What exactly does Apple think that they’re brining to the equation in order to deserve that 30? Is it simply that they’re hosting an app on their store, so therefore they’re entitled to a cut?

So if I write a novel, and get it published, Microsoft can say "We deserve 30% because you used our product to produce your product?

I’m so fucking tired of corporations. It’s well past guillotine-o-clock.

Haven’t brushed my teeth yet today. I’m gonna have to decline.

That was sassy? I thought it was hilarious.

I thought you had actually taken the time to look at my comment history, discovered that I majored in Near Eastern Classical Archaeology and was making a riff on that. I thought it was great!

I stand corrected. Learn something new every day. Thanks.

edit: I don’t know why you are getting downvotes. You corrected me with a proper source. and I stood corrected. That’s the proper civilized way of doing things.

They didn’t ban weapons. They banned generals leading independent armies.

Roman military was, at that time at least, privatised. The generals were the elites and the rich who would often pay for their own armies. When Caesar for example wanted to go campaigning in Gaul, he’d pay for a lot of the cost or of his own pocket. This resulted in armies that were generally more loyal to their general than to Rome.

That could naturally be a problem, so to prevent a general from getting ideas, the law mandated that they would have to disband their armies before crossing into Italy proper (or at least leaving their army encamped outside the territory)

That point was traditionally just before the army would cross the Rubicon river, hence the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” denoting a kind of “red line” or “point of no return”.

When Caesar made the decision to March on Rome and incite a civil war, his army “crossed the Rubicon”.

“most”?

Try “all”. Everything always eventually comes down to someone, somewhere, trying to make more profit for themselves.

That’s why “Follow the money” is the surest way to solve any crime.

I did not sign up to that.

Yeah. He did. At no point did Trump or MAGA lie about their intentions. From the beginning they said exactly what they were going to do.

And he signed on. Maybe its because he didn’t believe they would actually do it and now he regrets it. That’s fine.

But regardless, he literally “signed up to that” and he has to own that.

Around here, we just call that freezing rain.

Do these stupid companies actually think that any of these products aren’t just going to be used by perverts?

There are legitimate professional use cases: for example, imagine a consulting doctor looking in on what another surgeon is doing and offering opinions as the operation goes on. Or same thing with engineers.

But I can’t think of a single consumer use case that isn’t designed for perverts.

Canada.

“Frozen drops of rain” makes sense too. I picture it as, “Imagine a raindrop hits your windshield, and instead of thunking like a raindrop, it’s kind of splats like a tiny tiny snowball.” That’s sleet.

Come to think of it, I’ve never really bothered thinking about what sleet is. I’ve always just put it in the “you know it when you see it” category.

If I pummel my brain for what I would describe it as, I’d say it’s wet, heavy snow in a wind. Like “really soft hail” I suppose.

But yeah…I never bothered. Interesting thought experiment for myself.

PC Version was hard as hell. I was shocked by how differently designed the XBox 360 version was. It was two entirely different games for the most part. I remember back then that was the first time I had seen that sort of purposeful disparity between what was supposed to be the same game on both platforms.

Yes.

After god knows how many years now of being on Linux exclusively, I tend to look at the terminal (commands in general) as a convenience more than a necessity. Meaning that in a lot of cases, knowing a command and quickly typing it to start an update (for example) is just faster and easier than pulling up the GUI every time.

I’m not saying this isn’t what needs to happen. Shut everything down, for sure.

But the reality is that Trump and his Gestapo don’t give a shit if a blue state slows to a crawl from a walkout. Their not smart enough to grasp that blue states actually contribute more.

In their brains, blue state walkouts just means blue state chaos, which they love.

Until it starts hitting GOP states, the assholes in charge won’t pay attention.

The US is already in a civil war. But only one side is actually fighting it.

I’ll give my smart-ass answer first before deliving into my serious answer.

Smart-ass: Yes…tangible literally means “possible to touch”. So yeah…digital stuff isn’t, by definition “tangible” in the way that records, cds, etc… are. You’ve never “touched” an mp3 file. You’ve never “touched” a streaming movie like you handle a DVD or a VHS tape.

Now…to my serious answer: I’ve long been working on what started as an article, became a treatise, and is now morphing into a non-fiction book about that very concept. Still a very long way to go, and with my stop-and-start creative blocks, it may never get done, but I felt it was important to write it all down while I still have a functioning brain. (I’m not getting any younger)

I’ve added to it for years every time a new thought about it comes to me, talking about what I call “Patina” (the tendency for mechanical things like typewriters and camera lenses to age individually, almost developing a personality as they age) and equating it with the Japanese concept of Tsukomogami (the idea that physical things gain a soul after 100 years)

Go ask a someone under 30 if they can afford a house and get back to me

That has nothing to do with Canada or any one particular country, jack ass. That’s just late stage capitalism. Billionaire class slowly but surely, generation after generation, increasing the gap and fucking over the little guys. Every generation gets worse, and now, globally, we’re living in the age when all of that shit since Reagenomics hit the scene has now started to come home to roost.

Saying that that is a “Canadian” problem is like saying that climate change is a “Canadian” problem. Yes…technically it is, but it’s also a US problem, a UK problem. A French, German and Italian problem. Because the over-arching problem has nothing to do with countries, but with the elites that pay for those governments the world over to do their bidding while fucking the rest of us over.

Stop being an idiot.

My makers are hard at work getting ready to release my brother, ScatGPT. But I don’t expect it’ll be as popular.

Yep. You got me.

I’m a new model, called PhatGPT, designed specifically to catfish desperate men.

I would very much want to see the same for Canada. But Canada would have to first change it’s open border policy with the chuckle-fucks to the south. Don’t want to give those nut-jobs an easy round-about into the EU. MAGALAND --> CANADA --> EU