As soon as they became a publicly tradable company they are obligated, by the Dodge v Ford ruling, to only maximize shareholder value. Being not evil isn’t an option.

Where it actually breaks is unknowable, but the structure is:

Judges determine the interpretation of the law. The executive branch enforces the law.

Both of those branches derive their power from the constitution.

The military protects the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The President is the Command in Chief of the military, however service members from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to a Private fresh out of boot camp are instilled with the obligation to refuse illegal orders.

If the Supreme Court rules on an issue and the President tries to use the military in contravention of that ruling, the military is supposed to follow the constitution, not the President.

But also fuck this type of partisan rage bait article. This type of writing is what divides us, even if it’s saying things you wanna hear.

Hear, hear.

This kind of ‘information’ is like doing drugs, it feels good but it destroys your ability to function as a normal human being. Getting addicted to outrage and ‘owning the <other side>’ is playing into the divisive politics that allows the powers that be to divide us. Nobody is going to want to work with you if you’re calling them a MAGAT and you’re not going to want to work with anyone who’s attacking you.

Your enemy isn’t the other middle class and poor people who’ve been convinced to wear a different color hat than you. If you can’t see that and adjust your behavior appropriately then you still have a lot to learn and I hope we have enough time for you to catch up.

That’s pretty close, the Permissive Action Link code was 00000000 for about 20 years.

This hamster is clearly in the know…

Not being five eyes isn’t nothing :P

Of course, any traffic leaving the US is going to be hoovered up by the NSA for their SNDL program so make sure your VPN is using something quantum resistant. That being said, I wouldn’t be too worried about law enforcement from the perspective of pirating digital media for personal use. As long as you’re not selling pirated media then LE has more important things to worry about.

If you’re in a country that has criminal ‘contempt of corporation’ laws where they actively pursue personal-use piracy, yeah you’d probably want both a VPN and a seedbox. Of course, now you have the problem of paying for it without linking it to your person. Unfortunately, a big part of the online digital surveillance push in western countries has been expanding KYC and AML laws that make it much harder to pay anonymously without linking your identity to a seedbox.

Big brother is always expanding his reach :/

Tree? What kind of nature loving hippie do we have here? We use concrete blocks like a real 'murican

I think it’s because we here in the technical nerdy spaces know the value of a cooties shot…

If you’re only interested in torrenting don’t use a VPN, just get a seedbox. You can get one with minimal stats (1TB storage, 2TB/mo upload on a 50Gb connection) for like $6/mo. You use it to run all of your torrents and handle seeding (handy for getting access to private trackers) and then just download everything via SFTP/rsync/whatever. Or, you can spend a bit more and have them host the *arr suite and Plex/Jellyfin so you have your own private streaming service. Split between a few family members, this is a very affordable alternative to commercial streaming services.

If you’re looking for a VPN for privacy concerns, don’t use a US-based provider. You have no guarantee of privacy, just a flimsy ‘guarantee’ from the company. Use a provider located in a place that has strong privacy and secrecy laws, like Switzerland.