He also ordered many from the fields to factories and mines. Reducing the number of people farming in a misguided effort to industrialize imitating Stalin. Ordered sparrows to be killed because they stole grain. Leading to a boom in the locust population causing a plague. Heard somewhere that soil volume was important to food production. And being the supreme leader and less then a novice in the subject matter. Ordered those that remain farming against their objections under penalty of death. To till glass and other junk into their fields to increase the volume of the soil. Making the soil useless and infertile for a long time.

This is why all centralized authoritarian style governments are deadly. Whether it’s Hitler Stalin Lenin or Mao. Theoretically if we had a wise and benevolent leader. It would be the most effective and beneficial form of government you can have. The problem is with wise and benevolent leaders. It’s often more perception than reality. And simply an outcome of the environment they find themselves in. And even then they still tended to be the exception and not the rule.

Looks pretty foggin good. Just a light touch of it. And not a soupy overdone mess. As is so often tempting to do.

Sandworms of Saturn

I’ve never played the original. I have so many free/cheap games through epic/humble/prime etc I can’t ever decide what to start. So I don’t start anything. But I’m considering it as well.

Short answer yes. Much longer. More complex answer. Mostly. If you’re planning on your devices being able to support hardware decoding and large resolutions/ high frame rates. Sit-top boxes and appliances are not quite there right now. I believe the newer Chromecast HD absolutely supports av1. But most of the older Chromecast including Chromecast TV do not support it directly. So it will have to be re-encoded to be streamed.

That said, the codec itself is fantastic. As an example for animated content, especially. I have some super high quality rips of the old old cartoon from the '80s of the Ghostbusters franchise. We’re talking nearly a gigabyte encoded in h264 for a 22 minute episode. At SD resolution. Upscaling them to 720p and encoding them with av1. And a constant rate factor of about 40. They’ve been coming in between 80 and 200 MB in episode depending upon how much movement there is etc. The one thing with av1 is That as it degrades it sort of smooths everything which works out perfectly for animation most of the time. It can work for live action etc. As well. But you will encounter smoothing as detail is lost. But overall, it is much more preferable to the H style codex so far

The photos are less the issue than videos. But they definitely reduce the size of them far more than other clients do. At least for non iPhone/ iMessage users. It gets so bad that family doesn’t share videos with many of us anymore because of how difficult it is to use something other than iMessage. Or Facebook. But that’s a whole other problem.

XMPP

I can send pictures and video over SMS that are viewable anywhere. An iMessage user can only send a patch of 64 color changing macro blocks with some audio. While it’s technically true it’s the default. it’s purposefully degraded to the point of unusability.

Well that or use an instance that isn’t theirs, or doesn’t even federate with theirs, or simply block theirs.🤔 I mean this is really throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I have no strong love for leninists/stalinists, and think they accomplish little other than making actual socialists look bad while not being socialist themselves. But I’m not that put off by them. They’re generally fairly intellectually weak, and easy to maneuver around. Should you choose to interact with them.

All cell phones are tracking devices. Unless you faraday cage them. But yes, both apple and Android phones give out way more information than just that. And I definitely would not say that I would trust Apple more with data that I would Google.

Whooooooooooo wants Bixby+?

Nobody.

That’s how phones have always worked. As long as they are not automatically ingesting data from people without permission. I don’t see an issue with this. At least in this instance we have some choice in what we send or don’t. It’s no more privacy nightmare than mid-Journey doll-e or any of the others.

The Mandalorian had overall been excellent. Really enjoyed that series. Absolutely hated the way they dumped off a good portion of it in the center of book of boba fett. Was not as thrilled with book of boba fett. But it wasn’t horrible. It just didn’t have the hook that the Mandalorian did. Not watched any of the new series yet. But yeah they’re just really wasn’t enough to justify its existence. It could have just as easily been put on hulu. After all they have such a large investment in that too.

We canceled our yearly subscription in August. Haven’t missed any of the content. I mean I’ve seen what I wanted to regardless. Just not from there.

I’m a leftist. Not a Leninist or hexxbear or whatever. I am very for supporting everyone generally. Lgbtqia+mnop absolutely as well. But I think point of the phrase despite them being horrible at articulating it. If you look at the people spreading culture War, sparking the reflexive response of identity politics in return. They are typically members of wealthy powerful classes. Or the rubes they manipulate. By castrating said classes or even abolishing them. We could largely crash culture wars and the perceived need for identity politics in return. That shouldn’t mean we stop supporting the people who need it however.

The people funding and pushing the culture War want their minions to be attacked with identity politics in return. It polarizes and separates both groups. And keeps them from realizing their common interests. Such as abolishing the ownership and Leisure Class. Re-investing in society and average everyday working people.

The question is how do we respond? We cannot abandon those being attacked. But we’d be more successful if we found a way not to alienate those whose Minds have been poisoned by the culture War bullshit. Unfortunately trying to reason with a culture warbot is like trying to squeeze IQ points from a turnip. You’d be more likely to get blood. It’s honestly just easier to argue with them and increase the Divide.

The maddening thing is how much effort Samsung wastes duplicating basic gapps. Their contacts manager, calendar, etc has no real advantages over the Google ones. Just focus on the hardware and overall experience? Stop wasting time reinventing the wheel. Same with their app store. I’ve had an S20 for the last 4 years. Used Samsung since the S2 which I still have. And am looking at a pixel to replace it since my security updates are running out.