Gotcha, so in summary, anything that relies on an internet service, such as Signal, Matrix, or Simplex, is vulnerable to government ordered blocks via black list that ISPs are compelled to enforce. Am I thinking of this right?

Out of curiosity, is there anything stopping you from suggesting SimpleX? How does SimpleX compare to XMPP or Matrix?

Are there any other messaging options that are more resistant to government ordered shutdowns than Matrix?

Interesting—I feel like I see Matrix touted as more private than Signal b/c of Signal’s phone number requirement. What compromising metadata does Matrix require that Signal does not?

The ITEP report cited by the article calls out the fact Tesla uses the accelerated method of depreciation and amortization instead of the straight line method. This means instead of depreciating an equal amount every year over the course of a machine’s life, they are weighting these expenses more heavily in the near term in exchange for a lower expense (read: lower tax deduction) down the road. This Investopedia article explains it in more detail for those who care to learn more.

The ITEP report calls out other tax credits as well, such as carrying forward net operating losses from previous years. For anyone who cares, the full details are in their 2024 10-K filing. Open up the document, do a Ctrl+F search for “Note 13 – Income Taxes” and look at the tables on pages 80 through 82. I admit that there are several line items that I do not understand. I plugged them into Perplexity AI and asked it to explain them in layman’s terms. My brain’s too fried at this point, but I’ll leave the link to that explanation here (again, in case anyone out there cares to learn more).

Is there some way of safely circumnavigating these types of blocks in countries under oppressive regimes? I know about VPNs and TOR, but are those methods actually safe?

You’re mixing multiple subjects here, one being the logistics of blocking a federated system like Lemmy, the other being whether the wrong person finds the content of such a system objectionable and labels it a “national security issue.”

I’m being a tad pedantic here, but my reason for pointing this out is that I think #2 is not far fetched at all, but I’m unsure of how feasible #1 might be and would love if somebody who knows more than I do would chime in.

EDIT: Looks like some have already discussed #2 in the other comment thread started by Teknikal.