Emily (she/her)

This feels more like two questions, so I’ll answer them both:

1. When I’m not programming for my job, I’m programming one of many side projects I have going on at any time. Same with any other professional who has a career in their hobby. These are often projects I think would be useful to me and I believe would let me learn new skills.
2. I use Linux (and MacOS) because the Unix environment, particularly the command line tooling is far superior to Windows. Developers often work on Unix, so they build their tools for the platform and thus improvements stack up. I also just like the FOSS philosophy underpinning most Linux.

If you’re trying to learn programming and know at least some basics, my only advice is to pick a project you’re even a little interested in and get started. Don’t worry about operating system, it doesn’t actually matter that much unless you’re working on iOS or MacOS! A weather app for whatever language/platform you’re working with is usually my first suggestion for students.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for Google to provide extra support and exceptions to parts of their guidelines to certain parties, including themselves. No one is claiming this is a consequence-neutral decision, and it’s right to not inherently trust these exceptions, but it is not a black and white issue.

In this case, placing extra barriers around sensitive permissions like MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE for untrusted parties is perfectly reasonable, but the process they implemented should be competent and appealable to a real support person. What Google should be criticized for (and “heavily fined” by the EU if that were to happen) is their inconsistent and often incorrect baseline review process, as well as their lack of any real support. They are essentially part of a duopoly and should thus be forced to act responsibly.

Oh yeah for sure. Google, extremely large companies, and government apps essentially have different streams and access to support than the rest of us mere mortals. They all receive scrutiny, and may have slightly altered guidelines depending on the app, but the most consequential difference is that they have much more ability to access real support. I just don’t think it was an intentional and specific attempt to be anti-competitive, this is better explained by incompetence and the consequences of well-intentioned but poorly implemented policy.

I’ve experienced this exact issue with the Google Play Store with some clients and it’s just the worst. This kinda thing happens because Google is essentially half-arsing an Apple-style comprehensive review of apps. For context, Apple offers thorough reviews pointing to exactly how the app violates policy/was rejected, with mostly free one-on-one support with a genuine Apple engineer to discuss or review the validity of the report/how to fix it. They’re restrictive as hell and occasionally make mistakes, but at the end of the road there is a real, extremely competent human able to dedicate time to assist you.

Google uses a mix of human and automated reviewers that are even more incompetent than Apple’s frontline reviewers. They will reject your app for what often feels like arbitrary reasons, and you’re lucky if their reason amounts to more than a single sentence. Unlike Apple, from that point you have few options. I have yet to find an official way to reach an actually useful human unless you happen to know someone in Google’s Android/Developer Relations team.

I’m actually certain that the issues facing Nextcloud are not some malicious anti-competitive effort, but yet more sheer and utter incompetence from every enterprise/business facing aspect of Google.

Google is free. The moderator time you waste by reposting this already removed post however, is not

https://archive.is/eITOJ

Doesn’t help that he’s got the build and demeanor of a Hitler cabinet member

This isnt just a win for Labor, this is a historic landslide after the already historic landslide in 2022. The Liberals could hold as few as 40/150 seats in the house after today, and Labor as many as 90. This could be their greatest victory since the Second World War, and the Liberals (who, to clarify, are conservative) smallest representation since their formation. There was something like a 5% swing away from the Liberals. Likewise, this result appears to have elected the most independents to parliament in decades.

Fingers crossed they do🤞

To add, this is happening against a backdrop of a historic swing against primary votes for the two major parties. That means that, under our preferential voting system increasingly more people are voting third party/independent first, with the two major parties further down the ballot. Labor is still winning enough seats to form majority for now (due to preference flow), but it points to a population increasingly frustrated by the inaction of the legacy parties and increasing polarization.

Ok, first up the players: Labor is the major centre-left party led by Anthony Albanese, Liberals are the centre-right (think economically liberal) led by Peter Dutton, Nationals are right wing, Greens are left wing, and there are a handful of “teal” independents who are mostly politically centre women with an environmental focused. The Liberals and Nationals make up the Coalition and essentially act as one insane party with the Libs at the helm, so you can mostly treat them interchangably.

Labor won the last federal election in 2022 by a slim majority (2 seats), but the Coalition lost in one of the worst defeats in our history. The Liberals were hit the hardest, losing 19 seats, putting them at their lowest representation since their formation in 1944. They were in power since 2013 and lost for a lot of reasons, but a major one was that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was rightfully loathed.

Since the last election, the Coalition has been steadily growing in popularity due to the same reasons other non-incumbents have globally (ui.e., inflation, high energy prices, etc). Add to that a (mostly true) perception that the government was doing too little to fix problems like our crumbling healthcare system wasn’t helping.

Finally the election is announced in late March (our elections aren’t fixed) and the parties start campaigning. Dutton, the Liberal leader, looks like he is going to win a majority at this early point. The following things happen:

• Labor announces and immediately implements a universal tax cut, Dutton announces he will repeal it and replace it with a cut on fuel prices.
• Labors announces a major initiative to improve bulk billed healthcare (bulk billed = free to the patient), which Dutton immediately matches. Labor runs a major attack campaign claiming that he cannot be trusted, since last time his party was in power they tried to destroy bulk billing among other things.
• Dutton announces a cut of 41,000 jobs to the public service, a substantial portion. He faces significant backlash as people worry it will result in degraded frontline services, remembering the issues with veterans affairs and Medicare last time they were in. The 41,000 he wants to cut is how much the public service had grown since 2022, so this seems like a reasonable worry. He “clarifies” that no frontline workers will be cut. He also adds that the cuts will be through attrition, not firing. Following continued backlash, he “clarifies” that he always meant the cuts were to come from Canberra, the capital. This is a mathematical impossibility, as he would have to gut the upper ranks of every department and probably defense to achieve that number.
• He announced an end to work from home for all public servants. This is bad for the Liberals, because they’ve had massive problems with women in the past (including a woman allegedly raped in a ministers office and subsequently an alleged cover up), and people quickly pointed out that the policy would disproportionately affects women, who are unfortunately still expected to bear most of the burden of childcare. Banning working from home prevents them from holding down many jobs. Dutton responds, typically out of touch, that women can job share. He then “clarifies” he only meant it to apply to Canberra, then changes his mind about the policy completely.
• He rejected Labor’s renewable energy transition and instead proposes a transition to Nuclear. No industry group except the one they hired thinks this is realistic, a good option, or feasible. Unrealistically short time-frames, bad assumptions, etc are used to make it look good on paper. Finally someone points out that the places they plan to put the plants don’t have enough water.
• Just yesterday, on the eve of the election, they announced their budget they intend to introduce if they win shows a budget deficit worse than Labor’s during the next term, but magically improving after that. This exact tactic worked in 2013 but isn’t now.
• Other minor things. They keep crashing campaign trucks into polling locations. Dutton has zero charisma and looks creepy, and was a Queensland cop (that’s really bad, they’re as corrupt as the worst American cop).
• Also a Liberal Senate candidate for this election personally tried to induct me into a culty MLM a few years back so fuck them specifically.

This has resulted in polls gradually sliding for the Coalition to the point that it now looks like they will lose even more seats this election and Labor might even gain one. Dutton may lose his own seat. It looks like the teals may pick up another member, with the Greens and fringe right wing parties staying about the same.

Technically both sides have almost identical policies in the upcoming election - only because the Liberals (who are conservative) copy pasted Labor’s policy in a pretty lame attempt to overcome their (rightfully earned) reputation as a threat to Medicare. That said, Labor introduced the rebate freeze back in 2013, so who knows.

The only party offering a real solution are the Greens, who (hopefully) might form a minority government with Labor like they did in 2010.

Fair use commentary generally requires as little of the actual original work to be used as possible. Summary may be ok, clips/recordings are ok, but they must be minimal. That commentary must also be substantive.

Reproducing a work in full (thus obviously limiting the commercial viability of the original work - another factor considered) with light commentary over the top probably wouldn’t hold up in court. The commentary just avoids automatic systems in the increasingly poorly moderated internet.

The Affinity suite is not an Adobe product.

What about trans women who transitioned before puberty? What about cis or intersex women with elevated levels of testosterone? What about sports where it has been shown that after a long enough period of medical transition trans people have no significant advantage over their cis counterparts?

You appeal to science yet fail to cite a single source, so let me do it for you:

An individual’s sex does not determine their success or failure at any athletic event despite the high level of competition. This can be demonstrated when looking at not average outcomes, but the level of overlap among outcomes… While sex differences do develop following puberty, many of the sex differences are reduced, if not erased, over time by gender affirming hormone therapy.