There’s been like 14 similar cases of this.

I imagine the Flock techs, installing a fleet of cameras for the local fuzz, do training seminars where they encourage exactly this kind of thing (surveilling romantic partners). Still, the fact remains that the fuzz have good reason to know that that in particular is not allowed under any circumstances.

This is a hijacking: True — the reader is damaged by restricted access, but it is also true that the author is damaged.

You post something that you intend to be read by the general public. You don’t control access; the place where you post it does. After age gating mandates, that place will assume the worst — that your content is adult content.

There are three age tiers: adult, young adult, and infants. After age gating mandates, many of your readers in the general public won’t comply by stipulating their ages. The worst-case assumption is that they’re all infants.

When age gating breaks down, there’s a mismatch between default age rating of authors’ content with default age rating of readers. Content that is adult by default won’t reach readers who are infants by default. Much of your content will go unread by much of the general public. One assumes this is age gating’s intentional design — to restrict access to your content.

Same. Nobody listens to his radio 24x7. Hardly anyone ever responds to “Hello, World!” messages in real time. We do see nodes located far, far beyond the horizon. On a good day, there are way over 150 nodes operating, which is enough to keep channel utilization above 10% without any traffic beyond NodeInfo, Telemetry, or Position.

I don’t know what it’s all for. A couple of friends keep nodes charged and on the air locally. We expected to be able to exchange off-grid text messages, but, on a bad day, only about 2/3 of our messages ever go through. We need more LOCAL nodes! It’s difficult to imagine how to advertise though.

I suspect the agenda of Ham-Radio Operators with regard to Meshtastic who had nodes up before we did was just to dabble with the technology. Their agenda with regard to emergency preparedness is much more robust. For example the list of certifications required of Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network volunteers is (long):

"All SATERN Members • Must be a FCC licensed amateur radio operator • Must have an up to date completed volunteer profile • Must be credentialed and have an ID badge • Must follow the amateur radio operators code of conduct • Complete Safe from Harm training • Complete Introduction to Emergency Disaster Services training • Complete FEMA ICS-100 and ICS-700 • Complete Salvation Army SA-200 Incident Command System Training • Be proficient with net operations • Be proficient with the ICS-214 form • Be proficient with the ICS-309 form • Understand the ICS-217 and ICS-205 forms • Be proficient with the ICS-213 message and ARRL radiogram • Must have an understanding of how to report and/or halt any unsafe operations.

"TYPE FIVE Shadow Communicator, TYPE FOUR Canteen Communicator, & TYPE THREE VHF / UHF Communicator

“In addition to the general training and proficiencies above: • Must have a Technician Class License or higher • Recommended Completion of FEMA AUXCOMM training • Be able to program their radio equipment in the field without the aid of a computer • Know their radios’ capabilities and limitations • Arrive equipped to meet the needs of the team typing • Be able to function in high stress environments and in adverse conditions • Be able to serve as a net control operator • Be physically fit and able to walk for 10 minutes or more to serve as a shadow • Be able to lift 50 lbs as part of a canteen crew. • Type Three must be qualified to drive a Salvation Army vehicle (must have a valid driver’s license and be a Salvation Army approved driver)”

• https://salarmycentral.org/edsdirectorsmanual/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/05/SATERN-Application-2020.pdf

… so, if Meshtastic node owners aspire to having any role to play in emergency preparedness, then just operating a $50 LoRa radio probably isn’t going to cut it. Understanding how to keep out of the way of the folks doing the heavy lifting is important, too. Meshtastic Users’ getting the cold shoulder from anyone else having the least familiarity with emergency services is surely plausible.

I tried Tor for a while but it was too clunky and when used in conjunction with a search engine like Mojeek, was unusable. Whatever it was doing in the background made it impossible to search, with most failing due to suspected bot activity.

Yes, this is the point: Search engines are harvesting YOU and YOUR SEARCH TERMS! TOR prevents that, and they don’t like it.

OTOH, DDG Search and DDG(Onion): https://duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmv/ et al., almost always works for me. Startpage and Startpage(Onion), too, but Mojeek and Brave Search show results less often.

I made up my mind years ago to stick to TOR Browser and TOR VPN network for anonymity, privacy, and security regardless of poor response times. Today, I feel that that choice has been vindicated. TOR response times are no worse than they ever were, but response times viewing heavily ad-ridden sites with “normal” browsers have caught up. TOR blocks receiving a lot of ads and tracker folderal that “normal” pages spew out to all comers. It’s just that a handful of search engines — and many and yet more Web sites — will not serve content to TOR’s VPN network. But — You know what? — screw them!

I will admit to using the Chromium browser to retrieve must-have content from sites whose Web-hosting providers block the TOR network because — believe it or not — some of those sites don’t support Firefox. It’s deja vu all over again for those of us who lived through the Netscape Browser Wars.