For comparison, the construction cost of AlBoraq 200mph bullet train in Morroco is $5.3–5.7 billion in today's dollars. The line length is 200 miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Boraq

There is a sudden concerted international push for online age verification, and we do not know where this push originates from. That is the scariest thing about it.

It's not _completely_ shrouded in mystery - it started after Facebook got slapped by the EU for irresponsible handling of underage users, and since began a heavily funded lobbying push to drag competitors down with them. https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings...

Of course, it's probably also been coopted by the neverending stream of nanny-state political power grabs in both the US and EU.

I asked META itself:

The push for online age verification started gaining momentum globally, with several countries implementing regulations. Here's a brief timeline:

- 2022: The European Union introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA), establishing a framework for digital services accountability and content moderation.

- 2023:

    - *France*: Passed a law requiring age verification for social media and porn websites.

    - *UK*: Enacted the Online Safety Act, requiring "highly effective" age assurance for platforms accessible to children.

- 2024:

    - *Australia*: Announced plans to ban social media for under-16s.

    - *Italy*: Implemented mandatory age verification for sensitive content websites.

- 2025:

    - *Denmark*: Proposed banning social media for under-15s.

    - *Malaysia*: Required social media platforms to ban users under 16.

- 2026:

    - *EU*: Rolling out digital age verification across member states.

    - *Norway*: Proposed banning social media for under-15s.

    - *Spain*: Announced plans to ban social media access for under-16s.

It's true for a lot of things in Western countries.

Evident when the fight against "hate" was suddenly everywhere, and also during covid.

Politicians looks to each other. There’s nothing new in that.

There is only one problem with Meta: Facebook itself is like a TV show that has ran its course. He's riding off what he purchased: Instagram and WhatsApp, but being a product thief he cannot create anything new.

I still feel like he stole the word "meta" from the world. It was ours. Not his.

I wonder if one can start a company selling repairable cars, for example, be it electric or gasoline.

I went to school with a math genius who participated in international math Olympiads. Curiously he had no problem juggling multiple balls - and nobody taught him.

This freed capital is going into AI agent budgets. Expect lower quotas and higher prices

In what jurisdiction? He's in Russia

He's in the US.

I prefer this ISP blocking to their OfCom push where they tried to force companies worldwide to obey their regulations and make executives personally liable for actions of their users (an operator of a free forum, for example who has a full time job and runs a hobby forum in his free time).

I'm with you on this. I've been an early paid Antigravity IDE user. Their recent silent rug pull on quotas, where without any warning you get rate-limited for 5 days in the middle of code refactoring, enrages users, not simply making them unsatisfied with the product. It actually makes you hate the evil company.

I trust Telegram more: Putin never had any problems with Whatsapp, only with Telegram.

No end-to-end encryption by default. WhatsApp has.

No end-to-end encryption for groups. WhatsApp has.

No end-to-end encryption on desktop. WhatsApp has.

No break-in key-recovery. WhatsApp has.

Inferring Telegram's security from public statements of *checks notes* former KGB officer and FSB director -- agencies that wrote majority of the literature in maskirovka, isn't exactly reliable, wouldn't you agree?

Telegram has private chats. I don't pay attention to his words, indeed. Way before the Ukrainian war, Russia had a massive campaign trying to block Telegram and they failed on a technical level. This has never happened with WhatsApp.

Yeah it's really hard to block tally count of five IPs. https://telegramplayground.github.io/pyrogram/faq/what-are-t...

No wonder the great Russian firewall is struggling to keep TG at bay. Wake up.

>Yeah it's really hard to block tally count of five IPs.

They blocked 16m IPs, to the extent that it started affecting the entire Russian's internet stability, and Telegram was still available there: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/17/russia-blocks-...

>Wake up

Is that a demand? A slogan? I wonder how much your own wokeness affects your ability to absorb facts.

The server IPs are hard-coded into the Telegram client's source:

https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/d7deedfa33ddfa51c72a5...

You know you can just run

$ git clone https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram.git && cd Telegram && FILE="TMessagesProj/jni/tgnet/ConnectionsManager.cpp" && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'149.154.175.50' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'2001:b28:f23d:f001:0000:0000:0000:000a' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'149.154.167.51' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'95.161.76.100' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'2001:67c:4e8:f002:0000:0000:0000:000a' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'149.154.175.100' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'2001:b28:f23d:f003:0000:0000:0000:000a' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'149.154.167.91' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'2001:67c:4e8:f004:0000:0000:0000:000a' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'149.154.171.5' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1 && git log --reverse --format='%ad %h %s' --date=short -S'2001:b28:f23f:f005:0000:0000:0000:000a' -- "$FILE" | head -n 1

To get when the IPs first appeared, right? :D

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

2020-06-04 dceccae0b Update to 6.2.0 (1984)

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

2015-09-24 6bb7547f5 Update to 3.2.2

They've been the same IP addresses for ELEVEN years, and they precede the article you linked by THREE YEARS.

They're not playing the catch-up with Russian government. Either Russian government is completely incompetent in that they're blocking 3,000,000 IP addresses and failing, or they are LYING about attempting to block it, which would indicate Telegram is a Russian op.