Five months later I log back into Lemmy, so sorry for the ancient reply, but I wanted to thank you for correcting my misconception.

And look how many Linux distro producing companies there are that are the size of Google or that earn even a significant fraction of what Google earns.

Linux is a totally different ballgame. It started out with open source and free access in mind. Linux distros are often made by volunteer developers who do it for the love of the game, non-profit companies, or companies that have found some way to monitize it like RHEL. And companies certainly pay for support, standardization, and exhaustive stability validation. There’s also the commercial use of Red Hat’s customizations, and arguably faster responses to patching vulnerabilities.

I don’t even know how to respond to this. It’s filled with so much hyperbole that there’s nothing factual to refute or discuss. All I can say is that I vehemently disagree with your opinions on the matter.

But if she doesn’t the dems will blame those same voters, along with Greens (which, whatever) and any other third party voters instead of coming to grips with their many many failings

This is something that a lot of people don’t think critically about. The republican party is largely homogonized. There isn’t much diversity to their demographic at all. I had great hopes that Trump would fracture the republican party, but they’re even more spineless than I realized. For all the “Trump isn’t fit” gnashing that came before his win, even from the republican party, they sure fell in line behind him real quick. Republicans are all about party over country. They don’t care about compromise, and in fact they don’t want compromise. They will tank their own bills if they think the bill will serve any benefit for democrats. Party above all else, and that’s what gives them so much power.

On the opposite side, democrats are in many ways a coalition of various groups of non-republican voters, each group with their own desires and priorities, some in opposition to others who fall under the same umbrella. If the democrats lose support from one of their many sub-groups, that leads to a loss at the polls, which is a win for conservatives and the country gets pulled Evac further to the right. So democrats constantly have a very fine line to walk to pull voters to their side without pissing off another of their constituent groups.

It sucks, it’s not the way things should be, but it is the reality of our current situation. I’m not advocating for feckless Democrat leaders, rather, I am advocating against conservatives who will absolutely move the country in a direction away from my desired outcomes.

As opposed to? Conservatism? How do you expect that to be different? Because in terms of president, those are your two options right now.

But the question remains, will things be better, worse, or the same under Trump?

Like it or not, at this stage of the game there are effectively two candidates. To paraphrase South Park, you can vote for the douche bag or the turd sandwich. Neither is a very good option but one is certainly worse than the other if you’re paying any attention at all. Abstaining from voting for Harris in a swing state is tantamount to a half vote for Trump.

So sure, continue letting everyone know what the current administration is doing wrong. I’m all for valid criticism of our government. Post facts, link sources, and post ways that people can voice their displeasure to their elected officials.

Trying to sway votes away from Harris is not the answer. Because again, like it or not, the shitty choice that we’ve been handed in this scenario is bad or worse. Please stop advocating for worse.

Some of us remember the coed bathroom featured on the hit 90s show Ally McBeal. It seemed like a progressive but not so far fetched idea at the time. So WTF are we doing still arguing about this 25 years later? These bathroom nazis need to get a grip.

I had just given Putin tree fiddy the week before

I daresay this is the outcome he hoped for. Suddenly there are a bunch of open editorial author seats to fill. Taking bets on those seats being filled by people who don’t lean quite so far to the left.

And a significant loss in subscribers? That’s just the principled people fleeing who weren’t gonna buy his nonsense either way. The people who stick around are the ones who are okay with billionaire interference in their news source, and those are the people Bezos wants as subscribers.

Were they? 😄

You can mess with someone else’s life but don’t you dare mess with the money of someone more powerful than you. Good to see our legal system functioning exactly as it was designed.

Hate to break it to you, but you are not Google’s customer. Don’t believe me? How much did you pay for Chrome?

This move is in fact being made with their actual customers in mind.

Probably the closest thing you can get to in terms of a “privacy” credit card. Everything about a credit card is tied to you by their very nature. So it depends on what or who you want privacy from.

Someone else mentioned privacy.com which I also use - it’s good if you want to hide your transaction from the credit card company, or if you want to hide your identity from the merchant. But Privacy.com is more like a virtual debit card that connects to your bank account. Privacy.com still knows who you are.

HACK THE PLANET! THEY’RE TRASHING OUR RIGHTS!

It never ceases to amaze me how they mock Joe for speaking gibberish but then this seems to make complete sense to them.

Don’t underestimate him. He may sound like an idiot to us, but we aren’t his target audience. He doesn’t care what we think of him. He knows what his cult wants to hear and he’s plenty happy to chum the water to get them in a frenzy.

And then the concept of “too big to fail” was born.

There’s a reason scam artists target the elderly. If a box on the computer screen says “put payment info here” then who are they to argue with the box?

That’s a good question. But keep in mind that there are significant taxes associated with selling a home in most places that would dissuade landlords from trying to game the system that way. Then again, they’re just one more loophole from making that plan work.

Imagine having that much of an issue with barely offensive words that their kids will never read because most don’t use the school library anyway.

And imagine letting your kids come home and access whatever media they want including actual pornography on the internet. Most of these parents have zero clue how to block internet sites on their home computers and laptops let alone the phones that their kids all have.

But of course, that’s another problem some parents are asking the government to solve by forcing porn sites to require visitors to affirmatively identify themselves and their age. Of course, that only applies to the major porn sites that play by the arbitrary rules anyway. All so stupid.