Now I’m imagining Muppets doing the MASH series finale and playing it absolutely straight.

Real talk, though: why has Linux taken at least five tries (OSS, ALSA, JACK, PulseAudio, PipeWire) to get audio right?!

Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t as precise as I could’ve been. I was really just trying to convey the motivations (i.e. that it was due to being mistaken for foreign as opposed to being targeted for using a VPN), not go into the details of exactly which aspect of the VPN (the entrance IP geolocation, the exit IP geolocation, or the company HQ location) would actually trigger the “foreign-ness.”

Due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, both affected regions have experienced physical impacts to infrastructure as a result of drone strikes. In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure. These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.

Translation: servers got turned into charred scrap.

Those are the ones that would cause them to surveil you.

The issue isn’t necessarily “the government will target you for using a VPN;” the issue is “if your IP makes you look like you’re outside the US because that’s where your traffic exits the VPN, the laws against domestic spying won’t protect you properly because you’ll look like a foreigner.”

Frankly, the headline is heavily spinning it to be anti-VPN fearmongering.

guess I need to look at bit for “how to stuff a huge graphics card into a mini box”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X2Y62JGDCo

(That’s only the latest in a whole series of videos of his on that topic.)

^{chirp chirp}

No it’s not “natural,” because corporations themselves are not “natural.” We created them, and they’ve only gained more and more power and less and less accountability because we let them. It doesn’t have to be that way. Being granted a corporate charter is a privilege, not a right; we don’t have to let corporations that act against the public interest continue to exist.

See also: https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/

They had Data in the '80s. Star Trek TNG started in 1987.

Of course, they also had Lore. (And Moriarty, for that matter.)

Linux can be frustrating when something goes wrong, but at least you know it was by accident (either a bug in the software or a mistake on your part). In contrast, when proprietary software goes wrong it’s often due to some megacorporation deliberately trying to fuck you over, and that’s what’s really infuriating!

I wanted to upgrade my kids from Pi 4s to Pi 5s, but ended up just getting NUCs instead.

Did he still call you?

If so, I guess that just means you were important enough that he had your number memorized.

If by “complicates… basic PC ownership” they mean “infringes on your property rights as a computer owner,” then they’re finally catching on to what I’ve been saying for damn near a decade.

You should not accept having an abusive relationship with your operating system, and that’s what Windows has been since at least 8 (when they started infecting it with “telemetry”), if not earlier. Have some goddamn self-respect, people! Kick Microsoft to the curb!

Huh, I guess the person who runs FFmpeg’s Xitter account must live in western Europe (UTC+1:00).

If I admitted to calling, I would be confirming that the phone number the guy’s office received a call from was linked to this Lemmy account.

As it is, who knows who might have called? The call (or ideally, the calls, plural) could’ve come from any number of people who read that message.

Somebody tell this guy about Mastodon.

The phone number for his executive assistant is 617-349-4280.

https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departments/citycouncil/members/jivansobrinhowheeler

Upon further reflection, I think my previous comment may have been a little too harsh on it.

But I still think that, to be truly “excellent,” it could’ve made its point without muddying/confusing the definition of enshittification.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!

It’s not that “excellent.” It’s just ‘for the evulz’ mustache-twirling comical villainy, which ends up downplaying what’s actually important to know about enshittification, which is how self-serving and abusive it is. When companies enshittify products and services, they’re not just making them worse; they’re specifically making them more exploitative.

A lot of the examples shown in the video – cutting holes in socks, sawing off a chair leg so it wobbles, drying out a marker, etc. – are not enshittification. Enshittification is stuff like putting spyware in devices so that you double-dip on the purchase price and the value of the data, or turning products (as opposed to services) into a subscription. Stuff that extracts unearned value from the customer.

It touches on it in the latter part of the video, but for the most part misses the mark.