I find none of these arguments convincing. You have the right to vote. Unless you’re in Australia that means you can just not go vote also. That’s your choice.

Voter turnout has an influence on the vote share the extremes of the political spectrum get. If you’re on the extreme, you tend to go vote for your cause because you found your calling. So if enough people in the middle choose not to participate, you’ll end up with difficult majorities and/or more extreme governments. The latter is also true if either extreme is convincing many of the people in the middle. And that’s where tactical voting comes in. That’s why I would personally lean towards a “go vote and vote for the best of the worst if nothing fits well” approach. But I wouldn’t elevate this to the level of an ‘electoral imperative’ because it is a personal choice.

Microsoft chose to make a Chromium based browser with edge. They gave up on the idea of building an engine of their own. It goes without saying IE was shit but at least they tried. It’s also an example of why you want some competition in the market because when IE was dominant it was the focus of all hackers everywhere. The way chromium based browsers are today. (MS just made it too easy for them at the time.)

I don’t think OpenOffice is an apt comparison here. Every other browser with a modicum of market share is Chromium based. When even Microsoft folded, there is basically only Firefox. And the libres and the waters who piggyback on it. If Firefox is gone I think we’ll soon be in a complete monoculture of Chromium based browsers. No one should want this.

You don’t have to like what they do (I don’t either btw). You can predict all the opt-ins will be opt-outs (although I don’t necessarily buy into that). You can switch to any other browser. On desktop they ask for your feedback when you uninstall it so give them a piece of your mind. If you call for a crusade against Firefox you have to put more meat on the argument bones than the half-baked stuff in this overshared post. And if you can’t do that, kindly change your browser privately, is all I’m saying.

While I wouldn’t want to argue that Firefox hasn’t become more shit it doesn’t fit the Doctorowian definition of enshitification. And while they screw up stuff, to not an insignificant amount in communicating to the public what they’re doing, I do think their desktop browser is still better than most other browsers, all Chromium based ones included, and most of the terrible things are opt-ins. You don’t want them to install shit without you knowing? Then don’t participate in their experimentals. You don’t want the so-called AI crap in there? It’ll be opt-in as well so don’t opt in. If your standard was zero tracking then vanilla Firefox was never your right flavor. And virtually all mobile shit is trackable. So let’s take a chill pill and also appreciate if we push Firefox out of business, all the libres and waters will probably not be far behind.

Everybody is free to switch to any browser they like. Not every switch needs public announcing or result in a call to arms.

The solution is education, teaching media savvyness. Maybe a few restrictions in the market and introducing oversight and costly liability. The political angle is secondary. Both extreme right and extreme left may lean towards not educating people to keep them servile. But that’s just using slop for their own ends.

If this is news to you: most obituaries are written and produced during the subject’s lifetime. Unless they leave life at a statistically unlikely age, the biggest chunks are in the can or pre-written so you can get a single person to do the voiceover over it all. Writers often start writing obits in the press. It lessens the burden of fact checking when the person actually punches their ticket.

So the Bidden footage was probably pre-produced. A similar package exists for the orange one as well. And Rob Reiner’s would have been done as well. Although certainly nobody would have anticipated the way he died.

At this point in time you must suspect so-called AI to have its tendrils lodged in a lot of this stuff. I would suspect this less at media companies that still have more than a handful of actual humans employed. So the networks are probably okay. On clickbait dot news I’d be more suspicious.

I think you’re onto something here. It may have to do with containing RAM.

I wouldn’t know. I ad block everything;)

Yes, I have. I have no issues with JPGs or PNGs but any other format is a gamble. If you have a recent post you can get to to check, maybe you can add what format that image was (or add the link to the post with the image if you’re okay with that)?

This is a dumb article. Something got 800 likes on Facebook? Wow. Something happened on X? WGAF?

The idea that this would be a partisan use case is BS. And yes, we’ll have a solid base of slop naïveté within the general population that will distribute more or less evenly along the political spectrum. But more often than not people question shit that seems to be too good to be true. They just don’t use Facebook any more because they have common sense. Turning this into the MAGAs vs. The Libs is utterly pointless and clickbaity and I regret having followed through on this link.

But can I tell you that - regardless of the content - this feels more like a blatant attempt at getting more YouTube views with a patreon link in tow?

By most accounts, 25 Dec as a day in the calendar is a historical accident. The boy was probably not born in winter. Calendar problems, ancient Roman holidays, and the proximity to the winter solstice made this a historical game of telephone until a pope just set it in stone (some orthodox churches don’t agree but January is probably only marginally more correct for his birthday).

Traditionally, Christmas lasted so long it usurped solar new years. On the 8th day of Christmas my sweetheart gave to me … a shitload of weird stuff. Mostly birds, for some reason.

Correct me if I’m wrong here but isn’t in UK English “Christmas” still used to describe the whole year end period encompassing the year change. To me they are two close but still separate events with a bit of decorational overlap. So I understand your question why there aren’t more New Years songs. But the answer may simply be: history and tradition. People tolerate Christmas tunes until the 31st and then they’re all cheered out. And NY for most is just a reminder that it’s back to work now.

I mean, logically, it would make sense to push VPNs into illegality or create a lot of gray area there if you’re also planning to introduce the Aussie social media ban. Logically. I personally think both are no good.

I’ve read some headlines about illegal streaming being targeted and shut down in Europe. If there was lobby money invested, I suspect it is the likes of sports rights holders who would like you to pay them extortionate amounts of money and not sail the high seas for the price of a VPN.

Modstå, kære dansker.

If omnipotent deity of your choice forbid this ever lands at the ECJ I’m not sure they will side with the privacy/freedom of speech side of the argument.

Yahoo Japan is a separate entity from the US juggernaut of ancient times. They run a transportation app called Yahoo!乗換案内 or roughly Yahoo Transfer Information. I live here so I can read enough Japanese to get by. But there is no English version.

There used to be a non-Google English competitor that faded away a few years back. The network is quite dense here in the big cities and disruptions happen. So you’ll need something that alerts you to problems along the route. They stopped being tied into whatever API that requires. And it’s been so long I forgot what they were called. I prefer the Yahoo one to Google Maps because their algorithm that finds best connections works better in my experience. But that’s coupled with me knowing my way around Tokyo okay as well. YMMV.

I did not have the feeling that we’re talking about fully formed adults here.

TYL you cannot trust a statistic that you haven’t forged yourself.

I see the thumbnail but the picture fails to load in full screen view (Boost app on Android)

Somebody is going to jump into this. But I would keep my eyes open beyond just the Chinese market. Vietnam and Thailand are interesting places to watch. V because of the relative sweetheart deal with the trumpist of tariffs. And T because they already do a lot of SSD manufacturing. And China, more than any other country, will be at the mercy of a particular person’s bowel movements on Pennsylvania Ave.

I don’t think those particular comments, in writing and devoid of tone, not meant for public distribution (and she’s probably not running for political office or something justifying higher scrutiny), necessarily qualify as ableist per se, more skirting the line. I’ve said very dumb things in my youth and context is important, even in chat threads. But the rest of the picture you painted of that person is: asshole. So for my money it doesn’t really matter if she ticked that particular box as well. Stay away.

You could argue my take is too accepting of the current situation and I would agree with that. At the same time, I would argue yours is simplifying things quite a bit. Subscription TV channels came after free-to-air channels with commercials. This may depend on where you live in the world but most places have at least one local station or a selection of them broadcast through the air, not cable or satellite, and not subscription based. Financed through commercials or in some countries also through a license model (like in the UK). Cable/satellite/subscription channels are iterations on the model brought to you by capitalism. Ads in public transport can lower ticket prices. Billboards can help lower rental rates in buildings and their revenue adds to the tax intake of the community they’re in. If you think it already takes too long to get potholes fixed, it would take even longer without them. Not all roads are toll roads. I get it: you don’t like billboards. You’re going to get all these unintended side effects if they were banned tomorrow.

Online ads are insufferable. I’m running 3-4 plugins to avoid them. I’m also normally watching broadcast TV on DVR so I can skip through the commercial breaks. I bail on any subscription service that adds ads.

The problem online is the cause of the problem. It’s the simplicity with which data can be collected and the lack of regulation. It’s also generally still paying off a debt incurred when in the early days of www users got accustomed to getting everything ‘for free.’ Traditional media has lowered the price dramatically of its own offerings to get new eyeballs online while older streams of income still paid for most expenses, like the income from TV commercial revenue or sales of printed paper. And as these traditional sources of great rivers of money decreased over decades, the ones that replaced it were digital trickles in danger of drying out. That brought about a “militarization” of online ads, ever more targeted and annoying. This problem needs a multi-pronged approach including regulation of data collection and new financing models for media in general.