Owner and writer of CovertWiki.org. It’s basically a wannabe spy handbook in wiki format. Feel free to leave a bookmark until more content is released, or message me on Discord under the same username to become a contributor.

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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: July 23rd, 2024

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  • A semi-auto rifle ban is also one issue that I believe if we laid off of it, Republicans would be more willing to play ball with common sense gun regulation knowing negotiations weren’t being made in bad faith and with an ultimate goal of opening a pathway to banning semi-auto rifles.

    All of what I’ve said is already common knowledge to Republicans, but polls show they are open up to things like universal background checks and mandatory licensing. Just not when they feel like they need to use those things as a buffer to less justifiable regulatory ambitions. The Democratic attempt at voter appeasement with a hardball “all or bust” approach and a low willingness to have regulatory talks without a semi-auto rifle ban on the table has been very counterproductive on a federal level.



  • Remind me in ten years after semi-auto rifles are banned and handguns are up next on the chopping block because they [offers specific advantage to criminals that rifles didn’t]. I could probably sit here and name a good few, but the handgun’s overwhelming majority usage in crime compared to other weapon types already testifies to the dishonesty of the campaign against semi-auto rifles; a captivating or tragic story coupled with a classic alarmist piñata gets better ratings and speaks much louder than statistics, and as a consequence of effective campaigning, a conversation about banning handguns now would feel like an irrational leap to the public until semi-auto rifles are out of the way first.

    Mass shootings specifically with semi-auto rifles are of the perfect (relative) rarity to make the rounds on national news occasionally, whereas the same coverage with handguns would have to make headlines almost every morning. And when you realize that only about 3% of all criminal gun homicides are related to mass shootings, it should be clear that anyone with public safety as a concern should keep their televisions off when considering how attention and resources should be allocated to the gun violence issue. The conversation about semi-auto rifle bans has put politicians and the media into symbiosis, and truthfully, there’s a chance it might not even happen.

    Many of the common sense gun laws proposed are long overdue, but a ban on semi-auto rifles isn’t one of them right now.




  • The issue starts at the fact that it’s difficult to find a computer sold by a common major distributor with Linux already installed, nor does Linux have any marketing aside from word of mouth to compete with the aggressive Microsoft/Apple duopoly.

    The threshold to entry begins at simply having the technical prowess to install an alternative operating system on one’s computer, which I don’t believe a good majority of people are even capable of. Before that, people also need an incentive to transition in the first place. They’ve probably been using their current OS for a good portion of their life and are more than comfortable with it without putting themselves through another learning curve.

    The average person isn’t considering an alternative to what they’re already using, and if they are, it usually isn’t Linux. The biggest problem isn’t appeal or ease of use; it’s exposure and immediate accessibility.

    That said, performance and simplicity would be an excellent selling point for Linux. It would be absolutely worth banking on the open-source nature of it to appeal to a growing demographic of people interested in privacy-oriented tech as well.



  • It’s a multi-edged sword. It also means someone could be forced to testify against a friend or loved one, and in a slightly removed example, my beliefs also apply to laws that allow individuals to be imprisoned for failing to provide a password to locked electronics, regardless of whether or not they actually remember it.

    Maybe it would be a good middle ground to instead expand the privileges that allow members of a marriage to avoid testifying against one another, to include friends and family. The same reasoning applies, except that the state believes it can determine the strength and meaning of a relationship by its title and type alone.