Beamer wrote on Mar 14, 2024, 09:15:
Speaking of free speech and censorship, I was in Eastern Europe last week, and flew on Turkish Airlines (Istanbul has the best lounge I've ever been in, btw.)
I watched the Mare of Easttown on the flight, and man, was it censored. You could see a dead body with a wound, but words like "drug" and "sex" and even "affair" were censored. There's an entire lesbian subplot that was cut - I didn't even realize the character was a lesbian until I saw her making eyes at someone, but thought it was just her figuring herself out. No, turns out she had a girlfriend, but all those scenes were cut. I have no clue what else was cut.
Amusingly, one character does an edible, and that wasn't cut, because maybe the censors thought it was just a gummy?
Also amusingly, my wife was watching Deadpool 2. If what I watched was that cut...
Cutter wrote on Mar 11, 2024, 19:58:Sepharo wrote on Mar 11, 2024, 14:22:Cutter wrote on Mar 10, 2024, 17:25:BigVlad wrote on Mar 9, 2024, 19:13:Argonius the 3rd wrote on Mar 9, 2024, 18:01:ForgedReality wrote on Mar 9, 2024, 17:26:
I'm not even sure what "far left" even means. Nobody has ever been able to give me an example of what it is or why it's bad. Pretty sure having more rights is better, right? 🤔
You don't have rights in Stalinist Maoist states. You don't have food either... read about the Red Chmer and the attrocities, in Venezuela they are eating zoo animals. Communism/Socialism always leads to famine, poverty and mass murders.
The far left you're describing are tankies. And yes, they are annoying, silly, and pretend that Mao and Stalin were great. But they are such a tiny fraction of the left that they can be ignored entirely. A much larger portion of the left (but still tiny) are self described communists or socialists, but are sane and would never advocate for Stalinism, Maoism, or any kind of dictatorship (Cutter mentioned Pol Pot, which was hilarious as he was very far right). Those governments were closer to fascism than communism anyway. There is no reason you couldn't have a communist utopia in theory. There's some good ideas in there. The problem is you can't just transition from capitalism to communism without some wacky stuff happening as a result. So most communists and socialists set that as an ideal, and simply work to improve the system we have bit by bit. I don't see any harm in that.
You might want to try actually reading some history at some point. Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. They were the radical faction of the Cambodian Communist Party. Pol Pot was a communist in France, for fuck sake! They got all their arms and money from North Vietnam, the USSR and China. Explain to me in what fucking universe communists are "very far right".
They did not get arms and money from USSR and Vietnam... let alone all.
USSR backed Vietnam, China backed Cambodia.
Cambodia/PolPot said they were not communists, because they didn't want to fall under Vietnam/USSR influence.
Vietnam and Cambodia went to war...
Both China and the U.S. supported PolPot as a bulwark against Vietnamese and USSR communism.
Read more because the Khmer Rouge absolutely got funding and support from their fellow commies - mostly North Vietnam, who got all their shit from Russia and China. From Wikipedia....
"Ideologically a communist and a Khmer ethnonationalist, he was a leading member of Cambodia's communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997 and served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981."
And while there were points in time he refuted the communist label, he NEVER once disagreed they were a extreme left-wing revolutionary group. Communist, radical revolutionary, whatever, you're splitting semantical hairs. The guy was as radical a leftist as they come. End of story. Stop trying to pretend that only people on the right are ever the only bad people on earth.
Cutter wrote on Mar 10, 2024, 17:25:BigVlad wrote on Mar 9, 2024, 19:13:Argonius the 3rd wrote on Mar 9, 2024, 18:01:ForgedReality wrote on Mar 9, 2024, 17:26:
I'm not even sure what "far left" even means. Nobody has ever been able to give me an example of what it is or why it's bad. Pretty sure having more rights is better, right? 🤔
You don't have rights in Stalinist Maoist states. You don't have food either... read about the Red Chmer and the attrocities, in Venezuela they are eating zoo animals. Communism/Socialism always leads to famine, poverty and mass murders.
The far left you're describing are tankies. And yes, they are annoying, silly, and pretend that Mao and Stalin were great. But they are such a tiny fraction of the left that they can be ignored entirely. A much larger portion of the left (but still tiny) are self described communists or socialists, but are sane and would never advocate for Stalinism, Maoism, or any kind of dictatorship (Cutter mentioned Pol Pot, which was hilarious as he was very far right). Those governments were closer to fascism than communism anyway. There is no reason you couldn't have a communist utopia in theory. There's some good ideas in there. The problem is you can't just transition from capitalism to communism without some wacky stuff happening as a result. So most communists and socialists set that as an ideal, and simply work to improve the system we have bit by bit. I don't see any harm in that.
You might want to try actually reading some history at some point. Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. They were the radical faction of the Cambodian Communist Party. Pol Pot was a communist in France, for fuck sake! They got all their arms and money from North Vietnam, the USSR and China. Explain to me in what fucking universe communists are "very far right".
Cutter wrote on Feb 27, 2024, 14:57:
So he says, but that's seriously doubtful from the look of it. Making wild claims sure makes free publicity easy to get however. $20 for a crappy looking card game when you have 100s of similar apps online for free or a $1 or $2? Um no.
El Pit wrote on Feb 24, 2024, 03:48:
I don't remember ever reading of huge and successful Jewish terrorist groups
jdreyer wrote on Feb 23, 2024, 16:42:Sepharo wrote on Feb 23, 2024, 03:04:There are worse ways to spend $25.gfunk wrote on Feb 23, 2024, 00:29:
How has it not been shut down by Nintendo yet?
From friends who play its great fun for 2 weeks then you get bored
That's kind of how the whole genre goes.
But people have fun for the week or two they play with friends running through the survival/materials/upgrade treadmill.
gfunk wrote on Feb 23, 2024, 00:29:
How has it not been shut down by Nintendo yet?
From friends who play its great fun for 2 weeks then you get bored
Xero wrote on Feb 14, 2024, 15:10:Sepharo wrote on Feb 14, 2024, 14:13:
I have no problem with the military recruiting or using video games as one part of their recruiting strategy.
As long as everything is above board and they're not lying to potential recruits or anything.
Like if the military held a free concert, and then handed out flyers and made a general push to recruit young people at the concert... I wouldn't be like, "The military shouldn't be recruiting young people at a concert! Don't mix concerts and war... that's unethical!"
I don't see it as any different for video games.
I wouldn't say that they're not lying, but they don't tell you the full picture.
I remember trying to join the Natural Guard mostly for college tuition (because 90% of the commercials back then said they would pay for it) and remember people saying there, never bring that up when asked why you're there or doing it. Whether among ranking folks or even the jarhead privates who live and love that life. You joining just for that is like treason to them. I'll also just put aside the part of how racist most of the privates are when you go to basic training. I thought I went back in time.
Second, well, let's pray you don't end up deployed and lose some limbs, or get PTSD. Heck, my cousin didn't even see combat and has PTSD. A mate of his ended up shooting himself in the head in the same bunk they shared while my cousin went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. I'm pretty sure he didn't expect that when he signed up. Granted he's set for life at this point with all the monthly benefits he receives. Though there is a price to pay for it, without a doubt.
Xero wrote on Feb 12, 2024, 17:57:
Musk is no different than other Repubs in the beginning pretending to care for the free world and democracy. Now since UA couldn't win against Russia in at least a year from the invasion, they've been done with them. Musk included.
Jim wrote on Feb 12, 2024, 00:02:Burrito of Peace wrote on Feb 11, 2024, 23:13:so in other words you gots nothing, so you are just going to go with theoretical scenarios. like someone is going to spend the time and effort it takes to develop a hack that can only target 1 million PCs that have this game installed. You know why apple computers don't have viruses? Because their market share is so small it isn't worth it.Jim wrote on Feb 11, 2024, 21:27:
so.... aside from rootkits being "scary" - how has one ever affected people? yeah, no doubt "computer slowdown" but they say that about everything so the phrase is meaningless.
Oh my sweet summer child.
Rootkits, by their very definition, are malware. There have been many, many rootkits over the years that have affected systems and people and the sum total damages from them trends well in to the billions of dollars. They are one of the most, if not THE most, invidious types of malware around. I'm going to drop a layman level explanation of rootkits for you:
A rootkit does exactly what it says on the tin. It grants the process total access to the root of the system (root on Linux or ring 0 on Windows). Because it is now an authoritative system process, it can do whatever it wants without restriction to that system...often without the average user ever knowing it is even there. Credential theft? Easy. Use that system as a node in a DDoS network? Easy. Cryptomining? Easy. Plus many other nefarious uses.
Undoubtedly someone is going to say "But it's from Sony/whatever company they are doing business with!" The problem though is all it takes is for one dedicated person to find an exploit for it and then craft a hijack for it. Now that person has access, and can sell that access, to whatever system has that particular rootkit version installed. They don't have to do any real additional work because the targets already completed 70% of the work for them.
There are people whom still compute like it's the early 2000s and they are idiots in my opinion. We face a plethora of APTs on a level never before seen in human history. We face a corporate landscape that is exploitive to the point that it would make robber barons of the 19th century green with envy while also simultaneously putting as little money as possible, and almost zero foresight in to, protecting the data and access they have to consumers. There's a reason the concept of zero trust is such a massive deal now. Not only can you not trust third parties, you really shouldn't even be trusting the devices on your own network.
There are people who are going to call me paranoid and that's OK. I have been paid well for many years to be as paranoid as possible without having a psychotic break with reality. But I can also say that in 24 years, I have never had a single breach or infection on any system for which I have direct authority and responsibility. I didn't get that track record by being complacent and saying "Oh this rootkit is fine because it is from Name Brand Company."
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