I think my dumbest customer story isn't programming-related but still related to computers. I worked in a small computer repair shop about 3000 years ago, and one day a customer comes in with their family computer that's "not working." It turned out to be full of viruses and malware, and when we started working on it it turned out this was due to somebody visiting shady porn sites and clicking on download buttons left and right. I explain the situation to her and then recommend steps on how to avoid this happening in the future, so how to browse safely, antivirus software etc. She feelt a bit embarrassed and says that it's her son, and that she'll give him a talking-to.

A few weeks later the same customer comes back with the family computer and this time she's visibly annoyed, and curiously she's brought along the keyboard, mouse and monitor. The computer's got viruses again, and it's my fault. Why? Because she'd had a talk with her son who had then sworn up and down that he'll mend his filthy ways. When new viruses cropped up, his explanation was that obviously they're in the keyboard, mouse and monitor too, and since they hadn't been in the shop they were still infected and we were just too incompetent to have known this. Naturally she believed her son over my word, and started demanding that we remove the viruses from all the peripherals. I tried for a very long time to explain that it's just not possible (this was a time when PS/2 connectors were still pretty common and that's what they had so it wasn't even theoretically possible), but she wouldn't budge because her son was a computer whiz (he wasn't) and a Good Boy™ and would never lie, so clearly I was either incompetent or lying.

Finally I just relented and said "OK you got me, it's possible your viruses came from the peripherals but I just didn't want to mention it because removing them is so time-consuming and difficult". I took all their hardware in and had it unfucked in pretty short order, and I looked at the browser history to make sure that it really was a reinfection via the web, which it was (I remember Pamela Anderson featuring in a lot of the searches, which we techs giggled at.)

I kept their hardware at the shop for a couple of weeks; it's a tricky and demanding job to remove viruses from mouses, keyboards and monitors, remember? When writing the bill I charged her double the time I actually put in – she didn't want to pay at all because she felt it was our mistake but at that point my boss, who was a formidable lady, practically put her boot up the customer's ass and made her cough up the money.

She left in a huff never to be seen again, thank the gods.

It's funny how modern day conservatives use the term "fascism" like they think it's negative, when they literally want everything that fascism would entail.

And this technology is what our executive overlords want to replace human workers with, just so they can raise their own compensation and pay the remaining workers even less

Is the reason capitalism? I bet it's capitalism

Edit: it's capitalism

Conservatives are a threat to stable and peaceful societies, and an existential threat to the whole human race due to their climate change denialism. As long as we continue to pretend that conservatism is a valid political ideology and not psychopathy and sadism packaged up to look like politics, they'll continue to undermine democracy and peace until they get the genocide(s) they keep clamoring for

• The impact of dark tetrad traits on political orientation and extremism: an analysis in the course of a presidential election

In the present research (N = 675), we focus on the relationship between the dark side of human personality and political orientation and extremism, respectively, in the course of a presidential election where the two candidates represent either left-wing or right-wing political policies. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism were associated with right-wing political orientation, whereas narcissism and psychopathy were associated with political extremism. Moreover, the relationships between personality and right-wing political orientation and extremism, respectively, were relatively independent from each other.

• Bad News for Conservatives? Moral Judgments and the Dark Triad Personality Traits: A Correlational Study

We found eleven significant correlations between conservative [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad – [narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy,] all at significance level of p<.00001 – and no significant correlations between liberal [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad. We believe that these results raise provocative moral questions about the personality bases of moral judgments. In particular, we propose that because the Short-D3 measures three “dark and antisocial” personality traits, our results raise some prima facie worries about the moral justification of some conservative moral judgments

It feels like actual innovation in all sectors has slowed to a crawl, and corporations – especially the ones run by MBA parasites – are concentrating more and more on just squeezing money out of people with various bullshit tactics, while at the same time thinning their workforce (naturally the MBAs are never under threat, though)

She was an asshole who wanted me to redo work for free because she believed her son over someone who actually knew what they were doing, and after tens of minutes of wrangling I just went "fuck it" and obliged her request to sanitize the peripherals. The sum wasn't all that big to begin with, so it's not like she was on the hook for hundreds of euros – probably got a 50€ bill instead of a 20€ one. Not knowing any better obviously wasn't the problem here, but if that's your takeaway then I really don't know what to tell you.

So yes, I did it.
No, I'm not sorry.
Yes, I'd do it again.

Conservatives can't be trusted to serve in public positions. They will literally always ditch their principles – if they ever had any in the first place – to serve their political goals, naturally claiming that this is what "the left" does so it's OK for then to do it too

edit: this is why any sort of jury trial for Trump is probably doomed to fail. Any conservative jurors will favor him no matter what, and will absolutely lie about their plans to do so in the selection process

revenge of the edit: so the NY conviction was by a jury, happy surprise

That's probably the least insane part about Project 2025

Project contributor Jeffrey Clark advises the future president to immediately deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and direct the DOJ to pursue Donald Trump's adversaries by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. The Project recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants. It promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of such sentences.

Using the military to hunt dissidents and then recommending "speedy" capital punishment is pretty on-brand for conservatives.

Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.

The dude's a petulant child. No wonder conservatives fawn over him.

Hiring him was the dumb move considering that it's known he's a reich-wing fuckwit

Conservatives won't be happy until we're all in extermination camps. Again.

Every single conservative is either outright genocidal, or a silent collaborator who doesn't really care as long as they aren't personally affected.

The extreme right won’t stop trying to exert government control over our most sacred personal decisions

It's not the extreme right, this is mainstream for conservatives. The extreme right is the one calling for eg. the extermination of gender / sexual minorities or non-whites (and the extremists aren't nearly as rare as people generally like to think)

I'm sure gAmErS will have a totally reasonable and normal reaction to this.

His fanboys are mostly reich-wingers nowadays, and they're completely impervious to reality-based arguments

When broken down into party lines, 15 percent of Republicans think he is guilty while 64 percent do not

Proving once again that the vast majority of conservatives are completely beyond help

Or, you know, don't use Windows

It's the same with that one rabbi who's been labeled antisemitic because he's against the genocide of Palestinians.

Edit: this dude:

Eg. the Canary Mission has labeled him as an antisemite who trivializes the Holocaust because he thinks that in Canada the genocide of First Nations people would be important to teach more about instead of focusing on the Holocaust

I thought that was the point of the image

But why can a theme make web requests?!

Because we live in a broken world and nothing matters.

On a more serious note, it's a pretty horrifying misfeature. What's even more worrying is that by all appearances Microsoft doesn't give a shit, if they apparently didn't even bother removing the malicious extensions that were reported. Not that I'm surprised, but still.

Aww, someone's throwing a cissy fit

The idea that Europe isn't militarily self-sufficient is, frankly, horseshit. The US just has such an incredibly outsized military that anything will look "insufficient"

seen doctors force sex change to children that lead to the child killing themselves in adulthood

Why do transphobes lie all the fucking time? Like, is there something wrong with your brain preventing you from not lying?

“I tell you with confidence: I have changed,”

I tell you with confidence: he's fucking lying

It's not a surprise she was "attracted to what she described as [the conservative People's Party's] embrace of tradition", because right-wing systems are generally attractive to people with lower cognitive skills as they claim to offer simple solutions to complex problems. Unfortunately the solutions are nearly always wrong, but that's another matter entirely.

• Does Lower Cognitive Ability Predict Greater Prejudice?

[T]here exists a solid empirical paper trail demonstrating that lower cognitive abilities (e.g., abstract-reasoning skills and verbal, nonverbal, and general intelligence) predict greater prejudice. We discuss how the effects of lower cognitive ability on prejudice are explained (i.e., mediated) by greater endorsement of right-wing socially conservative attitude. […]

Right-wing ideologies offer well-structured and ordered views about society that preserve traditional societal conventions and norms (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). Such ideological belief systems are particularly attractive to individuals who are strongly motivated to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity in preference for simplicity and predictability (Jost et al., 2003; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). Theoretically, individuals with lower mental abilities should be attracted by right-wing social-cultural ideologies because they minimize complexity and increase perceived control (Heaven, Ciarrochi, & Leeson, 2011; Stankov, 2009). Conversely, individuals with greater cognitive skills are better positioned to understand changing and dynamic societal contexts, which should facilitate open-minded, relatively left-leaning attitudes (Deary et al., 2008a; Heaven et al., 2011; McCourt, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegen, & Keyes, 1999). Lower cognitive abilities therefore draw people to strategies and ideologies that emphasize what is presently known and considered acceptable to make sense and impose order over their environment. Resistance to social change and the preservation of the status quo regarding societal traditions—key principles underpinning right-wing social-cultural ideologies—should be particularly appealing to those wishing to avoid uncertainty and threat.

Indeed, the empirical literature reveals negative relations between cognitive abilities and right-wing social-cultural attitudes, including right-wing authoritarian (e.g., Keiller, 2010; McCourt et al., 1999), socially conservative (e.g., Stankov, 2009; Van Hiel et al., 2010), and religious attitudes (e.g., Zuckerman, Silberman, & Hall, 2013).

Conservatism as a political ideology is very attractive to psychopaths and sadists (and/or, in a word, idiots) – "the cruelty is the point" isn't just an empty saying, it's very often the literal truth when it comes to conservative moral judgements. Rulings like this are just an example of how devoid of any sort of empathy they can be. It's not a political ideology so much as it is a way for people with dark tetrad personality traits to wield power; conservatives are extremely easy to manipulate due to being on average dumber than non-conservatives, so it's a perfect combination.

::: spoiler Sources

• The impact of dark tetrad traits on political orientation and extremism: an analysis in the course of a presidential election

In the present research (N = 675), we focus on the relationship between the dark side of human personality and political orientation and extremism, respectively, in the course of a presidential election where the two candidates represent either left-wing or right-wing political policies. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism were associated with right-wing political orientation, whereas narcissism and psychopathy were associated with political extremism. Moreover, the relationships between personality and right-wing political orientation and extremism, respectively, were relatively independent from each other.

• Bad News for Conservatives? Moral Judgments and the Dark Triad Personality Traits: A Correlational Study

We found eleven significant correlations between conservative [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad – all at significance level of p<.00001 – and no significant correlations between liberal [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad. We believe that these results raise provocative moral questions about the personality bases of moral judgments. In particular, we propose that because the Short-D3 measures three “dark and antisocial” personality traits, our results raise some prima facie worries about the moral justification of some conservative moral judgments

• Does Lower Cognitive Ability Predict Greater Prejudice?

[T]here exists a solid empirical paper trail demonstrating that lower cognitive abilities (e.g., abstract-reasoning skills and verbal, nonverbal, and general intelligence) predict greater prejudice. We discuss how the effects of lower cognitive ability on prejudice are explained (i.e., mediated) by greater endorsement of right-wing socially conservative attitude. […]

Right-wing ideologies offer well-structured and ordered views about society that preserve traditional societal conventions and norms (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). Such ideological belief systems are particularly attractive to individuals who are strongly motivated to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity in preference for simplicity and predictability (Jost et al., 2003; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). Theoretically, individuals with lower mental abilities should be attracted by right-wing social-cultural ideologies because they minimize complexity and increase perceived control (Heaven, Ciarrochi, & Leeson, 2011; Stankov, 2009). Conversely, individuals with greater cognitive skills are better positioned to understand changing and dynamic societal contexts, which should facilitate open-minded, relatively left-leaning attitudes (Deary et al., 2008a; Heaven et al., 2011; McCourt, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegen, & Keyes, 1999). Lower cognitive abilities therefore draw people to strategies and ideologies that emphasize what is presently known and considered acceptable to make sense and impose order over their environment. Resistance to social change and the preservation of the status quo regarding societal traditions—key principles underpinning right-wing social-cultural ideologies—should be particularly appealing to those wishing to avoid uncertainty and threat.

Indeed, the empirical literature reveals negative relations between cognitive abilities and right-wing social-cultural attitudes, including right-wing authoritarian (e.g., Keiller, 2010; McCourt et al., 1999), socially conservative (e.g., Stankov, 2009; Van Hiel et al., 2010), and religious attitudes (e.g., Zuckerman, Silberman, & Hall, 2013).

:::

Conservatives only like cops when they abuse minorities or pretty much anyone else who isn't reich-wing. "They're hurting the wrong people!"

Yeah, that's not a fine, that's a fee.

I, uh… I don't get it. Somebody help an idiot out? I haven't had my morning cuppa yet so it might just be a lack of caffeine.

How is it that gaming as both an industry and as a hobby so consistently manages to attract the worst people you can imagine?

Conservatives are definitely thinking of the children:

Our best hope in the face of inevitable rises in heat? Cooperation.

Yeah, we're fucked

I've run into this problem with many open source projects. It's sometimes really hard to find out what the hell something actually does based on just the project's own pages. It took a while for eg. join-lemmy.org to actually describe what Lemmy is, for example, instead of just going on about it being open source and secure and federated and blah.

What are you talking about, the US has the best legal system money can buy

"Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer."

Considering the sort of country Russia is, them calling you a friend is much more damning than then calling you an enemy

Conservatives thinking about children seems to always lead to abuse of some kind

He has to say that, though. Saying "if Trump wins, Nato is hosed" wouldn't sound as, well… resolute

While the network service is designed to only accept commands that start with “wl” or “nvram get,” ONEKEY found that the restriction could be trivially bypassed by injecting a command after shell meta-characters like ; , & , or, | (e.g., “wl;id;”).

Whenever I feel like I'm a terrible programmer, I remind myself that there are vast amounts of confident coders out there being paid for code with idiotic mistakes like this and they have no intention of getting any better at it

You have some interesting ideas about what a minimum of effort looks like

puts innocent people to death, is racially biased, and is cruel and inhumane. It is state-sanctioned homicide

This is exactly why conservatives support it. Not that 99% of them will actually admit it, mind you.

None of their solutions ever actually provably work, but their point is rarely to work as much as it is to just simply be cruel in order to "teach a lesson". See eg. their approach to sex education or substance abuse