(From a US perspective) It would be good. As an analog, take a look at patents, the surge in 3d printer tech is because the patents expired. The idea is a “limited exclusivity”, the permanent nature it has become is stagnating, and only there to benefit the corporate rather than personal nature that the system was designed for.

Probably cookies, I did another quick test and created a new profile. The front page was unpopulated. I went to a technology connections video, and the refreshed the front page. It was populated, cleared stored information, (history, cookies, cache, etc…) and when I refreshed the homepage it was blank again.

The fairly default browser I used to take the screenshot is to watch some free with ads movies on youtube, most recently was waterworld, fun to watch, makes no sense.

Its not this simple, it looks like this to me on my fairly locked down browser (firefox), but on a fresh profile (image attached), that page is populated. I assume its a cookie setting, as I see the same behavior when I turn off tracking protection and ad blockers. I didn’t play around beyond that.

They bill after the fact now or at least that made that change 10 years ago. https://www.wkms.org/government-politics/2012-03-15/south-fulton-adopts-new-fire-subscription-service

Similar to nitro for a user, but for a server as a whole. At various levels it add features to servers. Bigger files, more sticker slots, Banners, animated server icons, higher quality streaming, more options for invite links and how they appear…

authoritarianism is another word that can mean different things to different people. It can be used to mean the government enforcing any rule that isn’t liked. civil rights protection? authoritarianism. job protections? authoritarianism. minimum wage? authoritarianism. etc…

Also related is “small government”. I think people who use it mean (at least when not in control) “small federal government”, the state however should control everything about peoples lives.

I almost think its the laws they support are black and white and unchanging. If something is wrong with a law, it doesn’t matter, that’s the law. The solution to an issue isn’t to change the law, its to enforce it harder, or make it more restrictive. The “rule of law” also applies to individuals and actions. Money crimes, fraud, “the state” are not subject to the same “rule of law” because those laws “don’t make sense” and if we look above are a result of “authoritarianism”.

Is there a solution to get people to use language that can be agreed upon? who knows, but it would certainly help clear things up. I hate trying to guess what someone thinks a word means to attempt to refute their points.

I don’t know I’ve though about “rule of law” quite that way before. I’ll have to add it to my list for when it comes up. There are several other terms that mean different things to different people (I wish I remembered a specific one to demonstrate). Its one of the reasons its hard to have political discussion online. You have to determine what the words your using mean, before you can start arguing the points.

Assuming he believes his words (as opposed to using rhetoric to get what he or someone around him wants, in either case unfortunately, I think he’s serious). I think he sees anything purchased from another country as “subsidizing” that country. To him, its money the US had that Canada now has. I sometimes think he somehow thinks the US should be given things, because…??? Every transaction has to have a “winner” and a “looser” and whoever has a + on the balance sheet is the winner, it doesn’t matter what that + really means. (I can only bend my logic so far to try to figure these things out)

Disclaimer, I don’t like what is being done, I think its wrong, damaging, and questionably legal, at least the process that is currently in progress.

To add more nuance and explanation, There are only 3 branches of government, and when congress says we want a thing done, the executive is the one to execute, because where else could you even put it? For truly independent agencies, I think you need to amend the constitution for that. The current administration is taking that to heart and taking more of an active role, often beyond bounds set, in what is still lower level of the executive. If you were to go to an org chart of the people being fired, and departments being closed, if you went up a few levels you would get to the president. As much as NIH, or CDC, or USAID, or any others are independent, at the end of the day, they are part of the executive.

Most of what is being done has been done or tried to be done before, not necessarily at the same time.

As for your list, I’d be careful about throwing the baby out with the bath water, the NSA is involved with evaluating encryption, although there is some checkered history (DES) in this role.

The FBI helps coordinate multi state investigations

Intelligence from the CIA would be useful, but their history of foreign meddling that has come back to bite is a bit hard to overlook.

For self hosting there is also https://forgejo.org/ which is a fork of https://about.gitea.com/ , the latter of which started to shift to a corporate model.

I don’t know if this is part of the case, but browsers basically control standards, and with the size of chrome, that means google controls the standards. The browser is a big aspect of the ad pipeline. Because they have the browser they could direct page views to themselves more than they do by using amp links. Even with blocking cookies and such, chrome still sends data back to google. There was the whole logon scheme they were pushing (I don’t remember the name) that only chrome would be able to do. There is a lot you can direct to yourself if you control the main access method.