Bill Gates is a monopoly capitalist with zero scruples. He screwed over so many people, vacuumed up so much wealth from all other sectors of the world economy. He has zero qualms about doing this either: There’s video of his depositions in the anti-trust case against Microsoft, and the whole fucking time he just argues semantics in response to the questions, and when pressed after five minutes of defining every fucking word in a sentence, almost always claims he doesn’t know or recall. Obviously a guy that thinks being as dishonest as it is possible to get away with is perfectly good business. And he does that despite whatever the outcome of the case, he’d be richer than billions of humans collectively. What pathology is this?

There’s so much more shit, like the incessant lobbying for medical patents worldwide, or how, according to Melinda, Gates loved hanging out with Epstein.

Now, why would anyone want to have their picture taken with that guy? Torvalds is such an unprincipled lib.

Edit: Listened to some of the deposition in the background. Here Gates is being extremely annoying for example: The interviewer reads back an email from Gates saying something like “browser share is a very, very important goal for this company”, and then asks what other companies he’s comparing browser share with. Gates goes several minutes arguing he’s not talking about any other companies, since literally there are no other companies mentioned in that very sentence, obviously pretending like he doesn’t understand the question. If you listen to all the shit before, they have to go over whether “browser share” means “market share” (Gates says no), whether “very, very important” and “important” have different meanings (Gates says not necessarily, could be hyperbole), and that sort of stuff for minutes on end. Like seriously listen to this, I cannot even describe how stupid it is.

About what?

Anyone who has never even used a computer before can go to one of these websites, follow the instructions on the screen in front of them, and get it done. Zero experience or skills required.

No they don’t. People who have never used a computer before have trouble even using the mouse. They don’t know what a file is, they don’t know what a filetype is, they don’t know that you can convert one type of file to another, they don’t know even to look for a file conversion website, they don’t know how to upload a file to a website, they don’t know how to find a file in the file dialogue, and on and on. Seriously what are you on about?

Overall fair enough I guess. I didn’t say it was simple though, i said it was not more complicated. Your experience using GUIs and web interfaces probably spans years. It’s not like you’re born with GUI skills.

Making a GUI is more work than making a CLI tool. GUIs are not cross-platform, a pure CLI is more portable. You can code a CLI with any programming language you like, while there are many restrictions on what kind of GUI is available on what programming languages and platforms.

The GUI code is tedious and boring to write. That code can become outdated and broken and might need fixing to run on newer platforms. The CLI has essentially no extra dependencies and the interface hasn’t changed much since like the 70s.

The sort of person who develops free software usually knows and likely prefers to use the CLI. They’re not doing it for users like you, first and foremost. They’re doing it themselves, or because they need it for their job. The CLI tool might be exactly what they want, because the file conversion is part of some backend stuff, something that’s run from a script, so you can automatically run it on all the files.

Anybody with basic web dev skills can then take these tools, slap together web fronted and try and make some quick bucks. They’re basically incentivized to not care about security, privacy or anything like that. Of course that space attracts scammers.

The incentives just aren’t there for it to be any other way. You can either learn the CLI commands, written by people who care about their reputations and professional pride and want to share their tools. Or you can trust anonymous internet randos wanting to make a quick buck. And while I sympathize not wanting to have to learn new shit, I swear using a shell isn’t actually more complicated than using a web browser, you’re just not used to it.

trustworthy AI

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What

They’re not the good guys browser wise, they’re just slightly less shitty than Google, which was (still is probably?) their biggest customer.

Are you talking about the claim that he endangered CIA agents? That was just some bullshit they cooked up to get him on, and I don’t think anybody even claimed that somebody actually died.

Imagine thinking exposing the CIA should be a crime, because the poor small beans CIA agents need protection. Who wouldn’t want to protect imperial blackmailers, hit men, weapons smugglers and death squad commanders?

You are the traitor for siding with the oppressor.

No he hasn’t. The management of the old x.com (the one that got bought by paypal) threatened to walk if Elon wasn’t removed from the office. He was always this incompetent.

No communist thinks that Russia is still communist. The critical support for Russia among some communists (me included) has to do with them fighting western imperial expansion/domination, and that Russia winning (or rather: not losing) would weaken the US empire and give breathing room to socialist and anti-colonial movements worldwide, since the US empire is the no. 1 threat to those movements. If US/EU supremacy on the international stage were broken, the US would have a much harder time isolating, toppling, or sanctioning socialist or anti-imperialist governments. If Russia loses and gets broken up or economically ruined, that would be proof of imperial power and scare other countries into caving to western demands. These countries would also lose Russia as a potential ally and trade partner.

The other major interpretation among Marxists (and there’s been a lot of debate about this) is that both sides are imperialist, and the correct stance in this conflict is revolutionary defeatism (as Lenin preached in Czarist Russia, or Rosa Luxembourg did in Germany during WW1). In this logic everybody need to fight and overthrow their own bourgeois governments and stop the war (i.e. Russian workers should undermine the Russian government, while Americans need to fight the US government), since the working classes of those countries shouldn’t fight each other, but rather fight the capitalists in their own countries. Slogan: No war but class war.

How is that supposed to work?

This will happen and marginalized groups like illegal immigrants, the homeless, and the disabled will be effectively excluded. Poor people are going to have their finances controlled even more. This will cause deaths.

You’d think the libs at Harvard would mention this. How do you think this actually works?

Better explanation: China has lifted 800 million out of poverty over 40 years, and quality of life has improved massively for almost everyone (also things that are confirmed by western institutions). Why would they not approve of the government?

My impression was that the forced sterilization claim was made up, or at least the evidence was not convincing.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/pentagon-eyeing-australia-for-testing-hypersonic-weapons/aac1a064-6eeb-4709-abc5-a1ed902053c9

If by “reputable” you mean pro-Western.

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Racism comes naturally the Anglo brainpan.

Edit: My apologies to my Anglo brothers and sisters still fighting the good fight and blowing up US government property.

There’s plenty of evidence of China trying to improve the living conditions for Uyghurs in Xinjiang and in the rest of China (poverty alleviation, affirmative action programs for university students, the crackdown against hate speech on social media, …). So imprisoning some people based on some vague “extremism score” and then seemingly releasing them after some months doesn’t show intent to impose living conditions in order to destroy a group. It shows intent on crushing separatism.

Preventing births is true for everybody in China, how does that show an intent to destroy a particular group? It doesn’t.

So we’re left with “serious bodily or mental harm”, which can be explained just as well by an intent to suppress separatism and religious extremism. Literally every war causes some nationality “serious bodily or mental harm” far worse than what China is doing, and we don’t call every war a genocide, do we?

Two years ago, that shit used to be in German newspapers every month or so. Haven’t seen anything in like a year now. Also, pretty sure the UN report didn’t allege genocide, which is what the media here was claiming back then.

Heck I remember one of my friends was under the impression that there was ethnic cleansing and some major refugee movements, despite the media never actually alleging that. But when they hear the word “genocide” over and over, that’s what people imagine.

It’s a western study! Is Harvard part of a communist conspiracy or what’s your point?