abbenm

@abbenm@lemmy.ml

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abbenm,

It is a nice PR but for me I am not impressed. Rolex is also a non profit organization in Switzerland and and mostly help hiding there finance.

Okay but Rolex is Rolex. There are uncountably many non-profits, and many (most?) do good work. I don’t think Rolex is representative of your usual non profit.

abbenm,

So I did read the article, and… I’m not understanding a word you are saying. The families are suing a video game company for a gun in their video game. Also the article is not at all making the emphasis that you are making between marketing a specific game and video games writ large (the article kind of speaks to both of those at the same time and isn’t making any such distinction), so I don’t know what you are talking about. As far as the article is concerned this has everything to do with the fact that the gun was in a video game, and even Activisions statement in response was to defend themselves from the idea that their video game is a thing that pushing people to violence. So even Activision understands the lawsuit as tying their video game to violence.

I’m not saying I agree with the logic of the suit, but I literally have no idea what you think in the article separates out video games from the particular model of gun because that is just not a thing the article does at all.

abbenm,

So I’m not a fan of guns but, “marketing guns” is not per se illegal nor unique to video games. Yet the lawsuit separates out video games specifically. So I am not sure I agree that it’s less crazy at the end of the day.

abbenm,

That’s what I did!

abbenm,

My Puxl was from eBay.

To be honest, I don’t know much about how credit cards can be associated with phone hardware. I would think it could conceivably be tied to phone #s. In my case the phone is unlocked and it’s not an esim, which I understand we will all be moving too soon.

I wonder if it might have something to do with Google Pay or Apple Pay that ties hardware information to payments? And as for Esim, it might make it so that you can’t distinguish phones based on their physical sim card so it perhaps introduces a possibility of reliance on hardware.

But this is all speculation on my part. I just don’t know and I haven’t made whatever precautions would be needed.

abbenm,

Syncthing is brilliant, although for me it has had a heck of a learning curve to keep straight. Might just be me though.

abbenm,

NewPipe is a killer app I would say, with nearly Youtube Red level functionality in something that’s free and OSS. A bit afield from privacy, but you do get to access youtube stuff without logging in.

abbenm, (edited )

Very good to know. After following your Github link, I found my way to the blog post that it looks like you are quoting:

newpipe.net/blog/…/State-of-the-Pipe-2023/

Lasse Collin, the other xz maintainer, has acknowledged the backdoor (tukaani.org)

They haven’t particularly made a comment on the situation so much as acknowledged it’s happening. They seem to be going with the story that they had nothing to do with it and this is news to them. Hope to hear more from them soon so we can find out more about the situation, how and why this happened, etc....

abbenm,

In what way did I bend your logic?

Well for starters, the person above was pretty explicitly NOT advocating for reliance on third party libs, and perhaps more importantly, they were not in any way suggesting reliance on closed source software. In essence, diametrically the opposite of everything you were talking about.

I think your confusion came in their phrasing of not relying on “labor product.” I took them to mean, not relying on people committing their free labor to sustain FOSS. I think you must have read that as not supporting FOSS.

Also - not constructive? But you’re the one that’s being negative.

I think they are right. You took the exact opposite of what they said and “corrected” them for it, which is irritating as hell. And now you’re doubling down, which is worse. I would be irritated too!

abbenm,

Mate, we are discussing on two different threads. Chill out. Maybe I didnt get your point so feel free to elaborate or leave it.

I think it would be really good if all of us on the internet agreed to a rule, which is that if you mischaracterize someone or misread them, it’s not that weird for them to want you to not do that. So I don’t think it’s fair to response to a comment correctly noting they are being mischaractized by going out of your way to try and make it about their emotions/mental state.

abbenm,

we shouldn’t rely on free software made by free labor, and we need to say goodbye to some 60-70% or more of the software we use

Again I’m just reading along, and as a person who cares about, you know, the principle of charity, I don’t see how you can possibly think that’s the most charitable interpretation of what they said. I took them to mean we should do what we can to ensure these projects have financial resources to continue, not that we should “say goodbye” to them.

And here’s the crazy thing: I’m not even saying I agree. I just think it’s possible to address a face value version of what they’re talking about without taking unnecessary cheap shots.

abbenm, (edited )

And again, that’s not even within an country mile of being a good faith attempt at charitable interpretation, for several reasons.

You’re twisting their words into some sort seemingly overnight goodbye to all software relying on third party libs. A more normal way of taking that is envisioning a more gradual progression to some future state of affairs, where to the greatest extent possible we’ve worked to create an ecosystem that meets our needs. An ecosystem that’s build on a secure foundation of known and overseen libraries that conform to the greatest extent possible to the FOSS vision. Ideally you don’t just say goodbye, you work to create ersatz replacements, which there’s a rich tradition of in the FOSS world.

Your other point was even worse:

important software shouldn’t reuse code already made, they should reinvent the wheel and in the process introduce unique vulnerabilities

Somehow, you decided that putting words in their mouth about going out of their way to solve the problem only with worst-case-scenario bad software development practices (e.g. lets go ahead and create unique vulnerabilities and never re-use code) is a reasonable way of reading them, which is completely nuts. FOSS can and does re-use code, and should continue to do so to the extent possible. And like all other software, strive to avoid vulnerabilities with their usual procedures. That’s not really an argument against anything specific to their suggestion so much as its an argument against developing any kind of software at any point in time - new games, new operating systems, re-implementations seeking efficiency and security, etc. These all face the same tradeoffs with efficient code usage and security. Nothing more or less than that is being talked about here.

abbenm,

That’s where the not that weird idea comes into play. It’s not that weird to not want to be misrepresented - that’s an entirely different thing from trolling, or strawmanning, or seeking out inflammatory topics on purpose. It’s a natural and understandable reaction, and we shouldn’t respond to it by deciding it’s ok to retaliate with increasingly less fair characterizations of their statements.

abbenm,

Wait, what? I don’t think they were talking about piracy. They sound like they’re talking about something more like a C-Span type thing, envisioned as a YouTube alternative.

abbenm,

It is but there’s just not enough content to get me to fully stop YouTube yet

I don’t think anyone is proposing an overnight switch. You’ve got to take the long view. That said, I do think when it comes to federated activity pub style projects, Mastodon has gotten off the ground, Lemmy has exploded, pixel-fed seems to be doing pretty good, but the video stuff appears to be a tougher nut to crack.

abbenm,

Exactly. For any proposed change, it’s going to run up against what I like to call Status Quo Extremism, which is a mindset that suggests that “But that would be different from the status quo” counts as a defeater argument against proposed changes.

The combination of incentives would, as you note, need to be driven by niche interests rather than attempting to reproduce the incentives of the top 0.01% of YouTube creators.

Google Allows Creditors to Brick Your Phone (lemmy.world)

I installed NetGuard about a month ago and blocked all internet to apps, unless they’re on a whitelist. No notifications from this particular system app (that can’t be disabled) until recently when it started making internet connection requests to google servers. Does anyone know when this became a thing?...

abbenm,

And there’s the rub. Sure, it’s a financed phone. It doesn’t follow that we have to suspend judgment on the means they resort to, to enforce their terms.

abbenm,

Perfectly stated! The moralizing story kind of serves as cover, as a complete blank check to excuse practically any behavior of the lender, without any limiting principle.

abbenm,

Excuse me! I would never buy a thinkpad.

abbenm,

What would you consider an authoritative source on if something looks nice?

abbenm, (edited )

Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances

So I went ahead and read that article and goodness gracious, does anybody actually read these links??? Because that link is a complete nothingburger. It’s a blog post from someone who never read a 990 before (standard nonprofit disclosure form) who thinks every other line of is proof of a scandal. But it’s not, it’s just a big word salad that is too long to read, so nobody will bother.

The most significant charge is (1) that the CEO makes too much and (2) the author doesn’t like that they contract out work to consultants who think diversity is good. Every point made, so far as I can tell:

  • Have assets worth $1.1 billion as of 2021
  • Mozilla spent less on “expenses” from 2021 relative to 2020
  • Revenue went up over the same time
  • A lot of revenue was from royalties (e.g. agreements for default search)
  • They disagree with the wording on a donate form about whether Mozilla “relies” on individual donations
  • The CEO made $5.6MM
  • They pulled out one expense, which appears to have been training/education relating to social justice topics
  • They pull out a few more individual expenses and weren’t sure what they were.

This isn’t secret documents being handed to Deep Throat in a dark parking lot. There’s no smoking gun, no smoke, just a PDF with ordinary tables of expenses and revenue, and consultants who did diversity training. If that’s shady then, get ready to be mad about every non-profit ever.

abbenm,

Pretty sure all non-profits strive to be cash flow positive, in the United States and otherwise.

abbenm,

Should Mozilla be a not-for-profit instead? Trying to figure out the upshot of that distinction as it relates to this thread.

Elden Ring is getting a free-to-play mobile version with in-app purchases (www.rockpapershotgun.com)

Action-RPG colossus Elden Ring is reportedly getting a free-to-play mobile adaptation with in-app purchases, which takes inspiration from miHoYo’s Genshin Impact. It’s being published by Tencent, who apparently acquired the licensing rights to Elden Ring back in 2022 and put a few dozen people to work on a prototype, even as...

abbenm,

Uh?? Is War & Peace not literary fiction? Also I think Diablo, arguably the most famous RPG game (for better or worse), is an action RPG.

abbenm,

I think all stars in the galaxy will be dead by then.

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