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Sounds a lot like the true story of Juicero, that $700 juicer which only squeezed Juicero-brand juice packs, and only after connecting to WiFi and validating a QR code printed on each (rather extravagantly expensive) bag of pre-chopped vegetables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero

Edgy humor, even in poor taste, should not merit prison time.

Or worse, as we’ve just seen in Austria and France.

Reminds me of the case of Mark Meechan a.k.a. Count Dankula:

>Mark Meechan, 30, recorded his girlfriend's pug, Buddha, responding to statements such as "Sieg Heil" by raising its paw.

>The clip was viewed more than three million times on YouTube.

>Meechan, of Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, was sentenced at Airdrie Sheriff Court after being found guilty of committing a hate crime last month.

>He had denied any wrong-doing and insisted he made the video, which was posted in April 2016, to annoy his girlfriend.

>But Sheriff Derek O'Carroll found him guilty of a charge under the Communications Act that he posted a video on social media and YouTube which was grossly offensive because it was "anti-Semitic and racist in nature" and was aggravated by religious prejudice.

Cases like these are an absolute waste of the police and prosecutor's time, in my American opinion.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133

Source: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fastmail-loses-customers-face...

Irish farmers called pigs, "the gentleman who always pays his rent" [0]. Raising pig or two was a reliable way for even poor families to fertilize soil and make a bit of money.

[0] https://www.irishamericanmom.com/the-irish-pig-a-k-a-the-gen...

>I looked at Fastmail at the time, but there was one showstopper which I forget (and should revisit).

Was it Australia's anti-encryption law?

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fastmail-loses-customers-face...

I've been happy with Fastmail as a GMail alternative. Been slowly moving my logins and usernames from one to the other. Only (rather significant) complaint is that since 2018, they're affected by Australia's encryption backdoor bill.

> Well, fighting Nazis alone, does not make you a saint. Stalin fought the Nazis, too.

Quite so!

I encourage you to check out the book and reserve your opinion on its author:

>Kemp, neither loyal to the House of Bourbon nor Roman Catholic, also hadn’t been personally affected by the “Red Terror” political violence that had incited the conservative uprising. Still, he had been appalled at the bloodshed preceding the July 1936 outbreak of the civil war, explaining to a friend he couldn’t stand by while leftist mobs murdered people “simply because they were priests or nuns” or “because they had a little money or property.” [0]

We know now that while Republicans did massacre and rape civilians, the Nationalists did so too and on a much larger scale. But to someone on the ground in the middle of that chaos, with bullets and propaganda flying everywhere, I imagine the full picture would have been next to impossible to discern. We can only truly see what’s right in front of us.

[0] https://www.historynet.com/peter-kemp-set-europe-ablaze.htm

I‘d guess it’s due to the humanization of anyone ever associated with Franco’s Nationalists, however critically and impermanently.

Even fighting actual Nazis in occupied Europe (which Peter Kemp describes in the autobiographical “No Colours or Crest“) doesn’t rub out the stain for some users, apparently.

Personally I favor open minds and paths to redemption.

A revenge killing for the assassination of a policeman by the Falange [0], which itself was a revenge killing (with a mistaken target) for the shooting of another man, who was shot dead in funeral procession for yet another man who died under unclear circumstances in a spiraling cycle of violence.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Castillo_(police_officer)

Orwell wasn’t the only Englishman to write of his time spent fighting in the Spanish Civil War. British soldier Peter Kemp fought on behalf of Franco’s Nationalists (i.e. the side with the fascists) and documented his experience in the autobiographical “Mine Were of Trouble.” Although he had sided with Franco’s quasi-fascists* in Spain, Kemp would later fight the Nazis as a British commando in WW2. After the war, he worked as a foreign correspondent for The Spectator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kemp_(writer)

https://www.amazon.com/Mine-Were-Trouble-Nationalist-Account...

*While Franco’s authoritarian conservative coalition include the fascist Falange, it also included monarchists, Catholics, and other social conservatives who Franco balanced against one another while in power.

Don’t have a PS4, sorry. World of Warcraft Classic on PC has been fun for me, using Discord for voice chat.

Computer games with voice chat have helped me weather COVID cabin fever as an alternative to social media. Particularly in PvE MMOs, players are just there to collaborate and have fun, with no room for politics to intrude.

I can’t speak for the U.S. military, but Google accounted for GPS satellite failure (in response to the actions of a hostile power, solar weather event, or any other reason) in their design of Spanner, which relies on precise time synchronization between geographically-distant data centers. In the Spanner white paper, the atomic clocks used in case of GPS satellite failure are called “Armageddon masters”:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...

Best to avoid Kessler syndrome, where debris in low Earth orbit - such as space warfare might produce - knocks out satellites and makes space travel more hazardous:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Similar arguments were made in defense of the Daily Show and Colbert Report (e.g. "just comedy shows"), yet those shows also often touched on big issues neglected by mainstream news.

It's also a nonsensical expression which some English speakers (rather good-naturedly) find bothersome, as comedian David Mitchell explains:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

In the manner of all business consulting, it 'helps' by letting management say, "Look, we hired a consultant! We care deeply about ____ and have given it our best shot. If any problems related to ____ arise in the future, blame the consultant." In this case, the blank is diversity and inclusion.

One relevant example is the Steele Dossier, which Mother Jones reported on a week before the 2016 election. It was published without permission, and its more sensational claims remain unverified or have since been disproven.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier#Mother_Jones_st...

Thanks, copy-pasted them from elsewhere and didn't notice that they'd been clipped. Fixed now.

Many Quest buyers reporting similar problems:

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jb5z4i/i_dont_under... https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jb86d1/facebook_del... https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jb701s/guys_i_reall... https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jb5wrs/my_facebook_... https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jannlj/facebook_req... https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jaq477/facebook_scr... https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/jawv6g/how_sho...

Jonanin, what is your name? Where do you live? What is your current street address? Where do your parents live, and what is their phone number? How about your kids?

I’m asking rhetorically. All this info and more is available to anyone with a full name and photograph via people-finder sites like Spokeo and SocialCatfish, which is exactly what Facebook accounts with a “real name policy” expose to the world. Using this info, any anonymous troll who you tick off in a VR game can send a SWAT team to your house, or tie up your phone lines, or harass your family and employer, or attempt to do you real physical harm. The Internet creates an extreme asymmetry of power between the abuser and the abused, and there are lots of unstable abusers out there with nothing more exciting to do than make your life hell.

The Mark Zuckerbergs and Larry Pages of the world live in gated communities with many layers of people between them and the world, so they don’t care about any of this.

We now live in world where if Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like your Facebook posts, he (or some nameless flunky) will delete all your video games.

>The US is incapable of suffering a fall of Rome. America's geography makes that impossible.

That’s true if you look at America’s rivals on the world stage, i.e. Russia or China. But Rome wasn’t sacked by the Persians, or the Egyptians, or another Great Power of the time. It was sacked by tribal Gauls and migrating tribes of Visigoths.

Just make a throwaway Facebook account, then. That's what I did for my Quest and it works fine.

I made a throwaway Facebook account for my Quest 1. Took me all of two minutes.

EDIT: Having read more comments below, I'm concerned that Facebook may eventually flag my throwaway account as "inauthentic" and revoke my access to all purchased Oculus software. The day that happens is the day I drop Facebook VR forever. No way am I linking my real-life identity to a platform full of angry gamers, some of whom may try to doxx and SWAT an opponent after a bad in-game experience.

Apps aren’t even required. Mozilla Firefox for VR implements WebVR. Many adult sites can seamlessly play VR content via this plugin. Navigate to the site as normal in Firefox VR, hit play on a VR video, and there you are.

...or so I am reliably informed.

1.5x the RAM and pixel count compared to the original Quest, for one.

edit: and the 90Hz refresh rate upgrade from the first Quest’s 72Hz is nothing to sneeze at. Very perceptible immersion upgrade for many.

This problem is common to nearly every subreddit, on every side of the political spectrum. Unaccountable moderators will ban you in a heartbeat for arbitrary reasons, such as disagreeing with the sub's majority opinion.

I was banned from my (very liberal) U.S. state's subreddit for quoting Martin Luther King. I quoted a passage from one his speeches that denounced political violence, such as the arson and vandalism we've seen in Kenosha recently. The subreddit moderator banned me within minutes, called me a Nazi, and immediately denied the appeal.

The Stirling engine's time has finally come! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahfGfDdgNY

Not really, but it's a neat alternative for turning solar energy into mechanical power. Achievable (at grossly inefficient power outputs) by the hobbyist without expensive tools or nasty chemicals. Much easier to recycle at the end of a system's useful life.