Exactly my point!

Well, it is technically “piracy” but it’s amateur piracy. No need to get fancy with torrents and VPNs or whatnot. Just download the software and… not pay.

This is a tragedy of history. That is all I will say on the matter.

I hope you realise that countries recognise the People’s Republic of China because it’s politically expedient. It’s lip service since the PRC government is easily offended. So for many countries, it’s easier to just play along, shut up, and let’s get to negotiating some lucrative trade deals instead. Public support among Western nations and their allies for Taiwan’s continued autonomous existence remains high despite their governments recognising it as a province of China. You don’t seem to understand how useful doublespeak is in international geopolitics. To pretend countries say what they mean and mean what they say is incredibly naïve.

Your behaviour is exactly why I filtered out Hexbear in my feed. There don’t seem to be any actual socialists on Hexbear, just people knee-jerkingly defending any country that claims to be socialist without any regard to whether they practice what they preach. Social democracies like the Nordic countries are way closer to socialism than modern China is, but all you have to do is point your finger and say “liberal” and Hexbear users start foaming at the mouth. I say this as a citizen of the People’s Republic of China and a socialist.

This conversation has reached its productive end.

I will cut to the chase here and say that the only reason for calling it “Taiwan Province” is if you are (1) a Chinese nationalist, (2) a Chinese propagandist, or (3) a person who got absorbed by (2). Nobody else in ordinary English discourse will refer to it as such. The typical usage is to call the Republic of China “Taiwan”. Its government calls itself the “Republic of China (Taiwan)”. Normal people call it “Taiwan”. Taiwanese people call it “Taiwan”. Don’t forget; the “free area” of the Republic of China has two nominal provinces—Taiwan and Fuchien.

ISO standards are dry and mechanical, and most importantly, not designed to supplant everyday usage by humans. That is unless you also tend to write the date as 2023-10-03 and not the far more common “3 October 2023” or “October 3, 2023”. The ISO standard refers to Taiwan Province, which is a province of the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China, however, neither province has a government and neither makes decisions on its own.

The common name for the area controlled by the Republic of China is “Taiwan”. “Taiwan Province” is a Chinese nationalist dog whistle and there is nothing you can say to get around this fact.

I would like to remind you that there does not exist any political entity called “Taiwan Province”. The Republic of China abolished its provincial governments and the People’s Republic of China doesn’t even bother to maintain a shadow government.

Taiwan’s (the Republic of China’s) alliance with the United States and general defence strategy has a few key factors:

• Taiwan is counting on maintaining a key role in the United States’ high-tech economy. One where, if the island of Taiwan were to fall under the control of the mainland, American economic interests would be severely damaged. The existence of semiconductor factories in America doesn’t affect this calculus too much as long as a critical mass of manufacturing stays in Taiwan. In fact, tying Taiwan’s economy to the United States is beneficial because it means the pain of separating it will be greater, and hopefully the fear of such pain will make the Americans want to protect them.
• Taiwan believes that its location is of strategic importance to the United States’ South Asian military interests. If the island falls under mainland control, it would mean that the US military can no longer access the large amount of airspace surrounding the island and would lose access to the island’s naval facilities.
• Taiwan thinks that it can make a war with the mainland so costly for the latter that it would not make economic sense to invade. This is unrelated to the US; ideology takes a backseat to making money almost anywhere in the world and the Taiwanese know this.
• Taiwan thinks it can rely on popular and government support in America to defend it in the event of an invasion. Public support for Taiwan’s continued autonomous existence is quite high in the US and even Joe Biden’s sometimes erratic comments about the topic are enough to make leaders in Beijing think twice before invading. The Americans are unpredictable and they don’t want to leave it up to a roll of the dice.

This is a straight-up national security issue for Taiwan. Its chip factories are an integral part of its defence strategy and it needs to be able to use them as leverage to survive.

Well at least it didn’t save us -10^100% and just post the text equivalent of a ZIP bomb

A “couple hundred peers” is a lot easier said than done. That being said, it does happen and you are correct that having a lot of seeders doesn’t guarantee a safe download.

All of the three conditions I mentioned are neither sufficient nor necessary for a safe download, but there is a strong correlation. Unless the torrent is official (e.g. official Linux distro torrents), there is always some chance of a bad download. The chance can be low but is never zero.

Software is software. You’re downloading shady software off the Internet anyway, but there’s one key difference:

• Torrent sites (such as The Pirate Bay) usually have systems of trusted uploaders. These are marked with a green/purple skull next to the file in search results.
• A torrent with a large number of seeders (think: hundreds or thousands) is less likely to contain a virus because nobody honest would seed a malware torrent and it’d cost a lot to fake that many seeders across the world.
• Torrenting software verifies the integrity of downloaded data. It uses a cryptographic hash function for this so it’s impossible for a seeder to send you a tampered file (that is different from the file you intended to download). When you use a torrent file or magnet link, it contains the hash of the file so if what you receive does not match the hash then the torrenting software will discard it.

Yes, it’s called torrenting software. If you are just downloading regular things using a “download” button, that’s amateur piracy.

I’m confused by what you’re trying to do with this comment. What does “the[y] absolutely are” refer to?

I don’t think investors are idiots. They will look at whether the development community will accept whatever those changes end up being, or see whether Unity will just quietly let this thing die and pretend it never happened.

It’s harder to be stupid when it’s your money on the line.

This is like saying every lock is pickable so don’t lock the door at all.

This is what crypto wallets recommend you do. I don’t see why that’s a bad solution for backing up.

Off on a tangent here, but I think now is the proper time to say that people, when it comes to security, have no idea what’s good for them.

Before Google implemented this cloud sync feature, people were constantly complaining online about how they really wanted their TOTP codes to sync when they got a new phone. Nobody stops to consider the security implications of chasing convenience, but if you stop to warn them, suddenly you’re the bad guy for creating problems or “opposing their solution”.

During “peak hours” certain unlimited plans are throttled to 480p. It doesn’t always happen.

T-Mobile, a US mobile carrier, currently throttles video streams to 480p. It’s a pretty bad experience and I look forward to seeing it end.

I agree completely. I think this is the best solution to the AI replacing human artists problem. Big companies can’t use AI to replace humans because if they do, whatever they make will be ineligible for copyright and everyone will be free to rip them off.