The app got boring as they expanded the safety and copyright measures limiting what types of videos you can make. They would let celebrities of course bend the rules and when you try to remix the video with yourself in it the video fails due to copyright/IP violations. The minefield of rules even to make silly parody videos made it so you need to spend 20+ attempts to make your video. No thanks, I am out.

Also their algo to show you videos is horrible. It's just stupid like six-seven clips over and over and similar.

Interesting that so many here are speculating that this ban is to stop "freedom fighters" in the US and not the obvious case that the US has wanted to reduce dependence on China in areas of critical technology.

Drones are not going away in the US, they will just not be made by their primary political adversary. Let's not be hyperbolic, the US is nowhere close to having a revolution or civil War. People need to stop getting their primary world view from doom scrolling instagram or reddit.

I will believe this argument when everything else from domestic appliances to phones is not also made by “their primary political adversary”.

So Apple trying to move iPhone production to places like Vietnam does not count? Apple already makes some of their devices in Vietnam now (not iPhone yet.) These things can't happen over night. This decoupling might take decades. Or just be abandoned by the next administration. Who knows?

Will Foxconn and other Chinese manufacturers be less involved in Vietnam? How much less?

"the US is nowhere close to having a revolution or civil War."

  “It wasn’t Hitler or Himmler who abducted me, beat me, and shot my family. It was the shoemaker, the milkman, the neighbor, who were given a uniform....”
  —Karl Stojka, Auschwitz survivor

(59 new detention facilities since inaugeration, 77 more reopened, $45 billion planned for 41,000+ beds targeting 100,000+ capacity, dozens of deaths reported.)

The language of the goverment has shifted to "war" such as:

  • DHS New Year's Eve launch of the $100M "wartime recruitment" campaign.
  • Ads portray joining as a "sacred duty" to "defend the homeland" from "foreign invaders," using war-like imagery such as Uncle Sam posters and action movie-style videos.

A few other factors from a choice of dozens:

  • The several lies from the administration about the shooting of Renee Good, such as that the shooter was run over and is recovering in the hospital, besides the actual shooting itself.
  • Minneapolis has thousands of volunteers for rapid response teams to show up wherever ICE shows us, militarized on both sides.
  • The biggest No Kings protests ranged from 5-7million.
  • Congress' check on presidential powers is not happening
  • Abducting, beating and dropping off those abducted far from where they were abducted.

Recent lawsuits:

  • January 12, 2026, Mark Kelley vs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Department of Defense, and the Navy.
  • Minnesota AG Ellison et al. v. DHS/ICE (Jan 12, 2026): State, Minneapolis, and St. Paul sue over "Operation Metro Surge," alleging unconstitutional raids, excessive force, and viewpoint discrimination; seeks restraining order.
  • Illinois AG Raoul & Chicago v. DHS/ICE/CBP (Jan 12, 2026): Challenges violent tactics like tear gas use, warrantless detentions, and targeting sensitive locations; seeks prohibitions on enforcement practices

I wouldn't say the US is "nowhere close", recognizing that "getting close" is not the same as "happening", and recognizing that "revolution" and "civil war" are not the only possible terms, and that it is a matter of degree.

I have always thought once I get to a certain age I might just start wearing a helmet...everywhere when standing. It will look silly, but maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Padded shorts with hip protection arent really visible in clothes. Wearing a helmet would make you look pretty crazy hah. But helmets are also designed to deal with impacts stronger than just falling over. For falls, people might do ok with just padded hats that were designed for just falls.

What's going to stop them from closing shop and re-opening with a new name + website in a few days?

This post talked me out of buying the new XPS that is going to be released in a few weeks.

Good!

Mine is sitting on a shelf. I can’t even use it without the battery because it throttles when the only power source is the charger.

I keep it around to maybe scavenge the 4k touchscreen for a project or the ram for a family member’s under-specced laptop or maybe one day someone will crack the battery DRM…

Never buy an XPS. Always been trash always will

My nearly 6 year old XPS begs to differ.

I've seen quite a few various laptops with swollen batteries, and their users don't understand that can't habitually store their laptops in the sun (well, in sun rays through windows).

Those people also don't even realize their battery is swelling, and that it's a bad thing.

My XPS never sat in the sun and none of my thinkpads or MacBooks have ever had issues like this. Much less multiple issues back to back.

More importantly they can all accept 3rd party batteries.

Additional anecdata: my top of the line XPS 15 had to be repaired twice due to a "stuck" trackpad issue. It seems to me like they crammed as much compute as they could into that tiny chassis while their manufacturing tolerances really weren't up to the task.

They are already doing this. They build entire SFH communities exclusively for rent. Nobody even has an opportunity to buy them. Build to rent, etc.

> a lot of these places continue to give an ethnic discount - especially when paying in cash

This is _not_ a thing at all. Maybe you observed it once, but this is HIGHLY unusual.

> many houses are bought up by non-occupying internationals.

Maybe they are next?

Personally I feel people and especially corporations/REITs do not have the right to hide what real estate they own. Sure put it in a trust, but the public has the right to know who controls it.

I have a friend who has someone who has repeatedly threatened to assault her, and her primary protection is keeping her address hidden from him. Should she never be allowed to own a house at risk of being assaulted?

Maybe have a limited exception then, like rape shield laws. You don't need to gut the entire framework for this rare situation. (Plus it would be fun to watch corporate lawyers try to exploit this loophole.)

Or maybe just stop telling people what cases are "legitimate" reasons to protect themselves and what cases aren't.

I know multiple people who have gotten death threats because of technical comments they made online, or just for having the temerity to exist as a member of a minority group. Not the vague "I'm going to kill you" kind, the "here's a picture of your front door on Google Street View, and an unsolicited pizza, I could SWAT you at any arbitrary 3am, have fun being afraid" type.

I don't feel like the solution to this is having victims set up LLCs.

It isn't, but that's the best solution that is currently available to people.

A better solution would be to stop putting people's addresses in public records, and eliminating data brokers that expose name/address correlations.

I mean I get where they are coming from. It doesn’t strike you as a little odd that people have to protect themselves from dangerous individuals stalking them by setting up businesses? That’s not a little circuitous/indirect? Is that really in line with the purpose of setting up a business in the first place?

It’s not like that’s the only way to hide your identity, it’s just one currently available. Plus it’s a very trivial to look up who owns an LLC at least in my state. Not the best solution IMO

Either way I think you’re being a little uncharitable towards them. I don’t think they’re trivializing it, I think they’re asking a very legitimate question.

Do you find this style of argument to be productive?

I think its pretty easy to separate investment properties from primary residences when it comes to transparency requirements.

> This is pure whataboutism

This is by definition not whataboutism. Whataboutism is when you distract from a thing with unrelated things (e.g. "but there are more important bad things going on in the world than this!"). It is not whataboutism to bring up legitimate related counterarguments for a policy.

True, I did misuse it to a degree. I was actually a bit unsure.

You'll have to trust me that she's real, but I promise you that this is a real situation that she's actually concerned about.

Where do you stand on encryption? Do you feel like the "I have nothing to hide" argument has any merit? If you think people have the right to privacy, why should real estate be an exception? I personally find the fact that real estate ownership is public in the US to be quite bizarre.

Property is a physical thing in the real world that has been here long before anyone "owned it", and will be here long after all the "owners" are gone.

The public, i.e. the people on this planet, have a right to know who is claiming to own which part of the grass and soil that we all share.

They have the right to know that, but why should they know the transaction price?

To support a fair market of property value

> Where do you stand on encryption?

This is a really complicated and broad topic that I cant take the time to type out here. I do not stand on the side of "I have nothing to hide." I fully understand the risks of that position. People must keep some secrets to protect themselves from society. Especially as everything devolves into increasingly strict "purity" tests.

With that said, I don't think the right to obfuscate real estate transactions is the same as spicy personal beliefs/private conversations/etc. IMO there is nothing more public than real estate. I do not consider real estate transactions as protected speech nor one that can be legally hidden. We live in this world together.

I feel the numbers that show investment groups that own X number of homes is highly misleading. More than likely these investment groups form multiple companies when they buy up the homes. Likely state or regional. From there the larger parent company is invested. So I wonder if there are hundreds or thousands of "small" investment groups that are essentially a shell for a larger private equity group.

So my big worry is that the Trump admin will say they are going to only eliminate the most obvious cases and the problem will remain. The LLCs and shell corps, etc.

EDIT: Also it does not address the massive amount of housing stock that is foreign owned by people that don't even live in the country.