The local government is not banning repeat speeders from using the roads though.

Uhm… they do. Fuck up badly enough and your license is taken away. Does that stop people from driving? Of course not. But the penalties for getting caught go up really fast (if you aren’t a cishet white “good old boy”).

And while it is more associated with NIMBYism than safety, there are a few neighborhoods around the country where “no through traffic” is enforced very heavily. Usually there is no actual fine, but you get a rentacop who will make your life hell for the 30 minutes they spend “running your plates” and so forth.

That should remain the decision of the courts.

Uhm… what do you think this is?

I mean… why do you think new speed bumps and traffic signals get added to neighborhoods? Same with adjusted speed limits.

That IS the engineers (well, the local government that employs them) being held accountable for dangerous roads.

For this? I have very serious concerns for all the obvious reasons. But ISPs 100% know what we are doing. Like… there is a reason that comcast et al basically have like a 1 gig upload on a 100 gig down connection. Same with bandwidth caps… which “worked” up until everyone was teleconferencing from home and watching 4k netflix.

And… considering comcast et al love to sell bundles for “unlimited bandwidth” or “symmetrical upload”… they are very much profiting off of piracy.

A lot of that is also a function of displays.

Everyone and their mother want ridiculously bright displays with high contrast because we are all afraid of (I will never feel comfortable typing this without an awkward preamble) crushed blacks and so forth. Most people have no fricking clue what a “nit” is but you are more likely to know how many of those a display has than the actual resolution because that is what is put in the copy sent to reviewers.

And when your display puts out brighter light than the bare light bulb in the room… suddenly a white background is REALLY brutal and everyone jokes about getting flashbanged.

The “speculative” part being massive.

Depending on what brand phone you buy, you either think apple copied the Star Trek communicator or Star Trek copied apple. But the reality is that the communicator was really just a logical extension of the telephone (also so are cell phones but…). And it played such a major role since the 60s were really when people began moving really far away from their families for work or Life and audiences could relate to relying on their phones to keep in touch. And then it is just a logical extension of what happens if you are always in touch… and then what happens when you aren’t?

In a lot of ways? It is less that the techbros see the torture nexus and want to make their own and more that the torture nexus represents a logical progression of society and technology that we will reach if ethics and “common sense” fails and… welcome to the 21st century.

… How did you mispell the name of the service in the thread title?

Aside from that: I think so, but you need to make that decision for yourself. There are a few demos that various influencers have made (I was sold by the one by Remap Radio… Fuck Capitalism, Go Home, and Pay For Google?) but what sold me is:

1. I do a LOT of searching in any given month. I’ll use an LLM based “engine” for quick factoids (we’ll get back to that) but I really need the ability to search from my browser’s address bar or the steam browser without having to wade through all the bullshit.
2. I REALLY like that I can prioritize, deprioritize, and outright block sites. No need for a sketchy anti-fandom extension that tracks everything I do when I can just click the dots and say to never show me warframe.fandom ever again. Also it is useful for blocking the REALLY chuddy news sites and misinformation blogs
3. Speaking of Steam. I can just grab/assemble my login-less search string and use that with Steam so that all my in-game searches use kagi with my token rather than dealing with raw dogging google.
4. And as for that LLM? While I wouldn’t pay for it on its own, I do like the kagi assistant. Mostly because it shows me what search strings it is running/emulating and gives me citations. So when it tells me that smallpox tastes savory, I can see how it came to that conclusion and even check if that is contradicted by the website it linked to

I have a lot of concerns with the techbro libertarian attitude of the company itself and am not really huge with where my money goes (in terms of API calls) but… I have a lot more concerns with google shoving and obfuscating gemini more every single day.

Do I like that I am paying for what should be a basic fundamental element of the internet? Of course not. But also… kagi’s approach kinda feels like what searching always should have been since it lets me cut through the SEO bullshit so effectively. I doubt I would be paying for this if google et al hadn’t all decided it was better to emphasize advertisements and LLMs over all else but… I also could see myself doing so with the right demo?

Proton are very open about what they do and don’t provide.

They’re not going to protect you and they will turn on you the second they get a letter in the mail or a text from the cops.

But what they DO provide is the ability to register an email address (with a domain that isn’t blocked by most services) without providing any other information. And, from there, you can encrypt it yourself if it is a particularly sensitive message.

As for IP logging? if only there were tools like VPNs and Tor to negate that.