comfy

Let's say, I sit down in a mall, open my laptop and connect to a secured mobile hotspot. Then I do it again next week after a reboot. What information would a nearby shop or a passive malicious hacker be able to find about my device? Does my device send out identifying information before joining, like a MAC address? Is this persistent, or randomized?

I intentionally haven't specified a distro, so if something only applies to some network managers, give some details.

Bonus points: what about Android phones?

I'm asking this out of curiosity; I don't need to host anything that can't already be done in the West

Lots of countries have very relaxed or non-existent enforcement of torrent filesharing. That's not what I'm asking.

I'm asking about what place one could openly host every known commercial pop song and every Hollywood film without any worry about being shutdown or sued.

For a reference, according to a one-minute check of Wikipedia, the only countries which haven't ratified the Berne Convention or the TRIPS Agreement in any way are Eritrea, Kosovo, Palau and Palestine. While joining these agreements doesn't imply they're enforced, it gives an idea of how widely governments do agree to intellectual property rights.

~~how much would it cost to launch an independent server into orbit?~~

I'm going to have access to a 3D printer for a few days. I know two friends who've used them, but it's only been for art and figurines, or professional purposes.

Are there any other cases you can think of where a custom-printed item is better than the myriad of mass-produced plastic items?

What is something you can sense that few-if-any people you know can sense? Literal answers only.

We want to DIY some unique marker inspired artwork. The "DNA art" from companies online involves sending a DNA sample, and we have privacy concerns about that, and we'd rather not fork out thousands of dollars for DNA sequencing devices just for this. We can resort to a fingerprint for inspiration if there's nothing more interesting available and affordable to us, but we'd like to explore our options first.

The DNA sequence artworks they're talking about are ones like this, but it doesn't necessarily have to look anything like these:

Zohran Mamdani famously won the New York mayoral election, along with news of some other social democrat, and in at least one case socialist, politicians being elected to various levels of governance in the past weeks.

However, there will obviously be a broad range of reaction from the owning class (including but not limited to possible capital strikes). On top of that, since Mamdani ran as a Democrat, there is a very real threat of the Democratic Party establishment forcing Mamdani into compromise, for example, by state Dems threatening not to approve Mamdani's tax increases on the rich.

We've already seen some possible signs of Mamdani moderating stances on police and Zionism, and we've already seen other recent DSA politicians like AOC compromising, so this threat of Democratic Party pressure could be imminent if Mamdani (and the Dems) aren't held accountable by citizens and their power structures (including unions and other interest groups).

What power do citizens have to hold these social politicians to their word? How much power do existing structures like the DSA and worker unions have?

Most people reading this are probably very familiar with buying things between $0-1000 USD (such as everyday food and everyday clothing, perhaps weekly rent). Some of us will have experience buying more expensive items, like a car ($10,000s), or maybe even a house ($100,000s or even $1,000,000s). Some of you might want to object to those numbers I listed, they obviously will vary wildly in different markets, but I want to now ask about much more expensive things.

What is the cost of some items that few-if-any Lemmy users can afford? What can the absurdly rich buy that we can't? How much does it cost them?

You must give a money value with some evidence, no just knee-jerking and saying something vague like "elections" - instead find articles disclosing how much manipulation campaigns cost a political party.

It would explain a lot.

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad, "

This post is just asking: So, what are you doing about it?

There are plenty of great reasons to act privately, but I admit, it's also a hobby for me.

(it's also a good answer if there was a specific reason)

There might be a better title but it'll do.

Corporations insincerely adopt progressive themes because, at least in most Western countries, it's become increasingly accepted, popular and seen as ethical in the dominant culture, and therefore is a good marketing strategy for reputation management.

This phenomenon is widespread, but some core examples are pink/rainbow capitalism, greenwashing, and spin (e.g. presenting exploitation such as outsourcing labor to cheaper markets as "diversity", as opposed to actual diversity programs). A classic example of this insincerity is various companies (Bethesda, BMW, Cisco, General Electric, Mercedes-Benz, Pfizer, Vogue and many more) famously adopting social media rainbow Pride logos only in some regions but not others - improving conditions for SGM is evidently not a true company value, it's marketing.

I assume that before the normalization of progressive values in these markets, the same type of phony value signaling existed to exploit the dominant values of the time. For example, in the US, patriotism and Christianity.

I believe this is an useful topic to explore, because it can give us tools to explain to some of the more casual 'anti-woke' crowd the difference between progressivism and insincere corporate pandering, perhaps by comparing it with examples of corporate pandering abusing their values, perhaps the notorious commercialization of Christmas and Easter holidays for an example.