Burrito of Peace wrote on Aug 14, 2024, 22:52:

NKD wrote on Aug 14, 2024, 22:12:
Just keep posting images of Musk engaged in gay interracial porn, he'll put censorship on that thing so fast.

Or the image of him balding before he got the hair plugs.
Or the image of him trying to pretend he was in the Matrix.

For such a wannabe edgelord, he is one thin skinned motherfucker.

Dude changed his entire political belief system because he wasn't invited to a party at the white house.
Could be a little bit thin skinned yeah.

Ah crap I already own like every game in that bundle

When this all went down I was telling people on Reddit that dude was obviously guilty to anyone with the faintest hint of street smarts and got a lot of comments saying I was stupid which were then later deleted.

cappy wrote on Aug 13, 2024, 20:25:

Eldaron Imotholin wrote on Aug 13, 2024, 11:56:
It's all just a disgusting, fucking wasteland. Trump is a clown, Republicans are fools, Biden is so senile it's elder abuse by now, Harris has nothing. The media is biased as fuck. Maybe I see this because I'm an immigrant and brought some of that measured cynicism from Europe. Otherwise, I have literally no clue whatsoever how everyone here can be so fucking partisan they can't see the shit they're being fed.

I swear, even if both nominees are shit eating chimpanzees, a strong Republican base will still gleefully vote for the red ape and the Democrats for the blue ape.

Politics in the US is like a fucking football game, with the bombastic campaigns, the billions in ads, the irrational partisanship that's fine in sports but disgusting in politics, etc. I fucking love the US for a million reasons, but this part of the culture I hate vehemently.

/rant 😂

It's the system we are stuck with. The founders didn't have many examples to choose from back in the late 1700s. So they went with the republic system because there were no parliamentary systems like became so prevalent in the 20th century (parliament in the 1700s existed, but was considerably different than the power of the parliament and prime ministers in today's systems).

The founders also went with a system that guaranteed a great deal of deadlock and difficulty in getting things done - because it perfectly mirrored how deadlocked the founders and the colonies they represented were. Nowadays, the "checks and balances" are sold as some kind of great benefit of the U.S. system. But the deadlocking means voters are disenchanted and results in pathetically low voter turnout rates compared with many other democratic countries. And the 2-party system leaves many voters feeling disenfranchised.

It's notable that the U.S. formed parliamentary systems for both Germany and Japan following WW2, rather than trying to emulate the supposedly exceptional republic system of government of the U.S. Also notable is the high (pretty much 100%) failure rate of republics which the U.S. has so far managed to avoid. But the actions and stated ambitions of Trump and the extremists in the GOP and conservative movement have certainly laid bare the myths that the U.S. system could be immune to the kind of soft takeovers that have befallen others.

Parliamentary systems are certainly not perfect - no system of government is. But they do provide for more parties and allow voters to better align with their values and interests, and allow for coalition-forming where an outright majority isn't met. And do away with voting directly for the leader, while making it easier for the majority in power to actually accomplish the agenda they were supposedly supposed to do, having attained that majority.

Granted, the founders of the U.S. in many respects distrusted the will of the majority, and certainly there are many instances where the majority is wrong and protecting interests of those with less of a voice is the right thing to do. And yet, most of the other modern world democracies have managed to meet or exceed (and often far earlier) many of the gains eked out by the U.S. system's supposed superiority in protecting minority interests against the will of a majority.

Parliamentary systems are great - you end up with tiny fringe parties, usually a few for the white supremacists, and that keeps them from being an important part of a major party that then ends up needing to be heavily catered to.

Instead we got this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ

The Flying Penguin wrote on Aug 13, 2024, 12:34:
We have 4 years of Trump as an example. The sequel will not come with guard rails.

So yeah, I do think it's an existential crisis. Trump IS that bad, and the cronies he will bring along to actually run things will be even worse.

I am a moderate Independent. I do not knee jerk vote for Dems, although I generally tend to lean to the left. I vote for the person who I think will do the better job, in both national and local elections. I voted for Obama in 2008, and against him for Mitt Romney 2012 (to the consternation of friends and family on the left and the right). I did not vote for Reagan, but I concede that he was probably one of our best Presidents in our lifetime. I did not vote for George Bush Sr, but I concede he was overall a good president in the mold of Reagan.

All politicians are flawed creatures. You pick the best you can, based on your heart.

If you choose not to vote, that is certainly your right. But don't complain about whichever administration winds up in the White House.

I mean there was the time that Reagan sold arms to our enemies for profit and to fund another illegal war in defiance of a bill passed 411-0 and that he signed into law.

Gave a great speech after the Challenger disaster he helped cause. I hope Trump has a real good one for Boeing.

Raised taxes more times than any other president - after his initial tax cuts for the rich because he thought they'd spur economic growth, but the rich tend to hoard so instead we tripled our national deficit.

Didn't really handle the AIDS crisis particularly well either I'd say, and his press secretary accusing reporters of being gay for even asking about it probably was not one of our finest moments as a nation.

Also invaded U.K. territory and forgot to notify Thatcher. Could have been the alzheimer's.

Also wasn't that around the time that the most influential Republican strategist of all time (Lee Atwater) was recorded admitting the Republican party was tailored to appeal to racists because they were a huge voting bloc?

The Nixon tapes definitely let you know how Reagan felt about race personally.

Also just a little weird for a president to have a court astrologer?

Kxmode wrote on Aug 12, 2024, 21:13:

Sheik Rattle Enroll wrote on Aug 12, 2024, 20:01:
I want a terminator crpg. Why can't I have that?

Would that take place in present day or the future war?

Oh man, both I guess, time travel seems like a prerequisite here

I want a terminator crpg. Why can't I have that?

A google search would have found it for you, but try "Elon Musk child sexual abuse material".
Or "Elon Musk Dom Luchre" or "Elon Musk Australian Parliament".

Cutter wrote on Aug 9, 2024, 20:47:
Guy's a bottom feeder. How can anyone be surprised by any of it. All the mouth breathers who are on board with this shit deserve what they get and more.

I mean is Elon Musk a bottom feeder for literally personally unbanning and then paying a guy who posted child pornography to his social media platform?

I personally save my hatred for him and not the guy building wells in Africa regardless of the fact that he makes a lot of money.

Musk illegally immigrated to this country and then complained about how little money he made from the briefcase full of precious gems he smuggled in, now rants about how evil illegal immigrants are.

There's way way way better people to hate than Mr. Beast out there.

Mr. Tact wrote on Aug 8, 2024, 17:21:

RogueSix wrote on Aug 8, 2024, 17:05:
And let's face it: Without US pressure there would not be a TSMC in Arizona because TSMC, among many other reasons, knew that they won't find the same working culture as in Taiwan anywhere else on the planet.

I absolutely agree with most everything you said, the cultural differences play a huge part in this. However, I am less sure about this last sentence. I mean, obviously it was unlikely to happen without US interest and support, but isn't in the interest of TSMC to expand outside Taiwan? I don't know what the likelihood of China taking over Taiwan is, but it ain't zero. And if that happens in a hostile way, then having plants in the US, Germany and elsewhere is going to be very good thing.

I'm sure that factors in but also that people will be more willing to defend something if it's unique.

If I was a lawyer for the advertisers I'd point out how Musk personally interceded to unban someone who distributed child pornography and then even paid him for that month of content.

Seems unlikely a court would agree that Musk should be allowed to force advertisers to advertise under those circumstances.

Tom wrote on Aug 6, 2024, 16:11:
I'm not sure why people like PowerShell. It seems like a total failure as both a shell (interactive use) and a scripting language. The syntax is ugly as hell, verbose, and unintuitive despite trying to use plain English names for most things. Pretty much anything other than Perl would be better IMO. It can't decide whether it wants to be more like DOS, UNIX, or its own weird thing, generally opting for a "worst of all worlds" approach. Its versioning/deployment has been a trainwreck, with the version built into Windows hopelessly obsolete for stupid reasons. And of course "Windows PowerShell" and "PowerShell" are totally different things that install side-by-side. WTF? Oh right, it's Microsoft.

I dunno, I've got a script that's 150 lines that creates an entire UI and uses winget and chocolatey to pull from a csv file that contains a table of ~100 pieces of software.

Bash scripting is fine too, I use it all the time at work, but I don't find it to be like vastly superior in some meaningful way.

But yes it is mildly annoying that Windows Terminal and the newer powershell don't come automagically.

Powershell is pretty dope, I use it to automate a lot of machine setup.
You can also even create GUIs in it, and GPT is pretty good at writing scripts for it.

Beamer wrote on Aug 5, 2024, 14:05:
By the way, the guy calling us "bots" is claiming that the first neuralink patient could play chess "faster than people could see the pieces move."

For the record, here is the video. I will let you decide if the guy calling people bots has actually watched it himself and seen that the cursor moves at a normal pace and all the patient is capable of is simply playing like a normal human, as it gave him the ability to control the cursor, not to think faster, or if he simply is parroting bad information he was too lazy to look into himself.

People can also control a mouse cursor like that with non-invasive headsets that monitor brain electrical activity. I bought one 10 years ago for a couple hundred dollars.

There's a lot of promise in brain implants, but you're right, it isn't perhaps earth shattering to do for surgery+millions what failed to sell through at best buy at the $200 level.

RedEye9 wrote on Aug 5, 2024, 13:00:
Whatever happened to the lawsuit Elon filed against twitter when he was trying to weasel out of buying twitter.
litigious is as litigious does

It made me a bunch of money!

I figured even Elon couldn't weasel his way out of a contract by saying he failed to think things through and bought when stock was down 20% off what he had promised to pay for it.

To be fair to the people who priced it 20% off, seems like he can get away with basically anything so I was taking a risk there.

Timmeh wrote on Aug 5, 2024, 13:34:
look at all the replies from all the programmed little lefty bots.

Totally PATHETIC.

Pretty brave to take that stance right after reading about how he personally unbanned and wrote a check to someone for distributing child pornography on his platform just because they were a popular right-wing influencer (Dom Luchre).

But I guess I've just been programmed by the left to believe that even the richest people in the world shouldn't distribute images of toddlers being sexually abused and then murdered.

RedEye9 wrote on Aug 4, 2024, 22:02:

Sheik Rattle Enroll wrote on Aug 4, 2024, 21:59:
Can you help me understand if you are for or against him unbanning someone for posting pornography of a child who was later killed just because they were popular with the right wing?

What with Elon's hourly shuttles to Mars, those things can be easily overlooked.

But seriously, you need to provide sourcing for who posted what and who was killed. Because that sounds beyond bizarre.
and if you say google it I will reach through this computer and ...

here you go!

The Watcher wrote on Aug 4, 2024, 18:50:

Overon wrote on Aug 4, 2024, 14:04:
Elmo is the Peter Molyneux, the Todd Howard, the Chris Roberts of over-promising and under-delivering. Except when Howard, Molyneux, and Roberts lie and mislead, they do so on more trivial matters like video games. When Elmo lies and misleads its usually more serious. If you look at the actual research, Neuralink is behind other companies with the same technology. Elmo likes to come upon on the scene and pretend he's innovating or he invented some technology when in reality he's just a money guy. It's the actual engineers and technicians, the do-ers of his company that are doing the work and others have gotten there first, he's following their footsteps.

Unfortunately people don't spend the time to find out what the scene was like before Elmo said "me too" and they think that Musk is doing something innovative and a lot of the media laps it up because they know Elmo will get their articles attention. Meanwhile there smaller less known companies toiling away in Elmo's media shadow that are actually innovating and pushing the boundaries, doing the actual science and technology work.

Are you ok? The guy sends rockets into space daily, has his own global internet service, car company, AI, grid battery system, and brain implant program for paralyzed people. That is not overpromising. What did you do today? Did you at least trim your neckbeard?

Can you help me understand if you are for or against him unbanning someone for posting pornography of a child who was later killed just because they were popular with the right wing?

The thing I don't get about Musk is why the world keeps forgetting he unbanned a guy who posted child pornography to his platform solely because he was popular with right wing influencers. Australian parliament made X answer for it, but for some reason no other country in the world was willing to stand up to him.

He's running around talking about illegal immigrants now and nobody seems to care that he was one and he and his brother bragged about it in an interview.

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Jul 19, 2024, 22:34:
I've always wondered how big of a following River City Ransom had, globally. I know there have been 5-6 games in the series/universe, maybe more but.. the early ones came out in the 80s, surely this is mostly an old farts game?

Are you counting like all the Kunio games? Wikipedia's page on that topic has a list about 10 pages long.
I think you're confusing "games released in the U.S." with "games in the franchise as a whole", and then still undercounting?