It’s dangerous to tell people “shit’s fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it” because they might believe you and do nothing.

Which is why I’m not doing that.

P.S. I’m not advocating for doom here, I just wish more people understood that Americans buying cheap Chinese electric cars won’t save the people living nearby the mine in Africa where the cobalt for those batteries was extracted.

I don’t think you disagree with the parts where I say people will suffer.

With respect, I think you’re projecting a discussion with a different person onto this article.

I don’t think so? My comment is generally aimed at “the situation is grim, but tech just got awesome, so let’s save the planet people!” optimism-filled pieces, much like this one. Forgive me if I come across as affronted when, as temperatures reach new and dangerous heights in certain regions, I am put out seeing someone say market forces are on the cusp of saving us.

For what it’s worth, I hope you’re right.

Thank you.

Whenever using this trick, I’d suggest using DDG instead of Bing if possible.

There’s a chance duckduckgo does something similar, but sadly I can’t check at the moment.

Leaving a comment so I remember to try it later—unless anyone reading is willing to do so.

With modern internet speeds, there’s no reason you can’t have full UHD-BR quality streamed over the internet.

Cost is a prohibitive reason for many (hardware, internet).

I do believe files are better than physical media, simply because with the proper setup they’re easily backed up and won’t degrade or break.

Andreas doesn’t need a bunch of people harassing him for a multitude of reasons that may or may not be true. What I believe he needs, is to reevaluate his actions and grow out of what seems to be a toxic mentality, conscious or not.

I’m not the very knowledgeable on this, but I think most people don’t grow from being attacked.

Realistically, it can’t stop the stubborn. But if it helps anyone reconsider, I’ll take it.

all the statements made in the article are sourced.

If only his sources matter, link those instead. Bringing in Lunduke’s article means bringing in his views. That’s not some special Lunduke-hate-boner property, if anyone linked an Israeli news website in a thread about Gaza, I’d call that ridiculous too. Articles reflect their authors, and you happened to pick one of the worst authors in tech.

You’re acting like the blogger is attacking you specifically or something.

Because Lunduke’s ideas can cause real damage to people’s lives, and I’m tired of seeing them. Again, I’m sorry if I come across as affronted—this genuinely, deeply frustrates me. And it’s hard to hold that down.

I don’t blame you. I don’t know how you found the article, or how you read it. But please reconsider sharing Lunduke’s stuff. The man’s one step away from conspiracy theorist, or hell, maybe he counts as one already.

Andreas said it simple (While in different words). What does your sex have to do with the project? Absolutely nothing.

“In different words” is doing a lot of work, there. But that’s a great point you made, sex has nothing to do with the project. So why did he reject a simple change which only made sex even less relevant?

And I ask again: which other side is Lunduke representing that you felt was important to include?

Purely anecdotally from what I’ve been reading online, it seems most younger folks hate Threads.

Not necessarily because of privacy issues or social impact, mind you. They also think it just sucks to use, don’t like the UI, don’t like the content—which turned out to include a lot of people trying to build a personal brand and sell you things. Just like Instagram, where most users came from.

Excluding content details, Mastodon fails similarly. Requires learning, unsatisfactory UI, more difficult to find and engage with content you like.

Apologies, I added a lot to my comment in an edit before I saw your reply. Regardless, which other side is Lunduke representing that’s important to share?

I’m actually just echo’ing what others have said.

Sorry, I don’t want to be mean, but genuinely, why would you reply and mention the CEO if you don’t know what the issue with them is? Had I not inquired further, would you ever add this context, unprompted?

Re: your move to LibreWolf, it’s your prerogative. If you like, keep at it. I will mention that I’ve seen a lot of misunderstandings regarding the latest ad stuff in Firefox, so I hope you got the correct picture to make your decisions, but I won’t bore you with details needlessly.

Lunduke is not a credible source. He’s inconsistent and has misled people countless times. I’ll still check it out and respond, but will also link other resources.

Edit: You know, I wanted to respond to the linked post by Lunduke point by point, but sincerely… I’m so tired of seeing his kind of content. It’s always the same mistakes, and he never learns.

And I’m not sure if he’s even worth bringing into this discussion. I made my point, and I provided my source. If anyone wanted to talk, ask further, even dispute, I’m willing to explain myself and provide further resources.

But I never called Andreas transphobic, or misogynistic, or a slave owner. Lunduke found the absolute worst materials to represent something he dislikes. Why is that relevant here? Should I answer for these people, who I’ve never met? Do they represent me?

Also, in his cherry-picking, Lunduke erases important context simply because it doesn’t support his views. Lea’s and Andreas’ conversation on Twitter painted a more complete picture of the issue with Andreas’ actions, but of course Lunduke only shows the tweet of Andreas being seemingly reasonable.

Worse, it’s like he genuinely has no idea what he’s talking about sometimes. He just needs to build a narrative and push it onto others, hopefully finding people who’ll take his views on reality as gospel.

Attacks Across Open Source

So many projects:

SUSE & openSUSE. Hyprland. Asahi Linux. Elementary OS. NixOS.

Lunduke, what? Genuinely, what are you on?

• Nix has long had an amount of drama, just search “are flakes ready.” Or are you talking about the complaints when people didn’t feel comfortable being sponsored by military companies? Very reasonable human behavior? Is that what’s wrong with Nix? And despite it all, it’s still one of the best ways to manage dependencies I’ve ever seen!
• Hyprland? What’s wrong with Hyprland? Yeah, the project has a toxic community, vaxry (lead dev) failed to understand why this was bad and failed to fix it, then eventually got kicked off Freedesktop because others didn’t want to deal with his shit. Now they get to build their own little kingdom, and it’s apparently “working out” for those who remained.
• Asahi is the way to have a good Linux experience on newer M-series Apple hardware, which recently got a Fedora spin and gets better every update… what could possibly be wrong with it? Is it the fact that one of the most prolific developers supports LGBT rights? No, that can’t be it, there’s no way Lunduke—

In fact, if recent history is any indication, we’re likely to see additional attacks involving Open Source Software projects and companies – by the Trans Political Activists – in the near future.

…Trans rights are ruining open source? That’s your grand theory?

Might be, as it seems he doesn’t take trans folks very seriously:

Back in 2022 – yes, two years ago – on the Discord chat server for the Hyprland window manager project, a man who identified as “Trans” listed his preferred prouns as “she/her”. lunduke

I’m so sorry, but Lunduke’s brand of journalism tires and saddens me. It’s a slap in the face to anyone who cares about not only understanding the full picture of events, but being just in how you deliver the truth to others. And then, on top of that, he acts like a jerk.

Here’s a video by Niccolò, KDE developer, showing how Lunduke is inconsistent, heavily biased and spectacularly fails at his own (and only) job.

I noticed you’re not the person I was replying to, but since you’ve joined the conversation, would you mind clarifying who and what the issue with them is?

As I understand it, Baker left the position, and Chambers is only temporarily assuming it—that is to say, we don’t actually know who’ll be CEO next year, I think.

I might be out of the loop, here. I don’t imagine you’re talking about the foundation, either.

I was so excited for Ladybird, right up until I found out the project lead and main developer, Andreas Kling, is scared of pronouns.

Again, I’m aware some folks think this is annoying, but if you’re the kind of user who shuns Brave because the CEO does stupid shit, Ladybird probably isn’t the way to go either. Not for the moment, at least. People deserve the right to make informed decisions, so I’ll keep sharing this, and I encourage others to do the same when relevant, but don’t harass anyone, please.

If you don’t care about any of this, it’s a very interesting project. I just can’t say I approve.

Why do you think they don’t care anymore? Agreed on the Servo optimism, though. And I hadn’t heard about Basilisk before, so thanks for mentioning it.

Thanks. I know you’re not OP, but I’ll take this opportunity to answer anyway.

privacy preserving attribution

…is not as bad as many people think.

The best argument that I believe still has merit is this:

All websites on the internet—including ad networks!—are guests on our computers, and the content they provide are merely suggestions for a user agent to interpret and show us how it chooses.

If you agree with this—and I kinda do—then yeah, PPA shouldn’t exist. You’re probably a staunch user of uBlock (or uMatrix) and don’t want your browser engaging in any privacy-preserving attribution shenanigans.

But here’s the kicker: if you use uBlock, PPA won’t do anything. It can’t, even when left enabled. For the API to be called, ads need to get to your browser first, and uBlock doesn’t allow them to get that far. The only people really affected by PPA are people not using adblocking, i.e. the people being tracked all over the web, who would likely benefit from PPA.

As I said in a previous comment: if PPA works and is widely adopted, I can see the argument for how it’d be better—unfortunately, most people still browse the internet without uBlock. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop installing it on every device I can; I’m simply accepting that’ll never be every device on earth.

And for all that Mozilla is implementing “bullshit,” they’re also the only ones keeping uBlock 100% functional by maintaining manifest V2. They spend time and resources protecting the very thing that trumps their supposed bullshit. That feels not like enshittification to me, but a group trying its best, even while stuck between a rock and a hard place.

What do you believe Mozilla was implementing?

I think the big difference is that you seem to think that AI has peaked or is near its peak potential, while I think AI is still just getting started.

That’s a fair assessment. I’m still not sure if popular AI tech is on an exponential or a sigmoid curve, though I tend towards the latter. But the industry at large is starting to believe it’s just not worth it. Worse, the entities at the forefront of AI are unsustainable—they’re burning brightly right now, but the cash flow required to keep a reaction on this scale going is simply too large. If you’ve got time and are willing, please check the linked article by Ed (burst damage).

I mean, maybe I could have phrased it better, but what else are you gonna do?

My bad, I try to trim down the fat while editing, but I accidentally removed things I shouldn’t. As I said, it’s a nitpick, and I understand the importance of helping those who find themselves unhirable. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought it came across a little mean, even if it wasn’t your intent. I try to gently “poke” folks when I see stuff like this because artists get enough undeserved crap already.

I’ve no idea where you’re getting these predictions from. I think some of them are fundamentally flawed, if not outright incorrect, and don’t reflect real life trends of generative AI development and applications.

Gonna finish this comment in a few, please wait. Edit: there we go.

One by one, somewhat sorted from “Ok, I see it,” to “What the hell?”

Well, sounds great. I almost wish more companies would advertise to that market, really.

It’s like… I know you’re lying, and I know you probably don’t actually care, but some of your competitors couldn’t even be bothered to do this much. Those companies thought shitting on things I care about to maximize profit was the better strategy. I’ll take that into consideration in my future decisions.

And if the situation changes, if they turn around and go full in on generative AI, we’ll just have to consider that too. That’s life.

Of course, I believe using alternatives that are more resistant to these kinds of market trends (community built software, perhaps?) would be ideal, but it’s not always an option.

The last few pages of the transcript are chilling. I don’t know who this helmsman, AB-1, is, but I deeply feel for them.