I think you might be talking about the Report of the Special Rapporteur from the UN that came out this week, which (and I quote) "investigates the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory."? Microsoft is definitely listed, but I don't know where you draw the connection between this report, a missile landing in a parking lot, and MS exiting Pakistan. Seems like a pretty tenuous connection to me.

I don't really think this is a point that needs to be defended anymore. You're right, it's DRM; I don't think that's misunderstood or hidden, I just think that people don't care very much anymore unless the DRM becomes noticeably obtrusive (anti-cheat kernal level nonsense). I sorta think of it as the "always online" issue, which in the past I thought was absolutely unacceptable for a single player game, and now I mostly don't care because I'm always online anyways. You can still make a fair argument that DRM isn't acceptable on principle, and I respect that, but the practical downsides I have experienced over the last 20 years of using Steam are nil or negligible at worst. Yes, I recall the early era where lots of digital storefronts shut down, and I too lost access to games I purchased with no recourse. The same could (will inevitably?) happen to Steam. If I was a collector, that might be an unacceptable... but personally ever since I had my retro game collection stolen and I decided not to replace it... I haven't really cared about persistent ownership of games. Moving to digital made games feel less like things and more like experiences; I buy them so that I can play them and after that I don't need them.

Who was probably using Hunter Biden's laptop!

American corn has been at the forefront of global corn for at least the last 100 years. It's arguably the best corn in the world. Hearing Americans trash talk their own excellent corn is just so bizarre. But even if you don't like a couple of the types of corn being grown (or it will make you sick, as you say), are you sure you should be uprooting it all? Well, in the end, it's your corn, so you can do what you want with it.

I'm sorry, which Democratic President or Presidential nominee wasn't Christian again? I can't seem to recall any.

In addition, if they do it anyways (maybe accidently), something called adverse inference kicks in, whereby the Judge has the discretion to draw the conclusion that the evidence that has been destroyed WOULD have been favorable to the party that did not destroy it.

Indeed. So many laws are toothless once a company gets big enough to shrug off the fines. I'd prefer to see a % of annual revenue (or something similar) so that it can scale up or down to the size of the company.

This is a tax that had been approved back in 2024, and scheduled for deployment in June 2025. This isn't new, or news; at least it shouldn't be. So Trump finds out that this tax is coming up and doesn't like it... well okay, fair enough I guess, he's free to not like Canadian tax laws. So why not, I don't know, say: "Hey Canada, WTF is this? Let's discuss you axing this tax, or there will be repercussions" like a normal bully. But no, he comes out with "Fine! I'm not talking to Canada anymore!" like a normal child. JFC

As a Philosopher... yeah I agree. In fact, I think it was Quine who suggested that if you wanted to know how the mind works you should study Psychology instead (I'm paraphrasing).

Well, maybe. I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that because we have multiple competing definitions, which can really be thought of as multiple competing theories in a scientific sense, that they are not actually good ("good" is another one of those super loaded words so what is "good" to you might not be "good" to me, unless we further clarify what the standards are). We are not in possession of all of the data as far as the human brain goes, so our definitions must be based on incomplete information. I think if you spent the time studying Epistemology you'd find the working definitions used there actually are pretty good, well thought out, internally consistent, etc. (not saying this is worth your time though). As they say, don't make perfect the enemy of good.

Words are... weird. To say we don't know what they mean is a bit off, because there is not necessarily any need for a word to be more than a fuzzy box around a concept that we employ in our day to day lives. Some people think that words spring up from the concepts or objects which they describe, as though there was some Platonic form of that thing which the word must truly apply to; I find this strange and too metaphysical for my tastes. As I see it, words are invented by humans to describe something we see/experience; they end up being as vague as our understanding, but they still serve their primary purpose, which is to communicate our lived experience of the world with another human. The idea of knowing something, or the idea of reasoning, they are not foreign to us: we understand what someone says when they say "I know that person" or "I reasoned that this would happen based [evidence, causal links, etc.]" even without pre-agreeing on what the definition is.

When we then set about crafting our technical definitions for use in Philosophy or Science is the only point at which we start to run into this trouble that we're talking about. Partly, I think, because we are trying to use a word to put a box around a process that we do not possess all of the data on (knowledge/reasoning). You will likely agree when I suggest that the solution to the problem is further scientific/empirical study; but, I don't think it's necessary to say that absent a complete and perfect definition we shouldn't use the best ones that we have available to us at the moment.

This is a good point; and there is more to it. Other studies I've read discussed what is best described as "background processing". When given a problem that required more than just a cursory thought, participants who were told to "sleep on it" were able to yield better solutions, even when they were told NOT to focus on the problem. Just parking it was enough; because once you are aware of the issue, your brain, wonderful tool that it is, can work through/analyze problems even without your consciousness being directed towards it. Ever since reading this I've always encourage friends/family who are debating a big life move to, once they have gathered the relevant facts, park it and sleep on it at least one night before coming to a decision.

The golden era for Xbox was the 360 and they've never really recaptured it. There was a brief moment, in that era, in which they had the absolutely superior online capabilities with Xbox Live (that they had really gotten off the ground during the earlier Xbox era). PS2 and early PS3 just did not offer what Xbox did in terms of online capabilities; but once that advantage was gone Xbox lost a lot of that ground and they don't seem to be trending towards recapturing it.

On the PC side of things, I don't see what they could do at this point to compete with Valve/Steam. Lots of companies have tried; EA even pulled their game library from Steam in the hopes that people would migrate to Origin and use their storefront (except it was trash and they eventually reversed that decision). Steam has been building a reputation (and their users libraries) for 20 years, they don't break their app just for the sake of adding new things that people don't want, they don't intentionally deprecate old games, they have great sales on the regular, reasonable return policies... why would I want to do business with someone else? What could MS offer that would tempt people away from a platform they are already comfortable with and hasn't done anything to alienate them (ymmv)?

I suppose what you're intimating is that it is not acceptable for Apple to be made to follow the laws of Europe, even when it is specifically for the business that they are doing in Europe. Presumably, however, if a Chinese company was doing business in America, you would expect them to follow the laws of America while they were there, yes? Or are you suggesting that a company should only ever have to follow the laws of their country of origin?

Technically he teaches 5/6. The way he describes it, the latest batch of teachers are using AI to write their lesson plans and tests; the students are (if they can get away with it) using AI to finish assignments and tests; and AI are grading it all. Beyond the obviously all important "free (tax payer) childcare" what is even the point!?

Agreed. Most university education wasn't supposed to be vocational training. It just sorta morphed into it as a result of a culture of telling folks "go to college to get a better job", and now we have a bizarre bastardization that doesn't really serve any of its purported purposes very well.

I imagine they still collect their transaction fees in any case.