deweydecibel @ deweydecibel @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

They don't actually know. If they think something looks suspicious, they do an audit, and then they know.

The vast majority of people's taxes fillings are taken on good faith.

Except the federal government literally this year started instituting a free, public filling service to get around TurboTax. And they fought it tooth and nail.

There is a conspiracy, but it's not a federal government conspiracy. It's just a bad system that certain companies conspired to take advantage of.

With Windows 10, you had much more control over the start menu. Windows 11 is further eroding control. That's why they absolutely refuse to allow you to disable the Recommended section.

The ability to disable it is present in the OS, but it's restricted to Enterprise versions. Disabling an unneeded and annoying UI element is a Premium feature now. And as everyone said when they made that clear a few months ago, "that's where the ads will go".

They'll probably let you disable them, at least for now. But the fact you can't disable the place for the ads is telling. We'll see how they feel about letting you disable those ads in a few years.

Now can we please get them back in phones?

I think you're probably going to end up getting into a lot of the metaphysical/philosophical/quasi-magical aspects of the force with that question.

The force isn't just about how many midichlorians you have in your blood. The midichlorians help facilitate the physical connection to the energy of the force, but one still needs to be open to it mentally and spiritually. It is almost routinely demonstrated that connecting to the force requires discipline, meditation, and "clearing the mind".

I'd argue that because the Borg are connected to the collective, they would be incapable of forming that connection. Drones don't really have a mind or a spirit of their own. They can't clear their mind. Literally, they can't stop the constant stream of information, so long as they're connected to the collective. And that's to say nothing of the spiritual aspect.

Really, the force connects all living things. In a way, it's a kind of a collective of its own. I feel like the Borg would have to be disconnected from their collective to feel the connection to another, but once you disconnect a drone, it's ceases to be Borg.

You can definitely overpower shields. Shields still need energy, and there are other factors involved on calculating shield integrity. Combat in Star Trek routinely shows bridge officers announcing the current strength of the shields as a percentage that drops as it absorbs more impact.

QED, the shield has its limits, so presumably a sufficiently powerful enough weapon could overcome those limits, possibly even with a single shot.

I think the question is would a shot from the Death Star, after completely depleting the cube's shields, hit the cube at full power? Or would the shield have "absorbed" enough of the hit that the cube might survive? Or does the shield perhaps completely nullify a single shot, even if it is depleted by doing so?

I was going to say, Ready Player One is not a great movie, but it does at least have Spielberg at the helm, and while late-career Spielberg is a shadow of his former self, the movie is directed competently and interesting enough visually.

Not least of all because you can actually see and enjoy all the various IP in action, rather than just have them name dropped like in the book. When there's a sea of interesting or recognizable things on screen, that does a lot to help distract from how terrible the plot is.

But even at its worst, the movie is a tolerable popcorn flick. Turn your brain off and enjoy some pop culture references, then forget it all an hour later.

Because the book is just terrible. It's an absolute slog, a lot of the dialogue is embarrassing, the prose is uninspired, it's overloaded with explanations of UIs and unnecessary, long winded ramblings about the various pop culture references. The movie at least has the benefit of just putting a thing on the screen, the book has to describe all of this shit, and it's tediously done.

Which is to say nothing of just how terrible the plot is in general but more than enough people have gone off about that.

Twilight for nerdy boys is the best description I've ever heard of it, but at least Twilight isn't as gratuitously masturbatory.

That's a pretty standard position nowadays from a lot of different tech companies. They can't possibly give the user any freedoms, because it might compromise something. It's this broad assumption that all users that refuse to surrender control of their device should never be trusted and therefore not have their desires respected.

Like how Google continues to actively punish users that claw back control of their devices through custom roms or rooting, and of course Apple has been doing that forever. Microsoft is threatening more invasive restrictions in windows, too. It's why shit like integrity checking is continuing to be pushed.

The pattern is very clear: you are required to let them stick their arm up your device's ass to participate in our "modern" tech space.

It's the equivalent of a store that forces all customers to strip naked before entering to prevent shoplifting. You of course don't have to enter that store, but that store has also run virtually all the other stores out of business, and it's the only one that carries the specific brand of chips you're looking for.

The Jetsons:

George Jetson went to work everyday at Spacely Sprockets and pushed a button. A single button. That was his whole job. The whole businesses was automated to the point George did not have to do anything except sit and press the button.

And he made enough money in that job to support a family of 4 in a nice house, as the sole bread winner.

Imagine that: A future where the benefits of automation technology are not solely for the wealthy and business owners. Automation and AI making people's jobs easier, instead of simply replacing them. Businesses that employ people to do jobs that could be automated, but don't, because people need living wages regardless of how easy the work has become.

Yeah, I've seen a bunch of these guys comics, and they're all like this. The art is almost superfluous. An afterthought.

It's the kind of comic where it feels like the word bubbles were made first, then some random, generic art came second.

Be thankful it didn't take an explosive shit.

Why does there need to be a reason?

The question you should be asking is why does reddit care what I'm doing on my own computer?

Firstly, check if certain apps you use from Google Play are on there too. Some, like Bitwarden, Wikipedia, or Jellyfin, are on fdroid too without Google's bullshit. Some even have functionality on fdroid that they're not allowed to have on the Play store.

After that, the Fossify suite of simple apps are very basic, no bullshit, non-Google system apps. Gallery in particular is popular.

If you like Sid Meiers Civilization, search for Unciv.

NewPipe for ad-free YouTube.

TrackerControl will let you block ads system wide. It's kinda touchy and takes some finagling, though.

Recently discovered it myself. Absolutely excellent.

They say that, but I'll believe it when I see the implementation.

It's still going to artificially inflate Edge's numbers from tech illiterate users that don't know how to change it. There's a significant number of users out there that will put up with Microsoft shitting down their throat before bothering to expend the few minutes it would take to learn how to change the settings themselves. The few that do try to figure it out will find Edge directing them to Bing which will make every effort to convince them not to do it. Meanwhile, Edge will steal all their bookmarks and tabs from Chrome, in order to further encourage users to just give up and use Edge.

It's all calculated "dark patterns" shit, and it works. Microsoft counts on these people being so easy to corral.

And you can bet your ass after they implement this, they will push an update that "accidentally" resets the default back to Edge for everyone. Just to "clear the board".

it stops malware from doing it

There are many different ways to prevent that apart from straight up removing the functionality. Another tactic Microsoft uses is trying to convince you there is only ever one way to secure the system and they "have no choice" if they want to keep their users safe.

It's like saying the only way to keep a plane from being hi-jacked is to handcuff every passenger to their chair. It's bullshit.

Urban dictionary only works when the people using the terms go there to define them and upvoted the definitions.

And young people nowadays don't do anything online if it isn't an app.

They can't. They would have if they could.

At this point I've just abandoned the start menu all together. PowerToys Run has effectively become how I launch anything that isn't on the taskbar, tied to one of the buttons on my mouse or a keyboard shortcut. Everything search on a different shortcut replaces the built-in search.

Of course that's just how I cope on my mandatory-Windows 11 work laptop. At home (and I know this is almost a meme at this point), I'm slowly getting myself accustomed to Linux alongside Windows 10 until that's no longer feasible.

And the knowledge that he's going to be doing that will make most major donors hesitate.