I'm guessing some people don't know (or forgot) that site-to-site and remote access VPN's are a thing, and was the initial purpose of VPN's. Masking or hiding your location became a benefit after the fact, and todays more common client VPN is technically a remote access VPN with a new purpose. Remote access VPN's are a very common attack vector for companies, look up companies compromised with Fortinet gear and its typically through the firewalls VPN. In fact, a primary purpose of a VPN, spoofing your IP/geolocation, pretending you are someone you aren't... is pretty much antithetical to a highly controlled system of users with varying levels of access to specific, private areas of that system. Most modern remote access VPN's do exactly that, so it is not antithetical at all and is how most client VPN's keep you from accessing other users data. I would encourage you to read up on WireGuard and the like, they are fun to learn about and awesome tools when configured properly. Also, we removed the above comment because the last sentence was fairly rude and violates rule 3 @sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Nobody's complaining about the simple.wikipedia part, but you already know that.

the US the 50 states basically act like they are different countries instead of different states. There's a lot of back and forth on that - through the last 50+ years the US federal government has done a lot to unify and centralize control. Visible things like the highway and air traffic systems, civil rights, federal funding of education and other programs which means the states either comply with federal "guidance" or they lose that (significant) money while still paying the same taxes... making more informed decisions and realise that often the mom and pop store option is cheaper in the long run. Informed, long run decisions don't seem to be a common practice in the US, especially in rural areas. we had a store (the Jumbo) which used to not have discounts, but saw less people buying from them that they changed it so now they are offering discounts again. In order for that to happen the Jumbo needs competition. In rural US areas that doesn't usually exist. There are examples of rural Florida WalMarts charging over double for products in their rural stores as compared to their stores in the cities 50 miles away - where they have competition. So, rural people have a choice: drive 100 miles for 50% off their purchases, or save the travel expense and get it at the local store. Transparently showing their strategy: the bigger ticket items that would be worth the trip into the city to save the margin are much closer in pricing. retro gaming community GameStop died here not long ago. I never saw the appeal in the first place: high prices to buy, insultingly low prices to sell, and they didn't really support older consoles/platforms - focusing always on the newer ones.

In 2025 it would be anything above 3.6 million. It's a ton of money but here's a list of a few people that hit it. https://aflcio.org/paywatch/highest-paid-ceos Now if they added in a progressive tax rate for corporate taxes as well.... Say anything over 500 million in net profit is taxed at a 90+% rate. That would solve all sorts of issues. Suddenly investors of all these mega corps would be pushing hard to divide up the companies into smaller entities. Wealth tax in the modern age could be an inheritance tax. Anything over the median life earnings of individuals could be taxed at 100%. So median earnings in my area is $65K * 45 years (20-65k) = $2.93 million.

enable the absolute worst of what humanity has to offer. can we call it a reality check? we think of humans as so great and important and unique for quite a while now while the world is spiraling downwards. maybe humans arent so great after all. like what is art? ppl vibe with slob music but birds cant vote. how does that make sense? if one can watch AI slob (and we all will with the constant improvements in ai) and like it, well maybe our taste of art is not any better than what a bird can do and like. i hope LLM will lead to a breakthrough in understanding what type of animal we really are.

Anytime I consider making the jump, I make my peace with everything and then the price hits...no way