This is "victory" because the Dems like the environment, so stopping anyone from knowing about it is ergo "beating the Dems".

Same reason the Republicans were all about demolishing the ACA (an act written by a Republican and then edited by Republicans because the Democrat proposals weren't acceptable to them). The ACA was voted on by Dems and therefore had to be destroyed, the fact that it has led to many Americans being without any healthcare at all and more than a few dying as a result is considered an acceptable price to pay for killing something Democrats voted for.

"Victory" is not about doing anything worthwhile, it's about "owning the Dems".

Of course they colluded with foreign powers. However, it's irrelevant. Since the legalisation of corruption (Trump abolished any enforcement of corruption laws), the US has slid from an already disastrous level of corruption into total degeneracy. It will take years, maybe decades, simply to root out all of the evil that is now in place and by then those who committed treason will either be safely overseas, or their records will have been "accidentally" destroyed, making any investigation impossible.

I would point out, though, that the countries the GOP has historically strong ties with also have extraordinarily high levels of corruption - and have done for a long time - and nobody bothers to do anything about it. This is what Trump is relying on. Once corruption at this level is normalised, everyone just accepts it and moves on.

Worse, I just don't see any serious will to fix the issue amongst any of the other political groups in the US. The Democrats aren't being honest with themselves over why they lost in 2024, and have swung so far to the right themselves that Ronald Reagan would have considered them right-wing extremists.

This is something voters can fix, but almost half of Americans have totally disengaged at this point and the other half believes themselves so powerless that (to use a Douglas Adamsism) they're only concerned with preventing the wrong lizard from being elected.

They're finally going to unleash a Bob / Clippy mashup that does something.

Hilarious stories await us.

Sad ones too.

They forked SailfishOS to create a domestic OS to avoid these kinds of problems.

Russian linux devs still contribute to that tree though Linus banned their ethnicity from his tree.

Since we're all speculating, probably their phone is clunky and some Generals kept their iPhones against advice or orders because they're more featureful and convenient.

We'll hear eventually.

The grid was part of the problem. Texas' grid is largely disconnected from the rest of the country. So when there are failures, they can cascade quickly. The issue was not an area of Texas lost power. The issue was MOST of Texas lost power.

Shhhh. If you talk too loudly about Texas, Tony Isaac will start posting here about how wrong you are about Texas. See Tony Isaac is a Texan and lives specifically near Houston. Based on that, he can boldly claim things for all of Texas. For example did you know that " We don't have snow plows either, nor should we invest in them. We just shut down when it snows, and that's OK." When pointed out that parts of Texas like the panhandle gets annual snow and thus have snow plows, he was not wrong. Nothing gets in the way of narrative.

See major cities like Dallas do not actually use snow plows according to Tony. "No, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio do NOT clear the vast majority of their streets with snow plows. The vast majority of them are just allowed to thaw on their own, or at most, saline solution is dispersed." So every time the local Dallas TV news shows Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) snow plows on the road, they do not exist according to Tony.

When pointed to actual articles from TxDOT using 30 snow plows in North Texas storm, Tony says the population of Dallas is large so those snow plows don't count. Also the 700 snow plows that TxDOT has across the state don't count because Texas has a large population. So No "True" Snow Plows exist.

Define "rolling". If you mean up to a week in some places, most people do not call that "rolling".

I bought a Roland S-1 Tweak Synth this week. Absolutely lovely bit of kit, one of the best things Roland have done for a while. It's relevance to this conversation though is that it has a built-in, non-user replaceable battery and is charged by USB C.

I've kept my Roland synth from 1989, and there are people with synths much older than that. While never massively user-serviceable as a genre, this is the first time I can think of that there's a definite life span on these things. Just like a phone, eventually this battery is going to wear out and have severely reduced capacity. I have to imagine that, as with vintage synths or older phones, someone will probably start a service for replacing the battery but wouldn't it be nice if they didn't have to and the design had been thought of in advance?

Yep, was more thinking of the "people using wired don't care about the DAC" part than the actual machines we're talking about.

Meanwhile, X.AI has asked the EPA for permission to release up to 100 million hyperfecund pesticide-resistant male mosquitoes in California and New York over two years to own the libs.

I would think that buying headphones that can only be used in a specific and newer ports would not appeal to the average consumer, the type of customer a $699 laptop is intended. The 3.5mm jack has been around forever. Also people have headphones they already own that use these jacks. It is not about technical capabilities; it is about friction in use.

Not having wired headphone jacks is a negative, not a showstopper. Just like not having the right amount of USB A or C ports. Wireless headphones require pairing which is easy enough for most part, but there are some people who do not like that little bit of friction. Personally, I cannot imagine that someone who cares about the DAC would buy the $699 budget laptop anyway.

Quite the opposite. A strong use-case for a jack is low-latency audio, and tht's the kind of thing used by people who use their machines for audio and music production. I'm a heavy user of Logic, and would absolutely not let wireless headphones anywhere near it.

For "people who don't care the DAC sucks", there's wireless. For people who do care about the DAC but only for listening to music or conversation etc., then wireless also exists. For those who care about both quality and latency, and that's really only for specific use cases these days, then wired is the way.

Given how crappy a lot of "official' upsampling and other AI slop is and other batch-processing errors, aspect ratio changes ruining editing, and IP licensing making the music vanish, pirated media is frequently simply better quality.

But their big problem is reinventing all the cable shenanigans people hate without the natural monopoly to enforce it. When you run a wire to someone's house, there's lock-in. Streaming removes that "loyalty'. Now add in all the constant media swapping that means you can't count on things staying in the catalog, and there's no reason to want to use any of them, other than convenience.

And my storage server is a lot more convenient than any offer I've seen from the streamers.

That site is blocking VPN clients (sus) but here's another one you can pick up at CVS:

https://www.cvs.com/shop/ijoy-...

Imagine how much jet fuel was wasted on being stupid.