I, by coincidence, am also actively campaigning for Linux.

You should try it. It has a lot of issues and problems - but far less than you think, more importantly far fewer of it’s problems come from enshitification (software forking helps resist that), and most importantly, since many projects are community-driven the more people use it the better it’s likely to get.

The summaries are not real quotes, obviously, and is obviously selected to emphasise the shifting nature of the administration’s position … but yeah, I would say it’s broadly actuate.

Right? It describes some fingerprinting techniques the site uses, but browser sandboxing limits the available data.

This type of scan is uncommon, and slightly more invasive than other tracking techniques, but neither new nor urgent.

It doesn’t paint the site operator as a paragon of privacy for sure tho.

Access to information - Internet access should be made a human right

Yes, I do, but you don’t need a man in the middle when you also hold the decryption keys (on both ends). E2EE is useful in case you get hacked, since unless they get the whole system, a copy of the data at rest would be encrypted.

May the streets run red with maple leaves

That was back at the moment when Trump threw around enough tariffs to make countries with longstanding enmity sign direct trade deals with each other, cutting us out as the middleman. Those will never, ever come back (they were mostly forged in the wake of WWII, when the US had the only functional economy)

As for when we’ll see it? I think we have a “oh shit” world stage moment if the US tries to attack Greenland, as Denmark will then have to defend - and then by chain of treaties WWIII kicks off.

If we avoid that fate somehow, then there probably won’t be a specific moment - the US will over twenty or so years just slowly collapse in on itself and other countries will quietly start ignoring US while publicly paying lip service. … - There will probably be an event when we publicly can’t afford the giant military we have which will be an existential crisis for a news cycle.

That’s my attempt to read the tea leaves in the crystal ball.

From what I can tell, the ‘age’ part is misdirection. They want to restrict computer use to the “good” people, to make it “safer”.

Using age restrictions first allows legislation to be passed “for the children” using the idea of potential harm to theoretical children. However, in practice, legislators expect the implementation of the age check to be capable of checking anything else they want to about your identity, as a prerequisite for access. Probably using a combination of face scans and ID scans.

You’re very obviously not defending tipping culture. I am defending tipping culture as an organic solution to a structural issue. Is it a good solution? Not really, but more equitable than not tipping in the current state of society.

Your argument so far (as it reads by me) appears to suggest we should all stop tipping and the market will magically correct itself because (sometimes?) you go to a coffee shop that chooses to be more internally equitable.

I want to believe you have some plan as to how we get to a situation where restaurants (like McDonalds) are expected to pay a living wage, but right now, hoping that they do it voluntarily strains credibility.

Can you give me more of what you propose than “maybe not tipping is better” and “I know of a restaurant that voluntarily fixed this issue”.

I don’t see the problem:

According to my rudimentary research, the average franchise owner makes $118,00 / year (take home, after other things are accounted for). If you break that into 52 weeks and 40 hour work weeks, that suggests a (very rough) $52/hour.

https://franchisebusinessreview.com/post/how-much-franchise-owners-make/

And your argument is that sometimes the service worker can make as much as that, if they are tipped successfully.

I personally think that - while I would prefer to live in a world where a living wage was guaranteed and we could honorably discard tipping culture - in lieu of such regulation, this seems preferable to management making that same profit and the worker being offered poverty wages.

Correct, the customer benefits from enabling the employer to deprive th employee of a living wage. Their patronage facilitates the practice.

So yes, the customer is not a beneficiary of tipping culture, but they benefit by ignoring tipping culture at the cost of employees (in absence of robust living wage regulations or practices).

The customer is one of the beneficiaries of this alleged scam, which makes me dubious about the placement of responsibilities. It sounds like the customer is high on capitalistic copium.

In most situations, your BitLocker recovery key is automatically backed up when BitLocker is first activated:

• https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/back-up-your-bitlocker-recovery-key-e63607b4-77fb-4ad3-8022-d6dc428fbd0d

Unless your base argument is “Microsoft users are all stupid”, then I remind you that this is not only default behavior, but is mandatory if your account is associated with an EmtraID account (i.e. any business or school)

If only it were a paycheck amplifier

Oh, I too doubt the regret is for anything beyond “I got caught and this makes me look bad shash will directly cost me money slash power slash influence”. I only made the reference to say that Gates’ ties to Epstein were known well before 2026.

In 2019, Gates characterized his relationship with Epstein as a ‘huge mistake’. Make of that what you will.

But this post doesn’t really address that. It suggests Epstein bought Windows XP once, which … is fine … I guess? (Doesn’t let him off the hook for the criminal empire he ran though)

Right‽ this has ‘maybe the genie won’t screw me over with my third wish if I just ask it right’ energy.

Your feelings and opinions are affecting our bottom line. Obviously it’s you that’s the problem here.

I’m sorry, what’s market research again? That sounds old-school and not involving AI.

“The Farmer Was Replaced” has you covered

No, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. I think people are theorizing that X is very likely to respond to pressure from Google and Apple threatening to deplatform them, and loudly complaining about them not applying their own rules equally is a great way to remind their internal lawyers to put pressure on them (insulting the CEOs is just a nice bonus).

Frankly, if the fallot here is a relaxed adult policy, that’s still a win. LGBTQIA advocacy groups tend to get lumped in as ‘adult’, which is a problem for trans-affirming suicide prevention hotlines trying to save lives.

As for your slippery slope question, that Pandora’s box is already open. Just half a year ago Mastercard and VISA put the strongarm on Valve and itch.io to let the payment processors ban any game they choose under the guise of pornography censorship. Pressuring a platform to censure an app ‘for the sake of the children’ just isn’t the virgin ground you seem to think it is.