Because they’re not used to people saying no to them.

Boiled alive

Gotta love the Streisand Effect this is having, too. They arrest one notable person and suddenly a rather scattered movement has a martyr to rally behind.

You’re not wrong. I answered in a reply to someone else but I have a gaming laptop with a decent enough GPU to play newer games. Not well, in many cases, but good enough.

It’s just that with prices of everything being so inflated again, I don’t want to pay more for older hardware than it’s worth, especially if it won’t be as significant a step up from what I’m using now.

Yeah, definitely an additional dimension that would need some sort of out of the box thinking to address, and I don’t think it could ever be done perfectly given that the internet is an international community not beholden to any single country’s laws.

In one sense though I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue of people posting whatever opinions and endorsements on social media, but more to do with the algorithm. No idea what could be done about that, but can’t say I’d be against some sweeping reforms hitting social media platforms anyways to address user privacy, which might at least address the algorithm problem somewhat.

That, or, we hope decentralized social media like this catches on at a larger scale, haha.

I think your concerns are valid assuming you stop there, but there’s definitely a lot more that can be done on top of campaign finance reform to make politics more egalitarian and protected from corporate interests.

Once upon a time in the US, the FCC enforced the Fairness Doctrine, which required any radio or TV broadcaster to represent bipartisan or nonpartisan views on given topics if they wanted to discuss politics. Not to say that it didn’t come with its own set of problems, but Reagan did away with that in the 80’s and we’ve seen a right-leaning slant in radio and TV ever since.

Just spitballing here, but a similar model with campaign finance in mind could do a lot to level the playing field. First, do away with corporate personhood. Then make it so that if a broadcaster or advertiser wants to show political ads, they must obtain a special designation which comes with its own stipulations: limit the quantity/duration of ads any one campaign can purchase, require that they distribute any qualifying candidate’s ads without bias, charge a flat rate for ads for all candidates, and all political ads must be divided up along regular intervals throughout the day.

Despite corporate personhood, it is possible—common, even—for corporations to be limited in what they can or cannot say. Limiting corporate speech for public good (HIPAA in the US, for example) shouldn’t be something objectionable.

Probably not perfect, but also probably much much better than how things are today with so much corporate-controlled politics.

Honestly it should not even be legal to donate to politicians at all. There should only be publicly funded elections. Earn enough signatures to end up on a ballot, you get a budget that goes to helping you campaign, audited to ensure that it only gets used for purposes directly related to campaigning.

Nope, just the product of too much time at the beginning of my day and an unfortunate familiarity with his variety of bullshit.

They are definitely eyeing Moldova, Georgia, and Estonia.

“It’s because of Biden that your testes hurt now, I didn’t want to kick them. There should have been ball kicking from the beginning, you know it’s a very, really very important thing for our nation’s egg prices and wellbeing, and you know the liberal dictators and DEI enforcers, they said ‘Why—’ yes, I know, really, they said it, ‘Why should we have to kick people in the gonads? Why don’t we just give transgendered abortions to everyone who needs a ball kicking, on the taxpayer dollar,’ and honest to God this is what they told me, honest to God. Can you believe it? They thought they would get away with it, it’s unbelievable, it destroyed America, the lack of ball kicking, really, look it up, it’s all there. So yes, maybe, it’s going to hurt for a while, maybe a few weeks or years—it depends on, well, there’s a lot of very good, very good reasons that really smart people have known for a while, but the Biden DEI squad didn’t want to talk about it. And there will probably be other kinds of pain to come, maybe some worse than ball kicking, some small pains here and there, and you might be thinking ‘How did it ever get this bad?’ But it’s all Biden, you can check the DOGE numbers if you don’t believe me, and he brainwashed all of America, it’s a disaster. But now we have a good ball kicking plan, the best plan really, and this is how America got great, and how we make America great again.”

I mean, I already have good. I just don’t need to waste money on something I don’t need if it’s not worth it.

Lemmy.blahaj.zone

I feel like this whole issue is getting overblown, but I do agree with the take that a blatant troll should not be humored, and that shouldn’t make one a bigot.

Previous gen is going for 1.5-2x as much as current gen due to shortages, even for used cards. They are at least available if someone has a dire need for a replacement GPU, but I am patient, not willing to pay current gen prices for older hardware, and not willing to pay more than MSRP at that.

I expanded elsewhere in this post, but basically it’s a combination of:

1. I do own a laptop I bought in the pandemic which has a 2070 mobile GPU, and between that and my PS5, I am not truly in a rush.

2. Older hardware is also being price gouged. If I do buy something, I don’t want it to be more than 1 gen old, but at current prices I’d be paying more than the new stuff goes for at MSRP.

3. I budgeted to be able to buy something good, not just good enough. Since I’m not in a rush, I’m willing to wait and keep trying to buy something closer to top-of-the-line. I can afford scalper prices, but I just refuse to support scalping out of principle.

Absolutely, I have been. I was looking at some last-gen AMD cards, but used 7900 GREs and XTs are going for almost as much as an MSRP 5080, and unopened ones are going for the same or more.

If I had an immediate need for a card, I’d likely settle for that, but I’m still willing to be patient while keeping an eye on in-stock listings. I’m fortunate enough to at least have a PS5 and a decent laptop that can run newer PC games on modest settings, so I’m not in a rush.

I’d like to go back to Fuzhou, but geopolitical tensions are making international travel less viable by the day.

To add a bit to the story, I did spring for a gaming laptop in 2021 because my 2013 MacBook was starting to show its age, and the model I bought came with a 2070 mobile GPU which has been fine playing newer games at modest settings at 1080p.

Laptops and prebuilts were basically the only affordable option in the pandemic, and I had a laptop need at the time. But for a while now it has still been a goal of mine to put together a good desktop. The last desktop I built was in 2010 (I snagged a GTX 580 GPU and felt like such hot shit then).

It is very tempting. Would definitely recommend for anyone who needs something.

My current laptop that I bought during the pandemic shortages has a 2070 mobile chip which still works fine-ish for newer games. I’m tempted to look at basically anything better, but I’m not truly in a rush to upgrade just yet and want to make sure whatever I upgrade to is worth the price.

The main reason for my impetus at present was to try to get ahead of the Trump tariff price hikes, but I’ve basically accepted that as unavoidable at this point.

I actually had thought of that too, but see my reply to someone else further below:

https://lemmy.world/comment/15537041

I had thought of that, but the 4080’s/4090’s were going for significantly more than the next gen cards were going for at MSRP.

I mean, look at this, the 5080 is MSRP $999 but here’s Newegg’s 4080s:

And looking at the “Buy it Now” prices for used models on eBay isn’t much better: