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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • it’s mostly political

    Oh I gotcha. Interesting. I don’t follow FSF or GNU or anything, do you know if they tend to be antagonistic toward nonfree devs who still try to be as free as possible? Honestly, I read the Stallman quote about FreeBSD in this thread, and a statement from GNU that acknowledges the impracticality of their philosophy, and I kinda agree with their ethical takes. Except, I also think people should be able to install nonfree software, because otherwise you have a pretty bad dilemma with the word “free.”

    Ultimately, if they are actively antagonistic toward those who don’t share that philosophy, I think that’s not great. Sure, free software according to the GNU project may be the only ethical one, but we live in a culture that promotes the exact opposite idea, so why would I be surprised and upset when an otherwise ethically acting person doesn’t conform to my own ethical framework, and they go on and create nofree software. I’m still going to get a beer with that person because at the end of the day we probably have common values and how else am I going to sell them the idea free software


  • jwiggler@sh.itjust.workstoOpen Source@lemmy.mlWhy is GrapheneOS against GNU?
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    5 hours ago

    I’m afraid to ask this because I’m not a dev, but I have a fair amount of linux experience. Why is it that the ability to install Google Play Services on GrapheneOS makes it not FOSS/open source, while the ability to install Google Chrome (or any proprietary software, I guess) on Linux doesn’t make is non-FOSS/open source?

    I’m not articulating that question very well, and I’m assuming I’m missing some key component, but they seem comparable to me, as a regular user. Is it something like the level of access that GPServices has to the kernel?










  • Have you happened to read the book? He has a chapter dedicated to his decision to call it technofeudalism rather than capitalism, hypercapitalism, technocapitalism, etc. Basically he’s saying profits have been decoupled from a company’s value, and that it’s no longer about creating a product to exchange for profit (which, in his words, are beholden to market competition) but instead about extracting rent (which is not beholden to competition – his example is while a landowner’s neighbors increase the values of their properties, the landowner’s property value also increases).

    Anyways he describes Amazon, Apple store, Google Play, cloud service providers, as fiefdoms that collect rent from actual producers of products (physical goods, but also applications), and don’t actually produce anything, themselves, besides access to customers, while also extracting value from users of their technologies through personal information. They’re effectively leasing consumer attention in the same way landowners leased their lands to workers.

    It sounds pretty accurate to me, but I haven’t had much time to chew on it. What’s your take on that idea?




  • Ideologically Ubuntu makes me cringe, but I also use Google and a host of other technologies that fuck my privacy, so I guess I have accepted the world we live in.

    In the same way that I think it’s noble when people try to live waste free, I think it’s noble to use things like GrapheneOS, or selfhost all your services, or de-Google your tech. But it’s unrealistic for all of the world to live waste-free or customize their tech so as to be private. In the end, the government needs to step in and force these giant-ass companies to behave better, because they are the primary forces pushing forward the destruction of the environment and personal privacy.



  • jwiggler@sh.itjust.workstolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldSeen this countless times
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    4 months ago

    Hate saying it, but Ubuntu just works for me. I’d rather focus my computer configuration and maintenance efforts on clients rather than my own laptop. If I have to reinstall for whatever reason, its pretty easy because I’m already very familiar with the (shitty) installer, and I don’t do much customizing because I’d rather not have to go through that every time I reinstall.

    Granted I’ve never even bothered to run Arch, or any really other desktop distro for that matter. Ubuntu + Gnome looks nice, seems to just work, all I need to do is apt install nvidia drivers and firefox post-install and I’m up and running. I don’t want to do work on my laptop, I want my laptop to enable me to do work.


  • jwiggler@sh.itjust.workstoLord of the memes@midwest.socialSnacks and some pipe-weed
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    5 months ago

    I mean, yeah, you’re coming to a small community of LOTR fans and accusing the author of their fandom of being racist. I’m not sure what you expect lol.

    But yeah there are some dubiously racist characterizations in the novels. There are also some moments of reflection, like Sam seeing the dead Harad soldier:

    He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home.

    I mean, the book is written from a Western POV, and by a white Catholic guy who was born in the late 1800s. I think the chances were pretty slim of him having a modern outlook on race, gender, sexuality, etc.

    Edit: omg on midwest.social too hahaha