348 karma · joined October 28, 2020
In front of me I have an Amiga 600 (with an accelerator) and the whole OS can be installed from 5 floppy disks and is roughly equivalent to MacOS. I also have an Atari ST 1040 with TOS. No autoexec or IRQ madness to deal with. They mainly just work.
I've found quite a lot in my career that often people mistake understanding someone elses line of thought as acceptance of such a thought. This invariantly upsets someone that to be quite frankly isn't mentally equipped (and no I not using that a euphemism for stupid, I mean they literally cannot have conversations about ideas and that maybe due to a number of reasons that have nothing to do with their intelligence) will become upset and then you end up in an argument and the conversation is derailed.
Also simply examining pre-conceptions of why a problem exists also seems to upset some. Normally because you are undermining their authority in one manner or another or they have accepted the initial pre-conception cannot be incorrect because it is normally considered to be inevitable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisha_beacon
Pelican crossings have the button you must press to cross.
It is simply a deflection from the central point that frequently the state will involve itself in things that it really shouldn't be involving itself in. This is frequenly because it must justify its ever increasing size. Saying that the state should have well defined responsibilities shouldn't be controversial. What those should be is a different conversation.
There is still lots of stuff I kinda have to use but I've managed to massively reduce my use of most of this stuff.
Obviously if your job/business relies on using this stuff then you gotta use it. I wouldn't advocate that you put yourself out on the street for the source code freedoms.
However what most people mean by "hate speech" is protected from what I understand.
If I don't want to use Windows or MacOS, I can use an alternative operating system. If I don't want to use Google's search engine there are many other alternatives. If I don't want to use a companies webmail solution I can setup my own.
It is very simple to not deal with these tech companies.
However I have no such choice when it comes to Government. Whatever they choose to decide I have to abide by or face fines, jail and other reprocussions. Some of those decisions maybe just which aren't a problem. However some of them maybe unjust. If those decisions are unjust I have almost no direct way to address it especially if I am in the minority.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/17/solomon-island...
Some things that stood out to me:
> Facebook has also been cited as a factor in riots that gripped the capital, Honiara, in 2019. The social media platform was alight with anti-government rhetoric in the days after Sogavare’s election and was used by rioters to organise and congregate.
> But observers say China has influenced the government’s decision. Facebook has been, officially at least, banned in China for more than a decade. > In September 2019 Solomon Islands switched from recognising Taiwan to instead embrace diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Solomons are home to a significant Chinese population and Beijing’s influence in the Melanesian archipelago – with the exception of Malaita, the most populous island and which remains loyal to Taiwan – has been steadily growing.
The guardian also has a link to a solomon times article:
https://www.solomontimes.com/news/solomon-islands-cabinet-pa...
> Minister Agovaka told Solomon Times Online (STO) that this temporary ban was made because of the controversial issues raised via Facebook. > “Abusive languages against Ministers, Prime Minister, character assasination, defamation of character, all these are issues of concerns”, Agovaka says.
I don't think the USA supports that at all. They don't prosecute speech which was specifically what I was responding to. Not prosecuting speech is not the same as supporting said speech.
Also I am not from the US. I am from the UK.
> But exporting that terrorist thread to the European Union should ban Facebook in Europe.
You premise is faulty. The purpose of facebook is not to spread any sort of terrorism. It is a social network and communication tool. This would be like blaming the phone company for mafia organising a hit over a phone call.
In this specific example it does seem they were calling to violence which is not legal speech even in the US (IANAL though). So they should be removed.
> USA here, USA there. There are more countries in the world, Facebook should take that into account or be banned.
I agree I am in the UK and I don't like silicon valley trying to impose their set of values on the rest of the world either.
As for banning whole sites who purpose is not anything nefarious because some people do illegal acts on said platform is ridiculous.
Even in countries where there is hate speech, what and what doesn't constitute it is normally broad, subjective and is frequently misused by state to prosecute people that have no ill intent.
The most egregious example is the Chelseas Rusell case in the UK:
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/woman-wh...
Also not only that but it doesn't work. If you stop people from saying certain words they just end up making new ones to get around your censorship. It is already happening online, people will make up new words to get around any speech censorship e.g. "jogger" means black criminal and I will leave it up to you to work out what that is being used in place of.
Also banning certain words doesn't take into account regional dialect e.g. Faggot is a regional dish in England. They recently banned google ads for a restaurant that sold "Fanny's Faggots".
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/cafe-advert-fannys-faggots-...
Or this curious case that I just found while looking for the previous one:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7911927/Meat-lover-...
Hate speech legislation doesn't work and just causes people to start resenting law enforcement and have less respect generally for the laws of the land.
https://www.generationamiga.com/2020/07/11/apolloos-a-new-op...
There was also Icaros and Morphos but I am not sure what going on with those.
This idea is insidious.
Firstly people have to remember fiction is fiction. The reason why the first few seasons of Game of Thrones was compelling was because the world they lived in didn't have any modern sensibilities in it. The more they threw in modern sensibilities the worse the show got (thought the action scenes for the most part got better).
There was some show recently where Black slaves in the USA had taken power over the whites and a white KKK member from another dimension somehow got transported there. Some decried the show and wanted it banned. I thought it sounded excellent, because it was soooo divorced from reality. Same with the "Man from the High Castle". The setting in which the enemy won WWII was compelling.
Secondly just randomly pushing people into roles for the sake of representation ends up cheapening any genuine effort. The Wire was brilliant because the huge number of black people being in the show made sense. At the time I didn't actually notice that most of the cast was black.
You know what the end result is. It made me notice skin colour when I didn't used to and made me start to resent any effort (no matter how genuine) because I know there is probably some quota involved somewhere to pander to a demographic.
> Historically, "rich white people" have been in control of the media, so it's great to see this group becoming more self aware.
It isn't self awareness though. They are projecting their prejudices onto the rest of us. This includes places where it just isn't relevant and makes almost no sense.
How dare they project their prejudices onto me in an effort to absolve themselves of guilt, then have the gall to tell me that I am the one with the problem when I object to it. Fuck them!
I clearly remember when I decided I wouldn't watch anymore broadcast television (this was about 8 years ago now).
There was a show hosted by Scottish Comedian Frankie Boyle that was infamous for his offensive comedy. On that show there was a rich Canadian woman on the TV telling people in the audience that all men had done through the centuries was raping and beating women.
Then there was a black musician called "Akala" telling me the British Empire institutions were guilty of perpetuating racism. He seemed to be obilvious to the fact that he was on a British Institution being broadcasted to every home in the country.
Other the gross oversimplification of history. I had nothing to do with it (nor did my family as they were all very poor). It would be like blaming today's Germans for what Hitler did. It is absolutely disgusting.
You know what the end result of this is? It made me hugely suspicious of any claim of sexual misconduct or racism. It is the classic story of the boy that cried wolf.
> We should let people with compelling stories tell their stories! Now that streaming is the norm, there's room for everyone, now that we're not limited to only the stories which are marketable for primetime.
Maybe I am getting old but I remember a lot of this already happening. I am not saying it was perfect and I don't disagree with it in principle.
Recently "Black Panther" was released. "The first black super hero" they said. People seemed to forget Wesley Snipes played Blade for 3 movies (starting in 1997) and they were the first Marvel Movies and made the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe viable as it showed that a comic book property could be successful.
Before that we had the "There are no female action heroes" they said. Forgetting all thrillers in the past with heroines, a whole movie franchise called Aliens, Cherry 2000, Nikita, Tank Girl, Buffy and a bunch of other movies I have probably forgotten about where the woman had taken charge of the situation and won the day.
People increasingly think that the world before they were born didn't exist.
Just having a cursory look over my collection on steam:
* Streets of Rage had black, white, asian, men and women.
* Street Fighter had every nationality on earth represented.
* Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Almost all the characters were black.
* Grand Theft Auto V - One of the main playable characters is Black (there are 3)
* Sleeping Dogs which is set in Hong Kong so they are Chinese.
* Yakuza Series - Japanese.
* Prey (the first one) you play a Native American.
* Prey (the new one) you appear to be of Asian decent (probably chinese if I were to guess as the surname is Chu).
* Assassins Creed - Altair is a Arab.
* Assassins Creed 3 - Ratonhnhaké - Mixed Native American and White.
* Kratos - Greek
* King Pin - Black
* Aladdin - Arab
* Loads of Micheal Jackson games (Black)
The Grand Theft Auto series on its own has sold million and millions of copies.
I am still not including all the games where you can literally design your character to be anything you want. Or all the strategy games where you can choose your historical factions such as Age of Empires.
> If I were nonwhite I think I’d want to be included in some games, yes.
Have you ever thought that other people don't judge or identify characters in their entertainment on what race they are? I couldn't give a monkeys the race of a game protagonist. It literally doesn't enter into my mind. Why are you soo pre-occupied with it is the real question?
It only seems to be rich white people in the US (nobody cares about this shit in Europe btw because our identities are based on our nationality) seem to care about it.
There has been several moral panics incited by the conventional media (TV, newspapers etc) about adverts being displayed alongside edgy content a while back. Several rounds of this eventually brought about a TOS change where they could deem you "not advertiser friendly". This of course ignored that Google does targeted advertising.
Some claim it is "political" however I believe it is simpler than that. It gave youtube an excuse to stop paying people without outright removing them from the platform which saves them a fair bit of money and doesn't quite bring the same outrage from the respective fanbases as outright removing people. In addition to that the people that have been demonetised have ranged from progressives, anarcho-communists, people doing ben-shapiro compilation videos and edgy boys and girls that tend to shitpost. So I don't see anything political about it.
They've also made it harder to be monetised on the platform generally, IIRC you can't be monetised at all and cannot receive super chats if you have less than 1000 subscribers. You also can't put custom thumbnails on your videos which makes it harder for your content to get attention.
For wikipedia I use this theme specifically:
> He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
Never agreed. You are obviously trolling. Goodbye.
There are quite a few “wow” moments in the game.
For those that like these games I also recommend Amid Evil. The game is excellent and well worth a look for many of the same reasons.
Some of the other “boomer” shooters have been a bit hit and miss. Ion Fury was good but Tbh is a bit easy. prodeus is okay in bursts and wrath of aeon is solid but like the original quake can get a bit boring. Some of the other FPS games in the same vain have been "I've played it for a day and probably won't play it today".
These days I am playing Doom mods via GZDoom and there is soo much there now you could just play doom mods and never play anything else.