This illustrates the contempt large tech companies have for the people who keep them alive. They don't care what you actually want, but how far they can push before you quit. Every forced update, every dark pattern, every ad disguised as a feature is a test of your tolerance, not a service to you.

The bigger the company, the less reason they have to care. Once they dominate a market, they know you have nowhere else to go. That is when the garbage ratio spikes: Microsoft slipping ads into the operating system, Google rearranging Gmail whether you like it or not, Youtube's absolutely awful new ui, Meta filling your feed with sponsored junk. The calculation is simple: monopoly power means they can shovel worse product at you and trust you will still come back.It's not accidental or subtle. It is the business model.

Maybe if Trump's first term was the end of it. But by reelecting him and more notably every supposed check and balance failing, the US has proven it can't be trusted not to elect another destructive idiot again in another 4 years. Also, they know Trump is a demented old fool, he's not the one coming up with the major steps to tear down this country. This is what the people controlling the GOP want ... all laid out in Project 2025.
It will take decades to get back to where we were even if we managed to never hand power to the right again. Which is unlikely to happen because people are so goddamn stupid, hateful, and brainwashed. And the Democrats are controlled by people who outright prefer Republicans to the kind of leadership we'd need to even begin repairing the damage.

Their remedy would be limited to revoking your membership, not physically stopping you or having the police arrest you.

Evan walked the aisles with his basket hanging loose, like he had every right to be there. He kept his head level, though his heart was galloping. A block of cheddar and two tubs of yogurt disappeared under his jacket, followed by a loaf of bread and two cans of soup. Enough for a meal, maybe two, if he stretched it.

At the doors, he pushed through the crowd, forcing his stride into something casual. Then the whir began. A drone lifted from its ceiling nest, rotors slicing the air. Its light fell on him like a spotlight. "Unpaid items have been detected. Stop."

Evan ran. Across the floor, out the doors, sneakers hammering the pavement. Another drone dropped in from above, swooping low, its camera blinking. He ducked, zigzagging through parked cars, until the bread slipped from his coat and the cans clanged onto the asphalt. The drones immediately rose higher, losing interest once the bulk of the haul was gone. Panting, shaking, Evan kept running until the Walmart glow was behind him.

That night, in their dim apartment, Mara sat cross-legged on the carpet. The little block of cheese and the two yogurts were spread before them like contraband treasure. "So this is it?" Evan nodded, avoiding her eyes. "The bread and soup didn't make it. Drones stayed on me until I dropped 'em."

She peeled open a yogurt, dipped her finger in, and licked it slowly, like it was some rare dessert. "It's enough," she murmured. "For tonight." He broke the cheese into uneven chunks, handed her the larger one. "It's not enough. I promised I'd take care of you." "You did. We're eating, aren't we?"

His voice cracked. "I looked like an idiot out there. Running from a machine. Dropping dinner on the pavement." Mara reached for his hand, sticky with yogurt. "You ran for me. That's not nothing." He finally looked at her, saw the faint smile tugging her lips.

They ate slowly, drawing out each bite. The yogurt cups scraped clean, the cheese gone in four small mouthfuls. The sharp edge of hunger had dulled for the night. Mara leaned her head against his shoulder. "Tomorrow we'll figure something else out," she said.

Evan stared out the cracked window at the glow of the Walmart sign in the distance, and thought about the drones, patient as vultures. "Yeah," he whispered. "Tomorrow."

They cannot imagine keeping things in a car for convenience, because a chauffeur or maid always clears it out and puts everything away. They've never worried about whether they'll have everything at the other end of the destination: someone does the packing for them. They have never had to wait for a taxi. They do not see cars as storage or backup. To them, a car is a fashion piece, part of a collection, a toy for pleasure, or a way to get from one place to another.

The idea of keeping supplies in the trunk "just in case" is foreign to someone who has always had food wherever they went, who has never wondered where to sleep in a pinch, never planned a long road trip -- only a drive to the nearest airport or a fun day along the highway or autobahn. All the little practical uses most of us attach to car ownership simply do not exist in their world. So for them a service that takes a person from here to there is all that's needed. They recognize that a poor person needs transportation too, but they see this as a cheaper option that does everything a car should do for a poor person: take him from one place to another.

I've been trying to use ChatGPT like that. It takes an hour of demanding rewrites and pointing out mistakes for it to properly fill out a 16k txt file with what I've got going on at the moment for the purpose of making the days' schedule. It keeps dropping things off, putting in [this thing goes here] and ignoring whatever we weren't talking about most recently.

That evil guy Trump has the solution, created last Friday- $100,000 minimum application fee for new H-1bs

If Trump wants to make the $100,000 H-1b fee *extremely popular among techies*:

-$30,000 to an American worker laid off in the last 36 months for retraining funds and or job coaches
-$50,000 in a trust fund for the worker to be paid upon purchase of a return ticket when the visa expires, or alternatively, to pay for a conversion to an immigrant visa
-$15,000 to the revenue to help pay for INS/ICE and the bureaucrats to process the application
-$5,000 to a company that cancels an H-1b application to hire a US Citizen

Get a better version of Windows 10, and get standard, non-extended support through 2032. It's weird that even tech sites just run with Microsoft's scary talking point uncritically. "Windows 10 support ending!"-- for the most popular versions sure; for all versions or the best version? NO. Are they pressuring people to not mention certain alternatives? You'll push this scam where you're forced into an internet sign on for your local desktop that massively expands the spying they do on you, but not mention that Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC has mainstream support until Jan 2032?
An individual would have to jump through some hoops to get it fully legally-- difficult but not impossible; but with this kind of scummy exploitative shit, no idea what the argument against gray market or even piracy is. It's a much better version for most use cases, and you can reinstall the missing crud if you need it for compatibility. Incompatibility claims are hugely overblown.

Your question implies that it is a subjective matter and that anyone can render a verdict. My point was that information is objective not subjective.

Forgive if I take the word of experts on fascism over random slashdotter.

Kimmel didn't do that and it's still far from clear he's not, what with the groyper memes on the bullets from that day and all, and ridiculous arguments otherwise: being trans doesn't even prove the trans person is liberal (hello Caitlyn Jenner) let alone that his roommate/partner/whatever is, and Joseph Smith like claims about "oh we destroyed it but our recreation says...". Notice how you're a giant fucking liar? Republicans are the least trustworthy people on earth so forgive me if I don't take his parents words confirming he just happens to be exactly what their cult has been 100% convinced of since before Kirk was cold. What they'd get endless death threats for not saying from their own side. That somehow he changed to far left, but still had groyper shit on his bullets, and picked the person the groypers hate most over the much better targets if you're a psychotic lefty instead of psychotic righty. Considering how delusional you all are about who's hateful and how much projection there is in your rants about it, generic messages about hate aren't more persuasive either.

"Ordered" you're a delusional liar. Right or wrong it wasn't even close to more coercive than what Carr did, let alone "ordered" you misinformation spreading dimwit.

You know what they were banning? They were banning factual information that contradicted the official narrative. They were banning links to small, but scientific, studies that suggested alternative treatments, people talking about loved ones who got the vaccine and died of COVID anyway, hospitals putting covid as cause of death when it really was something else so they could get that government funding. Go educate yourself you ideologically blinded twit.

You keep using the word hoax but clearly have no idea what the word means.

I like everything you wrote but wish to point out that the word can suggests it might not be happening right now. These idiots are dangerous and people suffer every day because they are allowed to shoot their ignorant nonsense. It's not something that can happen, but rather something that *is happening*.