As for the US, having the laws on the books appropriately applied, resulting in a breaking up of the company would make me much more likely to opt for Azure.
For the remaining 96% of the world population that isn't the US, there's not much you can do, as the ICC case shows you to be an adversary. You'd have to show through big actions that you no longer are one.
I'm sure someone wants to reply "why so aggressive, they're doing their best, they don't have anything to do with the above". Almost certainly someone who wouldn't write this if I were replying to a Flock, ClearView, Paragon [0] or Palantir employee on here, despite Microsoft realistically being a much bigger societal threat - and top enabler of the former companies - in every way imaginable.
You have a core team member of the Azure Linux group invite you to ask/tell them what you want to see in what they are working on and this is what you choose to say? Smh
There are dozens of "small firms" with plenty of reputation at stake. Or how about a "medium-sized firm". There's quite a few, probably a few hundred-thousand, options inbetween "PWC" and "my mate's nephew studying computer science".
> If there's any, even the slightest, chance that buying from a business might one day reflect badly on the civil servant in the procurement office, then they won't buy from that business.
This is an absurd statement that might as well come straight out of Yes Minister. Buying from PWC reflects badly on them already, let alone when their next scandal happens. Which is of course never far away [0].
I'm sure Fujitsu met similar "criteria" when selected for Horizon. How well that selection reflected on the procurement office..
> For some, it's better for emotional and mental wellbeing to ignore the problems of reality and remain ignorant.
I think it isn't just some, it's effectively everyone, the nature of being human. Instead, there's a group of people who are willing to sacrifice their emotional and wellbeing to face these problems of reality, and try to use the limited power they do have to improve them, for the greater good.
1. It is. It makes me more likely to use Linux, and I'm not that far from the average. On Reddit r/gaming I've seen people who literally made the step and say exactly this "I installed Linux and when I can't figure something out I ask an LLM and it has done a great job so far".
It's happening right now. Maybe you're so opposed to the concept that you hate to imagine it, but it's the reality.
> or they are afraid of outdated criticism of Linux Desktops being error-filled nightmares
Your concept of people installing Linux is behind because even just over the last 12 months things have changed a lot.
Go and download the archives of Reddit, there are plenty of torrents out there. Filter to a sub like r/gaming. Relative frequency graph of Linux mentions. You'll see a magnitude increase over the last 12 months compared to years before. It's real.
Must admit, not sure if the data torrents are
uptodate now that Reddit anti-scrapes so hard to raise their premium on the exclusive contract to the highest bidder, OpenAI.
Apple is disabling downgrading across all of iOS, and starting to do the same with MacOS. So you need to keep old hardware to run older MacOS versions, and it's only a matter of a few years before Tahoe is the latest OS you can run on your Mac.
Oh, I must be clear here: I'm not considering M1 Macs or later, since Apple closed the ecosystem with Apple Silicon.
What you did is a downgrade in what's called the supported OS.
However, if you decide to downgrade to Catalina on an M1 Mac, it's not possible — Big Sur is the earliest version that runs on Apple Silicon.
Anyway, you cannot downgrade to a macOS version older than what your Mac originally came with. So if you buy a Mac now, Tahoe will be the minimum option.
Old Macs can certainly be downgraded. iOS doesn’t allow it though and they pulled the latest security update which fucking sucks. And if you buy a M5, Tahoe is the only OS that’s available.
I have nothing against old Macs and MacOS, but I certainly won't be buying anything since the Apple Silicon switch, because now only Apple controls which OS you can run.
That's a very temporary solution to be fair. KDE and even, shudder, Gnome put mac os and windows to shame when it comes to responsiveness, performance, and resource usage.
I mean, KDE does 3x the stuff for 1/3 the cost. That's more memory and CPU for your IDE or, more likely, chrome tabs.
One willing to break the norms and campaigning on this in Trump-like weasel words would landslide the next election. Not a chance in hell that'd be allowed to happen though, as big tech, the DNC, and the rest of the capital class would put a stop to their platform long before.
Can you expand on this, because I'm not understanding what your grief with the 2016 DNC is. I'll help speed the process saying: 1. I voted for Bernie in the primary 2. I fully recognize -- and we all should -- that the DNC is not beholden to us to run the primary in a particular way. Until some point in the 20th century nominees were literally decided in backroom deals without primaries influencing anything. So the idea that they "robbed" us of the Bernie candidacy doesn't hold sway with me (if that's what you're arguing) even though I supported him myself.
The issue isn't not choosing Bernie, it's knowingly picking the only candidate who could possibly lose. Because as GP said, they're in on the game. The goal wasn't to pick who they sincerely believed to be the best candidate for the country, including both fitness and likelihood of winning. So it's theatre, as they pretend to put the populace first, but clearly they don't.
No, I didn't imply that anywhere. Not sure how you read that. They knew she was a very poor pick in terms of "good for the whole populace" and "maximizing the chances of winning", yet chose her despite that, not because of it. The theater is the pretending that they have the best for the populace in mind, which directly contradicts this.
The UK seems a lost cause though, even under Starmer it has been far more appeasing than any (West-)EU country. And as right-wing as Starmer is, your next PM will inevitably be even moreso and more buddy-buddy with the US. Perhaps even a personal friend of MAGA.
As for the US, having the laws on the books appropriately applied, resulting in a breaking up of the company would make me much more likely to opt for Azure.
For the remaining 96% of the world population that isn't the US, there's not much you can do, as the ICC case shows you to be an adversary. You'd have to show through big actions that you no longer are one.
I'm sure someone wants to reply "why so aggressive, they're doing their best, they don't have anything to do with the above". Almost certainly someone who wouldn't write this if I were replying to a Flock, ClearView, Paragon [0] or Palantir employee on here, despite Microsoft realistically being a much bigger societal threat - and top enabler of the former companies - in every way imaginable.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/02/trump-immigr...
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