Then again, both CAN be true.
It could be racist flame bait (I'm inclined to agree with you) with a small kernel of truth.

And I believe the answer to your questions is almost certainly BOTH.

Yes, they absolutely do. (Except for the wee bit about getting everyone to agree with them and change things, which I think even dipshits like you would agree they did in the last election.)

Then again, it's pretty much the entirety of your posts, eh? Just ceaseless dripping of bile like an infected cunt.

Nope, you don't get to redefine words to fit your moral parameter.

THEFT is taking something that doesn't belong to you. Even very, very small children understand that.

No previous definition of theft ever included "so that I have it and you don't" until hairsplitting internet lawyers wanted to be able to download things they didn't own and not be called thieves.

(shrug) in fact I agree with you that the best description of software piracy is indeed "illegal copying" but in the vernacular, simplest use of the term, it's ALSO theft. If we're splitting further hairs, it's ALSO a less serious category of theft for the reasons you put above, like (for example) taking your neighbors rake without permission, using it, and putting it back. It is absolutely 100% theft; it is also much less important than a theft involving keeping or destroying the thing, I would say that's also self-evident.

Paul Krugman, darling of the NYT, insisted Debt is GOOD
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...

https://x.com/paulkrugman/stat...
"DEBT IS MONEY WE OWE TO OURSELVES
DEBT IS MONEY WE OWE TO OURSELVES
DEBT IS MONEY WE OWE TO OURSELVES
DEBT IS MONEY ....

It only make us poorer in aggregate if it crowds out investment â" which is isn't doing"

(apparently disregarding the obvious, recognized, inevitable consequences of soaring debt)

Let's remember: in the US, about 20-25% of every year's budget is borrowed against the future.
We are the wealthiest society ever in human HISTORY and we still can't afford all the shit we WANT.

That's insane.

Sure they will.
Histrionic language designed to spur sympathy.

No, you're being bought by a big funding firm. Nothing here necessarily implies you're going to be "victimized" in any way.

To be clear, I personally don't like VC takeovers, which is essentially what this is - they DO tend to have negative results on companies in the long run. But if a business is up for sale, the future for that firm is not "Happy lucky everyone happy utopia" vs "terrible VC acquistion". Rather, the options are "long dwindling likely painful death of the business as the incompetents running it who put it in that shitty place try increasingly desperate efforts to solve it" vs "terrible VC acquisition".

No, what this plaintive, emotional please is all about are people who are afraid that DEI really *is* over for them, and the last few years of triumphal leftism-as-delivered-in-games "Hello I'm nonbinary" is ending, so they no longer can destroy long-beloved IP with their political horse-flogging.

So fuck 'em.

I feel slightly bad for the people who didn't participate, but like the collaborative fucks who didn't participate but who "went along with" shit like the Bill Cosby room at Blizzard, to claim they're entirely innocent is also not completely true. Sorry. Ecosystems require turnover, and - while the Saudis might like EA to continue to survive as a money-making enterprise, after all and are reasonably likely to continue to fund the creatively-bankrupt money-printing of games like Madden 912 or FIFA v306 - if they prohibit your overt political bullshit and drive Sweet Baby out of business? All good in my book.

If only Disney were next.

1) most 'piracy' (I suspect) is not massive commercial grey-copy moneymaking enterprises.
1.1) that said, as a society I think it's morally in our interest to NOT normalize low-level theft, which copying someone else's music, text, video, etc without them being fairly compensated is.
2) yet there are large numbers of such organizations that really do deserve punishment
3) at the same time, the idea that "in defense of our IP" the producer/distributors feel entitled to install harmful software without permission is also absolutely unacceptable.

Neither the blurb, the OP, nor the (sort of paywalled) Guardian article note that ITV is ONLY available to UK viewers as far as I can tell? (Maybe there is a pay version)

Or use Tunnelbear, et al.

Note that the NASA one, for all its warts, is available to everyone for free.

I know the implication is "not even half the workers have quality jobs!!" rage-bait but I rather suspect that most of the historical data (curiously not really presented as far as I could see in a skim of the OP and linked report) would show that - by their metrics - MOST people don't have "quality" employment, ever. And have NEVER had so.

Then again, it seems a very 21st century thing that people can daydream about their fantasy situation "I wish I only worked 3 days a week, half days, from home, got paid $250k/yr, had a 4 bedroom house overlooking the sea in a stable relationship" and then spend actual time bitching that "the world" hasn't provided that for them.

You don't "DESERVE" utopia. You have to make it.

Don't like rapacious corporations and how they treat workers? Vote in representatives that will aggressively control them.

"But my neighbors are all MAGA stupidheads who don't agree with me and vote for Literal Nazis!" then you have three choices:

1) try to listen to them and understand why they feel that way; in most cases people can find agreement on what they want (ie "kids to get a good education") but disagree on the means ("more funds for public schools!" vs "vouchers to put my kids in goods schools"). Understand that democracy REQUIRES compromise, find a compromise you can live with, then work TOGETHER to get it done.
or
2) just seethe 24/7 like a crabby bitch that you don't have the utopia you want and post your rage repeatedly all over social media because it gives you that tiny faint sense of validation. ...and I'll tell you which of those two will actually make things better in the long run.

That's what they've done. Or rather they've bought the politicians who create the regulatory frameworks. But if people woke up and realized they've been frog-boiled into giving away their privacy, then that would be prohibitively expensive.

I essentially made the argument that if we want capitalism to work the way we were taught in civics class it is supposed to, companies must be forced by regulation not to undermine the basic assumptions that lead to efficient operation of the free market.

I am neither here nor there on a basic income. I think it depends on circumstances, which of course are changing as more and more labor -- including routine mental labor -- is being automated. We are eventually headed to a world of unprecedented productive capacity and yet very little need for labor, but we aren't there yet.

Anybody who is pushing AI services, particularly *free* AI services, is hoping to mine your data, use it to target you for marketing, and use the service to steer you towards opaque business relationships they will profit from and you will find it complicated and inconvenient to extricate yourself from.

The question is -- ideas that are bad for *who*? This may be a very bad idea for you and me, but it is a very good idea for Microsoft, especially as, like their online services, they will make money off of us and it will be very inconvenient for us to opt out.

In civics-lesson style capitalism, which I'm all in favor of, companies compete to provide things for us that we want and we, armed with information about their products, services and prices, either choose to give them our business or to give our business to a competitor.

Not to say that stuff doesn't *ever* happen, but it's really hard to make a buck as a business that way. So what sufficiently large or well-placed businesses do is earn money *other* ways, by entangling consumers in business relationships that are opaque and which they don't have control over, may not even be fully aware they're signing on to, and which are complicated and awkward to extricate themselves from. In other words a well placed company, like Microsoft or Google or Facebook, will constantly be looking at ways to make money outside the rigorous demands of free market economics.

Literally: https://www.city-journal.org/a...

To address large racial disparities in disciplinary actions, St Paul public schools openly changed the standards of punishment: something that would get a white student expelled would for a black student barely result in any punishment at all.

They were quite open about it.

The results were... Predictable.

55 comments is pathetic for a racist dog whistle post like this. Remember when Googler James Damore wrote his anti-diversity screed and got fired for it? 5000+ comments, and as far as I know they're still arguing about it.

This.
How is he not immediately disbarred?