• 0 Posts
  • 142 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 3rd, 2023

help-circle

  • Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company’s headquarters

    But they contended that Thursday’s event was similar to other Microsoft-sanctioned employee giving campaigns

    Seems like employer approval is an important piece.

    But I think the most interesting part of the article is

    Nasr said his firing was disclosed on social media by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism more than an hour before he received the call from Microsoft. The group didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on how it learned about the firing.


  • Also made the switch not too long ago, only using Manjaro. Steam’s proton had gotten extremely good at playing Windows games, so there’s a good chance that it could run your old strategy game.

    You might already have this on your set-up, but having wine auto-launch for Windows executables has been fantastic. I regularly pull and run Windows executables without really giving it a second thought, and so far it’s generally “just worked.”








  • Then I would steer away from arguments which are more debatable and stick to ones that are more robust and focus on the present and future than the past, and avoid anything that can get mired in debate. I’d focus on what the specific problem is (we will have fewer artists due to competition with AI) why it’s a problem (cultural stagnation, lack of new inspiration for new ideas) and why alternative solutions to regulation wouldn’t work (would socializing artistic fields work as they’d no longer be subject to market forces).



  • I’ve heard the sentiment that change and convenience are killing society before, and I’m sure I’ll hear it again. I prefer to shop online. I get no sense of community from stores where every interaction has a hanging financial incentive around it, I get it from local organized runs, other frequent visitors of the dog park, etc. To me, that line of reasoning feels almost like lamenting how good the pipes in your house are, because you don’t need to call a plumber and get to interact with them.

    Shopping online gives me more options, more reviews, easier ways to look up additional technical details without feeling weird taking space in an aisle while researching on my phone. It’s also more efficient in terms of total driving; one person making deliveries for everyone in a neighborhood requires less total driving than all those people making individual trips to a store. And it frees up more time for me to do things I actually want with the people I enjoy.








  • AndrasKrigare@beehaw.orgtoMemes@lemmy.mlArrrrrr
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    sometimes it’s a matter of means & availability, sometimes it’s a matter of controlling their paid-for content (like people who actually buy switch games but want to run them on their steam deck), and sometimes it’s basically a hobby

    Very little of that justifies it to me. For means & availability, this isn’t a mother stealing baby formula. Pirated content isn’t a need (though I’d make an exception for things like school books). There’s plenty of content made to be free and available, as well as libraries. And I’m completely fine with people pirating copies of paid-for content; there’s an argument to be made that that isn’t actually piracy and is personal archiving. It probably doesn’t need to be said that “hobby” is not a justification in the least, just like people who shoplift for the thrill.

    I see supporting a service hostile to users as immoral - it’s like enabling an abuser, however slight, you’re contributing to behaviors that are a detriment to others

    To me the real crux is that you believe that not doing something immoral is the same thing as doing something moral. Me sitting here is moral because I’m not murdering someone. Yay me. I’m also not blackmailing, gaslighting, stealing, etc. etc. Me sitting here might be the most moral thing anyone has ever done.

    To me the case for the absence of activity actually being moral is it requires some amount of sacrifice to continue to do the right thing. Avoiding going to Walmart to support a local business, even if you pay more and it’s further away. The difference between not wanting to see a movie and boycotting it. There’s nothing moral about not going to a movie you didn’t want to see. But I think it is moral to avoid going to a movie you wanted to because of labor practices; you made a sacrifice in support of your beliefs. If you then go and pirate said movie, it’s indistinguishable from selfish behavior.

    As I’ve said in other spots, if it’s genuinely about not supporting hostile services and not about self-interest, donate however much you’re saving by pirating to a union or charity. That’s completely fair. But if not, all I see is people acting in their self interest and trying to justify it by saying that they are doing a bad thing to bad people so it’s okay (and maybe they’re doing a little bad to some good people as well, but that’s a price you’re willing to have them pay for you).


  • AndrasKrigare@beehaw.orgtoMemes@lemmy.mlArrrrrr
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    The problem is when people claim they were never going to buy an awful lot of content. If someone spends a significant amount of time playing, or consuming, pirated content, I call bullshit. They would have bought at least some of it if they weren’t getting so much stuff for free. Considering the rewards and lack of consequences, I doubt the vast majority of people pirating are being really honest with themselves about what they “would never have” paid for, and instead use it as a simple excuse for bad behavior.

    And rejecting a service you don’t consider worth it isn’t moral. That’s just basic capitalism and self-interest. That’s the standard decision to not buy something, which is a decision people make literally dozens of times when they go in the store. And pirating that content anyways certainly doesn’t make it any more moral.