Hm, while that does seem to fit, it feels as if its intent doesn't necessarily align. To me, that is more of a description of it's purpose rather than what it does.

I’d probably tighten the first one to “It is a thing that produces stuff.”

That omits descriptive information though. The example includes the fact that the thing "works" which is how it "produces stuff".

Maybe it’s a dialect thing?

It is certainly a grammatical issue.

Deletion not federated yet, then.

I have deleted the previous message

In that case, the email provider that you use makes little difference at all. Because of the way that email works, it will always be visible in plain text (unless manually encrypted through PGP) by a third party other than the recipient at some point. There is of course the exception of, for example, direct communication happening between two Proton Mail accounts, but this is really hardly worth mentioning in any practical sense.

The long and short of it is that email should never be used for secure communications.

For reference, the article does point out the following:

The United States said it was discussing with relief agencies how "safe areas" could be set up for civilians in Gaza. "One of the things that we did discuss with [Israel] was the need to protect civilian lives in Gaza, the need to establish some safe areas, where civilians could relocate to be safe from Israel's legitimate security operations," said a senior U.S. State Department official in briefing reporters. "So we've been engaged with the International Committee for the Red Cross, the UN relief agencies to work through the details of what that might look like. It's still work that's coming together. The Israelis are committed to it," the official said.

The article also provides a map of the total evacuation area, which I assume was also provided to the Palestinians. Given that this evacuation area only applies to the north of the Gaza strip, I would assume that the evacuees could flee to the south. I'm not arguing that this is practical given the circumstances, but there technically are places to go.

Please correct me if there is extra information that would suggest that evacuation to the south is also not an option. There's a lot of information out there regarding this situation, and I am not at all fully educated on the matter.

Are you going to audit all the code you use ? You need to trust some organizations to make the audit. You NEED to trust some entities

While lacking in practicalicy, this is not a new idea. While It is certainly not impossible to have an entity that one can completely trust, I would just argue that such certainty is improbable.

What I'm trying to get at is that one shouldn't approach this question from an appeal to authority -- i.e. Proton is trustworthy, therefore all of their services must be privacy friendly, and secure. The russian proverb "trust but verify" comes to mind.

at the very least, this is unimplementable for an email provider.

If one ignores the collection of metadata, then this is the very purpose of PGP.

I am trusting someone for my data

The point that I am trying to make is that one should never have to trust someone with their data -- if all data is encrypted, for example, from a privacy perspective, it really doesn't matter where it is stored. Of course, metadata can still be gathered, but that is, in my opinion, a lesser issue, and the user has some, if not complete control over it.

I should also say that it depends on what you mean by "trust". My response, and original comment are under the assumption that "trust" is referring only to privacy.

I’m not saying Lemmy should be some kind of court room stenographer

I don't think that that would be a bad thing 😉

This happens fairly often on Reddit, and it’s annoying trying to figure out what the responses were referring to unless they happened to quote it

Yeah, I've had the same issue countless times. Although, it should be noted that a good chunk of those such examples that I have encountered were due to people deleting their comments, which would be out of the scope of this thread.

We have precedent here with publicly auditable mod logs, so why not public edit history?

This is actually a good point. I hadn't thought of that.

I think it’s clear that “maximize individual freedom” is a BS marketing phrase given how much nuance you had to use when rejecting the “freedoms” I proposed.

Again, it should be strongly noted that the maximization of individual freedom does not entail that such freedoms are at the expense of another. Also the usage of the term "maximization" is intentional in that it does not describe a destination, but, instead, an aspiration, subject to the practicalities, and nonidealities of the real world. It should also be noted that you are affirming the consequent in your argument by rejecting all other examples by arguing from, most likely unintentionally, cherry picked points of contention.

No problem with coercing workers to do 80 hour weeks? I don’t think you’ve ever been in a situation where someone had that kind of power over you.

When one enters the employ of another, a contractual agreement of one's expected working conditions is signed. If one wishes to give consent that their employer has the ability to demand an 80+ hour work week, at the risk of termination, then that is their prerogative. One's ignorance of their own contractual agreements should not be my concern. Furthermore, a competitive, free-enterprise system would ensure that there is another employer available to take up that disillusioned employee. And, of course,

And selling junk but “safe” medicine is as dangerous as selling cyanide labeled as aspirin.

In what way? Also, it should be noted that selling "junk" medicine is not an immunity against independent audits on it's efficacy.

Or are you content suing the drug company after your kid’s asthma rescue inhaler was actually just full of nothing and they asphyxiate to death?

Hm, this is under the assumption that a company doesn't care about it's own longevity, nor profits. If a company falsely advertises, this is a surefire way for that company to quickly go under. Furthermore, proper tort law would assure that all those involved are held accountable for damages, and that appropriate remediation is ordered. One's ignorance in consumption really should not be the concern of another. Also, there is a 3rd possible option that wasn't mentioned in that the FDA could instead serve the role of being a certification body, rather than a regulatory body. What I mean by this is that a company could go through the motions of ensuring the safety, and the efficacy of their drug in order to get an FDA approval stamp on their product. This approval would then be the guarantee that a consumer could look for if they wish to buy a pre-approved (and, presumably, more expensive) drug. A company would be incentivized to go this route as it would ensure them preferential treatment with consumers in the market. A consumer could, of course, still buy a non-certified drug, but they assume the risk associated with that.

It sucks that the symbol is associated with assholes.

I would suggest rewriting this statement as follows:

"It sucks that the symbol gets associated with assholes."

This does, of course, depend on which "assholes" that you are referring to; however, the bottom line is that the Gadsden flag is a symbol that represents ideas of individual liberty, and resistance to authoritarianism. If it gets mistakenly co-opted by individuals that do not share these values, that does not change what the flag fundamentally represents, but, instead, that which it gets associated with.

I'm pretty left, but I've always liked the Don't Tread on Me flag..

It depends on how you are defining "left-wing" but I would that the Gadsden flag's symbolism is not mutually exclusive with being "left-wing". At a fundamental level, the Gadsden flag represents ideas of rejecting authoritarianism and supporting individual liberty. So long as one's beliefs align with this, then they can fly the flag without compunction.

The average person displaying this flag treads all over people's rights constantly, though.

This statement is pure conjecture.