moving from iphone to stock android is arguably a downgrade in regards to security & privacy. a rough rule of thumb is grapheneOS on a pixel (security & privacy) > stock ios (security, and at least their business model isn't openly selling your data) > stock pixel (security only, bad privacy) > stock android (not great on both fronts)
Japan and most of Europe do not really use iMessage (Japan uses LINE, Europe generally uses WhatsApp), so I'm not sure exactly how iPhone market dominance is relevant to the previous commenter's point.
a large chunk of Georgian territory is occupied by Russia, Abkhazia is one (which essentially functions as basically a breakaway state but is de facto russian controlled), and South Ossetia (which essentially functions as a de facto Russian oblast). That's probably the issue.
hadn't heard of this project before, but their github does include instructions on how to claim it even in a network-less dedicated docker container if you're truly paranoid.
I wouldn’t trust it. I got the same email as OP and checked it out. I suspect they somehow embed the user’s private key in the output “proof” so that they can then start pushing malicious code to all your GitHub repositories. I wasn’t able to confirm that this is what actually happens, but it is definitely fishy.
If they genuinely wanted proof of account ownership there are other ways to do it. OAuth, for example.
> I suspect they somehow embed the user’s private key in the output “proof” so that they can then start pushing malicious code to all your GitHub repositories.
> I wasn’t able to confirm that this is what actually happens
So it's a baseless accusation, you can see exactly what happens.
"baseless accusation" is wild. have you not observed the result of 99.999999999999999999999% of emails that randomly tell people you are eligible for receiving some token allocation?
Different contracts between Twitch partners have different levels of ad density, as well as differing amounts of cuts of subs/bits taken by Twitch. It's pretty negligible though, and could have been kinda estimated previously. For example, Hasanabi is claimed to have one of the lowest ad density requirements on twitch (1 60 second ad per 1 hour of broadcast, plus 3 minute ad at end of broadcast) which does line up with him making less than multiple streamers with less subs than him (and with probable higher ad densities required by contract).
Yeah, this has nothing per se to do with exclusivity though. (As in, XX months exclusivity to Twitch. For those who don't know, every common partnered streamer already is exclusively bound to Twitch for livestreaming content. If he wants to stream somewhere else, he loses his partnership. (And yes, there are exceptions, old contracts, ...))
And "premium contracts" to keep talent were offered pretty much since day 1, just looked quite different back then. (Mainly just differentiated in sub share. For the last 2-3 years they also include better ad payouts (and a minimum of ad time), boni for minimum amount of hours streamed, etc.))
And... every streamer who only cares a bit about his business already knows, at least for the most part, what kind of contract other streamers are on.
So don't think there will be any (real) drama - but I also didn't see or hear of any extreme unexpected outliers.
Some people in the article either have no ties to the US at all or have renounced US citizenship, so it _will not_ be corrected next year as they don't file tax returns.
Regardless, this is chump change to the US government, and there are other larger lost amounts of money they should probably worry about anyway.
If you owe money to the IRS, you need to file a tax return whether you're a US citizen or not.
Now you might say, well what is the US gonna do if you don't?
Well, the people mentioned in the article receive Social Security (so "no ties to the US at all" is false), and you can 100% expect their SS checks to be garnished to cover debt to the IRS, as this happens all the time with unpaid back taxes.
So it's not going to be any free money at the end of the day.
The whole process would obviously take a few years, but literally all the systems are already in place for it. Nothing special even needs to be done. It'll just happen.
The unmentioned reality is that tying these payments to SS payouts helped millions of people - the ones who are least able to navigate complex government systems.
My understanding is that the current Netflix contract generally includes a clause preventing other streaming services from picking it up, leaving to only allowing network TV to buy rights. That's how One Day at a Time got saved, PopTV which is owned by CBS, so technically network, managed to buy the rights. However they aren't allowed to add it to CBS All Access like they do other Pop shows. Doesn't help that the Netflix demographic, _especially_ for shows with large fandoms, don't generally use network TV.
