Random Dent

I assume this is the same reason why they want to ban TikTok but not Facebook - it’s not so much that they object to the data harvesting, they just object to non-American data harvesting that they can’t readily influence.

The only thing I can think of is sending actors out to pretend to be Americans in American TV shows. Australia & New Zealand are strong in this field too, but I think we’ve still just about got the edge on it.

Well then I’m not pirating anything, I’m just downloading data and if it happens to correlate to the new Aliens movie then that’s not my problem. 😮

If there were any security/civil rights/general spying on people bills that were floating around but were too unpalatable to push through, those are most likely going through now.

Also if the shooter turns out to be anything other than a straight white cis male, then whatever group they were part of is probably gonna have a bad time for the foreseeable future.

IIRC he had some kind of insurance file against that, I think there used to be some encrypted file you could download from Wikileaks and if he died the password would be released.

No idea what it was (if anything, it could have just been a bluff of course) but it seems to have had the desired effect so far.

As a European, I’d say it is very much in America’s MO to come into a conflict all guns blazing and with lots of bluster, then get caught in a quagmire for an absurdly long time, then eventually randomly declare that they’ve won and just bail, with very little regard for whoever’s left still fighting who isn’t American.

It seems to happen with them pretty regularly, and for an example it was only about three years ago that they hurriedly pulled out of Afghanistan and abandoned the local translators to their fates with the Taliban.

With regards to Russia encroaching into Europe, could we be 100% certain that Trump won’t win the next election and start throwing favours to Putin? I’d say it’s certainly a possibility.

Or at least space them out a bit. You get one set for the first 5-10 years, and then the second set has to last you the remaining 60-70.

Getting a new set at like 35-40 seems like a more sensible system to me.

I don’t know how many times exactly the Republicans have tried to repeal Obamacare but it’s at least 70, so yeah I have no problem with Biden hammering on this issue for as long as it takes to get it done.

I also wouldn’t wish the British tabloids on anyone. Going through this with every scumbag paparazzi in the country chasing you around, bothering everyone you’ve ever known and camping outside the hospital trying to get the most ill-looking photo of you has to be its own unique kind of hell.

Unlimited scams and Jesus stuff for everyone!

Or… hear me out… we use AI to make social media even more insufferable than it was before.

And ironically when we do get to the point where an AI can string together a semi-coherent narrative, the first things it’ll start to produce will probably be exactly the sort of mid-level dross that Tyler Perry likes to make.

I think in this context it broadly means, “turning America into a theocratic hellscape.”

Mull is a good one for Android.

Hmm, I have a soldering iron and a 3D printer. You might be right. Thanks for the link!

I had a go on a VR helmet and thought it was kind of fun, but at the moment the options seem to be an affordable one that’s infested with Facebook nonsense, or the Valve/Apple ones which are presumably less intrusive but cost a fortune. So I’m fine to just do without until someone figures out how to do it in a cheap, open-source kind of way, like the raspberry pi of VR helmets.

That might not even be possible, but in that case I’m also fine to just do without TBH.

Yeah same here. Don’t have TPM, not buying a new CPU just to enable Microsoft’s bullshit, so we are at an empasse.

Drugmakers have argued that seizing the patent for a medication makes that treatment vulnerable to competition, which can reduce a company’s revenue and limit how much it can reinvest into drug development.

I like how that’s supposed to be a compelling argument against it, “But if we open it up to competition someone else will do it cheaper and better than us and we’ll go out of business.” Good! Fuck your company lol.

Also the taxpayers are funding the development, which is why the government can do this. If the public pays for it, they should be able to access it as far as I’m concerned.

It’s that usual right-wing thing, where their opponent is simultaneously an idiot who does nothing, and also a scheming mastermind who’s responsible for all the trouble in the world depending on which way the wind’s blowing.

Darwinism in action I guess…