I understand where you’re coming from, but of course the Linux I want to use is not a business with a centralized marketing department vying for market share. It’s something that I can customize and make into whatever I want it to be.

I think that’s why many people want to use Linux - they’re not pigeonholed into decisions made to gain market share, they’re free to choose whatever works well for them.

Paradoxically, 20 plus years ago people chose PCs and Microsoft over Apple for much of the same reason. We could select our own hardware from any manufacturer, easily run our own executables and develop code in any direction desired.

It’s hard to see that being a good thing

I thought filing egregiously inaccurate documents with the court was risking contempt of court (in the best of cases).

Ignoring the court itself, I’d think for a prosecutor or cop this would lead to pretty bad performance reviews.

But if the system has no standards…

I don’t automatically have a negative opinion about this, I would need more information before that. Did the terms of service allow for this?

It’s a fascinating case study on crowdsourcing data that is useful to this navigation technology, and reminds me of the first captchas that helped train OCR engines.

Yeah the 5 months thing… That’s the difference between having a $400/hour lawyer and no lawyer. The first guy could get you out by 6:00 p.m. on bail. If you have no lawyer, your appointment to be assigned lawyer is scheduled for next month.

Damn I better check my contracts and see if they have any war or terrorism clauses 😅

Internet subscription canceled! See you on the other side brother

Been with mullvad for a very long time but this scares the crap out of me and I might have to bail soon.

Didn’t think about the possibility of a kinetic energy unit, thanks for the insight

The wind at 32,000 ft is 200 times stronger than the wind at the surface?

Ummm… 10 knots * 200 = 2000 knots. I don’t think so lol.

A lot of strange numbers in this article that bring its accuracy into question.

No mention of the weight of a 1 and 1/2 km wire that is also suitable to anchor this thing in place. Or are they going to float batteries and bring them down to discharge?

Uh oh… I bet the sound isn’t directional enough to work like this too. Yet.

Ever since we started seeing traffic cameras showing up at intersections 15 or 20 years ago and recording license plates, I’ve had an uneasy feeling that these data pools just become a tool to move against people at any time in the future.

I’m not opposed to enforcement of rules. I want there to be rules in society and it’s important that we have resources dedicated to the enforcement of rules.

What I don’t want is a goliath unfair advantage that can be easily used to hurt people - even inadvertently - by ill-trained or malicious authorities.

The government has unlimited resources to prosecute people and destroy lives through the process. And it’s extremely expensive for people to defend themselves, even when falsely accused. The risk to everyday people, many who are following the laws, is just too high.

And if the wind blows towards fascist tendencies, that pool of data on you just became your worst nightmare.

The Fourth amendment was created in response to abuses by British authorities. At one point we wanted to protect individual privacy and property rights from government overreach.

Americans are not free if they are being detained for “probable cause” because some database + opaque lines of code said there is probable cause.

I now avoid all videos showing deaths or serious injuries (if I know that kind of content is coming).

Feels better to not have those images in my mind.

Once they are following, I’d think you can begin to convert them to higher tiers of support through private channels?

It’s all about control of reach.

If I was an influencer and using Patreon (I’m neither), it’s a simple decision:

Total reach * conversion rate * platform commission = income

Apple’s app store has a fuckton of desirable reach - they monopolize (arguably literally) all the easy payments from iphones and kill anybody else who tries to redirect eyeballs. They are too strong. But what else are you going to do if you need Patreons or app customers, etc?

You can’t ignore the reach, and you’d have to pay or work harder to get eyeballs another way too unless you can get free publicity by being crazy or something and pull people into your own payment/ download channels.

Handful of Windows desktop apps that don’t work well on Wine - WeChat desktop, LINE app desktop. I do tons of copy pasting of mocked up screenshots and stuff. It just doest work as well as in windows.

I wonder if I’ll soon be able to just lean back and bark orders at my PC.

I’m no China expert but I lived In South China for a while between 2016 and 2024. The Chinese people I know are mostly hardworking, very motivated to succeed, and well capitalized. In their major cities you might be surprised to learn normal guys who earn half what you do are living a higher quality of life than you are, in terms of access to technology.

Their government is no doubt using uncouth methods to give their country unfair advantages. They don’t play well with others.

But holy shit there is one thing this Chinese government is doing well: effectively driving growth with targeted investments in the economy. They have been focused on that one mission consistently for a long time.

While democracies fuck around trying to decide if they should tax themselves to build public transportation, China installs 10 new ultrafast subway lines in just a few years in every big city. Covers the country in a network of high-speed rail. Drives the price of shipping goods around the country to almost nothing.

A kind of monoparty like China has is very likely a net negative when we look at world history, but for moments of time, if it’s the right one, amazing things can happen.

I have a laptop and a handful of desktops between my office and home. Some run Windows and some run Linux. I simply choose which one matches my task best.

Systems where I’m writing server-side code are going to be Linux. Systems that run jobs in the back end such as my self hosting stuff are all Linux. Systems where I’m doing email, documents, and general web browsing are going to be Windows.

Of course, my Windows systems have WSL, and my Linux systems can run Windows apps in virt. These days the line is super blurred and it would no doubt be possible to use only one if I were willing to give up some native app running.

Should have been Jeemail. Lost opportunity…