The "donate an organ today" item that WASN'T on some poor Chinese IT sod's To Do list will soon have a check mark beside it...

I'm looking forward to using this. The subject wasn't even on my radar - to my eternal shame - but now that it is I'm happy about the opportunit to lock down my laptop.

As a Canadian, I always do my best to vote for the least of evils. However, here in Canada we're often stuck with "strategic voting".

In this system, we often have to choose between voting for folks who stand for what we want but who have zero chance of holding even the balance of power, and voting for the lesser of the other evils. In a vote where who's going to win is effectively preordained, I vote according to my conscience. In a vote where the lesser of evils could win, I hold my nose and vote for them.

And every time I'm faced with that choice, I so wish my country had pushed harder for electoral reform and implemented some kind of proportional representation. Alas, we have our own brand of Republicanism at play here; since Trump came to power we've taken to calling it "Maple MAGA".

So John "nothing scams like a" Deere gets to keep between 47% and 74% of their ill-gotten gains, minus legal fees which are undoubtedly a small fraction of their total take. Who says crime doesn't pay?

It's good news that they have to provide the digital tools. However, TFA says Deere must "make Repair Resources—which permit Deere Large Ag Equipment to be maintained, diagnosed, and repaired such that they can be operated in the manner for which they were designed—available to every Owner, Lessor, and IRP on a license or subscription basis on Fair and Reasonable Terms". I say "fuck that noise". Deere should be forced to provide those things free of charge as an additional punishment.

I'm getting sick and tired of all the corporate fuckery that lets the bastards steal from customers hand-over-fist, then give back a fraction of what they stole and call the matter settled. Fuck John Deere and the tractor they rode in on.

Gee - that sounds rather like asking only questions which are known to be correctly answerable by the AI.

But Google would never cheat to hide flaws and make their shit look better - right?

In other words, it's using horrendous amounts of power and causing untold environmental damage, while maintaining the existing overall parity between the bad guys and the worse guys. Got it.

Thanks for the clarification.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that you and DamnOregonian aren't too far misaligned morally and philosophically. The differences I'm seeing are mostly in the details.

So I'm curious - why the scorn? I was following your counterpoints with interest until that 'disconnect with reality' jibe.

I have no idea why you've been modded down - your comment on this story is one of the most insightful ones I've read. Sadly, I commented just before I got to yours - otherwise I'd have modded you up.

Even though I use a keyboard almost exclusively these days, I'm going to play Devil's advocate here. I would at least want to see the time split between screens and paper. Taking notes on paper is - brain-wise - a qualitatively different thing than typing. Also, the ability to draw pictures, or even to just doodle, can be a valuable thought and memory aid.

Additionally, when you've written something in pen and then change your mind, you have to cross it out; whereas on a device you simply make it disappear as though it never existed. Having a record of a mistake or a discarded idea can be very valuable, both for learning and for creativity.

Then there's the ability to communicate in writing and drawing even when you only have pen-and-paper, stick-and-sand, or whatever...

I don't use technical references much these days, but when I do I like to have both digital and paper, especially for data books and app notes. The digital version is easier to search, but the paper version allows for using my fingers to hold two or three sections open simultaneously. Paper is the best for random access.

And that's why when I'm reading fiction or scholarly / scientific stuff, I only use the electronic version if have no other choice. For those kinds of reading, I will frequently flip back and forth by dozens or hundreds of pages to confirm my memory, or to find what a character said. In my experience, trying to do that on a device utterly sucks.

Reading a book and reading a screen are, for me, very different experiences. If I had to choose, I'd drop e-books in favour of paper and never look back. Except in the pages of my dead-tree books, of course...

Is there any other kind? Every photo of him I've seen looks like the result of a poorly formed query processed by a janky LLM.

Maybe it's the ghost of Windows 3.1 haunting Microsoft for giving it such a shitty legacy.

Then again, perhaps it's the essence of MacOS, taunting Windows users.

You really said a mouthful there. From my Canadian perspective, it's utterly shocking to watch American news and to see even the supposedly liberal media soft-peddling current events. And when I hear average American citizens being interviewed, and see the fathomless ignorance many of them have regarding what's going on even in their own country - never mind in the rest of the world - I feel as though I'm watching a parody.

I think America's approach to education has a lot to answer for. Sadly, even my own province's education system seems to be drifting that way. Gee - I wonder if it's just a coincidence that our Premier is a knuckle-dragging nepo-baby whose allegiance is to property developers and (allegedly) to organized crime.

Brilliant! Thanks for the laugh - wish I still had mod points.