This tracks. I get Starbucks giftcards (as gifts, not for myself) and typically load them into the app so I can order ahead and spend less time waiting at the store. It pisses me off to no end that when I get to the last dollar or two, I can’t use it without reloading like $20 onto the app. I refuse to do that and lose the money.

Good. Now they need to start enforcing bans on corporate facial recognition technology use everywhere.

I wanted to like Mastodon but couldn’t. The only reason I used microblogging services like Twitter was to shitpost about Vampire: The Masquerade. Said game includes lots of death, blood, and other topics that make some folks uncomfortable. On Twitter, the atmosphere was very “don’t like, don’t read”, but Mastodon has an intense culture about using content warnings on anything that might make someone marginally uncomfortable. I’m cool with that, but I can’t do it on my shitposting or it sort of ruins the joke. Bluesky doesn’t have that atmosphere.

Am I off base in seeing some similarities between this and the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar?

It already is outlawed in the US. The US bans all depictions precisely because of this. The courts anticipated that there would come a time when people could create images which are indistinguishable from reality so allowing any content to be produced wasn’t permissible.

It’s impossible to have a real discussion about this topic, especially right now. Anything other than “Israel is perfect and an innocent victim” is viewed as anti-semitic hate speech.

I got mine through Amazon. Samsung makes the cheapest ones I’ve found. Just search for something like “samsung commercial TV”. They’re generally a little more expensive than your ad/data harvesting-supported TVs but if you value your privacy and longevity of your devices, it’s worth it.

I got a display signage TV. Totally dumb. The only app it has is YouTube and that’s optional. I don’t even have the internet hooked up to it. Works fine for gaming and occasionally streaming via other devices.

There’s a number of takeout coffee places near me that will let you bring your own cup and give you a discount on it. You just need to know how many ounces it contains. I have an insulated stainless steel mug that I always bring. Most places that wouldn’t accept them during the pandemic are back to allowing it again.

Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published an opinion piece arguing that Tier 1 ISPs should not bow to pressure to drop Kiwi Farms, calling the move “a dangerous step” toward censorship.

It’s all fun and games for the EFF until someone on that site starts publishing their employee’s SSNs and home addresses.

Doing the lord’s work. Thank you!

Worse, people making AI CSAM will wind up causing police to waste resources investigating abuse that didn’t happen, meaning those resource won’t be used to save real children in actual danger.

Delito.

Fundies are in a death cult.

Not only traumatic for the pregnant person, it also is prolonging the suffering of the child. Birth itself is thought to be pretty awful for a baby - being born and then immediately going into organ failure or otherwise being in extreme pain from birth defects that make you incompatible with life has to be miserable. It’s literally being born to die. Stack on the fact that birth is expensive in the US and the parents will be required to provide some amount of medical care for a baby that’s fated to die soon, then a funeral? He’s absolutely ghoulish. If this is Christian love, give me hate any day.

Yeah, I got into a disagreement with someone in a thread once and for a year or two, they’d just message me at random times to yell at me and accuse me of making them suicidal. I eventually blocked them and should have done it sooner. Aside from that, most other messages were just people sharing in game names for multiplayer stuff and Animal Crossing dodo codes.

The fact that this article’s top image isn’t a furry paw on a computer keyboard is a missed opportunity.

In a fight between a corporation and a bunch of people very determined to get content for free, history shows the corporation always loses.

That’s why Sansar not allowing it really surprised me. SL has a decent grip on moderating and working with sexual content, something most companies don’t have. The fear of sexual content and how to manage it shouldn’t be something Linden Lab grapples with. I guess they wanted to test whether their product was appealing without it and ultimately the answer was no.

A substantial chunk of the reason why it flopped was because they banned sex. SL continues to thrive in good part due to its liberal embrace of sexual content. It would have died out years ago without that. Companies that want to make virtual worlds never learn that lesson.