Reddit allows you to appear anonymous to other Redditors, but Reddit knows who you are.

You can create an account anonymously, and you might be able to browse through a connection that can’t be tied to you, but you’ll be shadowbanned from the start.

It depends on the device.

If the device requires an account and uploads data to the cloud, it’s almost certain that they are recording your location (plus likely a heap of other sensor data). GPS receivers are in a lot of devices that are designed to track your location (like like smart watches, fitness trackers, cars, handheld GPS, PLBs, and so on). The tracking is often a key feature we want for our own benefit, we just don’t want or need that data to be used against us by advertisers and governments.

If you have a device that only receives GPS and has no wifi, bluetooth, or other radio or network connection, and doesn’t use a cloud account, then perhaps that device doesn’t track your location. I’d bet that there aren’t that many of those on the market though.

For sure, it’s a valid use case… connecting to wifi on an airplane.

I can’t help on Samsung. I haven’t had one in ages.

GPS is not bidirectional communication, so the systems themselves (ie GNSS) aren’t tracking you just because you receive the signal. But…

• In addition to GPS, airplane mode also doesn’t shut off the Wifi or bluetooth radios; it’s usually just the cell radio.
• Your phone OS has several ways of tracking and recording your location, activities, and movements, and it generally does this at all times. For example, Find My even works when the battery on an iPhone is “dead.”
• Phones may fallback to BTLE mesh networks (like AirTags), or do background WIFI location scanning to track and record your phone’s location. Turning these off does prevent you and 3rd party apps from using the features, just not the OS.

The companies definitely know. Knowledge levels, insights, and interdiction capabilities vary by company, but every media company knows about boxes like this, and the dude at the gas station who will sell you a thumb drive with movies on it, and the secondary markets for stolen passwords, usenet, kodi, and the hundreds of other ways.

Source: I worked in such a company for a kotra years.

Of course it’s artificial, but knowing that doesn’t change the reality for the people who have to pay the bills.

Competition and choice lowers prices. Government “investment” usually raise prices.

I guess this sorta thing still needs to be repeated, but it’s literally every retail product or service you buy that connects to the internet. The article covers some, but not all.

I don’t think so. I think the previous poster means that most insurers serve a nationwide (or international) audience. So in terms of pooled risk, the Florida hurricanes and California wildfires aren’t separate risk pools.

On your other point of comparison, we do have similar things in the states. Lots of gov programs that have “insurance” in the name, but if they ever were pooled risk insurance, they’ve morphed into social welfare programs a long time ago. They vary by state, and sometimes county, but they include Unemployment Insurance, Workers Compensation Insurance, Disability Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and even old age pension (called Social Security). Some of these, like Workers Compensation have private market competition, where others do not.

We also have agencies like FEMA that aren’t insurance, but have become a sorta relief mechanism for large scale catastrophic events. We also have things like the California Earthquake Authority, which provides earthquake insurance. I have no idea if it’s genuinely pooled risk or not, but it’s like an order of magnitude cheaper than commercial earthquake insurance was when we had before CEA existed.

Then we have a heap of programs and agencies that provide insurance (or assurance of some sort) to industries. FDIC insures bank deposits. FNMA, FHA, et al insure (or provide liquidity) to mortgage lenders. And on and on. There are probably more forms of state run or state sponsored insurance than any one person knows. There might even be some company or program called National Insurance, but not that I’m aware of.

It’s not new either. 20 years ago I interviewed at a company that did climate risk modeling for the reinsurance industry (among other risk modeling).

Linux works broadly across a wide range of hardware, but it’s not 100%. You can ``very easily test hardware compatibility with a Live USB install of most Linux distros. Windows is a way bigger driver pain in the ass if you ask me.

One of my all time faves.

I think we’re using “privatized” to mean different things. You’re saying airlines should pay for their own security. That’s a reasonable position.

This administration would never let that happen. Privatization to them is about robbing the public trust. They would keep it a taxpayer funded program, but they’d triple the budget, halve the staff, and decimate the effectiveness. They don’t care how dysfunctional or corrupt it is; it’s about stealing from the public in every way they can.

The Trump regime hates federal workers. They also want them all to quit, but so they can privatize airport security, not rethink or reduce it.

Recently learned about cachy and installed it yesterday to give it a try. I love it. It’s like arch, so that’s nice if you’re already familiar with arch, but a little less manual, and more functional out of the box; literally every bit of hardware wierdness on my 2in1 laptop just worked out of the box. Also, I love the fish terminal.

If you already use Android, Graphene is even easier than switching to Linux. It’s a very well-polished, well documented, and just a dead-ass simple process.

Ah, I didn’t initially catch that it applies to tax year 2026.

I did a little reading this morning on case law of retroactive taxes, and while I’m certain this would be litigated, not really sure where it would land. It might depend on the jurisdictions that hear the case. I’m not at all optimistic that they’ll collect what they think they will, but they have sure attempted to craft it to tax people before they can exit.

I’m well aware. California loves to tax people as residents and not give them the benefits of residency. I’ve lived here my whole life. It’s mostly the plebs they get with that, like you don’t get in state tuition, but you get to pay state income tax. But if I were a billionaire, the 50 million I’m not paying the state could fund a lot of careful legal and tax planning.

Why would a single resident billionaire continue to remain a resident if this passes? It’s not like they can’t come here and spend time here while being a resident of another state. Hard to see how this would make a meaningful bump to state revenue.

The ideal thing is to actually move to Darktable. https://mathiashueber.com/migrate-from-lightroom-to-open-source-alternative/

Be prepared to commit some time to the transition though. I installed darktable and gave it a try a couple days ago. There’s enough similarity to make you think it’ll be an easy transition, but it sure wasn’t for me. It took me an hour to do something that would have taken 5 mins in Lightroom. I’m glad to have it, and it seems like a powerful tool, so I’m not complaining, just sayin… be prepared to commit some time to learning where everything is.

it’s not even obscurity; it’s logged publicly.