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Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

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Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#71
post #33

What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…

This very morning, my wife performed reset of cache/cookies from our family’s perfectly fine iPad 3 (yeah, the one from 2012, 11 years old). The iPad is our kitchen TV, it shows either some content from VLC (works perfectly fine, kudos to the devs) or some YouTube from Safari (the AppStore’s app support is long gone, web app still works quite well, even considering it was updated recently). Today I spent my morning t…

I refuse to buy hardware when it comes out, and I only buy used hardware from private sellers on ebay. And only hardware that I know there's a possibility of me (read as: my clumsy hands) repairing it without having equipment worth 10k$. The reason I am doing this is because I had several Macbooks and Ultrabooks when they were cool and shiny, and all of them died within less than 2 years. So I kinda learned my lesson.

This sadly limits the options to less than let's say 10 devices. For now I am still using my 10 years old T440p because it's the last generation laptop that can both run coreboot and is still repairable (and it survived all the Ultrabooks I mentioned before. WTF?). But it's too old for Vulkan because there is no Haswell support. It was the perfect laptop until around 2020 when Vulkan was rolled out. Can forget games that ran before that now, because of mesa dropping support for it.

The framework will very likely be my next laptop if the current one dies, but only time will tell if the promise is worth the price.

Fairphone 2/3 are kinda useless as an ideology if there are no replacement parts available 12 months after the phone came out...so yeah, I got also two broken Fairphones I cannot repair for the moment because the bottom module isn't available anywhere.

I kinda refuse to buy a full phone just for spare parts because I can do that with literally every other cheap Chinese Android phone.

With the T440p there's no working new mint condition batteries available and only used ones that have less than 60% capacity when you buy them, so I am currently trying to design a battery case that can use 18650 cells directly without soldering. Takes a lot of time to iterate, and very hard to print with a cheap 3d printer.

I think I am way too stubborn for this world, given the amount of time I spend on fixing my old hardware.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#72
post #33

What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…

The pity is that while he was remarkably prescient, he seems to have stopped adapting decades ago. GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Prett…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#73
post #13

Asking out of curiosity, not to be cruel: I wonder if he's willing to use medical equipment that uses non-Free software? To my knowledge, his stated position against using non-Free software is pretty much absolute; but given that medical equipment's software is almost universally non-Free, taking that stance here would seriously endanger his ability to receive necessary medical care.

Younger folk might not remember that RMS actually once said that Word 5.0 was the best word processor he ever used.

He's not unreasonable, he's just very adamant about software freedom.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#74
post #33

What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…

The pity is that while he was remarkably prescient, he seems to have stopped adapting decades ago. GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Prett…

> Where's their Youtube channel, or their Twitter?

Well, they are Free Software Foundation, they have Mastodon (and PeerTube, although the latter is pretty empty).

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This very morning, my wife performed reset of cache/cookies from our family’s perfectly fine iPad 3 (yeah, the one from 2012, 11 years old). The iPad is our kitchen TV, it shows either some content from VLC (works perfectly fine, kudos to the devs) or some YouTube from Safari (the AppStore’s app support is long gone, web app still works quite well, even considering it was updated recently). Today I spent my morning t…

Have you thought about the pinetab ? https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/

I own one. It's extremely slow, and the screen is easily scratched by the keyboard when folded.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#76
post #37
post #13

Asking out of curiosity, not to be cruel: I wonder if he's willing to use medical equipment that uses non-Free software? To my knowledge, his stated position against using non-Free software is pretty much absolute; but given that medical equipment's software is almost universally non-Free, taking that stance here would seriously endanger his ability to receive necessary medical care.

I will answer this assuming good faith, but this line of reasoning is very irritating since the answer (to me) is obvious. If RMS made a choice to use proprietary software, with the only alternative being his dead, there is absolutely no moral conflict, or even anything against his principle. The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives", which I am pretty sure…

>the answer (to me) is obvious

The answer is obvious based on your own personal principles, or based on RMS's stated principles?

>The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives"

He claimed that it is categorically not good to use non-Free software, with one exception for using non-Free software to develop a replacement for that software; and that "we must resist stretching [that exception] any further": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-prog...

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#77
post #33

What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…

The pity is that while he was remarkably prescient, he seems to have stopped adapting decades ago. GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Prett…

And gcc and grub and potentially some other 10 libraries that everybody is still using!

> Where's their Youtube channel, or their Twitter?

You are seriously asking why the Free Software Foundation isn't using a propietary social platform?

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pity is that while he was remarkably prescient, he seems to have stopped adapting decades ago. GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Prett…

The FSF is a tiny organization with little funding; you can't lay the responsibility for "reaching out" on them. It's a question of what other cultural, educational and commercial organizations and groups have been doing; whether enough of them have taken these messages to heart; and what they have been promoting. Also, in suggesting they use Youtube or Twitter, you're simply exemplifying how you reject their princip…

Their goal should be encouraging people to demand open software and hardware, not being principled. Youtube and Twitter have power, not acknowledging that is dumb.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#79
post #33

What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…

Why do you need? Or have the right? To modify the software. That same Tesla is cast with a proprietary alloy that not only they won’t tell you what it is, but it’s patent anyway. Same is true of the rubber in the tyres.

Open source is a great thing. But it’s not better (morally) than closed source. Open is just a feature. Like Lego vs a solid plastic toy.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#80
post #33

What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…

I remember thinking that Stallman was too pessimistic and things like that would never happen. But I was wrong, and Stallman was right.
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