If you want to understand why the #USA goes to war even when it is stupid and costly, like #Vietnam #Iraq #Afghanistan, look at who is benefitting from those wars. https://theintercept.com/2021/08/20/mike-waltz-afghanistan/
Here's a newsreel from Vienna in 1937, when the Austrofascist Schuschnigg was in power. They were forcing pedestrians into the narrowly constrained segments of the city that is now all too common. Before, the whole streetscape was open to all. https://www.britishpathe.com/video/watch-your-step-1/
Even in Red Vienna, we're still suffering from the Nazi's focus on the automobile: the 1939 "Reichsgaragenordnung" (Reich's Garage Law) still is law in some form in Vienna, Austria, and Germany. It requires that there are parking places for every job, apartment, store, etc.
https://cba.fro.at/347920 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellplatzverordnung https://www.falter.at/zeitung/20210818/autos--autos-ueber-alles/_5e5d2b1b12 Reichsgaragenordnung
And there were propaganda films about the Autobahn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-8cHRs4JM0
Hitler loved doing grand opening events for new sections of the Autobahn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwemPLBzME8
Mercedes was also an early Hitler supporter and received lots of support from the Nazis. The Nazis stopped taxing cars in 1934, for example https://jalopnik.com/some-nazi-car-won-pebble-1847495169
While China's passing of a strict privacy law pushing back on technology companies’ data collection is a big win for Chinese citizens, unfortunately it does not extend to the state's widespread surveillance.
Eva Xiao reports:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-passes-one-of-the-worlds-strictest-data-privacy-laws-11629429138
Original tweet : https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1429439969391697920
Modern day Hitler apologists also want to claim the Nazi role in the #Autobahn https://hitler.org/artifacts/autobahn/
And the contemporary German government tries to highlight that the Autobahn wasn't purely built by the Nazis, but can't get around that they drove their widespread creation and adoption https://www.dw.com/en/the-myth-of-hitlers-role-in-building-the-autobahn/a-16144981
I'd love to see a well researched documentary or book about the fascist roots of how cars came to dominate the world, the story is out there plain to see: Mussolini and Hilter pioneered the freeway, Nazis started VW, Franco started SEAT, Ford loved the Nazis, Fiats owners were tied to Mussolini, Peugeot and Citroen owners switched to producing for the occupying Nazi armies. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/the-peugeot-plant-attack.html https://jalopnik.com/the-inventor-of-the-rotary-engine-was-a-nazi-nutjob-1030379772 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/henryford-antisemitism/ https://voxeu.org/article/nazi-pork-and-popularity-how-hitler-s-roads-won-german-hearts-and-minds https://www.webuildvalue.com/en/infrastructure-news/first-italian-motorway.html
In #Afghanistan, "...as internal U.S. government documents show, the United States enabled a kleptocratic state rife with corruption." https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-corruption-government/
Anyone whose paid attention to #Afghanistan over two decades knew the gov would collapse like a house of cards, it is corrupt from top to bottom. Kudos to #Biden for finally ending the charade. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/15/a-tale-of-two-armies-why-afghan-forces-proved-no-match-for-the-taliban
In countries from the UK to Indonesia, it will be easy for governments to ask Apple to expand their message-scanning program—and hard for Apple to say no. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/if-you-build-it-they-will-come-apple-has-opened-backdoor-increased-surveillance
Even if you think the #Taliban is bad does not mean that the war in #Afghanistan makes any sense. We are finally now seeing the truth: that 20 year long war was built on willful fiction https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/14/afghanistan-taliban-us-troops
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/08/07/Apps-Get-Worse is worth reading, though its a bit ranty. The core idea he's talking about is one that it is rarely taught yet is really valuable to learn: sometimes the best choice is to not change something.
#helloSystem sounds like it is taking the right approach on building a coherent operating system. Consistency, interaction, and minimalism means the OS gets out of the way of the user https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/hellosystem_maclike_freebsd_project_05/
Building a bunch of wind and solar is not proven to cool the #climate, it could backfire. Reducing consumption is proven: Eat a lot less meat! Get rid of your cars! Yes, also electric cars. Ride the train! Take mass transit! https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-wind-power-could-contribute-warming-climate
Sometimes the best tech is low tech. Cash leaves no digital footprints, unlike credit cards. So we’ve teamed up with dozens of groups to urge Congress to require stores to take cash. https://www.eff.org/document/2021-08-05-group-support-2021-payment-choice-act
"Es ist nicht lustig, wenn plötzlich Maskierte mit Sturmgewehren in den Kinderzimmern stehen" - 9 von 60 Hausdurchsuchungen sind rechtswidrig. https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000128650481/gericht-erklaert-razzien-gegen-muslimbrueder-teilweise-fuer-rechtswidrig
#CalyxOS is leading the charge to deliver a truly #private mobile device, it is also #FreeSoftware. Since it is based on #AOSP, you can port it to lots of devices, even if they do not support a locked bootloader.