All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tami]

A 23-Year-Old Coder Kept QAnon Online When No One Else Would

In fact, there’d been no conspiracy to take down the sites; they’d crashed because of a technical glitch with VanwaTech, a tiny company in Vancouver, Wash., that they rely on for various kinds of network infrastructure. They went back online with a simple server reset about an hour later, after the proprietor, 23-year-old Nick Lim, woke up from a nap at his mom’s condo.

Lim founded VanwaTech in late 2019. He hosts some websites directly and provides others with technical services including protection against certain cyberattacks; his annual revenue, he says, is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although small, the operation serves clients including the Daily Stormer, one of America’s most notorious online destinations for overt neo-Nazis, and 8kun, the message board at the center of the QAnon movement, whose adherents were heavily involved in the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Lim exists in a singularly odd corner of the business world. He says he’s not an extremist, just an entrepreneur with a maximalist view of free speech. “There needs to be a me, right?” he says, while eating pho at a Vietnamese restaurant near his headquarters. “Once you get to the point where you look at whether content is safe or unsafe, as soon as you do that, you’ve opened a can of worms.” At best, his apolitical framing comes across as naive; at worst, as preposterous gaslighting. In interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek early in 2020, Lim said he didn’t really know what QAnon was and had no opinion about Donald Trump.

What’s undeniable is the niche Lim is filling. His blip of a company is providing essential tech support for the kinds of violence-prone hate groups and conspiracists that tend to get banned by mainstream providers such as Amazon Web Services.

It’s almost impossible to run a real website without the support of invisible services such as web hosting, domain name registration, and protection against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which involve crashing a site by bombarding it with junk traffic. Getting banned by AWS, Cloudflare, or other infrastructure providers, as the Daily Stormer and 8kun have been, is a step beyond a ban from Facebook or Twitter. It puts the American far right on a short list that includes child pornographers and terrorist organizations such as Islamic State—groups that promote and incite violence and basically aren’t allowed to have websites. “Every time I see an article attacking social media companies—and they deserve it—I think it’s more important to go after the companies that are hosting terrorist material,” says Rita Katz, founder of SITE Intelligence Group, a nonprofit that tracks terrorist activity online. “There’s already a good recipe that was used for ISIS. Why don’t you use it on the far right?”

[Spike-X]

Cops need guns, but they also need to be better trained in rules of engagement and when to escalate. The guy didn't have a serious warrant, they could have just picked him up later.

She needlessly escalated.

Agreed.

I believe her when she said that she meant to use her taser, but there was no call for that.

I don't, because she's a cop and she's saying words.

[achilles]

The whole taser thing.....rang a bit false to me, as if she was trying to set up an alibi. Her manner....just didn't seem right. Of course, my accuracy rate is about 3%, so take that how you will. I also don't buy the Taser/gun mistake. This is all just my opinion, and is thus likely wrong.

[Gray Lensman]

Agreed.



I don't, because she's a cop and she's saying words.

Who yells Taser Taser! when pulling one out? I'm more inclined to believe that she meant to draw her gun and yelled Taser! for the camera to establish deniability and help invoke Qualified Immunity.

[JackDaw]

Who yells Taser Taser! when pulling one out? I'm more inclined to believe that she meant to draw her gun and yelled Taser! for the camera to establish deniability and help invoke Qualified Immunity.

That would surely mean she had an acute mental problem...for she surely had absolutely nothing to gain by deliberately killing some one she had never met, and an enormous amount to lose.

To be honest, I would guess that acute mental problems must be fairly common for American cops? Put it this way...I wouldn’t fancy my own chances of remaining (relatively) sane if I had to do their job.

[babyblob]

I don't have any idea what the verdict will be. I do hope it is based on the evidence, not the social repercussions, as bad as they may be.

I've heard people say they will riot if all the cops on the scene don't end up getting convicted. For some of them, especially the rookie, that's not likely.

There are tons of Republicans and Q people who are saying the verdict was decided before hand. I have heard many people say the Jurors were told before hand that anything but a guilty verdict one the most serious charge would not be accepted and that he has to be thrown to the wolves for the sake of Racal unity no matter how they feel. There have even been a couple people on Fox news float this around.

[The Gold Stream]

the announcing "taser" thing is just general precaution to avoid stuff like this: (especially in close proximity w/ the resisting suspect)



(1:11 for POV tasing)
(alternate angle later in the video at 3:00)

yelling it isnt unheard of but usually theyll just say something like "deploying taser" or sometimes the senior cops will specifically tell another to use it so no further clarification is necessary


incidentally speaking of general precaution the department in the video has bright safety-yellow tasers unlike that lady in the daunte wright shooting

[Hellion]

Tami, referring to your discussion of Northern Ireland a while ago, here is a prime example of why I side with and forgive their Catholic/republican/nationalist population over the Protestant/Unionist population: https://twitter.com/brendanhughes64/...275428865?s=09

The DUP are pretty compatible with the worst of the U.S. right wing.

[Tami]

Tami, referring to your discussion of Northern Ireland a while ago, here is a prime example of why I side with and forgive their Catholic/republican/nationalist population over the Protestant/Unionist population: https://twitter.com/brendanhughes64/...275428865?s=09

The DUP are pretty compatible with the worst of the U.S. right wing.

Thanks for the info.

[Malvolio]

The only thing good about it is that it gathers all the lunatics in one place so that we can deal with them all at once.

Exactly. I like the fact that they're dropping all pretense and calling themselves the "Anglo-Saxon" caucus. They might as well hang a sign outside their office reading, "Black and brown people need not apply."

[babyblob]

Exactly. I like the fact that they're dropping all pretense and calling themselves the "Anglo-Saxon" caucus. They might as well hang a sign outside their office reading, "Black and brown people need not apply."

Pretty sure they also wouldnt be thrilled if they saw a Jewish person at there little club of hate.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Pretty sure they also wouldnt be thrilled if they saw a Jewish person at there little club of hate.

I'm certain that they'd accept at least one. Gotta have a warm body to deflect the accusations of racism, after all.

[Kirby101]

Actor Jim Caviezel is a Qanon lunatic.

https://twitter.com/ehananoki/status...2F100215345989

[Adam Allen]

There are tons of Republicans and Q people who are saying the verdict was decided before hand. I have heard many people say the Jurors were told before hand that anything but a guilty verdict one the most serious charge would not be accepted and that he has to be thrown to the wolves for the sake of Racal unity no matter how they feel. There have even been a couple people on Fox news float this around.

Why do only Republicans have this vital information? There would be a lot less tension in the city of Minneapolis if everyone already knew the city was not going to explode next week. Somehow, lot of us missed this memo.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Actor Jim Caviezel is a Qanon lunatic.

https://twitter.com/ehananoki/status...2F100215345989

God damn it, Mr. Reese.