> When the $13.95 monthly Big Blur Coverage supplementary fee is disclosed.

Don't be ridiculous. This is Apple. You will get Apple Blur for free, but it will only cover about 10 pixels of naughty bits. For complete coverage, you'll need Apple Blur Plus for $13.95 a month. But Apple Blur and Blur Plus will only be available on higher end iPhones.

Somebody needs to let them know that the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys

At least that's what I heard on the radio.

Hulu and Fubo merging sounds like parodies of generic tech company names. Is the combined company going to be Fulo, Hubo or some other completely random combination of letters?

25 floppies? Was there a 720k floppy version of Windows 95? I only ever used (way, way too often) the 13 floppy HD version.

I lost count at how many data breaches T-Mobile has had. I think it's five in the last two years.

At this point I think they run their backend on an unpatched Windows XP system with no firewall.

On second thought, I take that back. I think an unpatched Windows XP system with no firewall would be more secure than whatever T-Mobile is doing.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but it was a brilliant idea to announce this the day after you have a huge network outage. Of course Verizon claims only 50,000 people had problems. But it still made national news.

> The Japanese rover will support extended expeditions from Artemis landing sites that are beyond the range of the Lunar Terrain Vehicle that three American companies are developing for NASA under contracts announced April 3.

In other words, the American space car industry is doing just as well as the American Earth car industry. (i.e. getting beaten by Toyota, who is building the Lunar Cruiser)

Yes. The idea of creating small scale Communist collectives is not new. They used to be called Soviets. Then you would have an group to organize interactions between the worker cooperatives (like setting prices so one soviet doesn't exploit another soviet). You could even call it a Soviet Union.

But I don't disagree with your overall point. Within a capitalist economy you can have communities that are not the stereotypical for-profit corporations. Kibbutzs and other religious communities, co-ops, employee owned corporations and not-for-profit corporations are all versions of that. As you point out, Kibbutzs (and these others) are not Communist organizations and certainly do not exist inside a fully Communist society. They are a form of Democratic Socialism within a capitalistic society. They can exist (and even thrive) because they are small and tight-knit. Where it breaks down is when you try to scale it at the nation state level. There are just too many competing interests among the 'soviets' that inevitably leads to a dictatorial central organization.

Not to repeat myself but Marx and (especially) Engels would disagree with you about being able to create a Communist system without the dictatorship of the Proletariat. If you are saying that Marx and Engels were wrong about some very fundamental concepts about how to implement Communism, (like the necessity of the dictatorship of the Proletariat because human nature means you could NEVER eliminate a class-based society without it) that undermines a lot of the whole basis of Communism. If Socialism can be achieved through an alternate path than what Marx and Engels laid out, then there really is no need for Communism at all.

Lenin's view of how to achieve Communism is relevant, and can't just be dismissed as self-serving because his concept of Marxism-Leninism predates the Bolshevik revolution. Lenin thought your could achieve Communism while skipping the Capitalist stage. (ie you could achieve mass industrialization in a proto-Communist state. And Stalin kind of proved him right for sufficiently broad definitions of success as long as you willing to put up with a full on authoritarian terror state instead of a capitalist one.) But no matter how you rolled the dice, Lenin didn't think you could skip the dictatorship of the Proletariat. It's a feature not a bug in Communism.

Only if you are being hyper-pedantic. In the sense that Marx maintained that the dictatorship of the Proletariat was a transitionary phase and that "True Communism" would transcend it. Of course, there hasn't been a single case were Communist government has even been able to get out of that dictatorship phase.

But it would be more accurate to say a dictatorship is a necessary part of getting to a Communist society. At least according to Marx. (And Engels, and Lenin, and Mao) So if you decide to go down the path to Communism, you may not ever get there but you will definitely have a dictatorship along the way.

Lloyd Austin is a FORMER four star general. SECDEF is a civilian position and holds no military rank. In fact, former military officers need a waiver from Congress to become SECDEF if they have been retired for less than seven years. Three have been granted since DoD was created, two of which were since 2016. (Austin and Mattis, Trump's first SECDEF.)

Everything you said is true. But the original allegation was that Apple was encouraging kids to ostracize other kids. And nobody can come up with a single quote from anyone at Apple even saying that it was a good thing. Even you concede that 'maybe' Apple didn't intend for the blue/green bubbles to become a social stigma. Your worst accusation is that Apple is happy to benefit from it. And you are probably right. But riding a wave is not causing a wave, and we doing blame a surfer if the wave drowns somebody. Agency matters.

As a reminder to all, I won't try to defend Apple on any number of things where they are wrong or acting unethically. But I will defend them (or anyone else) from 100% made up accusations without proof. (referring to the original comment I responded to not yours) Hate on Apple for actual reasons, not made up ones. (And ironically, I'm the one that is called a fanboi)

> Apple's role in encouraging kids ostracizing other kids for not using Apple's products (in order to drive more sales) is more than a little sleazy.

Citation needed.

Show me any credible source that says Apple is encouraging this. Heck, I'll take a non-credible source.

There are plenty of things Apple does that are more than a little sleazy and can be fairly criticized. There's no need to make up new ones.

You double tap your thumb on your index finger. The newer watches can detect that gesture without you touching the watch. (I guess through movements of the bones in your wrist maybe?)

I don't know enough about Mitchell to offer any defense of him, or even if it's warranted. The original post I was responding to was:

> Well to be fair, the US Army Air Force didn't sink any battleships. The battleships (eg Musashi and Yamato) were sunk by US Navy planes

I was just pointing out that reference to the Army sinking battleships was almost certainly a reference to the Mitchell debate, not a claim that the USAAF was regularly targeting capital ships during WWII.

The only other thing I would say is that, everything you say about Mitchell may be true. But Mitchell's premise was still correct that aircraft can sink capital ships. His demonstration may have been rigged and an insufficient proof of it, but the premise was clearly shown to be true through the course of WWII even if the sinking of Virginia and Ostfriesland was rigged. (And thank you for bringing up Ostfriesland. I didn't know about it so now I have a fun new thing to learn about.)