Remember when we could only watch what had recently been on TV and cable companies were trying to lock people in to specific cable boxes that couldn't skip ads and we paid $120 per month for ad supported content and cable companies would attach random fees and everyone had to buy hundreds of channels to only watch 4?

And we'd build movie and music collections of physical media we had to keep in our homes and cars and we'd listen to the same three albums for months and if we were lucky enough to get a TV series box set, it'd set us back many hundreds of dollars and we'd have to remember which disc we were on and navigate arcane and slow menus?

And when we had questions, we had to find the answers ourselves by reading long form content and just be satisfied that there were many questions we couldn't answer at all because the information wasn't available?

Or when we wanted cabs, we'd not know how much a ride would cost until after we got to our destinations and they smelled like rotten farts and were covered in boogers and our only goal was to not touch anything and look out the window because what's a smartphone?

And when we wanted to go somewhere, we had to ask for directions and use atlases to figure out how to get to the general area of the destination, then drive in circles, accidentally drive past a turn 5 times because the street we were supposed to turn onto had two different names and we had been given the wrong one?

I was there and anyone who pines for the old days can just go there. We have cable and encyclopedias and taxis and atlases. Go nuts.

I also don't remember Han wearing a scoop neck, skin tight crop top.

This needs to become illegal. Ads are part of the price you pay for a device or service. If you didn't agree to them at the time of purchase, they can't be sprung on you after you've paid.

I don't like that, "leftist", has become a word used outside conservative circles. It sounds shitty and is as meaningless as, "rightist".

Censorship is terrible. Except when I want to do it and pretend like I'm the best politician. Then it's great.

Remember when China told Google to censor web search results and Google said, "No. How about we show those search results with notes that they were censored and why since the sites will be blocked anyway?", and China was like, "You can't show them at all.", and Google said, "Fuck you. We'd rather lose access to the Chinese market than violate our principles.", and instantly shut down any service in China that would require censorship or disclosing private data and closed all Chinese offices working on any of those technologies?

What a time we're living in.

Jesus saves and I'm a soldier for Jesus, but only in the ways that don't cost me money or require me to make any lifestyle changes or acknowledge that I may not be perfect. Now, who's doing something that I can tangentially relate to the Bible that I'm not doing and don't plan to ever do?

Here's a great article on a site that doesn't force you to register for an account. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/huaweis-new-mystery-7nm-chip-from-chinese-fab-defies-us-sanctions

This is part of what sanctions are about. China has been hacking companies around the world to steal technology to be able to produce stuff like this.

I heard an interview about this new effort. IRS agents used to be rewarded by case count. It's much easier to audit people who earn salaries because you know exactly what they earned from employers' reports. Rich people often have many sources of income that take time to investigate. Agents audit normal folks because it's easy while the rich lie and get away with it.

The goal with this effort has been to change the incentive structure for agents to get the most money.

I'm a really great person. I'm good at everything. My friends are all tools and won't ever be as amazing as me.

Congratulations. I bet those friends are absolutely real.

I like the judge, but 20 hours a week wouldn't teach anyone how hard it is to work in the service industry.

will have to work there 20 hours a week

I want to make the, "free", moniker illegal. Advertisers have to pay money for ads and they get that money from us when we buy their products. In addition to having to look at ads, we also have to pay money for the privilege of looking at them. Any ad supported service is objectively not free. No thanks.

From the article

Prepandemic, Fleetcor workers in their 20s and 30s took one or two sick days a year, she says. Now, it's more like three to five.

So pandemic taught people how viruses spread and how not to spread them and coming to work sick is shameful, not a badge of honor. Still, 4 days a year isn't enough.

I worked with a guy, Clint, who had been at the company his whole life, worked his way from the factory floor to head of accounting. The thing Clint chose to brag regularly about was that he was 60-something and had never taken a sick day. Instead, he'd roll in obviously sick, sneeze on everyone, everyone he saw that day would get sick, a few of them followed his stellar example and got more people sick. During those times, no actual work got done except Clint lamenting about how everyone was getting sick. "Must be the weather."

Thank you.

Ways Lemmy is already feeling like modern reddit: Instead of link to an article, we get screenshot of a post with a screenshot of the article.

When a ship gets far away and you only see the top half, it's behind a flat Earth water mountain.

This hotel has been there for a while for visiting employees, paid for by the company. People wanted this option if, for example, you lived in Brazil, wanted to visit the US, but didn't have any reason to book a business trip because you don't work with anyone at headquarters. I'm going to guess that most paying guests won't be reporting for work during their stays, but will be grabbing a solid 3 meals a day, plus snacks.

I'd rather tax the rich and let the people decide what to do with their money than trust all billionaires to do the right things.

This particular person is on a mission to do to malaria what science and governments did to smallpox, eliminate it from existence forever. You don't spend 80 billion dollars to save on your taxes. He's no perfect saint, but there are rich people who are more selfish.

I've been reading On the Origin of Species and was surprised that even Darwin had noted that species that evolved in segregated environments like New Zealand had less competition, so weren't as fit. It's amazing to see how much progress has been made to undo damage done by humans and create environments were species like this can thrive again.

Uhh umm... You are the product! Aaand... Shill for greedy corporations!

I remember when Google said quite openly that they'd give us email addresses with more storage than we'd ever dreamed for life and in return, they'd scan the first few sentences of all messages and use them to target ads at us and we were all like, "Sounds fair."

Midjourney