I respect the objections that a committed pacifist (or opponent of standing armies) might have to their company taking on military contracts -- even if I disagree. But, anyone else is just being a selfish fucker. They are saying: yes, I agree that we need to maintain a military so someone needs to sell them goods and services but I want it to be someone else so I don't have to feel guilty.

Doing the right thing is often hard. Sometimes it means doing things that make you feel uncomfortable or icky because you think through the issue and realize it's the right thing to do. Avoiding doing anything that makes you feel icky or complicit doesn't make you the hero -- it makes you the person who refused to approve of interracial or gay marriages back in the day because you went with what made you feel uncomfortable rather than what made sense.

He mentions why it looks old on the home page, point number 12.

...and Amazon finds itself in a perfect position to sell pickaxes and shovels. Can't blame them.

I guess if there's any place to point out that forums worked fine over 300bps connections, it's here. Although the upgrade to 1200bps was admittedly a welcome change.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I love LineageOS and F-Droid, I wish the open source movement were larger on Android. Most app developers seem to drool at the 0.00001% chance that their app goes viral so of course they want to enable ads, while in reality making basically nothing anyway.

However, the loss of convenience that you mention can be somewhat gradual. You can still use for example gmail and normal apps from google play store with LineageOS, which may be more or less "necessary" when you need to run an application from some clueless car park operator, banking app, or similar. The good thing is that you have the option to avoid it.

I'm sure the "national security establishment" already knew about this and was already using it. Using targeted ads for this purpose is old news.. He just wasn't cleared for it.

I'd rather be held accountable for my speech than not be allowed to speak at all.

The problem is that these are the same, because the process is the punishment. Even if it's eventually decided that whatever statement you're being "held accountable" for is fine, just being sued is ruinous to an individual. And if that can easily happen for every statement you make, you'll have to not speak at all just to have a chance at life outside a courtroot.

There are many sorts of places you can get educated, and only one sort of place you can get a college degree. The degree is of great value; for would-be employees, it's either a minimum requirement or a way of separating yourself from others when jobs are scarce. For an entrepreneur it conveys to would-be investors your seriousness and/or competence. Though "chosen by Thiel" is probably a decent stand-in for that second case.

And I don't like the way it's been putting up AI-generated results in a box and making them look like actual search results. Then you click on it thinking it will take you to a useful article and instead it gives you AI-generated bullshit. Basically when they've managed to do is create an AI which can figure out the form of the thing you're looking for and present it to you, but not the substance; they're SEOing themselves.

If you're over 40 good luck getting another job.

I was well over 40 when I got my last job. Yes, I had to pay for medical insurance out of pocket for a while in between jobs.

If you're a nerd there's a good chance your lack of social skills and probably useless family (nerds aren't born, they're made) probably means you don't have a lot to fall back on either.

What I had to fall back on, being a superannuated nerd, was savings. It doesn't care about your social skills.