Oh boy are you not going to like this, but someone’s gotta say it:

The Democrats are just as responsible for this shit show as the Republicans

The US has a two-party system, based on the assumption that the two sides will oppose each other and through that opposition come to a happy/sane medium. I’ve been watching US politics my entire life (I’m 46) and not once have I ever seen the Democrats do their damned job and oppose the rightward slide.

Biden had the House and the Senate and he knew what was coming. Anyone paying attention knew that Trump or some other fanatic would take the White House again and he did nothing.

Things the Democrats could have done with the power they had:

• Reduce the powers of the president
• Enshrine abortion as a human right
• Abolish ICE
• Medicare for all
• Elevate Puerto Rico and Washington DC to state status, thus guaranteeing Democrat dominance for the foreseeable future.
• Reducing the funding of the military
• Stop supporting Israel already

They did… none of that. In the case of genocide, they did the opposite and then threatened anti-genocide voters that they’d better fall in line or they’d get… the other genocider. Fuuuuuuck that.

Some of this is strategic. The Democrats will never make it impossible for the Republicans to threaten abortion rights, because it gives them a stick to beat the Republicans with every 2 years. Same goes for Medicare. Some of it is ideological: the Democrats are just as bad as Republicans when it comes to supporting genociders and opposing socialism for example.

“BuT tHe RePuBlIcAnS aRe ObStRuCtIoNiSts!” I hear you say. “They Democrats could never get any of that done with the Republicans blocking everything!” To this I remind you that they had the House, the Senate, and the Presidency and all the powers Trump is unilaterally leveraging to turn your country into a dictatorship.

The Democrats haven’t had a leader with conviction since Carter, and every successive generation is more cowardly and disconnected from the people than the next. It certainly doesn’t help when people decry the immorality of refusing to vote for a candidate that will do nothing but keep the seat warm for the next Republican.

If the Democrats are unwilling to do their damned job, they should step aside and let someone else do it for them.

What’s 1312a?

The headline is rather vague and seems to buy much of what’s said in the actual article: that the cops raided this dude’s home and charged him with obstruction when he got upset that they were raiding his home and stealing his shit.

Among the things they made off with as “evidence”: computers, t-shirts, a fridge magnet, and a keffiyeh (that scarf traditionally made in Palestine). There’s no mention in the article that this dude was anything other than a peaceful activist campaigning for a free Palestine.

Edit: I just read the arrest report and it’s pretty standard cop overreach stuff. They raided his home, took his computers, thumb drives, etc. and the worst thing they found were “Plans indicating how to cause property damage during the protest;” and smoke bombs.

Definitely a true danger to the public. Best we lock him up so we can get back to bombing children.

I’ve wondered this myself, but at a guess, I’d assume that they’d attach a 1hr window to the time change. So to use your example:

• 1400h egg price is set to £3.00
• 1445h you pick eggs off the shelf
• 1500h egg price set to £3.05
• 1515h Jane picks eggs off the shelf at £3.05
• 1530h you get to the till and pay £3.00
• 1535h Alice gets to the till and pays £3.05

Basically, so long as you’re in and out within an hour, any price rises (not drops, likely) within that hour don’t apply to you.

Alternatively, there’s a continued push to use the self scanning guns, those things you take with you in your cart as you shop. These could track the time of purchase and thus give you up-to-the-second pricing. Of course this only works if everyone has to use those things. I’m sure that’s next.

It’s actually so much worse than that.

With e-labels you can optimise your prices in real time, A/B testing the public across the country in minutes to optimise for the highest rate a population will tolerate indefinitely.

Then, you can offload the management of this service to a third party, which sounds daft at first, but this provides deniability when it comes to price fixing. When EvilCorp contracts with all grocers in a given province/state, they can slowly hike the price of bread by 1% every hour until they maximise profits, screwing you. They can even optimise for time of day/region/whatever, all with deniability.

Surge pricing is a distraction. The real profit is in squeezing the public slowly.

What is it with so many maps drawn by Americans pretending Canada doesn’t exist?

You can also do this with New Pipe.

Despite the name, the title is not just granted to individuals. Pairs of people such as married couples and political opponents, classes of people, and inanimate objects have all been selected for the special year-end issue.

— Wikipedia

Notable past winners include:

• The computer
• The endangered Earth
• The Spirit of Ukraine

0118, 999, 881, 999, 119, 725…3.

“Tension”

Motherfucker invaded a sovereign nation and kidnapped its leader.

Well that’s encouraging. Here’s hoping they switch.

I would say so yes, but only if you view it as a communist enclave within capitalism.

The tricky bit is that FOSS exists in an environment that’s devoid of scarcity. If I write code and post it under a Free license, you can make infinite copies and use it without depriving me of it. That’s rather different from a scenario where I might spend my labour extracting a finite number of carrots from the earth.

Still, I think it’s an excellent demonstration that the working class is willing to spend its efforts in a sharing economy… so long as the benefits are reciprocal.

This looks… fantastic.

Shame they opted for Apache.

Croc can be especially good for this.

Weirdly, I do have a “special permissions” section in my phone (Fairphone 4, which basically runs stock Android 15), but there’s nothing about adding links to the homescreen in there, just:

• device admin apps
• Display over other apps
• Do not disturb access
• Media management apps
• Modify system settings
• Notification read, reply, and control
• Change media output
• Picture-in-picture
• Premium SMS
• Unrestricted mobile data
• Install unknown apps (Firefox has this permission now, still no joy)
• Alarms and reminders
• Usage access
• VR helper services
• Wi-Fi control
• Screen turn-on control
• Full-screen notifications
• Launch via NFC

I actually went through all of these, enabling Firefox’s permissions wherever it came up, but still nothing. I’m starting to think that this might be an Android (b)locking rather than a Firefox shortcoming.

It doesn’t appear on any site. Note that I’m not looking for an “Open with the app” button, but rather one that creates an “app” that just opens Firefox at a particular URL. This used to exist, but doesn’t seem to happen for me anymore.

Well it’s good to know it hasn’t been removed, but I don’t have that. Did you install from the Play store or from F-Droid, or somewhere else?

Here’s my build info:

146.0.1 (Build #2016132551), 86bb7f6af6312ba3c0161085f854bcdff68f1a91
GV: 146.0.1-20251217121356
AS: 146.0.2
OS: Android 15

This comic is quite old and predates AI.