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The tools I love are made by awful people

ankursethi.com

101–110 of 185 posts

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#101
post #12

I would love it if I could use Linux on the Desktop. Windows 11 feels a practical joke played on humanity by Nadella. The new Macbooks have amazing hardware, but the software quality has deteriorated considerably - even spotlight has bugs nowadays. However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve. If the Linux Software Foundati…

Umm get a framework laptop. Sleep/restore works out of the box. Admittedly I only tried it on QubesOS and Nixos, but if it works in both of those places chances are pretty good that it will work for any distro. THere’s a reasonable chance if you get a lenovo thinkpad or similar very mainstream laptop it will just work there as well, but get a framework anyway because they’re good and you deserve a nice laptop.

They're not so available in the EU.

Some countries they don't export to.

Other countries the VAT + import tax just adds up.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#102
post #83
post #4

There’s this modern affliction where people believe they are morally responsible for the actions of every person they buy anything from. For your own sanity, please let this go. You are responsible for your own actions. If you buy a pen from a psychopath and he uses the money to buy a bullet and shoot someone, that’s not your fault. He’s responsible for his actions. It’s like everyone somehow forgot that other humans…

Your purchasing decisions are one of the more significant ways you impact the world and it makes sense people want to be cognizant of how they are effecting other people. Though I recognize depending on people's mental health it can be stressful to think about and if you can't then it's okay, one of my friends in particular was worrying about what she was buying to the point where it was a significant source of stres…

It makes sense if consumerism is your only connection to human society.

It is a form of trained helplessness to fixate perpetually on consumption.

If someone wants to do good in the world, go out and do it. help someone for real. I think it is lack of real connection that leads people to navel gaze about the third order consequences of their clothes or software.

I think this substack [1] summed it up perfectly:

>I was 16 when I realized I had to kill myself. I was in a Denny’s with my friends, looking at an empty glass of Diet Coke. The glass was produced by taking the raw resources of a foreign country, exploiting its workers in horrible factories, and sent to me to drink out of. And I didn’t really have any other option for getting liquid from a nearby water source into my body, it had to travel through moral atrocity along the way. It wasn’t just one glass, of course. It was everything. It was the shoes I was wearing (shoes were a big deal in those days) and the flooring I walked on and the food I ate. The only moral act was to kill oneself, and failure to do that meant you accept your role as a vicious monster. (The depression helped, but maybe the depression/guilt causality was reversed.)

https://deathisbad.substack.com/p/does-the-omelas-kid-have-a...

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#103
post #20

> Things will only change when democratically elected governments across the world step in with regulation, drag Big Tech through the courts, and fine them billions of dollars. How will that help you install Linux.

I think the point is that if the corporations are morally kept in check by governments, then installing Linux wouldn't be necessary.

how about the government keep people in check by forcing them to install Linux?

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#104

Have the author did the reality check exercise? What might seem as awful conditions by some westerner, might be great given other options. Once I read a post about working at Foxconn - assembly line for majority of hardware manufacturers. You might remember people were dropping off the roof because of hard working conditions. Yet they have a line of candidates. Because the other option is working at the same intensit…

The author lives in India, where Foxconn has multiple factories.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#105
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know up front what's going to happen. Seeing the future is not an ability humans have. Unless the pen is being sold as part of some murder fundraiser and you're going out of your way to specifically buy it there than from any better options the person doing the murder is the one responsible for the murdering.

If that's the rebuke then the whole comparison is silly. Since if you buy clothes at some chain like Zara you know before hand what the conditions are which they impose on their workers. You don't need "future sight" for that.

You personally know the conditions? You know that the workers would be better off not having the option of working in the Zara factory? I don't mean a choice between working for Zara and a hypothetical fantasy option of them working in an office with 40 hour work weeks and air conditioning, I mean their actual other option like subsistence farming or whatever they did before there was a Zara factory. You feel you are more entitled to make that choice for the workers than they are themselves?

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#107
post #12

I would love it if I could use Linux on the Desktop. Windows 11 feels a practical joke played on humanity by Nadella. The new Macbooks have amazing hardware, but the software quality has deteriorated considerably - even spotlight has bugs nowadays. However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve. If the Linux Software Foundati…

Umm get a framework laptop. Sleep/restore works out of the box. Admittedly I only tried it on QubesOS and Nixos, but if it works in both of those places chances are pretty good that it will work for any distro. THere’s a reasonable chance if you get a lenovo thinkpad or similar very mainstream laptop it will just work there as well, but get a framework anyway because they’re good and you deserve a nice laptop.

Yes, framework looks really good. Wasn't an option before due to extremely heavy import duty and they didn't bother opening ordering. (But hopefully changing now that Trump has raised the reciprocal hammer and revised trade agreements are being signed..)

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#108
post #12

I would love it if I could use Linux on the Desktop. Windows 11 feels a practical joke played on humanity by Nadella. The new Macbooks have amazing hardware, but the software quality has deteriorated considerably - even spotlight has bugs nowadays. However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve. If the Linux Software Foundati…

> The new Macbooks have amazing hardware

Hm. You can't really repair or upgrade them, so you don't own the hardware at all. That's far from amazing.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#109
post #12

I would love it if I could use Linux on the Desktop. Windows 11 feels a practical joke played on humanity by Nadella. The new Macbooks have amazing hardware, but the software quality has deteriorated considerably - even spotlight has bugs nowadays. However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve. If the Linux Software Foundati…

> I would love it if I could use Linux on the Desktop.

Not sure what you use your desktop for. If your issue is that you need certain professional applications that are not compatible with Linux you may be out of luck.

But if your complaint id "core usability and stability", I am not really sure what you are complaining about.

I migrated my personal laptop from Windows to Linux Mint around 3 years ago, and it's amazing how much more stable and easy to use it is in comparison - case in point, back in Windows days I would have to do a fresh install every year or so.

And don't get me started on OSX. I have to use it daily on my work-issued laptop, and I deeply loathe it how it is hostile to more technical users (I would sincerely prefere using Windows than that crap).

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#110
post #20

> Things will only change when democratically elected governments across the world step in with regulation, drag Big Tech through the courts, and fine them billions of dollars. How will that help you install Linux.

If we're praying for unicorns, they might also notice they're paying millions for licenses to software they can't self-support or even audit. Then reinvest money from fines into in-house, open development, and use that instead of closed solutions.
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