Probably the round thing (a shield?) fooled us both. For me it looked like a two-hander.

Althoigh this sword\katana discourse is all known at that point, I can’t help myself but adding rapier at the western side to spice things up.

Would rapier\katana comparison work better?

Just how long is that? I struggle to calculate it from what I see.

And you can imagine someone thinking it’s super clever and secure.

It may be them either not trespassing their territory (as a part of a deal or as a precaution) or TV apps sharing\telegraphing that info without the need of screen cap analysis as they work on TV itself and may as well be special modified apks. At least, they differed

Laptop sends only it’s video and audio outputs, apps’ code executes at it’s hardware, so TV needs a workaround to know what you are watching. And as it’s incapable of such analysis itself, it channels that data to it’s real owner.

Where’s track_shovel in this thread?

pocket_sand protocol: engaged

Glad to hear your points fleshed out.

As I read this thread and your response to my jaggernaut quote, I feel like it’d be okay to reduce my view of Google from an american pov (and I’m russian lol) to some artifact from a folklore tale, like a sure-striking sword. The carrier of such pointy thing concluded it pierces the heath of their enemies by itself and never fails, but is oblivious to other properties it has. They would have a great time weilding it, occasionally getting a king’s contract and their daughter’s hand, but them putting their whole life on the line depending on a behavior of such an unpredictable magic thing. That is a very insecure position to be in. And anti-trust legistations are kinda nice, but touting them as an adequate and a timely measure sounds kinda weak in a world where corpos like Big Mouse can shape and abuse patent law to it’s profits, and Google isn’t better.

That is an interesting argument to have, and I choose to disagree with you. Besides what’s told in the article, my own problem with the likes of Google is that this amount of corporate power makes them, like oil barons, an international governing body that affects policies worldwide. They can unintentionally, like Facebook in Myanmar, enable genocide by slacking on getting bhirma-languaged moderators and just not giving a damn about what they give platfrom for. Like a butterfly effect, something decided in Silicon valley may cause a tornado on the opposite side of Earth. And supporting Google we delegate such power to their board of directors we can’t even choose, let alone impeach. They are akin to kings blessed by a god of capital and have more reach than modern hereditary monarchs in spite of that being not as obvious and direct. The Algorythm deciding what to show you, may it be ads or an answer to your question, controls you and your worldview on the level a step higher than the resources they reference. Like, we all know there’s this crazy Conservapedia, and now imagine, that it’s the first result in every google search, everything you want to ask the internet about is explained by insane rightwingers. Google chooses not to do that, to rank it down, thanks, but they can change that at any point and we wouldn’t even know, because they are completely closed to external review. That’s nice they are kinda aligned with what the US+Europe do for now, but as we see with Twitter getting musk-off with it being a propaganda vehicle, we somehow forget that it’s a nearly irrelevantly small spot compared to a jaggernaut like Google that is The Internet, the start page for billions of people, and it navigates the decision making of almost all of our world now, while, uhm, building their business around reselling that influence to third parties for money. Right now, they plan to ban adblocking in Chrome and their sole real competitor Mozilla is majorly paid by them, they also has a saying on how we use our phones\tablets due to android popularity, so they are a judge and the executioner of how we use the common internet we live our digital lives in. And they succeed at flying under radar for how long they exist.

That’s actually frightening to think how much power they hold, and that the things in the article is them holding themselves back to appear neutral, reasonable and uninvolved. At the same time, I suppose, even the coming US elections won’t shape the world just as much as the politics of Google’s board of directors. And, if they’ve wished so, they could pick a winner just by what ads and resources they show to most of the voters.

The power of an american corporation can’t be good for americans (and the world) if it isn’t even controlled by them. It’s just their interests don’t explicitly cross those of the US. But you can guess that if there’s something really uncomfortable to Google, they have enough connections and bribed politicians to undo it in it’s uterus.

Beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot.

I’m seeing him blasting ‘Out of Space’ by Prodigy on his dj deck.

SMMs for officials, volunteers and military would keep posting, right. It’s inside communications that are a concern. And as some ukrainians wrote, in some places it was an obvious rule from the very start.

Another failed coup\fraud attempts not having enough momentum. Mild persecutions for his chuds after a long time. Him dying from something preventable, probably respiratory or blood-related, while his trial is still going on. Republicans coming slightly back to the center because they can’t find another idol and want to appeal to a wider voting base, that’s until they find a younger Shapiro or Tate-type. Harris and Walz’re gonna do some better policies on equality and ecology no one would remember in four years. Ukraine has a bit more funding, Israel a bit less. Democrats won’t try to find another candidate because Kamala just worked right, that’d come unfortunate because she and her running mate are elderly know and lost a lot of their appeal.

I feel like staying in the shadow of Skyrim makes things worse for them. If only they could make a different game, like a TES spin off, to try new things like they did before Morrowind, they’d probably shift their mindset from reiterating and adjusting the same formula ad nauseam to a fewer success. Like, a small 1,5-2y project with a semi-linear action akin to The Dark Messiah of M&M, or a fucking AMID EVIL as a fantasy shooter, but about some lore-important chain of events. They can later reimplement their work on it into a better combat in TES6 and rise some hype about the franchise that is starved from any news by now. Beth have a lot of talents at hand from companies that did shooters they published. They, imho, just need to start small, because Skyrim would tower over them just like Half-Like for Valve unless they break the silence with their Alyx.

Of all possible scenarios, I want the fight for the Red Mountain. Either the original one against the dwemers with their tech, or an L4D-like one against Dagoth Ur and his blighted punks. They did a lot of performative nods to Morrowind, so why won’t they just go with it?

I look at Yakuza series and I wish Bethesda would follow their example, with remasters, spin-offs, back-references, side-series and a complete switch of original mechanics just for them to reevaluate what them and Todd want.

While I get that security certifications (and existing contracts with the right people!), the slowness of such laws ans disdain for prisoners, especially doing their law research, are big factors, I see a point that even prison admins shall consider. Besides big cuts in spending on capable clients, opening the ability for inmates to write whatever they want in a word processor as easily as it can be is a plus to the surveiliance. Authocracies of today don’t ban their own social medias because an illusion of privacy makes people snitch on themselves.

The last one about a backup is a great idea. Not because some receipt can be misleading, but because my 20y+ with Windows showed me it has some temper on it’s own and can kick back for no reason.

I wish you to get it right without a problem.

The thrid one looks like a solid suggestion: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/544156/windows-10-pro-to-ltsc See if you trust it.

Just a little coma, you won’t even notice it.

A pubertarian boss be like:

The guy in pink: 😞😣😢