The law should still apply equally to every company, shouldn’t it?

That’s fair.

However, it’s just an argument for cracking down on money laundering, criminal enterprises, dark money in politics, etc.

Bad actors who oppose cryptocurrencies out of nefarious reasons don’t make cryptocurrencies a good thing, particularly if even worse actors support cryptocurrencies for even worse reasons.

Another thing of course is that the banks are unhappy with not getting their share in money laundering, crime investments and tax evasion, like they do with government currencies. Cryptocurrencies could also democratize organized crime and not just leave it to the established ties between politics, banks and existing crime groups.

I’m not sure that “cryptocurrencies make it much easier for criminals to launder money, finance criminal enterprises, evade taxes and for organized crime to funnel dark money and into politics and corrupt politicians” is the kind of pro-cryptocurrency argument you seem to imply it is.

You’re spelling out how they’re acting like a neutral party here.

Qatar is knowingly and willingly hosting the leadership of a terrorist organization that mass murders innocent civilians - both Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas leaders live in luxury in Qatar, they have billions of dollars stashed away.

That makes Qatar about as “neutral” about Hamas as the Taliban were “neutral” about al Qaeda.

It’s a destitute open air prison. Come on now.

You act like I’m debating that, or like I’m taking sides.

I’m not.

I’m just pointing out that a totalitarian regime - a regime that tolerates no dissent, that enforces strict religious laws, that suppresses women, that has the death penalty for homosexuality, that openly uses slave labor - isn’t some kind of neutral party if it has a vested interest in Gaza and has been openly supporting Hamas for decades.

I don’t blindly trust their reporting.

That’s all I’m asking for.

The hostage deal was negotiated by Qatar, the Hamas leadership is living in luxury in Qatar, Qatar is seeking to gain more influence in the future of Gaza.

Is this really the right moment to blindly trust the Qatar state owned news source with its reporting about a Qatar negotiated deal related to a conflict that Qatar has a vested interest in?

Point being that installing Chrome isn’t the “trouble” you’re making it out to be, when switching to Edge comes with zero advantage.

But you weren’t asking an open ended question anyway, right?

Conversely, if they’re both evil, why use Microsoft over Google?

People have their browser set up the way they want it, and downloading and installing Chrome to have everything sync back and work exactly the way they want things to work takes all of two minutes.

Why use Edge and spend time and effort to import bookmarks, import passwords, change settings, install extensions etc. only to have the exact same end result that downloading Chrome would have given them in the first place, but with the added annoyance of Microsoft leveraging Edge to nudge them into the Microsoft ecosystem?

Winamp wasn’t a Google project.

Then I assume you’re aware that the Geneva Convention make one exception where hospitals lose their protection: when they’re used for a military purpose that is harmful to the enemy.

In other words: a warring faction cannot simply set up a military headquarter, a military outpost or a military attack position in a hospital and expect to enjoy the full protection granted to medical facilities while using it to attack the enemy.

You’re aware of that, right?

Except that in this case, the UN is explicitly saying that the numbers they’re quoting cannot be verified and they’re merely cutting the numbers Hamas is giving them.

So the question is: if the IDF cannot be trusted, why should we trust the terrorists?

What does the Geneva Convention say about using civilians as human shields? What does the Geneva Convention say about using hospitals, schools, places of worship as military headquarters or outposts? What does the Geneva Convention say about murdering civilians to prevent them from evacuating from an area that is under attack?

Not sure how much more encouragement H.R. needed, given that his work from the 1960s was already pretty nuts, but he certainly didn’t hold back for the movies!

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These cars don’t even go onto highways or areas where accidents are more likely.

Accidents are less likely on highways. Most accidents occur in urban settings. Most deadly accidents occur outside of cities, off-highway.

Clearly the driver is at fault here, but a case can be made (and apparently, was) that this would not have been possible had you not provided access to the car to the perp in question.

This is the equivalent of holding gun manufacturers culpable if someone buys a gun from them and then uses it to commit murder - right?

For the exact same reason, I’ve only been using Pixel devices for years now. Before that, Nexus devices.

Every now and then, I get interested in what Samsung has to offer, and their top end devices are without a don’t often among the very best out there.

But it’s shit like pre-installed apps, Samsung’s tooth-and-nail fight against unlocking the bootloader, bloatware that re-enables or installs itself with system updates, and generally Samsung’s attempts to pull users into it’s ecosystem and sell them more Samsung stuff that makes me keep it at arms length.

Pocket Casts is available as Android and Windows app; Apple Podcasts isn’t.

Pocket Casts syncs between MacOS, iOS, Android, Windows and Abby device that asked you to open the wenn player; Apple Podcasts doesn’t.

It’s not garbage per se, it just doesn’t fit the same use case.

The mods never had leverage

Of course the mods had leverage: they could have just walked away.

The reality is that there’s no difference between mods and users: everyone is just too addicted to their routines and habits and mindless opening of Reddit and doomscrolling that the vast, vast, vast majority of people just wanted to go back to how things were.

Many “tech journalists” are about as old as Facebook.

When they started using devices, the iPhone had been around for years, and the only discussion platforms they ever knew where centralized platforms with millions and millions of users run by mega corporations. In their personal life experience, Reddit has always just existed, they’ve never known a world without YouTube, Snapchat is what they used when they were little kids, TikTok had been around long enough that’s it’s considered an established media outlet.

They’ve never seen a Usenet group, they’ve never had accounts on phpbb forums. Choosing a smaller platform with a more selective userbase just doesn’t exist in their reality.

Refuse to pay bills for your clouds infrastructure.

Refuse to pay rent for your offices.

Big brain time.