overview for Warl0k3

Scammers hijack websites of Bank of America, Netflix, Microsoft, and more to insert fake phone number | Malwarebytes by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

That makes sense, thank you!

How is federated social media better? by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

Sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding. It's just that none of what you've listed is inherent to the fediverse? There's nothing preventing data collection of that sort by an instance owner, and claiming anonymity on a system explicitly designed around open ledger social media doesn't seem entirely credible. There's nothing preventing someone from including tracking pixels, for example, and your browser can still be fingerprinted and linked to your activity on lemmy by 3rd parties through a number of meta-analytical approaches.

I love the fediverse and there's lots of good reasons for that, but I really just don't think anonymity is a selling point here. Again, might be misunderstanding what you mean, if so I apologize!

Scammers hijack websites of Bank of America, Netflix, Microsoft, and more to insert fake phone number | Malwarebytes by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 8 points 12 hours ago

Wait, so are they injecting the number into the actual legit support website, or does this only show up in the google search results as the wrong number, but following the link directs you to the legit site? The article is kinda unclear on which it is.

2025-06-18 by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Reference to the song "Dr Livingstone I Presume" by The Moody Blues.

Dr. Livingstone, I presume
Stepping out of the jungle bloom
Into the mid-day sun
What did you find there?
[...]

How is federated social media better? by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 24 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Yeah it's absolutely not true, everything done on the fediverse/activitypub is extremely easy to scrape (an unavoidable consequence of the design) and inevitably will be, if it isn't happening already. Though, it's true that it's not being hoarded and since everyone can scrape it, it's probably not being sold either!

Poor Emperor Severus Alexander, just wanted to watch the animals play 😭 by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 21 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

According to the Historia Augusta, Alexander's "chief amusement consisted in having young dogs play with little pigs." [69] Herodian portrays him as a mother's boy.

In case anyone else was curious what the context was!

US Military never really trained for these types of dog and pony shows by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

(Apologies that this response took a minute, there were scythe-related hijinx)

…You just did exactly that. Projection much?

While it's not really a whatabboutism (since I'm not trying to deflect the conversation to an unrelated topic, I don't actually want to talk about the Uyghur right now), you're otherwise 100% correct. Explicitly, even! That's the whole reason I said it, to provide an (ironic) example and to point out your response in a way that is personally unimpeachable. How did you react to it when you read it?

One of those links is a fucking search bar.

Damn, sorry about the OECD link - I didn't catch that it was loading a cached page when I followed it. Public entity webdesign, what a charming thing. This one should be fixed. It's a great site to get familiar with in general, really. An invaluable source for a great many topics.

See how you’re trying to impose artificial limits on the conversation, excluding points that you don’t like even when they come up naturally?

Again, you're not wrong and this was the explicit point. That's what all that lampshading I did was about.

[...]even if your overall perspective is still wrong.

I'm not sure I strictly disagree here - I'm curious why you think the US is overextending itself? In what ways have we overextended, or what signs of that are you seeing that I'm not of a potentially catastrophic strategic overinvestment are present in the Ukraine war? I won't argue that China isn't making great strides geopolitically, that is patently true, but the gains they are making are mainly at the Russian Federation's expense - China has moved in to support many regions that were once staunch bastions of Russocentric influence.

That's not to say they're not gaining ground against the US, but the US and China's economies and development are closely tied together. Example: China is the #1 home country for foreign students studying in the US, in every university system with which I am familiar (which is west coast and ivy league I admit, I don't know much about student populations in the flyover states except to say that Earlham and OSU both follow this trend the last time I checked) and we sponsor thousands upon thousands of our graduate researchers to Chinese universities in kind. The US has as well entrusted a great deal of technological advances, even licenses for silicon design technology and other secrecy-order technologies like ultra-high-yield solar panels (rumored 45% efficiency) (this is the only S.O. technology I know of to be acknowledged) to China, and that wasn't even done for entirely hubristic or greed-based reasons. Realistically, China is the only near-peer power to the US, and (aside from that little whoops about russia) that's been true for a long damn time.

Anyways, Cooperation between the two states would be beneficial for the whole world. If we can both clear up our issues with homegrown fascists, and oligarch worship we might actually be able to get a whole lot of good done for the world, especially now that Russia has effectively removed itself from the world stage (and now stands impotently in the shadows, trying to be menacing). Joint US/China projects are already some of the most influential in the world, extending this would be to everyone's benefit.

Sorry, things are getting... dumb... here but I think that hits your major points. I don't like to do full point-by-point breakdowns, since it just spirals into longer and longer walls of text if both parties take to it, and I already spend enough of my time bickering with well-meaning randos on this website. This seems like a decent response to your overall thesis, though?

Ah and the edit points:

Ok, cool! So you agree that the US should copy China’s approach of avoiding military entanglements like Ukraine and instead focus on peaceful economic development! Glad we got that cleared up.

Oh come on, you're better than resorting to middleschool-tier baiting. We both know it's more complicated than you're presenting even if there's no chinese boots on the ground.

That’s… the point. The time period is pretty old.

I think we might both be confused here; to my mind, bringing up the age of the data which is being used to address a historical point seems almost ontological. Why are we arguing about it?

US Military never really trained for these types of dog and pony shows by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 0 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Do you notice when you're doing that? Constantly shifting the conversation to a new topic when you've been batted down over the last one, rejecting things out of hand that might go counter to your position instead of trying to at least understand the intent with which they were shared? Remember when this was about Ukraine, Instead of what you're trying to shift it to, the moral relativity betwixt China and the US?

All those links are highly relevant here (I admit #2 requires you to scroll a little, and #4 is a database frontend so maybe it was unfair to assume you'd be able to interact with it), arguably the third link most of all (it shows a ton of things in that very compact table, individual donations yes and it's a fine example of how China's restrictions on extraterritorial charity affect their potential impact.)

Look I get it, you're pro-china, but you're just assuming I'm opposed to you. It's... I mean, it's the stereotypical reason why so many people dislike .ml users, you're constantly coming in here and intentionally provoking interactions that you comfortably know the dance steps to. You personally are persecuting yourself, and it's kinda embarrassing. Gladhandedly dismissing the other party, focusing only on the things you support, never reflecting on anything that's actually said in favor of attacking in kind.

even if the US is narrowly ahead, it’s a richer country and it’s a much smaller fraction of the military budget compared to the same numbers for China

(edit:) Look you did it again. "Even if you were right, it doesn't matter and anyways I'm still right"

Anyways, here's a fun hypothetical example: I do not support China because of their ongoing public genocide of the uyghur people.

Oh, you edited it:

That source still shows the US ahead in the period from 2000 to 2014, but that data is pretty old at this point

Which data on that time period wouldn't be pretty old?

characterization of their approaches

That was never the topic of discussion, I was never arguing US vs China, but I'm a nice person so you're free to claim your uncontested victory on this point.

US Military never really trained for these types of dog and pony shows by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh boy. Only have time for a top three, so in no particular order:

Who considered the Russian Federation a bigger opponent than the PRC?

... Literally everyone. China was aligned as a 'follower' of the Russian Federation's geopolitical lead prior to russia's utter stomping in Ukraine. Was it incorrect? Well, obviously. But the image of the great russian bear was the specter keeping the western world up at night.

Looked in a mirror lately? The US just elected Trump

A blatant whatabboutism but just to address it: The US will be fine (diminished geopolitcally no doubt, but still in a powerful position) after this all gets sorted out internally. We survived the last trump admin, we'll come through this one too. This just isn't the fall of the roman empire like oh so many people are claiming, politically it just doesn't even resemble it.

building hospitals and infrastructure for developing and middle-income countries - the things we won’t even build domestically.

I... what? We opened half a dozen hospitals in my state alone last year. Additionally, you know the US has been the world's largest source of charity and investment in developing nations for decades, right? Look you're repeating lines from some seriously anti-china propaganda here and it's a little weird. You know about trump canceling USAID and why that's bad, right?

There's lots of things to criticize the US on (and it's something I do all the time, lets be clear) but you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

(Okay, honorable mention because I just can't with this shit:)

when it’s the reason we can’t have things like free healthcare or higher education.

The reason we don't have healthcare is fascism, not "military spending taking all the money". We could 100% have free uni and healthcare without reducing a cent to the pentagon's budget. In many states we even have (limited) free healthcare, entirely funded by state budgets. You're just repeating bullshit right-wing talking points like they're objective truth, but with a lefty spin on them.

US Military never really trained for these types of dog and pony shows by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You might have a point if the US were fighting in Ukraine, but... we're not? We're advising the Ukraine army, sharing intelligence we'd be gathering anyways and giving AFU a bunch of export weapon systems we found by rummaging around in the pentagon's couch cushions. This has been a spectacular opportunity for the US because it costs us almost nothing, yet what used to be considered our biggest opponent is teetering on the brink of cultural and economic collapse. Seriously, even if Kiev were to fall tomorrow NATO would be no-contest the victor. Nobody cares about the bear any more.

Such a flop... by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Dude thats a whole 214 words, it's not like they typed out the unabridged works of Tolstoy.

Australian writer questioned, deported from US after report on pro-Palestinian protests by Warl0k3 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think we already knew they'd taken over Customs and Immigration. This is yet more of the same shit they've been pulling for decades - just more blatant and with a lot more coverage than usual, which is nice that people are finally seeing what they're doing. Eyes-on is, despite the lack of rebellious glamour, a critical thing to have...