This is generally what I recommend. I’d also suggest going into it as blind as possible simply knowing that it’s a half comedy, half historical drama. It gets pretty heavy at times, more than most comedies. One of my favorite movies ever.

I saw it not even knowing that much and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Great film.

Good luck! You’ll pop open your first lock in no time

Getting started is closer to a tenth of that— the starter kit linked is $10 pre shipping from a brand that is generally considered overpriced in locksport. Buying locks is the expensive part but you probably have a couple of padlocks to start with. And for those £20, you can get the knowledge and basic skills to open the vast majority of locks.

I’d personally recommend JimyLong’s starter kit if you can catch it in stock but hook and turner will work. Then don’t buy anything else until you know exactly what lock you want a thinner hook or different pick for; that set would open about any lock you can find in store. Spending £200+ to start out is more lockpick consumerism than an actual on ramp since you’d likely be bogged down by too many tools.

If I were truly thrown into this scenario, my first step would be accepting likely death. Even if you maintain status quo and do no good, you’ll be killed by the next guy in line. There’s nearly no way to both satisfy the current oligarchs and maintain enough power to prevent being replaced by one of them. There is also no way out, as Russia has carried out assassinations in foreign countries. Not that you’d make it onto a plane.

So I really would try to do all that. I’d tell them that whatever force got me there also gave me time to enact failsafes so that, if I disappeared, every property that every Russian billionaire owned would make unexpected contact with drones. Then I’d go ahead and post Putin’s files with every billionaire’s dirt and holdings hoping to start some fires they’d need to put out before coming for me. From there, an aggressive push towards democracy by appealing to the people in the hopes that they’ll back me, which might buy a little extra time.

I think this secures a few hours. They won’t want to move against a complete unknown that suddenly became president. That’s enough to call Biden (allegedly to negotiate US withdrawal from Ukraine in exchange for election interference in Harris’s favor) and send him every bit of data on the military that I could. That might be enough deterrence to buy more time: “the US military knows everything now, so killing me might have consequences.” I’d CC several other NATO members, but for time’s sake Biden is probably the one to call.

Maybe I could get some bodyguards that appear loyal to me, maybe not. But every bit of bluster I could muster, I’d throw it down out the gate, then start trying to fix the country before they call the bluff.

Yeah, I still die quickly, but even a single step towards improvement is worth my life. An easy decision to make when it was forfeit the second I became president. Even if I failed miserably, merely dumping presidential documents would have been worth it. Perhaps it’d get the ball rolling.

Edit: I missed the part where everyone loyal to Putin would be loyal to me. That opens up a ton of space to actually set up these failsafes or move against the oligarchs myself, as well as secure the Kremlin with men more or less actually loyal to me (by wiring them all a million USD on the spot with promise of more). Putin put down a rebellion from one of the most powerful oligarchs, so there might actually be a way to survive long enough to do many of the things on that list. I’d probably not dump the oligarch files and keep that on a disappearance failsafe then proceed mostly the same hoping to generate serious, potentially irreversible momentum before dying.

I unironically miss when it was still Android Market. It was a clear name. What is a Play Store, really?

Edit: I searched it up and the reason is acceptable, you don’t need an Android device to purchase and utilize some of the content. I still think Play Store is a bad name tho

I have some ethics issues with how Tidal pushed MQA snake oil for years, charging more for less. Outright deceptive advertising for nothing but the money. I have bigger ethics issues with Spotify funding Rogan though.

Now, Apple is obviously its own titan and almost inherently harmful, but the music department does less active evil than the others. Qobuz seems fine in general so it’s the one I’d rec

A good point, but I personally see it like this: a small percent of humans created weapons of extreme destruction, then the small percent of humans with access to them still did not kill as many as they did back then. The faceless violence sucks, but weapons development was set to outpace peace development before every living human was born. Pretty soon everyone with access to those weapons will have simply inherited it, making them more capable of war but not more warlike.

Yeah same. I first remember hearing it when Apple was planning that amazingly invasive local scanning of user images. Now it seems to be everywhere.

I’m not against it though. CP could’ve described multiple things and this one is a lot less mistakable when you know. CP wasn’t particularly intuitive either— no easier to decipher, merely that with years of use many people knew it— so it’s an upgrade overall I think.

Another benefit is that it includes “abuse” in the name. That’s important and ensures the people who seek that stuff out won’t borrow the term like they did CP.

This makes me realize that I have a huge list of things I should see/do, but have been putting off because I want to enjoy them at their max. Then I find myself never feeling ready enough. Some of the ones from this thread I’ve been meaning to check out for years:

• Inside
• Bojack
• the video “Leroy Jenkins”. I have no idea what it even means, but I’ve seen references to it for well over a decade.
• Halo: Reach
• ME: Legendary, I did download this one a couple years ago, so I’m further on it than anything else
• Firefly

Anyway, the ones I try not to oversaturate are the best episodes of Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Particularly Charlie Work, which I’ve only seen once.

They’ve made a stunning amount of progress in accepting credit cards in the past couple years though. I’m there pretty regularly and the shift has been wild. By spring 2023 I didn’t really need cash anymore. By fall, I used cash maybe twice.

There was one thing I was sure I’d need cash for— nope, the hotel paid them and added it to my tab. Back in the day, that mostly happened only if you skipped out on a reservation and the restaurant wanted to collect the cancellation fee. Which has never happened to me so I guess I’m not sure it worked exactly like that.

I know a lot of people here hate credit cards and only use cash, but it’s honestly a pretty large hassle to get cash in every country you visit. Using the same card everywhere is way more convenient and cheaper (exchange fee + no % back like with a credit card)

Don’t think I saw this one yet, but Briggs & Riley luggage. Lifetime no-questions-asked repairs for all functional damage, even if intentionally inflicted.

They’re also just very good. The BIFLness is cool but I’d have gone with another if it weren’t also the best in general. Super practical design.

I think it’d be great to be able to see Reddit content if I wanted, and ignore it if not. I left because I’m a mobile user, not because I dislike Reddit content. It would also significantly lower the barrier of entry to Lemmy, so they’ll never do it.

Would you care to share some? Can’t tell if this comment is a setup

Takashi Saito, his choice. Damn near impossible to get a reservation, but I’d also like enough personal attention to ask for tips.

Oh. That’s disappointing, I guess there was some degree of wishful thinking in hoping bullying was actually easing up. My schools had next to no bullying + years of anti-hazing campaigns and I’d never actually heard of anyone dealing with the classic bullying stereotypes, so I thought we really were making progress.

I wonder if part of it was the setup of the schools, where we had only a few minutes between classes to transfer rooms. Not much time to flush heads in that span? But I also thought it was a common setup still used today so no idea.

On the other hand, if this is true, kudos to society for clamping down on teen bullying. There wasn’t much (if any) bullying in my high school, but not long ago bullying and ostracizing was more… physically painful.

Like yeah it sucks that there’s still any, but this green text nonsense is a hell of a lot better than having one’s head flushed inside a toilet and the like. Good to see society making forward progress.

I don’t like your bots at all because I, like others, browse all. Lemmy is too small and inactive to stick to little groups. They also filled my feed with a disproportionate amount of stuff I don’t care about, like selfhosted.

The idea is genuinely interesting and the execution, especially the bridge to claim ownership of the bot account, is legitimately really cool. But until it’s not spammy— which may be never at the rate Lemmy is expanding, or lack of expansion— it’s going to meet significant resistance.

It’s weird because I really agree with you. Lowering the barrier to entry for leaving Reddit and porting over its discussions is great. People say they don’t want Reddit content, but honestly I doubt that. Hell, even having copies of the niche Reddit content would help fill out the fediverse’s lack of content. Sadly I don’t see this working at all without two way communication (which you would probably need proxies for). I’d be pretty surprised if you ever brought it back.

I particularly agree on the moral front. I disagree with Reddit the company and don’t care for the state of the internet. But I can’t see a barrier of entry low enough for people to actually stand up for themselves, so while I respect the effort and willingness to do something about your values, my faith in the remaining Reddit users is low enough that I really can’t see a universe where this works.

I’m not much of a gamer admittedly but I have no issues with touch controls. I played several GTA games (III, Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories), KOTOR 1 & 2, and several shooters on mobile. Right now I play Genshin Impact almost entirely on mobile and am not noticeably worse than when on PC, and I’m starting Hitman: Blood Money as well. Mobile is severely underrated in capacity, and while there is a learning curve and it is more limited than PC, you adapt pretty rapidly.

But most mobile games suck now. IB has been gone for ages— slain by Epic Games on the plains of Koroth— and it’s hard to think of a good AAA mobile series that came after. Most mobile games seem like thinly veiled money grabs. Even Blood Money was preceded by a godawful sequel to an actually good Hitman: Sniper game filled to the brim with classic mobile microtransaction drivers. I have Apple Arcade included with my subscription and it’s better for not having MTX, but the games themselves aren’t too complex.

And well, maybe that’s because companies expect mobile players to lack the time for long sessions. So a lot of the games feel like they’re designed for brief sessions like that failed streaming service. The view on that seems to be changing, thankfully, as more AAA games are getting ported again so maybe mobile will get another renaissance.

I carry a pair of earplugs because mine block 10dB, much less than most. It’s the most general use sound reduction and is rare, so I find it worth carrying. Before that I didn’t, because:

Most hotels have earplugs and eye masks that they’ll provide for free. So I only bring my own eye mask for long flights. If you’re only concerned about sleep quality in bed, that’s not a bad option

It’s open source and has aggressive privacy features so hopefully there will be data on whether it’s worthwhile soon. If it’s a good OS + has privacy focused hardware, it could be more compelling than a Pixel without hardware switches for the ultra privacy minded