Changing the TOS is explicitly allowed. You can refuse to accept the changes but then the company has the right to end their relationship with you (i.e. terminate your account).

There are also strict limits. Something like: “Your account may be terminated for any unspecified reason” is illegal, I’m pretty sure.

And the recent DSA of the EU has further limited social media company’s rights to terminate accounts. I believe they must provide a way to fight terminations and listen to your arguments. Other countries may have similar laws but I cannot speak for them.

Banning clickthrough contracts would genuinely break large parts of the internet though. No more online purchases for one, including anything from Steam to Amazon.

It’s much more complicated than that. Social media platforms have a TOS that binds them just as much as the user. It’s literally just a contract.

The social media company also has much more limited rights to terminate such a contract than the user. At least that’s the case in countries with any consumer protection.

That’s how YouTubers at least in Germany have successfully forced YouTube to reinstate their channel. YouTube failed to prove a violation of their TOS, therefore the contract termination was null and void, therefore the contract is still valid.

There is no contract when you have entered a restaurant. After you ordered your food, there is a contract and you cannot be kicked out for arbitrary reasons anymore. If you are kicked out for no reason, you can sue for damages (but you cannot force the restaurant to enter any new contracts with you, e.g. another meal).

0°F is way colder than 100°F is hot.

There are hardly any population centers that reach the lower temperature while there’s a shitton of them that reach the hotter one. That should say enough about how dangerous and inhospitable each is.

Damn it, I was trying to go for the “When” + simple present to check whether my statement worked.

I thought:

“When 1 equals 2, blablabla” is always true, therefore [my statement above] works as well.

But I should’ve thought “When 1 equaled 2, …” which doesn’t sound true anymore.

That is to say: Fuck grammatical tenses!

Reason #2801 why vacuous truths are awesome.

“When I first met you, you promised to give me all your money” is a true statement because I have never actually met you.

Just be careful not to test this in court.

deleted by creator

True. I should’ve added: “Without significant foreign support”.

Like no shit, if neighboring countries provides weapons, training and even manpower then it’s hardly considered an uprising, is it? More like a proxy war.

That covers Vietnam, Cambodia and Syria. The latter was literally just a gigantic proxy war. Like look at this shit, this is not a popular uprising:

Don’t know enough about Iraq, but in Afghanistan the military did jack shit against the Taliban and in Myanmar the military was the one rebelling.

Every single uprising hinged on:

• Who is supported by the country’s own military?
• Who is supported by foreign nation’s militaries and to which extent?

None of them depended on the popular opinion of civilians.

East Germany 1953, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, China 1989.

It does not cause any long-lasting unrest. Crushing protests with tanks is extremely effective and has always worked if the military was called upon and willing.

Full control of everything? It would take at most around 1000 soldiers on the ground to siege a modern a city - shut down water, electricity and close the highways - and you’ll regain control. People don’t like to live without food and water.

Plus no country cares what you do to your own population beyond strongly worded letters and maybe some targeted sanctions against like 3 entities.

They don’t need to kill the entire workforce. People generally don’t want to die, so you only need to kill a small fraction to terrorize the rest into submitting.

This has worked for pretty much every single uprising since WW2. Just send in the tanks. Only when the military refused were uprisings successful.

The military today is able to kill nearly the entire population within days. That’s pretty much it.

As long as the military is not on your side, you will lose badly. And as long as the soldiers don’t suffer, they will support the status quo because they have something to lose.

Is it?

Just use Linux 6.12 with LTS until 2029 and Super LTS until 2036.

The rating system isn’t meant to be taken literally though. It’s expected that parents make an informed choice based on the maturity of their child. The ratings are recommendations and as far as I know only actually enforced by stores/sellers and cinemas.

To be fair, school lunches aren’t free in Germany.

Technically they could be considered free if you factor in monthly child benefits (currently at 259€ per child) or parents further qualify for social assistance.

I don’t know enough about Windows app development to answer this. Maybe it replaces the old .exe and the now replaced .exe is just continuing to run from RAM? Maybe there is some restarter.exe program in the same folder that does all the work. In any case, this depends far too much on the Windows update process and how to launch applications.

I just know when I used Windows applications in the past, they were able to restart themselves after updating somehow.

I meant the old .exe would check the signatures before initializing the official Windows way to update. Effectively have this run whenever you start the application:

main() {
    if (update_available()) {
        exe_path = download_update()
        if (signature(exe_path) == SIGNATURE) {
            install_update(exe_path)
            restart()
        } else {
            put_up_a_warning_or_something()
            delete(exe_path)
        }
    }
# Rest of the application
# ...
}

The only thing I have no idea how to implement would be the install_update(path) function. But surely this is one way to install updates without signatures recognized by Microsoft, right?

And if for some reason you aren’t allowed to sign the .exe because this breaks something, then place an unsigned .exe in a signed zip folder.

Yes, but from what I understand this refers to the automatic update functionality and not Microsoft’s own .exe signature verification thing.

Couldn’t you do it like this:

• Put hardcoded key into N++
• If a new release is available: Download, then verify signature
• If the signatures match, do whatever Windows requires to install an update

That should work, shouldn’t it?

It’s astounding this wasn’t done years sooner to be honest. I mean, signing software with keys is not something invented recently. Not doing so is akin to storing passwords in plain text.

Reason #186729 why it’s insane to have no right to privacy in public.

Fun fact: Recording the public is illegal in Germany. Any private video camera must only be able to record your own property. If you do record (and store - smart doorbells without storage that are only active when they are rung are exempted) material you must have visible warnings (that others can see BEFORE being recorded) or else any evidence you collect is likely to be thrown out in court.

You seem to be wrong about the packaging criteria:

Packaging

The V-Label does not exclude products whose packaging contains animal-derived products. However, companies are encouraged to voluntarily avoid using packaging containing animal-derived products.

https://www.v-label.com/faqs/