You don’t even need bribery. You can just throw money at something and make things happen.

If you think something is true, you can pay the world to prioritize things as if it were true.

If you think vaccines cause autism and you are rich, you can create massive “education” campaigns and the like to convince people its true. You can buy ads telling people its true. You can amass an enormous following of people who believe you and change policy without bribery.

Fundraisers and charities, when you have a lot money, are rarely acts of charity. They tend to be PR campaigns and power plays.

Honestly, even when the acts have good intentions, they are often quite damaging. The involvement of the wealthy in charity is very similar to their involvement in politics. Their wealth buys influence and gives them a disproportionate say that allows them to ignore and overrule the will of the people and sometimes even reality.

For example, look into the impact of Bill Gates’s “acts of charity” in the education space. He poured money into charter programs that negatively impacted public education. Later studies showed that his programs were not particularly effective.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that a very rich person is convinced by some charlatan that they found the a means to produce free energy. The wealthy person throws tons of money at the idea. How many talented people will be taken from other legit programs because the paycheck at Bullshit Energy Nonprofit is better? These rich people are successful and think they know bestr. Their money ensures they get treated like experts because money makes things happen whether or not those things are helpful.

As someone who is trying to teach themselves a few new things this year by diving to projects using them… I seriously, seriously feel you. It honestly makes me question whether I should just abandon each project I start, both professional and personal.

All the relevant hits are from years and/or 2+ versions of whatever ago or forum posts with dead links to an alleged solution.

I feel like in the past I could just dive into something and search my way through it. Now I feel like that era is over and I question whether it’s me, my niche project idea, the disappearing community, or just the search engines.

Sadly, old Google doesn’t work either thanks to the efforts of SEO and the AI generated garbage.

The problem with search is that the motives of those being searched aren’t to provide you with the most helpful answer. The motives are to get you to visit their website then stay/click/buy as much as possible. They’ll tailor their content to match whatever algorithm the engine is using.

That’s why Google’s new plan is to collect all of the information ahead of time and skip the “visit other websites” step. Then you can stay/click/buy on their website as much as possible.

Seriously though. Just skip all this nonsense, you selfish piece of shit, and open your wallet so the hungry corpos can feast on its contents - they have poor, innocent, starving shareholders to feed… you monster.

Also 10. Copilot preview installed itself.

I’m still using my HL5280DW. The w (and later the n) both stopped working, so I connected it to an old pi I had laying around to print to it over the network.

Only downside is no Windows 11 (thanks new work laptop) driver support if I connect directly via USB.

I think I changed my toner for the first time like 2 years ago. The high capacity toner I bought with the printer worked just fine (after 16 years in my closet) when I installed it. I don’t expect it to run out of toner until I’m long dead.

Absolutely. Dumb TVs going forward. Unfortunate that the best screens like those made by Samsung are ruined by surveillance and hardware that can’t run the “smart” OS for more than a few years without eventually running like dog shit.

Does it end? I ended my subscription with Netflix due to the repeated cancellation of shows I would get into.

More like they need to have everyone use the app so that they can offer “AI Assistant” features through it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/01/28/new-details-free-ai-upgrade-for-google-and-samsung-android-users-leaks/

Honestly, that was my first hope.

Apparently our typical installer for Visio 2016 and our 365 license use “incompatible installers” so it is going to be a pain in the ass for me to have both installed at the same time. Thankfully I’m trusted by IT so I might be able to just do it myself.

Edit: Looks like I’ll need IT after all. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/use-the-office-deployment-tool-to-install-volume-licensed-editions-of-visio-2016

Now if only it would stop dropping leading zeros unless you ask it

That appears to actually be a feature.

My local public school district takes student privacy seriously. They make an effort to track which students they have consent to feature in any media in order to avoid this and, as a district policy, ask for consent every school year to make sure consent doesn’t change.

Assuming you are a minor in the US.I would be very surprised if you or your guardians ask for your photos to be removed and the school didn’t cooperate.

A right to repair bill made it just as far in NY and the Governor absolutely sabotaged it.

Apologies, I didn’t realize that your goal was to promote capitalism and defeat class solidarity.

The difference between the people you call proletariat and the people you refuse to call proletariat is often luck. Luck is fickle and can swing both ways. A manager at a bank is absolutely proletariat, they’ve just been given a bit more money and told they’re no longer proletariat. This is because it’s way easier to keep workers and management at each other’s throats than to have everyone target the real source of the “orders from above”.

Jesus Christ, I guess the capitalists are still winning. Keep us fighting amongst ourselves so we never unite. What, exactly, would convince you to have solidarity with a person able to save 3k a year? To quit and work for less? To donate all non-living expenses to charity until their QOL is on par with yours?

Seriously though, there is no reason why labor at all levels can’t work together to improve the system and demand better treatment across the board.