Is it too late to elect Trump and end democracy?

Red Star OS!

I was raised Catholic, but as time went on and I left it, I think one of the misconceptions people who are still deeply religious have is that atheists or non-religious people are continually thinking about NOT having religion as much as religious people think about their religion, but the fact of the matter is, sometimes MONTHS go by where I don’t have a single thought about religion, the afterlife, God… When you grow up in an organized religion you tend to feel the lack of religion is some kind of continual rejection of it, and it’s hard to imagine people for whom it just isn’t a presence in ANY sense. When you realize the presence of religion is neither necessary or sufficient for any part of life, you can start to see how life satisfaction or lack thereof has nothing to do with belief. There are horribly depressed devout worshipers and annoyingly peppy and positive atheists. It’s an entirely different axis.

So this is the laser-like focus on the future of Tesla that 56 billion dollars bought, huh?

Absolutely.

Bad, rushed software that wires together 200 different giant libraries just to use a fraction of them and then run it in a sandboxed container with three daemons it needs for some reason doesn’t mean “8 Gb isn’t enough”, it means write tighter, better software.

I felt the same way. I was VERY happy with that outcome. I won’t say PayPal earned my LOYALTY with that, because loyalty to ANY company is stupidity, but at the very least they earned my respect for the time being. Of course, I reserve the right to revoke it at any time.

In my experience, their consumer protection is great.

PayPal has been absolutely instrumental for me in issuing refunds with obstinate vendors. Once or twice they’ve issued me a refund after being refused a return/refund when an Aliexpress vendor either sent the wrong item or nothing at all.

I even got them to secure me a refund against the Australian government after they refused to issue a refund after directing me to apply for a tourist visa with the wrong visa process.

This is less of a brag and more a question for the philosoraptor.

Edit: Apologies… didn’t even notice that loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works beat me to this observation.

Untrue. I grew up on the Super Mario Brothers Super Show.

Possibly. But it’s also pretty common in many instances of technology adoption that as more users come, the quality gets worse, and while open source doesn’t have to worry about a shareholder-driven profit motive driving it, it’s still easy to wind up with a muddled focus. I wouldn’t expect that Linux and all of the associated software projects that make the functional desktop are going to be an exception overall. If you’re an open source developer working on a project now, basically any user is some form of power user, and it’s easier to find consensus of what to prioritize on a project not only because Linux users tend to be better about understanding how their software works and are actually helpful in further development, they’re also likely to direct development towards features that make software more open, compatible, and useful.

Now fast forward to a future where Linux is the majority desktop OS, those power users are maybe 5% of the software’s user base, and every major project’s forum is inundated with thousands of users screaming about how hard the software is to use and, when bug reports and feature requests are actually coherent, they mostly boil down to demands for simpler, easier to understand UIs. I can easily imagine the noise alone could lead to an exodus of frustrated developers.

Some things are better for NOT trying to be the answer for everyone.

I can see the point in theory, but when this would’ve been really helpful, my experience is 80% of the time the video maker’s hand is obscuring the important stuff, and the video is often out of focus or frame anyway, and a red circle on a photo as an alternative will usually do just fine. The nice thing about still photos is, the photographer REALLY has to think about each shot, and if it is showing the important thing they want to reveal in that shot. If it isn’t, they’re forced to either retake it or take extra photos to get the point across.

With a video, the videographer is distracted by talking and doing a thing at the same time, and they just think “Yeah, it’s video. I got it.” and they often don’t even rewatch the footage.

Absolutely. You usually don’t need a whole step-by-step 40 minute walkthrough anyway. You need help with a SPECIFIC step and it’s MUCH easier to scroll through a page or CTRL+F the part you need than try to scroll around a freaking youtube video that you can’t search unless you run it through a text transcriber. Not to mention the bandwidth and storage waste, the annoying, unclear voices, the sponsor ads…

I swear people learning most things from youtube videos either have COMPLETELY different brain wiring, or are just straight up insane.

Well, I guess that’s not fair… they might ALSO be lying about learning. That’s the hustle culture, I guess. Learning things is less important than the APPEARANCE of learning things.

It’s easy to say that when you’re an outside party who doesn’t understand or care about the underlying issues. Not to minimize the issue with the metaphor, but have you ever fought with a sibling or someone else at school and your disinterested parent our authority figure told you to both to stop without addressing any of either of your underlying problems? How well did it work?

Pretending that “just stop it” deals with the realities of a complex history of real grievances and legitimate causes for anger and retribution on both sides is the most magical of magical thinking, and it doesn’t help that third party negotiators usually start their peace proceedings by learning NOTHING about the history of distrust and anger building up over decades, picking a side to ride or die with, and then declaring the issue fixed as soon as someone signs an agreement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhbvnIEMxSA

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But hey, at least they’re compatible with Windows 11, right?

/s

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This is Sony’s decision. It is a material change to the product that was sold. It is not the same as a patch or a nerf. It has rendered the product unplayable. Yes, you can make the argument that it was listed on the page from the beginning that an account was required, but it is also the case that EULAs are actually not legally binding contracts. Sony has made a unilateral decision, and as a result it does not matter whether a person is finished with the game or not. This is a change to the actual contract, which was the purchase of a game to use in perpetuity for the length of time that it is available on steam. Sony has made this decision, customers don’t have to justify the reason that they don’t like the change. It is a change. They are counting on people letting it slide, because most of the time that is how businesses do business.

Also, you should really stop standing up for giant corporations. Sony doesn’t need your help. They have teams of lawyers whose job it is to argue with valve over whether they need to give refunds. They may also end up having to deal with class action lawsuits, and potential legal issues with 177 countries which may have completely different laws of consumer protection than the US. That is not your responsibility.

Besides, one of the pillars of capitalism is rational self-interest, and that goes both ways, not just in the business side. If you can get a refund for something because a company has made a bad decision about how they do their business, why do you care about whether it’s fair or not to the company? They sure don’t care about whether it’s fair to you. Are you a Sony lawyer? Are you the “be nice to big companies police”? Let Sony and Valve, and possibly the court system, worry about what their legal obligations are, and you worry about your personal decision of whether you are going to take advantage of your legal rights. Don’t start judging whether others should or shouldn’t do the same.