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GitHub Should Start an App Store

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211–220 of 319 posts

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all you need to do is look at the windows ecosystem vs the linux one to realize how important a software hub is. windows is a place where people download random one off pieces of software that may or may not be safe, will likely never be updated, and will sit and rot on your computer until the end of time, and are entirely unvetted whereas linux maintains all of your software for you, keeps it frequently up to date,…

This argument really doesn't resonate with me. Like, if people want to download trash on their Windows computer, who am I to stop them? You can do that on your Mac and Linux devices too. People don't need to be protected by App Stores. I'm not only concerned about that, though. The standard 30% cut of revenue flowing through the app if it was downloaded from the app store is also an issue. In general, App Stores crea…

i agree that you should be able to do whatever you want with you device. if you want to download malware or try to manage it all yourself, then you should be able to do that. i think that out of the box, by default, having things managed by a package manager makes sense, especially for normies. this app store monopoly doesn't exist on android. you can very easily install fdroid or any other app store whenever you want. this issue does exist on ios though. if you would want to argue that alternative app stores or package managers should be front and center out of the box, I'd be more than fine with that as well.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#214
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The thesis of the illiberal left isn't that universality under the law shouldn't exist, the free speech shouldn't exist, that individualism shouldn't exist, that color-blindness shouldn't exist, that equality of opportunity shouldn't exist, or anything else. The thesis is that those things don't exist in the real world . And it goes further than that, by saying that those things cannot exist in our society unless maj…

I don't understand how I was arguing with a strawman, when your entire argument is explaining WHY the left is illiberal. I said that the illiberal left differs from liberals in that they don't, for example, find color-blindness to be a reasonable strategy for eliminating racism. You go on to explain why the illiberal left doesn't find color-blindness to be a reasonable strategy for eliminating racism. No strawmanning was done, nor was a moral judgment.

To address some of your points. You say

> The thesis is that those things don't exist in the real world. And it goes further than that, by saying that those things cannot exist in our society unless major changes happen

Liberalism doesn't make a claim regarding whether or not things exist or not. It is a fixed compass of procedural principles. Completely consistent of means, independent of ends, and independent of the state of things. You can't say that "free speech doesn't exist in the real world," when free speech is a procedural description of the way the system should run. If there is a failure of free speech to be applied unilaterally, that isn't a failure of liberalism, so much as an implementation error, and a failure to actually run the system as described. Your argument is like saying that "habeas corpus doesn't exist because the Japanese were interned in WW2." Habeas corpus is a procedural description of a process. What happened in WW2 wasn't habeas corpus not existing, but an implementation failure where habeas corpus was not implemented.

Much of the liberal ethos was present in the country since the get-go, and the failures of the country were actually failures of implementation. How can you have slaves, how can you treat people differently in accordance with their race, how can women not vote, in a country whose espoused ethics describe systems that would in no way tolerate these failings? The strongest leaps forward in progress have come from making the claim "this is what the liberal ethos describes, and this is how you're failing at it." MLK or the suffragettes are making the case that they're being denied their ability to act as individual actors, being denied equality under the law.

Now, compare this to the modern left.

> If you didn't notice, the conclusion of the lefitst project after gender equality became progressive weakening and then almost abolition of gender - and I mean this in the strictest sociological sense of gender as the perception of a set of social attributes related to sex.

You have described the exact opposite of what the modern left is. In the 60s-00s, the movement regarding gender equality was primarily what I would have described as a liberal movement. One that is hyper focused on individualism, and asserting that identity could exist as independently from sex or race as one wanted. If you are a girl, and you have short hair, and you like fighting, and skateboarding, and you're sexually attracted to women, that is as valid an expression of what it means to be a female as any other variant. This is an anti-collective, purely individualistic position, and is spot on with the liberal assertions of individualism and (gender)-blindness.

The modern leftist position is a complete inversion of this. If you are a girl, and you have short hair, and you like fighting, and skateboarding, and you're sexually attracted to women, are you sure you're not a boy? Your gender presentation is rather male, you must at least be non-binary? Do you see how this is a complete inversion? It goes back to making the assertion that these gender expressions are actually fundamentally to be associated with fixed collectives. I find it to be a much more powerful expression for a man to have long hair, wear dresses and makeup, love whoever they want to love, and say "I'm a man, and this is what being a man means to me." I don't take any issue with that same person asserting that they're a woman, I just think, again, that it could not stand in starker opposition to what is clearly the extension of the liberal movement regarding gender identity.

I'd keep discussing more of your points, and I'd be happy to continue later, but I'm honestly slightly apprehensive by your tone that you might not actually be interested in a conversation. Like I said, though, if you're looking to continue the conversation genuinely, then I'd be happy to.

In summary, I think the illiberal left DO think that universality under the law, free speech, individualism, color-blindness, equality of opportunity shouldn't exist. Your argument is that they do think that they should exist, but believe that they don't exist. My case against this is that, not only do I virtually never see any of these things espoused as values by leftists, but often see them ridiculed. And as I said, these are all descriptions of procedural means, they are not ends. So you literally cannot believe in those things if the procedures you want to see implemented are done so in pursuit of corrective ends. I can't say I believe in free speech, but then restrict the speech that I think that is harmful to the equitable outcomes I want. Controlling speech in pursuit of outcomes is itself the opposite of what free speech is. The desired outcomes are irrelevant. To then say that leftists "don't believe these shouldn't exist," is not correct. They very much don't believe that these procedural systems should exist, because none of the procedures they design or implement remotely resemble any of these systems.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#215
In some ways I feel like this is coming in the not-so distant future. You can already auto update releases every commit, get paid via sponsor, and receive “reviews” (issues). It’s inching steadily towards an App Store already. They seem to be adding social media features too, the user profile README being the most notable example recently.

Edit: It’s interesting to notice throughout the comment section all the places where ‘App Store’ has been (presumably) automatically capitalized.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> equally whacky things trending on the left side, e.g. "Russian Ads on Facebook won Trump the election". Why is that "whacky"? There were Russian ads.[1] They obviously intended to affect the election result (because why bother otherwise). Whether or not they were actually successful in affecting the election is unknowable. But it's not flat-earther-whacky to think they succeeded. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu…

The right is saying the same about election fraud. Neither have any basis in reality beyond circumstancial evidence. Neither should dominate the conversation so heavily and yet... here we are. Both left and right have it's stupid moments, if you can't see that it's you with the bias, not me.

I don't think you understand what "circumstantial evidence" is.

I'm aware I'm biased, but in this case the facts are in plain sight for Russian ads. A Republican authored that report. You may think yourself unbiased by saying "both sides are the same" but both sides are in fact not the same at all.

The "right" may say the same about "election fraud" but saying is not the same as having a well-sourced report, and federal investigation that netted multiple indictments and convictions.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#217
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is situational and opportunistic. It can change any day. In fact, managing an important app store is exactly one way to re-(un)-balance this relationship. I agree. Sorting huge, multinational, publicly traded companies in friends and enemies list is so obviously bogus and immature that it baffles me that this is so prevalent. Microsoft is not your enemy. It's not your friend (unless you're one of the shareholde…

Business is amoral; the system is amoral. But every player in the system must choose for every action whether to do that action or not. The actions they choose will either conform to the morals or they will not, so in the end just like the individual people that comprise them, companies are (mostly) either good or bad. There’s nothing that says a company, even a publicly-traded one, must not exist for anything but pr…

A company is not a static entity and its "morals" will change must faster than those of an individual. Moreover nothing says that the management of a company must act based on their innate morals. Lying for personal benefit is a perfectly valid human trait. Humans are also very good at justifying anything we do that benefits us as aligning with our moral compass. So in the end a company must be assumed to have no moral compass in the future even if it has one now. Giving a company power now based on its moral compass will just mean it has power to abuse in the future when its moral compass changes.

Microsoft and Google being recent examples of companies shifting their moral compass fairly quickly.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#218
The reason why centralized app stores (and autocratic dictatorships) suck is because once you delegate enough power to a single entity, they will ALWAYS have an incentive to start using this power to protect their own interest and not yours.

The arguments like "unlike Google, they actually listen to their users" sound similar to "this guy is a complete tyrant, but look, his interests are aligned with ours, for now". History has shown where this road goes.

I think, the only way to have a fair "app store" is to somehow model the recommendation mechanics of the pre-monopoly era. 50 years ago you would learn about a new product from your friends (i.e. people you trust) or a newspaper you would buy (i.e. the "influencer" you trust). Each person had their own circle of friends and trusted "influencers", and made their decisions based on them. There wasn't any central authority that could apply the same ranking algorithm to what 100 million different people get to see.

This could be modeled fairly well with decentralized mechanisms. Where the weight/rating of an app is different for each user, and it strictly comes from the approval of that app by the people they trust. If you get too much spam this way, just track down the source in your trust network and untrust them.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#219

The reason why centralized app stores (and autocratic dictatorships) suck is because once you delegate enough power to a single entity, they will ALWAYS have an incentive to start using this power to protect their own interest and not yours. The arguments like "unlike Google, they actually listen to their users" sound similar to "this guy is a complete tyrant, but look, his interests are aligned with ours, for now".…

They're not really app stores, but community-managed free software repositories (e.g. Debian) work astoundingly well next to the shit-show that is every commercial app store I've ever seen.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#220
post #156
post #32

> They already host source code of millions of apps. Release integration should be trivial to implement. Release integration is trivial for anyone. It's the easiest and most irrelevant part of the app stores. > Unlike Google they actually listen to their users. They were awesome during youtube-dl debacle. And controversial on others, like shutting down Popcorn Time's repository. As any other, they'll listen if there'…

> Sure, lets pipe user feedback directly into GitHub issues. Good luck with that if you have a hundred issues a day. This honestly sounds like it could be a feature with the right automation. Devs are often separated from customers by multiple layers of "flappers" who's sole job is to triage, organize, and perform manual resolution of customer issues. If your app is large enough to receive hundreds of issues a day, t…

So far we have not been to find a way to automate this sort of triage unfortunately. Also, most developers I know are quite happy that there is someone between them and the customers.
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