?

Me too! So much so that I have sworn to name my first secretary Kate.

I mean, a country with minimal military spending (or, one that doesn’t have their own encrypted satellite network) can get a commodity device that gives modern connection speeds with very modest latency.

But the empowerment it obviously gives to an underpowered military is phenomenal.

Indeed, that’s how it was sold. But that’s not what it ever really was. What it really is, is a big fat on/off button in the hands of a private corporation, and the nation where that corporation is based. It’s generally a bad idea to put the on/off button of your entire military into the hands of an outside power, as is made abundantly clear now.

This kind of technology isn’t really feasible for smaller nations to establish on their own. The only countries that should ever rely on Starlink, or it’s equivalent, are countries that either control it, or countries that are already vassals of countries that control it.

Not like Ukraine exactly had a lot of options at the time, of course…

So you had an egg in these trying times, did you?

Lol

The problem here is that those are filters, and the newcomer will usually still be faced with several options, which will still make them scratch their head.

A wizard is a good idea, with simple questions, rather than filter buttons.

But it needs to end up telling you “here you go, this is the one you want!”, giving you just a single instance. Doesn’t matter that multiple will probably match the answers given - then just pick one at random. Chances are, they will be equally happy on either, and if not, well, it isn’t very hard to switch to a new instance later on, when they have become regular Lemmists.

I don’t think there’s anything democratic about publicly singling out some users as pariahs. If a user is disruptive, just get rid of them. If they’re not, leave them be. If the jury’s still out on this one, well, don’t bias the jury against them.

I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, as the old world order continues to change into… this, that we will see an expansion/rework/new layer on top of the current association agreements. Something more like associate member states.

My guess is that it will take a form where associate states will have no explicit political power (no elected politicians, and not likely any appointed political positions either), but will have greater access to less direct influence, that could potentially-eventually even include formal rights of hearing with the Commission, a right to speak in Parliament, and/or guarantees of consultation on certain matters.

I think this could become a more standardised system than the current association agreements. In many ways it would be like having different membership tracks, with different benefits and requirements. I expect that realist school foreign policy is going to overwhelmingly dominate global foreign affairs, with the idealist school being relegated to mainly having influence in regional foreign affairs. As such, I think standards on political and human rights that these associate members will have to live up to are going to be an order og magnitude less strict than what is required of full members. There will probably be other requirements that will be more important, such as certain foreign policy commitments.

As for level of integration, I would imagine that such an associate member would be able to become fully integrated in many areas, but on an opt-in basis, possibly with almost standardised package deals, where certain benefits and obligations (both legal and economic) are bestowed together. Things like Schengen membership, or access to some of the large redistribute programs (agricultural subsidies come to mind) will remain very exclusive, and membership in these will continue to be largely political, rather than something that can be accessible to any associate member that fulfills certain objective criteria.

Do I have any special insights that make me able to predict the future? No. No one can predict the future. But I think these are some pretty solid guesses.

Can you delete it a little harder? It’s still there for me. Maybe you only put it in the thrash bin. You need to either empty the bin, or press shift+delete in order to delete it permanently.

Godspeed. We’re all counting on you, oh ye who has the power to delete all of Reddit!

P.S.: Not trying to make fun of you, btw! Just entertaining myself. “Deleting” something sounds so different when you’re used to using it through your browser. :D

I admittedly didn’t read the article (no time as I speak), but surely they included a control group?

It’s a lot easier and much more productive when you learn to talk to other people in a mature, healthy way, and insulting someone, slurs or not, never is. Try leaving school yard talk, like personal attacks, where it belongs, and see how much less stressful it is when you’re not fighting people all the time, and how much more people will listen to you.

Me browsing Lemmy, finding this post

You’ve got three guesses!

That aside, I remember back in the day that Op4 received a lot of praise from fans, while Blue Shift was considered by many to be underwhelming. I love them both, but I always thought Blue Shift was the better game. Op4 might be longer and more full of new content, but it’s also all kind of thrown together, playing very loose with the universe. Blue Shift was, by comparison, short, clean, well told, and nailed the setting and gameplay. To me it feels like a very Half-Life game, whereas Op4 feels more like fanfic, like the most impressive single player Half-Life mod ever made.

No, that’s not it. It’s a little “trick” that’s becoming popular with European politicians from the right, all the way to the centre-left.

According to international law, those asylum seekers have a right to have their request for asylum processed, by the country they’re in when they make that request. Processing someone’s request for asylum is something that can sometimes take a long time, and if their request is denied, it can still be very difficult to deport them - which is why you also see some countries giving denied asylum seekers a monetary reward for going back.

Hosting asylum seekers, especially a lot of them, can become quite unpopular, both locally, and in the population in general. The reasons for this is usually that it costs money to host and process asylum seekers, which some people feel is an undue burden put on their country, especially if they have a perception of the asylum seekers not seeking asylum in good faith, but are rather just economic migrants.

Additionally, it would be a terrible disregard of human rights to lock up these asylum seekers, as if they were criminals, and the asylum centre a prison. That means that they of course need to be able to go outside, and live as normal lives as possible, while their request is being processed, and their children will have to go to the local schools, etc.

In addition, I believe there are often put restrictions on their ability to work, as a measure against economic immigration - but the side effect of that is that they are much more likely to be seen as an undue drain by the general population. Countries are often loathe to start integrating people, when they expect to reject the vast majority of them. The consequence of that is that these people end up being very poorly integrated.

Besides that, there also tends to be a higher average crime rate among asylum seekers. The local communities that host the asylum centres of course reacts to that, and some people will start to feel unsafe, whether due to prejudice, or due to incidents of crime relating to some of the asylum seekers.

So, the clever “trick” that is becoming popular among politicians is to pay a foreign country to have their asylum centres built there, send all of their asylum seekers off to those centres, and often to staff those centres largely or partly with nationals of this foreign nation. From the point of view of these politicians, it solves a lot of the problems, and it lets them look “tough on immigrants”.

The legality of all of this is still being hashed out, and courts are sometimes foiling those plans entirely. Whether this trick is or can be technically legal or not, and even if this method could be used in a fair and reasonable manner, it seems to always be bereft with very questionable practices or methods, as in this case, or when a European country tries to set up asylum centres in an African country that has a long track record of human rights abuses against - whaddya know - asylum seekers.

I agree with you. I’m a huge fan of the series, and I love them all, but I also think my favourite will always be the first one. I honestly think there are many parts of its design that are just impressive, but also subtle enough that they are rarely recognised.

It does of course also have its weak points, that can be critiqued, but I would be boring you with a nitpicky critique, in a long form format, outside the scope of what anyone would want from a Lemmy comment, if I started on that, I think.

I do think Half-Life qualifies as a masterpiece, though. That’s why I am always sad to see when it is recommended to newcomers to the series as the way to experience original, you know? Hell no. It’s an inferior game in many ways.

Black Mesa was a really fun fan homage to Half-Life. I played it several times, and I’m glad that it exists. I think it’s great that it sometimes put its own spin on things, instead of trying to be a 1:1 recreation (because, then, what would be the point, when Half-Life already exists?), but there were some of its design choices that seemed kinda not thought through, and randomly contrarian to its source (pun not intended, hah) material. Its soundtrack was also stupefying… Not only was it bad, in terms of quality, but it seemed like an antithesis to Half-Life’s soundtrack, which was very head-scratching, considering that the game seemed to try to aim at capturing the spirit and essence of Half-Life.

Is it related to the browser NetSurf?

Holy shit. I got Logitech peripherals, and an ASUS motherboard. I’m glad I’m on Linux. I still have Windows installed, and booted into it around 2 weeks ago, after it having lied dormant for four months. I didn’t notice anything being installed, but maybe I had to reboot first.

Quite possibly, my peripherals and motherboard are all too old to have this anti-feature. Do you know if there is a list of which of their hardware this is the case for?

Damnit, I always preferred Logitech mice. I guess I might have bought my last one.

You are the one, Neko.

I remember that the sound of his voice surprised me a lot, but I really like it. It honestly sounds a lot more normal than I would have expected - but I guess the voice is the difference between a god and a fake god!

I have been really curious about that, actually, but since I don’t speak French, it’s been hard for me to follow the post-election developments. Are you able to give a recap, or point me to a good summary somewhere?

When “supply” of “quote on quotes” is higher than “demand”. :p