No quantity of counter-content can overcome the person who controls what posts are actually seen by other users. Staying on X can never lead to any kind of balance. Staying there only serves to prop-up the false sense of legitimacy.

[edit] I’d posted something to go into more detail. But I’ve decided that branch of conversation is not really the way forward.

I’ll just say that the software is not installed by choice, and it does things that people don’t want it to do… so it could be described as malware. But if you want it on your computer, then I guess for you it is not malware. In any case, it doesn’t look like we’re going to agree about this regardless.

Anti-cheat software is very clearly and explicitly spyware. That’s the entire purpose of it. It spies on how you use your software in the hope that if you cheat you’ll be seen by the spyware watching you.

This spyware is generally not something people want on their computer - as evidenced by people complaining about it. So effectively whats happening is that people are being spied on against their wishes. Spyware is a common category of malware.

So I think it’s pretty easy to see why people might describe anti-cheat software as malware.

Chrome is already spyware on its own. That’s basically the reason Chrome exists.

Is Brave the one with the built-in crypto scheme and its own ads?

That could force a change in the DNC, but the change would be to push them further to the right. The issue is that the right-wing party won the election. They got more than 50% of the total votes. So the democrats aren’t going to see splitting their own base as a viable pathway to victory. If a left-wing faction splitters off, then the DNC will be forced to try to capture more votes on the other side instead.

If the democrats won the election then we’d be in a situation where we can talk about pushing them further left. But when they lose, that’s not really an option. (Most of these strategy problems disappear with ranked choice voting… but I doubt the current government has any interest in pushing for that kind of change!)

X’s supreme dictator openly campaigns for Trump. He even promised to pay millions of dollars to help people vote for Trump. So yeah, I reckon that probably had an effect.

Yeah, and although it will be painful for Mozilla in the short term - it would be a good outcome. It was always bad that Mozilla’s main source of funding was from their most powerful competitor. It’s an obvious conflict of interest. And obvious way to skew decision making. … But that money is just so addictive.

There will be some pretty severe withdrawal symptoms if the money gets taken away, but everyone will be healthier in the long run… unless the overpaid CEO continues to suck in all the remaining money and leaves nothing for the people actually doing the work. That would be bad. In that case, if the corporate structure chokes the company to death, I suppose we’d be hoping for Ladybird, or something like it to take Firefox’s place.

I love how none of these comments account for fiber, something you won’t get from granulated sugar but which you will absolutely get from any actual fruit, which at least one of these yogurts actually references in its label.

It’s definitely true that eating fruit is a very healthy way to consume sugar. But the amount of actual fruit in those fruit yogurts is pitifully small. Advertising aside, it’s not like eating an fresh piece of fruit; and it is not why the yogurt has so much sugar it in.

And as I understand it, the existence of an inner planet (Vulcan) was a reasonable explanation consistent with Newtonian gravity. (The only problem was that the planet wasn’t there.)

Also, I’ve seen a video of an experiment done in a vacuum chamber. (Although they kind of botched the point of the video by showing lots of slow-mo and junk like that.)

Unfortunately, USA doesn’t have ranked choice voting. So voting for someone who doesn’t have a chance of winning is basically the same as throwing away your vote.

I mean yeah, subscription services are shitty, but what’s wrong with lifetime purchases?

This thread is about subscriptions. So I’d assume that when people talk about ‘rent seeking companies’ etc, they are referring to subscription payments rather than lifetime purchases.

I’ve literally never bought anything from Amazon ever, at all. Not once. Nothing. Zilch. … So I think it is more than fair to say that there are plenty of alternatives to Amazon.

I agree that there shouldn’t be any people with that wealth, and so does the person you were responding to. But taking away 90% of people’s money above a reasonable threshold is definitely not going to help those people become ultra rich. It would make becoming ultra rich more difficult, and instead spread the wealth across the wider population - decreasing wealth disparity.

And although there is almost certainly a better way possible, this method is relatively easy to implement and is an obvious improvement over our current situation. So we can just go ahead and do it while we continue to find consensus on a better system in the long run.

You seem to be arguing that taxing the rich is somehow bad because it isn’t perfect. Your argument makes no sense. You are saying that taking their money helps them maintain a position of wealth. That makes no sense. Of course taking their money will make them less rich. Surely that’s easy to understand.

Inheritance tax is very good and fair. But a tricky problem is that if one place has a big inheritance tax, and another place doesn’t - then rich people basically just put all their money in the place with no inheritance tax. … We should do it anyway, but it does mean the bulk of that money probably won’t get taxed.

Good, but hard to measure fairly. Essentially all the emissions for everyone are ‘indirect’. They are the result of the processes used to produce the goods we consume, etc. So then, should the consumer be responsible for those emissions directly, or should it be the factory workers, or the people who own the factory, or the people who supplied the fuel that was used to run the factory, or the people who payed the people who supplied the fuel… etc.

We could think about untangling it, but probably easier to just tax the rich and then tackle the CO2 problem separately - probably by also taxing the people who own the factory for emissions.

What the hell are you talking about? We’re talking about increasing taxes for the ultra-rich. Saying ultra-wealth people should be paying >90% tax has nothing to do with feudalism, and it certainly isn’t supporting the concept of a rich and ruling class.

I find Widelands to be slow and relaxing; but also challenging and engaging.

Jeff Bezos killed. Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris. Paper reports.

That’s a big news day.