My first reaction is that if one company is selling at half the price, that company will go bankrupt at twice the speed since every transaction was already a money-loser. Customers are absolutely the worst thing for these "businesses."

But is revenue really significant? I can see how neither reducing the price to $0 or increasing their price to 10x what it was, might not really have much of a different impact on the bottom line, compared to all the debt.

Make IBM Great Again: go back to .. leasing computers?!

Nobody remembers or cares that a B-2's toilet cost $23k, so the Pentagon is updating to a newer, better form of government waste that kids today will better understand.

Malware is any software that runs on your computer but is intended to serve the interests of someone else.

Calling it malware isn't so much inaccurate as it's unspecific. Not all malware is adware, but 100% of adware is malware.

There's nothing wrong with storing some things *also* in cloud services.

But when it comes to copies of important things, two is one and one is none.

I don't think Google should be required to provide anonymized search data to rivals. Firstly, that's effectively their intellectual property.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. I'm sure the others will do something transformative with the data.

Your argument contains several claims that are not supported by the historical evidence.

There was a violent crackdown in Beijing in June 1989. This is documented by eyewitnesses, journalists who were present, diplomats, hospital workers, declassified government documents from multiple countries, and later research. While the exact death toll is disputed, there is broad agreement among historians that hundreds, and possibly more than a thousand, people were killed when the Chinese military used live ammunition and armored vehicles to clear protesters and bystanders.

The protests did not begin as a violent uprising. They started as largely peaceful demonstrations calling for political reform, freedom of speech, government accountability, and action against corruption. In the final hours, some protesters and residents did fight back by throwing rocks, setting military vehicles on fire, and attacking soldiers after troops advanced into the city. That does not change the fact that the military used overwhelming lethal force against civilians.

There is no credible evidence that the Chinese government deliberately recruited ethnic minorities because they "hate Han Chinese." The People's Liberation Army is a national military whose units are drawn from across China. Claims that the crackdown relied on ethnic groups chosen because they were hostile to Han Chinese are not supported by credible historical sources.

The claim about mandatory two-year programs for all ethnic groups is inaccurate. China has implemented various education, labor, and relocation policies affecting different ethnic minorities, especially Uyghurs in Xinjiang, but these policies were not introduced as a response to Tiananmen Square. Researchers generally view those policies as part of the Chinese government's broader strategy of political control and assimilation rather than a measure to prevent another Tiananmen.

Finally, dismissing the Tiananmen Square crackdown by comparing it to other events doesn't address the historical record. Serious discussions should rely on evidence from contemporaneous reporting, archival documents, eyewitness testimony, and academic research, not egotistical, unsupported assertions from the Chinese Communist Party point of view.

Ok, you're a Chinese shill. Tell me, what's your official stance on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre? Got any opinions on that? What to talk in depth about it? Or, are you mysteriously going to go silent now that I mentioned it?

I'm betting you go silent. That's because China isn't a free society. You're not allowed to talk about it.

Xi Jinping, as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and President of China, holds ultimate power as paramount leader. His authoritarian rule is a dictatorship due to his unchecked authority.

Oh my god, this is laugh out loud funny. There's a reason there's "basically no violent crime." It's a communist dictatorship. Dictators love to highlight the law and order in their countries. That's what you promote when people have no freedom.

If you think America is unwelcoming to foreigners, then you're living a completely sheltered life. Trump and MAGA are a temporary problem that will disappear in 2 years. America is still the most welcoming country in the world to foreigners. Go to China. See what life is like in comparison to the US. See what life is like in comparison to Berkeley, California. Note the difference in how everyday people treat you. And yes, there's going to be a difference between the Bay Area in California and China.

RFS is dead. Like his wife.

What could possibly go wrong?

Apple is becoming more MS every day.

"Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time"

Its called fingerprinting, and it has been going on a very long time, using techniques that go back decades. This just makes it more persistent and spans attempts to obfuscate fingerprinting in easier ways.

If you want to avoid this, work from a non-persistent VM that is created and destroyed every online session, using no identifiable information (no-logins ever).

Security isn't convenient.