riskable

The article sucks. The FTC isn't going after Microsoft's cloud services because they're good/bad. They're going after Microsoft because of forced bundling. Same abuse of monopoly power they were found guilty of when they started forcing everyone to use Internet Explorer.

Microsoft is forcing customers to use their cloud services under all sorts of scenarios. Many of which have no logical reason other than to force customers into Azure.

For example, if you have a lot of Windows servers in Azure they will stop supporting you once you reach a certain threshold unless you also sign up to use their enterprise cloud AD service.

They already do this with regular Windows--you have to use AD if you're a business customer and you go past a certain threshold of systems--but in that case you can just get some Domain Controllers and call it a day. You can put them wherever you want (locally, in AWS, in Azure, wherever).

With Azure Windows servers though you're forced to use Azure AD (or you lose support and possibly access to other bundled services). You can't host Domain Controllers anywhere else. I mean, they'll let you have as many off-Azure DCs as you want but they must still be joined/synchronizing to Azure AD.

There's probably many other anticompetitive tactics in place within the world of Azure but that's the one big one I know off the top of my head.

It was a tired story until OH DEER it wasn't anymore.

After replacing writers and artists it is now replacing the entire category of, "old people". AI has reached the, "final solution" faster than I thought possible!

Because a lack of rest always moves projects forwards with absolutely no problems at all!

Exactly! I love how AI image generation can come up with funny surprises like that 🤣

I hope the hilarity never ends!

I use it for the hilarity!

I made a whole series of images representing the usual hair colors just for fun:

I have so much fun with images like this in Discord/Matrix and the occasional Lemmy post 🤣

That's a lot of dough

Stopped reading after this:

Take, for instance, the Democratic Party, whose immigration policy, at least for a large portion of the Biden presidency, has been to effectively open the southern border to all comers

What a load of bullshit! Border crossings went down under Biden earlier this year because of his aggressive enforcement efforts:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/26/border-crossings-drop-biden-policy-00165055

Not only that but the article is implying that immigration through the southern border is where nearly all illegal immigrants come from. Most illegal immigration is from people who enter the country legally (from wherever) then overstay their visa.

The southern border is a problem for sure but the border policies of the Democrats are simply on par with the Republican policies (they both don't accomplish much since the border is just too fucking huge!). Basically, there's very little that can be done that hasn't already been tried.

Even if you institute mass deportations the people will just come back because getting into the US is just too easy and it's physically impossible to actually police the entire southern border let alone the entirety of the land and sea that borders the US.

I think this one can be attributed to, "mere poor taste" and a lack of imagination.

If I were in charge of the leading image in the article I'd replace "cloud" with "shitstorm emoji" in the prompt. Then it would make more sense and be more applicable to VMWare.

What it proved is that the super rich have too much power. A power that shouldn't exist in a democratic society.

Right wing media has been given far too much leeway in spreading disinformation and misinformation. Every show, podcast, and news article that spreads easily disproven falsehoods should be prosecuted. Fuck "corrections". If an organization has to issue a correction that should be all they're allowed to say for at least a 24 hour period (basically, put them in timeout).

Basically, they need to be held to account for not doing due diligence on what they're reporting as fact. Unverified claims? It's simple: Don't publish that. Don't even bring it up as news at all until you feel safe defending your statements in a court of law.

We already have standards for defamation of individuals. What we need are standards of defamation of reality.

We can't rely on the civil court system to protect society from total bullshit. It's too expensive and there's so many ways to spout dangerous bullshit without defaming anyone.

Software patents shouldn't exist!

I don't believe he thinks that abstractly. Maybe his advisors will tell him as such and he'll do it but I have my doubts.

He wants his followers to love and worship him. Not operate in a, "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" sort of way. He just wants the, "you scratch my back" part.

By pardoning them he's sending a message that he'll do something for them for free. That's not how Trump operates. He's going to want something immediately in return; power or money or both. The Jan 6th insurrectionists don't have much of either.