Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)DD
Posts
0
Comments
437
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Opera was useful to me at three very specific points in time for very specific reasons:

    When I built my first PC out of old scrap parts in the early 2000s, the only halfway modern browser that was still compatible with Windows 95 and a 486 CPU was Opera. Not the latest version, but new enough to be usable. This version, which came with a permanent toolbar urging users to purchase a full license, already had tabs.

    I did not have broadband Internet until 2006. Even 56k modems didn't work with the awful telephone line we had - I had to make do with 48k. The proxy service with compression Opera came with was the only way to browse then current websites without waiting for half an hour for a page to load.

    When I bought my first touchscreen phone in early 2009, the LG KP500, a Java-based phone with only 2G and no WiFi that pretended it was a smartphone, Opera Mini was the only browser that was usable, again thanks to its proxy service.

    Outside of these niche use cases, I never saw a reason to use Opera instead of Firefox. While it was an important innovator in the beginning, for me personally at least, it has always been nothing but an "emergency" browser and ever since it was bought out by a Chinese firm and switched over to Chromium, there was no reason left to use it other than brand attachment.

  • The thing is though, I think he's right. There is no younger alternative to him that has any chance of winning an election right now. At best, some are popular among college-aged males, a group that thinks they are far more important and numerous than they actually are (see also: Bernie-Bros).

  • There were also TV shows that would have a little flickering box in the top right corner. You would attach a diode to the screen and by the end of the show, you had a working program recorded to cassette.

    Programs were not just distributed on cassettes and via radio and TV broadcasts. There was software distributed on vinyl records as well. The very first programs distributed on CD were stored on CDs as audio.

    All of this was done, because floppy disks and especially floppy drives were hideously expensive - and hard drives even more so. It wasn't unusual for a floppy drive to cost more than the machine it was attached to. Everyone had a cassette recorder at home though and knew how to operate it.

    If this seems cumbersome, consider that one of the most important software distribution methods for home computers in the '70s and '80s was through so-called listings: Magazines would print the program code and you manually typed it in, line by line. We are talking cryptic assembler code, not something an ordinary human being could actually understand:

    https://i.imgur.com/NW4Mhp6.jpg

    If you were very lucky, there were checksums. If not, have fun going through every single one of the hundreds to thousands of lines of code, trying to find that one mistake you made. In case you were a kid on a tight budget, it wasn't uncommon that you didn't actually have any storage media to save this code to, so if you wanted to play a game, you had to type it in anew every time.

    Even if you stored it on cassette tape, loading times on for example the C64 were typically between 15 and 30 minutes, if it loaded correctly.

    Early home computing was wild.

  • It sold reasonably well in Germany, just like other titles from this studio. It was never as popular as any of the Gothic or even Risen games though, but a small community still formed around it.

    I had no issues with it when it launched, on fairly modest hardware. Quite an enjoyable open world game with great world design and somewhat clunky, if highly skill-based combat and movement, as to be expected from this studio. The way the jet pack is a core part of the game design is remarkable, if you actually make use of it as intended.

  • they had a god given right to land they'd never set foot on before in their lifetime

    750,000 Palestinians were expelled from Israel. There are now millions of them due to incredibly high birth rates, all of them recognized by the UN as refugees (which is unique to Palestinians). The vast majority of these people never set foot on the land they claim to be theirs in their lifetime. Using your own logic, does this mean it's not theirs either?

    There were literal Israelis who tried to form an alliance and work with Nazi Germany DURING WW2

    I have no idea what you are talking about. There's the Haavara Agreement from 1933, which enabled the move of tens of thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany to Palestine before the war (but they lost all of their possessions and it was hardly voluntary). There was most certainly absolutely nothing during WW2 - and no Jew ever said that Hitler did nothing wrong nor was there an Israeli prime minister involved in any of this. What a ridiculous story.

    On the other hand, there were literally Palestinians who actually did form an alliance with the Nazis during WW2, encouraging them to push through with the Holocaust and wishing that the Arab world would do the same to their Jews. These people were the Palestinian leadership for decades after the war.

    Do you also disagree with First Nations or Aboriginal peoples who fought against their colonisers?

    There are legitimate and illegitimate forms of resistance. What Palestinian terrorists are doing is not legitimate. They are just oppressors of the Palestine people who wish to amass more power and satisfy their cruelty. There is no noble cause here. Hamas are indistinguishable from the Islamic State in their methods and their goals. Have you ever looked into their actual vision for Palestine, what they want to do with it? They want to create an Islamic caliphate, based on shariah rules and from there on out launch a global Islamist conquest. No rights for women, no rights for any non-Muslim, guaranteed death for any LGBTQ+ person or anyone who doesn't agree with their rule.

  • Did you know that the mastermind behind the October 7 massacres was imprisoned in Israel for the torture and murder of several Palestinians and Israelis? He was able to earn a degree at Tel Aviv University while in prison and when he complained about vision problems, Israeli doctors discovered a brain tumor. They removed it, saving his life. He was later released in a prisoner to hostage exchange.

    One of the surgeon's nephews is among the civilians Hamas abducted.

    Yahya Sinwar was treated with kindness, despite being a monster who literally tortured people to death. He thanked Israel by leading the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. October 7 was not a reaction, it was not justified by anything Israel has or is said to have done, it was not an act of resistance. It was nothing more than an unjustified and unjustifiable act of cruelty, an expression of blind and incurable hatred.

    You know what struck me the most about October 7, outside of the murders, rapes and abductions? It was the initial phase of the attack, when they systematically and expertly struck Israeli border defenses, when they disabled communications systems and overran command centers, when they used every little trick in the book to defeat a far superior opponent. Had it just been that, had they limited their attacks to purely military targets, it would have been an acceptable and legitimate act of armed resistance, one that would not justify the retaliation Gaza is experiencing right now.

    They didn't though.

    All of this was just done so that they could murder and rape their way through peaceful little towns and villages, through a music festival. All of this expert planning and deception, all of the skilled execution was done solely so that they could hurt innocent people who share no blame for anything that the Israeli state has done to Palestinians. Hell, these terrorists were more than happy to torture and kill even fellow Muslims who spoke with the wrong accent or were just unlucky enough to be in their presence. That's just terrorism.

  • Because it's not an invading force and the entire country is not Palestinians and it never was. The other side has always been there and for much longer. Dig anywhere and sooner or later, you'll find something ancient with Hebrew writing on it - Hamas would know, because they make a killing from any ancient artifacts they come across when they are digging their tunnels. Modern Palestinians, while sharing a common ancestry with Jews, are the much later product of the often ignored Arab colonization of the Middle East.

    Yes, there was a massive influx of Jews into Palestine, primarily directly after WW2, because they didn't feel safe anywhere else after they realized that most of their neighbors were happy to either look the other way or betray them outright when the Nazis came for them. Do you really blame these people for wanting their own state where they could be the masters of their own fate and not be under the boots or at best a temporarily tolerated minority that has to think twice about showing their identity in public ever again? There are 49 Muslim-majority nations on this planet, there are 22 Arab majority countries, but only a single tiny one where Jews aren't a minority. Why is this small spec of land such a big problem?

  • This is just nonsensical. A dismantled Israel is an Israel that cannot protect its population anymore. We have seen on October 7 what happens if the IDF is absent for just a few hours. Not to mention, the entire idea is preposterous. Even if it made any sense, it's impossible, because you can't dismantle a nation armed with ICBMs and the strongest military in the Middle East. Are you even aware of the fact that just one third of its forces are active in Gaza? The rest are at Israel's borders, in case someone else feels the need to martyr themselves.

    You seem to believe that Hamas is some sort of protector of Palestinians, whereas in reality, they are the polar opposite. At best they are a magnet for Israeli retaliation. Their mere presence comes with guaranteed destruction, both from the large percentage of their own weapons that fail instead of reaching their randoms targets and Israeli strikes - and at this point, Hamas are so incompetent on their home turf that the biggest actual danger to IDF soldiers is friendly fire instead of these wannabe martyrs.