yeah exactly. when the system is about to blow up, they turn a valve and release a little steam

that’s one of two paths we are headed towards today. the pressure is building up. we either need to turn the valve soon OR we’re gonna blow up

i have a feeling though we’re headed for the explosion route

i think most legislation is explicitly for the capitalist class. that much we probably agree with

but i do think every once in a while, when there is a ton of pressure and the elites are scared, they throw a bone to the working class.

it happened with the antitrust act, it happened with the New Deal, and it happened in the 1960s with the Civil Rights era and the end to Vietnam

yes, capitalism will eat itself. it’s what we’re essentially seeing right now in slow motion. but there is something there in democracy beyond just capitalism. even if it’s buried deep down and impotent

it’s an eternal battle. every once in a while we pass legislation to try and reign in corporate power. like for example the anti trust act in the early 1900s

the issue is that public attention is temporary. eventually we move on to the next crisis and people forget. grow complacent.

corporate interest, however, is eternal. it’s persistent and never gives up. it keeps pushing, infallibly, in order to weaken the structures meant to reign in their power. whether by legislation/policy (AT&T and friends unilaterally killing Net Neutrality some years back, Disney signing into law expansion of copyright, etc) or through more subtle methods (buying politicians and getting people into positions of power that have no intention of enforcing the laws)

this is inevitably what happens with every democracy. eventually the vigilance fails and the structures of power are hijacked by opportunists.

although having said all that, I don’t think greed had much to do with the inflation we saw. Sure, some companies took advantage and raised prices more than they needed to just to inflate that extra juicy profit margin.

but realistically we’re headed to war and war means massive government spending which means inflation

And it wasn’t. The supply chain breakdown would have happened no matter who was in office

if i remember correctly, COVID brought our inflation up to roughly 6%. then the Ukrainian war took it the rest of way where it peaked near 9% (over 10% in my home state)

these things would have happened anyway, although choosing to prolong the Ukrainian war as long as possible most definitely increased inflation. people think we only gave 2 or 3 hundred billion, but realistically the American public has paid more than a trillion in the invisible tax that is inflation. hundreds of thousands of layoffs because of higher interest rates are also connected to this

It’s because, in the liberal and activist communities, it’s become customary and accepted to treat men like shit.

this is just as dumb as the opposite “they didn’t vote for Kamala because she’s a woman”

people don’t like Kamala because she’s an extension of Joe Biden and Biden has been a failure. that’s why she lost. she offered status quo when people want change. the DNC is incapable of changing quick enough to avoid fascism

i think you give too much credit to Trump. the economy has been rigged against the working class for a long time. it’s just getting progressively more brutal which makes people feel increasingly insecure.

an insecure working class elects strongmen who promise simple solutions

there was a vulernability on the iphone a while back where someone would send you a specific hindu character and it would crash the OS. it can get you no matter what you do really, use or business. the difference is a business has a lot more to lose.

as for the OS talk…

I use MacOS on my macbook & Linux on my desktop at home. I don’t think Mac is intolerably locked down. I have virtually the same experience on both. Mac is a very smooth experience once you set it up how you like. I have the same command line applications, the same config files, the same firefox profile that gets synced in between them, same unix utilities that share folders/files as if they were native, can ssh from one to the other, etc

including windows in that would be a PITA

windows is clunky and the company pushing it is becoming progressively more hostile to its users. apple is greedy but at least with their OS it’s not pushy. it’s the hardware where they stick the knife and twist in terms of price

it’s pretty dangerous not to be getting security updates. probably for regular users won’t be a big deal. i have a feeling really bad vulnerabilities will be patched even if you don’t pay for it just out of a potential PR issue. but i would almost definitely pay this if I were a business who didn’t plan on switching to Win 11 soon

on a personal level i don’t understand why anyone continues to use windows these days

i guess it’s just puppeteer + ai prompting

unless AI gets significantly better in the next year or so I doubt it’s gonna be any better than someone spending an hour writing a puppeteer scraping script

Kids are disadvantaged in a number of ways compared to adults

• the obvious factor is that the prefrontal cortex is not developed. they simply do not have the capacity to make fully informed decisions.
• another factor is the simple lack of experience. when you compare an 8 year old to an adult, that adult has been through a lot of shit in their life. they learned a thing or two and that gives him the ability to sniff out bullshit much more easily than a child. think of it as the bullshit immune system
• kids don’t have the resources that adults do. they typically don’t have access to credit cards so the free things on the internet attract them more easily. websites (really apps these days) prey on this fact.

What do you mean “install as app”?

Around 2009~2011 if I remember correctly. Back then it was either IE or FF. Then Chrome came on the scene with their fancy marketing ads and blew up very quickly to overtake FF.

At the time FF felt bloated compared to Chrome, so Chrome was like the fresh new and faster alternative.

I can’t think of a single example where a web page doesn’t work on FF.

if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups

Lol. I remember when FF was the most popular browser.

Did everyone just collectively agree to forget 2016? The polls were all favoring Clinton by a dramatic margin. CNN famously had a headline where they predicted Clinton had a 99% chance to win off of the polls.

And what ended up happening? 538 (before bought and neutered by ABC) gave the odds 65-35 or so, in Clinton’s favor. Trump ended up winning that 35%. This year, according to polls, Trump’s odds are better than in 2016. Kamala has the upper hand, but

A) lots of things can change suddenly before the election (like the Hilary emails thing)

B) polls are not the ultimate arbiter of who will win an election- actual real votes are

C) Trump more than likely has some “extracurricular plans” in store, much like Jan 6th, that has a chance of working.

Tldr: don’t get drunk on positive news. Keep a level head and you’ll see this election is still very close to a coin flip

They could still remove it if they wanted to.

For example push an update so your console can’t read certain games when they lose license. Or simply break backwards compatibility in specific ways.

I guess the games I really like are all digital. Games like Slay the Spire, Rimworld, Balatro, etc. I know that the data is sitting there in my hard drive. I can copy it, move it, delete it, etc whenever I want.

I honestly haven’t included a disc reader in my PC builds for over a decade. I guess on Xbox it’s different because Microsoft has more control. But again, if they wanted to take away the games they could do it either way.

If that’s main reason, I don’t see the point of continuing disc use

I understand if you don’t have the CD they can remove your access to it arbritarily like when they lose the license but

Nobody ever complains about Steam and they have a similar policy of no physical media going back decades. I have hundreds of gamed accumulated on Steam and no game of mine has ever been removed.

I bought the cheaper Xbox last year to play Overcooked with my girlfriend and it has no physical media. I just download and play games no problem. I actually find it more convenient not to have any physical games.

So I guess the question is- what is the reason for the strong rejection of the digital version? It is the natural evolution of these things.

People believe just because someone interacts with some sort of digital device, it makes you an expert on computers. The thing is, it depends on the type of operating system you are interacting with.

For example when I was young, my father would buy those big old gray computers from yard sales. I would mix and match the pieces inside to build my own PC. I broke a lot of shit but learned a lot.

The operating system was one where you more or less had total control over the computer. By 12~13 I was using CD-Roms to load different Linux distros and play around with all sorts of different things.

This experience basically taught me how operating systems work at a fundamental level. How it needs a kernel, how it loads and maintains services, packages, etc. How file systems work and learning how terminals are useful. Scripting languages, and eventually coding applications.

Compare and contrast that to the young kids of today. What do they get? A phone and a tablet. You can’t open it up. You can’t tinker with it. The OS is closed off and is deliberately made as difficult as possible to modify. No mouse, no keyboard. Streamlined UIs with guard rails.

You get what you get and you don’t get upset. That doesn’t leave nearly as much room for exploration and curiosity. It’s a symptom of our computers becoming more and more railroaded. More and more control by large companies.

It’s really sad, I think. Fairly soon I believe every device will be a “thin device” or essentially a chrome book. Very little local processing power and instead it’ll essentially stream from a server.

There are laws against excessive fees like this. In my home state of Florida, a landlord cannot charge more than 20% the rent in late fees.

And trust me, Florida is not known for its consumer protections. So chances are your state has a similar law which is probably better.

So if I were you I would look up the law and not pay.

Assuming of course you are telling the full truth- your full rent payment was late for a short period of time.

Personally I prefer subscription model over ad-based data tracking model. When you get something for free, you are the product being sold. For example Facebook or Reddit. Your content (comments, media) is used to populate the site and your data is sold to advertisers.

When you pay a subscription, you are the customer. There’s more incentive to create a proper service with the actual users in mind when it’s a subscription model.

When advertisers are the primary customer, they will always be a priority in determining policy. So for example YouTube- longer ads and more of them.

Of course, I think Google is guilty of double dipping. We pay for premium but I’m certain they still sell our data to advertisers. For example you watch a lot of carpentry videos, they will sell a list with your name that says “likely tool buyer” or something along those lines.

But generally speaking, I never mind paying a subscription for a service. It’s more honest, more clear what’s going on.

I just pay for premium. I’d rather pay the $25 a month to never have to see an ad.