marticode

I really don't see Microsoft blocking unsigned exe. There's just too much old Windows/DOS software out there still in use, sometimes running critical infrastructure.

You are assuming the administration will respect legal decisions. This is sadly no longer a given...

Seems they are being DDOS by someone in Singapore and blocked the whole country: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/403-forbidden-in-singa...

> it's not a straw man. the security guarantees zelensky requested and used to hold up the deal extend to that.

It does not. Europe has been willing to send troops on the ground. The guarantee from the US could be in the form of equipment, air interdiction, etc. Note the the US already had guaranteed Ukraine sovereignty when it gave up its nukes. So no new treaty should even be necessary if the US only stuck to its words.

> it was, in fact, a fair deal. the minerals deal was to ensure we got some sort of repayment for all the aid we've already sent

No repayment was expected when the aid was given, otherwise it would have been given as loans.

Do you ask for repayment 2 years after giving people gifts? I would hate to be at your Christmas gathering.

> to make us a bit more comfortable with the additional aid

That's not how treaties work. You put, IN WRITING, something you agree to do and the other sides does too.

If Ukraine commits to give something while the US "feels good" about maybe doing something (or not, who knows?), that's not fair.

> what he did was simple disrespect

Musk holds conferences in the oval office in T-shirt and MAGA cap while his child scolds the president. Nobody stepped in to ask where was his suit, and certainly not the president.

> we do not have enough of an interest to go send young Americans to die.

This is a straw man: nobody asked you to.

> the minerals deal was actually a pretty fair offer the way it was worked out

There was nothing fair in that mineral deal: the US would get resources and Ukraine was getting... nothing. No security guarantees, no military support, nothing. Trump said it himself: he wanted it to get back what the US spent helping Ukraine so far.

Getting something for nothing is fair to you?

> as dress for the occasion

The is the King of Saudi Arabia at the white house: https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/president-obama-meets-wit...

This is the pope at the white house: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/09/25/photos-...

This is Elon Musk giving an interview in the oval office: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/12/tech/elon-musk-x-oval-off...

Did they all disrespect the US?

Ukraine is sending its youngs to die to keep Russia (the west common enemy) at bay and your concern is... Zelinsky wearing a tie?

Off topic but now Ars Technica has blocked my IP and gives a "403 Forbidden". Most likely another one of Cloudflare "protected site" that blanket blocks whole foreign IP ranges from legit reputable ISP. At least some site makes me go through the whole "prove you aren't a robot" song a dance but here they just outright blocked :(

I am playing this right now and love it, though the learning curve is steep even for a Civilization veteran. This is what Civ VI or VII could be if they didn't try to dumb down the game to increase the audience.

As a kid who wasted countless hours in Ultima V and VI, thank you: you explain very well what made those games so great and how disappointed I am every time I have been since then (though I gotta say Morrowind was fairly good at mimicking that recipe)

He has been publicly attacking Fauci for his handling of Covid and retweeting antivax people

40 bucks feels alright but 200 (five times as much !) feels excessive. How much priority support does one need for a file explorer?

Also yes 200 gives you free upgrades but you have to assume there'll be many years of development and many upgrades to recoup the cost vs buying the regular license.

Between your average corporate megacorp and a drugged-out antivax fascist, I'll take my chances with the former yes.

But it has the worst build quality, interior and controls. These are not numerically measurable but they certainly do matter to prospective buyers. As does even more subjective things like styling, which is now pretty dated.

Either way I suspect it now doesn't really matter because this is becoming the "Trump-mobile" which makes it a non starter for a lot of politically conscious peoples.

I still remember when they refused to support forms constraints (there was the JS API, but not the UI designed to show users what they got wrong with their form, so you had to polyfill that specifically for Safari).

Forms are pretty darn important to 99.9% of web apps, this felt like active sabotage.

Why not not both? Escaping output should be a requirement but doesn't hurt to remove obvious garbage in the input (including harmless stuff like pointless spaces)

I own stocks of several companies and I definitely hope he stays as far away from them as possible. He is a man-child into alt-right and antivax conspiracy theories, this is toxic to any brand unless you are selling to the MAGA crowd.

Every chip coming this year (Intel, AMD, Qualcomm) has an AI processor. I am not sure Apple is doing anything special here.

In the case of Uber, the service they provide is highly dependent on where you are.

How would they force you to buy anything? If you don't want to use their store, then don't install it?

This would never get past regulators approval. Qualcomm has a massive share of the Android CPU market, putting the combined entity in a clear monopoly situation.

Companies the size of Apple are very limited in acquiring other large companies (see: Nvidia trying to buy ARM or Microsoft struggling to close on Activision)

Not any weirder than Montana having to abide by SCOTUS decisions.

Producing content also cost money, and producers get a cut of the ads or the subscription.

In my experience, roaming on another network also often breaks SMS.

They don't on Android, why would they on iOS?

Plenty of countries do, for ex in Asia see Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.

I actually do. Part of the appeal of the Civilization franchise to me has always been the ability to model the landscape and shape to get geography of my civilization. Civ 6 kind of break that and makes it worse with all the wonders scattered all over the place

I have played all of them since the first and this is my most disliked. There's something just not quite right with it for me though I can't put my finger on it.

Well the benefit of having Java/Kotlin being the default dev language for Android is there's no need to recompile to run those apps on another arch. Only apps with native code will be an issue.

Apple's demonetization was painful financially but the platform losing steam is a deeper and different problem that started before that event.

In developed countries, banks are rarely left to completely fail nowadays, the small ones are usually taken over by the big ones, and the big ones are bailed by governments/regulators.

Gold has industrial uses without even talking about jewelry. Even if everyone stopped valuing gold as a form of currency, it would still has some intrinsic value.