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Context is confusing because we arrive in the middle of a story arc, at a point where an unrelated tech snafu happens.

The story arc is about a lost airtag that is living it's secret life in Mexico.

The link is for a post where Apple decides the distance to it's location in Mexico is greater than the circumference of the Earth.


GPS has an altitude component so maybe it thinks either the AirTag or the tracking phone is really high up?

Nah, the altitude component is less than a rounding error at the scales involved.

It's clearly in a vaguely geostationary orbit above Guatemala City.

     we don’t censor search results
Sure they do. They preemptively censor entire torrent sites. Everyone one they can, from what I can tell.

> They preemptively censor entire torrent sites

They don't do that. That is a story that comes from a case of Bing, their upstream results provider, doing that, before quickly reverting the block.


> that comes from a case of Bing, their upstream results provider, doing that,

Bing is just one of their sources. They run their own crawler. They source data from multiple 3rd party providers.


I know. I'm talking specifically about the source of the "DDG censors torrent sites" story.

I'm saying DDG has spiders that index the web - and for ~every torrent site found by DuckDuckBot, DDG scrubs every bit of it from it's search results.

I searched torrent sites on DDG just to test what you are saying and this isn't true or maybe I am not understanding but it shows me torrent sites links so I am not aware what you might be talking about.

>> [DDG] preemptively censors entire torrent sites.

> I searched torrent sites on DDG ... it shows me torrent sites links

I can't speak to your search because you didn't post it. For my part, here are DDG results for widely used torrent sites (per reddit).

    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:1337x.tw
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:rarbgdump.com
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:limetorrents.fun
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:torrentdownloads.pro
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:extratorrent.st
Interestingly, I did find that DDG isn't scrubbing Russian torrent sites from it's results. I think this makes sense if DDG is trying to compete with Yandex (who doesn't censor like DDG).

    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:uztracker.net
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:rutracker.org
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:piratesparadise.org (eng, hosted in Moldova)

To be fair, 1337x.tw is a fake 1337x domain [1, 2]. It's bad that it's even indexed by DDG higher than the official one, I think it would be better if it was completely hidden from results. The .tw is a malicious website that actively tries to mislead users. For example, on the main page it says "1337x.to is our main domain", but when you click on that, you get redirected to "1377x.to" (notice the swapped digit), yet another fake clone website that conveniently lists the .tw as one of the official mirrors.

Searching for site:1337x.to, which is the official domain, does give results.

[1]: https://1337x-status.org/

[2]: https://fmhy.net/unsafe#torrent-sites-clients, see "fake 1337x sites"


I had just searched 1337x and nothing too much else so it seems that duckduckgo may (sensor?) the site:1337x.tw or similar but also I feel like ddg doesnt really censor the ability to find the website by just searchign 1337x

Although I still agree that this is interesting discovery but I didnt know that these sites allowed to be indexed in the first place and that the issue was from ddg site, I always thought it was the opposite or didnt really give much too thought into it but interesting, I would love to discuss more about why you might think so this is the case or how it can meaningfully impact I suppose.

I think that the issue here could be that there might be some censorship from big upstream or that ddg does it to prevent any legal issues which I am sure can open a load ton of questions if you scrape something tangentially related to copyright/similar so it might be understandable why they might do this I suppose.


I did different searches and am getting some more results than I used to.

This hash search gives one site: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%229623748B411A3CD02DE8F332820C4C7...

This way also gives one torrent site: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=all+quiet+on+the+western+front+193...


> I feel like ddg doesnt really censor the ability to find the website by just searchign 1337x

For us users, the point of search engines is to index the context of sites and tell us which one(s) have the info we're looking for.

There isn't much point to a search engine that just tells us where a site is. Even less to tell us for a site we already know.


They just posted it on the board. https://status.godaddy.com/

It wasn't there a few min ago.


Appears to show? The article identifies the aircraft - which denies the hinted-at uncertainty. And it hit mach5 which is cool and interesting.

Aircraft is the Roc, Scaled Composites' autonomous Model 351 Stratolaunch (giant dual-fuselage flying wing).


Mainstream media just reflexively equivocates now, because actually making a positive statement just leads to immediate attacks.

It's the Talon-A2 that reaches mach 5. The Roc is its launch vehicle. Roc is very cool nonetheless.

Ah. Appreciate the clarification.

I had planned to be stunned at those giant wings doing mach5, as soon as I had a free minute.


> Why do you think people voted these idiots in?

In my unbroken experience, they possess a demonstrated ability to believe in trivially disproven lies.


And the reason for believing these lies is because it's easier to listen to disgraced news outlets instead of reading a book or asking questions. It's a double edged sword: duped on one side and willful ignorance on the other.

Some might say, who cares about what idiots think? Well, these idiots get one vote, just like the rest of us.


> And the reason for believing these lies is because it's easier to listen to disgraced news outlets instead of reading a book or asking questions.

If it was just laziness, their belief wouldn't persist in the face of better information.

Willfully clasping onto an absurd premise this way strongly implies to me there is some sub-optimal psychology in play. There is a needful relationship inside that is being sustained (at a starvation level) by these exploitive external forces.


Your response, to me, is profound. I've lived in a deeply red voting state (OK) all my life. I never could understand how voters could vote against their best interests and to the harm of others. Perhaps your "sub-optimal psychology in play" is a reasonable answer.

I'm a recovering conservative. I've had some time to reflect.

> Are we sure his coauthor is Jenna McCarthy?

    The War On Ivermectin – Jenna McCarthy
    Written with Jenna McCarthy, Dr. Kory’s story chronicles the personal
    attacks, professional setbacks, and nefarious efforts of the world’s major
    health agencies and medical journals to dismiss and deny ivermectin’s
    efficacy.
    jennamccarthy.com/portfolio-items/the-war-on-ivermectin-cloned
Seems to be, yeah.

Sorry, it was a dumb Internet comment playing on Jenny McCarthy being an anti-vaxxer.

    NVMe solid state disk drives have become inexpensive...
Up 80% over last 3 months and steadily climbing and climbing.

I hold out hope for the rest of the article tho.



    “Everyone who does this work has depended on the records database
    that Ancestry controls,” said David Gurney, who runs Ramapo College’s
    Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center in New Jersey. 

    “Without it, casework is going to be a lot slower,
    and there will be some cases that can’t be resolved at all.”
No where in here is there even a hint of acquiring the consent of the people who's data this is. Nor does the word consent appear in the article.

People who don't even think about getting consent are poor choices to be in positions of power or accountability.


    In August, Ancestry revised the terms and conditions on its site to make it
    clear that its services were off-limits "for law enforcement purposes"
    without a legal order or warrant
Good. This is the minimum I expect from Ancestry (I have >30k names in it). If cops want to leverage the data compiled by volunteers, get a warrant and get the oversight that comes with that.

    a legal order or warrant ... can be hard to get,
    because of privacy concerns. 
"A legal order" implies a subpoena; they require a signature from a magistrate. This is typically the opposite of hard to get.

A warrant can be hard to get if police do not provide sufficient cause or are asking for and excessively broad scope.

The difficulty level of getting a warrant goes way, way down when police submit the information the judge needs to properly evaluate it.

But police really really prefer to search without agreeing to boundaries. Including cold case officers, it seems.


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