I’ve argued this for point for so many years and have become exhausted to the point where I don’t even bother any more.

Free software advocates, God bless them, are fighting a good fight but we will never see the average computer user giving up functionality for the sake of some computing ideology; whether that ideology be free software, privacy or security focused. I’m glad some people are willing to do so as I believe strongly that the world would not be where it is today if it weren’t for it’s existence offer the last two or three decades. But the reality is that 90% of the world views computers, phones and tablets as tools; a means to achieving an end, not the end in and of itself. There may be some subset of people who are willing to give up some convenience or utility if they believe strongly enough in one of these ideologies, but most of them will never care about the license of their software as long as it gets the job done. But this is precisely why we need people who do care about these ideologies because software freedom ultimately is important and people do benefit from it. It just needs to be as good as, if not better than, it’s non-free counterparts

I recently started uses dotbot for managing dot files across my systems. It sounds very similar, in terms of the simplicity of the implementation, to yadm. You define a config file in yaml or json and run the “install” script which calls the dotbot utility, passing in your config file. With a simple change to the install script, I’ve been able to create multiple config files, one per environment (work, home, linux, mac, etc.) and I’ve been thinking about how I could automatically sync changes to git whenever I edit a config file. Leaning towards setting up an autocmd in neovim to automatically commit and push changes on save when I have one of the config files open. Just not yet sure how to do this in a way that would only run the sync for the configs and not every json or yaml file on my system. I’ve only ever set up autocmds for specific file extensions but the syntax leads me to believe it’s flexible enough that any arbitrarily specific file name or path could work the same.

This sounds really similar to how I do things but I use Ansible. What are the advantages to something like yadm, that is specifically designed for dot file management, and a generic config management utility like Ansible?

Still use Google Authenticator. I know there are alternatives out there that have other features but I’m a pretty strong believer that my 2FA shouldn’t be backed up digitally. I keep any recovery information offline and prefer it that way.

Yeah, neither is great. Needs to be called something like “Employee Business Relations” maybe?

100%. The rebranding of some HR departments as “People Officers” or “People Team” drives me bonkers. When push comes to shove, they will always protect the interests of the business before the interests of the employee. Full stop.

I’m glad to see that. I didn’t follow her on Twitch, but watching that was nice to see.

Damn! I know she was going through some rough stuff in her personal life recently. I fear it’s all connected, though I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

I met Kris a couple of years ago at GopherCon. At the time I was very new to Go and she mentored me early on and was very friendly. She and I worked together during the GopherCon hackathon and produced the early version of a tool that ultimately became Kubicorn.

EDIT: seems like this was a climbing accident. Truly sad to hear. But going out doing what you enjoy… could be worse I suppose.

Exactly right. Facebook will factor this in as am expected cost of doing business (if they didn’t already) and their stock will go up. This isn’t a penalty, this is just like paying a bribe. In the end, both are just lining the pockets of officials more interested in appearing to do something for the next news cycle so they can get re-elected.

Honestly… I don’t get this. It’s a bit more work than other distros but I think that Linux users often get to a point in their Linux journey where customizing a system with defaults is more difficult than just starting from a blank slate.

It’s not necessarily idiocy. Dystopian, yes. And when you consider that the case for it not being idiocy is a government that has created such wealth inequality that people will do this for an extra $50.

Part of me wants to believe that this won’t be abused and it’ll actually make the web better. The other part of me knows better.

They could, theoretically, implement this on a way that just changes the pay structure for ad impressions but I think that all that will do is incentivize website owners using Google ads to block or nag “non-compliant” users… but here’s hoping they don’t abuse it I guess because there’s basically nothing we can do to change it once it’s out there. Genies out and all that

Shamelessly stolen from the HN thread:

Don’t just comment and complain, contact your antitrust authority today: US:

• https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation
• antitrust@ftc.gov

EU:

• https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust/contact_en
• comp-greffe-antitrust@ec.europa.eu

UK:

• https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tell-the-cma-about-a-competition…
• general.enquiries@cma.gov.uk

India:

• https://www.cci.gov.in/antitrust/
• https://www.cci.gov.in/filing/atd

Email template:

I would like to bring your attention to Google’s recent proposal to add a feature to its Chrome (Chromium family) of browsers called Web Environment Integrity. This provides a mechanism to reinforce Google’s already dominant browser market position by creating a technological control that can be used to nullify a user’s choice of browser, device and operating system. This technology also has the potential for abuse by preventing users from using browser extensions that can enhance security by blocking unwanted and potentially malicious content, as well as browser extensions that help vulnerable users with enhanced accessibility needs, such as color blindness and visual impairment.

Google’s dominant, near-monopoly position in the browser market already harms me as a consumer by reducing browser choices and preventing a competitive market for developing new browsers. Allowing Google to include this feature will reduce my browser choices and consolidate the browser market even further, and it is incumbent on [INSERT AUTHORITY HERE] to take action against this abusive behavior.

No, thats because of capitalism

Exactly! It will all come full circle

Exactly this. SO is now just a repository of answers that ChatGPT and it’s ilk can train against. A high percentage is questions that SO users need answers to are already asked and answered. New and novel problems arise so infrequently thanks to the way modern tech companies are structured that an AI that can read and train on the existing answers and update itself periodically is all most people need anymore… (I realize that was rambling, I hope it made sense)

Twitter who?

His utter lack of understanding about how SAaS companies work is astounding. Having worked on the backend of several, they’re all hot garbage and brittle. That’s why there were so many “useless” engineers. You know, the ones he shit canned when he acquired the company? Surprise, they were probably the only reason the dumpster fire wasn’t burning down the whole city block. The thing Elon fails to understand is that someone didn’t just write Twitter on one go and gift it on to the world. It has evolved over many many years. Technology stacks change, frameworks change, standards change and these companies are trying to continually add features to applications and don’t have the luxury of just rewriting the whole stack every time something new comes out. The end result is something that is often more akin to a living organism than a website or application. He probably thinks Twitter is some program running on every server that can just be rewritten and replaced. I can’t wait for the day they try to replace it and it ends up setting Twitter back a decade.

This is neat and the best part is that it’s open. This means if you don’t like the batteries sticking out like that, it’s you are empowered to fix it and make it better!

As a newly minted parent, the “unborn child” was a real gut punch. I’m not the type to get overly emotional about celebrity deaths but when I read that, I felt it.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kevin twice. Once in 2008 at the H.O.P.E conference and again in 2017 when he and his company were contracted to do physical pen testing at our office. He was always very charismatic and kind in person. I’m sure he’ll be missed.