floofloof

the only way to stop this is for entire swaths of people to quit their jobs.

There's a middle ground: unionization and strikes. Not always successful but more effective than just complaining.

Age verification done the right way does not require providing any personal info. I 100% oppose forcing people to share personal data with private companies. This is not what we’re talking about here.

Handing your government ID and other personal data to private companies is exactly how current proposals for online age verification work. It could be done without this, but that's not what governments and corporations are pushing for, because the goal is easier surveillance. Take a look at some of the problems with Persona, for example:

https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/persona-age-verification-surveillance-biometrics-government-reporting-2026/

The next step will be to make more essential services online only, so people have to use the internet.

They probably know this perfectly well. But there are corporations and their lobbyists to think of, and they'd much prefer it if ordinary people weren't able to build their own devices and spare parts, but instead had to buy them at inflated prices.

Into fascism. But also from fascism.

That has always been true, but the prices are higher for all tiers now.

Yeah but then they wouldn't get to collect people's biometric data to sell to the highest bidder.

Sounds great but is sold out already.

Yeah I don't really do new technology any more. I'm more into keeping the old machines running as long as possible.

Painfully expensive, like all computer hardware these days.

Wilful ignorance was a key element in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theory of stupidity. It was the aggressive resistance to learning that he thought made the stupid person especially dangerous. And we see this characteristic in Trump, his sycophants like Hegseth, and his followers.

AKA "Microsoft's QA".

From that 2019 article:

Fox News host Pete Hegseth has said on air that he has not washed his hands for 10 years because "germs are not a real thing".
Speaking on Fox and Friends, Hegseth said the infectious micro-organisms did not exist because they could not be seen with the naked eye.

This is a man who attended more than one very expensive university and didn't learn a thing, then said this idiocy, immediately after which the world was hit by a pandemic, and again Hegseth didn't learn a thing. The guy must be terminally stupid.

Anyway, if you ever have the misfortune to meet Pete Hegseth, don't shake his shit-covered hand. Although he probably doesn't believe in wiping his ass or showering either. After all, a dirty butthole isn't real because you can't see it without using one of these new-fangled mirror gadgets.

What a coincidence that all the people getting fired are women.

It's probably lobbying by corporations who feel threatened by people being able to make and repair their own stuff. Also possibly gun manufacturers, and perhaps the government's desire to spy on everything people are doing with tech. These things are always dressed up as safety measures.

It's almost enough to make Chuck Schumer mumble "Careful now!"

Is it that technology is evil though, or is it the people who own the technology, or the economic system in which this all takes place?

Just once I'd like to see the world's companies react to dumb local laws by refusing to sell their products where the laws apply. Problem is, other states and countries always introduce matching stupid laws soon enough. California, for example, is introducing a similar restriction on 3D printers.

I don't really understand why people with repositories that are vulnerable to DMCA takedowns persist in hosting them with Microsoft. But then I don't really understand why so many open-source projects opt for Microsoft's Git hosting anyway, when there are alternatives without the Microsoft.

I'm all for challenging Adobe, but the journalist should ask how and why these competing products are free. What are the implications of that in the long run? I was happy to pay a reasonable price for the Affinity suite, and it becoming free actually worries me. Free isn't something a company does unless they're going to crank up the price later, or carry ads, or spy on you, or steal your creations, or lock you in, or all of the above. It's pretty shallow how the article just stops at "free is great".