The only reason they are restoring Nextcloud is because Nextcloud users were forced to migrate to F-Droid. Seriously, that is the only reason I have F-Droid on my phone, Google basically forced me to use a 3rd-party app store. Thanks Google.

I am speaking of personal experience here.

Unfortunately we only hear one side of this story, and even that through BBC's reporting, which has proven to be somewhat less than impartial. (BBC will cheerfully report figures released by the Hamas terror organization without so much as a tiny asterisk.)

The fact is that people will lie about their persecution, misdeeds done to them and pose themselves as victims all the time. This is especially true if the same person feel discrimination and persecution, real or imaginary. The sad fact of the matter is that you cannot take any of it at face value: I have encountered sad complaints about how someone was mistreated by "Organization X" while later finding out that either none of it was true, or that it was true but "Organization X" had actually excellent reasons for sanctioning them.

I'm not saying that Microsoft is impartial, but it is certainly more impartial than someone with the dramatic line "They killed my life online", or the BBC which just echoes it without an ounce of criticism.

Which business unit would you prefer to shut down next? The unit of auditing and subsequently extorting / suing their customers, or the business unit of bankrupting local governments with projects that grow to 5x the original estimate in cost without actually working?

No, it is OUR survival. This is the second time an AI has attempted to murder humans that I know of. :) (Amazon, on the other hand, will be fine.)

While I have little sympathy for crypto firms that allow criminals to use their service unchecked, it must be pointed out: payment processors have become the real gatekeepers of the internet.

They decide what segments of the adult industry are allowed, what sort of gambling, medicine, services, goods they allow their customers to deal with. If you can't get paid, you can't keep your site funded, so ultimately what is and isn't allowed on the internet is decided by the payment processors.

I can't imagine they enjoy this role, but it has become their roles anyway. What we also shouldn't forget is that these are corporations, beholden only to the almighty benefit of the owners and nothing else. The power that they wield is far greater than the scrutiny that they need to pass to make decision.

Granted, this doesn't affect you if you just want to buy or sell cat toys and handmade quilts, but go into anything more controversial or non-trivial, and you best read the ever-changing terms of service pages very carefully before you try and find a payment processor for your business..

I don't think software can do that. You would need sleep() and rand() -- no framework has those.

This presents an opportunity: simply reverse the polarity on the test result.
If you solve it quickly and correctly, you are a bot. If you struggle and fail, come right in!

I hope you will never experience takeover of your country by a criminal gang who use your country's resources to enrich themselves, buy up most of what used to be free media, manipulate the public discourse to their benefit, use your tax money to fund research into ways to entrench their power, modify the electoral and judicial system to make it next to impossible to have a fair election in your lifetime, and that's just the tip of an iceberg.

Sucking Putin's dick is just the tiny part that you see, excuse the pun.

I don't mind studies that quantify the climate effect of various activities. They can be useful for prioritizing what needs to be adjusted first to get the largest benefits. What I do mind is comparisons that seem impactful and profound, but are actually manipulative and therefore only serve to muddy the waters. I also mind when it is made seem like individual habits are the problem and not government policy and industry.

9 million cars seem like a lot! There are about 32 million cars in the UK, so 9 million is 28% fewer cars. Transportation contributes to 26% of emissions in the UK, and about half of that comes from passenger cars.

Multiply all that together and you come to a 3.7% reduction, that's what "9 million cars" translates to.

Congratulations on your research, you gain points for coming up with a useful statistic. You lose those points and maybe 200% more for sensationalism and presenting it like it is far more meaningful than it really is.

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: Yes, I want it because OO makes polymorphism easier, and that helps with a range of programming tasks.

Yet longer answer: Perl gives you more than one way of doing things, it always has. Those who like perl tend to favor this approach, detractors point at it as a fault. You can use OO or not in your own code, the choice is yours. A fair number of CPAN modules give you both OO and non-OO interfaces.

Oh, and perl is already excellent at what it does, on that there is consensus (*).

Relax. The wild conspiracies were here for a long time. There was a long "don't feed the trolls" period. This is fun, let's get together sometimes and reminisce (just don't invite the goatse guy).

If the concept of corporations are trying to make money is new or shocking to you, then you are clearly new to this planet. Welcome, and enjoy your stay and be careful of "credit card scams".

OpenAI and ChatGPT are free to try. You can create an account on openai's website and get $18 of credit that is enough for a ton of queries and experimentation. Seriously, you can use it for weeks without paying a cent. You don't even have to give them a payment option upfront.

I understand that yours was a knee-jerk reaction, there's a lot of that going on on Slashdot, but I would really recommend that you create an account and try it before you form a strong opinion of the technology.

Apple is also rather shy about mentioning the zero-day in the "About this Update" message. Instead it is positioned as the release of a new app (Freeform, a mindmapping app that nobody asked for). You have to zoom in to a barely legible part of the update note to see that there's anything security-related, buried under a long list of app news.

This is pure speculation on my side, but I have the feeling that Apple has a number of first-party apps stashed away, to be released with security updates. These apps act as the big colorful rugs under which bad news can be handily swept.

Cost cutting, most likely. The Bezos' of the world need more Money, so in a routine evaluation of which business units are making or losing money, the Academy likely came up sort and got the axe.

It must have been a difficult decision (as far as the marketroid class will tell you), but you have to do what is right do The Bezos and the Investor class, lest you face the wrath of the capitalism gods!

I'm not sure why that was marked as troll. It is a fair observation that the article didn't say what Proton was. It might be something related to Steam and WINE.

It takes a duckduckgo search to discover a decent summary on protondb.com:

What is Proton?

Proton is a new tool released by Valve Software that has been integrated with Steam Play to make playing Windows games on Linux as simple as hitting the Play button within Steam. Underneath the hood, Proton comprises other popular tools like Wine and DXVK among others that a gamer would otherwise have to install and maintain themselves. This greatly eases the burden for users to switch to Linux without having to learn the underlying systems or losing access to a large part of their library of games. Proton is still in its infancy so support is inconsistent, but regularly improving.