They do have a bit of a bias in my experience. I commented a few days ago on the BBC story and my conclusion was that they didn't seem to have much of a bias but that I didn't really have enough hands-on experience to go off of. It's different with NPR, I listen to them most days while I'm driving and I hear them plenty. They usually report things fairly and accurately but their bias comes across more in what they choose to report on. Stories about things that tend to move or interest conservatives usually only get reported on if they're very major events; stories that move or interest liberals are kind of the meat-and-potatoes of NPR. It's a subtle form of bias that a lot of conservative listeners will probably notice over time but may not be able to put into words.

I think there's still value in NPR's existence, just like I think there's value in outlets with a slight right bias like the Wall Street Journal existing. As for whether they should receive public funding, that's a different story. There seems to be this notion that it's important to have state-funded media and that it's important for that state-funded media to be fully independent... but that pretty much necessarily means they're free to be biased. Even if you don't think NPR is biased, such a setup means that they could be biased and there'd be no recourse. I think independent journalism is of value and I think there might be value in state-funded journalism, but I'm not sure I think there's value in the overlap of the two. If we're going to fund journalism, we should probably have some checks in place to make sure all of our taxpayers are getting representation out of it.

I can actually provide a bit of insight on this. It's because it got cracked on every version of Windows and Office that supports it going back to like Windows 7. This happened nearly a year ago now. I'm not sure whether Slashdot wants me posting direct links to websites that host crack tools so I'm not going to do that, but if you search mas blog tsforge you'll find their writeup on what it is and how they did it. It's a fairly interesting read.

The writing's been on the wall for phone activation since then. I don't think they're going to bother patching it out of old versions of Windows but it was pretty obvious they were going to drop support for it at some point since it's so completely and utterly busted open.

Showing that there's a right-bias in guest selection only proves that there's a right-bias in guest selection. That can be offset by other sources of bias, such as story selection, story presentation, interviewer-guest interaction, etc.

Most of the interactions I've had with the BBC here in the US (mainly through the BBC News Hour on NPR in the morning and some occasional online stories) come across as pretty neutral anecdotally, and MBFC, my preferred watchdog for this sort of thing, seems to agree. So I think the original poster's conclusion that the BBC is left-biased is probably untrue and likely comes from his own place of bias. But it's important not to overstate the case here based on one metric. A news outlet disproportionately taking on right-leaning guests could very easily be offset by, for example, the host being disproportionately confrontational to those guests or conveying story information before or after in a manner intended to predispose the audience to the opposing viewpoint.

I missed the previous story on this or I would have commented on that when it was current... censorship doesn't necessitate government involvement. The point of censorship is using some form of power to suppress speech. In the US and many countries, there are laws against the government doing this to some degree. In the US' case, the Constitution defines checks on the US government intended to prevent censorship. The reason this applies only to the government is because that was the scope of the Constitution, not because other sources of censorship are somehow perfectly acceptable.

The problem with censorship is not "the government doing it," the problem is speech being suppressed. The government is often uniquely powerful and can suppress speech better than most, but it's far from the only entity that can do so. Power can take many forms, but generally speaking the things people fear are physical harm, financial ruin, captivity, threats against family, etc. The government is not the only entity capable of making these sorts of threats and following through on them. I believe using any of this sort of power to suppress speech in any context is unacceptable. Now, I do think the nuance of what speech is is important -- I'm using the term "speech" but I do think certain things should be excluded, like many of those things that are excluded under US law (defamation, credible threats, criminal incitement, etc). But stupid and hateful opinions based on false information should be met with truthful refutation, not threats of harm or ruin.

While I disagree with the Trump administration on a great many things, and I find their motivations suspect, and I certainly think that they only care about protecting speech that they agree with like a great many so-called "free speech activists" often seem to, I do find myself in agreement that, in principle, if people outside the US are trying to use some form of power to suppress the speech of US citizens, that is something the US government should be pushing back against as the representative of the US people.

We need to stop pretending like it's perfectly OK to film strangers in public. Legal? Sure. Should you be doing it? 9 times out of 10, no.

It is. It's legal because it's OK. You're in public, people might catch you on camera. You can find plenty of videos of Karens on Youtube harassing people who are merely filming the area the Karen occupies and they grab at the camera/phone and attempt to destroy or steal it if they get ahold of it. This is illegal and it should be illegal and nobody should accept it; these people are bullies and thugs and should be treated as such.

In this specific situation, the guy was additionally being annoying and obnoxious on top of that. He's a piece of shit and people should apply social and legal pressure to account for situations like this. These sort of "nuisance streamers" are increasingly common on the popular streaming platforms and everyone can agree they're a social ill. But even with all of that, you still don't have a right to destroy someone else's property just for being obnoxious if their behavior doesn't cross the line into assault, harassment, etc. I don't think anyone should lionize this sort of thing.

Everything you said is correct and I'd recommend the same. I wanted to expand on this, though:

This is windows triggering how the computer is restarted - and that has been a problem since the days of Windows 7 where a "reboot" was not as rebootish as the name implied.

The behavior you're describing and working around with arguments to the shutdown command is typically caused by the confusingly-named fast startup (not to be confused with UEFI fast boot, which might also cause irregularities in the boot process but is controlled by the system firmware/UEFI and not Windows). It can (and IMO always should be) disabled with ctrl+r > control > hardware & sound > power options > change what the power buttons do/change what closing the lid does > uncheck "turn on fast startup." It causes way more headaches than the few seconds it saves on each boot and as there are no other benefits; I always disable it.

It's normally only a problem with a shutdown, though, not a restart; doing a restart from within Windows' UI is already supposed to bypass it, which is why we'd always tell our users to restart their PCs once a week. But, if you're on a computer with fast startup on *and* want to do a shutdown *and* bypass fast startup, simply doing shutdown /s will disable it for the next boot.

Also, I think shutdown /fw might need to be combined with an active option like /r /s or /g in order to actually function.

No. That's fucking stupid. Nobody needs to hear about politics when they go shopping for groceries or take a walk or go to the bathroom. There's a place and time for political discussion. The place is not "everywhere" and the time is not "always." Sane individuals do not want political bullshit invading every single moment of their waking life. Have some goddamn restraint.

I use catbox.moe which will store anything up to 200mb. They also have litterbox.catbox.moe which has a customizable expire timer. The anime girls on the front page may be a deal breaker for people who don't like that sort of thing, though, and for the same reason it's probably not good to use in a professional setting.

Alternatively, if you use Discord at all, it's fairly easy to create a server* for yourself and just upload and link pictures from that. There's a fairly small filesize limit and I think they do expire eventually, but it works well if you already use Discord. If you pay for Nitro, I believe you can upload much larger files. (*this is Discord's term for a private group hub, don't blame me if you don't like them using the name "server" for that). Honestly, you could probably do something similar on other social platforms.

Failing that, you can always use any of the big name free cloud platforms and just cull whatever you upload every week so it doesn't take up your allotment. Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive (I hate everything about the desktop version and how it tries to take over your computer, but their web interface is usable), etc.

I strongly disagree with the direction the Republicans are going but your complaint here is about basic human nature. Most people prioritize themselves and their families. The argument should not be "you are a bad person for only caring about you and your own." Pragmatically speaking, that is not going to win votes. The argument should be "you care about you and your own, so here is why what the Republicans are doing is bad for you and your own."

The Democrats used to be the party of everyone. Healthcare, corporate greed and exploitation, pollution, trade... these are all issues that ultimately affect everyone in some fashion. Saying "the Republicans only really care about the upper 1%" is a strong argument because (a) there's a lot of truth to it and (b) it puts Democrats on the side of the 99%. Democrats have moved away from that message (I'll leave the "why" as a thought exercise for you, dear reader). Now, Democrats complain about the selfishness of a different 99% while saying that we should all be focusing on the issues of the 1% they claim suffer the most... even if you think that's true, pragmatically speaking, how does that win you votes?

Posts like yours feel good but get us nowhere. Why the Republicans are bad for the average person becomes more evident every day but the Democrats continue to fail to capitalize on this. This insanity isn't going to end until the Democrats come back down to earth and stop complaining that basic human nature isn't good enough. We all need to work within the constraints we are given. If you want to help the fringes, you need to help everyone; that ALSO helps the fringes, and when everyone is in a relatively better position, they're often more willing to talk about fringe issues.

Presumably because it's free and can be viewed from home. I don't understand what you aren't understanding.

My coworker has been going absolutely insane trying to figure out why one of our printers has been doing this. He's going to be pretty pissed off when he realizes it was all due to a Windows Update.

This is one of those questions where I feel like if you need to ask, the answer is just "no" because you lack the finesse needed for a more complex answer.

People who are very emotionally invested into political issues frequently believe their issue is of such utmost importance that everyone should be thinking about it all the time (and thinking it about it in a way they approve of). Maybe that's even true for issues like climate change, considering the potential consequences... but the reality is that approaching it that way ignores human psychology. If you are constantly preaching to people about something all the time and invading their hobbies with your preaching, they're going to tune you out or become hostile. That's just how people work. If you are trying to actually reach people and motivate them, to win them over to your side, you need nuance, finesse, subtlety. Repeatedly bashing them over the head with your beliefs is just not going to be effective. And the people who might be inclined to ask the question "Should Climate Change Be Acknowledged In Movies" generally do not strike me as the kind of people capable of the finesse required to effectively convey their message without making a nuisance of themselves to the people they are trying to reach.

So the short answer to the question is simply "no." But if that's insufficient and you really feel strongly about the topic, then at the very least tell a story where climate change is the focus, don't try to wedge it into something unrelated. Like with Unix, entertainment media and art benefit from "doing one thing and doing it well." Focus is important; by losing focus, you dilute what you are trying to achieve. Trying to account for everything doesn't leave sufficient room to effectively address anything. So, if climate change is what matters most to you, put your heart into making something compelling that illustrates how you feel about it, so that you can craft a really compelling narrative about that topic and how you see it. And just maybe, if you do a really good job, people might begin to understand why you see things that way.

I pay for an individual subscription to ChatGPT. I use it several times a week and it has saved me a large amount of work at least once. I could probably micromanage my subscription if I wanted to save some money but I'm comfortable with keeping it active considering I do find it useful. If they raised the price substantially or enshittified it, I'd probably look toward doing that.

As I see it, there are three separate issues here.

First, does the First Amendment or any other law guarantee free speech rights against private entities? As it stands now, my understanding is there is no such guarantee. The legislature may change that or the courts may decide to drastically reinterpret the First Amendment, but barring that, this will probably remain the state of affairs going into the future.

Second, should there be such a guarantee? I think this is a more interesting question. I don't think the people who came up with the First Amendment had "a vast amount of public discourse will take place on corporate-moderated spaces" on their 1776 bingo card. I think there are valid arguments as to why maybe such spaces, when sufficiently large, might be best regulated as utilities or some other similar classification (I'm not a legal scholar) wherein people do have guarantees of free speech. I think it's important that people be able to speak their notion of truth even if it's unpopular or uncomfortable so that such ideas can be argued and iterated on and we can collectively come to a better understanding of the world. And I think when so much discourse is locked up on these platforms, maybe there's an argument for regulating them that way. I'll admit it's not something I've fully explored, but it certainly holds some appeal to me.

Third, should we trust the intent of the Republican Party in this situation? My answer to that is FUCK no. As others have very rightly pointed out, the Trumpsphere has very frequently demonstrated that they are only interested in their ability to say what they want, not anyone else's. Leftist thought gets banned very frequently on conservative platforms and spaces. While this isn't a problem unique to the GOP, it is a problem that they very obviously do have. I'd love to have someone actually championing free speech rights online, I just don't buy that it's the GOP. I'll continue to maintain my skepticism until I see reason to believe otherwise.

Presumably you do not want the country to vote for someone like Trump based on the content of your post. So, let me ask: do you think sentiments like yours advance that goal? What exactly are you hoping to accomplish by throwing insult soup at Republicans on a website where most commenters skew left anyway?

For the record, I voted for Harris. I'm one of the only people in my extended friend and family group that did. Do I think 95% of my family and friends are "fascist traitors to their country?" No, and even if I did, saying so wouldn't serve any useful purpose besides antagonizing them. Like it or not, you live in a country where essentially half of the voting public supports Trump. You can either insult and antagonize them and accomplish no useful purpose while shit (often literally) burn down around you, safe in your cloak of "at least I was on the right side," or you can try to find common ground as individuals who share the same space and many of the same problems.

Part of living in a democratic society is occasionally being on the losing side and being ruled over by people who, at the very least, you do not believe to have your best interests at heart. Part of being an adult is learning to get past your differences with people you disagree with and getting useful work done anyway. If you want to improve the situation of the country, then have discussions, make friends, find common ground, and break down walls. Trump voters aren't martians, it's inevitable you will have SOME common ground with them. So focus on what you CAN fix and while you're doing so, be patient and discuss the problems they don't see so that they may have sufficient context to come to a more sane conclusion next time. The difficult work of politics isn't being on the "right side," it's the slow work of building relationships and illuminating other people to your point of view so that something better can be built up over time.