I love that paranoia and xenophobia. As if a corrupt domestic company is somehow magically better than a corrupt international company.

It’s been quite obvious over the past few years that yes there’s potentially some risk of foreign countries trying to install spy code, but actually that doesn’t seem to happen very often, and what’s much more damaging to our society are large corporations that use their power to screw over the general public, and most of these large corporations are domestic.

Nintendo has been a dominant company in the video game industry for decades. It should come as no surprise that they’ve made some amazing games.

Capitalists hate capitalism. Competition is so irritating, because someone might undercut you. (And other people would cheat to win, just like you would, so you can’t ever relax.)

Tell that to Amazon. If you can build a monopoly, you win in the medium run.

Challenge presented. Who has courage to accept? We shall see.

Are there books in libraries? Yes, and the publishers don’t have to do a thing. And it is good for society. Similarly, can you fix an old car, even if the manufacturer went bankrupt? Of course you can.

We have precedent, my friend.

There are two different problems. One is easier to solve.

Your counterexample, “purchase a subscription”, actually undercuts the point you’re trying to make. The goal is honesty here. If you are renting or subscribing, you want to know that up front, in big text, using the simplest possible word. That word is “RENT”.

The issue about the lease business model being bad for society and consumers is also important, but it’s complicated and different from basic truth in advertising.

You’re talking about the wrong thing. The Mozilla Foundation is and has been acting a fool in recent years. Firefox, the open source program, is doing mostly OK. Obviously the two are closely connected, but they’re definitely not the same thing, and this matters when discussing policy.

Now now. If Mozilla is breaking the law here, of course someone would report them for it. There’s no need to shoot the messenger when everything was predictable.

I appreciate your apprehension. Fortunately, you don’t need to speculate. Go try it and find out.

What are you talking about.

I think we should be precise. The badness began before generative AI. Generative AI makes things worse because now you are less sure when you’re looking at total junk, but the junk ratio itself doesn’t depend on that.

What you talking about as apathy, that’s not what’s happening. Google has 90% or more of the search market because it’s the default, because it pays to be the default, even when it’s worse than alternatives. The only people who are actually apathetic are the ones who know that alternative exist, are relatively easy to switch to, are superior, and still don’t. That’s not the majority of users.

I think that’s a matter of perspective. IMO it didn’t work, it was broken, that’s why we’re even talking about it.

Nope, sorry. That technical hurdle is easily solved. In reality, this is about advertising and snooping.

Betrayal at Krondor. What an amazing game, I love it, but if you imagine what the graphics would be like if it were made today, I think it’s hard to recommend anyone play it.

If you read that Wikipedia page, you will find that it says the opposite of what you thought it said. Oops!

Laws regulating TV shows? I just don’t see any need for it. We will all be fine without that media. Read a book or take a walk or browse free online media.

Of course simultaneous price increases suggest a possible antitrust issue, and that should be dealt with (but don’t cross your fingers) along with all the other antitrust issues in other areas.

Blaming the shareholders is partly disingenuous. Yes the shareholder problem is real, but yes the corporation has power to address it directly. There is no law that says short term profit must be maximized.

And good riddance to the streaming services. We just don’t need them.