It’s a funny story but it’s worth noting that copyright does not apply to typefaces in the US (although maybe it does in other jurisdictions)

It’s much more correct to say that Lineage or Graphene are Android than saying that Android is Linux.

Both of these are correct. LineageOS and GrapheneOS are AOSP; AOSP is Linux.

Linux is a kernel. Other components must be added onto Linux to create a complete Linux operating system. Adding stuff onto Linux does not subtract any Linuxness from it. Any Linux OS is “real Linux.” Saying that some Linuxes are not real Linux is like saying if you add peanut butter to bread you no longer have “real bread.” It is nonsense.

They stole our brain? Wasn’t that a Star Trek episode?

Brain and brain, what is brain 🧠?

Aaah so a backtick is for strings? WRONG!!! IT EXECUTES THE FUCKING COMMAND!!!

To be fair this is what they do in Perl and shell scripts (and in PHP too), so it’s not unexpected behavior in that world.

I will preface this with my usual disclaimer on such topics: I do not believe in intellectual property (that is, the likening of thought to physical possessions). I do not think remixing is a sin and I largely agree with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s take that “AI training” may largely be fair use. So, I don’t think so-called “generative AI” is inherently evil, however in practice I think it is very often used for evil today.

The most obvious example is, of course, the threat to the work force. “AI” is pitched as a tool that can replace human workers and “wipe out entire categories of human jobs.” Ethical issues aside, “AI” as it exists today is not capable of doing what its evangelists sell it as. “AI chat bots” do not know, but they can give off a very convincing impression of knowledge.

“AI” is also used as a tool to pollute the web with worse-than-worthless garbage. At best it is meaningless and at worst it is actively harmful. I would actually say machine generated text is worse than imagery here, because it feels almost impossible to do a web search without running into some LLM generated blog spam.

Creators of “AI” systems use scraper bots to collect data for training. I do not necessarily believe this is evil per se, but again - these bots are not well behaved. They cause real problems for real human users, far beyond “stealing jpegs.” There is a sense of Silicon Valley entitlement here - we can do whatever we want and deal with the consequences later, or never.

I have long held that a tool, like any human creation, is imbued with the values and will of its creators, and thus must serve both the creator and the user as its masters (The software freedom movement is largely an attempt at reconciling these interests, by empowering users with the ability to change their tools to do their bidding). In the case of “Generative AI” it is very often the case that both the creators and users of these tools intend them for evil. We often make the mistake of attributing agency to these computer programs, so as to minimize the human element (perhaps, in order to create a “man vs machine” narrative). We speak of “AI” as if it just woke up one day, a la Skynet, in order to steal our jpegs and put us out of work and generate mountains of webslurry. Make no mistake, however - the problems with “AI” are human problems. Humans created these systems in order for other humans to use, in order to inflict harm to other humans. “AI slop” was created specifically for an environment in which human-generated slop already ran amok, because the web as it existed then (as it exists today) rewards the generation of slop.

Intellectual property is made up bullshit. You can’t “steal” a jpeg by making a copy of it, and the idea that creating something based on or inspired by something else is somehow “stealing” it is quite frankly preposterous.

The sooner we as a society disabuse ourselves of this brainworm the better.

Edit: I have very mixed feelings about so-called generative AI, so please do not take this as a blanket endorsement of the technology - but rather a challenge on the concept of “stealing intellectual property,” which I unequivocally do not believe in.

The point (as I see it) is not so much to stop scraping as it is to prevent bots from effectively DDOS-ing web services. As others have said ActivityPub content is public and there are ways to get it without slamming instances with scraper bots.

Little Kitty Tables

This doesn’t even make sense. If the spell falls apart without Kier’s symbol, then Kier’s symbol absolutely is “actually necessary.”

Proprietary software in general, Discord and Twitter in specific

I run my instance so I am perfectly happy with the level of censorship.

Said instance is narrowly focused on free software and free culture issues, so unrelated politics would be off-topic. That said there is a fairly bog standard code of conduct prohibiting bigotry, nazism and the like.

Apple intentionally makes iPhone-Android interoperability crap in order to sell iPhones. That’s not conspiracy theorizing, Tim Apple blatantly admitted to it.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rcs-imessage-android-iphone-compatibility

Unironically one of the greatest people in the technology space of the last 40 years, in the sense of accomplishments and impact on the world. I’m talking specifically about the free software movement, copyleft, and the GNU GPL. The world would be a much worse place without those accomplishments. The fact that a lot of his life’s work is erroneously attributed to the kernel guy doesn’t change that.

As a thinker, absolutely brilliant and unfortunately misunderstood. He espouses radical ideas about the relation of users to the technology they use that are still relevant to issues of today (e.g. enshittification, planned obsolescence, surveillance capitalism, and so on). It goes far beyond “you can look at source code to see if there’s bugs or spyware in it.” There’s a reason “Stallman was right” is a meme.

As a leader and a figurehead I’m not convinced he’s as effective. Regardless of the coordinated smear campaign from a few years ago (in which it was erroneously said “he defended Jeffrey Epstein” or “he blamed Epstein’s victim” or some such), he has demonstrated behaviors that alienate people and people who have worked for/with him (e.g. FSF employees and GNU maintainers) have said he is not a good boss. His comment about “voluntary pedophilia” is inexcusable, even though he has said he no longer stands by it. The Epstein association was fabricated from a quote taken out of context, but I don’t think it was wise to even join that discussion. The glibc manual abort() joke incident from 2018 is probably what convinced me of this - not so much that the joke is bad (humor is subjective) but that multiple developers objected to it and said it made them uncomfortable, yet he “pulled rank” and insisted it be left in (although as of now it seems to be absent). I believe his intentions were good (the “joke” isn’t actually about abortion as such, but rather the US government “global gag rule” suppressing discussions of such) but forcing it in against the protests of the community was inappropriate in my opinion.

Overall despite the above I feel he’s done more good than harm to the world, however, I’m not sure how much more good he can do in his position. I feel like the term “Stallmanism” would be an apt term for his thought but because of the above I feel leery associating myself with the guy.

AFAIK on Android it has a hard dependency on Google services. I don’t mind installing proprietary stuff to my work profile for the express purposes of work but that requires modifying my system to accommodate this specific app and that’s a step too far for my personal device. So I use a free software option (Aegis) instead.

edit: if for some reason I really did need MS Authenticator and not any old TOTP app, I would procure a googled device specifically for work rather than install google or microG into my personal device.

It started 40 years ago, when a man was not allowed to fix his printer. We didn’t have the word enshittification at the time but even then it was understood what happens when technology abuses its users in order to enrich its creators.

I don’t care about Linux. I care about freedom. It just so happens that the best free software operating systems are built on Linux, so that’s what I use.

I use GNU Guix System on my desktop, laptop, and server machines. I use LineageOS on my mobile devices, although sometimes I wish I could use Mobian or even Guix System instead. I do have a Pinephone with Mobian but it’s collecting dust and the battery is swollen so I can’t use it anyway. I also have a router running OpenWRT.

I used to use Debian until 2019, Trisquel until 2014, and Ubuntu until 2010. When I was something of a kid I played around with a Knoppix live CD, which was my first taste of GNU/Linux.

Firstly, Captain Beyond is the name of a band that I’m fond of - although by far not my favorite one, ever.

However, it’s also somewhat aspirational. “Captain” I define as the sort of leader as in the captains of Star Trek, someone who leads by example, who makes-it-so, takes care of their people and their “ship” so-to-speak. Someone who is more of a steward than a boss. Someone who is first and foremost in command of themselves. “Beyond” refers to the aspiration to go further and achieve great things.

As I said it’s more aspirational than anything - I don’t think I do a very good job of living up to that moniker most of the time.

It’s a misconception to say that free software is “about privacy.” Many people in the free software community care about having the four freedoms (the freedom to use, share, modify, and share modified copies). We don’t like free software because we think it’s more secure, we like it because it’s free software. Freedom doesn’t need a justification other than freedom itself.

For us, a catalogue offering only free software isn’t an “arbitrary rule” that’s the whole point. If F-Droid carries an app I know I have the four freedoms with that app, because they put in the work to verify that, by building the app according to their (relatively strict, not strict enough IMO) standards. Accrescent and Obtainium fans have different priorities, which is okay, but I don’t understand why they spend so much time shitting on F-Droid and the free software movement.

Security is important in free software, but security in proprietary software is often user-hostile (for example, DRM and WEI). Often times the only way to regain freedom in a proprietary environment is to exploit a security hole, so sometimes we prefer that proprietary software actually not be very secure.

As for F-Droid’s and the free software’s community towards “old” apps, we understand that software does not lose value simply by being unmaintained. Of course, if something is particularly security-critical and/or has a large attack surface (for example an operating system or a web browser). I would stay away from anything unmaintained. That doesn’t apply to all software, though.

The point of free software isn’t security, but freedom. For people who want control of their computing, this is not an “arbitrary restriction” but rather a basic requirement. Just because you don’t particularly care about a concern doesn’t make it “arbitrary.” I’m not a vegan or vegetarian but I don’t complain about the “arbitrary restriction” of a plant-based diet.