Agreed that it likely depends on the region it was bought in. For most businesses and government services I have found the quality of customer service has dropped through the floor in North America as compared to 20 years ago. I worked in customer service for years and it’s always been a horrible job. But it can be made better or worse by how the department is managed.

Lenovo Canada’s customer service, shipping, and possibly quality control teams appear to be overworked because the result is slipshod work, ignoring the customer, and general incompetence. Again, I worked in the field and don’t blame the individuals.

They are trading on their good name, and eroding it at the same time. Glad to hear it’s better in Europe.

The whole shipping, returns, and reliability experience for Lenovo was rather bad for me (Lenovo Canada). My Legion shipped with a faulty motherboard and faulty power supply. Bought in Canada, but I work in China. International warranty didn’t cover China so I paid for replacement power supply out of pocket. Then multiple usb keys were fried before I figured out it was my laptop. Back in Canada they fixed it, but jerked me around on the turnaround time. Overall bad customer service, shipped a lemon. It was cheap for the specs though.

So… is no one going to comment that it looks like Mads is going down on Hideo?

Ooh, pool depth diss!

Propaganda is usually truthful or exaggerated truth. It’s the framing that is important. Some facts are focused on. Some facts are omitted.

I acknowledge that Russia, China and the DPRK have made mistakes and even done things that are deeply questionable. But I’m interested in comparing their mistakes or misguided actions to those of the most powerful military empire on earth. The one involved in hundreds of military actions and dozens of coups since its inception. The one with the largest per capita prison population on earth. The one which controls many of the world’s financial levers.

There is a difference in the scale of their mistakes or bad actions. Propaganda distorts that difference of scale. It focuses on the crimes of the “enemies” / “axis of evil” / “rogue states” but doesn’t examine context or culpability of the empire. They’ll choose one conflict, downplay 9 others, and give a one-sided view of that one conflict.

That’s how propaganda works. Every state produces propaganda. One state produces billions of dollars of propaganda each year.

Good film. One of the few good Lovecraft adaptations, IMHO.

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is straight up State department propaganda.

Richard Stanley was hired to direct “The Island of Doctor Moreau” but was replaced by John Frankenheimer after a few days of shooting. However, Stanley considered the film to be his baby (he co-wrote the script) and didn’t want to leave. So he disguised himself as one of the mutants and secretly remained on the shoot.

You can watch the documentary about the shooting of this B-movie and it’s full of weird details like that. It’s called “Lost Soul: the doomed journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Doctor Moreau”

Is that David Frum, speechwriter to the Bush Jr administration? Writer of speeches about the axis of evil? Writer of speeches to whip up frenzy for an invasion of Iraq? An invasion based on lies? That David Frum?

Calculator?! Those thieving, energy-sucking piles of garbage! Abacus till I die!

But seriously, AI is insidious in how it data mines us to give us answers, and data mines our questions to build profiles of users. I distrust assurances of anonymity by big data corpos.

Let’s not have advertising slogans in posts about products here on Lemmy. Reddit really has that going on if you’re into it.

Some horrors need not be shown in the light of day

Dead internet shall become undead.

The article states that there is no evidence that this is caused by Russia. But then goes on to speculate that it’s caused by Russia. Journalistic standards have fallen.

(This is) me, (a person) who doesn’t use AI.

ISTG stands for It’s Studio Giblets

Would be funny if Boeing started cutting corners with their hitmen, too.

You aren’t. There’s more backstory.

Then it’s not getting the freshest photons.

Yes, he is essentially pro Western which is why the NED funded the Levada center.

Putin had a meeting with the other candidates yesterday, by the way. I think that opposition is likely kept out of power by various means.

Especially important if the opposition is funded by the UK and US, like Navalny’s Democratic Alternative. Navalny’s highest national polling was 9% with many Russians unaware of who he is. He was a creation of the West, and an unsuccessful one at that.

The Russian communist party functions in Russia’s political scene and gets some significant support from the population, though it is far less popular than Putin. We might consider them to function as controlled opposition.

But Putin himself doesn’t control everything. Just read Medvedev’s scathing speech criticizing him as Putin sat on the stage next to him.

We can criticize their system and say it isn’t a fair system so that’s why Putin is popular. But let’s not pretend he isn’t popular. And let’s not forget that Putin brought Russia out of the economic collapse of the 90s and into the fifth largest economy. He did so by regaining state control of key industries that had been sold off cheaply in the 90s, under the direction of a team of Harvard economists via US NGOs.

Russians appreciate having jobs, housing and food which they didn’t have when the country was sold out in the 90s. They credit Putin with putting the country back on its feet.