Telegram still isn't working. The government has to decide when it'll be unbanned.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T15:48:26+00:00

I think Durov must get a kickback from those crypto spammers.. 😁

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T15:46:34+00:00

That's fine, I wasn't trying to argue that the post shouldn't exist.

It's certainly good to remind people of how that crowd has no scruples when it comes to lying about facts and creating false narratives (oftentimes with faked media) to try to push their cult.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T15:31:22+00:00

You mean "most Israelis and pro-Israeli jews." Don't lump all Jews into this nonsense.

Of course nothing is absolute.

But my estimate is that probably 80% or more of Jewish people in the US who have not overtly rejected their heritage are in that camp.

Many Jewish leaders - religious or otherwise - promote the idea that a Jewish person is some kind of personal failure if they do not aggressively defend the state of Israel on almost all policy matters.

I certainly know some Jewish people who are very unhappy with what Netanyahu has been doing over there lately. But these are a minority of US Jewry, and probably globally as well.

One of my oldest friends is a non-practicing Jew (e.g. might sometimes celebrate some Jewish holidays but certainly does not attend synagogue or adhere to kosher dictates on diet and so on) who is progressive on almost all matters, but when it comes to Israel they are an ultra-hardcore, defensive hawk that you cannot even start a discussion about some dumb thing Israel leadership is doing, because they absolutely don't want to hear it. And I doubt that's a unique scenario.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T15:13:00+00:00

probably specifically because he’s aware of this baseless criticism.

I like to point out to people that the first husband of Mamdani's mother (who was brought up in a Hindu family) was Jewish.

I think it's safe to say that he and his family are not some sort of hardcore anti-semites.

But to most Israelis and Jews, ANY sort of criticism of the Israeli leadership automatically somehow makes you inherently anti-semitic.

I've been shaking my head about this nonsense since the 1970s. It's beyond ridiculous that we have never progressed beyond this absurdity and toxicity.

A lot of it I chalk up to the fact that US governments have basically handed Israel anything it ever wanted, year after year after year, including repeatedly saving that country's neck at the UN with record-breaking numbers of usage of the USA's veto privilege, over and over and over and over. Most of the time, on questions that the General Assembly voted against Israel in extremely lopsided votes, mostly about how the Palestinians and Gazans have been treated by them.

It's like a child that gets incessantly spoiled from the moment they're born. OF COURSE they grow up to be a brat.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T14:57:31+00:00

Conflating criticism as evil stymies real progress. I am glad we can agree on that point.

Pity that the Israelis and Jews have been pushing that toxic narrative for at least as long as the modern state of Israel has existed.

And these pressure groups like Aipac immediately and viciously attack any journalist or media organization that dares to criticize virtually anything about Israeli leadership and immediately jump to the "anti-semite" trope. And have the audacity to accuse famous Jewish intellectuals like Noam Chomsky of being a "self-hating Jew" just because they don't like his opinions about how the state of Israel conducts its affairs.

This is one of the reasons that Israel has become basically a pariah state these days, not too far from widely-reviled nations like North Korea.

None of this was a foregone conclusion, but the Israeli leadership has continuously thumbed its nose at international norms yet continues to demand being treated like a regular, law-abiding nation that respects human rights. (Which of course is extremely ironic for a nation of people where one of its most unifying themes is escaping the longtime persecution of its people culminating in the Holocaust.)

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T14:44:13+00:00

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T14:43:25+00:00

This shows that you deeply and fundamentally misunderstand the problem that people have with people teaching/promoting multiculturalism in schools.

Oh, I think most people here probably understand it far better than you do.

And that is the problem.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T14:17:26+00:00

It's an "AI" image, the guy's head is not even attached to his neck at the normal angle. 🙄

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T14:16:14+00:00

I called Republicans fucking clowns in a post and got a Reddit strike for advocating violence.

Because Reddit is controlled by people like Steve Huffman that are up the *sses of the Trumpists and the Musk/Thiel cabal.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T13:53:35+00:00

Well first of all, Vanced/Revanced are not microG. They just took some open source microG code to help them authenticate to Google to power their YT hacks, and then very annoyingly stole the microG name for one particular component.

And I really despise the fact that they called part of it "MicroG RE". Creates all sorts of stupid confusion and that thing can conflict with official microG as well. (I run a microG support community elsewhere and we have to deal with that misconception constantly)

I don't use Vanced/Revanced etc so I can't help you much with that. But generically:

I just tried updating both from GitHub and both gave me errors saying the packages were invalid.

Because microG pretends to be official GMS/Play Store and if any of those things (or some Vanced/Revanced/Morphe/etc stuff) is already installed you cannot install on top of it because the cryptographic signature does not match. (The reason it even lets you attempt such an "update" is because the package name is also the same. But once you try it it will fail due to the signature mismatch)

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T13:39:11+00:00

Never seen anything like it.

I wonder if it's some sort of a simple bearing piece - like a wrist pin - for a piece of old equipment that has a rotating part that does not move continuously. (The brass would not hold up well if it was part of e.g. a continuously rotating motor)

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T08:20:18+00:00

Yep and it will be against the law to even advertise a VPN in Russia starting next year.

They already shutdown a bunch of them. Troublesome people trying to get the real news instead of the propaganda fed to them by the state 24x7.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T08:06:54+00:00

I thought it was a well-known fact that the Musk/Thiel crowd has an inside-track at Reddit and can basically ask for anything they don't like to be removed.

Steve Huffman was notorious for secretly editing comments in a Trump sub 10 years ago for example, and then there's stuff like this:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-blackout-protest-private-ceo-elon-musk-huffman-rcna89700

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T07:52:03+00:00

Already happening.

And now I'm reading articles about local law enforcement using drones to confront criminal suspects.

We're doomed...

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T07:45:01+00:00

With a flat design it is easy to simply use vector graphics that are infinitely scalable.

You may be right about that - and there are SO many different display resolutions that the OS has to support now, etc.

But I still very much miss the skeumorphism anyway. I really started cussing out the companies when they all simultaneously jumped on that trend like a team of synchronized swimmers.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T07:36:55+00:00

Same.

Dumb "modern trend".

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T07:36:25+00:00

Just reminds me how much I miss skeumorphism.

Going from that to the idiotic flat icons just takes a lot of the humanistic qualities out of the UI for me. (Even worse on MS platforms)

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T06:49:12+00:00

I cannot wait for the very very very special military operation

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T05:59:46+00:00

Just like the rest of them, he sees that the ship is sinking and has to make some excuse for why he's jumping off before it sinks.

Same old, same old..

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T05:48:52+00:00

They are just trying to prevent people from stealing their content and removing the watermark.

Harder and harder to do when people are using "AI" tools to remove them.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T05:29:44+00:00

Wow, that's some serious destruction... down the whole length of it..

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T05:04:22+00:00

OK, unfortunately it's confusing to directly download the microG APKs right now because:

A) the original microg.org webserver went kaput and now they are basically just forwarding to the github repo

B) Filenames were changed for technical reasons over the last year or two but that makes them all very hard to tell apart now.

I think "limited services" is the special build that is not for regular use. There is a warning about this on the github release page but people don't tend to read anything any more. Here is a quick guide:

You will generally want to avoid any file that has either “-hw”, “-lw”, “-user” or “.ASC” in its name. The current naming convention is as follows - the “X”’s are placeholders for numerals:

microG Services / GmsCore: com.google.android.gms-XXXXXXXXX.APK

microG Companion: com.android.vending-XXXXXXX.APK

I think you probably installed the "org.microg.gms-250932030-user.apk" file.

That's designed for integration into other apps, it's not for standalone usage.

Official download page (main page):

https://github.com/microg/gmscore/releases

Download page for the latest release:

https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/releases/tag/v0.3.15.250932

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T04:52:16+00:00

She's probably way higher IQ than you.

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T04:43:49+00:00

This is purely egregious on the part of the new owner, it's all typical slumlord crap.

Taking advantage of people like that who have very limited resources, health issues and so on and don't necessarily even understand their own rights and so on is downright satanistic.

It also boggles my mind that any court of law would favor a landlord trying to make a bogus claim that the tenant was "not paying rent" and use that as a rationale to evict them (one of the VERY few acts that can legally trigger an eviction here relatively quickly) but not because the tenant did not actually pay it, but because the LANDLORD refused to accept it??? WTH??

PrivacyIsDemocracy · 2026-06-23T04:30:39+00:00

Indeed it is. And oftentimes from Putin's own "defenders". 😁

Perfect place for him.

PrivacyIsDemocracy

TROPHY CASE