This. If I’m not mistaken, the system was meant to operate like a hybrid between patents and trademarks. Iirc, things weren’t originally under copyright by default and you had to regularly renew your copyright in order to keep it. Most of the media in the public domain is a result of companies failing to properly claim or renew copyright before the laws were changed. My understanding is that the reason for this was because the intent was to protect you from having your IP stolen while it was profitable to you, but then release said IP into the public domain once it was no longer profitable (aka wasn’t worth renewing copyright on).

Then corpos spent a lot of money rewriting the system and now practically everything even remotely creative is under copyright that’s effectively indefinite.

one slice is missing

That looks more like 2~3 slices dude.

The alternative explanation is that the employers have investments in corporate real estate and don’t want their investments to lose value. Personally, I think that the the people at the top probably have investments in corporate real estate, while middle managers are the way you describe.

I don’t think the people at the top usually care what the employees are doing so long as they’re making money, and being in the office means they’re keeping corporate real estate prices afloat. As such, being in office makes money for the executives, even if that money isn’t made directly through the company.

Middle managers on the other hand, likely don’t have any significant corporate real estate investments, nor are they as likely get significant bonuses for company productivity. As such, it makes more sense for their motive to be more about control than it is money.

That said, I do know some executives do indeed see employees the way you’ve described them; an infamous example comes to mind about the Australian real estate executive talking about how they needed to bring workers to heel and crash the economy to remind workers that they work for the company and not the other way around. I’m just not sure that many executives actually think about their workers in that much depth. I think if they did then we’d see a stark contrast of very ethical companies and highly abusive companies instead of the mix of workplace cultures we have now; because some ceos would come to the conclusion that a happy worker is a good worker, while others would become complete control freaks.

Oh my god, wallet chains are going to make a comeback, but for phones this time.

I’m really hoping valve does a public steamdeck OS release. I’d like to replace windows on my PC with Linux and have windows as a backup, but the Linux distro I’m the most familiar with is the steam deck’s distro, and that’s not available outside of steam decks yet.

Everything is political.

Sigh

That’s only true in an academic sense. When a layman uses the term “political”, they refer to discussion pertaining to things like how a formal government is run, comparisons between types of governance, government policy, etc.

While deciding what cookie to eat or what color your cat’s litterbox is might technically be political in an academic sense, you’re just going to annoy people if you try to tell them that those are political decisions. I have found that trying to force academic definitions into common use is confusing at best, annoying on average, and infuriating at worst.

An example of where a word’s academic definition has no place in common speech can be found in “information”. The informal definition of “information” typically is seen as referring to knowledge and the transfer of said knowledge. This definition allows you to gain information from a lack of something.

However, it is my understanding that the scientific definition of “information” does not allow for the aforementioned action, as “information” refers to the properties of physical matter. The result is that you cannot gain “information” from a lack of something. You might be able to come to conclusions based on a lack of “information”, but you cannot actually gain “information” from a lack of something because “information” is inherently linked to matter.

Now. All of that said, this meme is related to something said at an engineering school, so on the one hand, it isn’t entirely out-of-place to expect the academic definition to be used because it is an academic setting. Yet, on the other hand, it is an engineering school, not a political science school. As such, while OP should be aware that the academic definition of “politics” may come into play, it’s also reasonable to expect that their professors and peers would mainly be using the common definition of the term.

However again, in my experience, trying to force academic definitions into casual discussion is confusing at best, annoying on average, and infuriating at worst. Please stop trying to do it. Thanks.

(Also, imo, genocide is like Schrodinger’s Cat; it is both political and not political at the same time. Personally, I think it mainly depends on the depth of the discussion; but its “political” nature varies from person-to-person. Imo, saying that genocide is happening shouldn’t be considered “political”, but talking about why it is occuring is political.)

Edit: whoops, somehow my comment doubled, within the comment. The fuck happened there?

Edit 2: I swear I need to find a new phone keyboard, and I need to read over my comments before submitting. I’m finding a lot of stupid auto-correct errors, and it seems like they’re becoming more common.

Edit 3: the reason I got hung-up on it, and I should have mentioned this, is because I often see “everything is political” used to justify bringing heavier topics into places where it’s inappropriate (like chatrooms where people are trying to just hang out and have light hearted discussions).

Holy shit that’s fucking awesome.

After reading the article, this might be an exception.

I thought that was Qobuz. At least I can actually buy music through Qobuz I guess.

Yeah, I don’t get it. No one says, “fuck Alphabet for how they’re handling YouTube”. No one says, “fuck Alphabet for baking spyware into Android and Chrome”. No, they criticize Google for that stuff. Why is Facebook different?

I don’t think the people doing it now are bots, but I swear the Facebook-Meta separation had to have been started by astroturfing. People seemed way too eager to accept the rebranding and act like Meta was somehow different from Facebook.

This meme is about gun control.

Dude, maybe it was meant to be a joke, but that doom picture is so fake. C’mon.

The fact that quantum dots are already being successfully applied to LCD-LED and OLED screens is encouraging for future QDEL products. QDEL stakeholders claim that the tech could bring efficiencies like lower power consumption and higher brightness than OLED. (Research using a prototype device has recorded quantum dot light-emitting diodes reaching 614,000 nits. Of course, those aren’t the type of results you should expect to see in a real-life consumer product.)

614,000 nits

That’s fucking insane. HDR 1400 displays are at least 1,400 nits. 614,000 nits seems like you’d be staring at the fucking sun.

There’s also hope that QDEL could eventually last longer than OLED, especially since QDEL doesn’t rely on organic materials that can cause burn-in.

Tbh the burn-in issue is the reason why I don’t like OLEDs as computer monitors. I know phones and TVs don’t tend to have major burn-in issues, but the fact that it exists sucks. TVs have a variable-enough image that long-term use isn’t an issue imo, and even the most thrifty person will probably end up replacing their phone every 4~6 yrs. However, I’m used to having computer monitors be long-term things. My last monitor lasted about 10yrs before it died.

As it stands, QDEL displays would become noticeably dimmer more quickly than today’s OLED displays.

Aw, that’s disappointing. At the same time though, if they’re able to get even 10% of the 614,000 nits on commercial units, then they’d have to lose a significant amount of brightness to dim to current display levels.

But optimists believe QDEL display lifetimes could one day be on par with LCD-LEDs and outlast OLEDs.

Yeah, I hope so too.

True, it’s just that if businesses are already using Windows + Office 365, then it’d just be the usual monthly/yearly cost wouldn’t it? Maybe they were just talking about their office specifically though.

I doubt any department is going to get approval to move to Windows 11 and deal with Microsoft’s fees.

What fees are you talking about? Genuinely curious because I haven’t seen any articles about new or increasing business fees.

I looked up the transcript for it out of curiosity. The jokes aren’t terrible I guess; they read a lot like the Carlin bits I’m familiar with. However, I got to the AI part and was like, “nah, they’re pushing it too hard.” I couldn’t see the complaint until I got to that bit, and then I could understand why it made his estate uncomfortable.

If they’d used the AI bit to poke fun at themselves and talk about how AI’s even replacing dead people without trying to push AI as the future, then I’d be confused as to why the Carlin estate is upset. However, right now AI primarily benefits the rich, so pushing AI as the future of humanity is contradictory even within the context of fake-Carlin routine because it goes against his takes about rich people ruining everything.

I like the security camera pointed at the billboard, like someone’s gonna steal it.

I was speaking in a general sense. You’re right that it seems like an outlier, but it’s also possible they were playing on custom servers which could implement addictive mechanics like lootboxes. However, at the same time, it’s not the fault of Minecraft’s devs if a custom server has lootboxes. Again though, I was speaking in a general sense because I was replying to someone saying that gaming addiction is unproven boomer shit; and not about this specific case.

I mean, there kinda is. Gambling addiction is a fairly well known phenomenon and while the vast majority of games aren’t purely gambling, many of them do share mechanics with gambling games. One could argue that if a game shares too many mechanics normally seen in gambling and are associated with addiction, then gambling addiction could apply.

Another thing to note is that, if I understand correctly, the modern professional definitions of “addiction” aren’t exclusive to substance abuse but include anything that can cause someone to repetitively engage in a particular behavior despite any negative effects it may have. You could argue that if someone is engaging in gaming to the detriment of their own lives, then they’re addicted. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the developers fault though, people can get addicted to just about any system that triggers some kind of reward in the brain.

However, to add onto the previous statement, it is fairly well documented that some games (World of Warcraft is an infamous example) are specifically designed to keep players engaged for as long as possible without any regard for the player’s wellbeing. If a game has a lot of systems that are designed to keep the player hooked for as long as possible then it’s reasonable to argue that the game is designed to be addictive. The catch is that you’d likely have to prove that the developers were being intentionally malicious.

I hope whatever they come up with is linux-compatible so it can work on the Steam Deck. I know it almost certainly won’t be, but it’d be nice.