404 Media previously reported kids said they were using photos of Trump and G-Man from Half Life to bypass the age verification software in the popular VR game Gorilla Tag. That game uses the service k–ID, which is the same as what Discord is using.
I do think we're running into a problem of net in exceeding net out with modern tech and finance companies. They've surpassed the point at which they can generate meaningful amounts of profit because they've cartelized all the major profit centers.
But the idea that there's nothing left to improve, nothing left to repair, and no one left to consumerize... no, obviously not. The market system isn't failing. It is being failed by business leaders that no longer want to do the hard work of management, innovation, and improvement.
Look outside the US and you can find everything from massive overhauls in modern infrastructure to breakthroughs in manufacturing and miniaturization to exciting modernization in entertainment and sports. Within the US, though, its just slop.
Please don’t confuse actual technological progress with markets.
Consumer goods are delivered through market distributions for nearly every post-industrial society on earth.
The government could distribute widgets, but it doesn't.
Modern infrastructure is not built by markets.
Construction crews, materials purveyors, architects, electricians/plumbers... All come through the market system. That's why Americans have to turn to Spain or Japan every time they float the idea of expanding HSR. That's why only two companies in the world build civilian airliners. That's why our telecom network is an oligopoly.
How significant is Gallup’s decision? On the one hand, the firm’s view that its job approval ratings are no longer distinctive is hard to deny. The New York Times tracked 51 polls measuring Trump’s approval rating in January — so many that poll watchers may not have noticed the absence of Gallup’s monthly figures.
But Gallup is not just another pollster. The firm has earned a reputation for high-quality surveys over nearly a century, and its polls carry more credibility than most. And by so regularly asking Americans about the president, Gallup was able to give politicians, journalists and the public a invaluable way to compare modern executives with those of decades long gone.
Gallup’s polling is also useful because of how it is done. Gallup was one of the last polling groups that tracked presidential approval using phone — rather than online — surveys, and that contacted a new, random sample of respondents for each poll.
By using those techniques, Gallup was able to collect up-to-date data on things like party identification that pollsters across the country, including myself, use as a reference to ensure their own polls are representative of Americans overall.
One thing the article doesn't seem to explore is the one thing I suspect matters most - the money.
How much was Gallup earning by running and releasing these figures? Who was buying the data and how were they, in turn, profiting off of it?
After decades of media consolidation, I'm willing to bet the stock of newspapers and journals that had historically subscribed to Gallup for this metric has dwindled relative to the cost of running a phone survey poll with random sampled users.
Perhaps Ellison buying out CBS was the final straw. Or perhaps it was simply cutbacks across the entire industry, leading to publishers losing interest in Gallup as a breaking news source.
I mean, pretty famously, we didn't. Bad communication between agencies and poor airport security paved the way for 9/11. But given our intention of defunding just about every other federal agency, DHS's domino was going to get knocked down eventually.
What's more frustrating is that Trump's Big Beautiful Bill is effectively bankrolling CBP and ICE indefinitely. So we're going to defund the bureaucratic administration while pumping billions of dollars into a Presidential paramilitary force.
Overall, more than 90% of the Department of Homeland Security’s 272,000 employees would continue working during a lapse, according to the agency’s September shutdown plan covering the first five days of an impasse. More than 93% of ICE and CBP workers would remain on the job.
Only about 44,500 staffers would continue to be paid through other appropriations, according to the shutdown plan. However, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said last fall that 70,000 law enforcement personnel, including in CBP, ICE and other divisions, would receive their paychecks.
So we're putting the middle-management on furlough while the goons with the guns just get to run around snatching people, beating them, disappearing them, and executing them. And this is what we're going to call a "shutdown".
In my 25 year career, I have never had to deal with such a garbage software vendor as this one. I don't want to go on a rant since I have other things to do today and could go on for hours, but here are the highlights: ...
The future is clocking in for another 12 hour shift at the "making minor adjustments to the super intelligent AI dick sucking factory" so you can afford to eat the bugs and live in the pod
human is dumb for specifically choosing to be a piece of shit for NOT closing the car door.
Depending on what I'm doing, I periodically have to double back and re-close a door if I didn't close it hard enough. Modern cars have built in alarms specifically to alert drivers when a door latch isn't secured. You don't have to be a piece of shit to fail to notice that a door is ajar.
Or they're in a hurry and didn't realize the door was ajar when they left the vehicle.
Pretty normal for this to happen at the airport, especially when you're carrying a bunch of bags, juggling kids, etc. Normally, its not a big deal, because the cabbie will pop out and close the door if they get the alert. But here, there's no remote way to close the door and no way to signal the rider that it didn't close completely.
Kulyk legally entered the U.S. in late 2023 along with his wife, 38, and daughter, who’s now 5. The family was sponsored by U.S. citizens as part of the Uniting 4 Ukraine program, a humanitarian program set up in April 2022 to allow Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war to live and work in the U.S. on “parole.” ...
I mean, First Blood was loosely based on real-life World War II veteran Audie Murphy's struggles with PTSD. And it was further informed by the deplorable treatment of protesters at the hands of local police and national guard - many of them returning veterans - during the Vietnam War. The original novel was intended to juxtapose this initial horrifying abuse of a homeless American veteran with the events happening half a world away by a US-sponsored dictatorship.
But reactionaries always forget the first film and fixate on the next four, because it lets Rambo embody the mythological special forces superhuman rather than the Vietcong revolutionary resisting imperial oppression.
This is such a bizarre take, given that we have mountains of compromat released through the Epstein files, plus all his sex scandals dating back to the 1970s. None of them indicate that
a) He's sexually attracted to men
or
b) Revealing any amount of his habitual pedophilia of women affects how he governs
Trump isn't hard to control. Anyone and everyone with two shillings to rub together has been able to bribe him. But liberals need to believe he's a closeted homosexual for some reason.
I don't think anyone can argue the war has been a nightmare for conscripts.
But it's crazy to point to this years long atricion as some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Like any country with a population in the hundreds of millions is just going to run out of people one day.
Tesla’s domestic sales in China collapsed 45% year-over-year in January, falling to just 18,485 units — the automaker’s lowest monthly retail figure in the country since November 2022. The data, released today by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), paints a grim picture of Tesla’s demand in the world’s largest ...
All comes down to marketing. You think European products are a status symbol because LVMH spends enormous sums to convince you of their quality. American firms do the same thing in China.
I associate American goods with ruggedness, cool, or cheap.
Speaks to your media consumption habits. I've always associated American goods with hip hop and street art. But I'm also bombarded with images of kids in track suits and giant hair doing kick-flips while downing soda. Or bohemian-types rolling up to a drive through in a top-down convertible while belting out pop music.
As of now, President Volodymyr Zelensky does not plan to announce presidential elections or a referendum on a possible peace deal with Russia on Feb. 24, a source in the President's Office familiar with the matter told the Kyiv Independent on Feb. 11. ...
Romans extraordinarily appointed someone to have full authority to resolve a specific problem, such as when a serious threat the the state was present.
And how'd that work out?
The Ukrainian constitution says no elections while war.
While in a state of martial law. A constitution re-written as recently as 2015, the year following Ukrainian Oligarch Petro Poroshenko's ascension to power.
You're witnessing the end stages of the collapse of democracy in the country under a set of rules authorized barely a decade ago.
Martial Law was written into the Constitution by a billionaire Oligarch and his corrupt friends, specifically so he could leverage the fighting in the Donbas to secure his position indefinitely.
The Ukrainian executive did not wake up one nice morning, realize it had some kewl powers and thought let’s enact martial law
He needed an excuse to consolidate power, just like every other successful dictator.
Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO and co-founder, is facing growing criticism over a joke he made about US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) monitoring international employees during an event for the company. ...
From reading the article, it just sounds like anonymous complaints to no consequence. But maybe the Salesforce labor force has more of a spine than I'm giving them credit.
It was explicitly a reference to the "Sharing" Economy (Uber, AirBnB, Grubhub, etc) that would supposedly supplant the modern retail sector. So, less replicators and more endless piles of single-use plastics with your take out.
Brociopathic Mendencies (@[email protected]) says "i am no longer saying the fediverse is like email. from now on the fediverse is a lot that turkish neighborhood of uncompleted mini-castles. it was supposed to be one beautiful-but-unrealistic thing, and instead it's a different broken-and-hilarious thing, and if anyone lives there you have to assume they were driven into the hills for being unable to exist in polite society.". The post is illustrated by a photo of that neighbourhood
Trump admin is pulling supercomputers out of key weather and climate research center ( www.cnn.com )
Archived copies of the article ...
Don’t you ever accuse me of a crime!
'Later found dead': Dem lawmaker flags explosive Trump allegation in Epstein files ( www.rawstory.com )
Free Tool Says it Can Bypass Discord's Age Verification Check With a 3D Model ( www.404media.co )
404 Media previously reported kids said they were using photos of Trump and G-Man from Half Life to bypass the age verification software in the popular VR game Gorilla Tag. That game uses the service k–ID, which is the same as what Discord is using.
The Only Solution Capitalism Has Is to Sell Us More Useless Junk: Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions. ( theintercept.com )
Archive. ...
Gallup's presidential approval ratings poll is ending after eight decades ( www.axios.com )
DHS on brink of shutdown as lawmakers leave DC without a deal ( www.cnn.com )
We all have "that vendor" right?
In my 25 year career, I have never had to deal with such a garbage software vendor as this one. I don't want to go on a rant since I have other things to do today and could go on for hours, but here are the highlights: ...
DoorDashers are getting paid to close Waymo's self-driving car doors ( www.engadget.com )
Laughing ICE Goons Seize Dad Who Fled Ukraine War at Walmart ( www.thedailybeast.com )
Kulyk legally entered the U.S. in late 2023 along with his wife, 38, and daughter, who’s now 5. The family was sponsored by U.S. citizens as part of the Uniting 4 Ukraine program, a humanitarian program set up in April 2022 to allow Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war to live and work in the U.S. on “parole.” ...
Is Windows FOSS now? ( lemmy.blahaj.zone )
https://zomglol.wtf/@jamie/116059523957674208 ...
DIY
Crossposted from ...
Which is it?.
Cat goes where cat wills!
GUIs
Russian losses exceeded recruitment for second month in a row, Ukraine says ( kyivindependent.com )
Archive link
2026-02-11
🔗
Wave of Arrests Hits ICE Officers Following Rising Claims of Sexual Abuse, Domestic Violence and Misconduct ( www.ibtimes.co.uk )
Biblical Christians
false profit of salivation
Tesla sales in China crash 45% to lowest level in over three years ( electrek.co )
Tesla’s domestic sales in China collapsed 45% year-over-year in January, falling to just 18,485 units — the automaker’s lowest monthly retail figure in the country since November 2022. The data, released today by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), paints a grim picture of Tesla’s demand in the world’s largest ...
Zelensky won't announce elections on war anniversary amid talks of US-driven timeline ( kyivindependent.com )
As of now, President Volodymyr Zelensky does not plan to announce presidential elections or a referendum on a possible peace deal with Russia on Feb. 24, a source in the President's Office familiar with the matter told the Kyiv Independent on Feb. 11. ...
Beyond fucked up (CW: sexualizing children)
House GOP passes sweeping anti-voting bill that could disenfranchise millions, sends measure to Senate ( www.democracydocket.com )
The GOP’s sweeping new anti-voting bill cleared the U.S. House Wednesday, setting up a high-stakes battle in the Senate. ...
Salesforce workers outraged after CEO makes joke about ICE watching them ( www.theguardian.com )
Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO and co-founder, is facing growing criticism over a joke he made about US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) monitoring international employees during an event for the company. ...
A “QuitGPT” campaign is urging people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions— Backlash against ICE is fueling a broader movement against AI companies’ ties to President Trump. ( quitgpt.org )
James Van Der Beek’s Friends Launch Fundraiser For His Wife & Kids After His Death, Saying Actor’s Cancer Treatments “Left The Family Out Of Funds” ( deadline.com )
it's not actually like email
source