This right here. Companies like Google effectively have infinite money and it's not a big deal for them to pay off the (usually miniscule) fines that they get hit with.

This this this. So much this. Canadians do not understand just how catastrophic of a fuckup that was. The consequences of that have not yet been truly felt but it will be horrendous when they are. Canada's electoral system is a goddamn joke and, in my opinion, is barely even a democracy at all because of it.

Just like the US, we are one 51% vote away from a bad actor gaining absolute power and tearing down everything Canadians have known and loved. Hell, even right now we have a majority government that the people did not vote for.

Kagi is highly intriguing but their prices put me off every time. $15CAD per month for a search engine is a hard pill to swallow. That's a higher cost than basically any other digital subscription that I pay or have paid at any point.

They won't, but it's also partly our fault too. Canadian telecom companies are legendary for their scumbag behaviour and monopolistic practices and we, as Canadians, 100% understand and just accept that they are corrupt and nothing will get done about it. Our collective response to getting fleeced is to just shrug and pay the higher prices while bitching about it.

We, as a nation, put up more of a fuss over fucking vaccines than we ever have about our telecom companies robbing us blind.

Makes sense; a lot of our media is owned or otherwise influenced by the Americans.

The most basic thing you can do to start with is to contact your elected representatives and demand action, and I'd be willing to bet most people haven't even done that. Make a stink; contact the media, the government, and get others to do the same. Start building a unified demand for change that becomes impossible to ignore.

Escalate from there as needed. Corruption doesn't go away because you asked it nicely. It has to be forced out like cancer from the body.

I'm lightly active in the headphone enthusiast space. Even in the more light-hearted circles there is still an elevated amount of placebo bullshit and stubborn belief in things that verifiably make zero difference.

It's rather fascinating in a way. I've been in and out of various hobbies over the course of my life but there is just something about audio that attracts an atmosphere of wilful ignorance and bad actors that prey on it.

Microsoft has gone all-in on AI to the detriment of basically every other aspect of their business. They are in deep deep shit when the bubble finally pops.

There are. Heaps of them.

The US is just a big place and very spread out. And the ruling government and its media conglomerates are trying to keep them out of the media.

Kind of a tangent, but properly encoded 1080p video with a decent bitrate actually looks pretty damn good.

A big problem is that we've gotten so used to streaming services delivering visual slop, like YouTube's 1080p option which is basically just upscaled 720p and can even look as bad as 480p.

In the short term: Yes. Unless the US military decides to remove a sitting president but that is extremely unlikely.

In the long term: Yes, but also no. Fascism is extremely inefficient and expensive and the US is destroying its own economy and pushing away all of its allies and former trade partners. Things will get very rough but it will not last forever. There will be a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done.

Unfortunately this has been a long time coming. The United States has never really been united and it was only a matter of time before another possible civil war loomed on the horizon.

The Convoy being a rights movement was a skin-deep excuse for what it actually was. It did not take long at all before it turned into a general anti-vax fascist movement that saw significant funding and support coming up from the US.

If we lived in any sort of reasonable or responsible world then these cars would be banned from public roads all over the globe.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Slop coding.

Buying a game post-launch:

• Better prices; often on sale.
• Fixed and patched up.
• Extra content often included.
• DRM often removed.

No brainer, imo.

Canadians hatred of Trump is burning hot right now. We vividly remember all of the threats Trump made of invading Canada.

and here PP is celebrating Trump invading another country. This man couldn't be more tone-deaf if he tried.

Social media and news is overwhelmingly controlled or otherwise influenced/flooded by the right or those acting on their behalf.

What the fuck

Goddamn Dell of all companies is the only one that seems to get it. I'm shocked.

Welcome to the world outside of your own ass, Dell. The air is fresher out here.