EDIT: I misread your comment. Forget I said anything. Carry on.

$42 million dollars. Basically nothing in terms of Google’s bottom line.

They’re doing this because they WANT to.

I’m gonna give him credit here.

It’s the first truthful AND self-aware thing he’s said his entire term.

“Allegedly”…

I haven’t stopped celebrating for two days.

It wasn’t RIGHT for him to be killed like that, but I believed the world would be better without him a week ago, and that opinion hasn’t changed now that he’s gone.

Using the word “problem” is wrong because that implies he sees something wrong that needs to be fixed.

What he sees is something he can’t control or bring to heel, and that’s unacceptable to him.

Which is also what the sniveling “don’t make him angry” people need to understand… the same thing minorities and LGBTQ people have understood for DECADES.

TRYING TO FLY UNDER THE RADAR WILL NOT SAVE YOU. It’s your EXISTENCE that he finds offensive, not your behavior.

Be loud. Be uncontrollable.

Fantastic, thanks!

Feeling good too! I’ve got a feeling this is really gonna be a great decade!

You’re only mentally healthy until the mentally unhealthy decide you don’t get to be physically healthy anymore.

Yes. A war YOU started.

One point of hope is that they mandated cross platform chat compatibility too, and every platform is just… Ignoring it and not doing it with zero consequences.

Maybe this just also won’t happen.

They’re going to get stopped either way. A flotilla of 27 civilian ships isn’t sneaking past one of the most advanced, heavily armed navies in the world, no matter how “sneaky” they try to be.

At least this way they’re on record for stopping the delivery.

Let’s not forget it’s convenient for conservative parties of BOTH sides to have some red meat to throw to their country’s nationalists. Normal, everyday people scarcely have the time or interaction to have strong feelings about another country whose people they don’t encounter that often, independent of history. But when you stir up your constituents to unite against an out-group, you can get them out to the polls and have a nice convenient threat to accuse the other guys of being soft against. They will become real friends when the real threat from China is greater than the political benefit of using each other to keep a united nationalist wing.

The solution is what it has always been.

Since DAY ONE phone hardware should have been as standardized and open as normal PC hardware - able to run any operating system that you want.

But every time it got brought up for DECADES, techbro corporate apologists were ready to line up and talk about all the reasons that wouldn’t work and how companies would NEVER do that, as if that was some kind of sensible counterpoint.

Now the noose is closing and all it’s going to take is the combined forces of the richest companies in the world to crush what little competition remains. Undercut or sue Fairphone into oblivion, for example. The lawsuits don’t even have to have merit - they can eat the costs for a few quarters to ensure no viable alternative to the walled garden ever gets a foothold.

The thing to be done now is minimize your mobile usage altogether and try to make it to the tech dystopian endgame with a few local files of your own left.

What could possibly go wrong with pushing the two most resource rich and populous countries in the world onto the same team aligned against you? I’m surprised nobody’s thought of such a winning strategy before.

Where would you ever find someone who both watches anime AND plays video games?

Talk about a unicorn.

Gregor Samsa entered the chat

I’ll drink to that, my friend.