China needs us economically as much as we need them for manufacturing. Sure, we’re trying to be more independent and make more domestically, and they are trying to be more independent economically through BRICS. Neither country is doing a very good job of attaining their goals of independence, but to keep up appearances both countries like to simultaneously pretend there’s not a relationship and also that they are the top in the relationship.

The reality is both countries have some wealthy “oligarchs” who exploit workers and governments that mostly only work to benefit themselves and their oligarch friends. China will take out an oligarch here and there when they decide they’re getting too powerful, and Americans get to elect some of our leaders, other than that we’re not very different. Deep down both governments understand it would be political suicide to antagonize the other to the point meaningfully harming them. At least both current governments that is, Trump is probably too dumb to realize we need each other, so that’s a potential wild card, but North Korea is almost certainly a bigger threat to both the US and China than we will to each other for decades.

I still use DDG as my “daily driver” (I know there are better options for privacy and avoiding big tech, but I haven’t yet found anything independent that is good enough for me to switch to full time yet). I bookmarked Stract a while back, and it proved useful a few months back when Microsoft had an outage that took down Bing and by extension, Duck Duck Go. I do like Stract, their index seems to be enough larger than MoJeek (another independent search with their own index) that it gives me better results.

Stract might not be as open as I’d like, but it’s nice to have as an option, and I’m never going to complain about having more search providers with independent indexes.

And then once your person wins, shout at them every day about the things that are important to you. Pester and annoy them so much that they are both motivated to do what you want just to get you to leave them alone, and also so they have support they can point to to convince their colleagues to join the cause. We’d be in a very different place if we had demanded getting rid of the Electoral College even 10 years ago, and a vastly different place if we had gotten that changed 25 years ago.

I know it’s a lot of work to stay loud about political issues all the time, but if you don’t use your voice, someone will take your silence as contentment and nothing will change.

As someone who grew up in Christian-Nationalist churches and circles, just dress like a Jehovah’s Witness or like a young Ben Shapiro. Even if someone does call to complain, they will describe 70% of the people there and they’ll probably address it as a gentle reminder to all the canvassers in a meeting rather than one on one. At which point someone more right-wing will stand up for everything because they actually believe every one of the policies are good things, and everyone will think they were the problem, not you.

Yeah, it’s like they think buying solar panels from overseas is the same as importing oil from overseas. When China is selling real “energy independence” from for less than you could make it yourself.

I’ve been using Syncthing-Fork (on F-Droid) for the extra features it has. I wonder if that developer will be able to continue.

Not to be pedantic, but wouldn’t making an endorsement make them no longer “Uncommitted”? Yes, Harris could and should be better on the genocide happening in Gaza, but “Uncommitted voters still uncommitted after not meeting with candidate” also isn’t much of a story.

So more like Judas and Goliath then?

I want to like this, but some of that mocap animation looks really off. Especially in those scenes with the idol and where indie is slamming down that stone. Looks like the mocap actor was holding back and that the idol weighs less than it should. It’s probably going to be okay, but after the excellent mocap work in games like God of War, where the animation really conveys a sense of weight, and in comparison to the Indiana Jones films this looks a bit floaty and like Indie is pulling his punches.

I’m hoping she’s mostly just playing soft on Israel for now is to avoid more criticism of being antisemitic. When Israel started their attempted genocide, most of the Biden administration was silent on it, and we didn’t hear or see anything from Harris, when she did eventually have a public appearance about a month later, she was pretty much the first person in the administration to say anything remotely pro-peace.

I’m probably just huffing copium but I hope she’s just taking AIPAC’s money (not sure if they are giving her any, but better in her hands than theirs) and getting through the election, and then going to go full prosecutor on Israel/Netanyahu.

I felt like Nova’s not being special was what made it special. It was the closest to stock android while having a bunch of little tweaks here and there that allowed for more custom setups.

Ever been to a dollar general that sells groceries? The ones near me frequently sell out of 25-30% of the groceries they offer, and then don’t get restocked for a couple of weeks. And we have traditional grocery stores nearby and a Walmart 10 miles away. I wouldn’t trust DG Market to reliably provide groceries for a community if no other options were available.

I’d take Katie Porter as well, I know she isn’t as progressive as Warren or AOC, but since she lost her Senate bid to Schiff, she’s not doing anything else, and has quite a bit of goodwill even among non-liberals for her whiteboard takedowns of CEOs and pentagon waste.

I’d also add to this that a whole bunch of us have at least a few extended family members that we heard spouting similarly insane takes for as long as we can remember. But because they were the patriarchs or were unhinged enough that they’d ruin the family reunion or Thanksgiving for everyone, we all learned it was in our own best interest to never challenge them.

We were conditioned from a early age to ignore it at go on with our lives, and they were conditioned that they could say more and more unhinged things and really never be challenged on it.

I didn’t say it was the exact same, but to the victims the difference isn’t very meaningful, much like victims of murder and manslaughter are still dead whether we make a distinction or not. It’s meaningful for prosecution purposes - at least in the case if manslaughter and murder because it’s taking intent into account. It’s also a bit easier to accidentally kill someone than it is to accidentally have sex with a minor.

Probably one of those weirdos who knows the specific term for paedophiles who are into teens rather than younger children and tries to use it as if it’s a meaningful distinction.

I had a nicer Acer monitor that I replaced with a similar Samsung model about a year ago. I still kinda miss the Acer. Both were 32" curved LCD and 1440p. The Acer had a much more uniform curve to it, and the Samsung has a bunch of firmware issues that sometimes can only be worked around by unplugging it and power cycling it that way. The only reason I “upgraded” was the Samsung had better support for PS5 and scaling 4K inputs down to the native 1440p without artifacts.

Why would you want another year of their software for free? This is their second screw up (apparently they sent out a bad update that affected some Debian and RHEL machines a couple years ago). I’d be transitioning to a competitor at the first opportunity. It seems they aren’t testing releases before pushing them out to customers, which is about as crazy to me as running alpha software on a production system.

I’m sure you have reasons, and this isn’t really meant to be directed at you personally, it’s just boggling to me that the IT sector as a whole hasn’t looked at this situation and collectively said “fuck that.”

No way that’s the real reason, the real reason is taxes. So many California millionaires move to Texas for the low tax, only to realize once they’re there that it’s a shitty state with a barely-functioning power grid. Unfortunately it never seems to click for most of them that the low taxes is a big part of why they don’t have a competent state government.

I feel like a lot of what made the Bioshock games good was Ken Levine’s social commentary. And while we’ve had Bioshock games that he didn’t write or direct, and it would be silly to argue that he is the only one capable of writing a good Bioshock story, I do think he understands that it’s more important to say something with a game, than just churn out another title within the same world.

Rapture wasn’t just a dark underwater city, it was a Libertarian utopia, with all the exploitation and unchecked capitalism that would come from that. Columbia was a Christian Nationalist utopia, with the cultish brainwashing, revisionist history, and racism that is common in that worldview. I hope the team in charge of the new games understands that the series is more than the locations, and the “Big Daddies” and “Little Sisters.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’d love more Bioshock (if it’s good), but I’m glad we’re also getting Judas from Levine’s new studio, because I have a feeling it’s going to feel more like Bioshock than whatever the next official Bioshock game ends up being.