>This thing also has a "Text the President" button that auto-fills your message with "Greatest President Ever!" and then collects your name and phone number.
when is the onion going to go bankrupt? it has to be soon, i imagine. no way it can compete with reality at this point.
(the rest of the article is a bit too depressing for me to comment on at the moment, other than saying "wow, gross")
I remember when I was young seeing videos of North Korea, of audiences always giving rapt standing ovations and many people fake fainting, and I always thought "How dumb and stupid does everyone have to be to carry on this absurd, ridiculous charade."
It is still bad news. The last sentence refers to things working out for everyone except the reader:
"Sources went on to report that, due a minor oversight that also occurred as you slumbered, your student loans must still be repaid in full and are now subject to a highly predatory ballooning interest rate."
It's ming boggling just how....cringe... these billionaires that want to run the world are. Makes you wonder if the personas that seek billions are correlated strongly with mental illnesses.
The drive to achieve that level of success often comes from weaponized poor self esteem.
Well adjusted individuals just chill out after a few million and work on whatever is fun/important for them.
Only rarely does this also happen to be something that can take you from 10M to 1B. (and if it can it would take a lot of work you can't be bothered to do unless it's some core value like helping the poor beat malaria)
Trump saying recently that he hates hanging around successful people and prefers losers because he doesn't want to listen to other people's stories really speaks to the poor self esteem angle
It comes down to two things. One is the well documented issue of how, when you are that rich, you are treated differently, and how that will ultimately modify your behavior. The other is the prerequisites to get to the job. Chances are you aren't fully self-made, receiving no investment. From convincing investors, to having immense faith in a project that cannot be obviously good, as otherwise you'd be building what already exists, to the personality to handle the road upward.
This second effect happens in all kinds of places where you have to jumps througha lot of hoops to just get to get there. Every hoop discards candidates, and promotes different things. Sometimes in ways that make sure that nobody capable of attaining the job is fit to actually do it well. You can see the issue all over the place, once you track people's careers. Sometimes things that should be disqualifying for a role are actually requirements in practice.
- Own a monopoly
- Inherit your fortune
- Run a criminal enterprise
Using just these three filters alone, you encompass more than 99% of all billionaires in existence.
The amount of billionaires who do not fit into these categories can barely occupy a family sized vehicle.
The criteria here suggesting that there is a specific sociopathic personality requirement to being a billionaire as each category can be argued as harmful to societies.
And mathematically, only businesses at the top of the graph are capable of generating a billion dollars. Hence, if you are looking to be a billionaire, the path lies either through a Ponzi scheme or through a monopoly. Both of them, in their most pure form, are illegal, and the challenge in the business model is to execute on them while staying just barely on the right side of the law.
Right? If I had enough money that I could make a serious dent in local or even global poverty without noticing the change in my lifestyle, and I just... chose not to, I have no idea how I could sleep at night.
Huge numbers (billions) of people have enough money to make massive changes to the lives of those less fortunate than them, but don't, and prefer instead to make incremental upgrades to their own lives. New rugs, more savings, first-class airline tickets, eating out a few more times a month, etc.
This is just human nature.
People who are at wealth level x tend to say, "I can't believe that people at wealth level x+1 aren't more generous!" all the while ignoring their own lack of desire to give generously to people at wealth levels x-1 and below.
I remember wrestling with this in my therapist's office when Aaron died. I had known him tangentially - we hung out in the same IRC channels, and had several mutual friends in the Cambridge/Somerville techie crowd that he would hang out in person with.
As a college student and young adult I had always envied his fame, his intelligence, his money (post-Reddit acquisition), and the strength of his convictions. And yet, in that moment in early 2013, he was dead, and I was working a good job at Google (and this was 2013 Google, when it was still a nice place to work doing things that I could generally approve of). And he'd died doing the stuff that I wanted to do but had been too chickenshit to actually carry out.
I think that this illustrates why the world is the way it is. All the true altruists are dead, killed for their altruism. It is adaptive, in a survival sense, to think of yourself and your own survival and not worry too much about other people. Ironically, this is what my therapist was trying to get me to realize.
But I think this also goes back to the GP's point. When people at wealth level x give to people at level x-1, it doesn't raise the people at x-1 up to x. It brings the person at x down to x-1. There are more people at x-1 than x, after all; you could give everything you had away and mathematically, it would lower your net worth significantly more than it would raise theirs. And of course, it doesn't do a damn thing about the people at x+1. Why can't they donate instead, where their wealth would do an order of magnitude more good?
There actually do exist people who are like that: they would rather spread their wealth around the people at wealth level x-1, joining them at that level, than raise themselves up to x+1. I've met some; most poor people are far more generous than rich people are. That is why they are poor. But then, it doesn't solve the problem of inequality, they just disappear into the masses of people at level x-1.
I also think this could be a symptom of an economically unequal society (which creates a higher range of x), and is a big reason why it's important to fix it, on top of the extra money to the state.
So thats essentially communism right? Is human nature incompatible with communism or is capitalism incompatible with human nature?
Communism doesn't eliminate power relationships, it just papers them over with politics and bureaucracy instead of having them legible with prices and wages.
In the American golden age of capitalism from ~1950-1970, the top marginal tax rate was 90%, and so you didn't have CEOs get paid more than about 3x the median worker, because the government would get it all. Instead, they got perks. Private jets. Positions at the company for their kids. Debaucherous holiday parties. Casual sexual harassment of secretaries.
In Soviet communism, all production was centrally planned by government bureau run by party members. It was not uncommon for these bureaus to make mistakes, leading to severe shortages for the population. Nevertheless, these shortages never seemed to really hit the party members responsible for making the plans. Power has its perks.
And that's also why reforms attempting to reduce economic inequality need to focus on power rather than money. There have been a number of policies that do meaningfully raise standards of living for the poor: they're things like the 13th amendment to the (US) Constitution, the 1st amendment, the jury trial system, free markets, anti-monopoly statutes, bans on non-competes, etc. What they all have in common is that they preserve economic freedom and the power to make your own living against people who would seek to restrict that freedom and otherwise keep you in bondage.
We can also tell because anyone who can take the time to use a computer with internet to write a comment in well-formed English is already comparatively wealthy or connected enough to provide food and housing for dozens of people.
Trump has largely not had that kind of money. He’s had a _lot_ of money, many many times more than most, but by all accounts except his own, those numbers are much lower than he likes to brag about. Well, they were - there’s been a troubling amount of money going out of the federal government that isn’t well-accounted for under his reign.
He had the kind of money that can hire expensive projects on trust that payment in full will be rendered, but only kept his money by often not paying out.
As with all things Trump, even up to the new ballroom not having a front door despite the massive staircase, his wealth is more in appearance, and less in actual assets…or was. Of course, someday maybe we will know the true extent or shortfall of his bank accounts
I don’t get puzzled that the criminal doesn’t use his ill-gotten gains for pro-social causes. Why would a person ever use anti-social means to acquire funds for pro-social goods?[1]
This is not too disimilar from the case of the billionaire.
[1] Excepting some Galaxy Brain philosophies like Effective Altruism
If you had that amount of money you would also be a sociopath. It's a precondition.
Good news is that you would sleep fine at night. No matter how destructive your existence was, and how much of a net negative you were to the world, you would still think very highly of yourself.
I do not think it is the money that made them terrible. I know all sorts of terrible people that would do the exact same things. The only difference really is they do not have the money to execute on those ideas.
Money does not make you a good or bad person. It just makes you more of who you are already.
I specifically did not say money makes them mentally ill, but rather the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness.
> the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness
Do we have any actual evidence of this? I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything, they just didn’t sell their piece of the closely-held business they started, and they spend their time skiing, reading, travelling and taking care of their friends and family.
> they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money
And I’d say they’re literally wrong. They may be hoarding capital. And yes, some wealthy people do hoard money per se. But outside the Epstein class there are lots of people we just don’t hear about because they aren’t on social media talking about how rich they are. Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them.
while this distinction may be important to you, i dont think it really changes anything about malfists question/point.
>Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them.
and cigarettes cause cancer. not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad (smoking, too).
(please note: i am not arguing for or against what you or malfist have said, just thought there was a little something lost in translation re: you asking for evidence after a conversation that started with "makes you wonder")
> i dont think it really changes anything about what malfist question/point
Of course it does. Turning capital into spendable or transferable wealth takes work. Plenty of rich people are just enjoying their lives in the same way retirees do.
> not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad
I’m saying the folks we tend to get upset about being rich at are also the rich who are prominently on social media. The problem isn’t that they’re rich. It’s that they’re on social media so much. I think there is a genuine argument to be made that even Elon Musk would have been a better-liked person, maybe even a better person, if he never got on Twitter.
> thought there was a little something lost in translation re: "makes you wonder"
Perhaps. And appreciate your clarifying for them. In 2026 I’m just sceptical of the “just asking questions” bit, particularly when it comes to cultural tropes. (And for what it’s worth, my query for a source was genuine. I’m always down to change my mind on a loosely-held belief.)
> a hell of a difference between a multimillionare who has a successful business and a billionare
Yeah, I'm saying the ones worth hundreds of millions to low billions who aren't on social media are, in my personal experience, often fine people. The ones I don't like are the ones on social media, but that's also true of the folks worth a few thousand dollars.
Plenty of billionaires are assholes. The world's GDP is over $100 trillion. That's going to produce diversity among the rich.
And who are you to personally know enough billionaires intimately enough to absolve them of any guilt they might have earned hoarding enough wealth to reach that level?
> who are you to personally know enough billionaires intimately enough to absolve them of any guilt
I'm not absolving anyone. I'm saying I know good people who are also billiionaires who most people have never heard of. The billionaires I've heard of I tend to dislike. But I think the correlate is the fame, not the wealth.
> guilt they might have earned hoarding enough wealth to reach that level?
This is where the hoarding metaphor breaks down. If you build a company, is it hoarding to not sell your stake off to a private equity firm?
Because practically speaking, those are their choices. Hold it, manage it and live off the income. (They all donate most of their incomes, but that's neither here nor there. You can be a good person even if not philanthropic.) Or sell it to a private equity firm and then have a pot of money to stare at.
Of course the money doesn't make them terrible. Being terrible makes them money. Lots of money. There aren't really other ways of obtaining so much money, which is why if you see someone that has that amount, they should be viewed with suspicion.
To get moderately rich doesn't require a special personality type, but obscene wealth requires breaking laws and asking forgiveness later (throwing lawyers at the problem). Not caring who you hurt while reaching for a goal is a trait of sociopathy.
Trump specifically seems to hew awfully close to the symptoms of a long-term cocaine user. The hard drift into self-congratulatory vanity parallels that of Charlie Sheen during a certain infamous interview, for example, and at least two people (Howard Dean and Carrie Fisher) identified him as having compulsive sniffing reminiscent of a cocaine habit during debates prior to his first election.
Remember that Trump is not a first-generation member of the upper class; as a nepo baby, he was born out of touch and has spent his whole life falling deeper into bizarre social bubbles and media silos that were tailored by his ancestors and peers to reassure them that they're doing the right thing. In theory plutarchs should be receiving world-class education from private tutors, but being arch-Conservatives by definition, these teachers are invariably out of date on mental health, and would be forbidden from teaching it even if they had modern material.
Because of this isolation the ultra-wealthy often have certain very uneducated traits around self-esteem—which can paradoxically seem like the result of poverty. They do not have access to DARE or Sesame Street to give them the confidence not to take drugs when pressured, they've never seen Mister Rogers, their biological parents were always off running a business empire, and they have no surrogate figures because their nannies probably get fired at the drop of a hat, even for defending the child's interests.
Ironically, American republicanism makes this worse; in a planned aristocracy, parents internalize the belief that their children deserve "the best" because they are meant to be "the best", but without that noble lie, there is no pressure to create a positive environment for the next generation of tyrant. To make matters worse, these families never start off with healthy values to begin with—which produces a founder effect of regressive masculinity that magnifies everything else I've just mentioned.
Aren’t sociopaths strongly overrepresented among the powerful?
(Assuming that) It’s a bit astonishing that we discuss things like that, go huh, and then go about our day. Effectively acquiescing to rule-by-personality disordered.
They are perfectly aware of their own optics and do it because you can't escape it. See Elon with his cringeworthy Twitter takeover that still hasn't collapsed, Larry Ellison buying up the media or Tim Cook gifting the gold trophy to Trump.
Nobody has the guts to boycott them anymore. Billionaires know that you depend on them for news, social media and smartphones too.
Well... it worked. The shareholders were made whole, Elon got his vanity project, and the only people who got the short end of the stick were the loss-leader Twitter addicts. From a game-theory perspective that's a pretty impressive political polemic to achieve with purely private capital.
When the dust settles the only person to blame is Jack Dorsey, who spent his halcyon years on Twitter pumping Bitcoin and looking even more coked-out than Elon. If people can't move on to better platforms then yes, they are doomed to eternal monetization by warring moron techbro tribes.
I think that's what bothers me the most about the last couple years. These ultra rich people are just brazenly being scumbags and there is nothing anybody can really do about it. I imagine this is what people felt like in the middle ages when their King was going senile.
Both are true. Some things can be done and are simple/healthy, like escaping social media. Others are fundamentally much harder and not worth the risk/trouble/time.
The closing point is the one that should get more attention — every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page. And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts: you want access to APIs
the browser won't give you. Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser, and that's by, unfortunately, design.
> And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app
I have worked on several applications where the product managers wanted to make our web app something that could be installed through the app store, because that's how users expect to get apps.
I know people who don't even type search queries or URLs into a browser, they just tell the phone what they want to find and open whatever shows up in a search result.
I've tried pushing back against the native app argument and won once because customers actually reported liking that we had a website instead of an app, and other times because deploying an app through the stores was more work than anyone had time to take on. Otherwise, we would've been deploying through app stores for sure.
Marketing gets plenty of data from google analytics or whatever platform they're using anyway, so neither they nor product managers actually care about the data from native APIs.
> I know people who don't even type search queries or URLs into a browser, they just tell the phone what they want to find and open whatever shows up in a search result.
I don't know exactly what you are talking about here, but if I wanted to find a restaurant that is local I definitely just type 'Miguels' into the browser and then it searches google for 'Miguels' automatically and it know's my location so the first result is going to be their website and phone number and I can load the website for the menu or just call if I know what my family wants.
However even then, I'd rather have an app for them where I can enter in the items I want to order. I've noticed apps tend to be more responsive. Maybe it's just the coding paradigm that the applications tend to load all of the content already and the actions I take in the app are just changing what is displayed, but on a website they make every 'action' trigger an API call that requires a response before it moves on to the next page? This makes a big difference when my connection isn't great.
I also find it easier to swap between active apps instead of between tabs of a browser. If I want to check on the status of the order or whatnot, it's easier to swap to the app and have that refresh then it is to click the 'tab' button of the browser and find the correct tab the order was placed in.
This is pretty much what I meant. Even if the browser is what comes up, the fact is the user isn't interacting with the browser as a browser. They're interacting with their phone through an app (voice => search). They don't understand website URLs, or what search engines are doing. That makes it harder for them to return (engagement metrics!) than tapping the icon on their phone that opens up directly to the app.
It's also why so many websites try to offer push notifications or, back when it seemed like Apple wouldn't cripple it, the "add to home screen" or whatever CTA was that would set the website as an icon. Anything that gives the user a fast path back to engaging without having to deal with interacting with the browser itself is what PMs and marketing want.
I recently took a trip to Hawaii, particularly Maui. I've never been before, but I hit the weather lottery and got to experience the Kona low system that raked the island with copious rain. Anyway... What I found, in the areas that we were staying, was that there were a lot of food trucks that looked to have great coffee, poke, food in general. But with the weather it was unclear if the food truck was 1) accessible 2) open due to other weather issues.
What I found was that none of these food trucks (and even some relatively nice restaurants) had operational web pages. One had a domain but, for some apparent reason, they posted the menu to <some-random-name>.azurewebsites.net. And that page just... Didn't work. The rest got even worse. Most had listings on Google Maps, but the hours and availability did not reflect reality. We went to a coffee food truck that wasn't there, even though the day before they had commented on a review. Then we had others that had a link to an Instagram page of which some claimed to house their "current" hours and location, yet we tried going to two of them and both weren't open.
It's 2026. If you have your business on Google Maps you should be able to update hours and availability quickly. But beyond that it costs almost nothing to host a simple availability page on a representative domain. And even if you don't want to deal with the responsibility of a domain, there are multitudes of other options. Now, I'm guessing that this isn't the norm for most of these vendors, at least I hope. But we weren't there during the worst of the rain, we hit the second low that went through in our timing. So while it was a significant amount of rain and some of the more treacherous switchback roads were closed - I'm talking about food trucks that were off of very accessible main roads & highways. My SO reached out via IG to about a half dozen vendors and only one responded 2 days later.
Clearly tech and simple services like availability and location that is easy to update is not accessible (or known) for these types of businesses. But it definitely does not require an app (nor should it). Having these simple "status" sites would have made the friction the weather caused significantly less than what we experienced. I don't want an app when I'm trying to find out if a restaurant is open. I, personally, don't find apps any more responsive. In many cases a lot of web sites are littered with far too many components that are not required. I've been doing a lot with Datastar and FastAPI recently and some of the tools I've thrown together (that handle hundreds of MB of data in-browser) load instantly and are blazing fast. So much so that I've been asked how I "did that". It's amazing how fast a web app can be when it's not pulling data from 27 different sources and loading who knows what for JS.
> there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts
The flip side is there are (presumably) real people downloading these apps. Maybe it’s a kid interested in a career in the FBI, or the family of someone who works there. Idk. (I thought it would contain a secure tip line or something, but the app seems to be a social-media front end first.)
I am willing to entertain that there is a legitimate reason for an app to exist without conceding that it should be a pile of trash.
Exactly what big businesses do, and governments think what businesses do is good practice. Fore everyone to use an app.
The UK's Companies House (required for anyone who is a director or has a shareholding of more than 15% etc.) requires a Onegov ID now. They offer a web version with a scan of a photo ID (passport or driving license). I tried it. I thought one of those would work. Apparently the web version needs to ask security questions (reasonable, as the app used NFC to read your passport) but despite the vast amount of information the government has on me (to issue those IDs, to collect taxes, etc) it cannot do that, so i had to either use the app or go in person to a post office in a different town.
Similarly I got an email from Occado saying that if I used the app I could change orders without checking out again. If I do it on the website i have to checkout again. Why?
Not sure if this is still a thing, but some apps used to embed libraries very much tracking everything you do on the phone, including your live location and that was then sold to third parties.
The APIs in question are client-side iOS and Android APIs. Most of these apps are just WebViews wrapped in spyware, which is the point. It doesn't matter that most of the content is static or already uses browser-native APIs for functionality like forms, gating access to this information behind a surveilance device is the point.
You will of course need a couple additional threat intel feeds because what is provided via the browser itself isn't enough, but third party data vendors along with threat intel vendors are fairly cost effective.
I've seen a couple actual live demos of deanonymization a couple years ago - it's a capability that has existed in the Offensive Security space for a couple years now. And the company I'm alluding to is already live in Japan and Israel.
Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? I find this site incredibly difficult to read with things re-playing as you scroll up and down and the articles I've read from here are often light on details. The graphics seem very AI-generated (overlapping text and other little issues) which makes me think the whole thing is from an LLM.
While this post does have some interesting information, I have to wade through distracting animations that seem "off" which makes me questions all of it.
> Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations?
I don't think so. It's more likely that they're upvoted as a signal-boost; convene here to talk about bad government tech.
Some submissions are less about the subject matter than they are about providing a space to talk about only the subject in general. I've found this to be the case when the content is AI-generated.
Relatedly, I just registered for PACER to download court documents. It's pretty shocking that to get public legal documents the US Federal Court system requires full name, birthdate, address, phone, email, credit card info... and I THINK (it's past the initial registration page so can't confirm 100%) also mother's maiden name and 2 common security questions. Just a treasure-trove of PII if it ever falls into the wrong hands. (What's esp frustrating is even after going through this, I had to call a number and wait on hold for 1 hour to activate the account.)
You could not pay me to use any of these apps. All of my own devices run some form of Linux (Debian for servers, Arch for desktop/laptop, GrapheneOS on phone). I generally refuse to use non-free software, the main exception being Steam on a dedicated gaming rig.
I really don't understand why everything has to be an "app." My phone only has a handful of apps, including two web browsers, through which other things are accessed. No app gets access to location, sensors, the camera, or the microphone.
Apps obviously gather data. In fact, on common phone operating systems, they tend to have access to an insane amount of information, including what other apps are used, hardware identifiers, information related to Google/Apple accounts and more.
As for things "requiring" apps, I am happy to do without those. If I cannot access something through a website on a device under my control, I will not use it. No convenience is worth more than my freedom and privacy.
The inconvenience is considerable. In the last few days I had the choice of use the app or drive 20 mins each way plus park, walk and possibly queue. Required (UK) government ID verification. The issued my new passport without that!
It is often more costly to not use an app, not just inconvenient. My daughter had to use the bus company app to get (much cheaper) monthly ticker to get to school.
I use few apps, keep location turned off, do not use wallet, etc. but there is going to be more and more pressure to use apps.
Most of this is bad, but I think it's reasonable for the FEMA app, whose purpose is to help you get to the nearest shelters, to have access to your location.
> regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back
Well yes, it’s not a high priority. I’m not going to bring it up with my electeds. Are you? If everyone who thinks this is a huge deal is too lazy and nihilistic to do anything about it, it won’t be prioritized.
As long as it isn't mandatory like the Russian Max app, I wouldn't worry. The only reason to dislike it (other than privacy issues) is the money spent to develop it (which has already been spent).
> only reason to dislike it (other than privacy issues) is the money spent to develop it (which has already been spent)
There are plenty of reasons to dislike it. The money spent to develp it. The attention spent to maintain it. The abuse of users' goodwill. Dilution of the FBI's brand with a circa 2008. None of these are good. None of them are, frankly, issues I'm going to personally engage on.
There is currently an attempt going on by several governments to crack down harder against the people. While before it was "only", say, California and their age-sniffing laws infiltrating and tainting Linux - thus declaring war against the people, as revealed by Meta acting as primary lobbyist here - today I read that now that age-sniffing was also approved in some european countries (in one EU country the parents are required to install a sniffing app and thus verify the age of the kids; I think it was in Greece. I'd never help any government act as fascist sniffing proxy trying to control and monitor by kids, that is an act of betrayal of such a government), their next line of attack is against VPN. Suddenly the picture shifts, because if VPNs are targeted, how does finding an excuse such as "but but but think about the kids", make any sense? That is very clearly governments becoming increasingly fascist. Add a few lobbyists here and there who benefit financially from this and now we suddenly understand how democracies are undermined. See also:
The recent spate of state-level age verification laws, while stupid, are primarily designed to insulate Facebook from lawsuits and not actually crack down on people. You can comply with them by just having a date field and an API to get bucketed age ranges out of them. The reason why they seem like a concerted crackdown is that Facebook can pay people to go to literally every legislature and bug them up and down[0] until they pass a law to make OS vendors provide age buckets.
The real shit is happening parallel to the actual legislation. Companies that need to comply with, say, the extremely onerous UK Online Services Act, are forcing everyone to use data-heavy verification paths like facial recognition age estimation or ID scanning. Newgrounds just used your account age or a credit card.
A core property of fascism is that, unlike other forms of tyranny, it is specifically a public-private joint venture. The government uses corporations to bypass its own constitutional restrictions, and those corporations then agree to follow rules that don't actually exist, specifically so that those corporations can shut down all their competition and form para-governments that supercede the democratically responsive bits. This has actually been going on for a while, but it's only now that the people are actually noticing it.
[0] Inspired by Louis Rossmann's efforts to get R2R bills passed, I've started doing amateur lobbying for the Rio Grande Plan. It's surprisingly easy, but you will almost certainly have to take off from work or sacrifice many a lunch hour to be able to actually get to talk to people.
>This thing also has a "Text the President" button that auto-fills your message with "Greatest President Ever!" and then collects your name and phone number.
when is the onion going to go bankrupt? it has to be soon, i imagine. no way it can compete with reality at this point.
(the rest of the article is a bit too depressing for me to comment on at the moment, other than saying "wow, gross")
I remember when I was young seeing videos of North Korea, of audiences always giving rapt standing ovations and many people fake fainting, and I always thought "How dumb and stupid does everyone have to be to carry on this absurd, ridiculous charade."
I don't wonder anymore.
They've pivoted to good news. It's more absurd.
https://theonion.com/breaking-all-of-world-s-problems-solved...
It is still bad news. The last sentence refers to things working out for everyone except the reader:
"Sources went on to report that, due a minor oversight that also occurred as you slumbered, your student loans must still be repaid in full and are now subject to a highly predatory ballooning interest rate."
It's ming boggling just how....cringe... these billionaires that want to run the world are. Makes you wonder if the personas that seek billions are correlated strongly with mental illnesses.
I think they are, and strongly.
The drive to achieve that level of success often comes from weaponized poor self esteem.
Well adjusted individuals just chill out after a few million and work on whatever is fun/important for them.
Only rarely does this also happen to be something that can take you from 10M to 1B. (and if it can it would take a lot of work you can't be bothered to do unless it's some core value like helping the poor beat malaria)
Trump saying recently that he hates hanging around successful people and prefers losers because he doesn't want to listen to other people's stories really speaks to the poor self esteem angle
It comes down to two things. One is the well documented issue of how, when you are that rich, you are treated differently, and how that will ultimately modify your behavior. The other is the prerequisites to get to the job. Chances are you aren't fully self-made, receiving no investment. From convincing investors, to having immense faith in a project that cannot be obviously good, as otherwise you'd be building what already exists, to the personality to handle the road upward.
This second effect happens in all kinds of places where you have to jumps througha lot of hoops to just get to get there. Every hoop discards candidates, and promotes different things. Sometimes in ways that make sure that nobody capable of attaining the job is fit to actually do it well. You can see the issue all over the place, once you track people's careers. Sometimes things that should be disqualifying for a role are actually requirements in practice.
> To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
> - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The people who would, shouldn't. The people who should, won't.
- Own a monopoly - Inherit your fortune - Run a criminal enterprise
Using just these three filters alone, you encompass more than 99% of all billionaires in existence. The amount of billionaires who do not fit into these categories can barely occupy a family sized vehicle.
The criteria here suggesting that there is a specific sociopathic personality requirement to being a billionaire as each category can be argued as harmful to societies.
I've been thinking that you can divide businesses on two axes,
And mathematically, only businesses at the top of the graph are capable of generating a billion dollars. Hence, if you are looking to be a billionaire, the path lies either through a Ponzi scheme or through a monopoly. Both of them, in their most pure form, are illegal, and the challenge in the business model is to execute on them while staying just barely on the right side of the law.Right? If I had enough money that I could make a serious dent in local or even global poverty without noticing the change in my lifestyle, and I just... chose not to, I have no idea how I could sleep at night.
Elon tweeted that he'd fund ending world hunger if someone presented him with an actual plan to do that. UNESCO did. Elon did not act.
can you verify that the UNESCO plan would have ended world hunger?
It was a 6.6 billion dollar plan to alleviate famine in 43 countries for one year, so, no.
Huge numbers (billions) of people have enough money to make massive changes to the lives of those less fortunate than them, but don't, and prefer instead to make incremental upgrades to their own lives. New rugs, more savings, first-class airline tickets, eating out a few more times a month, etc.
This is just human nature.
People who are at wealth level x tend to say, "I can't believe that people at wealth level x+1 aren't more generous!" all the while ignoring their own lack of desire to give generously to people at wealth levels x-1 and below.
Aaron Swartz had a good take on this - http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall
I remember wrestling with this in my therapist's office when Aaron died. I had known him tangentially - we hung out in the same IRC channels, and had several mutual friends in the Cambridge/Somerville techie crowd that he would hang out in person with.
As a college student and young adult I had always envied his fame, his intelligence, his money (post-Reddit acquisition), and the strength of his convictions. And yet, in that moment in early 2013, he was dead, and I was working a good job at Google (and this was 2013 Google, when it was still a nice place to work doing things that I could generally approve of). And he'd died doing the stuff that I wanted to do but had been too chickenshit to actually carry out.
I think that this illustrates why the world is the way it is. All the true altruists are dead, killed for their altruism. It is adaptive, in a survival sense, to think of yourself and your own survival and not worry too much about other people. Ironically, this is what my therapist was trying to get me to realize.
But I think this also goes back to the GP's point. When people at wealth level x give to people at level x-1, it doesn't raise the people at x-1 up to x. It brings the person at x down to x-1. There are more people at x-1 than x, after all; you could give everything you had away and mathematically, it would lower your net worth significantly more than it would raise theirs. And of course, it doesn't do a damn thing about the people at x+1. Why can't they donate instead, where their wealth would do an order of magnitude more good?
There actually do exist people who are like that: they would rather spread their wealth around the people at wealth level x-1, joining them at that level, than raise themselves up to x+1. I've met some; most poor people are far more generous than rich people are. That is why they are poor. But then, it doesn't solve the problem of inequality, they just disappear into the masses of people at level x-1.
RIP
I also think this could be a symptom of an economically unequal society (which creates a higher range of x), and is a big reason why it's important to fix it, on top of the extra money to the state.
So thats essentially communism right? Is human nature incompatible with communism or is capitalism incompatible with human nature?
Communism doesn't eliminate power relationships, it just papers them over with politics and bureaucracy instead of having them legible with prices and wages.
In the American golden age of capitalism from ~1950-1970, the top marginal tax rate was 90%, and so you didn't have CEOs get paid more than about 3x the median worker, because the government would get it all. Instead, they got perks. Private jets. Positions at the company for their kids. Debaucherous holiday parties. Casual sexual harassment of secretaries.
In Soviet communism, all production was centrally planned by government bureau run by party members. It was not uncommon for these bureaus to make mistakes, leading to severe shortages for the population. Nevertheless, these shortages never seemed to really hit the party members responsible for making the plans. Power has its perks.
And that's also why reforms attempting to reduce economic inequality need to focus on power rather than money. There have been a number of policies that do meaningfully raise standards of living for the poor: they're things like the 13th amendment to the (US) Constitution, the 1st amendment, the jury trial system, free markets, anti-monopoly statutes, bans on non-competes, etc. What they all have in common is that they preserve economic freedom and the power to make your own living against people who would seek to restrict that freedom and otherwise keep you in bondage.
We can also tell because anyone who can take the time to use a computer with internet to write a comment in well-formed English is already comparatively wealthy or connected enough to provide food and housing for dozens of people.
Trump has largely not had that kind of money. He’s had a _lot_ of money, many many times more than most, but by all accounts except his own, those numbers are much lower than he likes to brag about. Well, they were - there’s been a troubling amount of money going out of the federal government that isn’t well-accounted for under his reign.
He had the kind of money that can hire expensive projects on trust that payment in full will be rendered, but only kept his money by often not paying out.
As with all things Trump, even up to the new ballroom not having a front door despite the massive staircase, his wealth is more in appearance, and less in actual assets…or was. Of course, someday maybe we will know the true extent or shortfall of his bank accounts
I don’t get puzzled that the criminal doesn’t use his ill-gotten gains for pro-social causes. Why would a person ever use anti-social means to acquire funds for pro-social goods?[1]
This is not too disimilar from the case of the billionaire.
[1] Excepting some Galaxy Brain philosophies like Effective Altruism
If you had that amount of money you would also be a sociopath. It's a precondition.
Good news is that you would sleep fine at night. No matter how destructive your existence was, and how much of a net negative you were to the world, you would still think very highly of yourself.
I do not think it is the money that made them terrible. I know all sorts of terrible people that would do the exact same things. The only difference really is they do not have the money to execute on those ideas.
Money does not make you a good or bad person. It just makes you more of who you are already.
I specifically did not say money makes them mentally ill, but rather the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness.
> the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness
Do we have any actual evidence of this? I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything, they just didn’t sell their piece of the closely-held business they started, and they spend their time skiing, reading, travelling and taking care of their friends and family.
>Do we have any actual evidence of this?
to be fair, the original comment by malfist started with "makes you wonder", so i dont think they are asserting this as fact.
>I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything,
some people would see this sentence as contradictory, and they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money.
> they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money
And I’d say they’re literally wrong. They may be hoarding capital. And yes, some wealthy people do hoard money per se. But outside the Epstein class there are lots of people we just don’t hear about because they aren’t on social media talking about how rich they are. Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them.
>They may be hoarding capital.
while this distinction may be important to you, i dont think it really changes anything about malfists question/point.
>Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them.
and cigarettes cause cancer. not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad (smoking, too).
(please note: i am not arguing for or against what you or malfist have said, just thought there was a little something lost in translation re: you asking for evidence after a conversation that started with "makes you wonder")
> i dont think it really changes anything about what malfist question/point
Of course it does. Turning capital into spendable or transferable wealth takes work. Plenty of rich people are just enjoying their lives in the same way retirees do.
> not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad
I’m saying the folks we tend to get upset about being rich at are also the rich who are prominently on social media. The problem isn’t that they’re rich. It’s that they’re on social media so much. I think there is a genuine argument to be made that even Elon Musk would have been a better-liked person, maybe even a better person, if he never got on Twitter.
> thought there was a little something lost in translation re: "makes you wonder"
Perhaps. And appreciate your clarifying for them. In 2026 I’m just sceptical of the “just asking questions” bit, particularly when it comes to cultural tropes. (And for what it’s worth, my query for a source was genuine. I’m always down to change my mind on a loosely-held belief.)
There's a hell of a difference between a multimillionare who has a successful business and a billionare.
The difference between a person who has a million dollars and a person who has a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.
> a hell of a difference between a multimillionare who has a successful business and a billionare
Yeah, I'm saying the ones worth hundreds of millions to low billions who aren't on social media are, in my personal experience, often fine people. The ones I don't like are the ones on social media, but that's also true of the folks worth a few thousand dollars.
Plenty of billionaires are assholes. The world's GDP is over $100 trillion. That's going to produce diversity among the rich.
And who are you to personally know enough billionaires intimately enough to absolve them of any guilt they might have earned hoarding enough wealth to reach that level?
> who are you to personally know enough billionaires intimately enough to absolve them of any guilt
I'm not absolving anyone. I'm saying I know good people who are also billiionaires who most people have never heard of. The billionaires I've heard of I tend to dislike. But I think the correlate is the fame, not the wealth.
> guilt they might have earned hoarding enough wealth to reach that level?
This is where the hoarding metaphor breaks down. If you build a company, is it hoarding to not sell your stake off to a private equity firm?
Because practically speaking, those are their choices. Hold it, manage it and live off the income. (They all donate most of their incomes, but that's neither here nor there. You can be a good person even if not philanthropic.) Or sell it to a private equity firm and then have a pot of money to stare at.
Of course the money doesn't make them terrible. Being terrible makes them money. Lots of money. There aren't really other ways of obtaining so much money, which is why if you see someone that has that amount, they should be viewed with suspicion.
Most don’t seem to think about morals or quality at all: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/introspection-andr...
To get moderately rich doesn't require a special personality type, but obscene wealth requires breaking laws and asking forgiveness later (throwing lawyers at the problem). Not caring who you hurt while reaching for a goal is a trait of sociopathy.
Trump specifically seems to hew awfully close to the symptoms of a long-term cocaine user. The hard drift into self-congratulatory vanity parallels that of Charlie Sheen during a certain infamous interview, for example, and at least two people (Howard Dean and Carrie Fisher) identified him as having compulsive sniffing reminiscent of a cocaine habit during debates prior to his first election.
Remember that Trump is not a first-generation member of the upper class; as a nepo baby, he was born out of touch and has spent his whole life falling deeper into bizarre social bubbles and media silos that were tailored by his ancestors and peers to reassure them that they're doing the right thing. In theory plutarchs should be receiving world-class education from private tutors, but being arch-Conservatives by definition, these teachers are invariably out of date on mental health, and would be forbidden from teaching it even if they had modern material.
Because of this isolation the ultra-wealthy often have certain very uneducated traits around self-esteem—which can paradoxically seem like the result of poverty. They do not have access to DARE or Sesame Street to give them the confidence not to take drugs when pressured, they've never seen Mister Rogers, their biological parents were always off running a business empire, and they have no surrogate figures because their nannies probably get fired at the drop of a hat, even for defending the child's interests.
Ironically, American republicanism makes this worse; in a planned aristocracy, parents internalize the belief that their children deserve "the best" because they are meant to be "the best", but without that noble lie, there is no pressure to create a positive environment for the next generation of tyrant. To make matters worse, these families never start off with healthy values to begin with—which produces a founder effect of regressive masculinity that magnifies everything else I've just mentioned.
You aren't the first one to notice the correlation. It is a heavily studied subject.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wealth+and+sociopathy
Aren’t sociopaths strongly overrepresented among the powerful?
(Assuming that) It’s a bit astonishing that we discuss things like that, go huh, and then go about our day. Effectively acquiescing to rule-by-personality disordered.
They are perfectly aware of their own optics and do it because you can't escape it. See Elon with his cringeworthy Twitter takeover that still hasn't collapsed, Larry Ellison buying up the media or Tim Cook gifting the gold trophy to Trump.
Nobody has the guts to boycott them anymore. Billionaires know that you depend on them for news, social media and smartphones too.
> still hasn't collapsed
Which is why he's playing a shell game with xAI "buying" twitter and then SpaceX "buying" xAI
Well... it worked. The shareholders were made whole, Elon got his vanity project, and the only people who got the short end of the stick were the loss-leader Twitter addicts. From a game-theory perspective that's a pretty impressive political polemic to achieve with purely private capital.
When the dust settles the only person to blame is Jack Dorsey, who spent his halcyon years on Twitter pumping Bitcoin and looking even more coked-out than Elon. If people can't move on to better platforms then yes, they are doomed to eternal monetization by warring moron techbro tribes.
I think that's what bothers me the most about the last couple years. These ultra rich people are just brazenly being scumbags and there is nothing anybody can really do about it. I imagine this is what people felt like in the middle ages when their King was going senile.
I think you're wrong and it's worse- there are a lot of things that many people can do about it, it's just that they choose not to.
Both are true. Some things can be done and are simple/healthy, like escaping social media. Others are fundamentally much harder and not worth the risk/trouble/time.
The closing point is the one that should get more attention — every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page. And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts: you want access to APIs the browser won't give you. Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser, and that's by, unfortunately, design.
> And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app
I have worked on several applications where the product managers wanted to make our web app something that could be installed through the app store, because that's how users expect to get apps.
I know people who don't even type search queries or URLs into a browser, they just tell the phone what they want to find and open whatever shows up in a search result.
I've tried pushing back against the native app argument and won once because customers actually reported liking that we had a website instead of an app, and other times because deploying an app through the stores was more work than anyone had time to take on. Otherwise, we would've been deploying through app stores for sure.
Marketing gets plenty of data from google analytics or whatever platform they're using anyway, so neither they nor product managers actually care about the data from native APIs.
> I know people who don't even type search queries or URLs into a browser, they just tell the phone what they want to find and open whatever shows up in a search result.
I don't know exactly what you are talking about here, but if I wanted to find a restaurant that is local I definitely just type 'Miguels' into the browser and then it searches google for 'Miguels' automatically and it know's my location so the first result is going to be their website and phone number and I can load the website for the menu or just call if I know what my family wants.
However even then, I'd rather have an app for them where I can enter in the items I want to order. I've noticed apps tend to be more responsive. Maybe it's just the coding paradigm that the applications tend to load all of the content already and the actions I take in the app are just changing what is displayed, but on a website they make every 'action' trigger an API call that requires a response before it moves on to the next page? This makes a big difference when my connection isn't great.
I also find it easier to swap between active apps instead of between tabs of a browser. If I want to check on the status of the order or whatnot, it's easier to swap to the app and have that refresh then it is to click the 'tab' button of the browser and find the correct tab the order was placed in.
>I definitely just type 'Miguels' into the browser
So you open safari first. I think that’s a step further than what’s being described.
Many people it’s just “hey siri, book a table at Miguel’s.” And then click whatever app, web result, or native OS feature pops up.
It’s a chaotic crapshoot that I have never been able to stomach personally. For others, that’s just called using their phone.
This is pretty much what I meant. Even if the browser is what comes up, the fact is the user isn't interacting with the browser as a browser. They're interacting with their phone through an app (voice => search). They don't understand website URLs, or what search engines are doing. That makes it harder for them to return (engagement metrics!) than tapping the icon on their phone that opens up directly to the app.
It's also why so many websites try to offer push notifications or, back when it seemed like Apple wouldn't cripple it, the "add to home screen" or whatever CTA was that would set the website as an icon. Anything that gives the user a fast path back to engaging without having to deal with interacting with the browser itself is what PMs and marketing want.
I recently took a trip to Hawaii, particularly Maui. I've never been before, but I hit the weather lottery and got to experience the Kona low system that raked the island with copious rain. Anyway... What I found, in the areas that we were staying, was that there were a lot of food trucks that looked to have great coffee, poke, food in general. But with the weather it was unclear if the food truck was 1) accessible 2) open due to other weather issues.
What I found was that none of these food trucks (and even some relatively nice restaurants) had operational web pages. One had a domain but, for some apparent reason, they posted the menu to <some-random-name>.azurewebsites.net. And that page just... Didn't work. The rest got even worse. Most had listings on Google Maps, but the hours and availability did not reflect reality. We went to a coffee food truck that wasn't there, even though the day before they had commented on a review. Then we had others that had a link to an Instagram page of which some claimed to house their "current" hours and location, yet we tried going to two of them and both weren't open.
It's 2026. If you have your business on Google Maps you should be able to update hours and availability quickly. But beyond that it costs almost nothing to host a simple availability page on a representative domain. And even if you don't want to deal with the responsibility of a domain, there are multitudes of other options. Now, I'm guessing that this isn't the norm for most of these vendors, at least I hope. But we weren't there during the worst of the rain, we hit the second low that went through in our timing. So while it was a significant amount of rain and some of the more treacherous switchback roads were closed - I'm talking about food trucks that were off of very accessible main roads & highways. My SO reached out via IG to about a half dozen vendors and only one responded 2 days later.
Clearly tech and simple services like availability and location that is easy to update is not accessible (or known) for these types of businesses. But it definitely does not require an app (nor should it). Having these simple "status" sites would have made the friction the weather caused significantly less than what we experienced. I don't want an app when I'm trying to find out if a restaurant is open. I, personally, don't find apps any more responsive. In many cases a lot of web sites are littered with far too many components that are not required. I've been doing a lot with Datastar and FastAPI recently and some of the tools I've thrown together (that handle hundreds of MB of data in-browser) load instantly and are blazing fast. So much so that I've been asked how I "did that". It's amazing how fast a web app can be when it's not pulling data from 27 different sources and loading who knows what for JS.
I want to be really clear that I'm not trying to argue with your experience, just to understand it... but:
> However even then, I'd rather have an app for them where I can enter in the items I want to order.
Really? You want to download a different app for every restaurant you order from?
> there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts
The flip side is there are (presumably) real people downloading these apps. Maybe it’s a kid interested in a career in the FBI, or the family of someone who works there. Idk. (I thought it would contain a secure tip line or something, but the app seems to be a social-media front end first.)
I am willing to entertain that there is a legitimate reason for an app to exist without conceding that it should be a pile of trash.
Today morning, I was checking TSA wait times. Guess what, they want you to install their app to get the wait time. [1]
[1](https://www.dhs.gov/check-wait-times)
In their defence, there is a fairly nice website too, not sure why it needs to have its own logo though
https://bwt.cbp.gov/
That's border wait times, not what the OP was looking for.
TSA used to have an API [0]. But, of course while the deprecation page still lives on the service does not.
Edit: Also looks like TSAWaitTimes.com [1] is an option, I'm sure their API works. o_O
[0] https://www.dhs.gov/archive/mytsa-api-documentation [1] https://www.tsawaittimes.com/
Exactly what big businesses do, and governments think what businesses do is good practice. Fore everyone to use an app.
The UK's Companies House (required for anyone who is a director or has a shareholding of more than 15% etc.) requires a Onegov ID now. They offer a web version with a scan of a photo ID (passport or driving license). I tried it. I thought one of those would work. Apparently the web version needs to ask security questions (reasonable, as the app used NFC to read your passport) but despite the vast amount of information the government has on me (to issue those IDs, to collect taxes, etc) it cannot do that, so i had to either use the app or go in person to a post office in a different town.
Similarly I got an email from Occado saying that if I used the app I could change orders without checking out again. If I do it on the website i have to checkout again. Why?
Quoth the Doctorow: "An app is just a website wrapped up in enough IP to make it a felony to modify it."
Not sure if this is still a thing, but some apps used to embed libraries very much tracking everything you do on the phone, including your live location and that was then sold to third parties.
> access to APIs
It's mostly static data. Just publish it under a URL that won't change. Then we could actually cache and archive it.
The APIs in question are client-side iOS and Android APIs. Most of these apps are just WebViews wrapped in spyware, which is the point. It doesn't matter that most of the content is static or already uses browser-native APIs for functionality like forms, gating access to this information behind a surveilance device is the point.
Very well said.
> Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser
Most browsers do in fact offer that level of granularity, especially for PWA usecases [0].
And from an indicators perspective, having certain capabilities turned off can make it easier to identify and de-anonymize individuals.
[0] - https://pwascore.com/
Fingerprint? Yeah. Deanonymize? No.
There's a considerable difference. And doing whatever one can to mitigate the former shouldn't be discouraged by falsely equivocating the latter.
Nope. Actual deanonymization.
You will of course need a couple additional threat intel feeds because what is provided via the browser itself isn't enough, but third party data vendors along with threat intel vendors are fairly cost effective.
I've seen a couple actual live demos of deanonymization a couple years ago - it's a capability that has existed in the Offensive Security space for a couple years now. And the company I'm alluding to is already live in Japan and Israel.
Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? I find this site incredibly difficult to read with things re-playing as you scroll up and down and the articles I've read from here are often light on details. The graphics seem very AI-generated (overlapping text and other little issues) which makes me think the whole thing is from an LLM.
While this post does have some interesting information, I have to wade through distracting animations that seem "off" which makes me questions all of it.
> Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations?
I don't think so. It's more likely that they're upvoted as a signal-boost; convene here to talk about bad government tech.
Some submissions are less about the subject matter than they are about providing a space to talk about only the subject in general. I've found this to be the case when the content is AI-generated.
It's upvoted because the message is "the administration bad." Which, heuristically, is the correct take most of the time.
Yeah, this site has been posted a few times recently, and there is something just very odd about the site design and the writing.
For example, this post seems unhinged at best: https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-ve...
I didn't even realise it was an article. I thought the grid thing at the top was just an index page linking out to other pages.
I can only presume it's designed for people who's attention will not be kept by sparse but fitting graphics and a well written article.
I can't read any of it, but the other comment's descriptions sound like the new mandatory Russian Max app, so it isn't without precedent.
Speaking for myself unless I know the site and like how they do things, my default these days is a reader view.
It helps a lot!
In this case it helped me lose interest in the article within about 20 seconds.
Relatedly, I just registered for PACER to download court documents. It's pretty shocking that to get public legal documents the US Federal Court system requires full name, birthdate, address, phone, email, credit card info... and I THINK (it's past the initial registration page so can't confirm 100%) also mother's maiden name and 2 common security questions. Just a treasure-trove of PII if it ever falls into the wrong hands. (What's esp frustrating is even after going through this, I had to call a number and wait on hold for 1 hour to activate the account.)
I'm old enough to remember when people actually took the Hatch Act seriously.
You could not pay me to use any of these apps. All of my own devices run some form of Linux (Debian for servers, Arch for desktop/laptop, GrapheneOS on phone). I generally refuse to use non-free software, the main exception being Steam on a dedicated gaming rig.
I really don't understand why everything has to be an "app." My phone only has a handful of apps, including two web browsers, through which other things are accessed. No app gets access to location, sensors, the camera, or the microphone.
Apps can gather data, and there are lots of things that requires apps now.
Edit: I meant apps can gather data.
Apps obviously gather data. In fact, on common phone operating systems, they tend to have access to an insane amount of information, including what other apps are used, hardware identifiers, information related to Google/Apple accounts and more.
As for things "requiring" apps, I am happy to do without those. If I cannot access something through a website on a device under my control, I will not use it. No convenience is worth more than my freedom and privacy.
Oops. I meant apps can gather (more) data.
The inconvenience is considerable. In the last few days I had the choice of use the app or drive 20 mins each way plus park, walk and possibly queue. Required (UK) government ID verification. The issued my new passport without that!
It is often more costly to not use an app, not just inconvenient. My daughter had to use the bus company app to get (much cheaper) monthly ticker to get to school.
I use few apps, keep location turned off, do not use wallet, etc. but there is going to be more and more pressure to use apps.
Can you offer some examples?
The names of the offending apps on the cards need much more emphasis.
Don't install these apps unless you absolutely have to. If you absolutely have to install them, uninstall them as soon as you're done using them.
Most of this is bad, but I think it's reasonable for the FEMA app, whose purpose is to help you get to the nearest shelters, to have access to your location.
Which government?
FYI, regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back
> regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back
Well yes, it’s not a high priority. I’m not going to bring it up with my electeds. Are you? If everyone who thinks this is a huge deal is too lazy and nihilistic to do anything about it, it won’t be prioritized.
As long as it isn't mandatory like the Russian Max app, I wouldn't worry. The only reason to dislike it (other than privacy issues) is the money spent to develop it (which has already been spent).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(app)
> only reason to dislike it (other than privacy issues) is the money spent to develop it (which has already been spent)
There are plenty of reasons to dislike it. The money spent to develp it. The attention spent to maintain it. The abuse of users' goodwill. Dilution of the FBI's brand with a circa 2008. None of these are good. None of them are, frankly, issues I'm going to personally engage on.
Title is missing the number 13, which makes it much harder to parse. Should be "Fedware: 13 Government Apps That Spy Harder Than the Apps They Ban"
These devices don’t actually give access to biometric fingerprint data do they??
Heh. American funny
Why is every part of this website animated, and part of the text is backwards? Am I the only one who sees it this way?
I think they are supposed to be like cards that flip over and you see what's on the back.
If the webmaster notices this, the squares aren't great on mobile.
There is currently an attempt going on by several governments to crack down harder against the people. While before it was "only", say, California and their age-sniffing laws infiltrating and tainting Linux - thus declaring war against the people, as revealed by Meta acting as primary lobbyist here - today I read that now that age-sniffing was also approved in some european countries (in one EU country the parents are required to install a sniffing app and thus verify the age of the kids; I think it was in Greece. I'd never help any government act as fascist sniffing proxy trying to control and monitor by kids, that is an act of betrayal of such a government), their next line of attack is against VPN. Suddenly the picture shifts, because if VPNs are targeted, how does finding an excuse such as "but but but think about the kids", make any sense? That is very clearly governments becoming increasingly fascist. Add a few lobbyists here and there who benefit financially from this and now we suddenly understand how democracies are undermined. See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...
Democracy needs to be adjusted - right now private interests can too easily sabotage and undermine it.
The recent spate of state-level age verification laws, while stupid, are primarily designed to insulate Facebook from lawsuits and not actually crack down on people. You can comply with them by just having a date field and an API to get bucketed age ranges out of them. The reason why they seem like a concerted crackdown is that Facebook can pay people to go to literally every legislature and bug them up and down[0] until they pass a law to make OS vendors provide age buckets.
The real shit is happening parallel to the actual legislation. Companies that need to comply with, say, the extremely onerous UK Online Services Act, are forcing everyone to use data-heavy verification paths like facial recognition age estimation or ID scanning. Newgrounds just used your account age or a credit card.
A core property of fascism is that, unlike other forms of tyranny, it is specifically a public-private joint venture. The government uses corporations to bypass its own constitutional restrictions, and those corporations then agree to follow rules that don't actually exist, specifically so that those corporations can shut down all their competition and form para-governments that supercede the democratically responsive bits. This has actually been going on for a while, but it's only now that the people are actually noticing it.
[0] Inspired by Louis Rossmann's efforts to get R2R bills passed, I've started doing amateur lobbying for the Rio Grande Plan. It's surprisingly easy, but you will almost certainly have to take off from work or sacrifice many a lunch hour to be able to actually get to talk to people.
Surprise... water is wet. Now bring in the NY Communist Times and the Bolshevik Broadcast Corp for a "differing view".