• 17 Posts
  • 46 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 30th, 2022

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  • almost as if there are parties trying to turn it into a big political issue to paint Russia as a victim

    Idk, there’s probably some of that but until today with the clarification that the bans are happening from a list of employers they’re required not to work with, things were pretty unclear and I don’t think it was unreasonable to assume they were going beyond what was required…especially with Linus’ response being pretty tone deaf given the information critics had. People were angry what seemed like random Russian citizens were being targeted and Linus responded angrily as if we all already knew their employers were on a list despite it not being reported yet.

    It’s not a huge deal but Linus is just not very good at handling this kind of thing. Nerds should have assumed there was more behind the scenes and given the benefit of the doubt, though.



  • Wayland has security benefits over X11 so choosing one with a Wayland session is a good idea but other than that I’m not really aware of any breakdowns of security between DEs. My gut says the major options are pretty similar on that front, most hardening guides only mention DEs to tell you which ones support Wayland. The choices you can make to harden your system are changing things at a lower level that is entirely unrelated to your DE. That said I’m just a privacy/security interested layperson and security is a topic where you can always split more hairs if you want (or need) to.


  • I’ve no idea what Swartz said on the subject and I’m not sure if this implication is intended by you but I would not characterize rms as just being uninformed. There’s lots of evidence in this piece that he encountered information and testimonials from abused parties and nevertheless landed at the conclusions he did. I don’t know if he holds CSAM or not but I do know he is long past the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his words.


  • Oh absolutely, if following the trail of your beliefs leads you to a conclusion like this it should be a reason to interrogate those core beliefs and/or recognize where other core beliefs take priority, and not doing this is a major failure on his part that I’m sure is largely motivated by ultimately not really caring that much about sexual violence. It’s just that the pattern of reasoning here is so consistent with his approach to every other issue that he writes about that I think it’s reasonably likely that he just defends possession of CSAM on principle (as twisted as that is) rather than as as a defense of actions he’s made. This is not a defense of the man, to be clear, just a guess as someone familiar with his idiosyncrasies. What we know for sure from his own mouth should be more than enough to condemn him and get him the hell out of the FSF. Having a man who actively defends pedophilia in a leadership role in any capacity is an embarrassment and a failure of the organization as a whole, even if he also laid the intellectual foundation for its mission.




  • Entirely possible but he’s also a stubborn man obsessed with his own ideological consistency and absurdly precise (if not commonly understood) language. He’s clearly a creep but having kept up with him over the years I think it’s similarly possible that those statements aren’t self-serving and are instead sincerely held dominoes 15 down the line from following the implications of some core principles.

    That doesn’t make them not disgusting and also does not mean he should remain the voice of our movement, of course.




  • What you’re asking for is distributions to roll their own solutions instead of contributing upstream to make it better for everyone. Distributions and the organizations behind them frequently do things to make the user experience better, it’s just that the preferred way to do this is by making the projects they use better…which will just look like a DE version bump by the time it makes it to a distro changelog.






  • Unity started with pretty awful performance (much like GNOME 3) and coincided with some infamous decisions on the part of Canonical, namely that whole business with the Amazon integration, so it’s permanently tainted in the minds of many. It also meant that the largest distro in town was suddenly using a desktop that was much less inviting to newcomers than the familiar GNOME 2.

    I’m glad it’s being kept alive as it does have a unique vibe to it, but I always found the workflow a bit awkward and much prefer GNOME for something modern and xfce or MATE for when I want something traditional.





  • You’re right, of course. I detest capitalism and while I obviously understand why people and the institutions they build operate under its rules, I see not doing so as a generally good thing. I’m under no delusions that this will bring the change we deserve, that requires actual political action. But liberating art and information is actually possible thanks to filesharing and so we ought to do so.

    People seem to be missing the point about Bethesda’s guilt. I know that Bethesda cannot give this game for free and I take for granted that you know they cannot, my point is that because they can’t, they should not exist. I’m not a fool, I know how the world around me works and that games would not be made at this scale (but they would still be made…art LONG predates the profit motive and exists even today where no profit is to be had, and no one could possibly snuff out the human drive to make art) and am willing to take those consequences. I believe withholding art from the public is stealing from the common heritage of mankind, and so we ought to strive for a system in which art can be made and shared freely because people’s needs are taken care of. And yes, I focus on art and information because it is the topic here and it is particularly close to my heart, not because my beliefs stop there.

    I just want to say one more time that I wasn’t trying to preach here or start a fight. I just wanted to express my sadness at this situation. That’s it. I only respond because I don’t like having my views misrepresented.



  • Like I said downthread, I wasn’t really looking at derailing this thread by starting a debate, but to clarify my position, the industry as it exists today collapsing is entirely okay with me. I’d be happy to live in a world where all games were freely distributed public domain solo endeavors, small collaborations, and the rare larger (but still not this large, likely) productions organized as public works or naturally-occurring oddities.