There isn’t a meaningful difference; gachas are just a subset of lootboxes, and anybody claiming otherwise is a player lying to themselves or is a game publisher defending themselves from these predatory practices.

before I ever install their unnecessary and untrustworthy data-miner

You’re about [current year minus year you installed Win10] years too late for that. That said, if you intend to come over to Linux, it’s probably best to set time-bounded goals for yourself instead of vaguely putting it off until MS does something that crosses some poorly defined line, else you risk having to chaotically abandon ship at the last minute and making the transition much harder.

And more expensive while you’re at it, thanks.

Who in their right mind would use this bootleg piece of shit when uBO exists?

maybe the universe

Imagine how self-important or ignorant you have to be to think this. No matter what, all life on Earth is going to die in 4.5 billion years when the Sun burns out. Once every second, a star somewhere goes supernova. Galaxies collide with each other and violently fling stars out into deep space. Black holes are constantly swallowing solar systems and deleting them from existence forever. All life that has ever existed will die and be forgotten. The entire universe was shrouded in hot and complete darkness for its first 350,000 years. Even these things (which are still miniscule on the scale of the observable universe) are on levels that are about as comparable to human activity as stubbing your toe is to the Holocaust.

Fuck it: “will ever happen to the universe” is heat death, and it’s infinitely worse than anything humans could possibly do. We’re just some hairless monkeys fighting over an infinitesimal rock harboring life and sending out some stray photons in a radius that’s almost nothing compared to the size of the observable universe.

The former employee knew what they were doing with their choice of words.

“5 ways YouTube is cracking down on clickbait – #3 will make you shid and fard and cum your pants”

Okay, enjoy your subscription seatwarmers, I guess.

So car-centrism is even more ✨ terrible ✨ now? Golly, who could’ve predicted that relying on and enforcing a single industry for most of our transportation might result in rampant enshittification?

It’s hard to have faith that a US-based company will actually protect your privacy.

You don’t have to, though? 1) The E2EE Signal protocol is well-audited to be robust. 2) The app itself is FOSS, and there are a lot of eyes on it. 3) The server code is FOSS. Even if they’re lying about what code they use, it doesn’t matter because it’s E2EE. 4) If you think Signal might be bait-and-switching by building from different source code, you’d be provably wrong. They have reproducible builds, so were they to actually try this, it would be like sending up a flare to the entire security community. 5) Literally every single time OWS has been subpoenaed, the only information they’ve been able to provide is extremely basic metadata like server connection times.

You have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m sorry. There’s functionally less “trust” here than any messaging application on the planet. The network effect remark is at least valid and can be debated (although I personally have zero friends who use Telegram and at least several who use Signal). This one is just so, so wrong that it’s not even up for debate.

A platform that values my privacy? Or stickers? Tough choice, I guess, except Signal has both.

If something like this happens, I’m setting up a Matrix room as something on the side for if people who work on the same project I do want out of this garbage.

Not true. This is part of a scheme.

The sugar is honestly probably the biggest factor here. Plaque is just bacteria poop, and giving them a bunch of sugar is basically speedrunning their growth and telling them to produce as much poop as they possibly can.

I mean it also shows a 6–11% reduction in gingivitis, so it’s at least getting some of those weird little angles better. Gingivitis most commonly occurs because plaque stays too long around the lining of the gums, and thus electric brushes should at least be more effectively getting this off the bases of the crown – which to me were always way more difficult and awkward to effectively treat with a manual brush.

Meanwhile, there’s really no such thing as using your toothbrush as a substitute for proper interdental cleaning, and that’s why your dentist really will notice if you haven’t been flossing properly. A water flosser is best for something like that.

That’s what effectiveness means, since removing dental plaque isn’t a binary thing. If you’re trying to remove plaque, then a percentage reduction is a corresponding increase in effectiveness. If a vaccine has a 20% reduction in disease compared to another vaccine, it’s 20% more effective at preventing the incidence of disease. I’m pretty sure this comment isn’t just splitting hairs; it’s actually wrong in its pedantry.

I would honestly go so far as to suggest that in the long term, not having this monster raise them (given they’ll still have plenty of money) probably leaves them better off.

Fuck off

PV Magazine is more or less an outlet for press releases by companies trying to innovate (often in air quotes) with photovoltaics. I’m honestly not even sure why it’s allowed here; it’s completely uncritical. May as well cite a press release on the manufacturer’s website at that point instead of laundering it through a magazine.