SoylentNews

GAB

Hello Everyone,

Yesterday Breitbart published a leaked internal Google briefing about the shift Silicon Valley is making towards more censorship online. This followed leaks earlier in the day from The Intercept, which show how Google is contradicting themselves in regards to the censored search engine they are building for the Chinese government. You can read the briefing that Breitbart published here: Google: "The Good Censor".

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/10/09/the-good-censor-leaked-google-briefing-admits-abandonment-of-free-speech-for-safety-and-civility/

https://theintercept.com/2018/10/09/google-china-censored-search-engine/

On page 53 of this internal Google briefing, Gab.com is cited as a "challenger app" and notes how users are moving to Gab in response to the censorship of Silicon Valley. Google argues for a "European" approach to speech standards on the internet, favoring "civility" over freedom.

Silicon Valley has shown their true colors, which is why they recognize Gab.com as a threat to their control and dominance over the internet. They are rejecting the cherished internet ideals of liberty and free expression in exchange for censorship and partnerships with the Chinese government.

This is why Gab is winning and will continue to win. We are adding tens of thousands of new users every week, and our funding round is being completely powered by you, The People. In about 20 days we have raised $670,000 and will quickly meet our goal of $1.07m. We are hiring more engineers to speed up product development, make the site more user friendly, and build out our own infrastructure to escape the chains of Silicon Valley.

If you're interested in investing and becoming a shareholder you can learn more here and invest as little as $252.

PS: developers please check out our new API.

Thanks for your continued support!

Click here to login to your account →

Thanks and remember to speak freely!

__________________________________________________________________

THIS is why there is a gab.ai people. Any more questions?

After serving me well these past five years, my good old Nexus 7 is finally going to retire. I've gotten a new tablet, a Xiaomi Mi Pad 4, which is more or less the same form factor, just slightly bigger, and the hardware specs are really sweet. But I should have been a tad more careful reading of both the place I bought it from and the stuff on XDA about it. First off I'd bought a version that has a Chinese ROM. This shouldn't be such a big deal, except that the damn thing doesn't have Google Play or any sane app market. There's the Mi App Store, and while it has some of my essential tablet apps, some omissions are rather notable, not even including including something as basic as a workable FTP client. Since one of the main uses of my tablet is to play video files I download from a network storage server at home, this is essential. Maybe there is something there that could do that... if only I could read Chinese. F-Droid seems to help somewhat, except that there still isn't a simple FTP client that will let me download several files in a batch. The closest thing there seems to be Ghost Commander, but it downloads all the files in parallel and can't display progress for all of them. This is ridiculous. Even the web browsers like Firefox are in Chinese! The keyboard is also the Google Chinese keyboard, and there's something of a dearth of alternative keyboard apps, at least no keyboard that will let me type numbers on a password screen lock without pressing a modifier key. I fucking hate that. There is a lot of space on a 1920×1200 screen that is 8" across, I could use a row of number keys at the top thank you very much! There certainly seems to be nothing like the Hacker's Keyboard on Google Play, which you can actually use vi on a remote shell with because it gives you that all-important Esc key. :P

The other thing is that locked bootloader. I could have flashed a custom ROM to remove the useless Chinese cruft. While Xiaomi will allow me to unlock it if I want to (after giving them something like $250 for it I expect no less), they have an irksome requirement. They are making me wait 720 hours (yes a whole fucking month) before they will permit me to unlock. The fact that they impose this delay on you for your "protection" is extremely irritating and paternalistic. Sure, if the device is stolen it becomes essentially unusable if the bootloader is locked but there are better ways to make that happen I think. Given the lack of GPS or LTE circuitry in this version of the Mi Pad 4 I have, if that happens I don't think it's going to help. So do I own my device or not? Seems they want to hang onto it for a month longer before they'll actually give it to me.

In the meantime I've managed to sideload a few of the essentials after using Titanium Backup on my Nexus 7 to convert them into APKs. They largely seem to work.

I've been hearing about that clown's support of Trump. And, about the snoopy Dog putting him down for it. And, assorted other nonsense responses to the Caney guy.

Now, let's be clear here - I don't like West. He's about as dumb as two boxes of rocks, IMO. In an interview, he said "They wanted to execute Galileo for saying the sun revolves around the earth". The host attempted to correct that little mis-statement, and West says he's really not interested in the details. Yup - two boxes of rocks.

Still, the guy is kinda, sorta, at least TRYING to think for himself. He gets an "E" for effort, anyhow. He likes Trump. A black dude who rejects the Democrat mantra. Maybe he's smarter than he looks? Well - probably not, but maybe smarter than he acts? Hmmmmm . . . Anything is possible.

Still - we have a rather popular person (Don't ask ME why he's popular!) who bucks the trend, and supports the President of the United States.

And, for that, West becomes "Uncle Tom. Ass nigga".

Alright, so the snoopy guy is the only one to use those exact words. (Well, the only one I've seen quoted as using those words.) Still, half of the D oriented population in the US suddenly hates West, for his political preferences.

“The blacks weren’t always Democrats. You know it’s like the plan they did, to take the fathers out the home and put them on welfare. Does anybody know about that? That’s a Democratic plan,” West said while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

“Ninety percent of news are liberal,” he also said. “Ninety percent of TV … LA, New York, writers, rappers, musicians; so it’s easy to make it seem like it’s so, so, so, one-sided.”

OK, soooo - maybe West ain't smart. Still, he demonstrates that he's smarter than at least half of America's "progressive" "leftist" "socialist" "Welfare" "communist" supposed to be "Democrats".

Oh yeah - he demonstrates a little bit of wisdom in that last quote. He does seem to recognize that rappers aren't musicians. "writers, rappers, musicians:" He clearly distinguishes between rappers and musicians - maybe I'll have to up my estimate of his intelligence to THREE boxes of rocks?

Ass nigga. Is that an ultimate insult, among black folk? Or, is that just a generic insult, like, "You suck"? Or is that to be taken in context? Like, if I were to say it, I would be shot immediately, without so much as a warning. But, if another black guy says it, it's just so much banter?

Imagine if West got a vanity plate "A55NIGGA". I might have to salute the guy for being that ballsy. Still not smart, but ballsy. There are so few ballsy people left in this country, you gotta respect that. Well, I respect defiance, anyway.

BTW - how in the FUCK do you get "Conyay" out of Kanye? It still looks like "Caney" to me. His existence helps to lower the literacy rate in this country!

“I'll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.”

― Lyndon B. Johnson

Are we to the point yet where we can mostly agree that the name game is fucking stupid? You know, the one where as soon as everyone gets used to referring to a group by $name it gets declared *ist and a new and wildly less accurate one is created? This isn't a thing I lose sleep over and it doesn't offend me when someone uses one of the retarded terms but the fact that it is still a thing that happens annoys me much in the same way people not using their turn signals does.

Let's go through a few here. Mine first. Native American. I was born here, so I'm a native American. So is little Chewy who was born in east L.A. even though his parents were illegals. So is Tyrone who was born in Detroit. So is Sally who was born in Vermont. Which is to say, it's a fucking idiotic term. I prefer Indian or wagon burner but I'll answer to anything that isn't trying to paint my race as delicate snowflakes; even Azuma's favorite racial slur, Chief Shitting Bull, is better.

African American next. For starters, not all black people are American. Not by a long shot. Also, the vast majority of them are no more African than they are Martian. If you just emigrated from Africa and got citizenship, this term would make sense. Most black folks though can't even tell you which quarter of that continent their ancestors came from. They have zero genuine ties to Africa.

Asian Americans? They're generally fucking proud of being from their nation of origin and would prefer that nomenclature-wise. Don't believe me? Call a Japanese person Chinese and see what happens. Lumping them all together is actually insulting if you know their ancestry. You're basically saying they all look alike. See African American for the American bit.

Middle Eastern? See above but switch Israeli and Egyptian for Japanese and Chinese.

Hispanic? Did you know you can call a person from Germany German, a person from Canada Canadian, but not a person from Mexico Mexican? That's some fucktarded shit.

People of Color? Strictly a term to exclude white people. Damn fine way to spot a racist asshole though.

Now how about some that have been declared reee-worthy simply so you can call someone a bigot...

Retard/retarded. See, this word has an actual meaning and is not an insult to anyone who it is an accurate description of. But it's been around a while, so it must be offensive and need changing.

Ditto disabled, handicapped, etc...

Tranny? Short for trans-whatever using the long standing habit of chopping a long word and adding "y" to shorten it. No more insulting than Tommy for a guy named Thomas. Jimmy for James never made sense to me on account of having the same number of letters but at least it follows a pattern that makes sense in general even if not in every specific case.

We don't even need to go into the pronoun game much. Anyone who can't decide on male or female can fuck right off and anyone getting offended about not being called the one they prefer should stop fucking looking like the other one.

If you're pissed off and want to discuss this, please try and present a rational argument. You being offended isn't going to cause any fucks to be given by me, no matter how hurt your butt is.

Ever wonder why progressives (Not liberals. Entirely different meanings.) seem to be getting wackier and farther out in crazyland as time goes by? Well, you're in luck. That's the topic of today's bedpan full of wisdom.

Progressives, unless they are an extremely small minority, are going to constantly make incremental progress towards whatever their goals are. A funny thing happens when over half of their goals have been accomplished though, they face a brutal decision. They now have an unavoidable choice to slowly watch their reasons for existing diminish as their goals do and allow themselves to become conservatives, or they must keep coming up with shiny, new things that piss them off. The problem there is that sooner or later you run out of things to be pissed off about that even make sense.

This is where the progressives historically split from the liberals, by the way. When everyone has liberty and equality under the law, as best as can be realistically managed, you have no choice but to move away from liberty and equality if you want to keep progressing rather than conserving what you already have.

See, liberals and conservatives are the same thing when the status quo is liberty and equality under the law. This doesn't work for people with a bad case of Pissed Off At Daddy Syndrome though. They have to disagree and think he's a bastard no matter what. When he's for liberty and equality, that leaves them no choice but to be the opposite if they want to remain pissed off children rather than growing the fuck up.

Just another day, here. I have things to do, but I spent a couple hours killing aliens before heading out. First stop, fuel up. Then head south into Texas, for breakfast and shopping. On the way, I met a diesel 1-ton dually pulling a trailer. He was only notable because he left a cloud of smoke drifting beside the highway when he pulled onto the highway. Going on south, I reach my breakfast destination. Walk in, take a seat, ask for coffee, then order an 8 ounce ribeye, with two over medium, and homefries. "How do you want your steak, Honey?" As always, rare, just turning medium rare - I don't like it to actually bleed when I cut into it.

I got an unusually tough steak this morning - it didn't quite reach that "melt in your mouth" texture that I'm used to. Damned good steak, all the same!

Finish eating, light a cigarette, and smoke it before paying for my meal. Yes - in Texas, you can still smoke in the restaurants. Well, some of them anyway. If the owner of the restaurant has the balls to tell the state to go fuck themselves with a cactus. This is one of the reasons I like Texas.

While I'm smoking, a vehicle pulls up, some dude around 40 gets out, grossly overweight. Then two girls get out. Elder is overweight, for sure, younger is borderline. Can't call her fat, but she's not far from it. The two girls faces look familiar - think a second - look behind the counter - uhhhh - yeah, that's got to be their mama. Right at that border between way overweight, and actual obesity. She has a face that might be described as "interesting" if you're in a generous mood. In a less generous mood, "porcine" would work perfectly. Flattened snubnose, no lips, very high forehead. The daughters share her face, but they don't look so bad yet. The younger, slimmer, daughter can almost be described as "pretty". Give her a few more years, and a few more pounds . . .

Well, time to do that shopping. Spend an hour or so driving around town, picking this up, and that. Ended up at Wally World. Mmmmmm - easter candy!! I filled a shopping cart, thought about getting another cart, but was afraid the wife would call me a glutton - or worse.

Time to head home. Cross the Red River back into Arkansas, and drive a few minutes. WTF? DAYUM!! That cloud of smoke I noticed earlier is still hanging in the air? NO WAY!! I brake, do a U-turn, and drive back south past that "smoke". U-turn again, and idle right up to the smoke. Odd - I'm not aware of ANY kind of vapor that just hangs in the air for a couple of hours. I cut the wheels, and drive completely off the road, and edge into the cloud. Below the embankment, a water hole becomes visible, which is fed by an ephemeral which is dry right now.

Now, I'm kinda looking upward into this smoke. Lighter spots, and darker spots, it still looks smoke-like or vapor-like. But, now I can see little motes within the cloud darting hither and thither within the cloud. I finally get my eyes focused on this thing, and realize that some kind of gnats are swarming. They're much too small to be Texas' famed buffalo gnats, but sure enough the little suckers are swarming!

I'm almost curious enough to step out of the Trailblazer to get a better look - but I don't feel any real need to inhale a few thousand of these little insects. Then I realize that my 6-cylinder is probably inhaling butt-tons of them. Oh-well - put it in gear, and head home. I hope I didn't kill a hundred thousand of some kind of endangered species of gnats.

Optical illusions are pretty cool, if you have the time to stop to figure them out.

*sigh* The wife exclaims, "Oh, Halloween candy!" And, she begins plotting how she's going to give it all away. But, but, but - I didn't BUY it to give it away! Now I'll have to make another stop somewhere to guy another buggy full of candy!

Tittiecoin Acquires Titcoin and Launches Tittiecoin 2.0

According to the wiki page this happened a few days ago. I checked out the official site, but it was not terribly interesting (something about an island?) https://tittiecoin.com/

I purchased a book through Amazon. No big deal, I have a couple dozen ebooks that I purchased through Amazon. I checked my email a little bit ago, and found this:

"Some Old Guy, did 'A State of Disobedience' meet your expectations? Review it on Amazon"

Ehhh, I liked the story, and was prepared to write a review on it. So, I clicked the link. Odd - the link loaded, and they asked to send me a code to verify that I'm me. Didn't ask for my password or anything like that. I approved the code thing, then pasted that code into their form. The next page to load told me:

To submit reviews, customers must make a minimum number of valid debit or credit card purchases. Prime subscriptions and promotional discounts don't qualify towards the purchase minimum. For more information, see our Customer Review Guidelines.

Now, that seems pretty screwed up. I didn't exactly volunteer to spend my time doing book reviews for Amazon. They asked me, not the other way around. FFS, they know that I don't spend thousands of dollars per year on their products. Why bother to send me an invite, if they didn't intend to honor the invitation?

Just more stupid shit from a big corporation. Fek Amazon, and double-plus double-good double-fek Jeff. I'll probably spend even less money at Amazon after this.