SSJ2Marx [he/him]

It’s a bit flexible nowadays because a lot of cars will let you leave the a/c on while you walk away with the keys.

Funny fact: google’s newest feature is also its best, but it’s kinda hidden and might not be available everywhere - it’s “web search”, which cuts out all the awful bullshit

We’re leftists and our site culture is pretty aggressive. Liberals are predisposed not to like us because of the first one, and we’re especially prone to arguing with them in the comments of their instances because of the second. This means we’re more well known and more disliked than we would be if we stayed in our corner.

This is true of the consumer market, but the OP asked about governments, and 90% of government computers in China run Kylin or NeoKylin, with plans to consolidate the two into a single os. This follows the overall trend of China’s tech sector seeking to replace imports (and copied versions of foreign tech) with fully domestic alternatives.

The thing is that Rowling hadn’t really thought it through yet. Having the hero save a slave is pretty clearly heroic and good, and it’s a nice way to wrap up the Dobby story arc, but then the fans were all like “wait WHAT!? there’s slaves under Hogwarts!?” and she was forced to think it through, and it turns out JK’s pretty awful so the result of her thinking it through was to make it worse.

I do wonder how many people got hoodwinked by the film and then went to read the book only to be hit with an entire textbook of lectures from a libertarian.

Ready Player One I guess. There’s a big difference between seeing a fuckload of pop culture artifacts on screen and reading multiple pages of somebody rattling off their knowledge about them. The worst part is that RP1 doesn’t even really engage with the culture it utilizes in any kind of interesting way, it’s all just surface level references that you’d learn from reading Reddit comment sections where people quote memes at each other. The movie on the other hand kind of makes it work because the pop culture artifacts aren’t dwelled on, they’re used more like an aesthetic choice, while the main focus of the movie is on its paint-by-numbers plot.

edited out of the episode and then the user could also download said episode where ads are cut out of the final audio file

This is your problem, because you’re redistributing someone else’s work with the ads cut out, which isn’t sufficiently transformative to qualify for fair use. Sponsorblock is allowed because it doesn’t actually interfere with the video stream, it just tells your computer when to skip ahead using YouTube’s already-existing playback features - your app should work the same way, integrating into an existing podcast platform and skipping forward based on crowdsourced timestamps, then the only thing you’re providing are the timestamps, which don’t violate copyright.

I have no doubt that for a lot of reviewers the process is extremely wasteful. But for those who make a lot of videos, they’re leaving a lot on the table if they don’t make an effort to resell their stuff - and depending on where they live they could be leaving a lot on the table if they don’t recycle it.

The big ticket items get loaned out to reviewers as part of the company’s marketing campaign. Some reviewers are blacklisted from this process (or refuse to be part of it for ethical reasons) and have to beg, borrow, or buy from their contacts in the industry/community.

If a retro reviewer lives in your town, it’s possible that they’re single handedly keeping multiple secondhand tech stores afloat. Also, if you keep a sharp eye on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace (easy if you’re doing it as part of your job) then you’ll see interesting tech appear there literally all the time.

Really prolific reviewers will do regular auctions of things that have piled up. This practice is common but they gotta be careful, as we saw when it got Linus Tech Tips into pretty hot water a few months ago when they sold something they had promised to return.

If you have a production team, then you can have people who spend their time listing and shipping out unneeded items - not to mention that people will tend to just take things that aren’t being used if they lie around long enough. On the other hand smaller reviewers tend to get big collections because they run out of people to give things to and selling stuff takes time away from video production.

Vietnam was embargoed until the 90s, and dropping it basically allowed the soft power of the US to do it’s thing. 'Nam isn’t really an ally of the US, they consider themselves neutral, but they’re undeniably very friendly. I suspect that a generation of trade and tourism could do the same to our relationship with Cuba and might result in softening attitudes among Cuban-Americans as they reestablish contact with their families and reconcile lingering animosity from the revolution.

I think this would also work for the DPRK, Iran, and others. Trade is really nice and children are rarely willing to carry the grudges of their parents.

Well yeah I guess if you’re buying a used machine from six years ago with millions in existence because tons of businesses bought them it’ll be cheap no matter what manufacturer it’s from. Thinkpads do hold up better against age than most.

Arch users

LinuxFromScratch users

low prices

On a Thinkpad!? Unless you’re buying a last-generation one that’s on clearance, that’s a laugh.

Gambling I guess? Although I count cards so it’s not quite the same, but I can’t exactly explain to the people around me that I’m an advantage player when I start throwing fistfulls of cash at the dealer…