Aspen Ideas Festival
"throwing a fit" ...at a week-long festival in Aspen.
Yeah, these bigwigs have it rough.
482 posts • joined 9 Aug 2011
I made the same switch to AquaMail, right before AquaMail made the switch to "sketchy owners." Now I'm back to K9 and feel like I'm rapidly running out of options. I wasn't exactly impressed by "we promise we won't read your email no really."
I don't want *anyone* reading my mail (except the NSA, foreign governments, and major crime syndicates, which apparently we don't get a choice about).
Agree with "duh".
Strong disagree with "more important things to worry about."
Don't worry, I won't be saying "told you so," because when we get to that point I will have long since been silenced. History shows that they come for you "nothing to hide" types later, just... not too much later.
Question: when the CIA takes several months to "redact" a document, who's to say they didn't simply make up a new document entirely from scratch? It's not like there's anybody checking who isn't also also, basically, CIA...
In an earlier version of Zoom, when trying to get it running in a browser I noticed that even though the meeting hadn't started and Zoom showed us as "waiting for host", the video and audio streams from the host were running, showing her setting up and stuff, unaware that the camera was on. You just had to know where the hidden, muted browser widget that displayed the stream was in the CSS stack. I suspect that they would keep the streams running so that "mute person" and "start meeting" are instantaneous in the client. It would not surprise me if it still did this.
"As of January 2024, Google will be shutting down their support for the Google Universal Code Verification platform, used by thousands of projects and companies to verify the security of their open source supply chain. If you use the system to verify a project, it will continue to work until March, at which point the servers will be taken offline.
"Google, in its statement, said that while GUCV had been successful, they are going to shift their focus to other products like Google Flavor Of The Month[TM]."
I particularly hate that drivers can't be trusted to be sensible. I know it's a "distraction" and it's to "save lives" but...I know better than to try to watch a movie while I'm driving. My car won't let you, for example, pair a phone while driving. I get it, the driver will be distracted, but that's why I the passenger, am trying to do it.
But, no, I'm not being realistic. I'm a freak, an outlier. I see people obviously playing phone games while driving. People can't be trusted with anything: put their foot on the brake while putting the car in gear, wear a seatbelt, look in their blind spots...they will screw it up and then sue the motor company for allowing them to do it. People are incompetent and irresponsible.
So, the real question is: if we're so incompetent and untrustworthy, why we are allowed to touch the steering wheel at all?
And there's that assumption again: "Intuitive" == "DOS/Windows".
Now that we've SystemD'd the core and all Linux-as-a-desktop initiatives wholeheartedly copy either Mac or Windows, it's time to start making sure all command line tools are exactly like Windows as well. :(
I say to you :P
Is it just me or does Mozilla sound scared? They should be. Their purpose is to appear as "competition" and participate in "public forums" and "discussion" in the same way that "interviewing 5 candidates" is often followed by "hiring the boss's nephew." Forgetting this could be very dangerous to various careers.
"Dropping" is NVidia's watchword. They dropped their stereo 3D platforms without looking back, they'll drop their VR support for a completely new and incompatible tech the second they feel like it. I'm not even sure it's linked to profit in any real way. The crypto miner market is fickle? Nothing like as fickle as NVidia's marketing pushes.
>> They have value because we agree that they have value, that's all.
> FIAT has value as a representation of human activity and how it can be exchanged: 4 hours of person X costs Y and Y can be then used to purchase something entirely different.
You just gave a concrete example, illustrating how the previous statement works in practice, and called it a counterargument.
"Davis then said that System76 fixes bugs in its own distro before fixing them upstream in Ubuntu (Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu)..."
That just sounds like good business. I fix bugs first in my own branch of projects, instead of waiting to see whether my PRs are accepted and then waiting for a new release of the code and then integrating that into my release.
The article takes a journalistically neutral tone, something quite rare to see outside of El Reg nowadays, but wow from the quotes it sure does sound like one Gnome dev's hot take is being taken way too seriously. I suppose the Gnome devs must be quite defensive and fragile at this point, but you'd think they'd have grown thicker skins by now. FFS it's Gnome, nobody likes it; we just use it because it's the default.
"You'll remember an era on the web where innovation slowed down and even stopped"
No. I don't. I /do/ remember an era when one vendor used every bit of power their monopoly position afforded to make sure nobody else could compete with them. That was a very bad time indeed.
There are several statements even in this short article that are "arguable" at best. I don't know what I actually expected, but I suppose I still have enough optimism to be disappointed. What's that quote from Fury Road? "Hope is a mistake; if you can't fix what's broken you'll go insane".
systemd
Oracle's push to take control of Java and turn it into a corporate asset was just the inspiration Java developers needed to open it up. Working daily with both Java and ".NET" CLR projects, I would trade all my .NET assets for equivalent Java assets in a second, if I had the option.
"If weren't for the fact that it was run by the Chinese government, I'd even welcome the idea of Internet detox camps."
Trust your government much? At this point, I'm wondering what, exactly you *wouldn't* approve of as long as it isn't "run by the Chinese government?" Drone strikes? Extradition to secret torture prisons? Bulk data slurping? Archiving all phone conversations in a searchable database? This sort of "it's OK because we're the ones doing it" attitude is the root of many of our current day problems in the western world.
"...but we know how the Chinese government operates."
We know how all governments operate, the second you turn your back.
True, corporations are incomprehensible if you try to think of them as people, even though legally they sort of are. :( Another way to look at it is that, in the context of publicly-held corporations, *corporate law* is the only morality. Google isn't an evil corporation--it would be a truly evil human, but in fact it's a very good corporation. "Don't be evil" still applies, it's just that "good" has a different meaning here.
We've created extremely powerful creatures whose only morality is "maximize stockholder value," and "don't get caught when you break the law." Then, we act surprised when they ruin lives, dodge taxes, destroy the environment, treat their own customers badly, and in fact do anything they think they can get away with to maximize stockholder value.
Racism? Bigotry? Only has a moral import in the context of "public opinion," the tax advantages of "woman owned" or the regulatory requirement to do sensitivity training. Etc.
And it's not great for people like me who don't have Play Store or any Google apps at all on their phones. At this time I can still transfer some apps over from my "google store" phone. They must hate that. Of course now that the apps will be "compiled for specific hardware" this won't work any more.
They hate that people can use Android without Google. They hate it so bad.
The cynical editor in my head is hard at work with this one, replacing "writers and performers" with "Sony" etc.
I love how, when I perform an original piece of music in a public place with my band, Taylor Swift gets a little bit of the money the bar made that night. :P Love you Tay but that's MY 0.04 cents, thanks.
Telemetry shows that:
- all the features I use daily are unloved
- all of the annoyances I have disabled are popular
- the next version will force the annoyances on me while removing the features I love
- people like icons that are indistinguishable monochrome squares
- I need a beer
When roundabouts started appearing everywhere in CO, I researched them. What I learned:
1. The only documented benefit they offer is that they slow down traffic
2. Incredibly dangerous for bicyclists
#1 I assume is the great appeal. I won't disagree that most other drivers slow down considerably when entering a roundabout. ("Wheeee!" *squeal*)
However, here in "bike friendly" Fort Collins I don't understand why this trumps the problems of #2...
Those of us who run a Google-less Android don't have the Play Store TM, and it's actually quite nice to see an official download of the APK available. I mean, yes, if you're running the play store, you'll want to get apps there because hackers!
I mean, for this app it's largely a moot point but still.
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