That disclaimer was actually a result of the lawsuit. It didn’t always say that. Google was sued for intentionally misleading users, by tacitly encouraging their misheld beliefs that it made them invisible. Basically, Google wanted to track users. And Google knew that some users trusted incognito mode way too much. And instead of correcting that, they actively misled users into believing that incognito mode was more secure. Because if users believed they were invisible, Google could continue to track them when they thought they weren’t being watched.

They got sued for those misleading statements, and lost. And now the splash screen specifically says that Incognito Mode doesn’t make you invisible.

Well yeah, that’s all it ever was. The lawsuit was because of misleading/deceptive statements made by Google, which led some (intentionally misinformed) users to believe that Incognito Mode was more private than reality.

Basically, the company knew some users believed Incognito Mode hid their browsing activity. Not just from their local machine (via no logged site history, clearing cookies, etc), but also by hiding it from prying eyes like Google. Some users genuinely believed Incognito Mode was basically some sort of combination of Tor, degoogling, VPN, tracker-blocker, etc… And Google actively encouraged this incorrect belief, because they could continue to siphon off users’ data when they thought they weren’t being watched. The active encouragement of incorrect beliefs is what the lawsuit was about, not the data collection.

Can confirm

Mine does nothing when the video is full screened. I had to open the post and hit it while it was playing above the comments.

It can be both server and DNS provider. For instance, Cloudflare allows you to set rules for what traffic is allowed. And you can set it to automatically drop traffic for everything except your specific subdomains. I also have mine set to ban a IP after 5 failed subdomain attempts. That alone will do a lot of heavy lifting, because it ensures your server is only getting hit with the requests that have already figured out a working subdomain.

Personally, I see a lot of hacking attempts aimed at my main www. subdomain, for Wordpress. Luckily, I don’t run Wordpress. But the bots are 100% out there, just casually scanning for Wordpress vulnerabilities.

+1 for dropped connections on invalid domains. Or hell, redirect them to something stupid like ooo.eeeee.ooo just so you can check your redirect logs and see what kind of BS the bots are up to.

Yup. Queue is a line. Cue is a trigger. The cashier can cue the next person in the queue to approach the register.

Even more confusingly, my job frequently shorthands “cue” as “Q” because it is quicker to write in a script. For instance, the script margins will have the stage manager’s notes, which include lighting cues, sound cues, etc… So the stage manager will write something like “Q136 when light switch flipped” if lighting cue 136 needs to fire when the actor flips the light switch. So they can call it at the appropriate time.

The real concern is whether taking Courage will also invite all of the weird stuff that seems to follow him. You get a dog, and then suddenly your house is besieged by alien cats who want to steal your eyes.

Nope, Firefox. YouTube does A/B testing for their ad methods, so what works for you won’t work for everyone.

Pihole doesn’t work for YouTube, because they host the ads on the same servers as the videos. Blocking ads would also block videos. And uBlock Origin is a constant game of whack-a-mole, with YouTube constantly trying new ways to evade the ad blocker.

Hell, they’ve even started embedding the ad directly into the same video stream if they think you’re using an ad blocker, so it’s all one contiguous video that runs straight from the ad into the video you wanted to watch. Then they just block you from skipping ahead in the video stream until the ad is done.

So you’re still smug, and offering misleading advice. Peak substack vibes.

Are you a registered republican, or live in a conservative area? I’m registered R so I can vote for the least crazy candidate in their primaries. Because a democrat has basically zero chance of winning the general election in my district. And I get the MAGA bait too.

It’s actually “TL;DR rich people bad” but sure, pop off I guess.

Yup, exactly. They want to keep it federal (and avoid state charges), because Trump specifically can’t pardon state charges.

Official stats are that less than 30% of ICE detainees have any kind of criminal record. And of that 30% who do, the vast majority are small offenses like traffic violations, being drunk outside a bar, etc…

The old joke is that party democrats always manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Winning as a liberal would be laughably easy if the DNC would get out of the fucking way. But the DNC is obsessed with making everyone wait in line for their “turn”, which means the only people “allowed” to run are the candidates who have put in the time, paid their dues, and toed the party line to prove that they’ll play nice with the official party platform. Which means the only democrats who ever make it to the stage are the most bland milquetoast career candidates imaginable.

I can guarantee the ICE agent is going to say he felt like his life was in danger, because she was accelerating towards him. The fact that he actively walked in front of her car and created that situation will conveniently be left out.

I hate that so many videos only ever get posted to fucking Twitter. Fuck that site, and fuck the people who exclusively post things there.

The atheist thing is largely due to excitement and evangelicalism, the same way born-again Christians are some of the most obnoxious people on the face of the planet.

When someone “discovers” atheism, it usually comes with a lot of excitement. They have this new truth, and it’s so obvious if you just think about it. Why wouldn’t everyone want to find this same truth? After all, this truth brings a level of enlightenment that has never been felt before. So they should try to spread this new enlightenment to everyone. Wait, why are you getting angry and walking away? Ugh, it must be because you’re too indoctrinated or stupid to recognize the truth.

And the same is true for born-again Christians who discover religion later in life. The excitement leads to evangelicalism, because “this is obviously the best thing in my life, and I want to share it with everyone I meet.”

It’s how he normalizes his insane plans without being directly implicit. He starts with the “I’m not saying they should cancel the elections. But if they did… I’m not saying they should do it though. But I mean, it wouldn’t be unheard of.”

Anyone who has ever worked as a restaurant server knows the old “blame they, not yourself” trick. Forgot to bring out some table’s food, and now they’re upset that it’s taking so long? Don’t apologize for it and take the blame, because that will have them potentially tipping you less. Instead, say “Oh, did they not bring that out? Let me go take care of that real quick.” Now you’ve deflected blame off to some faceless entity, and have put yourself on the customer’s side as someone who wants to help. Your tip won’t be affected, because you’ve positioned yourself as helpful.

Notice that when Trump floats ideas like this, it’s almost always “they”, not “we”. “They” is a faceless, nebulous entity. It can be anybody or nobody, so placing blame on “they” is a convenient way to float potentially unpopular ideas without putting any individual (or himself) in the crosshairs. If he used “we”, he would naturally be the figurehead for the idea, and any blowback would land on him.

It’s a message to his followers on what he wants, without directly tying himself to it. And it allows the various talking heads to use it as a springboard to normalize the idea before it is ever implemented. That way when the thing actually happens, his followers have already been primed to accept it.

Protests can be peaceful and armed, FWIW. That’s what started the Black Panthers. People realized that unarmed peaceful protests got violently broken up… But heavily armed peaceful protests had cops politely watching from across the street.

Cops were more than happy to fire into crowds when everyone was unarmed. But the cost/benefit ratio suddenly changed when the entire crowd could return fire. A cop may be able to hit three or four protestors, and in an unarmed protest, the rest would quickly scatter and disperse. But when everyone was armed, the rest of the crowd could immediately return fire instead.

It’s also what started modern gun control laws. When lawmakers saw a bunch of heavily armed black people on their front porch, and saw cops unwilling to break it up, they got really fucking sweaty. So Ronald Reagan (yes, the same Reagan that conservatives put on a pedestal) and the NRA (yes, the same NRA that lobbies for looser gun control after school shootings) co-sponsored the Mullford Act, which was the most restrictive gun control bill the country had ever seen. It was literally the start of modern gun control laws.

This is what drove the Black Panthers underground, as the lawmakers and police worked to criminalize and track them, so they could kick down doors during dinner time, instead of busting up the peaceful protests directly. And we still see that tactic being used today, with police setting up cell phone trackers and facial recognition cameras at protests, and raiding suspected attendees’ homes days or weeks after the protest.