That did not quite go according to plan either. Definitely not a dictatorship but not exactly clean and the end result is not so far off from where they started. Venezuela could easily end up worse than it is today.
You’d be surprised. Last month on a visit to the U.S., 8/10 Uber drivers I had were Venezuelan. I’m a fluent Spanish speaker so I engaged in this very topic. The vast majority of them wanted Maduro out, and the fastest way to that is through U.S. intervention. They were not opposed to this.
1. This is a bit of a selection bias, since they are in the US, they aren't going to be the ones in the line of fire. It's all upshot for them.
2. Turn back the clock two decades ago, I'm sure plenty of ex-pat Iraqis wanted Saddam out, but half a million dead and a ten-year civil war and also fucking ISIS may have been a bit above what they were willing to pay. If I were living in a country ruled by a deranged autocrat (...), I too would like to see him removed, but that doesn't mean I'd invite war over it. (And the knives-out-nightly-disappearance repression that will inevitably follow.)
3. Given who Trump sucks up to and appoints, I'm sure he'll find his own monster to replace Maduro with. (The US track record with this in the Americas has been incredibly awful, but I've no doubt that he can set a new lowest bar.) He sure as shit won't be putting some lady who won a peace prize in charge.
Yes, I suppose you have successfully provided a counter-argument to my point, and I have to concede it - there are people with more skin in the game than the average MAGA who want to stick their former neighbours' hands in the fire, to check if it is hot.
Political expats and exiles do tend to favor invasions of their countries more than the people who live in them do, and I've not considered their viewpoints in this.
Like distributing an iOS app in France that uses encryption? What a pain in the ass that is.
The bureaucracy was painful enough that we just removed from the French App Store and when someone complains we tell them to write their representatives to stop with these misguided laws.
Excuse me, monsieur, do you have a license for that math?
You can't sell encryption in France if you haven't proved it actually is strong encryption and not a rot13 or something, which is actually a _very_ good idea.
Could the implementation be better? Knowing french admin, 100% yes, but complaining about the law itself is, in my opinion, misguided. This is an overall good law that doesn't came from nowhere.
My understanding is that it’s a loose autobiography.
I read through two thirds of it during Covid. I think it’s has an unfair reputation of being a challenging read; yes you’ll encounter new vocabulary, but the narrative itself is really interesting and clear.
I had the pleasure of recently meeting Leonard and spending a couple weeks together. What a unique and interesting person. I think he’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. His stories are captivating. Could spend a very long time chatting with him.
I'd read he met Ross Ulbricht in USP Tucson when they were both serving life without the possibility of parole. I hope they can reconnect now that they're both free.
The most active 80 year old I’ve seen. Lots of travel, speaking at conferencing, networking in his professional circles.
Believe it or not, he’s a fairly conservative person. He’d never done yoga, breath work, sauna, cold plunge, saline IVs. I had the honor of pushing him out of his comfort zone a bit with the hippy health stuff.
He’s speed run learning how to use a smartphone and loves using it to connect all the people he meets together.
I think that was the most intriguing part of Leonard- his ability to pick up a new concept in minutes and apply it expertly. We were discussing modern cryptography and he was able to grok it in < 5 minutes.
Yes, he and Ross are still friends today. If I understand correctly they recently met up for the first time outside of prison.
I’m kind of perplexed by the way Ross Ulbricht is held up as a hero after he was caught spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire hitmen to murder multiple people. Usually when I bring this up people try to change the subject to the FBI agent who tried to steal crypto or they suggest that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the claims (the court found that by a preponderance of the evidence he sent the messages). There are also claims that because they didn’t pursue those charges they do t “count” despite the preponderance of evidence. Some people just aren’t aware at all.
It’s a strange internet phenomenon where people seem to want him to be a folk hero and they’re willing to ignore or use mental gymnastics to wash away the fact that he was spending a lot of money to murder several people.
The jury is out on whether the accounts linked to the hiring of the 'hitmen' was exclusively under the control of Ross Ulbricht.
The 'preponderance' was found by a judge, not a jury, so it's a different threshold than say demanding a jury in a civil suit where the jury would make a finding on preponderance. You effectively have a jury of one, where that jury member is highly intertwined with the same federal government that is prosecuting the crime, in a way that would surely eliminate them in voire dire for an impartial jury.
This is what I’m talking about: There was apparently a preponderance of evidence that messages were sent and money was transferred to have people killed. There was motive. There was evidence. A court reviewed it. It was introduced in a trial.
Yet there’s this desire to downplay it or wish it all away as a conspiracy against him. You have to suspend belief and assume that someone else sent the messages or that they were fabricated. It’s all really hard to believe unless you’re in the mindset that he’s a hero and you need to explain away the inconvenient parts of his history that detract from the person people wish he was.
My app’s organization is outside the “west”. So in order to complete verification with Google I had to pay some subcontractor of Dunn&Bradstreet almost $500 to get the DUNS. Then I had to get an original certified copy of the organization’s registration from the national registry. Then have an official notarized translation to English and get all that apostilled (another $500 through a service).
Also, Google support refused to tell me what set of documents they would accept. I had to figure it out myself.
Primal.net and yakihonne.com speak nostr protocol and are both pretty slick implementations.
Primal recently launched “build your own algorithm” along with a feed marketplace.
P2P doesn’t work for social, see SecureScuttleButt. Rabble has moved pretty firmly into the Nostr camp. He’s one of the top minds thinking about decentralized social media. Study nostr and don’t dismiss the relay model lightly.
If Cipherwill goes out of business, we'll make sure to share your data with you so you won't be stuck without a solution. Plus, Cipherwill's data is hosted on blockchain, which helps ensure we won't go out of service.
Wow, super cool! I love the unique styling. Haven’t seen that before.
I (well, GPT-4) built freeqrgenerator.app specifically for my wife because she kept using the malicious sites that inject a redirect that inevitably die and stop working.
Thinking I can retire mine and use yours instead on the domain.
Yeah, there are a lot of annoying sites like that. Your site is cool, it's streamlined and has a easy to remember name and you made it (with a little help) which is great.
It's hard to find, but here are two other generator sites that are free and nice to use.
reply