making (presumably) thousands of dollars off their users

I agree with this post completely but for some reason you finishing with this makes me chuckle.

Oh no! Thousands! They might be able to pay rent for a month or two!

I’m just being cheeky, and while its true what they did was scummy, it also feels like a really… smallish amount of money?

If we’re literally just talking thousands, and not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands.

But yeah, fuck Brave.

Firefox gang and Hardened Firefox gang here to stay.

Mozilla’s got its own problems but that’s a story for another day.

I think this has less to do with Microsoft and more to do with the average human has no interest in learning something that only passively helps them.

I only know a handful of things about working on an automobile, while my father could practically take one apart and put it back together wholesale.

I can take apart a computer and put it back together wholesale, but I’m lost on an internal combustion engine.

I pay someone with expertise to handle the engine, because I’ve spent my time learning other things.

Look, unless the people you’re talking about are doing tech jobs, there isn’t a reason for them to learn the depths of it, just like there isn’t a reason for them to learn the depths of how their car works. Both a car and a computer are tools, and those tools are made to be used by people who may not know the depths of the internal workings of either.

This post feels like elitism and gatekeeping to me, as someone who thinks Windows sucks and prefers Linux. The idea that it’s the OS that is “holding people back” and not that those people might have more important things to do with their time than dedicate half their life to an operating system is absurd. If someone spends 20 years becoming a doctor, I’m not going to act like they’re a dumbass because they don’t know everything about fucking computers.

People don’t want to learn more because for most people not knowing more doesn’t impact their fucking life. Just like me not knowing more about my car doesn’t generally impact my fucking life. Because I’ve never had trouble finding someone to pay to fix it for me.

Surprise, we’re the people who are paid to fix computers for the people who are just using them as simple tools. Maybe we shouldn’t be so upset about that.

Also, last but not least, Android is a strain of Linux and it suffers from all the same issues listed above as Windows. Acting like you couldn’t pull the same bullshit in Linux if you wanted to is kind of a joke, because it’s already been done with Android.

All the ad infested bullshit we all hate about Windows 10 and 11? Blame Linux-based Android.

EDIT: Also, personal opinion, if we’re talking about which CLI is easier to learn and use. Microsoft has made great strides with Powershell being easy and accessible to people who haven’t faced a command line environment before. The things that make its command line better than Linux’s are two things, and only two things. (I hate that it’s object oriented instead of text oriented, Powershell has a lot of bad things, too)

First, human-readable commands whose names describe what the command does in a verb-noun format. This means instead of Linux with some very, very obscurely named commands that are not descriptive and you just have to sort of memorize, you can just sort of remember because the name is human readable.

Secondly, the get-command command is huge because it allows me to search these verb-noun names for the command I’m looking for. On Linux, if I don’t know the specific command, I have to search the internet, because there isn’t a built-in tool that will give me an idea of what each command does and allows me to search for them through a filter. Once you find a command you think might work, it has the get-help command which produces something similar to a Man page.

Linux has Man pages, but because there is no rhyme or reason to how any commands are named, it’s not very easy to find the command you’re looking for if you don’t already know the command. On Windows, if I know what the command does I may already have enough information to find the command using get-command instead of having to turn to Google and be like “what command do I use if I am trying to do X?”

So if we’re talking about the superiorly designed command line that’s easier for first time users. Powershell is where it’s at. Because Linux is a confusing fucking mess of 30 years of random decisions by lone programmers. Literally the only reason I know commands in Linux CLI is because I had to memorize them. I don’t do so much memorizing Powershell commands. If Linux was being built from scratch today, I’d practically demand a similar naming convention system to make it easier to understand what the fuck commands do.

I’ve been aware long enough of big gaps in the libraries of streaming services that there was never a reason to give it up.

It took until fucking March of this fucking year for Spotify to have any old De La Soul to stream. Good thing I’ve had a high quality rip of their early discography for fifteen fucking years. Otherwise I would have been shit outta luck on listening to them.

I couldn’t stream a killer album from fucking 1989 in 2022. There continue to be massive gaps in their libraries due to licensing issues and people who just don’t want to get underpaid by Spotify.

*Valve laughs in Gabe Newell, owner of Valve and former employee of Microsoft.

Motherfucker left Microsoft to focus on games. He spearheaded the move to Linux to protect their store from becoming blocked on Windows. He knows how Microsoft works, intimately.

I’d be really surprised if Valve got sold to Microsoft while Newell still lives.

I mean, this meme is accurate, because that’s about how expressive the faces are in Starfield…

AWS and Azure are services

A lot of people seem really confused by this, based on the number of downvotes.

“Knock. Knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“9/11”

“9/11 who?”

“YOU SAID YOU’D NEVER FORGET!”

I’m basically in the position that I’m driving a car from 1999, and when it finally dies, I’ll either be resigned to riding the bus or finding another aged used car without all this absolute bullshit in it.

Maybe it really is time for the Free Open Source Vehicle.

Running With Scissors is a “legendary” developer?

Postal was a violent mess that didn’t age well.

Postal 2 was a buggy mess that also didn’t age well.

After that, it was just legitimately bad games on top of the humor not aging well. (They literally don’t even acknowledge Postal 3)

Seriously, who the fuck would label them legendary? They’ve been a broken mess for over a decade.

Cheers mate, thanks for the nuanced take.

I don’t think most folks like me reject the idea that good cops could exist, it’s more that we’re so aware of how many bad cops exist (at least in the US), it’s one of those situations where good cops are run off the force (or worse, targeted and murdered before they can testify) or put up with so much bad behavior themselves that over time, they’ve become a bad cop, because they’re not stopping other bad cops. Even if they’re nice to citizens, if they’re covering for crimes of their fellow cops, they’re a bad cop. The fact that more cops aren’t standing up against things like qualified immunity when it’s painfully being abused or civil forfeiture when it’s abused shows exactly how little they care for the public and how much they care for their right to abuse the public without recourse.

Unfortunately, that leaves most cops in the USA falling under the umbrella of ACAB.

Oh, and the whole 40% of cops self-reported as beating their spouses. On top of the whole “Killology” mess that trains them to be an occupying force in their own cities. It’s really hard to make excuses for them at this point.

I mean we’re talking about a country that is literally in the process of redefining the history of slavery and running with “but the slaves learned valuable skills!” Yeah, I’m trying to meet these people at their level, but it’s clear that in huge swaths of the country, it isn’t talked about, period.

Erasure is different than censorship, and I think you’re intelligent enough to know that. I took that AP history class, and it was super biased against the workers, so that’s kind of a joke to reference.

Also, if we’re talking about a country with a seventh grade average reading level, we’re mostly talking about people who have never taken an AP fucking US history class.

Choosing the September date is part and parcel to why more people don’t know about it, because it’s not generally part of the public consciousness or conversation. That’s called erasure, not censorship.

The average American has a seventh grade reading level (with 54% of the population with less than a sixth grade reading level), and you expect them to be educated enough to 1. know what it is and 2. look for a Wikipedia article on it?

Jesus, half this fucking country doesn’t even live in reality anymore. Somehow, they’re supposed to just know that it’s on Wikipedia.

Just admit you were wrong. Just say “Actually, you’re right, the cops were committing violence against striking workers first.” It’s not that hard.

No need to split hairs or change the subject.

At the McCormick reaper plant, a long-simmering strike erupted in violence on May 3, and police fired at strikers, killing at least two. Anarchists called a protest meeting at the West Randolph Street Haymarket, advertising it in inflammatory leaflets, one of which called for “Revenge!”

The crowd gathered on the evening of May 4 on Des Plaines Street, just north of Randolph, was peaceful, and Mayor Carter H. Harrison, who attended, instructed police not to disturb the meeting. But when one speaker urged the dwindling crowd to “throttle” the law, 176 officers under Inspector John Bonfield marched to the meeting and ordered it to disperse.

Then someone hurled a bomb at the police, killing one officer instantly. Police drew guns, firing wildly. Sixty officers were injured, and eight died; an undetermined number of the crowd were killed or wounded.

But sure, the cops who were told not to show up, and then showed up when they were angry that people were pissed that they murdered workers, they deservedly got a bomb in their faces. Cops are always a bunch of authoritarian pieces of shit who can’t stand being criticized for being the violent fucking thugs they are.

Happy Fake Labor Day to the Americans, because their government wants to hide real labor day from their citizens so they don’t have to educate them about the Haymarket Affair.

Labor Day being in September is absolutely about erasing labor history. If more people knew labor history, more people would understand why All Cops Are Bastards.

They’re putting it in the stuff you drink!

but you’re willing to allow ISP’s, like Comcast (the most hated company in the US), to regulate what speech can be used online?

Where did I advocate for that? This is a small ISP, and I am in no way arguing that what they’re doing is the best solution. What I am arguing is that there is no political movement to create laws to police this, especially not an international political movement, since not all Kiwi Farms users are from the US. I’m saying that the EFF’s argument is that we should expect no one to do anything, and let them keep ruining people’s lives, because our solutions for stopping this mess currently aren’t perfect. It’s one of those “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” situations. I am in no way endorsing what the ISP has done, but I am questioning an argument to argue for laws to handle this when we can’t even seem to get our politicians to do anything, especially when it comes to policing some of the worst of our society. Republicans claim guns aren’t the problem, mental health is, but they also want to take away all the money for support and mental health services, and they refuse to see the connection between the violent vitriol they spew about political opponents and lone-wolf terrorists, like dude, we have an entire political party not operating in good faith and who is happy to let this kind of shit keep happening. The idea that we just have to sit by idly and twiddle our thumbs while they ruin lives because the solutions aren’t great is a fucking farce.

It really is arguing “We have to let these vicious, fascist abusers to run rampant, because otherwise their fascist political representatives or fascist business owners might use the legalism of fascism to justify them doing it even worse.” Like dude, hate to break it to you, at this point, they’re gonna do that whether we fight back or not.

This one is a tough nut to crack, because generally I agree, but holy fucking shit we’re talking about Kiwi Farms here.

There is nothing not one fucking thing that place produces that isn’t a garbage fire of harassment, abuse, and violence.

Usually the EFF is spot on, but I find their argument in this case pretty weak. While I think there are better ways to handle this as well than straight censorship, like give me a break, EFF, no one is doing anything about these scumfucks. I would give one shit about such an argument if I felt there was anything that would happen to stop this, but I’m pretty fucksure it won’t. If I felt like law enforcement was closing in and as was going to charge everyone involved in the site under some sort of gang-harassment law (which probably doesn’t even exist), then maybe this argument would hold weight. But I don’t feel like that, and I feel like the more people make weak arguments for horrendous places like this, more vulnerable people will continue to suffer Kiwi Farms abuse, harassment, and violence.

To put it even more simply: When a person uses a room in a house to engage in illegal or just terrible activity, we don’t call on the electric company to cut off the light and heat to the entire house, or the post office to stop delivering mail. We know that this will backfire in the long run. Instead, we go after the bad guys themselves and hold them accountable.

Who the fuck is actually doing that, EFF?? You’re basically arguing for endless abuse from these fucks because the justice system doesn’t give one fucking shit about what they’re doing because the justice system doesn’t generally give a fuck about vulnerable people.

That’s what must happen here. The cops and the courts should be working to protect the victims of KF and go after the perpetrators with every legal tool at their disposal. We should be giving them the resources and societal mandate to do so. Solid enforcement of existing laws is something that has been sorely lacking for harassment and abuse online, and it’s one of the reasons people turn to censorship strategies. Finally, we should enact strong data privacy laws that target, among others, the data brokers whose services help enable doxxing.

1. ACAB, the cops are corrupt and you can’t trust them.
2. The courts are corrupt and you can’t trust them.
3. We’re living in a hell-hole of a gerontocracy where government can’t pass a fucking bill to end Daylight Savings time, and you expect them to do something about policing this when we can’t even get cops to do their fucking jobs without murdering innocent citizens in the process? Get the fuck out of here, EFF, you’re a joke now.

Agreed, but having lived it myself with a manual transmission, it’s rough with a manual. It’s one of the few scenarios where I don’t prefer it.