God I'm sick of the constant attacks against online freedom.

God forbid anyone should ever have a private conversation.

After the number of data breaches we've seen, they want to do this, and in the least privacy-preserving way possible.

Why not set up a government api where a site can get a yes/no answer about age using tokens, so the site itself gets no information but if the age is ok? Nope, we'll just pick a few sites and force everyone to give them their data, what could go wrong?

And if you actually look at the suicide statistics, there's no epidemic of suicides going on...

https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/populat...

It's just lazy parents who can't be bothered parenting looking for a quick fix. I want to hand my phone to little tommy and turn my brain off.

What's even more galling is that the quick fix with so many obvious negatives won't even fix anything. As a kid I had unlimited time to get around any blocks. It's so dumb.

4chan is perfectly fine, but reddit must be stopped! Just to be clear I don't think either should be blocked.

Make the entire internet 18+ only and put the parents who let kids on the net in jail, I don't care.

In the process I learned about computers and eventually got a modem to access BBSes. It was exhilarating! I would have spent any amount of effort and time to access it.

I basically attribute my entire career to accessing stuff the puritans would have tried to prevent me from accessing.

Also, almost all of the porn I have came from private trackers.

I very much doubt they will be concerned with any of these rules. Things will just move more underground if that happens. And the more underground you go, the more unsavory stuff you might find.

But we all know this isn't actually about protecting children.

In a way, I hope that it ends up being a good thing because the whole clearnet should probably be nuked from orbit.

Us nerds can come up with something better. Federated, encrypted, anonymous and unblockable. It's just the spam problem that is the hard thing to solve. Maybe reputation with proof of work could work.

I'll happily leave the normies to their milquetoast, corporate, manipulated existence.

But I'm very surprised there wasn't a copy of Sims 3 visible.

How much do you trust your current government with the extensive surveillance apparatus they have created?

How much do you trust the next government?

What about the government after that?

Yes sir, I'm very sorry sir I didn't wear a nice suit when my people are being murdered.

Oops, I mean de-nazified sir.

Just tell me where I will sign to give up our natural resources for zero security guarantees.

The absolute weakest third-rate crybully with no conscience or morals. An empty vessel. A disgrace.

I'm in Australia and we're going to have the same problem with our under-16 social media ban.

There's privacy-preserving ways to do it, but they definitely won't use them.

No idea how useful it'd be for non-covid calls though. Probably not very.

We didn't ask for anyone to call the ambulance, although personally I am happy that it was called and she was checked out.

My partner suffered a medical episode while we were traveling in Germany. Bystanders called an ambulance which turned up and checked her out and asked her to be taken to hospital for more tests.

She/we elected to not go with them.

To our surprise, about 6 months later after we returned home (to Australia), we received a letter in the mail (in German) that said we owed something like $500 for the ambulance, I forget the exact number.

How does that line up with "you will never face a surprise bill" in Germany? Or is it because we are foreigners?

We never paid but I sometimes wonder if something would happen should we return to Germany.

Maybe another hero can clarify things.

What difference does it make? Doesn't your peace come from within?

I'll explain why:

>Why do you have a greater right to peace than your neighbors do a right to clean?

I think this was quite a rude statement, somehow even more rude because it was posed in a weak, backhanded way as a question.

It is also a question with the embedded presupposition that I actually do think I have a "greater" right to peace than my neighbors do a right to clean. "Assuming the worst of me".

This presupposition is also irrelevant because moving leaves is not inherently an operation that generates large amounts of noise.

I simultaneously believe my neighbor has a right to clean and also that I have a right to peace. These beliefs are not mutually exclusive and also not measurable so cannot be directly compared.

Notably however, my cleaning does not disturb my neighbors peace.

You don't know me or my situation except what I've stated, which was that I am living next to someone using a leafblower many times per week.

My strongly-held opinion is that there's no legitimate reason to use a leafblower many times a week in a highly-populated area unless you're being a selfish asshole. I think it was pretty clear that I would hold that opinion.

Do you disagree? I don't know because you haven't stated a position, only insultingly and weakly implied what you think my reaction should be (which is: no reaction, lobotomized and happy, everything is ok because I am non-reactive).

If you disagree, then I know where we stand and consequently what I think of your advice.

But your armchair psychology ("what do you think?") I found insulting.

>You know nothing about me.

I know something.

I know that your response to someone being disturbed by a neighbor using a leafblower many times per week was to imply (once again, in a weak backhanded non-committal way) that that person is being unreasonable to think that was excessive, and to offer a pithy one sentence non-solution to the problem.

A "solution" that is basically just me ignoring the fact my own home environment is being ruined by an asshole so I can't enjoy music, read a book or do basically whatever activity I would like to quietly enjoy.

Once again, in my own home, disturbing nobody.

>I'm just saying that you _might_ be the problem here.

Sitting quietly in your own home _might_ be a problem. I mean, what is there to be said about this? Do you want to step back and reflect on how this sounds?

Thanks for your concern. I'm comfortable with thinking my neighbor is an asshole. I don't love the situation, but that's my burden. I don't see any way around that without extreme action.

My original post was an impotent shout into the void, in the vain hope that maybe someone somewhere might be influenced to not be such a noisy asshole. Maybe my neighbor is reading!

>Peace comes from within

I find this pithy response to minimize the legitimacy of my concerns, and also insulting, as if I wouldn't have thought to ignore the noise without this insight.

Do you honestly think I wouldn't have thought to ignore the noise? I haven't tried? Do you actually believe you were offering any useful advice here?

If I didn't care about enjoying quiet activities in my life, and also somehow hadn't managed to discover this insight myself, then your pithy response might be helpful.

Unfortunately for me, I do value my own quiet activities.

And I don't actually see a way to simultaneously enjoy peaceful quiet activities, while also tolerating extremely loud annoying noise. And let's be honest, it's extremely loud annoying noise. Do you disagree?

If you don't have a solution to that conundrum, then perhaps it's best that you don't offer advice.

Sometimes people are assholes and there isn't a solution. I realize that. Unfortunately I'm not capable of being happy about it, as I am not comatose and my peace, the quiet enjoyment that I am supposedly entitled to inside my own home, is unfortunately somewhat dependent on external factors.

So, I'm unhappy about it, and telling me that I'm the problem because I'm not trying harder to ignore that unhappiness doesn't help.

If everyone made that amount of noise, the area we live in would be completely unbearable.

I wouldn't complain if he only used his stupidly loud blower when some leaves had built up, or used a rake for the three leaves he's blowing every time.

Or picked them up by hand. Or any of a number of different options that don't ruin the environment for everyone within 100m. But no.

Personally, I believe that ruining the environment should have a cost attached. But it unfortunately doesn't, so selfish dickheads gonna dickhead and ruin the environment for everyone.

Let me guess, a leaf blowing aficionado? Giant truck with big manly exhaust driver? Muh rights?