This marketing technique is seriously long in the tooth...
And it didn't get the press that Apple wanted it to, so they're now "suing" the leaker to try and make people care.
Apple became passe some years ago and now all but the most zealous Apple fanboys have noticed and stopped caring.
Yes, the Russians are anti-Nazi which is why calling them is that is such an insult. Of course, the fact that Putin is a classic fascist makes it hit even harder, since it is almost true.
It's more recent history. They have an even bigger dislike of the Nazis (I mean the actual ones, they seem to be fine with the concepts and tenets of fascism) because of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) is such a huge and well respected symbol in living Russian Memory, even more so than the earlier revolutions against the Imperialists. As the enemy of the Great Patriotic War were the Nazis, Nazi is a particularly bad insult. Putin calling Ukraine "Nazis" is more for the benefit of controlling Russia than influencing anyone outside of Russia although it does seem the hard of thinking in the west have swallowed it completely.
I think Russia started the Nazi talk and Ukraine is bouncing it back at them - because as you said it's the biggest insult they could hurl at each other. They are justly proud of the high price paid to defeat Hitler. But it also turns into propaganda.
It's also straight from the far-right playbook going back beyond when Hitler was a lad.
Poisoning the well. Accuse the other side of doing what you're doing (or being what you're being) so that when you do it, it's less of a shock and you can claim it's just in self defence. It also tends to take the sting out of the other side pointing out that you're actually the Nazi like ones.
Russia has lost democracy years before losing free speech and decades before the ideology arrived?
Did Russia ever have freedom of expression (why limit it to speech, if I want to call Pootin a cunt via the means of interpretive dance why shouldn't I)? I remember when I was in my 20s they regularly targeted Russian Celebrities that dared speak out against the government and now I'm a man in my 40s (Tatu was the famous one from the early 00s).
I'm pretty sure they've never had a real democracy either, just something that kind of looked like it between despotic governments.
But the OP has a good point, whilst the loss of freedom of expression is not the first step towards despotism, it certainly is a major one which is why your orange overlord is trying as hard as he can to silence any opposition to him (and why you need to be opposing him now, not later when you have no freedoms left).
Musk bans people left and right if they say unfavorable things about him. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/a...
But hey go on about “wokeness”.
I thought they'd switched to "DEI" now because everyone started ignoring the nasal whines of "woke".
I find it ironic that those who complain the loudest about so-called "cancel culture" seem to be the ones that are trying the hardest to silence others criticisms of them.
So it appears they aren't opposed to "cancel culture", they just want to be the only one's who are permitted to do the cancelling. It's a good thing cancel culture doesn't exist and there are plenty of alternatives to TheAppFormerlyKnownAsTwitter, which continues it's slide into irrelevance.
Didn't we already try that once with factory towns? And determine that it wasn't a good thing?
And again by giving payment processors (Visa/MC) the keys to the kingdom.
Why do payment processors have the ability to regulate businesses? Where does this power end? What if they said they didnâ(TM)t want games that depicted violence
This power ends when you stop electing ideologue, demagogues and religious fundamentalists in large numbers.
This means electing a government that will stand up to the power of corporations and put a system in place that will allow people to bypass the payment processor cartel (like the direct bank-to-bank transfer systems most countries enjoy).
You might not be aware, but this is not something that payment processors are permitted to do in the UK or EU (or Australia... in fact not in most countries) due to strict laws.
If Steam said, "No, we'll find another processor that isn't trying to run our business for us,"
You seem to be confused just how much of a monopoly the payment processing world is. Payment processors have acted as the moral police for decades now and have killed entire genres of the adult industry single handedly. There are many out there who have actively tried just going to someone else, and repeatedly failed.
Not really a monopoly, rather a cartel. I know this is largely a semantic difference because to you, I and millions of businesses the end result is the same but a monopoly is a single entity, payment processors are 2 large entities (Visa and MasterCard) and a few smaller ones (notably AMEX and Discover) colluding together.
And the issues come from governments, specifically the US government giving them too much power. Most other western countries (EU, UK, Australia) have laws that state they must process the payment _UNLESS_ it is explicitly illegal. No playing "moral policeman", if someone wants to pay for sex, then they can pay (assuming it's legal in that jurisdiction). We also tend to provide non-card based options like direct bank transfers, free of charge so that if they do kick up a stink it's not going to matter anyway.
The state of the world is such nowadays that you should not take your regular electronic devices across borders. Any borders.
The only borders I'd be concerned about taking a sensitive phone across are those around despotic regimes like North Korea, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States. I'd take my phone over most western, Asian or South American borders without a second thought because Thailand/Germany/Australia/Canada/Dominican Republic/et al. couldn't care less about inspecting my phone unless I've become a suspect in a crime... which has never happened to anyone I know.
The US CBP has always had a hard on against porn, so they regularly check phones for it (*gasp* we can't have people enjoying sex now can we) which hasn't really bothered me as I don't film homemade porn on my phone (lighting and quality would be abysmal) but it seems now they're looking for anything critical of Dear Leader now, which is why they get mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Saudi Arabia.
My American friends who live in Spain came to the US purposefully leaving behind their phones. That in itself raised some eyebrows at the airport immigration control booth %^)
They did bring their SIM cards, and had pre-ordered an Android phone drop-shipped to an Amazon box here in Phoenix (AZ), and had hoped to just pop in the SIM and everything would work. But no - even GMail wasn't working right. Ended up taking days to sort it out, and had to overnight one of the SIMs back to Spain for a neighbor to take to the phone store and help sort out the issue. Apparently, once the carrier was convinced that there was no fraud going on, then they were able to get the phone running.
Sounds like a pain, but it's easier for me to carry my regular camera across the border and use a burner.
I'm not sure how expensive phones are in Spain, but why didn't they just get a burner in Spain if you're going to use a Spanish SIM card? A fully functional cheap Android phone in the UK goes from as little as £70, although I'd be looking at around £150 for my needs. Before I got a dual SIM phone I just used to travel using an older phone anyway as I travel with a different SIM to the one I use in the UK.
As for cameras, I believe in carrying one on holiday because you get better shots with decent glass and a real mechanical lens. Just a decent point and shoot, no need to go crazy, whilst good equipment will not automatically make you a better photography the reverse is the opposite, poor equipment will make you a worse photographer.
I'd buy a new SD card for it before travelling to the US though, although I've no plans to do that until you lads manage to sort your shit out.
They used to be the Premier manufacturer of IC's. Now, TMSC has eaten their lunch. I was never sure that they had the "best engineers", but they did have the best processes to make IC's.
I remember how bad the later Petinums were that the AMD Athlon64 ate their lunch. It got so bad they had to abandon the Pentium name for "Core" which were only marginally better. They got lucky with the "Core 2" not being terrible and at the same time AMD's Phenom processors being a poor follow on from Athlon.
Now it seems laptops are regularly coming with AMD processors, so the last market Intel had a stranglehold on is seeing competition. Intel doesn't do well under competition.
Nationalism will doom the planet. Globalism is the way forward for humanity. Consider, 500 years ago, it would take days to travel to two cities within the same country (for example Berlin to Munich.) Now, people can travel to any country in the world in less than 24 hours. Within a few centuries there would inevitably be little to no cultural differences. Tribalism will lead to evil -- note various cultures will still be studied and preserved the same way people do Celtic dance today.
This, we're seeing the rise of ultra-nationalism in western countries and it will be the destruction of us if it's not stopped.
Also the GP is wrong. Globalism didn't start in the 1940s or 50s after the fall of fascism, it started in the 80s after the rise of Reagan/Thatcherism. The rise of ever more right wing policies has enabled and encouraged more and more jobs and industries to be sent overseas in the name of increased shareholder value. The 50's, economically at least were a good time for the US (Socially it was a total mess but beyond the scope of the argument I feel).
1. Indians are getting expensive.
2. There are not enough H1Bs(See #1.)
I have a friend who works for a US company that has started hiring remote workers in Nepal because "people in India are too expensive". He has no idea what they will do when people in Nepal get "too expensive". His company basically froze hiring in India and while the current Indian workers aren't in any immediate danger of losing their jobs, he told me all of them got moved into contracting jobs that his company can end at any time. He was in low level management for a while and in his current job he is in a position to know that.
It's the same thing with Mexico, companies went to India because places like Mexico got too expensive.
India is becoming expensive and Indian oligarchs know it, so they are now demanding Indians work 80 hours a week for the same pay.
I doubt they're moving off to Nepal though as Nepal doesn't have the infrastructure.
If an artist uses a song writer, has plastic surgery, uses musical instruments... They should all have to disclose this.
Velvet Sundown is no different than when a studio assembles a group of four boys, pays songwriters, dance choreographers, makeup artists, musicians, etc...
An artist sat down, used AI as an instrument and made music.
I've long stopped considering electronic music to be music because a computer is not an instrument.
The music industry has loved this kind of thing because musical instruments require talent to play, especially to play well which gives the artist a large mesure of power over their own destiny, rights, a voice... things that music execs hate because they can use that to get more of their precious, sweet, sweet profit.
A "DJ" or rapper can be replaced easily as they don't have any actual talent. Doubly so for pop stars these days as it's all autotuned to within an inch of their lives (so much so that the "artist" can't recreate the sound using their own voice, so they all mime at their shows these days, and to think there was a time where we derided Kylie because she was the only one doing it). The person doing the performance has become the least important part of it considering most of the time someone else writes their own song. Execs really dug their own grave by making music so drab, boring, repetitive and especially by removing all requirement for any kind of musical talent, AI is set to eat their lunch and their biggest problem is not that AI can replicate their process... but the fact anyone can use it, their problem is that they don't control the AI.
You're right that AI is no different than when a label assembles a band (or runs a non-talent show to find someone).. but you couldn't be more wrong about AI being an instrument.
Disc space -- the final frontier!
