I didnâ(TM)t think freedom of speech stops at the border. Americans have always had the right to consume and promote speech from any country they want. If our ideals canâ(TM)t hold up to Chinese propaganda they were not very good ones to begin with.

Running virtual machines is going to be nice.

I've always wanted to just buy a small plot of land in Japan and set up a tiny data center that would stream Japanese domestic television to my house in the US. When the pirates provide more features and an easier service to use it is no wonder the cable industry is dying.

This has been solved since the 1940s. It isn't cheap but geothermal earth coupled ground-source exchange loops boost efficiency quite a bit. Since at depth the temperature stays constant this is a. non-issue.

I run Windows 11 Pro on Parallels just fine on my M1 laptop. The only thing the M1 dosen't support is nested virtualization so I can't run VMs inside of linux or windows. I'm hopeful it'll be included in the M2 though. I hardly ever use MacOS except for music production but the performance of Windows and Linux inside virtualization on the M1 is about the best I've ever seen. Benchmarks show the M1 runs Windows in a VM better than any currently available ARM Windows laptop.

I've been doing this since DeCSS was released and have an amazing home collection. Turns out if you spend the equivalent to a cable bill on actually owning media every month you can keep up with all the good shows and movies out there. Lots of media comes with digital codes these days where I don't even have to break out the ripping software anymore. Now if only I'd take the time to figure out Plex instead of just mounting SMB shares and using VLC & Infuse. I really don't understand the popularity paying for something and not owning it.

History is a cycle. We had all these same problems before. We didn't pass the "New Deal" because people were kind and thought of others back then. It was because society inequity was so bad people began to organize and challenge the state's monopoly of power and their capability of enforcing private property laws. As the people in power start to forget the reason we had these social programs was to keep them in power they will of course begin to lose power. It is completely natural for them to try and push things to the very edge to maximize profits. It is everyone else's job to push back.

My eyes were opened to this world when I read Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" and Bernays "Crystalizing Public Opinion". The tactics for controlling what is popular have been a since for a long time now. Setting the narrative through repetition and trusted sources has become almost childs play these days. I'm deeply surprised there isn't more attention paid to deconstructing talking points and automated/paid social media accounts.

Renewables can't replace bunker fuel to power international trade unless we revert back to wooden sailboats.

Are they going to make the pirate URL database public? I need a copy for completely legitimate reasons.

That is some really old research. The rat park model shows that addiction is a mechanism we use to numb ourselves to shittiy living conditions. I replaced those behaviors by moving across the country; finding a healthy and stimulating place to live and a new job I love. I don't crave smoking at all anymore. The real way to combat addiction is to invest in making our society better. If my current lifestyle met a tragic end and I was living on the street with my family dead you bet I'd be smoking two packs a day again, probably a lot worse.

I started when I was 14 and smoked 2 packs a day until I was 30. Vaping is just another way of staying addicted. You are not a former addict you are still addicted. The only way to be rid of the addiction is stopping nicotine all together. Not a single puff or drop of nicotine ever again no matter what. Just one puff sends me right back into addiction. It only takes me a day or two to get back up to smoking two packs. Vapes are just the tobacco industry keeping you hooked. I don't know anyone who used a vape to "quit" smoking that has ended up free of a nicotine addiction. When I quit I quit for good and I've been craving free for about 7 or 8 years, quit nicotine 9 years ago. I didn't get it on the first attempt, nor the second. It took about 3 years of quitting and failing until it finally stuck. Get rid of all that nicotine and never look back.

Call your local university library. I'm sure they will hook you up.

How does the Play store's content moderation have anything to do with the ability to sideload apps?

Personal politics absolutely come into play when deciding what company you want to work for. Take the contractors that were working on the 2nd Death Star in the Return of the Jedi for example. I'm sure many of them were killed when the facility was destroyed. They full well knew the risks when taking the contract and the societal implications of working on a project that can destroy entire planets. If you can't make informed decisions about the politics of your customers and products then your autonomy as a citizen is impacted. Chances the desire for stifling speech are simply trying to negate the impact of the consequences of their position.