He lets the worm do the thinking.

I love Evangelion. I don’t love this stupid bullshit.

1. My cat
2. Tough one, but probably my cat.
3. Not only do I love my cats, taking care of your pets if your responsibility as a pet owner. I have no love or relationship to a stranger, they don’t care about me and I don’t care about them, and It’s also not my responsibility to protect other people. An animal that I raised from near-birth, and who has always shown me basically unconditional love and affection seriously means as much to me as a child. My pets are there for me when I have a bad day, and they’re with me when I’m having a great day too. They bring so much joy and comfort into my life and they are so innocent and kind. Even after a lifetime of interactions I never have a single bad or negative moment with my pets. I don’t hate people and I wouldn’t like to have to decide in a fucked up scenario like you’re describing here. But to be honest, I’m probably saving my pet. Sorry.

Funny how all of these social media platforms that were so happy to describe themselves as “the public town square of the internet” or whatever are now claiming that they own everything that everyone ever posted. So, which is it? Because it obviously cannot be both.

I think you’re conflating two very different things here.

1. Reddit _hosting/dissemination user-submitted copyrighted data.
2. Reddit licensing/selling copyrighted data to other parties.

The DMCA covers hosting and dissemination. If a user submits copyrighted data to Reddit that they do not own and Reddit unknowingly (because, to be fair, they can’t know what is or isn’t owned or by who), then Reddit is not liable for copyright infringement as long as they comply with DMCA takedown requests from people who claim to own the original IP.

But again, none of that implies that Reddit themselves (or Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, etc.) can realistically claim ownership over all of the data that is on their website. The reason they are subject to DMCA at all is because there is a globally shared assumption that data that users submit may or may not be owned by some other party, and while the DMCA protects them from being held liable for simply hosting and disseminating that data, it does not magically make them the owner of all data that hasn’t had a DMCA claim made against it.

In other words, if I post a picture of Homer Simpson on Reddit (and there are many), it is ridiculous for anyone to suggest that they have any intellectual property rights over that picture, that character, any trademarks, etc., whether someone has made a formal DMCA take down request or not. And if they don’t own the picture, the character, the trademark, etc., when what exactly are they selling (licensing) and where did they get the right to sell it?

They might not be liable for just hosting/distributing it, but just like you can’t sell someone else’s car, you can’t license out someone else’s IP.

And yet that exact kind of data is all over reddit in ways that are impractical to enforce by case by case DMCA. How many memes are there using footage from popular shows? How much fanart?

More importantly, is that stuff not included as part of the data that reddit “owns” when they sell their data to tech companies? Because whether a DMCA takedown has been requested on that kind of data or not, doesn’t change the fact that they don’t hold the copyright in the first place. How can they sell things that they don’t even own?

Something smells. The logic of this entire industry doesn’t add up.

Their TOS says they own your content in any current or future formats or derivative works.

Their ToS could say they own you and your children and grandchildren, but that doesn’t make it enforceable.

If I post a frame from the movie Akira on Reddit would any reasonable person suggest that they own not only that frame, but also the entire movie that it came from as a derivative work? There is a glut of second-hand data just like that all over Reddit, Twitter, and every other social media network, and I’m willing to bet that’s also part of what’s being sold.

But hey… I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that the idea that they automatically “own” the things that people post on their website is ridiculous. It’s a bit like UPS or FedEx saying they own the contents of your package while delivering it.

“its data”.

Ah yes… of course.

We don’t.

Right wing cultist morons do, because I guess they think that everything is somehow a giant conspiracy against Trump, because thinking that helps them process and cope with the fact that Trump is always in the news for saying and doing bad or dumb shit.

The majority of American elections are winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post races decided with plurality voting. Among other things, this means that if you are voting for someone outside of the realm of the statistical possibility for victory, you are simply throwing your vote away. That is the way the system works today, whether we like it or not, and wasting my vote by writing in Bugs Bunny or whatever isn’t actually a reasonable, productive, grown-up, or intelligent thing to do–especially not in the face of impending autocratic fascism.

In other words, the winner of the 2024 Presidential Election will either be Joe Biden (D) or Donald Trump ®. Of those two, I can easily pick Joe Biden as the person I would like to see running the country, controlling the US nuclear arsenal, and watching over the western world. Again, it’s an easy choice for me. As someone who does probably too much research and overthinking into voting, I’ve never had an easier choice.

But hey, if you’re like me and you don’t like the current American two-party political system, then I encourage you to vote for democratic reforms like Ranked Choice Voting, STAR voting, approval voting, etc. Multiple states have implemented better, more democratic voting systems, and more will hopefully continue to in future years, because unsurprisingly they are almost all better and more democratic than plurality voting.

I understand what you mean, and people should get a chance to vote in the primaries for the person who they think is best, but Biden is the incumbent, and he’s out there winning primaries with like >85% of the vote. Hell, he even won the write-in campaign in Iowa. ( That’s to say nothing of him winning against more than a dozen other, younger candidates in 2020. ) Marianne Williamson is the only other candidate to regularly crack 1%, and she’s not exactly “president material” if you ask me.

It’s going to Biden vs Trump. Two old ass white dudes who aren’t exactly sharp (though Trump is most certainly dumber, weirder and not to mention a fucking criminal fascist). For me, that makes it the easiest choice of my year.

Whatever you want to do in life, start right away.

• If you want to start a business, start developing it and putting the pieces into place as soon as you can.
• If you want to be a artist/musician/writer/etc, take yourself seriously and start gigging or creating right away.
• If you want to reach the top of the academic pyramid, study more than what you’re assigned and start developing your ideas.
• If you want to be involved in politics, then start getting involved in politics.
• etc…

I’m not saying this because it’ll be too late if you don’t, or anything like that. It’s never really too late to change course or start doing what you want.

But don’t wait until you’re finished school. Don’t wait until you feel “ready”. Dispel is the idea that you’re still a kid or that you’re just going through the motions until your life really begins. Life is now. So, plant the seeds of your future as soon as you possibly can.

I’d also say to develop a healthy attitude towards soft drugs like alcohol and weed.

Hard drugs can fuck your life up faster, but addiction to soft drugs can also do a lot of damage. Have fun, but keep perspective. You’re probably gonna be around people do stupid shit from time to time, but resist the temptation to be the person doing the stupidest shit.

What does any of that have to do with LGBT rights? Seems like an ad hominem at best.

Is this the part where y’all jump the shark and pretend like Palestine is a mecca of progressivism and civil rights?

Hardware wise, you’ll be hard pressed to find any even half-way popular computer that can’t run some form of Linux. So I’d say just get something that’s within your budget. Those x86 APU-based mini pcs that you can find for ~$200 are becoming pretty popular for projects these days. Something like a Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi or whatever might also be fine depending on what you want to do with it, just keep your power expectations in check. If you want to spend more money on something with graphics hardware, I’d recommend going for AMD over NVidia, just because the drivers are built into the kernel and essentially no-hassle.

When it comes to software, especially if you’re on x86, just arbitrarily pick one of the reasonably popular distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, PopOS, or any of the other ones you’ve probably heard of. One of the first things to learn about “Linux” is that there’s a whole ecosystem of software projects behind it, and there is a lot of overlap between the software that each distro runs. Yes, there are some meaningful differences between, for example, Ubuntu and Fedora, but I think they are much less meaningful to a noobie (who is just learning the basics of Linux) or an expert (who probably knows enough to bend and customize just about any distro into whatever they want).

Small caveat #1: If you prefer to have a desktop that more closely resembles Windows (like the one of the Steam Deck’s desktop mode) you might want to pick a distro spin that uses the KDE Plasma desktop. On the other hand, if you want to play around with something that’s a bit different than what you’re used to, it might be worth checking out a distro spin that uses the Gnome desktop. I can recommend them both for different reasons, so you might want to check out some videos of them to see what you’re more into before picking. (Other desktops are available, these are just the two big ones! So there truly are a ton of options to explore here if you want to.)

Small caveat #2: At this point in time are you more interested in stability or customization? If you want a truly rock-solid Linux system that’s hard to ever break, you might want to consider one of the new “atomic” distributions like Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite (or others), though you might find some of their limitations annoying. On the other side of the spectrum, if deep customization and flexibility is what you’re looking for, then you might want to venture into the deep end with things like NixOS or ArchLinux, just keep in mind that they can be very technical and overwhelming for noobs. Personally I have been using Fedora Silverblue for a couple years now and I love the stability of it, and I can work around it’s limitations with distrobox.

Another thing to consider is just using what you already have. For example, playing around with Linux in a virtual machine, setting up a Linux-based server on one of the popular VPS services, or just plugging your Steam Deck into a dock with a keyboard and monitor attached and playing with something like distrobox (which you can probably find a guide on how to set that up for your deck).

Everything, in one sitting. You might as well go out with a fucking bang, am i right?

Hopefully he’s dead (from natural causes) or in jail (from natural consequences).

Microsoft basically tied with Apple for the title of richest company in the world, by the way.

Modartt’s Pianoteq is a nice Linux native, physically modeled piano plugin.

In my experience yabridge is fantastic. With a bit of initial setup, it’s the closest thing to a native experience that I’ve come across.

You do control it with a CLI interface, so you need to be comfortable with that.

You also need to have already installed the Windows VSTs manually using WINE or whatever, and so there’s a bit of a typical “how well does this work under wine” crapshoot and a bit of a learning curve there.