotiation.

I'm not saying things will return to the pre-Trump semi-hegemony but I do think it's over the top to think the US economy will have zero soft power in the years after Trump too.

> Trade and tarriff relief are an option still.

That surely is running out of steam. Everyone's got whiplash from trying to watch America and it's tariffs. How do you know it won't be applied anyway, or forgiven for whatever flavour of the day policy it changes to.

There is very little point in conceding to it when you'll have another opportunity for something else that might be more amicable before the inks dry on that tariff.

Would be a good reason for the EU to start a 200% tariff for US software and cloud services then.

How would this work? Wouldn't a reciprocal tariff with identical parameters by the US against EU tech companies completely obliterate EU tech landscape?

Most EU tech companies probably have primarily European customers (given that services export from the US to the EU is much larger than the other way around). Second, all those EU customers are looking for EU alternatives that do not have a huge tariff.

Reciprocal tariffs would (for the EU) hurt export of goods much more, since that is where the EU has a large surplus.

The number of tech companies matters less than their scale. SAP, Spotify, and Dassault Systèmes likely have more economic impact than ten thousand tiny software shops combined. And notably, all three derive a huge portion of their revenue from the US market.

The US simply has more numerous and more important companies that rely on being able to freely export their services globally. The leverage here is with Europeans not only because of this asymmetry but because there is also more political appetite there to punish America than there is in America to punish Europe.

...and collapse their own economies in the process

> Trade and tarriff relief are an option still

Are they though? Trump tried to use them to get ownership of Greenland a few weeks ago and just gave up. Then he tried to bully Canada again, and also gave up again. I think at this point nobody takes his offers of relief or threats seriously anymore, since any deal you make can be invalidated a couple weeks later.

There's a huge range of stuff way below trying to annex Greenland or the strong arming he tried to use against Greenland. This thread was talking about how the US could get countries to not block their free anti-censorship VPN not territory annexation. It's a way smaller ask, comparing them borders on absurd.

I was not clear, I am not saying telling Canada not to make a deal with China is the same as telling the UK not to limit porn.

I am saying we have seen multiple instances where countries have stopped considering Trump's deals, cause they cannot be relied on.

Tarriff relief isn't much of an option as of a few mins ago...

There are still loads of completely legally valid tariff and other trade barriers ripe for negotiation that existed long before the ill named 2025 "Freedom Day".

Bro literally nobody trusts you any more. We do what you say, you put tariffs on us, we don't do what you say, you put tariffs on us.

We don't care any more. We don't like you. Do you understand?

Such an irony that there are two sides trying to control the Internet in their own lovely ways and in the end it's the people who will have to suffer one way or the other. But I do think countries around the world should have a hard look at how the Internet is, even today, de facto controlled by the US. Take ".com" and ".net" domains for example. Like there are efforts underway to get away from SWIFT (and hopefully one day USD as well), this should be independent. In a way, at least in the long term, this US administration might be a net positive for the world at least in the term of depolarisation. Or maybe the focal points will shift from existing ones to new ones.

You think you want US influence to weaken, but you may feel very differently should it happen. There is a lot you’re taking for granted.

These days what people receive of the US influence is mostly interference in politics to favour the far-right, military threats and economic war through tariffs. As well as just random verbal attacks on local politicians on local matters.

I'm sure there is a positive side to the US influence, but it's well hidden and they definitely don't advertise it.

Since you guys voted for Trump 2 it's guaranteed and it's happening right now. But, at least you deserve it.