Yep, capitalism is at direct odds with competetive markets almost by definition.
"free" is the non-specific term tht they use rhetorically. "Competition" is the market feature that might theoretically benefit consumers in some circumstances - and they don't often include that word in their rhetoric.
It's always been about acquisition of market power, this is sort of opposite of a free market.
If any threat of consumer rights / anti-trust / labour rights or balancing of market power arises, their incentive is to acquire political power and influence to defend their power.
It was the same story in western Europe before industry and "capitalism", just the landed class monopolising land vs peasantry (and/or enslaved/indentured labour). Landowners monopolised all the votes and even when suffrage expanded it was usually top down. Until maybe 1789 when something else happened to the top.
Unfortunately I think many of the major progressive changes of the past (that benefit people in general rather than the elites - again in "the West") have mostly followed catastrophic events or political upheaval, or martyrdom.
Peasants revolts, black death, aftermath/stress of major wars, civil war, workers uprisings, race riots, 1929, ww2.
I guess the 1929 and all the FDR stuff and strengthened social policies in western Europe was all widely democratically backed (honourable mention to the banks' major incompetence , to hitler for being such a massive c*nt and a decent 50-or-so years of European imperial decline) .
So maybe there's some hope for the democratic or the MLK/Gandhi type approach - not that it worked out too well for those two individuals.
Either way, assuming I can find a large stick or rock, I'd have enough patience to do a manual physical uninstall and get back to my solitude. So I think I'd be pretty ambivalent.
I guess smashing the shit out of windows would be slightly more satisfying - but that's not really the main reason I'm alone in the woods.
And yes - before you ask the obvious follow-up - I have smashed the shit out of a thinkpad in the past, they're not as tough as people say they are; it's mostly false bravado. Don't be afraid to stand up to the bully (ymmv).
Just got a steam deck and immediately checked out the desktop mode, and I was somewhat surprised to see KDE and pacman as opposed to GNOME and apt, I have nothing against the former though a strong preference for the latter, anyone know why Volvo went in this direction?
Volvo probably trying to cast off their reputation for being "safe ang boring" and take on a more edgy image.
Ditching Internal combustion in favour of steam power is also a major shift for them.
As i understand it it (somewhere between barely and not at all) the idea is not that It's "expanding" in the sense of a balloon inflating into the space around it.
Its more stretching internally.
So the distance (or time it would take at constant speed) between any 2 points is geting bigger.
You could maybe also say it'd take more energy to move between the points in a set time.
There's probably nothing outside, but the distances inside get longer.
It's probably something to go with gravity, momentum and entropy. The actual concept of "distance" between things might not be what we think.
But all these theories give rise to the concet of large amounts ob unobserved 'dark' mattter and evergy, so the actual basis of currently observable fact (i.e. energy / mass) is a small fraction of what is needed for these theories to work.
For those of you who don't know, Linux From Scratch is a project that teaches you how to compile your own custom distro, with everything compiled from source code....
Statcounter reports that Windows 11 continues to lose its market share for the second month in a row. Windows 10, meanwhile, is gaining more users and is now back above the 70% mark.
widdows 2000 was the pinnacle for me, beat XP until i wanted to go to 64 bit.
Apart from having 64-bit, XP was a step back; even if I don't count the fucking dog thing.
XP was a fair bit harder to de-bloat than win 2000 and they were hell-bent on forcing internet exploder on the world.
XP was also at a time when Linux was becoming pretty easily usable and mac osx was impressive too - I remember using those imac coloured egg things at university in 2000. They were good apart from the mouse, and ran MS office pretty well.
StarOffice was already better than MS-Word at dealing with .doc format across versions.
and ancient version of Wordperfect were miles better for WP anyway ("reveal codes").
windows XP was already down to gaming, adobe and CAD/other specialist apps, plus maybe MS Excel that just weren't as good or not available on linux.
In rural Scotland (at least in Fife , Perth +Kinross) I noticed a lot of
60mph-40mph - 20mph - 40mph-60
sort of slow down buffer zone type things around villages.
Much better than 60 - 30-60 we normally have in England.
And noticeably quieter too.
I hope they carry on with that.
I think Wales did 20mph in all rural villages.
Free-Market Advocate, Elon Musk, Asks for U.S. Government to Put Tariffs on Chinese EV Imports ( medium.com )
Microsoft Word just fixed its default paste option ( www.theverge.com )
Barcelona is parched — and angry at quenched tourists ( www.politico.eu )
The yawning gap between locals’ and visitors’ consumption is stoking long-standing resentments ahead of an election....
If you were alone in the woods, would you rather come across Windows or Linux?
Posted with my thinkpad running Arch btw.
Who fixes toilets under communism? ( hexbear.net )
https://bsky.app/profile/brenthor.bsky.social/post/3krzc7fs77k2i...
Why do people still eat beef when we know it's terrible for Earth?
Like getting 9 women pregnant and expecting a baby in 1 month ( sh.itjust.works )
I am taking Stick ( lemm.ee )
Does anyone know why SteamOS is based on arch rather than Debian?
Just got a steam deck and immediately checked out the desktop mode, and I was somewhat surprised to see KDE and pacman as opposed to GNOME and apt, I have nothing against the former though a strong preference for the latter, anyone know why Volvo went in this direction?
These Could Be the Worst Bike Lanes in the United States Right Now ( momentummag.com )
Listen, it's dangerous out there at the best of times especially given the examples of the most dangerous and worst bike lanes to follow
Is there a "canvas" of the universe? Do we even know? Would a canvas follow the same laws as the paint?
Think of the universe as a painting. There's the image made in paint, and the surface it was painted on. The canvas....
Has anyone here ever tried Linux From Scratch?
For those of you who don't know, Linux From Scratch is a project that teaches you how to compile your own custom distro, with everything compiled from source code....
Windows 10 reaches 70% market share as Windows 11 keeps declining ( www.neowin.net )
Statcounter reports that Windows 11 continues to lose its market share for the second month in a row. Windows 10, meanwhile, is gaining more users and is now back above the 70% mark.
Scotland launches campaign "give cycle space", reminding that those riding bike are real persons ( www.youtube.com )
The campaign aims to promote the highway code rule that requires drivers to give at leadt 1.5 m space to cyclists when overtaking....
Linux for Kids?
I'm thinking about building a desktop with one of my kids and I would really prefer to put Linux on it. My wife is not a fan of the idea, however....
I'm back on that other OS for work ( lemmy.ml )
Muscle memory is causing all kinds of problems.