You’re so totally wrong. Storing passwords in plaintext is such a dangerous, obviously wrong mistake that it can only be considered wanton disregard for the safety and the security of your users, and it should carry the equivalent of a life-in-prison sentence for the corporation which breaks that rule. Not only should the company be completely fucking destroyed over this but the CEO should be criminally liable.

The legal system does not take corporate crimes seriously at all. Perhaps it’s time to take justice into our own hands.

“Oh right, it’s money!!” — Hbomberguy

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Unless the biter has tavern brawler feat

The internet is worse than it used to be. Free internet services aren’t free because corporations want to help people out. They’re free because they’re trying to out-compete people who want to just help people and make the world a better place.

The early internet was a glimpse of how our world could be if we all just worked together, shared resources, followed our passions and collaborated to make cool things. There are still plenty of examples of products and services provided entirely free by people who do so just because they want to.

We get to see, in real time, what it looks like for private corporations to enclose common land, but digitally. And now people are forgetting - or maybe they didn’t even know to begin with - that all the shit that’s now covered with ads and has horrible design patterns - all used to be free.

Thanks for the well-considered and thoughtful response - I appreciate it.

Just to clarify, I’m not trying to make some typical liberal argument that China is evil or anything like that - I’m very far left and I’m not here just criticising China just because that’s what the mainstream media has told me to do. I just think it does leftists like myself no favours to pretend that China is perfect and that we shouldn’t criticise it - and the essay linked above, in my opinion, seems to be a bit of a reflexive defense of China, rather than actually considering the criticism - to me it seems they are choosing arguments to support their position rather than letting the facts and their beliefs lead them to a conclusion.

I don’t think we have to accept that any amount of imbalanced transactions of value necessarily guarantee that billionaires are inevitable - plenty of systems exist where there are “winners and losers” but the system itself reaches an equilibrium state. There are so many solutions which could be implemented to prevent billionaires from existing, and I would say that billionaires can only ever exist when there is a fundamental flaw in the society which produces them. It should be impossible to so thoroughly capture and centralise wealth and power to a point where an individual can have that much.

I’ve re-read this comment and your previous comment multiple times and I’m not really clear on what you mean.

My point is that the essay’s argument is weak because it completely ignores scale and proportionality. It uses the language of marxism to justify capitalism.

I don’t personally agree with it, but I was willing to consider the notion on its own merits rather than in contrast with ideology - but even when I do, I find it a wholly unsatisfactory justification

This is pretty typical self-justifying bullshit. They’re justifying pre-held beliefs (china is good; china has billionaires; therefore billionaires must be good) rather than actually considering the claim based on the merits. (is it actually a good thing that china has billionaires, and what does that say about socialism/marxism as practiced in china)

You can believe that people have different needs and that we don’t all need to be absolutely 1:1 equal in terms of our material possessions etc. and that having some goal to work towards is beneficial to society (ambition) without having billionaires.

This essay is like trying to justify genocide by pointing out that sometimes, for the benefit of society, the death of an individual is preferable to the suffering of many. The issue with billionaires isn’t one of inequality in the micro - it’s the magnitude of that inequality, and the power it brings, which is the issue.

This is how fascism is successful, because liberals will lie for a lie, but they won’t lie for the truth.

All ages are acceptable for running away from the police. Or fighting back against the police. Or destroying police property. Actually, come to think of it, just any kind of action against the police.

You’ve mixed copyright and patents together and confused yourself a bit. Game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, but they can be patented. Some game component designs can be copyrighted as well, and even trademarked.

There are many, many, many game mechanics and features which have been patented, such as in-game chat, minigames on loading screens, arrow pointing to destination, and so on. Game studios have to license those features from the patent holders if they wish to use them.

Some random company even owns a patent for the concept of sending and receiving email on a mobile device. The entire system is a fucking joke.

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I have a proposal for what I would suggest our next step should be once we get to that position, and I’d be happy to share it with someone who is genuinely interested. But you have to realise and accept that it goes against my ideology for me to act as if I have all of the answers. My entire belief system is that we can work together to find a solution, collectively, for what we should do next. If I assume I know everything and that we should all just do what I say, I would be no better than those I oppose.

I’m not going to defend Jan 6 for obvious reasons. There are plenty of left-wing solidarity movements we could talk about instead - Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Defund the Police, the CHAZ. I would agree that none of those projects really achieved their ultimate goals, but they did somewhat progress them.

Things fail until they succeed. I’m sure you wouldn’t have scolded the Wright brothers for continuing to try to build a flying machine despite prior failures.

I haven’t really criticised anyone for voting for Harris, I absolutely agree that given the situation that you’re in, it’s the right thing to do, no doubt.

My point is that there are so many people who don’t accept that Kamala Harris is a fucking terrible person and in a real democracy she wouldn’t have a chance of getting elected.

You’re in this horrible position where in order to do the right thing you’re forced into supporting a genocide. You have to accept that is what you’re doing, do it anyways, and then do everything you can to bring the system down to stop it from ever happening again.

I let you down by failing to convince you, though I’m sure you don’t see it that way.

Solidarity, awareness and collaboration are the prerequisite conditions for building a working class movement capable of achieving widespread change. That isn’t where the process ends, obviously, action needs to be taken once that movement exists.

I’m not sure what your point is about January 6th.

Truly, I’m sorry for letting you down, I really hope you come around eventually. Remember, solidarity is the key. Together we can change the world.

If people actually accepted the reality of the situation, truly, in their hearts, they wouldn’t find all of these excuses for it. Look at the replies, literally the first one is just “well, trump is worse, so we have to support Kamala”. You, as an individual, understand it when you think logically, but as a collective, the American people aren’t ready to admit that their elections are completely rigged.

If you don’t admit that there’s a problem, then answering your question would be a waste of time, because you would, most likely, just be looking for something to argue with me about, rather than considering my points in good faith.

Wow, my prediction came true. Truly, I am a fortune teller.

Sadly, my answer to this quite unsatisfactory: I can’t give you all of the answers, I am but one man, to act like I know the path to a perfect society would be arrogant to the point of excess. I want to start a conversation where we admit that the system we have is so fucking rigged that we have no chance to actually achieve meaningful change through that system, and talk about the alternatives.

Personally, I am an anarchist - so ideally, there would be no one “in charge”. I suppose another way of saying that would be that we would all be in charge. I believe in consensus-based decision making - it’s more or less what democracy should be - you could even consider it a form of democracy, if you like.

The more important part is the abolition of other unequal power structures, the worst of which is capitalism, undoubtedly. The problem with our system as it exists isn’t in the idea that people vote to elect leaders, it’s that we ignore all the other structures of power. Corporations don’t vote, but they have an absolute fuck load more political power than the combined voting power of all of their employees.