ricecake

Some of your emphasis is a little backwards. In the cloud computing environment, Amazon is bigger than Microsoft, and windows isn't even particularly significant. Azure primarily provides Linux infrastructure instead of Windows. AWS is bigger in the government cloud sector than Microsoft.

For servers, Linux is hands down the os of choice. It's just not even close. Where Microsoft has an edge is in business software, like Excel, word, desktop OS and exchange. Needing windows server administrators for stuff like that is a pain when you already have Linux people for the rest of your stuff which is why it gets outsourced so often. It's not central to the business so no sense in investing in people for it.

Microsoft isn't dominating the commercial computing sector, they're dominating the office it sector, which is a cost center for businesses. They're trailing badly in the revenue generation service sphere. That's why they've been shifting towards offering their own hosting for their services, so you can reduce costs but keep paying them. Increased interoperability between windows and Linux from a developer standpoint to drive people towards buying their Linux hosting from them, because you can use vscode to push your software to GitHub and automatically deploy to azure when build and test passes.
Being on the cost side of the ledger is a risk for them, so they're trying to move to the revenue side, where windows just doesn't have the grip.

I'm not sure it's a partnership. It looks and reads like the standard authorized data sharing setup. Anyone can configure that. It uses an open protocol that's standardized, let's users control the information shared with explicit consent and is basically what you want out of any entity that holds all your crap. The only thing it's really lacking is a standard protocol for sharing the actual data.

Linux distributions have it.

Microsoft using Google's public documented API is a long way from a partnership.

Don't get me wrong, it should be illegal to do a preemptive nuclear strike, it just sadly isn't.

It might not be feasible for the entire chain to have the information needed to make that call, but there is definitely someone in military authority positioned to know if it's defensive or offensive, and that person should be both allowed and obligated to refuse the order if it's an offensive strike.

Morality and the law may not be equivalent, but it would certainly be more convenient if they were closer.

Upfront: it should be obvious that no sane person wants us to drop a nuke or thinks there's any connotation of "okay" to any aspect of it.

Why do you think it would be an illegal order? There are very clear rules on what makes an order legal or not and, horribly, attacking a nation that poses no real threat isn't on the list. What nations we attack is a policy matter, and the rules are very clear that the military doesn't get a say in policy.
Explicitly targeting civilians for a strike on a city is where the line would be. Targeting something else in the city and deciding the civilians are acceptable collateral damage is right on the line. Legally, it's entirely unambiguously evil morally.

There are checks that keep the president from unilaterally launching a nuke. Unfortunately, the intent of those is to ensure the president is legally competent and actually the president, not to ensure he's wise or rational.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Hering

The system has been explicitly designed to minimize the risk of conscience preventing a launch. Issue training orders where the firing crews have no idea if it's real or not. Keep them on two week rotations where they don't have access to the outside world so they wouldn't know. Specifically select for people who will follow the order because it's validcand legal, without considering the greater context. People who are legitimately confused but ultimately unconcerned with protests against them specifically doing what they do, including clergy from their own religion. (Actual story of an ICBM operators reaction to nuns protesting and attempting to block access to the missile site he was stationed at)

There is no doubt in my mind that if the order were given and the VP and cabinet didn't remove him, that the order would be followed.

Fell. They fall out of windows. Usually after shooting themselves in the back of the head.

... You seem to be forgetting about the difference between the width of the projectile and the actual force that it imparts.

A 5.56 round is comparable width, but it's also moving significantly faster due to the "it's a rifle round do I really need to explain this?" factor. It was designed and selected with criteria like "can enter a steel military helmet at 500 yards".
Less recoil at high rates of fire with equivalent lethality are other criteria.

A rifle having ease of use doesn't somehow make it safer than one that's harder to maintain. I'm honestly not even sure what you're thinking with that point. In your mind is a flintlock more dangerous because it's tricky to use?

Yes, it's a small bore military rifle designed with military lethality criteria with the requirement of easy operation and high accuracy at increased rates of fire.

What do you get out of trying to pretend there's no real difference between a pistol and a rifle?

This is entirely it. A corporation can't care about people, but the people in the corporation can.

Business interests have forced a lot of companies to avoid doing things that would offend the right, lest they pull government contracts for appearing to support people.
The people in the businesses who give a shit aren't going to expend energy defending something that ultimately doesn't matter, like the logo being rainbow colored.

The company I work for is one of the ones that didn't change it's logo, and it was explicitly communicated to be because it would risk stupid amounts of money from government contracts.

More efforts were put into things that actually matter. Instead of eliminating DEI, it was relabeled EEOC compliance and left unchanged, without much fanfare. ("Jen is transitioning from head of our DEI office to leading our office of EEOC compliance. Her responsibilities and reports remain the same"). Our benefits were quietly extended to cover a few more cases for relocation assistance to "cover new sources of employee relocation interest". Travel expenses related to reproductive healthcare became covered by the health plan, as well as for gender identity related care.

The company is a heartless profit seeking beast. The people in them have the ability to find a way to do the right thing while appeasing the beast, but it takes effort to push for things so they just don't push for the symbolic gestures.

It's shitty, and I have to imagine that it kinda stings to have token support deemed non-viable, but the world is also shit right now. :(

Multiple people is significantly more force than even a knife.

Proportional force means the force must be proportional to the threat, not to the force the other person is using. If someone threatens death with their hands, you can use deadly force to defend against a deadly threat.

One would be reasonable in concluding that masked people trying to force you or someone else into a van is an imminent threat of death, great bodily harm or sexual assault.

You can't use deadly force to defend against harassment, or theft because that's disproportionate.

Well, there actually wouldn't be a much larger explosion, that's just not how nukes work.
A nuclear explosion is an incredibly delicate process, and the material just won't go critical because there's another detonation nearby. It's not like dropping a bomb on a dynamite warehouse. There's not a great analogy for what it is like though. Expecting a satellite launch to happen because you blew up a tank of rocket fuel next to it? Not quite there.

Additional contamination from onsite material is a different matter. Most nukes detonate above their target since that maximizes damage, but it also reduces fallout. There would, however, be vaporized material that would be sucked into the air by the vacuum created by the detonation. It's not clear if the presence of radioactive material would make it significantly worse than the general "radioactive dust and molten sand" that would normally be sent into the air.

In general, if you nuke something there's going to be radioactive issues afterwards, and you shouldn't do it. Adding a nuclear facility to the mix is kinda just throwing rocks at the windows on 9/11.

In general I agree. There are some people though who are definite sources of singular complexity making the world a worse place.
If trump were to die, I don't think it would suddenly end the insanity of the American right wing, just remove a little disorder from it.
However, people like Musk and Thiel are different. They have a preposterous amount of resources that they're directly using to try to push the insanity. The things that made them want to do that will still be there, but if they're gone then the resources they bring to the insanity are also gone, since the people who replace them just wouldn't care in the same way.

I'm superman, which means I'm effectively arbitrarily strong, fast and durable.

The biggest inhibitor is that I'm averse to violence, and I don't know a lot of stuff.

My first thought was to pick up Putin and drop him from someplace high so I don't need to see the outcome, but I don't actually know where he is. Same for a lot of other bad people with power whose disappearance would make things simpler.

I also don't know where they keep the nukes, so it would be unlikely I could throw them into the sun.

I do know where the cheese caves are, so I could grab a lot of cheese and distribute it to hungry areas faster than could be done with normal shipping.

There's a skywalk in the city I live in that really messes up a good view, so I'm pushing that over.

If I look like Superman, I think I could do the most good by just showing up in costume and just telling people not to be shitty, in greater detail of course. Otherwise a tubby guy in cargo shorts and slip on sketchers standing on the Whitehouse lawn yelling about the need to overcome hatred is just... weird.

Ooh, draw dicks on the windows of the ISS. On the outside.

I think it would be ultimately kind of a waste. I don't know where bad guys are, I could do same daring feats but I don't know how to do most of them.

unlike Democrat and Republican voters have morals and will not tolerate genocide no matter how hard they fearmonger.

And yet their principled opposition not only did nothing, it's very clearly made things worse for basically everyone. The genocide didn't stop, but now there's not even token opposition. Iran is being bombed. Civil rights are being rolled back across the country, food aid is being taken from millions, and it's just starting.

The Democrats were never "doing genocide", just like the Republicans aren't now. The Democrats weren't saying they would do enough to stop someone else from doing it, and the Republicans were saying they would encourage them to do it harder.

Red MAGA ... Blue MAGA...Democratic party is a bigger cult than Republicans

Congratulations on being an unwitting mouthpiece for the RNC. "Maga is just a rude word to call someone! It's not literally what we have on our hats!” "staunch opposition to fascism is closed minded and just as prejudicial as wanting to eliminate trans people!”

I hope your movement does stop Trump and cause effective change and reform. I'm not holding my breath, because I don't think they were counting on your votes in the first place and the next time they think about you will be when they want you to be mad at the Democrats again to keep you from voting for them.