I mean, it would make sense.

The only way a conspiracy theorist can be swayed is if being right isn’t a win condition. If there’s no other person to feel better than when you’re debating, something might actually sink in.

“Here’s how to turn on a new feature whose settings your devices will magically forget for no reason once or twice a year, and occasionally lock your UI for several minutes while phoning home. Also make sure you replace ALL of your devices frequently with ones with the newest Android versions, because we’re CERTAINLY not going to support this feature on anything older than the jar of spaghetti sauce in your fridge, which you’ll find out when one of them just stops being compatible, which will happen at the WORST possible time when you’re in an important meeting or having your last phone call with your dying grandma or something.”

Here’s to the Losers in my ass

What if you’re pirating to avoid agreeing to an EULA that lets a giant corporation murder your family members?

In the sense that it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time, yes. Exactly the same thing. Opportunities aren’t equal - they disproportionately effect those who happen to be positioned to take advantage of them. If I’m giving away a free car right now to whoever comes by, and you’re not nearby, you’re shit out of luck. If AI didn’t HAPPEN to use massively multi-threaded computing, Nvidia would still be artificial scarcity-ing themselves to price gouging CoD players. The fact you don’t see it for whatever reason doesn’t make it wrong. NOBODY at Nvidia was there 5 years ago saying “Man, when this new technology hits we’re going to be rolling in it.” They stumbled into it by luck. They don’t get credit for forseeing some future use case. They got lucky. That luck got them first mover advantage. Intel had that too. Look how well it’s doing for them. Nvidia’s position over AMD in this space can be due to any number of factors… production capacity, driver flexibility, faster functioning on a particular vector operation, power efficiency… hell, even the relationship between the CEO of THEIR company and OpenAI. Maybe they just had their salespeople call first. Their market dominance likely has absolutely NOTHING to do with their GPU’s having better graphics performance, and to the extent they are, it’s by chance - they did NOT predict generative AI, and their graphics cards just HAPPEN to be better situated for SOME reason.

Go ahead and design a better pickaxe than them, we’ll wait…

Same argument:

“He didn’t earn his wealth. He just won the lottery.”

“If it’s so easy, YOU go ahead and win the lottery then.”

I’m sure they’ll get RIGHT on doing something about it.

Take my upvote and get out of my sight.

Well, you are forgetting another category, which is incitement to violence. That falls under the same blanket speech as the aforementioned “yelling fire in a crowded theater”, and in 2024, the law is far, far behind the danger that this poses in most countries, limiting most governments in many cases to trying to stop each individual act inspired by the source rather than being able to go after the source directly. Someone does not have to directly commit violence to be responsible for it, and while I COMPLETELY agree with you that this IS a slippery slope that COULD be abused, in this case, the entire process is transparent and public with multiple exhausted avenues for appeal, and in the end, it doesn’t even SILENCE the users in question OR request they change their speech or ideas, it simply denies them access to a particular platform. As to the banning of X, even if you disagree with the particular banning of these 7 accounts, the removal from the country isn’t so much about free speech element as the idea that X has made it clear and public that they have no intention of obeying the law in Brazil, and it’s unquestioned that there ARE times when it is absolutely clear that a government SHOULD have the right to shut down information. What if X had a post next week giving Lula’s location, itinerary, security details, and clear lines of sight at a rally, and the government demanded legally that it be taken down? X has shown that if it disagrees with the legal judgement that this information should be taken down, they may refuse. It is totally reasonable for the Brazilian government NOT to accommodate the platform given its stance.

You make it seem like this is an epidemic of silencing.

First of all, this was 7 users. Secondly, it was such a controversial request that it had to be escalated all the way to the country’s Supreme Court. Thirdly, the request and its consequences were then reevaluated, and all 5 members of the Supreme Court review unanimously upheld the decision.

There’s obviously no such thing as a perfect system, but that is about as close to a fair review process as one can get, and I would argue it’s better than the alternatives of “the whims of the platform owner” or “completely unmoderated anarchy”.

Furthermore, they’re NOT silenced. This is deplatforming. Absolutely NOTHING is stopping these 7 people from setting up their own Mastodon instances and writing whatever they want. That’s not an option for the jailed dissidents X turned over.

Lastly, Brazil is a sovereign democratic nation within its rights to enforce its laws as it sees fit within its borders, and if the people find it that egregious they can change their leaders. X is an unaccountable cudgel of a single man who is taking it upon himself to conduct his own judicial review of the laws of a sovereign nation and act with impunity. If he were a nation, this would be an act of war. The sheer gall of it is utterly appalling.

It is well established that the right to free speech is NOT unlimited, and the “fire in a crowded theater” people tend to be the loudest complainers. Brazil is a sovereign nation entitled to its own interpretation of how to handle free speech protections, and X has repeatedly made the claim they obey the laws of the countries in which it operates.

Also, it’s disingenuous of anybody to take X’s side on this over free speech when the past two years they have complied with basically every single request from every government for personal identifying information for any user. People are serving multi-decade prison sentences for their speech because X has refused to stand up to, for example, the government of Saudi Arabia when demanding the identities of state critics.

So it’s okay to kowtow to governments when they want to violate the right to privacy, but not when they want to shut down speech which is outside a sovereign nation’s definition of free speech? And let’s be clear - we were talking about 7 users.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say it’s reasonable for a company to violate ONE right for a government under absolutely unethical circumstances and not another under SLIGHTLY debatable circumstances and expect anybody to take your position seriously. X is not a freedom fighter, and it’s not an actor for justice. It’s a partisan cesspool run by a man who is stacking the deck for the side he wants when it serves his interests.

I don’t get your point… are you suggesting NOT mind-melding is unethical?

Because it IS dangerous. Trek lore has established that mind melds carry the risk of neurological damage, emotional overload, and Panar Syndrome in the melder.

And even if all of those risks are mitigated, mind-melds are incredibly personal and Vulcans don’t engage in them flippantly.

People post this like the conclusion isn’t absolutely correct.

PM and sales, eh?

So you’re saying his lack of respect for programmers isn’t new, but has spanned his whole career?

You’re right of course, but you’re also wasting your breath.

In 2024 the business sociopaths have so many people so twisted and screwed up in the head that they can’t even CONCEIVE of the idea of a person or organization focused on delivering a product sustainably rather than “MONEY MONEY MONEY, NOM NOM NOM!” for eternity.

If they are shit at communicating it will affect share prices which could end a company. They have to say the right things at the right times or they could potentially break laws by saying the wrong things.

I notice, very glaringly, you didn’t mention a SINGLE thing about the company running efficiently, being profitable, producing something of value…

It’s not that the company could end if it doesn’t do well at what it does. It’s that the company could end if fickle, short-term focused asshats aren’t happy, and to keep them happy, you need a head fickle, short-term focused asshat at the helm.

God, I wish every company could just be private.

Don’t be silly.

Parents writing that letter, while misguided, is still them trying to protect their child, and so has an element of selflessness, and their hearts are in the right place.

This is like him PERSONALLY threatening people for not being friends with him, which is way creepier and unsettling.

Oh, absolutely. There are good reasons why that wouldn’t be an option.

But those would get in the way of the joke, so I’m choosing to ignore them.