That is a pretty good explanation of money laundering, actually.

I hated X because I found most of the characters sans Auron and Lulu to be incredibly obnoxious.

X-2 just made those problems worse by largely getting rid of the few characters I could tolerate, and somehow making Rikku even more annoying.

It says something about how good the combat was in those games that I managed to power my way thru X and a fair chunk of X-2 before it just got to be too much for me.

I hate X-2 with the burning fury of a thousand suns, and I’ll still praise the combat.

Thing is, all the other major manufacturers are just as bad or worse.

As a PC technician, HP still somehow has the best service and support, which speaks volumes about how bad everyone else is. Dell’s support tools are a generation behind HP’s, and Lenovo’s build quality is atrocious. Not to mention Lenovo’s technician support is so badly fragmented and poorly run, they default to having the customer send the device in for repair and avoid sending an on-site technician just so they can avoid dealing with technician support. Speaking from personal experience, getting to the right person when I have a problem or need to order additional parts is like pulling teeth, and even if I manage to reach someone, they’re usually equal parts incompetent and unhelpful.

And Apple doesn’t even want to service their stuff.

These days, you have to pick your poison.

Do it.

See what happens.

I’ve been getting a lot of mileage from this.

TikTok isn’t doing anything that any other major social media company isn’t also doing. The only difference being that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, and not a US one.

Just banning one app does little to resolve the overall privacy and information nightmare that social media is.

I’ve always said that the Railjack in Warframe really deserved to be its own game instead of a shoehorned game mode.

This looks like what that idea could be. Just being able to play Sea of Thieves IN SPACE!!! is a home-run of an idea.

But they may stay home, which is just as bad.

old.reddit is probably going to be on the chopping block, too. I only go for niche communities these days, but I’m gone for good once old.reddit is gone.

No, we’re not fine with being unbelievably screwed, but the ruling class has decided that this will be normal, so we might as well make dark jokes about it while we scream into the void.

I imagine this is only for consumer-grade printers. HP’s business-class devices are usually purchased under a contract.

shrug

I already assumed I’m being monitored on my work devices, and write my emails and chats like they’re going to be used in a deposition.

If I’m shit-talking someone, it’s in person or on my personal device.

Honestly, it’ll probably wind up becoming an American version of The Troubles. Republicans are cowards, and I doubt there are very many who are truly willing to fight and die for their cause. However, there are plenty of people willing to commit terrorist bombings and acts of sabotage if they think they can get away with it, and the US is huge. There are still plenty of places to hide if that’s the case.

And if Trump wins reelection, I can’t imagine many blue states putting up with it, and the same thing will happen from the opposite direction.

People in the know understand how shitty Facebook is, but at the very least, they’re a private company. ByteDance is Chinese, and there’s very little separation between Chinese companies and the Chinese government.

So, for all intents and purposes, it comes down to a company spying on you vs. a foreign government spying on you. They’re both invading your privacy, but for different nefarious reasons.

The question before SCOTUS boils down to: “Is it against the First Amendment for the government to inform social media platforms that a post/account violates that platform’s TOS?”

The Biden administration is explicitly NOT ordering these platforms to take down posts, but reporting them to mods, like any other user can.

I did. It seems your definition of “contemporary” is different from mine.

Whatever. No point in arguing with the atheist circlejerk; it’s sad how the good points you have get ruined by your inability to do research and understand context.

“Contemporary” is the period of time where there would be people living who had experienced these events, even if the historian him/herself hadn’t lived to see them.

So…yes, still contemporary.

I can lead a horse to water, but I can’t make it drink.

The sources that do exist were shortly after Jesus’ life, and they were not only consistent with each other, but from radically different sources, including Roman, Jewish, Christian, and even Muslim sources. It’s pretty simple to check the sources against one another and see what lines up.

Scholars generally agree that someone named Jesus of Nazareth existed in Palestine in the 1st century AD. Is Jesus the Son of God? Depends on who you ask, but to say that he didn’t exist at all is being willfully ignorant.

Here.