Humans care about belonging and fairness. Profit is one type of political good that can be distributed based on different criteria, for example by selling a good or a service or by stealing or copying someone’s code. But profit is not the only political good that exists. There’s also relevance. There is credit. There is legitimacy.
TL;DR: Money is not the only thing that humans care about. Humans also care about fairness.
The article’s “valuing your time” argument is problematic in certain contexts. My brother has had so much trouble with his dual-boot (Windows and Linux). Yes, he could learn how to solve something in Linux every time a problem arises, but he also has to deliver his projects on time. Because of that, he mostly spends time on his Windows dual boot. Yeah, it sucks ethically and has its own pragmatic issues, but he has never had issues resolving dependencies or hunting down the most recent version that can actually be run in NixOS.
I don’t doubt these will become issues that will not be as problematic in the future, but right now my brother cannot use Linux reliably for his assignments.
Edit: My brother has tried what I use: Fedora and NixOS. He has also tried PopOS.
In Fedora, he found some of his software didn’t exist as .deb, and struggled to make .tar files work smoothly for him.
He tried NixOS afterward. He really liked the whole immutability thing, as well as the idea that apps would have their own dependencies.
His dependency problem happened in PopOS. If I remember correctly, it was a code editor that required a version of something that was different to what a package he used in his software was.
I think the order he tried was Fedora -> NixOS -> PopOS -> NixOS -> ? (Haven’t talked to him about it recently)
I can’t see how AI can’t be done in a privacy-respecting way [edit: note the double negative there]. The problem that worries me is performance. I have used texto-to-speech AI and it absolutely destroys my poor processors. I really hope there’s an efficient way of adding alt text, or of turning the feature off for users who don’t need it.
It actually took me a while to realize he was not wearing the clothes of a McDonald’s worker.
The way string of any material is woven should be durable. But plastic can be a magical material. It doesn’t cool when wet, regardless of whether it’s got fat on it (unlike wool, which requires lanolin). And its cheapness makes it readily available to billions of people.
To be clear, yes, we should avoid overproduction and overconsumption of plastic. Yes, we should research cheap ways of making durable and waterproof/still-warm-when-wet clothes that are biodegradable. Yes, we should require good filters in every washing machine and dryer so that we don’t get full of microplastics.
Ah. This makes sense! Thanks!
Sometimes I don’t either…
I’m not sure adblockers change the OS they report. Other tools I know for a fact do it.
Edit: However, as @aebletrae@hexbear.net mentions, adblockers don’t have to change what OS is reported to change the overall statistics. They explain how in a comment below.
I found this: “With its plug still intact but threatened by warm water upwelling, the Ice Tongue prevents the majority of West Antarctica land and undersea ice from collapse and seabed displacement, respectively. The changes are profound and terrifying. The land-fast ice is gone in front of PIG and Thwaites before the melt season begins. This is not going to end well.”
I think most of the criticism on Telegraph regarding how Matrix handles rooms and events are addressed by the work behind linearized matrix: https://www.qwant.com/?l=en&q=linearized+matrix+messaging&t=web
EDIT BEINGS HERE
So I actually watched a talk by the person who coinded “enshittification”, Cory Doctorow, recently, and I have changed my perspective about Kagi. I no longer think Kagi is doomed to enshittify.
Enshittification requires advertisers. As long as Kagi finances itself with money that does not come from advertisers, it will not enshittify.
This does not mean that it’s not problematic that their code is closed-source.
EDIT ENDS HERE
I like what I hear about the user experience, but there are many problems I see with the service.
For one, it’s based in the USA, so it is legally subject to the insane, antidemocratic, and awful state surveillance there.
It is also a corporation, so it is subject to enshittification. Currently, it is giving users loads of stuff so that users use it, but sooner or later investors will want their money back and Kagi will enshittify.
Finally, these two problems would be mitigated by open-sourcing and making libre their software. With that, alternatives in more sensible legislatures could open. Users could migrate to instances that are still libre and not enshittified.
It is really unfortunate that Kagi is doing so many things well while doing some fundamental things terribly. As it stands, Kagi is doomed to enshittify.
I think this ignores that some children are more pensieve and reflexive…
I’m glad to ser a fellow grammar connosieur. Stressed syllables can be hard to spot sometimes.
Not actually, but it could be someone’s predicament
Just in case OP doesn’t know, this whole text comes from someone else. Some people prefer using words other than GNU/Linux.
Ummm… This is a bit grotesque, so if you don’t like graphical bodily stuff, maybe skip what follows. Anyway, someone gifted me really expensive and rare cheese recently. By that point, I had been eating less animal products, so I had forgotten my body couldn’t really handle dairy…
My friend and I tried it and it was absurdly tasty. We kept on eating, grating, eating, grating… In a single sitting, my friend and I ate the whole thing.
Oh boy, what a mistake. My belly ached. I was bloated. ‘Not a problem’, I thought, ‘tomorrow morning everything will be okay’. My lactase-abundant friend left and I went to sleep.
Middle of the night. I woke up. Nausea. Dizziness. I just had to go go the toilet. I ran. Oh boy, my stomach wasn’t happy with me. At all.
I figured I’d wait and see if this ended up being serious. It could be temporary. Except, I had to go to the toilet again, and again, and again.
“OK, snek_boi, you need electrolytes. You won’t die from lactose intolerance-induced dehydration. I refuse”. So I went to the store, got the electrolytes, and chugged them as I came back. Alright. Time to sleep, again.
I managed to sleep, except when I woke up I still felt nauseous. I went to the bathroom. This time, (TRIGGER WARNING, GROTESQUE) I was pooping radioactive water. It was bright yellow, almost like Powerade or Gatorade or something like that. Wtf.
I took out my phone to see if I should go to the hospital. Turns out, if you eat too much cheese, it goes through a whole process as your body tries to decompose it. The very last step is pooping bile, which is secreted in an attempt to digest the fat in cheese.
Knowing about that whole ‘cheese digestion process’, I guessed I wouldn’t die anytime soon. I just sat on the toilet, drinking my electrolyte solution, contemplating, contemplating my poor decisions, contemplating the wondrous complexity of chemistry and biology, contemplating the fragility of human life and good gut health.
TL;DR: Too much cheese can mess you up.
Dead Cells! Made by a worker cooperative 🥳