Steam does not force you to only buy games from Steam, even on hardware they sold.

Yeah, the big difference is you don’t have to use Steam on PC, nor does Valve appear to pursue exclusivity agreements to for consumers to get any particular game only from them. For Playstation, you use the PS Store or you don’t play.

Gabe doesn’t need to buy new boats, he owns a company that builds them…

It’s not the citizens having no confidence in the government, it’s the other members of parliament. If the government cannot get a majority of MPs to support their bill, they have lost the confidence of parliament, which will trigger and election (or technically could have the GG assign government to another party who DOES have the confidence of parliament, though to my knowledge that has never happened, but it is a tool in their toolbox).

Our federal elections are run by Elections Canada, which reports to parliament as a whole, not to the Government of Canada. It is a non-partisan agency. We have a similar setup in the provinces with each having their own provincial election agency. I am unsure how it is handled in the territories.

Pretty much. If the current party in power is not able to gain sufficient support for confidence motions (there are a number of things that qualify as a confidence motion, the budget being a big one) Then the Governor General (the official representative of the King / Queen) can offer control to another party if they ARE able to gather that support, or simply call an election.

Technically the (currently King) is our head of state, but for most functions our Prime Minister fills that role. The current government losing confidence of parliament is one of the functions where the King still holds de facto power in addition to de jure power.

Note that while they are titles held by the same person, the titles of King of Canada and King of the United Kingdom are legally distinct, and while referring to his role in Canadian governance, it is appropriate to refer to Charles III as King of Canada specifically, and inappropriate to use his other titles in that context. Mostly because the King of the United Kingdom has no role in our government, but the King of Canada does.

It makes more sense when you realize that Americans don’t actually give a shit about their veterans, they just like virtue signalling like they do. The VA would be in much better shape if they actually cared.

That’s the point of the agreement. It locks in that demand by contractually requiring the companies agreeing to it to buy a certain amount of product regardless of whether they actually want it.

Personally, I view this as a sign that Micron believes the AI bubble is going to burst within 5 years, so they’re locking people in at bubble prices now.

…you need to stop smoking whatever you’re smoking and come back to reality… Or learn to read, but I decided to be generous and assume you were just too high to know what was going on instead of assuming you were an idiot.

By attempting to refute an assertion about southern Europe using the UK as an example…

Geeze, I hope not. 2x8 is a huge difference from 1x16.

Looks like a custom GPU configuration based on AMD hardware to me. So not an iGPU, but also not a mainline card.

Sorry, in what world is the UK “southern” Europe?

Truth is, it was never about age. It was about asset accumulation. The more you had to protect, the more right-wing you got, generally speaking. There are obviously exceptions.

They fucked everything for younger generations so hard now though that we AREN’T able to accumulate assets to the degree where that shift happens in large numbers anymore. So we are staying left-wing for the most part. Unfortunately they seem to have realized their error and decided to just brainwash the really young gens with AI slop brainrot instead.

That’s kinda the point though. With firefighters, bad people get kicked to the curb. With cops, good people are the ones kicked to the curb.

Maybe at some point telling him that you can buy your own things, and that it is not the reason why you’re spending time with him, could lead to a more constructive discussion… If you’re not afraid to have it, that is

Yeah, plus his reaction to this would be pretty telling. If he takes it with grace then you’re probably good. If he gets offended or upset at you expressing some autonomy and ability to take care of yourself, fucking RUN.

Damn straight people defaultism :(

Yeah, I’d be careful with this one. It’s pretty love-bomby, which at this stage in my life just stands out as a red flag.

That said, you’re both young, so he may be legit and just not learned how to not be over the top when into someone lol.

I’m fine with AI use in the back end, nobody really codes without something along the lines of copilot or claude anymore anyway.

Well that’s just straight up untrue. My org did an AI pilot to see if it was something we wanted to invest in and it ended up coming back with reduced productivity among devs (largely due to a massive increase in debugging time because of the slop output from the AI). Our devs write good code, faster, without the AI involved.

It’s mostly in management where we’ve seen productivity increases, because of how many emails they are writing on the average day and for transcription of meetings.

Yeah… that’s not how that shit works in practice if you’re trans in far too many places…

hammer and sickle

OUR bathroom :P