Proton deserves a lot of criticism but they are still one of the easiest ways to degoogle. They have a fine line to walk with having enough features to be competitive with google and still trying to be more private.

This is the core objection of the piece:

Proton’s own Meet privacy policy claims the infrastructure “only processes encrypted data and cannot access any meaningful user information.” LiveKit’s Data Processing Addendum says they retain call detail records, connection timestamps, IP addresses, and operational metrics as an independent Controller. Those are meaningful enough to build a federal case on.

So the video stream itself is encrypted but everything else about the interaction, even for “anonymous” users, is logged by a US company.

Much like their email.

Very cool read. Not a problem I have ever tackled.

Oh, interesting to hear some of the detailed challenges of it… And yeah I could see that sea of bubbles being very error prone.

Seems like people are uncomfortable with ranked choice because they don’t understand it, but if they grew up with ranked choice, would they be comfortable with the electoral college?

From your article on Portland:

Voters in District 1 were also more unclear about how the city counted ranked choice ballots and expressed less trust that their vote would count than those in other districts. Nearly 50% of District 1 voters polled said they believed that ranking more than one counselor would dilute their vote, which is inaccurate. In comparison, 32% of voters citywide shared this concern.

Thats a confusing poll. Its not clear what concern is being shared. 32% is worried that district #1 votes would be diluted? Sounds like their voter education in district #1 was counter productive, or people got really anxious in district #1 to have 50% confusion.

86% of people do want the winner to have a majority of the vote and RCV gives them that.

Seems like the Portland example may not show the complete picture:

Using voter file data from off-year local elections, Dowling et al. (2024) find individuals living in RCV cities are more likely to vote nationwide. This study also reported evidence that campaigns in RCV cities have higher rates of direct campaign contact with voters than campaigns in similar places without RCV. Using panel data with repeated measures of individual voting over time, results show that people in RCV jurisdictions are significantly more likely to vote in off-year elections than individuals living in non-RCV places, all else equal. Increased campaign contact is shown to be the primary causal mechanism, as discussed above.

How do you figure? All the em dashes?

I suspect many of the other apps would work with any os, as they seem to be web apps. Voyager, tesseract, etc.

What actually makes money hasn’t changed. You find something people need. You get good at providing it. You charge a fair price and you keep showing up even when it’s tedious and even when you don’t want to. You build relationships over years. You build reputation over years. None of it is passive, and none of it has ever been passive! All of it revolves around giving a shit, day after day, about something specific. I don’t think anyone has ever found a way around that and I don’t think anyone will.

https://www.runforoffice.org/

Lots of local elections go uncontested or have very low turn out.

How is Sweden so low? They are pretty far north but >5x lower than many others?

Wow what in interesting rabbit hole.

I ended up four blogs deep at: https://www.seangoedecke.com/side-bets/

Looks like it was an F-35. https://m.economictimes.com/news/defence/iran-shoots-second-us-f-35-fighter-jet-says-pilot-survival-unlikely-israel-war-middle-east/articleshow/129994398.cms

This is not helping the marketing for it being a “next gen” and stealth aircraft.

I wonder if countries will use this as ammo to back out of F-35 orders

Ha oh I don’t follow football so I missed the joke. Thanks for the explanation.

Let’s not kid ourselves, most western nations have frequently been on the wrong side of history. Its no small part of where our wealth comes from.

But yes we should celebrate when they make a good choice and keep pushing them for better choices.

This is what I see:

OTTAWA — The United States has flagged Canada’s early interest in a sovereign cloud that would bar foreign governments from accessing data without consent as a potential trade irritant.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer included it among several procurement issues in the annual report on foreign trade barriers he submitted Tuesday to U.S. Congress and President Donald Trump.

As always, Canada’s tightly controlled dairy market got a mention. So did the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act, which Greer has flagged as priorities for the coming review of the North American trade pact. The federal government’s Buy Canadian policy for contracts over $25 million is a new one this year, as are moves by some provinces to keep U.S. alcohol out of liquor stores. The long wait for regulatory approval of aircraft and a proposed change to the disclosure rules regarding fragrance allergens in cosmetics also debuted on this year’s list. Gabriel Brunet, a spokesperson for Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, said the government’s trade team is reviewing the report.

On the sovereign cloud, the report cites an August 2025 “request for information” by Shared Services Canada, the federal government’s central information technology agency, asking Canadian suppliers about their ability to provide the federal government with a “fully sovereign public cloud solution.”

That feedback would then be considered in future procurement policy development, which the agency framed as a response to “emerging challenges relating to digital sovereignty.” Shared Services did not mention the U.S. specifically, but the onset of Trump’s trade war and his threats to annex Canada by “economic force” months earlier had thrust the issue into the spotlight.

Greer’s report notes the proposal calls for cloud services where data would be “processed, transmitted and stored exclusively in Canada.” It would exclude suppliers subject to laws letting foreign governments access Canada’s data without written consent. (Another requirement Greer did not mention: providers could not be “subject to foreign laws that permit foreign governments to request measures that could affect or discontinue the service.”)

Shared Services said it was unable to comment in time for publication, but an update to the request for information suggests the conditions highlighted in Greer’s report remain. In its notice, the agency said it had invoked the National Security Exception for all stages of the procurement process for sovereign cloud services. That means nothing in any of Canada’s free trade agreements barring such protectionism would apply.

There is a difference, though, between exploring the possibility of creating a “fully sovereign public cloud solution” and actually doing it—especially without U.S. tech giants.

The federal government acknowledged as much last October in its “framework” on digital sovereignty: “It is impossible for the [government of Canada] to obtain a state of complete digital sovereignty, known as digital autonomy, due to the absolute interconnected nature of the digital world.” Manav Gupta, IBM Canada’s chief technology officer, told The Logic last month that the views of Canadian politicians on digital sovereignty had been “maturing.”

In January 2025, the federal government said it would review its business relationship with Amazon after the e-commerce firm closed its fulfillment centres and sorting facilities in Quebec. As The Logic reported, that review led officials to conclude that Ottawa’s reliance on Amazon Web Services, its second-largest cloud vendor, limited its leverage against the tech giant.

Dude that’s huge. How is this the first I’m hearing of this?

If you don’t want to watch YouTube: https://transparentelection.org/

Our approach leverages each state’s authority to define corporate powers, creating a pathway to campaign finance reform that doesn’t rely on restricting speech but instead focuses on not granting political spending powers to corporations in the first place.

Yeah I had never seen a comparison before. My expectation was just based on the amount of news I see on surveillance in a given area.

Huh I would have guessed London would be far higher than LA.

Lots of countries are talking a big game but Spain is out there doing it.

A complete nothing burger. They tweaked some words.

Beautiful