They are beginning the "face turn" for Gaza just like they did for Iraq. They fully support and do everything to paint the protesters and anyone against the wars/invasions as "extremists" or doing the bidding of another nation. But the moment that they take a large enough L, they start loudly acting like it is they who have been on the "front lines" fighting against the shit they helped spread. They will go for the cheap "pops" and use the language of leftists and the people that have been actually in the shit. Just like they did with civil rights and women's rights by painting those brave souls as libs/centrists and remove all leftist bits out.

I am almost convinced that the Dems actually wanted to lose badly. As they tend to get more blind voter support while playing the "underdog" role. But the moment they get control again, we only hear about how they "can't do x because bipartisanship (or whatever fake reasons)."

Sending US troops in any capacity seems to me that US hawks are wanting to increase the chances of US troops being killed. Which then means that the US can then justify sending everyone in that they want.

Use the excuse of "they attacked 'Merica" and do the same shit that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq (just with Israel "inviting" them in and as a "supporting" army). Which will of course ignore all of the US citizens that have been murdered by Israel.

They want so badly to bring back the "hero" trappings that WW2 had, but they will be siding with the fascists this time around. And would have "perfect" excuses to attack China and Iran via false flag shit (again using Nazi tactics). Hell, they might even pull-off something with Russia that can be used for the death spiral that NATO Article 5 promises. Be like all the shit that made sure WW1 would happen if literally anything popped off.

It would be nice if they at least allowed for even being able to donate to the browser itself. All the options that I am aware of are either the paid extra stuff they have, or to the overall company. Which is annoying since I imagine that the current "donation" option means that the money is being used mostly for the upper execs and routed to the extra shit that already has options for paying subs.

I also went completely to FF on my phone the moment it had uBlock Origin and some other extensions. Now that I learned how to force other ones, it has been game over for other browsers aside from just seeing how they are every now and then (I work with general public and need to be aware of how they work). The only thing I would really really advise in addition to FF on a non-rooted device is setting the Mullvad ad-blocking/tracking blocking DNS for the device.

It helps even if I need to use a different browser (not as good as also having uBO), and has really good chances of blocking ads in many apps. For example, I kind of treat the Microsoft Solitaire app since it keeps games and stats from my PC. However they have lots of video ads that play after a couple of games. With the DNS it just kind of glitches when an ad should run and just goes on to the next round instead. The only odd thing I see with other apps is that it can cause my bank app to take a little longer to load when signing in (I am guessing due to tracking it is trying to do). But after like ten seconds it goes through like normal.

This is the DNS address to add if you want:

https://base.dns.mullvad.net/dns-query

And here is the main site for all their options and tester to make sure whichever one you pick is working:

https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls

Probably a good move for them to make tbh. I like how CrowdStrike's name already sounds like it should be the name of a big malware/virus/zeroday. So we should have seen it coming.

ability to reach engaged customers

Not sure that being stuck to a spot in a tube you can't just escape (and easily live) from is the same as "engaged".

I flip US flags because fuck imperialism.

They flip US flags because they are babies that bootlick.

We are not the same.

The US is constantly and historically the ones propping up dictators all over the world. AND we have done it while people of those nations have either legitimately voted for the opposite, and/or were fighting for their freedom from colonial powers/dictators. We actively fund and create false narratives inside nations that we don't like to start color revolutions. We force other nations into backing brutal sanctions if they don't want us to go after them and to be allowed to trade with us. Our military is literally installed all over the globe, but we claim nations like China are somehow being "aggressive" for even patrolling their own areas. We create and groom evil and gaslight the world that we are somehow just allowed to police the globe. Fuck yourself.

Very hard to convince people to buy things "legitimately" and have any trust in any of the "legit" options when they just go away so fucking easily. Stuff like anime has been a real weird example of both how horrible the corps on the Japanese side just squeeze every single fraction of a penny from stuff (fucking like two eps of a show on a modern DVD or even Blu-ray). But also feel zero reason to expand options in the first place. They were so fucking slow to get digital or streaming options. Same goes for the foreign outlets that get rights outside of J-land, but I am sure they were more likely to want to combat piracy via stuff like streaming. Funny thing about anime piracy is that it is literally the reason so many shows and movies were even seen and is the main reason so many people got into all of it. Back in the early 00's when I made friends with people that had cable internet and ready to burn as many eps as they could fit on a CD-R and later DVD-/+R.

It was just so amazing to see all these shows that weren't just completely altered by lazy US companies or ever likely to be translated. No US companies thought that Americans would ever understand or get into this weird Japanese stuff and not put money into it. But they sure started caring when torrents got going and the numbers were growing. One thing that has really pissed me off with legal digital copies of anime comes down to how it is still behind on basic shit. We have had multi-audio/subtitles on pirate copies and even on legitimate physical discs. But the legal versions of digital copies still have to be either bought in sub or dub. It is a slap in the face of fans to have to buy two different copies just to have multi-audio in Japanese and English. I thought that shit would have been left behind with VHS.

All of these companies demand our money and often charge prices that are just too high for their target audiences (especially teens that don't have jobs like so many of us have lived through). And yet they seem to do everything possible to make the options for purchase so much less usable compared to pirate versions. I would take a fansub that might be a bit off but has actual passion for community and accessibility over legit copies every single time. But I am also more than happy to pay for things if I don't keep being treated like I already stole it and should be grateful for being "allowed" to pay for it. I would love to pay for these things and know that the actual workers are able to live, and not just so overworked and not able to afford rent. But the entire media industry treats both the workers and the customers so fucking bad. They are making things worse for themselves by showing how we can't trust our purchases to even be around from one day to another. So why shouldn't we just take it and know that we will have it?

Given how lots of smaller shows and other things will never get re-prints or re-masters on modern media. It is also our jobs to preserve these things that the companies feel aren't worth the money to do so if they aren't. If I ever have kids, I would like to be able to know I can show them my favorites. Looks like I will also need to show them how to sail the digital seas and that "legit" options should always be treated as liars that steal your money AND take away what you paid for.

🏴‍☠️

I am really going to miss the old settings when they finally remove what is left of Control Panel. So far they have removed things or moved shit to force the Settings app. But they keep failing to make the new things have anywhere near the level of control. The power settings from Control Panel still matter way more than Settings and seem to actually stick when applied. And I just really have no idea how they have made stuff like resetting networking/connection issues worse over time. Fucking right-clicking on the networking icon on the taskbar and picking "repair" would actually get shit working again 8 times out of 10. But just seems to be a placebo at this point. There are still so many times that using different resets in Internet Options fixes more stuff I see regularly than the resets in Settings->Networking.

And the newer Troubleshooting options never fix any of the Windows Update issues I come across. Just a glorified verification of the failures I already know are happening. I never thought I would so badly miss being able to tell Windows Update to ignore updates if they were bugging out (not to avoid them all together but at least stop the OS from just constantly going through the motions of installing and failing during each reboot/shutdown). So many of the updates that used to give me issues were really either down to them trying to install out of order or due to a fuck-up on MS's end that pushed bad updates.

The push to so deeply embed these AI models into everything so fast is really pissing me off. Shit is known to have issues with just outright making shit up. Which is IMO reason enough to not be adding them to end-products (especially since the end-products are also still not finished with removing old versions of things). One thing that really worries me in my job with fixing people's PCs is the AI and search that pushes web content (and the now inescapable placement of ads) above local resources/programs/settings/etc. The main issues people have aren't actual viruses like in the past. It is the massive levels of scams and fake alerts followed by fake "repair techs." If the average person is so easy to trick when it is people scamming them. AI is going to blow shit up waaaaaaaay worse and will be able to do it so much faster and completely. Average people are still under the impression that these AI chats are giving completely real and accurate information (reminds me of how people used to believe that if something was said on TV that it was real).

Shit is fucked and going to get much worse at a dramatically faster rate due to rushing things in order to make as much money as fast as possible. Even Microsoft used to ship things in a more complete state. But gaming has made shipping broken products completely normal. So no reason to care about keeping any level of quality.

They make a large amount from Google paying them to be the default search engine. Also they have been making additional projects that can be subscribed to as add-ons for Firefox (like a VPN and an email forwarding service that allows you to make fake email addresses or phone numbers to use on sites that will forward the messages to your real inbox/phone). You can use a limited version of the email thing without paying though so it is easy to try out. And they are always ready to take donations of any size and can be reoccurring. I personally pay .99/month for the email service even though I don't use it often. As it is nice to have if I need it, and it is basically a donation at that point. lol.

Here are links to those products if you care to read more about them or at least see pricing.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/vpn/

https://relay.firefox.com/

But even just making a point to donate some one-offs here and there does help in small ways to keep a real option in browsers that isn't just another Chromium-based project.
https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/

Everyone hated when IE was the only browser that sites were coded for, and we are seeing more and more Chromium only sites. Which means a bad vulnerability in Chromium will impact all the browsers based on it. Also privacy add-ons for Firefox tend to work better and block ads well.

This kind of vibe is becoming actually scary from a "no one knows how X actually works, but they are building things that might become problematic later" headspace. I am not saying that everyone needs to know everything. But one really really bad issue I see while fixing people's PCs is that a shocking amount of high school and college aged folks are really about media creation and/or in comp sci majors. However they come to me with issues that make me question how they are able to function in knowing so many things that all involve computers, but not the computers themselves.

These next paragraphs are mostly a rant about how the OSes are helping make the issue grow with all users and not just the above. Also more ranting about frustration and concern about no one caring about fundamentals of how the things they make their stuff on function. Feel free to skip and I am marking as a "spoiler" to make things slightly less "wall of text".