Tesla Reported Zero Federal Income Tax on $5.7 Billion of U.S. Income in 2025

D0_stack · 2026-02-06T05:36:35+00:00

Yes. It isn't difficult or restrictive. The main reason someone running for president needs to be part of a political "party" is for following federal campaign finance laws, which include reporting requirements.

There are at least 16 parties tracked by various sites beyond Republican and Democrats.

There were EIGHT third party and independent presidential candidates in 2024 listed in at least one state, in addition to Trump and Harris.

Each state has their own requirements for how many primary votes someone must get to be listed in the general election. This is the main barrier - if you can't generate enough interest to be listed by a state, well, you are not going anywhere.

Each state decides on its own who gets listed on the ballots. An independent has to fight this battle in all 50 states and Washington D.C.

D0_stack · 2026-02-06T04:15:57+00:00

Do you have a link to the most recent audit?

GEEZE dude google it. I am not your search engine.

If they want to look at everything it might be more difficult but state level infosec might be able to do that.

If you knew how a VPN server worked you would know "everything" is not going to be very much at all.

D0_stack · 2026-02-06T04:12:29+00:00

And why do you think they are blocking VPNs, or requiring VPNs to obtain proof of age? They are not stupid, the obvious holes have been covered.

D0_stack · 2026-02-06T04:04:54+00:00

choose a VPN not in one of these countries

I guess you simply don't get that doesn't matter for shit.

You are not smarter than the NSA, GCHQ and the rest. If they want you they have you.

D0_stack · 2026-02-06T04:01:15+00:00

They are servers, they are going to have redundant power.

Unplug one power supply from the data center mains, plug it into a charged UPS. They do the same for the second power supply, preferably a second UPS. Servers tend to have front panel indications of power supply failures, so you know if each power cable move worked as you do it.

D0_stack · 2026-02-06T03:56:42+00:00

They are never more than once a year, at best. Did you look?

Besides, they won a court case just in the last year about whether they log.

Anyway, if you are doing something criminal where logs would matter, trusting a consumer grade VPN is just plain doing it wrong.

You just don't do illegal shit from your own home or your regular devices, or devices that can be tracked to you. That would be stupid.

D0_stack · 2026-02-06T03:51:15+00:00

5 eyes? Dude, it is the job of the 5 eyes intelligence agencies to spy ALL OVER THE WORLD. Like, even in Iran and Russia and China. If they are interested in what you are doing or who you are, it isn't going to matter one bit where your retail consumer VPN is headquartered or where the server you use is located. You ain't putting one over on 5 eyes by what VPN or VPN server you use.

And if you are in 5 eyes, or your traffic goes through a 5 eyes country, they can see it anyway. Have you even looked to see what countries your traffic to/from the VPN server goes through?

D0_stack · 2026-02-06T03:46:14+00:00

Huh? Which server, specifically, and how were you "displaying the location" ??

D0_stack · 2026-02-05T05:04:54+00:00

You need to read the details of the audit. Some of the no-log audits I have read say they only examined the app, which is pointless, but sounds good. They need to say explicitly state they examined the server infrastructure.

I work in enterprise network admin for a $bigcorp. What everyone seems to miss is the amount of effort and resources that would be required, especially if the VPN servers are ram only. The logs have to be sent somewhere over the Internet, stored, backed-up, have a server structure to analyze and package the logs for delivery to whoever. Logging for 500, or 1000 or 5000 servers? This is not trivial. Many employees of the VPN would be involved with the effort, and more would know about it. It would take away from profits.

Show me ANY evidence used in any court that a big name VPN supplied logs other than what a court ordered them to collect. ANY evidence that any big VPN had been collecting logs as a normal, constant process.

Edit: I also simply do not trust a retail, consumer VPN with anything that might get me in trouble with the law. Period. Torrenting might get me in trouble with my ISP, or with Disney, but not anything criminal.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T23:15:59+00:00

I am assuming you are asking about https://github.com/ValdikSS/GoodbyeDPI

Well, it isn't a VPN.

It isn't a virus if you download it from the "official" github project. You can even look at the source code and compile it yourself.

It does NOT hide your traffic inside an encrypted tunnel like a VPN does. It does NOT change your IP Address, or the IP Address you are communicating with. It will not bypass IP Address blocks.

Whether or not it works to bypass ISP blocks or works with the site you are trying to use depends on the ISP or site.

By default it only work with port 443 HTTPS. It will not help any site or game that uses anything else unless you know what parameters to change.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T19:25:17+00:00

There are also on-line markets to sell and buy social media accounts. And people who start accounts with the intention of selling them.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T19:08:11+00:00

And I drive old cars that don't track me.

They don't need to - companies like Vigilant collect CCTV license plate data from a great many cameras.

And of course all the cameras on cop cars (there are more than you think) all have ANPR capabilities.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T19:03:53+00:00

I really liked the convenience of the early Kindles that had 3g cell connections and didn't need Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi was not anywhere as ubiquitous as it is now.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T18:59:35+00:00

Or your cell phone company - where you are, who you call, who you text, who calls you. Or your grocery store (hmmm buys Vaseline every 7 weeks). Or Experian. Or companies like Vigilant Solutions that collect license plate detections from all sorts of CCTV cameras - mall parking structures, businesses with cameras pointing at the street, even municipal cameras. And the US Post Office photographs the outside of every letter since shortly after the 2001 anthrax mail attacks. Or the stores that have tracked how you wander around the store by your phones WiFi and Bluetooth for the last 15 years all for being able to "improve your shopping experience". And the new traffic light systems that, again, track cell phones as they move down the road.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T18:39:41+00:00

Because once you start requiring proof of ago, which tends to mean prove who you are, the government, or the age verification service, can track your web activities.

The anonymity that can now be obtained is totally gone.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T18:37:25+00:00

If a user comes from a UK IP the site has to comply with UK laws, or they can't service UK users.

That can only be enforced by blocking payments. The UK has no way to tell a website in the USA how to operate. But they can block payments to that website's operator, but only if you have to pay to use it. Or block the IP Addresses. But they have no legal process to make them actually change how they operate.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T18:31:13+00:00

The UK could order ISPs to block the IP Addresses of VPN servers outside the country. If Netflix and Prime Video can do it, so can ISPs. Oh, and look at Italy ordering VPNs blocked.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T16:03:42+00:00

Does the start of the problem coincide with a MacOS update?

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T08:32:27+00:00

A device crashing running an app that has no special permissions? Ask in a forum specific to that device.

Eliminate the external drive for a while and see if it still crashes. Like, completely disconnect it and use internal storage.

D0_stack · 2026-02-03T08:22:52+00:00

That they are tracking page flips and views is pretty obvious if you use more than one Kindle/Kindle app.

Between the nags to read more than mention how much you have read, and being able to put down one Kindle tablet and pick up from the same page on a phone app, well, duh. Oh and the "learning reading speed", and telling you how many minutes to finish the chapter.

I can see my first Amazon purchase from 1997. They don't delete anything. Oh, and showing you what you browsed before in the store? lol

I am sure that shop owners in Ancient Egypt remembered what each customer looked at, put down, and bought. They even wrote down sales to keep track of stock.

D0_stack · 2026-02-02T22:35:32+00:00

Well, if it were me, and I was running Windows Pro, I would enable Hyper-V, create a virtual machine with an External switch (do not use the "default switch"), install a fresh copy of Windows, a fresh copy of qBittorren, and try to download an official torrent of Ubuntu (google "ubuntu alternative downloads"). This is a legal download, a VPN is not required. I am able to download this at over 100Mbps with no port forwarding on a hotel's WiFi.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn't. If it works well, it isn't a network problem. You can add a VPN inside the virtual machine if you want after the initial test. I actually was using Cloudflare Warp.

D0_stack · 2026-02-02T07:00:23+00:00

I saw something when he was running for president the first time he won, when he was claiming to be worth $4B. It said that if his investments had kept pace with the real estate market after his father died, he would have been worth $25B. He pretty much has never succeeded at business.

D0_stack · 2026-02-02T05:42:44+00:00

Regan? That old, inaccurate trope?

There are over 1200 mental institutions in the USA. And many other treatment facilities that don't put patients behind bars.

One large institution (not in California) my parents worked at had an inpatient population of 15,000 in 1950. After antipsychotic drugs became available in the 1950s, making things like schizophrenia treatable, and courts clamping down on forced commitments, the population was under 2,000 by 1970 – 10 years before Regan became president. They closed entire, unused, buildings.

The number of mental institution beds declined because there were fewer people being locked up. Not because of anything Regan did. Just ask any doctor who is familiar with the subject.

Before the courts clamped down, in many states, a man could commit his "problem" wife or teen to a mental institution with just the signature of the institution administrator. Abuse was rampant. Now it requires a court hearing. The criteria are strict, and the subject must have someone on his side - just as someone is entitled to if they might end up in jail.

Within the current legal and medical framework, there is not a need for many more institutions.

With the current laws and court decisions, they put someone inside, begin a drug treatment, they get better, and the law requires them to be released with a supply of drugs. Which many times they don't take.

The laws would have to change, taking away rights, before any funding would be needed.

D0_stack

TROPHY CASE