I mean, there’s no singular reason for Kamala’s loss - but abstentions over the middle east were still a reasonably noteworthy problem for the campaign.

With that being said… more broadly, people are just generally awful and a lot of people bury their heads in the sand rather than acknowledging how backwards the majority really are.

Not sure what you mean, you can get a used Pixel 6a for 120 EUR, which will continue to get updates for another 2.5 years. Show me another phone with such a great value proposition. That’s exactly my point, outside of the EU and north america, you’re just very unlikely to find that scenario. I don’t want to doxx myself here, but the going rate for the phone you mentioned is at minimum 300 euro equivalent - comparable flagships significantly cheaper. I have nothing against Pixels specifically - before the re-brand, I had nearly every Google Nexus phone ever made, and they were all amazing. They’re just not acceptably priced in all markets for what they are, even used.

I’d argue however that there’s much more to android than either Pixels OR chinese spyware crap - Samsung, Sony, and LG aren’t always perfect, but often make very good products that if running a custom ROM, are every bit as secure as any pixel, while the hardware of pixels is generally a bit worse, but compensated for with better software optimisation. Buying into a false dichotomy that there is only one good android manufacturer puts us no further ahead than apple fanboys beholden to a largely good, but sometimes flawed ecosystem.

My ideal is that development can expand to other mainstream brands and OEMs, and that the interest in the graphene/ROM community picks up steam more broadly, rather than being siloed into pixels alone, and bound to the fate of google-specific hardware going forward.

graphene is ONLY for select Google pixel phones though. I wish this was made much clearer by the team and advocates.

its a real shame because pixels, although big in the USA are typically a minority of most android ecosystems elsewhere, and bootloader hijinks keep some perfectly capable phones from being easy to switch over to, even if they were supported.

Even on samsungs, which are much better for flashing than they used to be - my options on a year old flagship for a decent ROM are pathetic compared to the old days.

so I would really love to use graphene, and go back to an open source ROM without crap on it, but pixels are such a bottom tier phone for their price in a lot of places, as much as I really really want the project go gain traction for their transparency and objectives.

“it prevents some users’ preferred operation of using the mouse while its charging”

…

“It’s not a stupid decision”

the fact this is even being suggested shows a lack of familiarity with Australia’s position on asylum seekers.

People from war-torn countries or fleeing genocide are held in international-law-violating limbo for decades, there’s no chance in hell that somebody from a developed country is getting political asylum here, especially with the current poisoned rhetoric on immigration.

absolutely. I had tried Linux on various machines long ago but was one of the people that was put off by older distro’s learning curves - I’m now daily driving Linux on both my laptop and desktop and the main push for the switch is microsoft fucking around with settings, installing candy crush after updates (on a paid OS), adding more and more dumb, unsolicited, privacy invading AI bullshit with every feature update, and running like shit on a perfectly adequate machine.

Modern Linux, with flatpak support? I haven’t looked back once - had to help a friend fix something on a win11 desktop recently and was reminded of every reason I made the switch. Even if I had to jump in the terminal every day like long ago, it would still be worth it to not have bing, copilot, and edge rammed down my throat, whether I want them or not.

Windows is getting so shitty that completely non-technical users are tired of it… as soon as somewhat open minded users start to experiment and realise that Linux feature and UX parity has been achieved - I hope microsoft fucking collapses and we can all finally walk into the sunlight that open source OSes and software represent.

96% of perpetrators are men. It’s a statistic that goes against their “women are abusers too!” defense they have to protect their own egos from the reality that one of their friends is likely an abuser.

literally rape apology from you here.

The provocative and stupid sign in the article has completely derailed a potential discussion about fixing this problem and the exact nature of the problem - because it says something that denies anybody experiencing something outside it’s narrow statement their lived experience. It’s also not a men vs women issue - there are women that are assaulted by other women, who are equally silenced by this stupid sign. If you believe that a single rape is one too many (as any person on the fucking planet should), then explain to me how 4% of all rapes simply don’t matter - and how it isn’t offensive at a movement which is borne of abuse victims fighting against the system that facilitates it, and silences victims - to not only completely disregard men that have been victims of women (or women which have), but to then say that anybody who highlights the fact that rape can be perpetrated by a woman, even if it isn’t the majority of the time - must therefore be a rapist or friend of one. Fuck that noise.

stop making dumbass generalisations that paint those of us who make active choices to support women and act decently, being an ally as “probably having rapist friends” because of our gender - like seriously what the actual fuck is wrong with you?

Nobody is denying that the majority of rapes are men against women, but the disgusting attitude you have here that all men are automatically rapists, when there are people that want to fix this culture and stop the problem - but stupid nonsense like this pushes so many people down the alt-right pipeline and sets the entire movement back decades. Literally all you have to do to defuse this entire fucking issue is acknowledge male victims instead of pretending they don’t exist, and then link arms with them when they support the same reflections and changes to society and behaviour - instead it’s been turned into a stupid ‘men vs women’ fight by people that assume all people of one gender are perpetrators and all of another are victims, instead of the much more simple universal truth that rape is evil and you should just be able to accept that without adding qualifiers.

Whether they were condescending or not “militant athiesm” is a ridiculous hyperbole - people are free to believe whatever they want, just as anybody else is free to comment on that belief system when theyre not a part of it.

I mean, technically - the most secure option is irrevocably destroying the laptop everytime you have a break.

I’m not saying that all the women need to wear ‘skimpy bikinis’, I’m just making the point that the teams that are wearing the ‘sport hijab’ aren’t doing it because they have any kind of freedom, but because there is enormous societal pressure and political/legal/religious oppression, that extends beyond the games into their daily lives. Calling that ‘freedom’ is unreasonable, because the choice is either ‘wear these specific clothes (men-excluded) or face social outcast/death’

I completely agree that the frequent sexualisation of women’s sporting outfits is something which is still shitty and I’m not defending the objectification of talented athletes who want to be seen as skilled, rather than oggled for their body - but claiming that because the voluntary admission sports-team outfit is more revealing than necessary, doesn’t mean the athletes were forced into wearing it, and in the broader society, people in those same countries actually have the freedom to wear whatever they please, whether it’s ‘skimpy’ or not.

Sure, the women on the western team are perhaps pressured into the bikinis from decades of objectification and commercial sex-appeal underwriting womens sports, but in their daily lives outside, they aren’t beholden to a religious dress code, and consequently have much more ‘freedom’. The argument can also be made that even though the ‘skimpy’ outfits are objectifying, the athletes would have known what the prevailing dress code at the sport was before they signed up, and were ‘okay’ with it - at least to the extent that they still participated.

well nobody is forcing anybody to wear anything in the western countries - the huge difference is that outside of the sporting environment, women can choose to wear or not wear ‘skimpy bikinis’ - but in a sharia observant country, there is no such allowance made, so the sports team outfit actually is indicative of the dress standards forced upon women and expected by society.

Some cultures allow women to cover their bodies. While others allowed them to show as much as they’d like. Oh they’re allowed to cover themselves? They’re forced to wear it.

A truly insane way of phrasing repression - I guess Jews in nazi Germany were allowed to wear a star of david? No, I don’t care how liberating some women say the enforced coverings are, when there isn’t a choice - it’s repression. Plain and simple. Try being a woman in saudi wearing normal clothing in public and see how permissive the regime is.

I don’t think anybody is expecting Wikipedia admins and contributors to directly affect the outcome of conflict in the middle east, but deliberative discussions of how the events are documented can only be a good thing.

The site acts as much of our ‘record’ in the modern age - and is ideally less eager to throw out hyperbole or speculate too readily.

Arriving at that title and nomenclature needs to be seen as a reasoned approach, and not “crying wolf” so that the impartiality of the articles can be upheld - by being careful about their decision, it is a better outcome for everyone.

do you need to condescendingly question other people’s freedom of expression? if you pearl clutch over seeing a comment which says ‘fuck’, maybe the internet is a little much for you to handle.

dude what are you even talking about - corporate meddling and billionaires aren’t the topic of discussion here - you seem to want competency in leadership and that’s absolutely a good quality, but its genuinely confusing how competent leadership which also better reflects the demographics of the population isn’t in the interests of a better democracy? more representative politicians aren’t mutually exclusive from competent ones

you’re not hearing me - Its fine - please stop trying to convince me how difficult millimetres are, I went to school, I use them with no difficulty It’s really not rocket science to say ‘1.75m’ - we’re all surviving just fine. (Believe it or not, there are even craftsmen using millimetres! 😱) Base 12 is lovely, it’s very cute that you can say ‘3/8ths of an inch’ but it isn’t some universal human truth that fractions are easier than decimals - wait till you see that you can express inch subdivisions as decimals, and metric subdivisions as fractions!

SI is more logical in paper, it is also still more logical in practice. A base 10 unit I have never heard of before intuitively tells me what it measures and how big it is by the word alone. “Decilitres” is not really used outside of europe, but I immediately know it’s volumetric and 10x the scale of litres. Inherently logical. How many fluid ounces are in a liquid gallon? The answer is ‘good fucking luck’ or ‘12 is easy to subdivide by, but now I have to remember every single measurement relation by writ’

The most commonly used “standard” measurements are the way they are because they were the most useful measurements for actual craftspeople to standardize to, while the SI system was dreamt up by a bunch of rich French people.

The ‘S’ in ‘SI’ literally is the standard measurement system. It is the only universal and internationally standardised system. US feet are slightly different to UK feet, and Australian tablespoons were different to german ones - and if you think SI was dreamt up by a bunch of rich French people, firstly, that’s a bit disingenuous - not how that happened at all, but secondly, you’re going to absolutely lose your shit when you find out the basis of the ‘foot’ (it was the kings fucking foot, a super standardised unit of measurement)

As I said before, I’m not forcing you to use the dreaded centimetre - but please stop advocating against SI units because of hOw hArD tHeY aRe - it’s fine, complete idiots use kms without issue, we’re all gonna survive without reverting to fucking cubits.

For science? Metric is fantastic. For literally everything else - us customary is faster, easier, more understandable, and actually more approachable in terms of trying to actually build something.

Americans keep saying this shit as if the vast majority of the world doesn’t use grams for baking, celcius for temps, and cm for height daily - nobody is imposing anything on you guys, but you are going to continue to be ridiculed for using the dumbest measurement system. Yes, some systems absolutely make more sense than others - having even division of all orders of magnitude is a good example of that.

One could easily spend more time trying to measure 1.905 cm vs very quickly dividing 1 into 3/4". This is purely a skill issue. You’re also clearly being biased by picking a rounded imperial fraction as the basis of comparison, and complaining the metric equivalent is unwieldy. (50mm is 1.968504 inches - oh wow! oh no! how will anybody figure it out?) Of course they don’t neatly line up, they’re not meant to - it doesn’t make working in metric harder because I’m not using both systems? If I need hardware, I have M3 through to M8 for normal screws, bolts, washers, etc. - trying to use imperial is a clusterfuck - they don’t even use the same fucking denominator, thread pitch is not standardised, nothing makes sense, it’s a garbage system.

How many inches in a foot? thats easy - how many feet in a yard?..uh okay a little weirder, yards to a furlong? the fuck - furlongs to fathoms to miles to -… its inconsistent unpredictable garbage because it’s not in any way related to the units above or below it. That’s all WITHIN DISTANCE - good fucking luck if you want to convert that to volume or energy or anything else. mm > cm > m > km - all base 10. Predictable, consistently divisible.

There is no persecution here - you can use fucking apples to measure distance if you like - but please stop portraying SI units as this scientific conundrum which is incompatible with daily life or professional ease. Imperial isn’t actually any easier, americans are just familiar with it All but 2 countries in the entire world have switched over because the benefits self-evidently outweigh the costs…america acts like using dumb dumb units is a patriotic holdout but it is such an ongoing own-goal.

Yeah but people are correct when they ask if that’s really the standard you should be aiming for. If democrats want to beat trump as much as they say - perhaps to stop shooting themselves in the foot, picking incrementalist candidates who forget where they are, and trying to re-engage people that (correctly) feel completely unrepresented by offering up these ancient clowns would be a good start.

Blind allegiance to the most uninspiring dem runner in history, and his campaign being more about who he isn’t…it’s just the emperor’s new clothes but as an extremely consequential election.

If democrats lose again, it’s time for some serious self reflection - as bad as trump is, and as insane and dangerous some of his supporters are - that’s not an acceptable excuse for losing an election - if anything, it makes it more embarrassing that there’s anything resembling an actual contest.

To be clear, I think Assange definitely behaves as a russian asset - but democrats will do anything except admit that their candidates are awful. Leaks as mundane as the 2016 ones were capitalised on by Trump, of course - but it still shouldn’t have made a difference, and the race wasn’t as close as it was due to wikileaks.

Trying to motivate an increasingly disengaged and disappointed electorate by being the lesser of two evils simply isn’t good enough - and ‘useful idiots’ like Assange (although acting recklessly and causing damage) aren’t the reason Hillary lost, or that Trump has support.

dont know why youre being downvoted, this is completely true. The majority of people favour the convenience that streaming has represented, and TVs have been designed to turn on showing a shiny netflix icon instead of “Composite II” for like a decade now.

Yes, while consumers have been sold a double-edged sword/lie - the streaming companies were obviously never going to market their platforms by saying “one downside of streaming is we can take away content whenever we like”.

The average person with a bluray collection is going to be much more aware of the pros and cons of the formats - I’d be willing to guess most peoples family “collections” are still on DVD.

as a big proponent of FOSS I see where you’re coming from - but the reality will always be that apps which have a significant learning curve to even install are obviously hugely off-putting to the majority of users. While the rest of us might be comfortable cloning a repository and building from a tar file, expecting the average person who wants to talk with friends and family to jump through those kind of hoops is exactly what has held back wider adoption of better standards.

Things like flatpacks and snaps have gone a long way to making this less daunting, but when matrix isn’t a ‘self-hosted decentralised chat’, it’s a *‘version of whatsapp that isn’t always online, and i don’t know where to download it and have to learn what the terminal is to even get it on my laptop’ * - we can’t be surprised people stick with the less secure, private, easy options. That’s why I’m a big advocate of signal - it’s not perfect and part of me wishes it was matrix or threema or one of the other standards, but getting people comfortable with the idea of free and open source software, while making it as simple for them to install on their phone or computer as anything meta makes is a really good first step - in the meantime, it’s up to us in the wider community to make the other solutions more intuitive, simple, secure, and trust that if a good enough job is done of that - they will come.