There is actually quite a bit of difference between the US banning TikTok and the GDPR. Notably, the EU also imposes heavy regulation on how it's own domestic companies can store and use people's data. The US government's behaviour has done nothing to convince me that it actually gives any shits about the privacy of its citizens. Like, do you think any American politicians would kick up a fuss if the Chinese government simply bought user data from an American company?

I have no love for TikTok, and I don't particularly care if it gets banned, but I don't believe the justification being offered.

This Human Rights Watch article does a good job talking about when it's appropriate to attack a hospital. But in general, no, I don't think the mere presence of an armed soldier with a hostage is sufficient justification for bombing a hospital. Plus, you know, you'd be killing the hostage. If the soldier is fighting back from within the hospital, then things are different. And don't get me wrong; Hamas is definitely also committing war crimes here, both in their initial attack, and by hiding behind regular Palestinians.

I don't know, man. I'm not a politician or a military strategist. And yet, I still feel confident that there are options outside of "do nothing" and "commit war crimes". Hamas apparently isn't all the popular among Palestinians; maybe Israel should focus on undermining their administration, and recruiting informants and/or assassins that it could leverage into an extraction. Maybe there would be less collateral damage with a ground invasion than with indiscriminate air strikes. Maybe something else I can't think of.

It wasn't ad hominem. It would have been ad hominem if I had said "You lack credibility because you're a conservative". What I actually said (paraphrased) was "You lack credibility because you are lying when you say you're not a conservative".

Anyway, here's my evidence for your conservatism:

A pattern of disdain and contempt for progressives ("When I say idiots like you, I mean progressives, which you definitely are, and these show up written by progressives all the time:", "What's worse, economists tell you that exactly this kind of thing will happen, but your progressive ideology tells you to be dismissive of them because they're not "the working class" or some other Marxian lite shit."), but no corresponding comments that I could find for conservatives.

Respect for individual responsibility coupled with dismissal of collective responsibility ("I've long stressed holding people accountable for themselves, but by and large progressives, democrats, the left, or whatever you want to call it, place a huge emphasis on collectivism, "everyone belongs to everyone", "it takes a village to raise a child", etc, and fundamentally seem to believe that personal responsibility is immoral.").

A general approval of wealth inequality (In response to "that increases in CEO compensation should be matched by increases in worker compensation", saying "Not only is that a bad case of incredibly covetous penis envy, but that isn't going to do you any favors at all.", "That, and income inequality is the biggest economic red herring on the fucking planet. You think reducing it will somehow fix things, but it won't do shit.").

Opposition to organized labour ("Suck at your job? No problem, a labor union will ensure you can't get fired for doing a shitty job, being a lazy fuck, or being an asshole.", "Welcome to labor unions. In this case, the National Association of Realtors. If there isn't a 6% commission involved either for just them or split with another realtor (a trademarked term, by the way,) you'll basically get boycotted by NAR buyer's agents. Normally this kind of thing is an illegal cartel, but a long time ago the mafia succeeded in getting it government sanctioned, generally by bribing democrats.").

Based on that, it's going to take more than saying you're not conservative to convince me you're not conservative.

Woah, hold on. ArmoredDragon is definitely a conservative. That's based on his/her posting history, not the comment I was replying to. I couldn't just let that slide.

Are you only capable of arguing by setting up ridiculous dichotomies? There exists some middle ground between appeasement, and the bombing of hospitals and refugee camps.

Also, a minor point of correction: the people in death camps in Nazi Germany weren't hostages; the government at the time had no intentions of exchanging them for anything.

I love that you accuse others of oversimplifying things, while simultaneously conflating the actions of Hamas with the actions of the Palestinian people, the Isreali government with the people of Isreal, and claim that people who protest a government committing war crimes "hate" one country and "love" another.

Oh, you're lying. Never mind, then.

You know what they say: "The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum cleaner."

No source, unfortunately. I would describe it as a logical deduction, though. If prices and wages increased in lockstep, then naturally a constant tip percentage would result in constant purchasing power for employees who receive tips. It is "well known" (a phrase without rigour, but which I nevertheless feel is appropriate here) that wages have been stagnant for quite a long time, especially at the lower end of the pay scale. If employees make the same amount of money, but everything costs more, then their purchasing power decreases according to their salary-to-tip income ratio.

There are a few simplifying assumptions in there (like assuming that the price of goods and services served by tipped employees has increased at the same rate as the cost of living) but that was my thought process. I probably shouldn't have phrased my original post so authoritatively, but... well, that's the Internet for you.

You mean " Present self check-out prompt"?

The rising tip percentage is due to stagnant wages. If wages were keeping up with inflation, then employees would have the same purchasing power without changing the tip percentage.

It may well be that they exist in order to make money, but they exist because they provide the world with free cute cat videos.

If ChatGPT works just like humans, why can't you train ChatGPT on ChatGPT's output?

To be clear, this mostly applies to the US. In many European cities (and at least one Canadian city), downtown is a great place to live.

The only thing that has even the slightest chance of providing a 3.5-day work week is organized labour. It will never, ever come from the owner class.

Except Unity's new pricing policy doesn't solve that issue at all; devs are exempt from the per-install fees if the use Unity's own ad framework. If anything, this move encourages more ad infestation.