The prime directive is a great example of how even a good rule taken to the extreme can end up causing more harm than good.

But beyond that, it’s just an easy aid for the writers to add a point of conflict for their stories. The prime directive as a value within the federation seems secondary to me.

They wouldn’t be able to finish stealing that car before a thousand hungry lawyers ate them alive. Why do we let media companies do that?

They would probably actually have a decent shot at getting away with it, at least at first.

And to answer your question, it’s because the anger that companies generate by doing this shit ends up turning into piracy. Why would you try to punish a corp for doing this (likely wasting your time) when a cheap VPN and basic tech literacy gets you what you want?

The effort ratios are way out of wack when it comes to digital products. It’s easy to get around digital bullshitery, not so much in the real world where we are all car dependant.

Also a big fan of both series.

but if they have struggle dealing against a 2000 human civilization rebellion

There is a big caveat to this though, the combine are ridiculously pragmatic, to the point where they use humans to keep humans as slaves. Why specially create enforcers when there is already units that you can augment/brainwash into working for you, who already are well suited for the environment and atmosphere?

So that’s what the combine do, they use humans to keep other humans in check. So that revolt of 2000 humans was really only a revolt against other humans. Stories like that are a dime a dozen on earth.

The Combines dosen’t even have shields, the Combine Gunship can be throw away with just three real life rocket launcher and so far we see that’s one of their stronger airship synts units the combine have.

The shields one is a stronger argument, though again I think that might fall in line with the pragmatism of the combine. If all they are facing is humans, it could be the case in the eyes of the combine that putting extra defenses on your armored units is kind of pointless.

So they may very well have that tech, or something even more superior, but they just don’t bother wasting the resources on it.

Couple that with the fact that the gunships are themselves organic/enslaved, the combine probably don’t mind that the gunships are esentially cannon fodder. They might have the mindset that they can just breed up more.

But destroying a Borg cube? That is a feat even for an advanced civilization, or many of them.

The combine certainly are an advanced civilization. If you take the peripheral writings as cannon, they have at least one Dyson sphere. The tech for that might be beyond the borg, because even the borg’s biggest structures are grains of sand in comparison to the size of a dyson sphere.

Size doesn’t automatically mean a win, but the engineering required for a dyson sphere is huge. If they have that level of engineering, I could see them taking out pretty much as many cubes as they like. Especially if their dyson sphere(s?) are in any way weapons weaponized. And knowing the combine, they probably have sought such a weapon.

personally I think being a Stalker is worst than being assimilated by the Borg

Agreed 1000%. I’d rather be a borg than a half life stalker. If I’m going to have a hellish life with no agency and only pain, I’d rather not be conscious.

At the end of the day, the true strength of the borg is not particularly well defined (at least in my opinion), and thr true strength of the combine is even worse defined. The writers on either side have left too much up to question for any real definitive answer.

One day I’ll have more to do and you people will be rid of me.

And that day will be a sad one.

Because enshitifying their service would earn them short term profits, which is the only thing corps/shareholders care about.

Go for it. It was already an old, long dead meme when I posted it here.

This but corps

The air is plenty clean as it is

Tell that to the people in East Palestine Ohio. Tell that to the people that live near coal plants.

as long as you don’t live in California

Doesn’t matter where you live if the planet is uninhabitable.

Wanting to breath clean air on a habitable planet isn’t insanity.

I only live ~15 minutes from my parents. I just didn’t want to have to deal with going back and forth. Wasn’t worth it in the end.

This fundamentally and thoroughly explains what this Christmas has been like for me. Trying to move from one room to another has been a constant battle of stepping over things and pushing past clutter.

Sleeping on the couch of dog fur hasn’t been pleasant.

And the cherry on top has been my girlfriend having to go home because of her dog allergies. Hopefully next year will be better.

First, you’re going to need some sort of evidence to back up this claim.

It’s in their interest to exaggerate, and they are under the control of a terrorist organization.

Second, Hamas isn’t who is publishing these numbers.

My understanding is that the only people tracking & publishing the numbers is the Palestinian health ministry, which is under the control of Hamas. Everyone else is just saying “Gaza’s health ministry said X” and such.

Yeah. Definitely place sole blame on hamas instead of the people intentionally bombing civilians.

Dude, I am this 🤏 close to being banned in another community for daring to say that the current event is a genocide of palestinians.

I’m not denying anything, let alone for the sake of convenience. I’m not apathetic. All I’m saying is, is that the current numbers are probably not completely accurate.

I also explicitly said that the current estimate is probably not far off.

I haven’t heard anything from a third party, and no doubt hamas is exagerating to some degree, but whatever the actual numbers are, I wouldn’t think the current estimate of ~20,000 is far off. Israel is intentionally bombing civilians, so the estimated number sounds fairly reasonable to me.

Easier to confirm, is the proportion of women & children. About half the population of Palestine is children, and about half are women. So ~75% being women or children also fits.

It’ll look like what we already have. Swaths of users self hosting, with lots of redundancy to deal woth instances that have problems.

And that might mean it needs to stay small, but that’s OK. Not all success is measured in popularity.

Embrace extend extinguish

Don’t federate with corps, it will only end badly

I will say, part of that ignorance, apathy, and laziness is an intentional part of our existing society. You can’t spend the time to research every single product you ever buy, because many are stuck working several job, basically everyone is juggling their work, family, and social life.

A couple months back, I tried putting some effort into finding a printer that had all of the qualifications I wanted.

• usb printing, no network needed

• laser

• color

• not a brand that will fuck you over (looking at you HP)

• within a reasonable budget of $300-$400

And such a product just doesn’t exist. Brother comes close, but the market straight up isn’t producing good things. So at the end of the day all I can do is either get shafted at the local print store, or suck it up and get an inferior product.

But going back to the OP, it’s so much worse with cars because we have a car-centric society. You NEED a car in this place to have a normal life. Our cities and transportation have been intentionally designed to fuck over everyone not in a car.

So there is inelastic demand. The manufacturers can do whatever the fuck they want and get away with it.

Enshitification isn’t solved by voting with your dollar. If it did, the printer market wouldn’t be the shit show that it is. You can’t vote for the good if all the manufacturers mutually agree to only produce shit. Only regulation will keep them in line.

(inb4 “brother is better”, I am aware that brother printers are generally better, but they are far from good.)

That’s exactly what I do and I don’t have problems getting it warm all throughout.

And even for solid food it isn’t too hard. Just keep it shaped like a doughnut, then let it sit for a minute or two.