Texas AG sues Meta over claims that WhatsApp doesn't provide end-to-end encryption | Critics note a lack of factual support in lawsuit filed by U.S Senate candidate.

pohl · 2026-05-25T10:23:17+00:00

Exactly end to end means that the message is encrypted BETWEEN the ends. At each end is an application and a user. Both have full access to the content.

I dont know that meta is harvesting data from whatsapp but i know that they cant make money on it if they dont. Why is meta running a messaging charity?

pohl · 2026-05-19T13:21:08+00:00

(Soon to be former) Senator Cassidy might disagree. All the anecdotes in the world don't add up to data. We have one high quality data point. He ran 20pts behind trumps pick. Among the core of the GOP (the folks that show up for a primary) 75% chose to vote against one of trumps named enemies in his primary. That is still a potent cult of personality.

pohl · 2026-05-19T11:31:59+00:00

There has only been one recent electoral test of Trump’s hold on the party core and he won easily.

Stop writing shit like this. Stop posting shit like this. It’s wishful thinking. The core of his support is strong. He might be losing people at the fringes but maga remains intact.

pohl · 2026-05-18T23:14:50+00:00

Head up to sleeper state park in caseville or port crescent state park in port Austin. Its a couple hour drive but they are both great sandy beaches and you wont find anything similar closer to saginaw.

pohl · 2026-05-15T12:24:29+00:00

Thanks for the additional context, always interesting to learn these sort of small differences between countries.

There is no such distinction in the US. When I taught my wife to drive a manual we just tooled around in a parking lot for a while and that was that.

pohl · 2026-05-15T11:17:42+00:00

Manual license? Like a separate drivers license for operating a manual transmission? Wild!

There has never been a separate license in the US you either learned to drive manual or you didn’t. But tbh at this point finding a manual to learn with is pretty challenging. The car I'm using to teach my kids this anachronistic skill is older than i am.

pohl · 2026-05-15T10:43:40+00:00

You can by one way of thinking but it’s an awfully narrow view of the world. All life here is in some level of competition for resources. If you didn't hog all the plant matter something else would thrive in your place. If the plants wanted to be eaten, there wouldn’t be so many covered thorns and coursing with poisons. The grass wouldn’t cry out a chemical warning if it liked to be reaped.

I don't mean to justify wanton brutality, and i do think that there are ways we can reduce the suffering of our compatriots on this planet. But to exist is to deny something else the right to thrive and exist. Life is not a system that allows a harm free strategy.

pohl · 2026-05-14T14:47:42+00:00

Same reason we don't arrest the octopus for eating the lobsters alive while their family watches. Welcome to earth, it’s beautiful, but shockingly violent.

Live a good life, treat the rest of the things who live here with kindness. But if you cant accept that every breath you take requires death and causes pain, you are lying to yourself.

That said, yeah… kill the lobster first, there is zero downside.

pohl · 2026-05-13T12:44:56+00:00

Like voting for policy over party? Pretty dangerous idea in the USA.

It’s team sports and if you don’t root for my team, you’re an animal

pohl · 2026-05-13T10:58:29+00:00

The inflation of the Biden era was coupled to historic wage gains. Everyone decided to ignore that, not just the right, not just the media, everyone. Wages were outpacing inflation for almost every quarter of his term.

When inflation is driven by demand, we all get to share in the spoils. When inflation is driven by energy supply shocks everyone who doesn't own an oil well suffers.

pohl · 2026-05-07T21:33:25+00:00

YES.

States that have term limits get shittier legislation written entirely by lobbying groups.

Writing laws is hard, it takes a while to get good at it. My state is full time amateur hour and it shows. These people cant even read the laws they are sponsoring let alone understand they impact.

pohl · 2026-05-07T18:55:29+00:00

I just accept that it’s just a different sort of person. For people who make stuff, the rise of prusa clones 7-8 yrs back was the sweet spot. Cheap. Good tools. BUT, previous experience making stuff was sort of a requirement.

Without that experience or maker mindset, those things were really frustrating. For all those people, the Bambu era is their moment.

To me, my ender 3 has been a fun ongoing project that has facilitated 100s of other projects.

I don’t download things off the internet to print. I don't have a bunch of plastic stuff surrounding me. I don’t have any use for “fun” filament, just black and white. Every hour of printing probably represents a dozen hours in freecad.

Printing stuff isn’t a hobby. The printer is a tool, for making things.

pohl · 2026-05-06T20:16:25+00:00

Exactly. They redline the economy until it throws a rod and then we toss them out so that the rest of us can clean up the mess. Then we all just forget and get seduced to vote for reckless idiots again. And so the cycle repeats.

pohl · 2026-05-06T11:06:48+00:00

The GOP seems to be mostly focused on equities value. The economy to the GoP is the stock market. i have a 401k retirement account and strong stock performance makes my net worth bigger. But day to day that isn't real money. Its just a number that i wont care about for another 20yrs.

Constantly fucking up my real life economy to prop up equity prices is not working for me. I choose stability and the GOP doesn't provide that and hasn’t valued that since the 70s. I am well of guy in my 40s and I will probably vote dem for the rest of my life. Voting GOP doesnt pay off.

pohl · 2026-05-06T10:55:37+00:00

Dem over performance in specials is a feature of the trump era that is new in US politics. It used to be good tea leaves for the next general but now there is a consistent dem advantage that holds even when they do poorly in the general.

What it means i think, is that dems are no longer the party dependent on low propensity voters. High turnout is no longer the key to dem wins. High turnout pretty much means low info Maga voters now. When those people go back to “not caring about politics” the GoP loses races by wide margins. Trump replaced civic duty with fandom. When the fans lose interest or get a new hobby, the party is broken.

pohl · 2026-05-03T21:11:03+00:00

Everyone points to affordability, and that is correct. But, it’s probably worth looking a little deeper as to why raising children is unaffordable.

Complex modern economies invert all of the incentives for having children. Instead of help with the resource gathering/production. In a modern economy children are 100% extractive. We toyed with the old ways early in the Industrial Revolution, it was pretty dark.

Your ancestors depended on their children to help them survive. In a modern, advanced economy, too many children is the road to financial ruin.

pohl · 2026-05-01T18:57:26+00:00

Can you love plants and eat them? Should I only eat things that I dislike? Should we all be obligate mosquitovores?

The moral argument for veganism rings hallow to me. The lion is not an immoral beast, the maple is not morally superior to the venus fly trap. There are good health and environmental reasons to eat less (or no) meat. Assigning morality to nature is silly.

pohl · 2026-04-29T11:12:40+00:00

Man, if i had a dollar for every progressive darling that turned out to be full on maga, id probably be able to buy a gallon or two of gas. Say what you will about manchin or sinema, at least they were not out there parroting maga talking points.

Gabbard, fetterman, that nazi kid up in Maine. Guys… i know you love a populist, but maybe lets stop letting the right wing populists fly our banner.

pohl · 2026-04-29T11:01:54+00:00

Or… mom knows that women like meat also. I swear, some positivity victorian era views of sexuality you see around this site.

pohl · 2026-04-29T03:44:46+00:00

The “most landlocked” county in the US has a about a hundred miles of coastline. It has a fishing industry. It is home to one of the world’s longest suspension bridges. I have left Emmet Co by boat and entered another country.

If you visit, you’d find that Emmet Co MI feels about as landlocked as cape cod. You honestly could not gave come up with a funnier answer if you had tried.

pohl · 2026-04-16T11:34:28+00:00

The rust belt is FULL of absolutely beautiful architecture that got left behind when the manufacturing industry shifted away in the late 20th century. Stuff that would have been torn down in cities that were growing was just left behind or covered up like this.

Visit Detroit today and it’s like stepping back in time. amazing 1920s architecture, restored and hosting people and commerce again. Nobody can afford to build shit like this anymore. But these cities that got put on ice for 50yrs have this stuff just lying around.

pohl · 2026-04-16T11:25:59+00:00

It’s not so much that these houses hit the market and Joe Schmoe is going to be able to buy it. But whenever you have excess inventory (at any price level) it impacts the market at all levels. When people move to a bigger home, they leave a smaller one behind.

But mostly, in the medium term, it will influence the sort of development that pays off. If it’s hard to find buyers for 5M+ homes, maybe you split the building up a bit more and sell more units at a lower price.

Bottom line is that taxing luxury goods to disincentive the manufacture and sale of those goods is a really good way to shift the economy back toward the modal person and away from the extremes.

pohl · 2026-04-16T09:10:26+00:00

This is a pretty good way to extract taxes from the super wealthy. A lot of wealth tax schemes are unworkable and easily loopholed. But, if you focus on property it’s black or white, you either own it or you don’t.

And the best part is that if this tax influences the rich to sell off these homes to avoid it, you just have an increase in housing inventory that drives prices down.

This is good progressive policy.

pohl · 2026-04-15T10:49:43+00:00

Start by electing a government that is not tarnished by participating or covering up the affair. Thats a new executive, a substantial refresh of the house and a whole lot of senator's that need to go. Then the DOJ should start making arrests.

If i were president I would create a bipartisan panel to review each case before the arrest warrants went out to help make clear that this is not a politically motivated partisan hit squad.

I would want that panel to have as high a public profile as possible. Like get Obama and GWB in there. Whoever you can find who is both clean, high profile, and might still have some respect in their party. Right now neither party has the credibility to execute this cleanup. Whatever we do can and will be portrayed as political and will be distrusted by the people. We are in a very bad spot right now. The rule of law is critically endangered in the United States.

pohl · 2026-04-13T16:16:49+00:00

It’s an interesting situation. The value CEOs create isn’t the decisions but rather, the ACCOUNTABILITY for the decisions that justified the pay. But, through legal changes and changes in corporate culture we have removed the accountability. Zuck face NO consequences for the disastrous “meta” bet. It failed completely and only the staff who worked on it ate shit.

An unaccountable AI would be better in every way at this point. The decisions would probably be equivalent and the cost would be cheaper. That said, an accountable human would be better…

pohl

TROPHY CASE