This was many years ago and for the record not only has he never apologized, when asked to do so (in the aftermath of Arbery and during his senate run) he doubled down and refused to apologize

I bet money this works for them. Almost to the level that people will think flock was a psyop to direct hate before most counties switch to whatever nondescript alpr they can get their hands on. Americans have the collective memory of a goldfish and the outage will move on to some dumb bullshit trump pulls in a week

Or they just start directly integrating them into fixtures like traffic and street lights.

Definitely and the processor makes sure the floor is covered; my processor has 2.7%+ 15 cents per transaction to ensure they make a minimum amount per transaction, but there is no ceiling with any processor that I’m aware of

What’s also interesting is that with most processors the fee varies for in person and online with online being notably higher (1.5 vs 2.7% with mine). I suppose because online transactions are more likely to be fraudulent or something but ultimately the processing of the payment shouldn’t change between the settings

I eat the fee fwiw

And then the 3% surcharge is tacked on

Essentially a bunch of retailers decided they don’t want to absorb “the costs of doing business” anymore so they now charge $1-5 fees to cover when they have to replace a package that is damaged or lost in shipping. They sell it as “package insurance” but it’s once again consumers getting shafted to offset what was typically seen as a potential liability in running a business based around shipping. As a bonus if you don’t pay their extortion and your package is lost or damaged they will tell you to go fuck yourself

See also: merchants charging a ~3% fee if you use a credit card because similarly covering the cost of a payment processor is increasingly becoming a cost that is not absorbed. Even with medical practices!

Basically every time America gives huge telecom conglomerates money to expand rural services they literally just steal it and face no consequence whatsoever. It’s such a scam, politicians look good because they vote to spend 400 million dollars to expand rural access, comcast and Verizon take with the promise that in 5-10 years things will be better, then they do nothing hoping people will forget. Even when an expose article is written on the issue American cynicism kicks in and the politicians get away with letting them steal literally hundreds of millions of dollars.

It’s basically money laundering. It’s also a reason rural areas (which already tend to skew republican) have more support for musk, because for a lot of them starlink is the only real option for passable internet, but that’s expensive for internet that is pretty shitty compared to a basic broadband connection. And thus ~20% of rural Americans and almost 30% of Americans on tribal lands have no access to broadband in 2026

Cops and secret service don’t just shoot you once in the leg dude, they unload the clip center mass until you’re dead

You can run Linux and steam on ps5 but jailbreaks are as of now limited to older firmwares. The ps5 is aggressive about making updates mandatory so you either need a console someone purposely did not update in anticipation of a jailbreak break years later or one that’s been sitting around not being used for a somewhat long time

Whenever I see one that’s obviously fishing I have an urge to reply in a contrarian way but I don’t bc that’s mean

Like “oh does anyone think my ass looks good?” No

The bigger thing is the thirst posts in replies though. Lemmy doesn’t have the traffic that Reddit has so nsfw doesn’t get nearly the engagement but it does still happen. And the goobers that reply, especially with weird parasocial bullshit, remind me that I do have an inner bully that just wants to say mean stuff to dorks

yes exactly. Why do you think that is???

Human behavior is motivated by several functions, one of the most common being attention. Note that attention is not qualified or given adjectives. This is because behavioral research has shown for decades that attention is attention and serves to reinforce the behavior, thus increasing the likelihood that it continues

“Don’t feed the troll”, basically

Think about it, what does Elon (or anyone like him) get from posting nasty shit or doing hitler salutes? Notoriety. And what happens when you engage with this to label it as bad? Does he suffer? No, he is emboldened. Both financially (as you’ve mentioned) and through the function of attention based reinforcement. Someone telling you you’re a fucking piece of shit is still someone willing to give you the time of day.

However, this very basic concept is both apparently extremely difficult to understand as well as reliant on impulse control which is increasingly in short supply. Thus, we are doomed.

Those things are not mutually exclusive?

Functionally this is a non issue. The wording of the order says “once available” which is key language. There simply isn’t a separate vaccine commercially available for these diseases. To develop such a thing would take years, like possibly a decade, and no pharmaceutical company has any interest in spending a ton of money developing unnecessary vaccines that could easily become moot once political power shifts to someone that recognizes rfk led policy is utter nonsense. This doesn’t even mean a shift to Democrat power or a third party, there are several republican senators and congress members that are physicians and vocally oppose this shit

The modified schedule is more of a threat, though it is being fought in court. The biggest issue from this administration (in this regard) is likely going to be erosion. The modified schedule getting to exist as an option for people to choose against aap recommendations, relaxing school requirements, etc that continues this pattern of “worst x outbreak in decades” (currently measles) because it affirms the desires of ignorant morons that think an extremely minimal risk of relatively minor side effects outweighs potentially fatal disease and also simply do not understand or care about the protection of those around them who are in far more danger (infants, cancer patients, people with autoimmune conditions, etc)

Steam is gross, popularized the “own nothing” model (along with loot boxes), and just has a bunch of (very passionate) fanboys because it’s the least gross option (barring gog, which they often conveniently ignore), but this is more a problem of publishers consolidating and buying studios, giving some games obscene marketing budgets. The overwhelming majority of games are released by people whose marketing amounts to making (not promoted) social media posts on an account no one follows. Meanwhile Ubisoft, Microsoft, take two, etc have the capital and connections to dominate the press, social media, YouTube, etc

Best game ever won’t make a dime if no one knows about it. Even if you can get some pull it’s hard to compete with the game that everyone is talking about. That game is also probably more expensive, which theoretically gives you an edge, but in practice much of the time probably means your game isn’t getting purchased if the consumer is also hyped about gta6 or whatever

One measure they could take is to significantly lower or even eliminate their cut for niche games. They currently do the opposite, the largest cut (30%) comes in until your game makes 10 million, then progressively gets lower (25% 10-50m, 20% 50+m). A lower bracket that says like, 0 to 10% if your game makes under 300k or whatever. Based on this article they clearly make the majority of their revenue from heavy hitters so this would barely impact them

“Why do people say such atrocious things” they wonder, as they endlessly reply, retweet, screenshot and spread to other social networks, etc

Engagement is engagement

Flimsy excuse to post one of my favorite images

Plus we then perpetuate the idea that the internet is actually only 4 websites in a trenchcoat. Google and co love this because eventually more and more people will just stop visiting all of those pesky “other” websites that aren’t in their web of control and advertising. Here’s an AI overview that will tell you more without needing to visit Wikipedia or whatever

Running your own email server is also a good way to get a ton of headaches from your isp

For some cameras in stores hiding IR LEDs on your person aimed out (eg sewn into a collar or hat facing forward) will disrupt the facial scanning but many have gotten wise to this and added ir filters. Even if they are susceptible it’ll make you a big white blob which easily makes you stand out so they can manually review footage and look for any moment the led failed, you didn’t wear it, you getting into a car with a license plate that’s read by an alpr, they just come grab you if seeing it live, etc

Nothing beats the combo of hat/mask/sunglasses though. Though some sunglasses are transparent to certain cameras, and others like vaydr claim to have an extra layer beyond ir blocking (but don’t explain how it works, really, bc “proprietary”)

FWIW from what I’ve read the formbot kit seems to be pretty serviceable, almost 50% less and is still pretty good, though by most accounts I’ve seen the LDO kit is objectively better (for a significant premium)

I’m middle aged and my phone basically just has rhythm games