Even if you did get the thing back, no sane person who actually cares about OpSec would use it. It's compromised. Even if they couldn't access the data, there's no telling what else they did succeed in doing to it. Hell, attempting to use it might allow them to finally access that data, complete with automatic transmission to their analysts.

Lockdown mode is better than nothing, but in reality the best option would be automatic, instant, and silent destruction of any data that the adversary might want to get their hands on. After all, adversaries rarely allow you to get the device back anyway. (And there's typically a ploy at work for them if they do.)

Says the mouth breather regurgitating what marketing told them to upon hearing rejection of AI. Of course such a person wouldn't be capable of understanding the GP's post.

And why was that an effective punishment? Because the US offloaded it's entire manufacturing base to China so that a bunch of greedy assholes in the US could make a buck off of it.

So yes, the average American has a reason to hate China. China literally took their jobs, and they've never recovered from it. Worse, the "global market" means that any attempt to revive the dead industry in the US will always be out gunned. The average American has been forced to pay the thieves for everything ever since, and anyone who's tried to make a new product in the US has had to deal with never-ending hordes of Chinese knock-offs appearing on Amazon the second they get an initial manufacturing quote.

Globalization was a mistake, and the reason China made that threat isn't because of the asshole in the White House throwing a temper-tantrum. That was just a good PR excuse. The real reason is because China now has a similar problem to the US circa 1980. Their standard of living has gotten too high for the global owner class' tastes and they are at risk of losing their manufacturing base to other countries. (Malaysia, etc.) So much to the point that the CCP is now trying to ban high level workers from leaving the country to train their replacements. (Because China knows how this works out, having been a previous beneficiary.) China doesn't want to speedrun the US's downfall, and the CCP has no intention of being replaced. They might make a good show of being "cooperative" in the short term, but long term, they'll be forced to compete against cheaper countries, will suffer industry losses and currency inflation, and will gradually follow the same path as the US. Becoming "hostile" towards other countries as they work towards insulating themselves from the global market's whims.

As if China won't follow the same playbook? They've already done the rare earths bit, and as you've alluded to, want to axe the US out completely. What makes you think they'll stop at just the US? It's a powerful weapon. There will be immense internal pressure to use it with or without permission from the rest of the world. Europe's preferences be dammed. Note: The same would apply to the Europeans, or anyone else, given that power. It allows collapsing a country you don't like without firing a single bullet. No country is immune to that temptation.

The average American in fact does not want a war, but that matters very little given the massively corrupt government that they have. Their government represents them in name only. (Unless they just so happen to be the small, loud, fraction of them that actively supports pedos.)

Conservatives need nothing. They've had something to legitimately rail against ever since the owner class shipped all of their jobs to China. The problem is the owner class, who's convinced them that immigrants, LBTQ, etc. are responsible for it, instead of the owner class wanting to take more of their money. The Conservative's politicians, need no justification either. Might makes right is their justification. As they've already demonstrated with C-COT, killing Americans for protesting, terrorizing progressive cities, withholding congressionally mandated funds, blatantly defying court orders, threatening nationalization of elections, etc.

This. Sony has nothing of value, (since when has China ever cared about IP?), TCL now owns their branding and makes the sets. Sony has effectively exited the TV market, and the article is delusional if they think Sony has any remaining value there.

If you see a "Sony" TV in a store from now on, remember: It's Chinese.

You mean the same asshole who got several factories under construction completely canned because he publicly humiliated those running the construction on the International stage?

Or the asshole who slapped so many tariffs on anything and everything, that no-one wants to invest in the USA anymore due to market instability?

Or the asshole who pissed off so many of our allies that they are now actively cutting the US out of global trade anywhere they can?

Or the asshole who arrested and sent to concentration camps without trial anyone who didn't match the Family Guy chart, that the best and brightest no longer consider the US a destination for work or education?

Or the asshole who has allowed foreign nationals to die in the custody of his gestapo for the crime of *checks notes* freedom of speech? Killing our tourism industries across the country?

Or the asshole that actively promotes LLMs as the savior of mankind as they axe jobs left and right?


Yeah, I'll sympathize, with his victims, the asshole can go fuck himself. Without a minor.

And eventually, you'll be paying for it.

Whether that be through lower returns on your advertising dollars. (More ADs in ChatGPT for people who have no money to spend.)

Higher electricity bills. (Already here and growing.)

Higher AI subscription costs. (AI isn't profitable, now. They'll need to fix that before the VC funding runs out, and you're the ones who will pay.)

Lower units sold. (B2B or B2C, doesn't matter. No-one's getting paid a living wage, so even the B2Bs are going to suffer when the B2Cs run out of money.)

But yeah, keep pretending that UBI is going to magically fix everything, or that everyone is suddenly going to get employed by some other company so it won't be your problem. Your next quarterly review depends on it.

And, there's the problem. People think that serving customers should be a side job / hustle, when in reality many are lucky to even get that job. Given that we've systematically eliminated every other form of low skill labor in the country. While doing absolutely nothing about the ever increasing numbers of low skilled workers. The irony of the parent's comment in a story about automation invading these roles in an effort to save the company money....

Note, that Starbucks isn't the only fast food joint to suffer from this. They all do, and for the exact same reasons: There's no entry level work for people anymore, so they're increasingly dependent on jobs that used to be considered "summer jobs." Not everyone has the means to go to school for four years just to land one job interview, and now that most people have a four year degree, that degree is no longer a distinction that separates a good worker from the rest of the pack. It's become an expensive checkbox to be ticked that looks weird when it's not to employers.

Making matters worse we now have LLMs coming for those four year degree jobs. Which is leading us into a credential crisis (No point in going to school if an LLM will eliminate any chance of getting a foot in the door before you graduate), a debt crisis (student loans already handed out can't be discharged due to LLMs taking all of the jobs the loan was meant to train you for), and a cost of living crisis. No entry level jobs means, no chances to rise up to a point that the LLM can't replace *yet*. Also means you don't have a lot of people flush with disposable income, and that means the overall prices society is willing to pay for everything drops like a rock. Automation has a price people. That price is that society must move those displaced by it into other jobs that pay enough for them to pay their bills. At society's immediate expense, and some rich asshole's immediate profit.

Newsflash folks: You can't expect people with no skills to just go die in a puddle of their piss somewhere. Just because you feel like that's all they deserve given their skill set. At the end of the day you have two options: Either pay for the living costs of others (regardless of skill set), or watch as they burn down society to feel it's warmth. You can try to augment that by offering classes for them to skill up, but that has to be affordable in addition to their existing living costs.

It's pretty difficult to run an open system and allow free exchange of ideas between people, when said people are in a constant struggle to shout down their opponents and reject all evidence that doesn't reaffirm their personal gospel.

To say nothing of a society that's so close to the end of the race to the bottom, that it's unable to provide basic necessities to an ever increasing number of it's own citizens.

Greed and hatred corrupted the Internet, but that greed and hatred is imported. It is not native to it, and that hatred will follow those that brought it wherever they move to next.

Jackboot Thug: "Sir, he watched Great Secrets of the White House, National Treasure 2, and a ridiculous amount of Feel the Bern, Greatest Speeches."

TDS: "Send him, to the CCOT. We can't, have, such a GREAT DANGER, great danger to our United Shates. Can't have it."

Jackboot Thug: "As you wish, Sir."

It's deceptive because the content is sight unseen until that release date, and "gameplay footage NOT final" is often used as an excuse to explain why desired content was cut during development without any notice being given to the public. (Let alone a refund if the content loss was a deal breaker for the player.)

Many studios keep that stuff under wraps hoping you'll blow past the 2 hour play time refund window before learning about it, thus making the unavailability of information and intentional mandatory starting time deceptive. If the public was allowed to play it as they got a hold of it, the reviews and word of mouth would protect the public at large if the game was found to be deficient when compared to it's asking price.

To say nothing about how Capitalism expects all participants in a transaction to have equal negotiating power, but then hand-waves away anything that might suggest that a participant was in fact subordinate to another.

Damn it.

s/says/stays/g

Yes, really. There's a difference between making an attempt and failing VS. not being allowed to compete in the first place.

Valve is the current incumbent, it's going to take a lot of effort to get people to switch to a new platform, let alone remove Valve from the top, but it's possible for you to try and do it.

Apple / Google / etc. FORBID anything that could even remotely pose a threat to them, and they have their hardware ensure it says that way. You can't compete because they dictate who's allowed to try and who isn't.

The two groups couldn't be more different from an access to the market perspective.

I would think the market is rather large for one simple reason: People hate change.

Unless Microsoft decides to change course, people who want an NT based OS don't have many other options. React OS is about as close to a "clean supported Windows" as you're going to get for the foreseeable future. Granted that "support" is abysmal, but it's there, and it doesn't require you to learn POSIX shells or deal with the other American devil: Apple. From a corporate workflow perspective, XP is good enough.

Given the recent push to get away from American IT, ReactOS might be a better choice if you're trying to avoid America but still want a "Windows" that "works". A nation state could choose to support the project financially simply as a "fuck you" to the US / Microsoft, which would help a bit. (ReactOS already hires people to work on the project, and it seems to have a non-US bank registry if their donation page is any indication.)

The only real hurdle would be getting it to work on some old abundant office hardware, or some cheap set top client. But if you've got the money and skill to do it, it could end Microsoft's OS in the corporate world entirely with enough effort.

Most critical systems like that should already be air gapped / firewalled. Regardless of which OS they're running. Hell you should also have an active monitoring system on it too looking for unusual behavior.

Uh, NO. Microsoft doesn't really care about consumers pirating Win98, because they have nothing worth the time and effort of a lawsuit to get. Companies running multi-billion-dollar industrial equipment? You bet your ass they'll be paying you a visit if they find out, and they'll take you to the cleaners for it.

They said the same about Linux. Hell, they still do. Nothing's impossible. Unlike Linux which has an unstable by design API, any support added to ReactOS for later Windows driver models would be guaranteed to function for the long haul. That support is one of the stated goals of ReactOS.

Getting hardware support for ReactOS is less work than Linux because once the driver model is implemented, ReactOS gets instant support for any hardware with Windows drivers using it. Unlike Linux which needs to reverse engineer the hardware if the manufacturer won't play ball, and regardless of how a Linux driver is made, constant updates to keep the driver working. (Or it gets deleted from the kernel tree, and you get to keep all of the pieces.)

Considering you'd need a VM or ancient IBM laptop to even boot React OS to the point you can browse Slashdot, it's not surprising.

To be fair, Slashdot is the Internet Depression Generator.

Although, it's more of a function of the industry they cover being increasingly shitty over the decades than of the site itself*.

(*: The great 4-chan migration notwithstanding.)