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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: October 6th, 2023

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  • tbh, the concept of tiktok-style videos is really good for science and small useful info bits.

    What? That’s… absurd.

    I mean in the context of science, how is a tiktok style short video in any way superior to a longer form video? I mean there’s some really great science content on YouTube, vertasium, smarter every day, 3 blue 1 brown, minute physics, etc. But if you only watch a short snippet of video, what you’re cutting out is the entire scientific method, the part where they ask the questions, investigate, form a hypothesis, explain some experiments. Invariably, the short skips right to a conclusion, without any of the context. It’s like providing the right answer on math homework without showing your work, it’s functionally useless. It’s like science candy, it tastes great, but has zero nutritional value.

    I can’t see any way to avoid concluding that YouTube shorts are terrible for science.










  • Well, while I agree with that sentiment, you may be looking at it the wrong way.

    It’s not that locking your doors gives them permission, it’s that they’re just doing it whether you lock your doors or not.

    Imagine you’re the NSA, imagine you’re already spying on every American who isn’t using a VPN (not because you have any legal right to, but because you can). Now ask yourself, where’s your biggest blind spot?

    This is why they want legal permission to spy on people using VPNs. If they can do it legally, they can just walk right into a VPN’s server room and install whatever eyes they want on the inside.

    All I’m saying, is that there is no constitutional justification for this, they don’t care. Their plan is simple, spy on everyone, fuck the law.






  • While I don’t have an answer for your first question, there is a really good answer to the second.

    A delay is a perfect solution for eliminating the tactical advantage that its imagery could offer, while still maintaining an eye on the region, not letting war crimes go unnoticed.

    The delay rather than a blackout actually reinforces the idea that this is really about not providing intel to Iran. Three day old troop positions are totally useless, those troops are somewhere else now. A delay is totally sufficient to make their imagery non threatening. But if they were trying to hide the actions of either side, a delay wouldn’t be enough, they’d need to hold those images back forever. Meaning, they aren’t trying to hide the truth.


  • Well that’s actually a really good point. We already know that Russia is sharing intel with them and even if China wasn’t doing the same, I’m sure they have no problem with “sharing” that intel at a price.

    With this perspective I’m actually somewhat convinced that the move could have more to do with outside perception (be it for Americans or for the rest of the world).

    Still, there’s no telling what the quality or timelines of the imagery they’re currently getting is like. The difference between having 10 second old images and 4 hour old images is huge, and we really don’t know what they’re getting from Russia. So with that in mind, they don’t need one more avenue to get that data, especially one that could be more immediate imagery.

    Edit: As another user points out, these images aren’t being blacked out entirely, they’re just being held back on a 72 hour delay. This does indicate that the company isn’t trying to prevent their images from being seen, they will be seen. But they can’t be used for tactical advantage on the battlefield, 3 day old information is not very useful for that.

    So, make of all that what you will.