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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I’ll wait for the financial analysts that I both trust, and I know hate Musk, before I have any confidence in answering that question.

    But… my best uninformed guess is that it’s less fanboy worship, and more fear that Musk is the only thing propping up the insane stock valuation.

    I’m assuming that Musk has a complex web of possibly illegal and highly engineered financial instruments that keep that stock pumping, or at least, not crashing - yet.

    Maybe those who voted to approve might be aware, or involved, in that house of cards and believe removing Musk would be akin to blowing on it.

    But I’m just pulling all of this out of my ass, so who knows…

    It might be as simple as the majority of Tesla shareholders who voted to approve, including the institutional ones, are really just submental morons.


  • I don’t think they’re making a moral argument, but pointing out the reality of the situation as it stands.

    This is a problem that can only be fixed through legislation and aggressive enforcement backed by large punitive actions.

    Until that happens, it’s better to acknowledge and understand the reality of the situation, than to believe that a morally righteous condemnation will somehow unmake that reality.

    It sucks. I agree with your philosophical stance, except for the payment for personal data, as I’d prefer a complete opt-out. However, none of that changes where we’re at right now.


  • I got as far as the second paragraph, which consists of the following quote from a Google VP:

    “I’m not going to talk about Recall, but I think the reason that some people feel it’s creepy is when it doesn’t feel useful, and it doesn’t feel like something they initiated or that they get a clear benefit from it”

    That’s somehow worse than I imagined. I can at least understand being intentionally sinister, or overtly anti-privacy, but that level of delusion is somehow actually more terrifying.


  • lol.

    Just search for Purism customer support experiences.

    I’m honestly amazed there hasn’t been a fraud, or some other consumer protection type criminal investigation.

    All that baggage, and their hardware is also laughably outdated and overpriced.

    Which is unfortunate, because the concept is amazing and clearly there’s a sizable market for it.

    Here is an example of just ONE flavor of Purism customer experiences:

    Announce current gen hardware and current pricing.

    Customer pays

    Customer receives hardware 5 years later, after being told approx. 362 times that cancellation refunds are down, or unable to be processed.

    Customer tries to immediately return the 5 year old laptop that was just delivered and is told “No Returns”

    There are other variations that you can read about on various forums.


  • Every LG and Samsung major appliance I’ve had has broken within 5 years.

    Refrigerators, washing machines, and dryers.

    Prior, I only ever had 80s era American tank energy hogs. Switched back to American brands in the last few years, so too soon to tell if they’ll work out better…

    Here’s to hoping.

    Oh, and having dealt with LG warranty for both electronics and major appliances, I’ll never buy another LG product that isn’t a monitor.

    LG monitors are the only higher end LG product’s I’ve owned that have survived well past the warranty date.


  • I maintain one baremetal Windows install that gets fairly regular use. It’s on a major OEM business class workstation with a legit Windows 10 pro license.

    Recently, I had to wipe and reset and goddamn do they try and trick you into choosing all the worst spyware settings AND even if you successfully duck and weave past them, they’ll just cheat and enable them, or reinstall shit like co-pilot during an update.

    They just made me sign into that shitty M365 app to install a legit subscription of Office, and on the next reboot, it converted the local user account into an online user account.

    Make no mistake, Recall is going to be enabled by hook, or by crook, for the vast majority of Windows 11 users in due time. No matter how many times they disable it, or opt out.




  • That is their publicly stated goal, but that doesn’t mean it’s the policies true objective, or it’s only one.

    I’m not providing any moral, or value, judgement on any of this, nor am I claiming to know what went on inside the halls of power when crafting this policy that isn’t public knowledge.

    I’m simply stating that there are many “objectives” that this policy might be intended to achieve, other then what’s been publicly promoted.

    Which is pretty much true for any piece of legislation or new regulations that get processed through bureaucratic machinery with many competing outside influences and pressures.

    FWIW I’m not a free trade economic liberal. I support protectionism, when it’s justified. Especially in cases where it protects workers, or counters hostile policies e.g. dumping.


  • Depends on what the definition of “working” is.

    If it’s to damage China’s EV producers, then yes, they’ll work.

    If it’s to promote sales of domestically produced EVs, then probably a bit, although to what degree is unknown.

    If it’s to help domestic producers ramp up and grow the domestic EV market at, or around, the same rates that cheap imported EVs would… probably not.

    Which circles back to, if the goal is to dampen and slow the adoption of EVs en masse, then yes, it will probably work. Although, to what degree is unknown and can be heavily influenced by other forms of legislation and regulation.



  • Energy generation has constraints, whether it’s fuel, processing requirements, or the infrastructure’s generation capacity.

    At best, this is proof of concept that will revolutionize the environmental impacts of Big Tech’s new and even more environmentally damaging data centers.

    But we’ve seen that dog and pony show countless times whenever the environmental cost of data centers gets too much press.

    This is most likely just a cynical PR prop to wave around, as the rest of the AI facilities aren’t run so “greenly”.





  • Even if you trust that one feature will actually be disabled, that was just one example.

    Do you really believe you can disable and remove all of the numerous data collection and spyware components that are baked into all aspects of the OS?

    I’m not saying no one should use Windows 11, but they should be honest with themselves about the trade-off they’re accepting.


  • The major problems isn’t Windows 11 usability, although those issues due exist. UI and workflow issues can typically get addressed, or mitigated, by 3rd party tools.

    The real concerns are the exponential increases in spyware, such as the AI recovery tool that records all user interactions, or the native advertising inside of the system itself e.g. Start Menu ads.

    If native AI data collection and advertising is baked into all nooks and crannies of the system, the ability of users to mitigate those threats becomes extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to completely resolve.