Exactly my point!

Well, it is technically “piracy” but it’s amateur piracy. No need to get fancy with torrents and VPNs or whatnot. Just download the software and… not pay.

What is it supposed to say? “Tailor swift” on Wikipedia just redirects to “Taylor Swift”

I have a lot of Amazon gift cards that I want to use up

I’ll give an anecdote that I experienced just now. I bought a computer component, but I had to dig through the “other buying options” to find it on Amazon. The default recommended listing had a price of $207, delivered to me by 2 October. The listing I eventually found was priced at $206, delivered by 28 September. So it cost less and would arrive sooner, the only difference is that it was a third-party seller and not Amazon.

It indirectly comes from shareholders. Money gone to pay fines isn’t distributed by dividends. Theoretically, this hurts shareholders by decreasing the value of a share, since the company is worth less money after paying the fine. However, assessing a fine that shareholders have to pay out of pocket would trample the concept of limited liability and cause financial panic. I remind you that it’s not only rich people that are Amazon shareholders.

I understand the sentiment but this is a pretty uninformed take.

For me, nothing. Everything I want to do works without root. I don’t tinker with my phone. It doesn’t do anything cool anyway and that’s what I have a PC for.

I think that’s because of Chinese people’s travelling habits. Popular domestic travel destinations include Hainan for a tropical experience, Sichuan for pandas, Beijing for landmarks, Hong Kong for fake Britain, Macau for gambling, and Taiwan because it seems foreign enough without being actually too foreign (to Chinese people).

Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan require travel permits to enter, despite the Chinese government considering them “domestic”. They kinda straddle the line between actual domestic and international. Regardless, it’s not common for Chinese people to have phone plans that work in Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan, so they’ll buy the disposable SIM cards I talked about earlier. That’s why phones typically have two SIM slots.

Getting visas to travel internationally is a pain for Chinese people because they have to visit a consulate or embassy, apply, and then be subject to high scrutiny. After all, it seems everyone’s scared of Chinese spies nowadays. It’s also very expensive by Chinese standards compared to applying for a cheap HK/MO/TW travel permit. The People’s Republic of China passport is pretty weak compared to European or American passports. Chinese people can get visa-on-arrival or visa-free access in South Asian countries, Central Asia, or Africa, but these destinations are not popular with Chinese tourists.

This isn’t exclusively an American thing. I went to China and it’s extremely common to see SIM cards being hawked on the street and sold to tourists. They’re disposable and quite convenient. You buy them on the street, pop the SIM card in, get an activation text, and then you get data for a week before it stops working and you throw it away. They come with different data amounts and durations. But eSIMs do exist as well there, although it’s not nearly as convenient. You need to register your identity (surveillance purposes) and sign up for a regular phone contract. I haven’t seen any disposable eSIM plans there yet.

When real life does not match up with the description given by social rejects on a site notorious for infidelity

I would encourage you to look up “user-friendly Linux distros” on your favourite search engine and check the first few results.

PopOS is System76’s distro. It’s quite popular among beginners and frequently recommended to those just starting with Linux. I don’t personally use it.

I think the reasoning here is perfect. You didn’t make it. You told the computer to make it. But only human works are eligible for copyright.

Reactionary take in response to billionaires being put in their place by a working class that is gaining back the union culture of the 20th century and pro-labour fervour of the 19th, assisted by the technology of the 21st.

Yep. Anyone can do that, actually. I can declare you a terrorist. It’s totally my right to do so, but the question is–so what? What am I going to do about it?

The US government has declared the Iranian organisation a terrorist organisation. What have they done about it?

The amount of outrage on this thread is just ignorant people learning how international geopolitics and the concept of absolute state sovereignty work for the first time. Yes, it is the case that big countries get to stick their fingers into the business of little countries. Yes, it is unfair. But that’s how it is and that’s how it’s always gonna be for the foreseeable future. That’s how it always has been for all of human history. From Ur to Rome to Vienna to London to Washington. From Chang’an to Beijing to Nanjing to Tokyo and now back to Beijing. In the next century maybe it will be some other country kicking around everyone else instead of the US. But I can practically guarantee that there will be kicking and there will be people continuing to complain about how unfair it is, because it is and always has been.

I’d like to say we should do better as a species, but in reality, what we have now is really fucking amazing compared to when Genghis Khan would come romping around town destroying your villages and murdering your people, or the Romans coming and demanding fifty talents of silver by sunset or else, or the Belgians planting rubber trees in your backyard.

It can save people. I’m saying it doesn’t always do that and occasionally it works the other way around. It is not a binary “yes” or “no”.

But if we have the opportunity to trade a robber for an evangelist, then I’ll take that trade any day. Robbers actively hurt society as their dayjob. Evangelists at most just talk and vote annoyingly (depending on your political views)

You can call it misplaced, unfunny, or naïve but I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with it. Plenty of people in prison use religion as a means of self-improvement and then wrench themselves back onto the straight path after their release.

(I feel that if I don’t say “an equal number of people use religion as a justification for evil deeds” someone will mention it. Religion doesn’t make you a good person in itself. It’s your actions that decide that and religion is a means to that.)

Not for the shipping company. It’s not their oil. The Iranians can ask the shipping company for compensation, which they could easily refuse and there isn’t much recourse that the Iranians would have. The Chinese could demand compensation but if the company again refuses or claims insolvency or whatever, it’s easier for the Chinese to just stiff the Iranians with payment instead.

I wasn’t aware that you were a sovereign state or that I had any money deposited in your banks or that I do business of any sort with you.

You can sanction me by putting a permanent embargo on conversing with me by blocking me if you want

I hate that “confirmation bias” have become moo words with people nowadays.

The logic is pretty sound:

• A company that does business in the United States must comply with American laws.
• It is forbidden under American law for a company that operates from the United States to do business with Iran.
• The company, through its child, shipped oil from Iran.
• American authorities, enforcing American law, ordered the company to divert the ship and turn over the oil for confiscation because the shipment was illegal.
• Oil is confiscated.

I remark that sanctions do not require the approval of the United Nations. Under customary international law, it is an application of sovereign authority. Any country can apply sanctions and can do so in any way you like. What the USA has said is that “if you want to do business here, we forbid you from doing business with Iran”.

The ship was not intercepted by the Navy. They served a court order on the company and the company turned the ship back and its cargo was seized