Every time a Republican flips out about the next scandal it make me laugh. It's not that Dems NEVER DO ANYTHING WRONG, as so many want to try to say. They just have a far superior track record when it comes to holding them responsible.
You know, instead of trying to enable them to destroy the whole fucking country in the hopes of installing a religious dictatorship.
It's a small difference, at least according to a captured media who tries to pass them both of as exactly "equal", when they're not. Can't piss off those advertisers though, you know?

Your health insurance company begs to differ.

Did they pay you to write that in your break, or promise to give you 3 1/2 hours of "time off " in between crunches for you to do anything else your life required?
It's pretty obvious you're either:
- being paid directly to troll
- are one of the folks who happens to benefit from these companies shitting all over the market because they happen to be the biggest gorillas in the enclosure at the moment
- are just a garden variety shit-stirring internet troll.

If you were anything approaching a consumer I'm guessing you wouldn't be this gung-ho about having increasingly low quality games at increasingly unreasonable prices. Either that or you have a weird fin-dom fetish in relation to these corporations.
If it's that last part, hey I won't shame but please stop acting like you're some voice of sanity in the discussion. You do you, but kindly do you over THERE, where you're not going to get anything on the rest of us. Kthx.

Awesome!
For you.

For others of us, I guess we just like being able to retain the things WE PURCHASED instead of renting our lives. Archaic I know, but I prefer it that way. Would you believe I still have a car from 2007 AND IT STILL WORKS?! Weirdly enough, Toyota didn't pull the plug on it to prop up their sagging bottom line.

Yes I'm well aware that a DVD/ game isn't a car...and if that's the best counter argument you have you might want to think it over.

I love how everyone is trying to treat a comparison of NASA to things such as a business as if that's rational in the slightest.
The same people who ensure government programs of all kinds are as bloated and inefficient as possible are the same small group of rich assholes getting billions for basically nothing. Government programs and projects suck because they're designed to make a private business alternative look like the only and obvious solution.
If I can make billions in profit providing a half assed product, I'll just have the government program look 3x as bad. Then my solution looks awesome by comparison!

Seriously, how many times have we heard the Post Office being compared to the package delivery industry in a negative light BECAUSE IT'S LOSING MONEY? What they don't mention is that the USPS isn't a fucking business, and that there are the rules in place that utterly destroy the ability for the USPS to ever just break even. You think FedEx is required to PREFUND 50 years worth of retirement funds? Nah. USPS is required to. It's a tiny sample of an enormous problem.

We do not PROPERLY invest public funds efficiently into projects. Pork gets added, people's friends (or children) end up profiting immensely because somehow they get contacts. It's not even close to as good as we could have, yet everyone is told, and believes, that you just can't have a good large scale program! It's just impossible!
Well yeah it's impossible to build a house when 2/3 of the people involved are actively sabotaging it. No shit!

We either take full control of our democracy or we watch the rich finish turning it into feudalism with flashy paint and the addition of the internet.
Sadly, the sheep have been convinced by the wolves that the wolves are totally looking out for them and will not hear anything to the contrary.

I love your idealized scenario! It's wonderfully explained and everything.
I missed the part where you took corporate greed into account though, as it seems you simply skipped over that with "The electrical grid on both sides of the Atlantic has, and always will have, a great deal of generation redundancy and the temporary loss of the ability to buy part of your power cheaply from another continent would be made up by other more expensive power sources."

The Texas power grid supposedly has that too, until you actually try to use it when you need it. See, they seem to think profits are MUCH more important than lives, and you might have noticed that we live in a world that's increasingly like that. Texas didn't bother to upgrade their grid because that's expensive! It works just fine without all those updates and upgrades anyway. PLUS, as you mentioned, you can just buy (hyper expensive) energy from elsewhere! Perfect*!

*Perfect for those who are wealthy and don't actually have to depend on the grid in dire situations as they usually have generators. Not really great when you get hit with an electric bill in the 4 digits because of a predatory pricing scheme.

But other than those tiny, meaningless points you're mostly spot on...in a perfect world...with minimal bad actors.

Microsoft has announced that its big Copilot+ PC initiative that was unveiled last month will launch without its headlining "Windows Recall" AI feature readily visible next week on June 18. It will still be included as a hidden "critical security" update and will be switched on silently. This feature can be turned off with a simple 317-click process requiring you to edit your registry. Super simple!

Fixed that and added the "quiet" parts out loud.

Yeah!
Who needs some sort of centralized data outlet for something stupid and useless like abuse of a huge communications channel or the elections anyway!
That's what we have CNN, Fox News, et. al. for, isn't it?

I see what you did there...

When you take the nearly "free to the user" product that got you where you are, cripple it, then offer the non- crippled product back with a hefty price tag.
It's as if giant corporations want everything in our lives to be a subscription service. If one didn't know better, one might be lead to think that they'll happily fuck over their customer so that their board can buy that third yacht to park their second yacht in.
If one didn't know better, of course.

Ah yes, the smartest and most humble commenter on /.
Seems like no matter the story, you swoop in like a brain damaged superhero to ensure the conversation gets even more idiotic than it was before. Bravo.

Indeed, I'm eagerly awaiting their non- response as well. Who knows, may be this one will buck the trend and offer up something, ANYTHING substantive.
We can only hope.

Shhhh get back into the space between the floorboards you crawled out from. I'll put on some Apprentice reruns if you can keep yourself quiet okay? The adults are attempting conversation, stop being silly.

You're going to die of dehydration then, because what you're referring to is basically meaningless identity politics. "Guise! Only buy from the Good Guy" suppliers okay? Best of luck to you, but you're not the Sampson you're fantasizing that you are.
Also, you know who feels it's necessary to call attention to their intelligence?
Stupid people. Because if you have to advertise it, it's almost certainly because your actions aren't showing it.

Also remember, TikTok selling your information baaaad! Government using data brokers to spy on American citizens good! Unrestricted data mining with zero privacy laws also very good!

Fuck I wish Americans weren't so goddamn stupid. They could piss on us and the only thing you'd hear about is how lovely the warm rain feels.