Quoting: foobrewThe comment about Windows was far more shocking to me. I'd like to believe that after 30+ years the tide might be turning...but I'm not holding my breath. Seriously though, how is it possible that young people don't even question that they're running the same OS, just a newer version of course, that their GRANDPARENTS ran? Youth don't do this with any other product that I can think of. The unquestioning fealty to Microsoft is something I suppose I'll never understand.

Well, up until recently they might have not questioned it because they just didn't notice it. I mean, your OS (and where there's a distinction, your desktop environment) are kind of just a substrate you run your software on. And at this point the desktop environment is . . . sure, people innovate, but if you're not getting cute it's a pretty mature thing, so if it's done decently people are barely aware it's there. It's like how people don't rebel against how their grandparents used refrigerators.

On Windows, though, people are no longer barely aware it's there, because MS insists on making it get in the way. Lately it seems there are a ton of "I switched to Linux cuz Win 11 sucks so hard, so should you" videos on the internet. It feels like there's a shift happening.

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(Hugh Laurie as Prince Regent voice)
Well, hurrah!

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Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe US was a better place to live when it had more "nanny state" and that's no co-incidence. So was Canada, so was Britain.

If anyone thinks that there is less "nanny state" now than there was before, they are deluding themselves.

I suppose it depends on your definition. Most people who use the term generally use it to mean "Government doing anything useful". So, building housing, "nanny state"; providing health care, "nanny state"; social safety net, "nanny state"; regulations saying your food can't be poisoned, "nanny state". And, there is a lot less of all that stuff than there used to be in, say, the 70s. If you use it differently from that you're very much in the minority and can't be surprised if people misunderstand you.

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Quoting: sarmad

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: sarmadThe solution to the ethical dilemma should come from politicians, but they are unfortunately too corrupt to do the right thing.

Why should ethics be the responsibility of government? That just brings more "nanny state" interference in everyone's lives. Ethics should be personal and exercised on the individual level. The corporations will switch gears soon enough once they realize their policy is garnering very few customers.

From the perspective of legality, however, there is the matter of the violated copyrights ...

Not the responsibility of the government, rather the responsibility of the judicial system.

The judicial system is a branch of government.

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Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: sarmadThe solution to the ethical dilemma should come from politicians, but they are unfortunately too corrupt to do the right thing.

Why should ethics be the responsibility of government? That just brings more "nanny state" interference in everyone's lives. Ethics should be personal and exercised on the individual level.

I'm sorry, that's nonsense. A good deal of what government is all about has always been regulating unethical behaviour, in the interests of the community, because unethical behaviour damages the common good, and promoting the common good is what government is for. We're just so used to certain kinds of laws around ethical behaviour that we forget that's what they are. So for instance, laws against fraud are laws about ethical behaviour. Contract laws are laws about ethical behaviour. Arguably practically every law . . . murder, rape, theft, on and on . . . is a law about ethical behaviour. One could argue that laws about traffic aren't about ethics . . . but in a way even they are if you think the laws are rules to try to keep drivers and pedestrians safe, violating them makes people less safe, and making people less safe is an unethical thing to do.

In any case, where exactly has decades of whinging about the "nanny state" and getting rid of it wherever possible brought the United States? The US was a better place to live when it had more "nanny state" and that's no co-incidence. So was Canada, so was Britain.

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Quoting: sarmadWhile I agree there is a lot of immorality in AI, avoiding it just puts you at a disadvantage since everyone is using it.

That does not follow. For one thing, lots of potential buyers don't like AI, so if you don't avoid it, you may lose sales. For another, many applications of AI don't actually give advantage in the end, even if it seems like they ought to. Just because something is unethical does not necessarily mean that it is the best self-interested play. Lots of things are both unethical and stupid things to do.

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Quoting: rustynail

Quoting: sarmadThe snap file format and client side tools are completely open source. What's proprietary is the backend, i.e snapcraft.io, which is fine.

Doesn't that kinda mean that snap being open source is pointless to a large extent? It's like an open source client for a proprietary messaging service

Not entirely. If the file format is open source, then other backends could be written and they would interoperate with the client side tools (you might have to change a little bit of stuff in those tools that currently just point to Canonical's back end, but presumably that part would be trivial). It's certainly not ideal though.

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Quoting: Numerfolt

Quoting: AsciiWolfAnd Mastodon is sadly even more toxic than X/Twitter.

Oh, that's interesting, I haven't encounterd much toxicity on Mastodon so far 🤔

Isn't Mastodon designed to be sort of . . . patchy? Different sub-communities could be very different.

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Quoting: AsciiWolf

Quoting: RedjeAnd I don’t really get the hype for flatpak.

and actually makes desktop Linux usable even for regular, non-technical users.

Flatpak has uses, some of the stuff you said is true, but this is ridiculous. I am a regular, non-technical user. I use Mint, it's the most user-friendly distro around. It is possible to install Flatpaks in Mint, and I have installed a couple, but not enough to make a noticeable difference to how usable my desktop is. Flatpaks are some icing on one or two slices of the cake for "regular, non-technical users".

Being non-technical does not mean I can't recognize a statement that completely contradicts the reality of my experience when I see one.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Tethys84Except nobody will be able to afford the Steam Machine. I would be surprised if Valve didn't indefinitely delay or even eventually cancel it because of the skyrocketing prices on RAM alone.

It depends. If they made a fixed price contract early enough, they might be able to offer their boxes cheap.

Yeah. After all, this is not a cost of production problem, it is a "what the traffic will bear" supply and demand problem. So if some manufacturer has a contract to deliver hardware for $X, they will still make money doing that, just not as much money as they think they can bilk us for.

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