Wow, a single point of failure for the entire state? That's a sobering thought.

Consequence culture is a celebrity doing or saying something stupid and then being excoriated by their audiences and the public.

What's going on here is authoritarian repression of freedom of expression, with the implied threat of serious legal consequences against someone for expressing a viewpoint the government didn't like.

Miles apart.

Having kids is expensive, exhausting and can be largely unrewarding. Film at 11.

And given the general shitty state of the world, it's no wonder people don't want to have kids.

(I have three adult kids, so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to how exhausting it is.)

The new reality is that the world's population is going to start shrinking, probably before 2100, possibly well before 2100. We have to adapt to this new reality because there's not a damn thing we can do to reverse it; this trend is worldwide and persistent.

I use Firefox on Android as my main mobile browser. It's fine. A bit slower than Chrome, but I'll put up with that to avoid Google spyware. (Though... being on Android, maybe I've lost already. Still, don't want to make it easier than it has to be.)

Basically: Yes. I suspect the US government was behind this stunt, but absolutely... if the US government decides it doesn't want foreign companies to have easy access to non-Microsoft, non-Apple OSes, I can see them pulling this stunt.

The only solution is to ensure that whatever hardware you buy lets you either disable secure boot or install your own trusted key.

Clearly, the US government is unhappy with regular people having robust data encryption.

This is why it is folly for non-US organizations to continue using closed-source US-based software. If they can't see the security risks inherent in this practice, then I don't know what to say.

At this rate, reality is going to put The Onion out of business by 2029.

If you run a light desktop environment like XFCE or LXDE, 4GB is probably fine.

However, the instant you spin up a modern browser or office suite, you're cooked. It's the massive applications that are the problem on Linux, not the OS or desktop environment (if you pick a lightweight DE.)

Imagine if a bunch of tech bros said: "Hey, you don't need exercise. It's totally fine if your muscles atrophy. After all, we have technology to move you around and it can do so much more quickly than your muscles ever could!" We'd laugh them out of town.

Well, guess what? If you don't exercise your brain, it atrophies. If you outsource your thinking, you eventually become unable to think.

> then why did the iranians rally around it after the leader was killed?

They didn't. They celebrated in the streets when Khamanei was killed.

None of the Iranians I know are in Iran, but many have friends and family there.

Here is a link of people celebrating Khamanei's death.

There are no doubt pro-regime demonstrations. When such a vicious regime demands a supportive demonstration, people will comply.

Note that many Iranians are secular. Persian culture predates Islam by centuries, if not millenia, so when you say that killing Khamanei was like killing the Pope... that really doesn't matter to secular Iranians, who only saw him as a vicious tyrant.

I agree that the people of Iran are brave and dignified people. Every single one that I've met has been a lovely person. They are also overwhelmingly thirsting for freedom from Islamic regime domination.

Well, yeah. The US military is the best in the world for massive high-tech conventional wars.

Ukraine is probably the best in the world for drone warfare.

Iran is far superior to the USA when it comes to retaining strike capabilities under enormous pressure from a stronger foe.

The USA is getting weaker in the following ways:

1. It's pissed off most of its allies who will be much less likely to help them out in future. We all helped out after 9/11 and in Afghanistan. That ain't happening in future with the attitude from the Trump regime.

2. The USA is sabotaging its own economy, first with ridiculous sanctions and second by blowing up the world economy with this war.

3. The USA may have an impressive industrial base, but dig deeper... pretty much every supply chain in the USA has some dependence on China or some other country, and alienating those countries is not a good strategy.

4. The weakening of democracy in the USA and its contempt for the international order is emboldening countries like China and Russia. They feel much less constrained by a weakened and disengaged USA. As for oil, the USA is allowing Iranian tankers through! So China will get its oil anyway, because Trump is afraid to block it and make oil prices spike even higher.

Again: I do not want Iran to win. But it will win, because you (and the current American government) completely miss the point.

Iran wins by having its regime survive. And the survival of that regime is not in doubt. At least, not unless the USA invades with ground troops and is willing to take thousands to tens of thousands of casualties.

Do you really want that to happen? Do you think the American public wants it to happen?

Also, please provide citations for "regular Iranians" taking over police stations. The Iranian regime has shown it's willing to act with the utmost brutality, and 50M unarmed civilians cannot win against 1M armed troops.

Russia can't do shit to help Iran

Oh, I dunno. A little bit of intelligence and satellite photo assistance and poof there goes a very expensive AWACS.

It's obvious to everyone that Russia is helping Iran with intelligence at the very least, and possibly even with air defenses... how is it that an F-15E was shot down now, a month into the war?

I agree that leaving the war unfinished will be a disaster. However, finishing it is going to take the lives of thousands to tens of thousands of American soldiers, if "finishing" means regime change. You willing to live with that? (I'm not American, so it's not my fellow citizens whose lives are on the line.)