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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]

#771

Post by 93po »

63 wrote: post #653
bjourne wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very kind of him to reply to you. Perhaps it is just my culture, but asking someone you don't know personally who has a potentially life-threatening illness what their prognosis is can be perceived as very rude. Stallman is sharing the information he wants to share and rest is none of our business.

I think it would be rude under different circumstances but this is information that he already shared semi-publicly and would've shared with OP had OP been able to make it. Also I get the feeling that Stallman is enough of a pragmatist to not get too offended about that sort of thing though I could be wrong.

I personally think the more appropriate request would be to first research instead of asking him to answer your question, and if incomplete, secondly to kindly show interest in him, at some further point, discussing this more in a public way when he feels ready to do so.

Obv he doesn't seem to mind the question. Just my approach.

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

#772

Post by 93po »

PostOnce wrote: post #766
bawolff wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like one of those - programmers think they understand how laws work but don't actually.

Even the pastafarians get to wear strainers on their heads in driver's license photos. Some religions are exempt from paying social security. A group of adamant people is a powerful thing.

Not paying SS is something I need to look into. As someone in their mid 30s I'm never going to see a penny from it.

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

#773

Post by 93po »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #747
PostOnce wrote: post #322

Stallman's character is one of the reasons I have repeatedly considered establishing some kind of "Church of Computing", i.e. an organized "religion" solely to secure religious protections and rights as they apply to the modern world. For example, the right not to have to use some random company's app to interact with a government agency or a public school (and agree to said company's EULA, etc). It only takes a few…

You might want to visit this link: https://stallman.org/saint.html "Sainthood in the Church of Emacs requires living a life of purity—but in the Church of Emacs, this does not require celibacy (a sigh of relief is heard). Being holy in our church means exorcizing whatever evil, proprietary operating systems have possessed computers that are under your control, or set up for your regular use; installing a holy (i.e.,…

Does this mean that adherents can't actually text or call via carrier? Or have a data plan? I believe every modem-chip used to do this has proprietary code.

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

#774

Post by 93po »

bawolff wrote: post #438
PostOnce wrote: post #322

Stallman's character is one of the reasons I have repeatedly considered establishing some kind of "Church of Computing", i.e. an organized "religion" solely to secure religious protections and rights as they apply to the modern world. For example, the right not to have to use some random company's app to interact with a government agency or a public school (and agree to said company's EULA, etc). It only takes a few…

This feels like one of those - programmers think they understand how laws work but don't actually.

I feel like this is one of those comments that thinks they add substance or discussion but doesn't.

Please elaborate on why this is an inaccurate view instead of just saying "you're wrong", which adds nothing.

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

#776

Post by NavinF »

kortilla wrote: post #762
NavinF wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to believe that a smaller proportion of people know how to navigate a directory and unzip a zip file today compared to any prior year. A lot of people didn't know how to use computers at all a decade ago because they didn't have any kind of computer at home, not even a smart phone

It peaked and is in the decline. The number of households with desktops/laptops is in the decline. Fully native tablet+phone is the way a bunch of kids are growing up. Only computer usage in our local public schools is chromebooks.

I don't believe you. A quick google search finds several charts showing monotonic increase and zero charts that show a decrease.

https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/percentage-of-households-wi...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/748551/worldwide-househo...

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

#777

Post by epidemian »

Pannoniae wrote: post #429
throwaway5Am1k wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am not misusing the word Yes you are, see: >they are just progressively making things worse That's things going "shit". That's been around for as long as software has been around (e.g. Borland). Enshitification is a very specific thing: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ To quote it: I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of…

It is enshittification because they are making the software worse in opposition to the users. They don't care that the users hate the changes, they still do it anyway, deliberately.

Words have meaning.

You used a word that has a specific meaning to refer to something else, hence the miscommunication.

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

#778

Post by opan »

vinceguidry wrote: post #623
colordrops wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are still rooting Android and adding thousands of modifications to it.

You don't root OSes, you root devices. I learned that the hard way when I got a Samsung Z-Fold 4 and learned that the US version isn't rootable.

All this terminology is muddied and often misused. The whole term is supposed to refer to getting access to the root user, which is definitely an OS-level thing. One thing people often don't remember also is that gaining root on your phone and unlocking the bootloader are not only different things, but entirely separate things. You can gain root in your vendor ROM without being able to unlock the bootloader (common case on Amazon tablets), and you can install LineageOS in your phone after unlocking the bootloader but you still won't have root access in the OS unless you do an extra step, setting up Magisk or similar. You also have to re-set-up Magisk after every LineageOS update, which often means once a week if you do all the OTA updates in a timely manner. Gaining root is usually the easier thing and the less useful thing. It doesn't help much with getting a nearer-to-AOSP experience. You can remove some apps but there are still limits to what can be done without just flashing a different ROM with less crap in it.

When picking a phone I like to see if it's on the LineageOS devices page (you bring up a good point that different variations of the same model aren't equal, definitely watch out for that), as that means both that the bootloader is unlockable and that someone else is already maintaining a ROM for it, and hopefully will for years to come. If I just go after the shiny new hardware, chances are the bootloader is locked and it will never be unlocked, generating e-waste.

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

#779

Post by onethought »

mbakke wrote: post #764
onethought wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal isn’t malleable? I guess they just dug it up in the shape of a car. See recent car recalls where there is a structural problem with the car. This is not unique to software.

Right, I worded that poorly. The point is that Tesla cannot remotely change the metal in your car, whereas they can with the software. We as users should demand insight into the software running on hardware we own. Otherwise we only partially own it, and if the device is connected to the internet, we can lose ownership any time.

They can, it’s called a recall. If you do not respond to a recall the value of you car basically hits 0. Which was literally my point.

When you buy a house do you enquire into the grade of concrete used in the foundations? Should “we home owners demand insight into the concrete ratios used”.

I wonder if on electrician forums there are folks saying: “wiring should be open source”? Like because you understand something you want more insight, but you’re happy to be in ignorant bliss on every other aspect of a product.

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

#780

Post by robertlagrant »

Qwertious wrote: post #675
robertlagrant wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian and Chinese death toll under Communism went into the mid to high tens of millions, no?

I don't want to defend Mao/Stalin, fuck em both, but: If you're counting deaths by starvation under a communist regime as "death by communism", then you have to count deaths by starvation under capitalism as "death by capitalism". Poverty kills a whooooole lot of people, and the current system is broken specifically because the billionaires who benefit are specifically blocking any attempts to fix the system - like o…

> If you're counting deaths by starvation under a communist regime as "death by communism", then you have to count deaths by starvation under capitalism as "death by capitalism".

No you don't. It's not all starvation deaths. Mao deliberately - through the insane power Communism bestows on the state - told farmers what to farm and how to farm, and punshed harshly those who disobeyed. And because they obeyed, and only a child who still thinks their parents know everything would think the state (parent-surrogate to many Communists) knows more about farming than farmers, millions starved. Even worse in some ways (while it's stupid to trust the state with farming techniques, it was at least trying to make farming better) - the Soviet Union imposed harsh quotas on Ukraine, causing the death of 3.5-5m people in the Holodomor.

This is what you should expect when you give your "bureaucrats that supposedly represent the workers" all the power, trusting that they can do all the hard and expert work in allocating resources both extremely well, and without any human failings such as corruption or violence.

Markets aren't perfect at resource allocation, but they are very very good at it. Replacing the experts at it whose livelihoods depend on doing it very well, with bureaucrats who know nothing about it, and whose livelihoods are guaranteed either way, and who might get disappeared if they displease their superiors' whims, seems impossibly naive on the face of it.

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