There are plenty of legitimate reasons for Google to provide extra support and exceptions to parts of their guidelines to certain parties, including themselves. No one is claiming this is a consequence-neutral decision, and it’s right to not inherently trust these exceptions, but it is not a black and white issue.

In this case, placing extra barriers around sensitive permissions like MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE for untrusted parties is perfectly reasonable, but the process they implemented should be competent and appealable to a real support person. What Google should be criticized for (and “heavily fined” by the EU if that were to happen) is their inconsistent and often incorrect baseline review process, as well as their lack of any real support. They are essentially part of a duopoly and should thus be forced to act responsibly.

Oh yeah for sure. Google, extremely large companies, and government apps essentially have different streams and access to support than the rest of us mere mortals. They all receive scrutiny, but they have much more ability to access real support and may have slightly altered guidelines. I just don’t think it was an intentional and specific attempt to be anti-competitive.

I’ve experienced this exact issue with the Google Play Store with some clients and it’s just the worst. This kinda thing happens because Google is essentially half-arsing an Apple-style comprehensive review of apps. For context, Apple offers thorough reviews pointing to exactly how the app violates policy/was rejected, with mostly free one-on-one support with a genuine Apple engineer to discuss or review the validity of the report/how to fix it. They’re restrictive as hell and occasionally make mistakes, but at the end of the road there is a real, extremely competent human able to dedicate time to assist you.

Google uses a mix of human and automated reviewers that are even more incompetent than Apple’s frontline reviewers. They will reject your app for what often feels like arbitrary reasons, and you’re lucky if their reason amounts to more than a single sentence. Unlike Apple, from that point you have few options. I have yet to find an official way to reach an actually useful human unless you happen to know someone in Google’s Android/Developer Relations team.

I’m actually certain that the issues facing Nextcloud are not some malicious anti-competitive effort, but yet more sheer and utter incompetence from every enterprise/business facing aspect of Google.

It came to me in English class when I was 17. At the time I was unsure of why I became attached to the name. A few years later I realised why (and that it was a cliche, but I was attached at that point). I let my parents pick my middle name so they could have some say in naming me.

Google is free. The moderator time you waste by reposting this already removed post however, is not

https://archive.is/eITOJ

Doesn’t help that he’s got the build and demeanor of a Hitler cabinet member

I know this isn’t an author but a publisher, so please don’t crucify me, but have you checked out Tilted Axis Press? Their whole focus is on diverse translated fiction, particularly of stories or cultures that are less represented in the field. I’ve been a big fan of them for years.

I’ve been really concerned about this. I know their real power is in the senate but the Greens have done well to pull things to the left in both houses.

This isnt just a win for Labor, this is a historic landslide after the already historic landslide in 2022. The Liberals could hold as few as 40/150 seats in the house after today, and Labor as many as 90. This could be their greatest victory since the Second World War, and the Liberals (who, to clarify, are conservative) smallest representation since their formation. There was something like a 5% swing away from the Liberals. Likewise, this result appears to have elected the most independents to parliament in decades.

Fingers crossed they do🤞

To add, this is happening against a backdrop of a historic swing against primary votes for the two major parties. That means that, under our preferential voting system increasingly more people are voting third party/independent first, with the two major parties further down the ballot. Labor is still winning enough seats to form majority for now (due to preference flow), but it points to a population increasingly frustrated by the inaction of the legacy parties and increasing polarization.

Ok, first up the players: Labor is the major centre-left party, Liberals are the centre-right (think economically liberal), Nationals are right wing, Greens are left win, and there are a handful of “teal” independents who are mostly politcially centre women but fairly environmentally focused. The Liberals and Nationals make up the Coalition and essentially act as one insane party with the Libs at the helm, so you can essentially understand them interchangably.

Labor won the last federal election in 2022 by a slim majority (2 seats), but the Coalition lost in one of the worst defeats in recent history. They were in power since 2013. They lost for a lot of reasons, but one of the major ones was that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was rightfully loathed. The Liberals lost something like 10 seats, putting them at their lowest representation since formation.

Since the last election, the Coalition has been steadily growing in popularity due to the same reasons other non-incumbents have globally. Inflation, high energy prices, etc all contributed. Plus a (mostly true) perception that the government was doing too little to fix problems like our crumbling healthcare system weren’t helping.

Finally the election is announced in late March (our elections aren’t fixed) and the parties start campaigning. Dutton, the Liberal leader, look like they’re going to win a majority at this early point. The following things happen:

• Labor announces and implements immediately a tax cut, Dutton announces he will repeal it and replace it with a cut on fuel prices.
• Dutton matches Labors healthcare promises among attack campaigns that he cannot be trusted, since last time his party was in power they tried to destroy bulk billing (no pay appointments) among other things.
• Dutton announces a cut of 41,000 jobs to the public service, a substantial portion. After backlash of people remembering the crumbling veterans and Medicare frontline services last time they were in, he says no frontline workers will be cut. He also adds that the cuts will be through attrition, not firing. Following more backlash, he “clarifies” that he always meant the cuts were to come from Canberra, the capital. This is a mathematical impossibility, meaning he would have to gut the upper ranks of every department and probably defense.
• He announced an end to work from home for all public servants. This is bad for the Liberals, because they’ve had massive problems with women in the past (including a woman allegedly raped in a ministers office and subsequently allegedly covered up), and people quickly pointed out that the policy would disproportionately affects women, who are unfortunately still expected to bear most of the burden of childcare. Banning working from home prevents them from holding down many jobs. Dutton responds that women can job share, which is so our of touch it’s hard to describe. He then “clarifies” he only meant it to apply to Canberra, then changed his mind about the policy completely.
• He rejected Labor’s renewable energy transition and instead proposes a transition to Nuclear. No industry group except the one they hired thinks this is realistic, a good option, or feasible. Unrealistically short time-frames, bad assumptions, etc are used to make it seem feasible. Finally someone points out that the places they plan to put the plants don’t have enough water.
• Just yesterday, on the eve of the election, they announced their budget that shows the deficit to be worse than Labor’s during the next term, but magically improving after that. That worked in 2013 but doesn’t seem to be now.
• Other minor things. They keep crashing campaign trucks into polling locations. Dutton has zero charisma and looks creepy, and was a Queensland cop (that’s really bad, they’re as corrupt as the worst American cop).
• Also a Liberal Senate candidate this cycle personally tried to induct me into a culty MLM a few years back so fuck them specifically.

This has resulted in polls gradually sliding for the Coalition to the point that it now looks like they will lose even more seats this election and Labor might even gain one.

Technically both sides have almost identical policies in the upcoming election - only because the Liberals (who are conservative) copy pasted Labor’s policy in a pretty lame attempt to overcome their (rightfully earned) reputation as a threat to Medicare. That said, Labor introduced the rebate freeze back in 2013, so who knows.

The only party offering a real solution are the Greens, who (hopefully) might form a minority government with Labor like they did in 2010.

Fair use commentary generally requires as little of the actual original work to be used as possible. Summary may be ok, clips/recordings are ok, but they must be minimal. That commentary must also be substantive.

Reproducing a work in full (thus obviously limiting the commercial viability of the original work - another factor considered) with light commentary over the top probably wouldn’t hold up in court. The commentary just avoids automatic systems in the increasingly poorly moderated internet.

I think it would be great if more men read (or just read summaries of) basic feminist texts, especially Judith Butler and people of her ilk. Before I realised I wasn’t a man they helped me. I think the deconstruction of gender that feminism offers serve men just as much as women - it made masculinity feel like less of a prison (nevermind that I ultimately largely moved more feminine).

I remember reading authors like John Stoltenberg, the aforementioned Judith Butler, and some perspectives of feminism/masculinity in a working class context.

You’re right, it looks like they didn’t (at least for most things?). They do mention raytracing briefly, and that the sampling stage can “combine point samples from this algorithm with point samples from other algorithms that have capabilities such as ray tracing”, but it seems like they describe something like shadow mapping for shadows and regular raster shading techniques (“textures have also been used for refractions and shadows”)?

Maybe, what I said is admittedly mostly based on the experience I have with Blender’s Cycles renderer, which is definitely not real time.

I’m not a computer graphics expert, but considering Toy Story uses ray-traced lighting I would say it at least depends on whether you have a ray-tracing capable GPU. If you don’t, probably not. I would guess you could get something at least pretty close out of a modern day game engine otherwise.

Mr President, a second signal chat has hit the buildings