Thanks for the info, I’m on linux mint and after checking these out it isn’t immediately apparent from their websites whether or how I could install them. Still think etcher occupies a niche that alternatives don’t fill, its website directs you straight to installing it, it’s cross platform, and using it is very easy, so it’s something that could reasonably be linked to in various install tutorials.

Rufus seems to be just for Windows and dd does not have a gui

That seems kind of shitty, if he only cheated to qualify but otherwise won the prize without cheating

Maybe they are planning to find some flaw with the kitten as a pretense to haggle for a lower price

Will they even know if they are throwing it all away?

The main rule I try to adhere to:

If I think someone who responded to my comment did not read the whole thing, I should not reply.

Well one reason is probably that signing your article content to help it be verified when it is repackaged elsewhere is kind of the opposite of what news sources are trying to do with their paywalls.

imo it conflicts too much with freedom of information. In general, if I know something then I shouldn’t be barred from continuing to know it and expressing it, even if that knowledge involves someone who would rather I couldn’t. There can be exceptions in extreme situations, but things like a “right to be forgotten” and “copyright” very broadly violate freedom of information.

I’m skeptical the market is ever going to have principles, for every person that has gotten burned and become personally aware of shady practices, there are many more that aren’t aware and don’t have the incentive or ability to do research to find out. Seems like the sort of thing where the system is rigged in favor of scammers if consumer choice is the only regulation.

I think people don’t even realize the scale of the removals, because when it isn’t banning you the platform goes out of its way to hide it from you when your comments are removed, it looks like it is still there while you are logged in but no one else can see it, I only even find out by using the reveddit extension, and I’ve been banned from subreddits just for mentioning that there’s a way to do this. It’s usually a totally innocuous comment that gets removed, assuming they just have a keyword that triggered a bot or a mod just didn’t like what I said and clicked delete. What they’re doing can hardly be termed ‘moderation’ anymore.

I think it probably is somewhat less than legal to advise people to break the law, but I like saying everyone should pirate everything so fuck it, they aren’t going to waste their time prosecuting me for that

I don’t usually like Meta, but here they used that data to produce open weights models available to the public. That sort of thing is what piracy is for so I support it.

Unfortunately, if you go to a protest and use your phone to communicate, even with Signal, the phone’s connectivity might expose your location.

I wonder if there’s a way to use some sort of mesh network to get around this and avoid most people needing to transmit to cell towers