Shhh!

You’re not supposed to say the quiet part out loud!

Just keep pretending our societies are equitable.

$42 million dollars. Basically nothing in terms of Google’s bottom line.

They’re doing this because they WANT to.

One point of hope is that they mandated cross platform chat compatibility too, and every platform is just… Ignoring it and not doing it with zero consequences.

Maybe this just also won’t happen.

They’re going to get stopped either way. A flotilla of 27 civilian ships isn’t sneaking past one of the most advanced, heavily armed navies in the world, no matter how “sneaky” they try to be.

At least this way they’re on record for stopping the delivery.

Let’s not forget it’s convenient for conservative parties of BOTH sides to have some red meat to throw to their country’s nationalists. Normal, everyday people scarcely have the time or interaction to have strong feelings about another country whose people they don’t encounter that often, independent of history. But when you stir up your constituents to unite against an out-group, you can get them out to the polls and have a nice convenient threat to accuse the other guys of being soft against. They will become real friends when the real threat from China is greater than the political benefit of using each other to keep a united nationalist wing.

What could possibly go wrong with pushing the two most resource rich and populous countries in the world onto the same team aligned against you? I’m surprised nobody’s thought of such a winning strategy before.

Where would you ever find someone who both watches anime AND plays video games?

Talk about a unicorn.

What if what you want to do is be elitist about hot dog condiments?

Gregor Samsa entered the chat

And in a SANE world, somebody who learned a lesson would be using their knowledge so we don’t keep repeating the same crap over and over again.

Toyoake in Aichi

That’s fine. They should be LEGALLY required to allow ME to make that call and offer an avenue to allow me to remove it all.

Nobody is saying everyone’s machine MUST be completely open and insecure.

But that’s a far cry from giving me no recourse to make MY hardware do what I want it to.

And before anybody screams “liability”, they’re going to hold you to an EULA anyway - throw a couple lines in there.

I feel like all of this is a red herring.

How do Windows users fix a problem? They Google the problem and get the solution.

The EXACT same thing works in Linux. Has for a long, long time.

The only time it DOESN’T is when you either don’t know what you’re trying to do, in which case no power on EARTH is going to be able to help you, or you’re trying to do something so obscure and obtuse that a Windows user wouldn’t be doing it either.

What a thumbnail. Look at these proud parents.

Extra time! I wouldn’t have given us 5.

That’s WAY later than I thought!

This is cause for celebration! 🎉