If George had written Anakin like that, and if he had followed through with Darth Jar Jar, it would’ve been absolutely brilliant.

It’s mainly that I just don’t bother marking things read, so that’s like two and a half years of replies.

I regretted not cropping that as soon as I posted it because I knew someone would comment on it, but I couldn’t figure out how to crop after-the-fact on my phone and re-upload. The screenshot utility can do it, but the image viewer can’t.

There’s more you can do than that! It’s not as if we live in some sort of laissez-faire hellhole where corporations can do whatever they want; we could lobby the government to regulate it.

(I’m invoking Poe’s Law so hard even I don’t know if I’m sincere!)

Or valor, or velour.

Ah, I see how we differ now. I think the key isn’t just that they’re stupid, but more importantly that they’re incurious, mean-spirited, cowardly, and duped by propaganda. And that the leadership is malicious and corrupt, not merely incompetent. As such, I think just about every other dystopia is a better fit than Idiocracy is. 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Star Wars: Andor – take your pick!

It’s a shame about the licensing issues Qt had back in the day, because otherwise there was no reason GTK (and therefore GNOME) ever needed to exist.

I suddenly realize you may have thought I was criticizing you, individually. Just so you know, that’s not what I intended: I meant it as a general reaction to seeing that comparison made over and over again, and your instance of it just happened to be the one I attached it to.

Sorry about that.

And also, at least in the case of reading an article you understand that it’s a human with a point of view, rather than a tool that’s assumed to be neutral.

I don’t know if being blasé about an AI influencing everybody else’s opinion (including, for example, their politics) is just shortsighted, or downright stupid.

That’s still just compensatory damages. They need punitive damages on top of that!

Literally adjacent in my feed:

Generative AI agents will never be secure; it’s a flaw inherent to their nature.

Let’s not forget about this part:

On Christmas Eve, five days after the interview with Fargo police, the case was dismissed, and she was released from jail.

But, Lipps was now stranded in Fargo.

“I had my summer clothes on, no coat, it was so cold outside, snow on the ground, scared, I wanted out but I didn’t know what I was going to do, how I was going to get home,” Lipps said.

Fargo police did not cover Angela’s expenses to get home after her release from jail. Local defense attorneys gave her money to pay for a hotel room and food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

This shit was barely one step up from a “starlight tour,” and only because she didn’t actually die of exposure.

It’s sadistic on top of being unjust. The cops need to [redacted].

For the umpteenth fucking time, what’s going on in the US today is not “Idiocracy!”

In Idiocracy, the people were stupid, but honest. This is not that. This is malicious, which is worse.

You’re the one trying to sell me your argument; I’m not trying to buy it. Why would I pay to help you prove your own point?

Yeah, but it’s for a PXA255 XScale (ARM) processor, not x86. I’m trying to figure out if it requires any binary blobs or other non-mainline tweaks for Linux to work on it, but haven’t found a definitive answer yet.

I wasn’t asking for a citation that their methods aren’t altruistic; I was asking for a citation that they aren’t enshittifying the product with ads or subscriptions or whatever and then gouging you for full price anyway.

Isn’t it none of them, because they all want special-snowflake configurations that are supported by the vendor and not upstreamed to “mainline?”

Independently verifying it is still worthwhile.

The hypocrisy is by design: it’s how they mock and taunt you with their power.

“Never believe that [racists and bigots] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The [racists and bigots] have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” – Jean-Paul Sartre