The Trump or Biden decision is not democracy

You’re 100% correct there, unfortunately. It’s become the choice between a firing squad, or death by a thousand cuts.

I’m one of those people “privileged enough to not already be suffering”, as you put it; unfortunately I’m also terribly empathetic. Four years of Trump did a lot of damage to the social fabric here; emboldening the worst our society has to offer, appointing three conservative SC justices to overturn Roe, tax breaks for the owning class, and so forth. The country is becoming increasingly hostile to women, queer folks, and other minorities… Hell the MAGA crowd has even convinced a good chunk of the working class to hurt itself in it’s confusion.

I suppose I see any means of staving that progression off, even if I’m repulsed by the choice, as a net neutral. Perhaps I’m naive, maybe another Trump term is exactly what we need for people to wake the fuck up and take it to the streets; but I have a feeling it’s going to be a much more violent struggle fighting against bloodthirsty fascists over milquetoast liberals.

I’m rambling too now lol. Sorry for dragging the conversation out, I think I just enjoy talking about this stuff in a non-combative environment for once 😅

Yeah, kinda beating a dead horse here, but it’s giving “2024, Year of the Linux Desktop, inadvertently sponsored by Microsoft.”

Sure.

Then you get the occasional fun experience of a maintainer fucking up a package definition or two, and all of a sudden you can’t update your system or run a program because there’s a tangled mess of dependency conflicts and you get to spend the afternoon force reinstalling system libraries. Love ya’ Void :')

Been trying NixOS which is great for avoiding that kind of thing, but it comes with it’s own set of annoyances. I really ought to just settle on a more stable distro like Debian lol.

From the MS website:

Recall utilizes Windows Copilot Runtime to help you find anything you’ve seen on your PC. Search using any clues you remember or use the timeline to scroll through your past activity, including apps, documents, and websites.

A “feature” coming to Windows 11. Essentially a keylogger on steroids… Powered by AI of course, because what isn’t these days.

Cute bait, little guy. Keep it up :)

Apologies for the America-centric response, I know these ideas aren’t limited to the states, it’s just what I’m most familiar with.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of neo-liberals and I think they get a lot of justified flak for not doing enough, or what’s right, and I absolutely understand not “voting for people who are able to shrug off my very existence”. If I were in your shoes, I’d be in the “burn it all down” camp too.

In 2016, I wrote in Bernie Sanders out of principle, because he felt like the only candidate who genuinely cared about what was best for regular folks. I also thought the rhetoric around Trump was overstated, particularly, I thought the whole Antifa crowd was super cringe. I grew up in a conservative environment and none of the people I knew were actually fascists after all… Well, 8 years later… I have the hindsight to know that I was wrong. Fascism is alive and well, and it’s thriving in my backyard.

I don’t want to vote for Biden, his administration’s handling of Israel and it’s genocide is an affront to humanity and one more thing to add to the list of shit that makes me ashamed of this country; it’s just that, in my eyes, the only other viable option is so much worse…

I wish I had the answers, any policies that could bring meaningful change to a two-party system are in the hands of people who have everything to gain from keeping things the same. I’d like to think that enough overt acts of civil disobedience could change things, but I don’t think it’s bad enough for most people to gather the numbers necessary to bring it about. We’ve been given just enough luxury to keep us placid, but not enough to allow us the time, money, or energy to air our grievances. It’s a sorry state of affairs.

Anyway…

TL;DR, I respectfully dissent, but your experience is valid and I don’t blame ya, hopefully things start looking up in our lifetime :P

Edit: I missed a word

I get where you’re coming from… but when the alternative is mask-off clerical fascism, it ain’t a hard fuckin’ choice.

Voting democrat is just plain harm reduction at this point, as laughable as that feels to say given present circumstances… But this shit show is what we’re stuck with unless we can somehow convince the feckless bastards to implement a better system than first-past-the-post, so other parties actually stand a chance.

It won’t happen, but neither will convincing over half of the population to vote third-party; and abstaining, while principled, only yields more voting power to Y’all Qaeda.

True.

I could maybe see an argument being made in favor of having these kinds of security measures for the first month after release to protect sales, since it’s usually the period in which most sales are secured; devs do need a sustainable income after all. But that would also necessitate ignoring the potential performance degradation resulting in a poor first experience for players, and many publishers just leave it in for the lifetime of a game, which is a disaster waiting to happen (as seen here).

Overall, I think piracy is mostly a pricing issue above all else. With AAA titles getting increasingly more expensive and being released in broken states, it’s not surprising that people don’t want to spend $70 on a game that they might end up hating and opt to “demo” the game first. Refund policies can help alleviate the issue, but are hardly a silver bullet, with games inserting tons of fluff at the beginning to ensure you exceed the playtime threshold.

Either deliver the games you promise, or price them according to what’s actually there, and I’m sure the majority of gamers would be content in paying full price. DRM only serves to increase friction for the honest people paying for your games.

Probably because they do, at least in the realm of dietary choices. Choosing to slaughter billions of sentient creatures every year for food and accessorization, when the majority of us have an abundance of other options, is morally fucked… and this is coming from somebody who eats meat with some frequency.

Just because we like it, or because it’s easier, or because it’s “tradition” doesn’t mean it’s morally righteous, it just means we’re selfish assholes 💀

When people lash out at vegans it always seems to boil down to some degree of cognitive dissonance… Eat meat and revel in the immorality if you so desire, no one’s stopping you; but don’t fucking lie to yourself, and don’t get butthurt when someone holds a mirror up to your face. The loss of life, environmental impact, and the effects on our own health is enough justification to argue in favor of veganism, vegetarianism, or some other alternative that doesn’t result in needless harm.