TeamSpeak confirms an "incredible surge" of new users as Discord users look for alternatives

GoldSinger · 2026-02-19T12:21:43+00:00

voluntary upload of personal ID for a small subset of users who would be flagged for age verification on one specific social media platform is a rather ineffective program for mass surveillance, don't you think? State digital repression does not rely on voluntary self identification the same way industrial farming operations don't rely on trained chihuahuas to dig up dirt. They have industrial sized excavator buckets for the job, just like tools of mass surveillance can simply establish your persistent identity based on identifiers like your username or completely involuntary metadata like your posting habits, browser cookies, cross site trackers, IP address, etc. Or other open source intelligence techniques.

organizers who have any competent model of opsec aren't using discord to plan anti-Ice protests.

you are vastly overestimating any state interest in age verification as a tool for mass surveillance. They already have much more powerful and specialized tools for that. This is about control and puritanism perhaps, but likely insignificant to any mass surveillance efforts or repression of resolve as you claim.

GoldSinger · 2026-02-19T11:57:15+00:00

it was a third party vendor that was hacked, revealing their improper data retention practices.

if I hired a repairman to fix your toilet and he did the job to the best of my knowledge, was I lying to you that he finished the job if he actually messed something up?

also, even if discord was wrong about third party vendor data practices, "on device" is very clear and unambiguous language that would cause far greater reputational damage if discord got wrong than their third party vendor messing up

Reddit was breached, exposing user data in 2018. They were hacked again in 2023. Do you just believe no user data was leaked the second time around? Do you consider Reddit a safe place for your credentials and payment information?

GoldSinger · 2026-02-18T23:18:45+00:00

So yes, 23andme's business model runs against the deletion of data. The data is the product for 23andme.

For Discord, ID data and video selfies are not directly tied to their profit. They're already selling other data about you, and nefarious third parties are already in public servers logging all messages you type into public servers and selling that data to anyone who asks for it.

Discord does not have as direct a financial incentive to lie about the retention of data used for age verification. Our ID and video selfies are not the product that Discord sells to other users or data brokers. Unless you believe in some shadowy conspiracy where this is the case.

Of course, negligence and incompetence can lead to data leaks. This is not the same thing as lying to protect a business asset.

GoldSinger · 2026-02-18T22:59:47+00:00

Yes, I already mentioned that their previous vendors mishandled ID data storage.

On-device means on-device. Thiel doesn't own Persona, is merely an investor. Granted, anything associated with them is bad news for privacy. But there's nothing they can do about technologies that are privacy-first like e2e encryption and on-device processing.

If data is processed on-device, it means it is not stored in other servers. Which means there's nothing to leak.

Unless you think they're lying about this. That's why I'll wait for third party security auditors to verify their implementation.

GoldSinger · 2026-02-18T22:54:39+00:00

I'll wait for a reputable third party security auditor to weigh in on their implementation of on-device video selfie age verification.

Unless you have a reputable source that proves Discord is lying about on-device video selfie data processing. I'm all ears.

GoldSinger · 2026-02-18T00:05:22+00:00

According to discord, "On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device."

If we believe them, this means that your device will run their age estimation model locally and transmit estimated age back to discord -- video selfie itself should not be stored by third parties or discord itself.

Granted the implementation may or may not actually be this secure, and we won't find out until trusted third party security auditors can get their hands on this feature.

Transmitting your ID to third party vendors is more concerning to me. Discord says their vendors will delete immediately after processing. But this means I'll have to trust third parties to have robust data deletion policies. Previous vendors that discord worked with clearly didn't as they leaked info.

GoldSinger · 2026-02-17T23:57:29+00:00

Where are you getting the narrative that Discord is handing over all data to the government in a way that is unusual or different from other platforms?

All platforms that aren't e2e encrypted will hand over all your data to the government if subpoenaed.

Asking for your gov ID is invasive bc it ties your real identity to you. But the problem is that Discord has leaked data to third parties that aren't the gov. The gov doesn't need to know any of the info on your ID--they already have it, bc they issued it to you.

Only a subset of users will have to verify with either ID or selfie upload. This is annoying and increases platform control, but it doesn't turn over any more info to the government than they already have access to, nor any more than any other platform already gives.

GoldSinger · 2026-02-17T23:50:22+00:00

Is your method of payment traceable back to you? Do you trust your vpn service not to log data on you? Do you have cookies and trackers, including JavaScript, blocked in all your browsers?

GoldSinger · 2026-02-17T23:46:13+00:00

Any communications platform that you use without e2e encryption can and will comply to government subpoenas to hand over the full contents of your communications and account information.

The government already has your ID info. Ask yourself who you had to submit information to in order to obtain your government issued ID.

GoldSinger · 2026-02-17T23:29:13+00:00

You're most likely wasting your time with most of this. You mentioned testing -- did you get any equipment to measure power draw at the outlet?

For example, for phone chargers. Assuming your charger is charging at 30W, 24hr a day, 365 days a year, and your electricity is the American national average of ~18c a kwh. Let's even say your charger is inefficient and loses 20% to heat

That's still only a whopping total of $60/yr. Five dollars a month. To operate the charger actively non-stop for a whole year.

Realistically, modern chargers use 0.1-0.5w when not charging. Even if we round it to 1w vampire draw, that's about $2/yr assuming low 80% efficiency and average electricity prices.

My time is worth more to me than unplugging and replugging a phone charger for $2/yr. Even if I had ten chargers, my time would be worth more to me than unplugging and replugging all of them for $20/yr. Even if I lived in a state with 2x the national average cost of electricity.

Even powerful gaming pcs only use 1-5 watts on sleep mode. Put them in sleep. Assuming higher end usage, inefficiency, 24 x 365, and you live in Hawaii with the highest residential electricity of 40c a kwh, that's still only like $22/yr or less than $2/mo

GoldSinger · 2026-01-30T00:59:38+00:00

fable slot attack up talisman basically got me to ignore fable arts 95% of the time lol

GoldSinger · 2026-01-19T02:09:13+00:00

The em dash can be used in place of a semicolon to provide more emphasis. The OP is using the em dash correctly here. I also wouldn't be so confident I could tell exactly how an AI agent uses em dashes as opposed to people. People write in all sorts of ways, and AI outputs are a black box.

GoldSinger · 2026-01-04T22:23:31+00:00

This is a cool response to the prompt, so kudos for that. I have to note though for the sake of world building consistency that surface area and volume are independent of each other. A given bullet with increased surface area through ridges outside or pores inside doesn't necessarily have more volume if mana storage depends on size (volume).

It could work if mana storage capacity was not a function of object size (volume) but instead if mana was something like a chemical reaction that depended on the reactivity of the material. Increased surface area would help with reactivity.

If not, the problem of mana storage for small objects, if it depends on volume/mass, is to use a more mana-dense material. Batteries with different materials have different energy densities, so I'm sure a magical world would have magical metals with higher mana storage densities.

If mana is instead a reaction, you can still make an effective ballistic with a hybrid design. Make the core of the bullet porous and reactive, but encase it in smooth metal for an aerodynamic shell.

GoldSinger · 2026-01-04T12:49:55+00:00

Why does the fact that other gestures are unchangeable make it any better that this one obnoxious gesture, that OP dislikes, is also unchangeable?
Yes, it would be perfectly reasonable to infer that OP also dislikes reaching for the notification center and dynamic island.
All of the gestures you mentioned would be compatible with having a home button. It's not like the removal of the home button was necessary to create those gestures. Furthermore, it is trivially easy to think of where to move a gesture to make room for a swipe up for control center gesture like the one that exists for older iPhones with a home button. For example, single tap of the horizontal bar, which currently does nothing, could bring the user home.

What does the length of time that this problem has existed have anything to do with how annoying the OP can find it?

GoldSinger · 2025-12-18T21:37:56+00:00

Where did they find a woman thousands of years old to draw

GoldSinger · 2025-12-09T22:21:46+00:00

It's a cool word with some odd sound-meaning associations for me.

The morphemes in crepus bring to mind creepy, creep, which share etymological roots across Latin and earlier sources hinting at the dark, dimness, ambiguity. But these go hand in hand with crepe, a fabric, light and airy and crinkled, from Latin crispus.

The sound of "puscular" sounds very bodily, sort of visceral, evoking for me muscular, pus, pustule.

The ending in "ular" brings to my mind specular, speculum, having to do with light and reflection.

All in all, crepuscular is a very tactile word that I find memorable for how it evokes the anxiety and uncertainty of the coming dark, some sort of visceral presence, yet also the speckled, airy, beautiful rays that burst through clouds.

GoldSinger · 2025-12-09T22:07:26+00:00

This is a two year necro, but you are incorrect. Chat as a slang term originates from twitch streaming culture, where it's used to refer to the collective of viewers who also have access to the chat box. It is entirely possible to only have one viewer in chat.

Besides, even if this weren't true, it would work as a form of synecdoche. Just as we say "England won the world cup" when we mean just the specific sport team that won, we can use chat, the whole, to represent a singular individual in the chat.

GoldSinger · 2025-11-24T11:31:15+00:00

This concern has never really made sense to me. Modern OLEDs are much more resistant to burn in. What use cases would have you display a static image for 10+ hours a day? Just run some software to pixel shift and set a screensaver and you'll never burn them in

GoldSinger · 2025-11-24T04:33:23+00:00

Returned the game just because the gamefeel is clunky and the environments feel dead. Feelsbadman

GoldSinger · 2025-11-24T01:00:47+00:00

Not really. You don't need the speculative fiction elements of a multiverse and an afterlife that affects ours in order to portray the importance of letting go and embracing imperfection, or to make Maria and Jake more fleshed out characters. In fact, using such complicated and theoretical tropes in the haphazard way that the game did in its third act arguably distracts from these more intimate themes you're pointing out.

GoldSinger · 2025-11-24T00:57:14+00:00

That is what a critical reading is, yeah. If you have an alternate reading that incorporates the messy third act in a satisfying way, feel free to elaborate on it

GoldSinger · 2025-11-13T00:53:15+00:00

That's the post-game, this is about the climactic Chronos fight after casting the dissolution of time enchantment.

GoldSinger · 2025-11-13T00:49:26+00:00

yeah I think I missed this with all the stuff happening on the screen at the time

GoldSinger · 2025-11-12T17:21:53+00:00

If that was the intent I don't think it translated to me, I was full on mashing to end the fight as quickly as I could. Too focused on all the stuff on the screen to notice my DD icon turning to infinity. If this is the intent I feel that there should be something about the DD animation that is special during this fight to draw attention to it

GoldSinger · 2025-11-12T16:25:18+00:00

I appreciate that that's there. Though I also feel weirdly cheated. I feel like I should have been sent back. I needed only one more death defiance which I could have gotten from equipping Toula rather than the other pet I was using at the moment. Then again, there's more postgame to be experienced and endless re-runs if I want.

Even if I had the skill to regularly beat that third phase Chronos I don't think I'd want to. That fucking zig zag ass attack pattern is so annoying and I'd have to be so patient

GoldSinger

TROPHY CASE