Not just that. The tax preparation industry has gotten tax more complex and harder to file in the US

You get the government you can afford. The tax preparation industry has been able to buy several governments

When I see someone downvoted for no good reason, I tend to support them; upvotes don’t sway me at all. My own stuff I see votes as a guide to how well I fit a community (except in one controversial group which attracts down votes – there voters are meaningless

I don’t think you want to be named Md. in America at the moment or in the last several years

Nah, it’s enforcing law, and if needed, suppressing revolt

Because our system grew out of the past. In the past people had fewer rights, the rich could hire a professional defence.

As time passed rights for common people increased, we got the right to use a professional defence even if we couldn’t afford it. But we, like everyone else would need to choose that and organise it

I’m sure that future fairness focused governments will rule that representation is automatic, but it hasn’t happened yet

I wonder if Nintendo will ever embrace repairability like some phone companies have

I guess there’s more competition in phones than in devices that can run Mario Cart

Yeah, it is harder to do. Specifically

• you need to remove stickers in a way that you can replace them, if you want to keep them looking good
• You need to undo glue, iFixit used isopropyl alcohol and force
• Once you’re in its fairly easy to replace parts, but Nintendo don’t supply parts
• Batteries are glued down, you need to destroy the foam beneath them to get the batteries out, Nintendo don’t sell replacement foam, or even a specification for the foam

By being harder it will be more costly to repair

For most people: the more difficult, the more expensive to get fixed

Thanks to 3d printing I have litres of isopropyl. What sucks is you probably want to replace the glue since it’s there to protect against liquids, and Nintendo don’t care to provide a seal kit

You also need to remove stickers to get at the screws

Also you need a security screwdriver (three blade) for those screws

There are no replacement stickers, we wait for iFixit to provide guidance on adhesives

The guy doing the teardown recommended you wait until a third party company makes a drift proof module to replace the same as last version joystick decoders

I feel like I could succeed in an LLM selection process. I could sell my skills to a robot, could get an LLM to help.

It’s a long way ahead of keyword based automatic selectors

At least an LLM is predictable, human judges are so variable

Glad to see my halfling druid isn’t in the common list

Car drivers telling cyclists they spend too much :D

I ride an odd bike, a recumbent. I have seen a few cars watching me rather than the road, which is good for me — they give me loads of space — but bad for anyone ahead of me as the drivers show no lane control for a good 50m after they pass me. Where that happened most recently is also where a driver killed a cyclist by wandering into the bike lane despite having a six metre wide lane to themselves (even the cycle lane there is three metres wide)

Bike lanes are car infrastructure. They are not needed unless you consider the entire street to be for cars by default.

They’re better when they protect cyclists from cars with more than paint. I ride, and I’m less of an arsehole to drivers when I have a separated lane with as good or better rights than the cars

I would like to see streets slowed down and bike infrastructure better protected on roads. I don’t need bike lanes on streets, as almost all of them are pretty safe for cyclists — drivers seem happy to go slower and leave metres of space when passing

Don’t expect to block stuff from Google while using Chrome. Google is [one of] the biggest advertising companies

I think it’s more about power. Musk wanted more, but got less.

Regarding “Elon is stupid” I don’t agree. He has shown exceptionally good technical skills, he has no people skills, he’s worse than useless at presenting himself to the public in general

I don’t think he engineered much at either Tesla or SpaceX, but he had an excellent understanding of what they were doing - he could answer all the (non-ITAR, non trade secret) questions Tim Dodd asked in his tour of Starbase. When model 3 was new Randall Monroe did and assessment of the vehicle, Musk took the criticism and the next version fixed all the identified problems.

I would say Trump is the opposite. Actually low IQ, poorly educated, but good at talking to the population at large

I believe you’re (of you’re American) now allowed to rip DVD but not anything newer. DMCA protection was removed from CSS

And beyond the law it depends also on enforcement

The US doesn’t give a right to break Bluray copy protection and make a personal backup or access it on a device that otherwise couldn’t play it. But the only enforcement is on people sharing copies, no one is prosecuted for format shifting their collection to play over their LAN