Ummm... it's Ryanair. And the EU has been forcing US tech companies in general, and particularly Apple and Google, to demolish their security models, strip protections from mobile (and desktop and server) OSs, and give every fly-by-night outfit in the world unrestricted access to (In gates-speak) ring 0 or (to the rest of the world) the kernel. I mention microsoft and ring 0 in this context because it's another fine and recently notorious example of the EU's overreach screwing over people by demanding lax security. But "permissions" and "require"? Come on... this is Ryanair! They absolutely will harvest and sell every single byte that can get their filthy mitts on. I mean... google the name and read any site but their own. They really are just the worst.

And... again... it's Ryanair. So you KNOW their app won't be available on the legitimate App Store or Play Store. It will be on the EU-mandated Cydia Mark 2; which will inevitably degenerate into the same morass of spyware, malware, spamware, and all-around crapware that the original Cydia did back in the jailbreaking days. And with no app reviews, no sandboxing, no security checks, no memory or kernel protections? Damn skippy an outfit like Ryanair will trawl through you entire phone, and any account it is connected or logged in to, in order to spy on you and sell your data for every red cent they can extract from it.

Heh... I put off getting dear leader's dumbass "real ID" too. I mean... I have my passport, passport card, and global entry card, all of which actually benefit me. So why should I waste my time jumping through stupid and unnecessary hoops to appease dear leader?

In my neck of the woods though, the DMV simply forced the issue by no longer allowing online renewals; and now I have to actually go in to and renew my license in-person. So as long as I had to go through the hassle of the stupid and unnecessary hoops for my ID itself, I may as well jump through a couple more stupid and unnecessary hoops while I'm already stuck at the benighted place. And my California drivers license is now tainted with that mark of MAGA. Gross. Fuck MAGA. Fuck trump. Fuck ICE. And fuck realID.

The same thing will probably happen to you.

> On the other hand, if your card got refused at that
> grocery line - would you go back? Likely not.

Oh, I would absolutely go back. And after I unload my entire cart, including meat, dairy, and frozen foods; if they reject my card, I will just say "Oh? Okay. Never mind then." and I will walk right out... repeatedly... until they knock off the shenanigans.

Yeah, but I don't really blame people. LLMs work so incredibly well and produce amazing results. Even AI experts are impressed by the results and non-AI experts are often seduced by the results. Well, except for the anti-AI folks who, as usual, see all of the warts and none of the benefits, and are thus exactly as idiotic as the all-AI-all-the-time folks, just in the opposite way.

In truth, AI does mostly-great work and will replace many jobs over the next decade; translation jobs are very high on that list. But they need systems to double-check them, some computer and some human, because the mistakes AI makes are often hilariously bad (hallucinating relevant cases in legal filings) and often subtle and hard to detect. People want to replace people but expect AI to not need validation, even though most all-human systems have (and need) validation.

I'll admit that "good enough to get the point across" is often not good enough for support pages, especially for non-experts.

What is this obsession with pedophilia? I'm really getting rather suspicious of MAGA. I suspect your average Catholic priest or Southern Baptist youth pastor thinks about nude children less than most MAGA individuals.

With a president who solves an existential threat by finding the best expert he can find, and using his own formidable political skills and charisma to run interference for that expert.

Seriously, Comacho was a meathead, but Iâ(TM)d vote for him.

Linux phones have been available in the past; I assume you can still get them. The question is: are they better, or just more ideologically pure? Because ideology makes you feel all warm and special, but is kinda shitty at paying the bills. Or actually working.

Sure. First, lower the copyright term to match that of patents. Second, restore the latter (both) to the original 14 years. Once there is a reasonable balance between all of the interested parties again, let's talk. But the conciliatory ship sailed with Lars and Hillary and has never had reason to return to shore. And so long as one side is an abusive cartel with regulatory capture with absolute power to screw over the other everyone else, fuck 'em.

In theory, yes. The district attorney's office is supposed to be completely separate, independent, and skeptical of the police. That's that whole "separate and equally important" soundbite from the Law and Order intro. In practice, here in the US the DAs are so corrupt and in bed with crooked cops that the two departments may as well be one and the same. In the vast overwhelming majority of cases, all a cop has to do is say to a DA: "he done it" and someone will be in a cell and charges will be filed, no actual investigation or confirmation of the cop's story.

And, of course, the abomination of injustice that is qualified immunity makes it all but impossible to see the dirty cops and crooked DAs who arrest and/or charge the innocent properly punished.

You were doing quite well, but tripped just before the goal line. The government action you are talking about was "You need to stop redlining", which was a way to deny mortgages to minorities without saying you are denying mortgages to minorities. That was not a major cause of the crisis, though people who want to redirect blame have talked about it so much that gullible folk have started to believe it. The cause was the banks offering large mortgages to people who could not afford them (falsifying the documents so it looked good to govt watchdogs) and then splitting the mortgages into tranches, which was the banks choice not the government. Blaming the government for this is basically assuming that corporate greed and corruption does not exist, they are all angels who are forced into poor action by the EVIL GOVERNMENT. No, corporations screw up without the government, and lobby their paid-for (mostly but not always conservative) congresscritters to remove important regulations that get the way of "money today, market crash later but who cares".

The problem with crashes is that the crashes help the wealthy and help people in a few specific cases (like you), but they hurt pretty much everyone else. If you believe in Jesus's holy words "blessed are the rich, fuck those idiots who chose to be born poor" then we need more crashes. Otherwise, we can do better.

No. What should happen is: Accuse, "arrest," approach, or in any other way whatsoever harass or accost, someone who is not, in fact, guilty of the crime; and the "cop" instantaneously and forever loses every privilege or protection of the badge and is considered just another random violent thug to be treated like nothing more than that ever again.

Once enough of them are prosecuted for assault, battery, and kidnapping; and locked away never again to breathe free air or to look upon the sun or sky without bars interposed... the rest will start to get the message.

We MUST be able to inspect and age verify every AI slop porn image to protect the fictional children!

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I'm convinced that's a big part ofthe reason for our curent descent into fascism. I'm part of the younger cohort of Gen-X. My grandparents' generation were the original Antifa. Only they didn't pussyfoot around like the current iteration does. They way THEIR generation delt with poeple like richard spencer, stephen miller, stormtrooper barbie, their brown-shirted henchmen in ICE CBP and DHS, and the rest of their kind, was to drop high explosives on them by the tonne from B-17s and Lancasters; of, if it was for some reason necessary to get up close and personal, to cut out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of their tanks.

But most of them are dead now and cannot tell their stories. My cohort of my generation are the youngest people now who were old enough to grow up with, and have adult conversations with, the World War 2 generation. I grew up with my grandparents and their buddies in the Masonic Lodge telling stories about island hopping in the Pacific as SeaBees, landing their crippled B-17 in the English Channel after not bailing out because he couldn't swim and setpping from the plane onto the rescue boat hever having even gotten a foot wet, hauling ass through the deserts of North Africa in dune buggies while machine-gunning nazi airplanes. And when I got into my late teens and 20s, one past-Master of the lodge told us about what he saw when his unit got to the camps.

I will never forget what those men told me. Because of what those men told me I will never, EVER, support, aid, or have even the smallest or empathy for any fascists in any form, or their enablers or symphasizers. Because of what those men told me I will forever support Antifa in any form. In fact, I wish it really WERE an actual organization that I coule offer more support than moral. I will forever honor their legacy and what they did directly for this country and the world and indirectly for me when they were too goddamned young to be asked to bear the responsibility they were given. I will forever be greatful to the greatest generation.

But they were also people I knew persionaly. I grew up with them. I was even part of a Masonic youth group named after a Templar for which Master Masons were the advisors; so, for a kid, I was at the lodge a lot. I loved some of them as family and others as may-as-well-be-family. To me they are real. Their lives are real. Their stories are real. Their history is real. To the younger generations though? They did not grow up with those people and their lives and stories. To people who did not grow up around WW2 vets, that's just all trivia for the history test before they move on to the latest tweet or tiktok. I really do think that a lot of people have missed out on a LOT... particularly the perspectives that came from fighting... REALLY fighting... to destroy fascists. And I would bet good money that if that generation were still around; we would not be where we are in this country today.

Maybe they can start putting USB sticks on magazines like they used to do with 3.5" floppies back in the day? That would... well... it might at least increase the demand for the brand name.