Microsoft likely considers this to be a feature rather than a bug. Another avenue for brainwashing credulous people is wide open.

“I fell in love with your eyes first because I looked into their depths and saw the other half of my soul.” -R.K. Lilley

Thank you for taking my request in good faith; this is what I was looking for. I’ll be taking some time to look through these.

What you claimed is very believable to me, and I’m also prepared to believe that the reality of your claims is heavily censored in the English language. That being said I haven’t been able to find evidence to support that the primary drivers of these respective uprisings were fascist or Western. I have only found evidence of other causes. I have no doubt opportunistic fascists and Western governments took advantage of these situations for their own benefit, but the origins of these situations seem to have been genuine domestic issues which were met with state violence causing the situation to escalate. Would you link me to your sources?

From Wikipedia:

The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defence of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

I’ve never understood why there is any confusion over the word “tankie.” It applies to the pro-cop left. If a leftist believes that it’s necessary for cops to beat minorities and dissidents into submission for their society to function, they’re tankies. If they approach leftism in a way that does not involve state violence against civilians to enforce those ideas, they’re not tankies. To me there isn’t a lot of gray area.

This being an open-source application made me wonder about this exactly. Thanks for running it and publishing your results. This is fascinating.

Yes, it is a Tiktok meme. A few may actually remain on Xiaohongshu but probably most will migrate to whatever logical replacement pops up.

It is a protest. Some Americans may ultimately remain on “Little Red Book” but the main purpose of making it the #1 app in the US was to spite the government. It’s a much more restrictive app than Tiktok, but people are enjoying talking to foreign nationals both ways.

Because of the nature of the algorithm, it absolutely is this for plenty of people. It’s also not the case for plenty of people. I doubt there are many right-wingers going on to join a Chinese app called “Little Red Book” which has rules that require the promotion of Chinese socialism. It’s the most popular app in the US now because of this ban.

I have to admit I had very low hopes for Lower Decks after that first teaser featuring a drunk Mariner being reckless with a bat’leth. It looked like it was going to be just another “adult cartoon” cash-in like the dozens on Netflix. Very happy that my initial impression was totally wrong.

Lower Decks was an effective Star Trek show as well as an effective comedy. While I also wouldn’t trust this idea with just anyone, as long as there are people working on it who understand why Star Trek is important and how the themes are more important than being dismissive, I welcome another comfy optimistic comedy about a better world.

The tagline is “Tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, she also must face the sins of her past.” In Section 31? She wasn’t specifically recruited because her morals are aligned to Section 31? She won’t be engaging in the mission of Section 31?

There are steps to piracy which cost time and effort. For most of the media I consume that time and effort cost is significantly less than the time, effort, and capital I would need to invest in a paid service. However, the time, effort, and capital I spend to play videogames has been less than piracy would cost for me for decades. Being able to effortlessly get those games running on a mobile steamdeck is orders of magnitude cheaper than what it would have cost me to set everything up myself even if I’m not paying for software and my costly version wouldn’t be nearly as smooth. This quote would be true enough even if a counter-example didn’t exist, but Steam and GOG are pretty clear demonstrations of the kind of service the average person is satisfied with even if they still have some real issues.

Commander Data S6E18

I have been thinking about this recently. In a course I took on US economic history we studied the Silicon Valley during the first half of the 20th century. There was a major boom in technological innovation, and a major reason why was the open sharing of ideas among the local tinkerers. The invention of television as it exists was not a product of Farnsworth’s singular genius but of an entire community of inventors freely collaborating out of personal interest. Very different from Silicon Valley today except for one element: the FOSS movement. FOSS is where the experimenting and innovation is happening because the ideas can’t be locked down as they are in the proprietary area where innovation is stifled. It makes sense for corporations to pour money into FOSS because FOSS makes possible what is to them impossible. Also, investments like that are probably a small fraction of what an R&D department working from scratch could cost.

It is amusing though that since the FOSS people are often under no obligations they don’t have to do what big companies want them to do.

A lot of Congolese children died in humiliating and painful ways for that e-waste. Now many more will suffer and die. The good news is that Microsoft executives are probably getting a great bonus out of it for their stellar leadership and business acumen.

This is more like smacking a warhead with a hammer until it blows like in Loony Tunes. It is a shockingly suicidal decision with predictable results. He’ll be in debt for the rest of his life and should be thankful the Tolkien estate didn’t have him flayed for his impudence. Learning about how out of touch with reality the author is does make me curious how unhinged his book might be, though. If it turns out to be “The Room” of lotr fanficfiction I’d like to see it fan canonized just to spite the most litigious family in literature.

I’m about to do this for my mother as well. I just switched back myself and found Mint has come a very long way. The last time I ran it as my main OS 10 years ago it was pretty demanding from the user, but mint now is probably more user friendly than Windows.

Narration: Janeway couldn’t, in fact, deal with it.

Cyberpunk city with no plantlife other than these algae vats all over the place. Big towers of murky green liquid.

I do most of my discourse on Beehaw which is protected in many ways. When I used reddit I would often have a comment typed out ready to post and think better of it since I knew it would only drive dismissive and antagonistic responses of the stupidest kind. It may be because of the protections or it may be because of the smaller community but I find a lot less posturing and a lot more actual conversation since I’ve been using this platform. This is what keeps me here rather than reddit. It might be worth engaging in conversations you wouldn’t have on reddit when you’re interested.