They hook you into an ecosystem. That’s it, thats the game. I don’t think it has too much to do with insecurity. Group chats and video chats with people outside of imessage is awful. Group chats lose a lot of features because SMS was all there was for a long time. Standard (not Google-ified) RCS is still too bare at the moment so I don’t think the looming rcs fixes that aspect of it.

It’s easy for people to cherrypick with groups.

There are tons of antisemitic leftists. I’ve had to heavily curate my social media because of them, and I’m lucky because that’s all I’ve had to do (eg, I’m not being chased across college campuses or doxxed for belonging to a synagogue or have people waiting outside of my door to hound me immediately).

But there are tons of leftists who aren’t as well.

Leftism has become co-opted as way for people to virtue signal and rationalize things they want to believe. The right is definitely seizing on this strife. But historically, there’s nobody the left likes to fight more than other leftists.

And the meme at the top about immigrants… that isn’t new. The USSR was famous for establishing ethnostates and it carries over to modern day. Sure, you could immigrate. But it isn’t like workers held hands and ignored the differences. The pressure was there, but perhaps not the wage pressure. Out groups were still blamed for things like shortages and service degradation, just like today. Nor a defense of anti immigration, but people seem to think the problem exists in uneducated or unenlightened people close to be leftwing. Nope, it’s our cohort. We are watching it in real time right now.

Has to be Krampus, and Anna and the Apocalypse.

Krampus really scratches that nostalgic itch every year and I don’t know why. The broken family dynamics, the environment, the sound and set designs are amazing. And it has a lesson like every good Christmas movie should.

And Anna and the Apocalypse is similar. It is funny, musical, and ultimately an allegory about growing up and leaving everyone behind to forge your own path. A good reminder that you never know when it will be your last Christmas with someone. Or maybe I’m looking into it too much and I just like zombie musicals.

For me, it is the mindless reptition or task accomplishment. Showers work well because I don’t have to think about what I’m doing, which frees my mind up for something else. There’s no rush, there’s plenty of soothing ambiance, and it just works. I find doing chores around the house can trigger the same type of state. Putting dishes away lets my mind wander and problem solve. So does putting away laundry, dusting, sweeping, stuff like that. I usually need to wear earbuds and play an ambient noise to help me along.

But showers are still the best. You hit the nail on the head in your description about why it works. I think the key is anything relaxing, but not too relaxing such that you get drowsy.

This is literally the reason Apple changes the bubble color. iMessage is encrypted by default and uses normal data instead of MMS. That’s the indicator.

This entire spiel about bubble color envy is ridiculous. Features are the separation. The media will whip things up with their sample size of a handful of cherry picked anecdotes. But almost every teen has an iPhone and uses iMessage in the USA. Apple has over 80% of that market.

What Google wants is for Apple to implement Google’s proprietary RCS implementation, not RCS proper. Because RCS proper lacks a lot of features that people take for granted with iMessage. That is presumably one reason Google forked it and requires it to run through their proprietary middleware.

Edit: Don’t get me wrong. I would love for an open standard to overtake the proprietary bits from both Apple and Google. But Google is disingenuous here. They are complaining because, despite their efforts, they can’t crack the market. Teens aren’t bitting for Android. iMessage has network effect going on, so Google is trying to crack that open since they can’t get a compelling overall product and ecosystem for a valuable demographic.

I’d rather there be open standards. But that means Google RCS has to change as well.

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I’m so happy to see someone else is finally talking about this. RCS, as implemented by Google, is distinct from the actual open RCS standard. Google added a proprietary middle layer which is how they get features working which RCS doesn’t support.

And that proprietary middle layer (Jibe being part of it) is why there aren’t a million third party RCS clients out there. Google must give API access. They are gatekeepers. And they only share keys with strategic partners (Samsung being one of them, telcos with their own app like Verizon used to have being another).

But in the end Google did what Google does best: fragmented a product. And now Google holds the leash for RCS proper. I bet Apple isn’t too keen to route all customer data through Google servers even when encrypted. Because it’s another piece that Apple doesn’t control.

Citi Bank took my parents’ home and thus any inheritance the family had coming. So one can theoretically go murder those executives’ children as compensation and be morally right, yes? Or is putting in more identifiable terms highlighting how insane that logic actually is?

Native Americans can invade American preschools and cut the throats of all the toddlers similar to what Hamas has uploaded to the internet with Israeli kids, yes?

Don’t you see the slippery slope and immoral position you hold here?

Bad people love to wear the mantle of victim because it justifies all the evil shit they do.

Exactly. I’m a far-leftist, and I’m as disgusted with leftist hot takes the same way I was when poor old defenseless Russia invaded Ukraine and started murdering their children.

I’ve blocked and purged so many leftist creators in 24 hours it is unreal. Spreading legit anti-Semitic (really anti-Jew) conspiracy theories (“curious how nobody stopped it” and the like). Reframing these terrorists as freedom fighters like you said. Blaming this on the U.S. somehow (because we made Iran do this via Hamas as proxy; but Iran has clean hands don’t worry they are just another oppressed peoples).

Far too many leftists, like their right wing nut counterparts, are contrarians at heart. This is what happens when political ideology becomes a personality trait; it becomes akin to a religion.

So thoroughly disgusted by it all. Bad enough what’s happening over there in Israel and Palestine right now; bad enough with all the innocent lives being lost; but then to justify industrial grade rape and murder of men, women, and children? And cheer Palestinians on as they record, edit, and upload their barbarity?

I’d like to believe that a lot of it are disinformation ops, but the sad reality is probably that a fair number of people have nothing left to live for because their lives are shit so the world burning down for others isn’t such a big deal for them.

Ha, I completely didn’t pick up how my post could be read that way. And you’re right! I meant more about people being creepy and not letting a dad and daughter go unbothered for Halloween.

People really need to stop this celebrity obsession. He’s a dad trick or treating with his daughter a few years ago. It is beyond ridiculous that people not only tolerate this, but cheer it on.

There are many factors at play. Surely, a huge one is status. It’s why one of the most desireable keywords to associate with vehicles (as picked by buyers) is “luxurious.”

But then there is everything else. My state requires annual inspections. And you must fully repair that vehicle, including to modern emission specs, before it is legal and able to be registered. That alone will cost more than a beater in many cases since they are, well, a beater. A vehicle so old it is essentially driven until it is in a state of disrepair. As someone else said, saving money becomes difficult with a beater eventually because the cost of repairing it to keep it legal eventually outpaces your savings if you aren’t operating on a short timeline.

Personally, I make good money and still drive my old vehicle because it is good enough. I have peers who do the same: our priorities are elsewhere, like paying for private school tuition for the kids or whatever. But I also know howmit ends eventually: accidents, causes by other people, which totals your vehicle because it’s value is so low or damage so significant. And there isn’t a lot of beaters on the market here anymore. So people are forced to buy new or take a slight discount for used (insomuch as monthly payments go). Used prices are just that crazy.

Could be that Apple will acquire DuckDuckGo. A little hasty to presume it I suppose, but Apple has to wonder how much money they are leaving on the table by taking Google’s payments. If Google will pay them more than $9 billion/year just to be default—what does that say about how profitable Apple’s absolutely huge and locked-in base can be?

The problem in this scenario is that the biggest player will still have an opportunity to dominate. Proof of work blockchain? Well, Amazon just has to outspend all the others—which they can handily do, or run computation on AWS. Similar with staking, except worse because more money = more direct influence.

Our local stores, as discussed in other comments, can’t even offer shipping or workable websites. And we expect them to self administer part of that blockchain? They are just going to pay Amazon to do it.

And big data companies like Amazon would love to peer into the blockchain and see the throughput for each of these competitors and discover patterns. Edit: and they already do that for vendors selling on Amazon, which is where all these Amazon-branded products come from.

That’s probably the biggest turn off to the MBA-types; it would require sharing information, even if obfuscated.

Interesting to see if this reverses the beginning stages of some EU countries pushing back against supporting Ukraine (specifically Poland, which was a shocker for me). I’m sure that bit was all very real Politik what with their elections coming up and domestic issues to handle… but still. The U.S. is one bad election away from permitting expansive war in Europe. And some European countries are seemingly tiring of Ukraine taking the hits for them?

A tale as old as time. Rightists aren’t original, which is why their media/comedians/movies/music/religions are terrible.

Fascists cannot grow without co-opting leftist language. So yes, very worried.

Edit: not related to this shitpost. People here seriously need to watch Prager’s content. They twist our shit up with their crazy.

Conservatives: pErSoNal ReSpOnSiBiLiTy.

Also Conservatives: No, not like that! My feelings!!!

Most likely outcome. These are the people famous for holding bologna sandwiches hostage from starving people until they agree to hear indoctrination pitches under duress.

Same boat: people who hate typescript and therefore ensuring type safety probably also hate unit tests because they are too inconvenient to awesome rockstar developers.

Basically the atheist dad yelling and screaming at his daughter for not being gay and not wanting to have abortions. Typical fundie Christians projecting their inner most thoughts and darkest desires onto their opponents thinking.