In 2013 we all still believed that Putin wasn’t the madman that he has turned out to be. I remember thinking that our biggest threats were right wing terrorists, Iranian nukes, and maybe North Korea. Sure we had seen what happened to Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, but I don’t think anybody in the NATO countries saw that as the test it turned out to be. My point being that when Snowden flew to Russia in 2013, intent on seeking asylum, it may not have been his first choice, but it was as crazy an idea as it would be today…

With that said, I’d like to relate to some your post:

What I am saying is it is legitimate to criticize him and highlight his collaboration with the russians.

Sure, it’s legitimate to criticize anything. But without taking all the circumstances into account, the critique loses relevance. At least for me it does, and that’s what I’m arguing.

Well let me tell you as someone living in Ukraine (and was born in Donbas with my hometown being occupied in 2014 and relatives having to leave everything because of the russian occupation);

This is on a completely unrelated note. I’d like to apologize to you and every other Ukrainian, for the incompetence of my country’s politicians. We promised you +100 leopard 1 tanks, but due to the ineptitude of our politicians, their investments, and the resulting organization, we haven’t been able to deliver a single working tank. Whenever our politicians “donate” equipment it is blown out of proportions by our media. But when it comes to delivering useful kit, it fails over and over again. Rest assured that our present government is not going to be reelected. Their replacement will not be competent either though. Anyway, I wish we would do more than ship you our outdated equipment like it was some sort of humanitarian mission. It’s not a humanitarian mission, it’s fucking war and half assing war is stupid… Slava Ukraini! And death to Russian orks.

You full well know that there are real consequences from Snowden’s collaboration with the russians.

And we’re back in the discussion at hand :) the only consequences I can think of, that comes from Snowden collaboration is the propaganda tool he is now, and the intelligence he had to offer 11 years ago. Disregard him to mitigate the propaganda consequences.

I hope that whatever intel Snowden gave the Russians, it was limited. I think that a person with Snowden’s background would be able to encrypt the information he traveled with properly.

I’d like to know if I’ve missed something here. I really don’t mean to troll you. If you believe that I’m misinformed, please inform me.

Trying to survive is fair. But putting him on the pedestal and labelling him as “untouchable saviour who can do wrong” is not normal.

I don’t think that I’m putting Snowden on a pedestal. All I’m saying is that, like everyone else in Russia, who have a public profile, Snowden knows that he can either toe the party line, or plunge to his death from a basement window. What we really need to do, is to realize that anything coming from the mouths of anybody in Russia, is the result of a proverbial gun to their heads and should be treated thusly.

He could have chosen to not collaborate with the russians

Yes, he could indeed. He could be the metaphorical guy with the bags standing in front of a line tanks. But why should he?

This might not a big deal for you, but on a purely theoretical level, you don’t see how this hypocrisy could be important for others?

If you insist on applying a purely theoretical analysis, on the actions of a very real person with very real concerns for his safety, then I think I’ve found the problem with this discussion. You can’t lift this problem to this level of abstract theoretical morality.

But to answer your question more clearly: no, I don’t see how this perceived hypocrisy could be important for others.

Do you sincerely believe, that Snowden should have stayed put and faced a firing squad for whistle blowing? Snowden is trying to survive, and if daddy Putin says “go on TV and say these lines”, then the sentence doesn’t have to end with “or else”. Snowden did what he had to do for his country, by telling the public about the surveillance, now he’s paying for it. Why should Snowden be fighting for the Russian people as well?

Making data beautiful is what this community is about. But compromising readability for a color scheme is just annoying. Present data first, worry about it being extra pretty second.

We’re already looking at time being encoded differently than the usual horizontal axis, don’t make it harder.

On the other hand, if the purpose of the graph isn’t to present individual data points, but to present the monthly trends, then maybe it would have been OK, if the last 3 decades could have started over with a higher luminance set of colors. IDK but I think I would have used colors with more contrast and dropped the warm earthy theme.

Very few places that wouldn’t extradite Snowden instantly, even fewer that can’t be paid to do it. With Russia, Venezuela, and North Korea remaining his options, then Russia was the obvious choice. At least survival in Russia came with a price, had he stayed then the pay-to-play model for life wasn’t available.

The first line took a while to read. First try I got what could be written as:

“Sizes of energy drink can pelts, we salute you”

I mean “drink can pelts” is a weird way to say aluminum

W11 even enterprise users are all tied into autopilot, Intune MDM, and/or a microsoft account

The “win 11 business editions 23h2” iso that I got from visualstudio.com yesterday, did no more than the usual amount of crap to make it difficult to find the “join a domain instead”, allowing me to make a local user.

What happened to Adam Conover? I used to actually like his content. I probably agree with his message, but IDK because I only managed to get 2m45 into the video by skipping and playing double speed, and I’m not watching the rest.

I don’t remember him being so loud and aggressive. What the fuck’s up with the poop jokes?

Original Finnish management has split off to a new independent company with the same name last year

Best business move EVER! Now people have to wonder with whom they’re doing business. Sorta keeps people on their toes. Way better than coming up with a new brand, making it easier for their five customers. /s

I was wondering what a washing machine needed a TPM for. Better title: “machine fails to boot after power failure”

Don’t engage with them, look at the username. I wish more trolls were this upfront about it.

w00t? I will really have to look into that. There’s a reasonably priced 2nd hand A3 ecotank in my vicinity, and I’ve been avoiding it because of this.

Do you have sources?

Epson seems like a great choice, until you learn about the ecotank sponge issue.

You can buy a new waste ink sponge for next to nothing, but the firmware counter needs to be reset. That requires either a sketchy piece of software from some Russian hacker, or shipping the printer to epson and then paying epson for 5min of work and return shipping. The latter is rumored to be about the same price as a new ecotank.

But you’re happy with your megatank? I might look into that… I stopped looking at inkjets after hearing about the ecotank.

Feels like there are bad days and then there are worse days.

Lock the doors VW, we’re being car jacked.

lol no, I’ve seen you, you’re not jacked at all rofl

Remember 10 years ago when everything more technologically advanced than a flat toaster had to contain 3d printed parts?

Pepperidge farm remembers

You mean people are finding the origin of waterways and follow them down stream? How do you find the origin? I always go up stream on maps

Randal Graves : I don’t fuck around when it comes to ass-to-mouth. Dante Hicks : You never go ass-to-mouth. Randal Graves : It’s never my idea. These young girls, they get all horned up and they tell you to go ass-to-mouth.

I like LibreOffice, I used it it university, and before Libre I used openoffice and staroffice before that.

BUT! Since working in an ms office reliant organization for more than 10 years, I’ve become addicted to ms office’s grammar checks and integration with onedrive/sharepoint. Version control is integrated, I don’t have to alt tab to a terminal to submit to svn/git, and we have comments and live collaboration.

I sometimes wish that I could have working grammar check in other software than microsoft’s. Writing my final thesis in word, only to copy the sections into texniccenter for layout was tedious.

Manuel transmission used to be the norm. The last couple of times I rented a car/got a loaner at the mechanic, I was asked if an automatic would be OK. I have met people who avoid automatics altogether. Probably because they’re unsure of how to drive them. TBF the first time I test drove an automatic, the first stop I made, I was glad to be wearing my seat belt, as I was used to use left foot, push that pedal hard and then brake… My wife and I were almost climbing down from the dashboard after that.

When I said earlier that manuels used to be the norm, that’s because of the emergence of EVs and PHEVs. Our EV was our first car with no clutch.

Sooo after writing that boring drivel above, I decided to look it up on the most used second hand car platform. Turns out the about half the cars registered as pure ICEs are automatics. But then sampling the search results it’s evident that a lot of the cars on the first page, have been registered wrong, and are in fact hybrids. So I don’t have a solid figure. I’ve loitered the sales floor of my mechanic for 30mins, while my car is in for diagnosics. Looks like about 3 out of last 20 or so ICEs I’ve looked at are automatics.

While in the EU Teslas were already “banned”, if you want a proper cat B license, and not just a cat B(78). If you take the test in a car with automatic transmission you get a code 78 license, with which you can legally only drive automatic transmission vehicles.