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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: March 10th, 2024

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  • Running a server is very doable. There are packages to deploy and configure almost everything for you and removing a ton of headache.

    Getting your email recognized as not spam by the major providers is pretty much impossible. You need all sorts of stuff to help verify integrity including special DNS records and public identity keys, but even if you do everything right, your mail can very easily get black holed before it even reaches a user’s inbox because of stupid shit like someone abused your rented server’s IP years ago, and you can’t seem to get it off everyone’s lists.

    Email as a decentralized tool has effectively been ruined by spam and anti-spam measures. You’re effectively forced to use a provider because it’s near impossible to make your outgoing mail work as an individual. I think some of those anti-spam measures are anticompetitive, but I do think some are just desperate attempts to reduce the massive flow of spam.




  • Classic Doom 1 and 2. There’s gotta be over 100 levels if you count TNT and Plutonia, which I think were sold as Final Doom? Anyway, if you just get the base games for 1 and 2, there are thousands upon thousands of community made maps, including some total conversions, so you can play new Doom content until it physically pains you to continue.

    Of course, I feel obligated to mention that even though it would be super easy to pirate the WAD files and play with a free modern source port like GZDoom, like absolutely trivial to find copies of DOOM.WAD and DOOM2.WAD floating around the net, probably showing up easily on Archive.org, but… Um… Where was I going with this? Oh, right, don’t pirate. Cheap on GOG last I knew.





  • As you’ve phrased it, this seems to me to be a question of how to balance the rights of the developer versus those of the end user. The developer wants to monopolize commercial usage while the end user wants full control and authority on their machine.

    Some would argue that the developer’s goals are unethical, but I think it’s an unfortunate consequence of a societal system that would see them starve on the streets if they didn’t earn with their work. In an ideal world, end users would prevail unquestionably, but so long as developers must operate under capitalism where ownership is critical, concessions will have to be made.


  • In the case of libraries, the users of the libraries are not the end users of the program. The users of the library are the developers.

    Except the end user does inevitably become the user of the library when they use the software the developer made with it. They run that library’s code on their machine.

    It claims that it’s freedom for the users, but that’s not true.

    In light of the above, this is incorrect. By using GPL, you preserve the end user’s freedom to understand, control, and modify the operation of their hardware. In no way does the end user suffer or lose any freedoms.


  • When I see a GPL license I don’t see freedom. I only see forced openness, which makes me immediately avoid that library, since I can’t statically link to it.

    One of the arguments in favor of GPL and other “forced openness” licenses is that users should have the right to understand what their own device is doing. You paid for your computer. You own it. You should dictate how it operates. You should at least have the option of understanding what is being done with your machine and modifying it to fit your needs. Closed source software may provide utility, but it doesn’t really further collective knowledge since you’re explicitly refusing to publicly release the code, and it provides obscurity for developers to hide undesirable functionality like data collection or more directly malicious activity.

    I’m not personally sure how I feel about that argument myself, but I can at least readily acknowledge it as a valid one whether I agree with the decision to force openness or not.








  • Maybe not legally punished, but this very article we’re discussing is about how insurance companies are, in fact, punishing you financially for it. As for the false accusation, sure, but how likely is anyone to even figure it out? You’re not being dragged into court, and people don’t even know this is happening yet. It’s only illegal if you get caught. I don’t expect them to report it to anyone. I just expect data collectors to sell data and other businesses to buy it for the express purposes of financially screwing you. You may stay out of court, but that extra 21% charge is gonna cost you a couple hundred per year at least.