But officials and experts stress a U.S. operation is unlikely, and the scenarios are conceptual

Sooooo… officials and experts are too terrified or too stupid to face reality.

We need to build an effective insurgent network, now, and not after the invasion has happened.

For many places, it’s operational inertia. If you’ve had a hosting account at the same place since 1998, you’re bound to still have username/password access to services like FTP even though other (and better) options exist.

And then there is the issue of sole control. Many greybeards like myself still run traditional username/password auth on services because,

1. We have whitelisted our IP address, and if dynamic, keep that whitelist updated
2. That outside of said whitelisting, the service is a quasi-honeypot meant to protect the machine as a whole. Any connection made from outside the address space of my ISP, by anyone else, is by default considered malicious, and is banned instantly as a precaution. They don’t even get the opportunity to attempt a login; merely connecting to said service is sufficient evidence of hostile intent.

So while my setup is not ideal, it is ideal for myself. if I had anyone else as co-admin, or even clients, things would get stupidly complicated very quickly. But since it’s just me…

Fighting the US force gun vs. gun is just silly

Yes, and? Force vs force is stupid. No military could win in a toe-to-toe conflict with America.

But running a guerrilla insurgency without weapons? That’s even worse than stupid. You might as well explicitly line up to be shot.

Now, the efficient method is to pick up the tools and supplies that they drop. But you gotta make them drop shit in the first place, and then you’re limited to what they drop.

My 86-yo father is in the opening innings of dementia, and even he is successfully reading the writing on the wall. And this, despite a 5th grade education and a lifetime of blue collar work.

He’s currently trying to financially coerce my nephew to move back out of Alberta, as in his mind the agriculture and oil sands of that province will be one of Trump’s first objectives. I really can’t disagree with that analysis.

Hell, his side of the family came within a hair’s breadth of ending up in a Nazi concentration camp, so he’s always had a dim view of authoritarianism. About the only way he’s ever leaned in that direction is when politicians followed through with everything they said they were going to do. Such as Pierre Trudeau – he hated the guy with a passion, but deeply respected how he always did pretty much exactly what he said he was going to do. No lies, no bait-and-switch, just an exceedingly honest (albeit arrogant) politician.

For those who are good at smuggling, also consider the non-Canadian (non-gibbled) variant of the FN P90:

• This is a bullpup semi automatic that works exceptionally well in the urban environment.
• The short barrel variety can be equally as mobile inside of structures as a sawed-off shotgun, if not more so. Plus, far less telegraphing of your presence (muzzle precession) as you go around corners compared to non-bullpup long guns.
• Each of its 3 magazines can hold 50 rounds, and two magazines can be stored inside the shoulder stock.
• The brass is ejected straight downwards, and the grip is totally ambidextrous, which means it can be handed off between righties and lefties with zero mods needed. No hot brass to the face simply because the prior user was differently-handed.
• The UN ammo that is standard for it has limited range, which means it is less likely to have secondary down range casualties, yet still comes in a wide variety of slug types including body-armour-piercing.

If you want to see this weapon in use, pick up any season of Stargate SG1.

Downside is that the ammo isn’t cheap. In fact, it’s stupidly expensive. But the P90 is also used by many U.S. divisions such as the Secret Service, so the ammo can be “acquired”.

Which is why we call them conservatives instead of progressives. Everything they do is in the name of fighting material improvements in favour of benefitting their Parasite-Class donors.

Okay, maybe I’ve been reading too many historical accounts as of late, but the title by itself sounded like a military action meant to round up the Cree in order to violently/forcibly intern/confine them back onto their reservation.

Yes, I’ve read the article. It’s the phrasing of the TITLE that gave me such pause the moment I first saw it.

Instead, last year, a bombshell research paper authored by several Canadian neurologists and neuroscientists concluded that there was in fact no mystery disease, and that the patients had all likely suffered from previously known neurological, medical, or psychiatric conditions. The New Brunswick cluster was, one of the paper’s authors told the BBC, a “house of cards”.

500+ patients, all in one highly geographically-constrained area, makes this conclusion as suspicious as a fleet of black Ford Excursions, all filled with men in black suits, saying “nothing is going on here, carry on.”

TL;DR: BULLSHIT.

I wish Canada had a politically-independent research arm that could look into any possible subject, free of interference and with the authority of a national police force, only staffed with highly-accredited experts from every field. They would have a mandate to follow political and economic corruption and harms to the environment and peoples of Canada without censure or blowback, with the only requirement being full transparency and accountability. And with payroll bonuses being drawn from fines and other financial judgements such that they are as incentivized as possible to go after the biggest fish, first.

Now granted, the existence of this agency could very well mean the end of many political careers, as well as that of most any conservative political party. But that would be one of the small but important ways we reinforce democracy for the people, instead of letting the Parasite Class call all the shots.

Edit: just realized that most conservatives would violently push back against any open and fully transparent fact-finding organization that was a crown-funded research arm. Because it’s fact-finding, so therefore it’s intolerable.

75 years ago there were such few restaurants that margins were decent and owners could pay their staff well. A mid-range restaurant could have chefs and even servers earn decent wages.

Now there are 100× more restaurants per capita than there were back then, and margins are razor-thin and staff are being paid peanuts.

Perhaps. But F-Droid in particular has some pretty serious issues that cannot just be hand-waved away.

People certainly don’t believe that corporate schilling when it comes to home computers and cars.

Show me a single desktop/laptop computer manufacturer - aside from Apple - that deeply ties the software to the hardware.

Phones are different because the OS needs to be closely tweaked to work properly (and I would argue more specifically, functionally) on the phone. It’s why releases of custom ROMs are so model-specific. You cannot take a ROM for a Pixel XL and expect it to even boot on a Pixel 4 XL, much less a OnePlus. That kind of deep integration involves many specific settings because hardware is so wildly varied between models.

And car manufacturers can and do invalidate warranties based on software… a brand-new vehicle that has been “tuned” can and will have the warranty for a broken part invalidated if the manufacturer can demonstrate that the custom tuning software installed merely had the capability to affect the part in question. Since it’s not their software, they have no control over it to prevent it from driving the part beyond spec and breaking the part in question. Therefore, the onus is on the owner to prove that they never drove the vehicle such that the tune pushed the part beyond spec, and since you cannot prove a negative, good luck with that.

My BiL works at a dealership, and has seen many dozens of cases over the years where a warranty on a tune, chipped, delete, or software-modded vehicle was successfully denied. Hell, these days even software updates failing to be installed can cause a warranty to be denied if said updates correct a manufacturer’s mistake in the currently-installed software.

Also why are you letting ai do the thinking for you in that second link?

Because according to several different search engines, no-one has ever published any kind of answer to this kind of a question. The sales data is publicly available for each model, but nothing in aggregate when presented against the entire Android ecosystem.

Now granted, my view on AI is exceedingly dim. Even I take its answers at much more than arm’s length. But after poking at the sales figures for select models and comparing them against that of the entire ecosystem, I found its answer to be reasonably rational enough to be linked to.

in Canada, you cannot invalidate a hardware warranty based on the software that’s installed.

Software can most certainly drive hardware beyond its specs, resulting in physical damage.

Just try and tune a brand-new vehicle with third-party software, and then try to get warranty work done on a related part that broke. The manufacturer can and will successfully deny that warranty based on how that tune had the capability to drive the part beyond spec, thereby directly causing the failure… my BiL works at a dealership and has seen it happen dozens of times. Even skipping software updates can run the risk of voiding your vehicle’s warranty these days, when said updates are meant to correct software that doesn’t control the hardware correctly.

Phones are no different. If your custom OS has the ability to drive a speaker to volumes that are beyond its spec, that invalidates the warranty even if you never drove the volume that high. Manufacturers don’t have to prove that you actually did (and how can they, when it’s no longer their software that’s in control?), only that the custom software made it possible to do so. It’s up to you to then prove that you never did, and good luck with that.

And the App Store is one of the things I clearly pointed out as needing improvement, albeit not with this exact example. Apple makes more than enough money off of developer fees to hire more people to police standards and provide a more effective method of dealing with developer complaints and issues without resorting to highly error-prone automation.

I mean, I never said Apple was perfect, only that they are clearly doing something “more right” than others, as evidenced by consumer choice… within North America, Apple phones out-number Android (not specific brands, all Android phones, COMBINED) by 16%. As in, Apple has a market share of 58% in North America.

It’s only elsewhere in the world, where much poorer populations are simply not able to afford Apple products, where Android dominates. And even there, those who have the money to do so tend to choose Apple phones.

You can already do all of that with some phones that are already on the market and which have decently current specs and tech.

…Where are the consumers clamouring for those phones? Why are those phones owned almost exclusively by enthusiasts and tinkerers? Why are production runs so small that these manufacturers struggle to remain profitable going concerns?

Maybe it’s because there is zero consumer demand for what you are asking for?

Vanishingly few people want to tinker with their phones. Most just want something that works without having to dick around with it. And having an unlocked boot loader means zero warranty, because no sane manufacturer is going to warranty something they have no quality control over

The simple fact is that there already are phones that give consumers total control over OS and platform. And yet, almost no-one is turning to these phones because that’s not what they want.

Then focus on forcing all Android devices to be totally unlocked and let consumers decide whether they want a freedom-based and chaotic ecosystem, or a locked-down and orderly ecosystem.

I mean, isn’t the free market all about letting consumers decide?

And if sideloading and unlocked bootloaders were so vital to consumers, wouldn’t those manufacturers making those devices be seeing overwhelming market demand?

The point being, bootloaders are locked for security reasons, and to maintain separation between warranty concerns. That’s why most Android devices with unlockable bootloaders require OEM codes, such that warranties on those devices can be invalidated due to no longer being within the provider’s control. It would be moronic for any manufacturer to warranty anything that is not within their control.

And look at that: less than 1% of Android phones currently being used have said directly-unlockable bootloaders. And the availability of phones with directly-unlockable bootloaders has been shrinking rapidly as of late. I wonder how many of those have actually been unlocked.

Honestly, I am not seeing any material consumer demand for said directly-unlocked phones, otherwise manufacturers would have those phones as permanent best-sellers and seek to make more of the same.

Yeah, Apple has a lot of shitty restrictions in its walled garden. Firefox not being able to use its own rendering engine being a big one for me. And there are plenty more, such as a lack of responsiveness to legitimate devs when they report copycat rip-offs.

But as the Android ecosystem has shown, a breakdown of the walled garden has seen malware and scams explode in number. Many of the secondary app stores just don’t have the resources and tools to keep users safe.

Allowing alternative walled gardens is not the answer. Dramatically lowering the barriers to legitimate app developers is.

According to a staff email obtained by VGC, the decision is a cost-cutting measure and not related to the studio unionizing.

Aaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa…

inhales deeply

BULLSHIT.

I’m not even a gamer, and I can smell the anti-union stench from the far side of the country.

The Beaverton really needs to stick to satire, it was never meant as an advice column.

There has never been a communist country; only countries run by communist parties.

They were “communist” just as much as North Korea is “democratic”.

Just because a word exists in a name, doesn’t mean that the word actually applies in any fashion whatsoever. The political parties of both the USSR and China were as communist as fish are birds. Which is to say, absolutely not. They wore “communism” as a thin veneer of legitimacy over a bulwark of feudalistic authoritarianism.

And the real clue is in the name: Communism. Communal. No real leaders aside from administrative functionaries. Classless and cooperative. Everything that the USSR and China never was.

Edit: Russia became communist in 1917. By every metric with which you could possibly measure communism, it was dead by 1918.

Where is John Wick with diplomatic immunity when you need him?

Canada seriously needs diplomats who know significant levels of mixed martial arts and other forms of defence. And then we need to attach them to groups like this.

Officers like that desperately need to be made to eat their truncheons. Preferably sideways.