ttmrichter @ ttmrichter @lemmy.world

Posts

10

Comments

767

Joined

2 yr. ago

Is this the new version of "the lurkers support me in email"?

Current AI isn't in any meaningful sense "intelligent". It's all smoke, mirrors, horses, and ponies put out on a fancy performance designed to transfer money from the public purse (directly or indirectly) into the pockets of sociopathic billionaires.

Thanksgiving is specifically a harvest festival (one of the rare human near-universals) in which there is a feast held post-harvest (you know, when there is plenty of food!). Moving it to February would miss the entire point.

I've been using Linux since 2004, in various distros, exclusively as my desktop for any computer I own or control.

I nonetheless agree with you 100%.

Linux¹ is an OS that appeals to a very narrow spectrum of a very narrow subculture of people. As a desktop OS for the general public it is basically a disaster area. If video doesn't fuck you up, audio will, or Bluetooth, or networking, or any number of other sharp corners and rusty nails sticking out. You either get used to fixing these (and then never touching them ever again once solved ... and hope the next kernel update doesn't fuck you over!) or you get the joy of sifting through a myriad of subtly incorrect and/or out of date "help" articles online. (Documentation?! Don't make me laugh. You wouldn't like me when I laugh.)

There are a few reasons for this. Of these, one is out of the control of the Linux community. The rest are the Linux community's to fix, however. But they won't. (The reason for this is one of the items listed.)

• Manufacturers of hardware won't release the information needed to write drivers for their products, and won't commit to writing and maintaining good drivers of their own.
• The kernel has its ABI changed more often than, I suspect, an average kernel maintainer changes their underwear. (This contributes to why manufacturer drivers tend to drift into shit.)
• The development community is almost pathologically opposed to writing proper documentation. (Hint: reference documentation is not sufficient and never has been.)
• People who do write documentation (often third parties), are not supported in any way by those who don't: changes aren't checked against existing documentation and the latter updated, for example.
• There's a strong "it was hard for me to learn; it should be hard for everyone to learn!" vibe in the user community.
• There's also a strong element of denial in said user community: a lot of "works for me, so it must be your problem". The problem being with Linux is not considered seriously and, indeed, is strongly denied when mentioned as a possibility.
• Fixing complicated (albeit often entirely unnecessary) problems is literally addictive. A lot of users are addicted specifically to the dopamine hit of solving a complicated, if pointless, problem and thus don't see this as a problem. They expect other users to be similarly addicted.
• A lot of users view the computer's OS as the end, not the means to an end. This clashes with the viewpoint of users who just want their OS to get the fuck out of their way so they can work on their actual ends.

So why do I still use Linux, given all my negativity above?

• I do a lot of work with programming languages that most people haven't even seen used in anger. Many of these aren't supported under Windows in the first place; those which are tend not to be very well supported. Unix-like systems are the most common supported systems in that space.
• I really, really, really hate all the spying that gets done by commercial software and would rather deal with the problems that crop up using Linux than feeding a bunch of sociopathic billionaires even more data.
• This is probably the big one: I don't play computer games. I hate the fucking things enough without wanting them in my entertainment. Many of the problems that people have vanish into nothingness if you're not a gamer.
• I am a gigantic nerd. (In all senses of "gigantic" here.)

¹ Before some Yahoo tries to "own" me by pointing out "BUT ANDROID IS BASED ON THE LINUX KERNEL TOO!!!!111oneoneoneeleventy!", here I'm using "Linux" as a shortcut for "Linux on desktop systems as a desktop OS. That Android thing is not the killer line you think it is. It just makes you look intellectually dishonest.

He has money. That makes him able to do anything he likes in the eyes of many. Even many self-identified "leftists".

Are you kidding? Apartheid Edgelord is trying! VERY trying!

(We're using the same sense of "trying" here, right?)

Wait, you mean Apartheid Edgelord might be anti-Jewish as well as anti-woman, anti-black, anti-...?! NO, SIRRAH! I WILL NOT HEAR THIS!

Babylon 5 is a weird show for me. When it was first running, I religiously watched it. If I couldn't watch it live, I got upset and went around my circle of friends to see who'd recorded it so I could watch it as quickly as possible. Up to Season 4 I was gripped. (Season 5 was "meh" because of production shenanigans.)

Years later I watched them on DVD and ... the magic was gone. Watching one episode after another, without separating them by a week, just took the shine off of it. I didn't even finish watching the episodes on DVD; I think I made it to mid season 3 (and the amount I watched slid down and down up to that) before not bothering to continue. I eventually gave them all to a friend of mine and never watched the show again.

I can't think of a single show I've ever watched that had that weird impact on me: first loved, second bored. Usually shows I loved I keep loving, shows I was bored by remained boring, and very occasionally a show I thought was boring the first time got more interesting on second viewing. But B5? It's the only one that goes this way.

Yes. Some people are beyond hope. Therefore we shouldn't bother with empathy with all people. This is exactly how logic works. Yes.

But yes, indeed, some people are beyond hope. It's why I won't bother engaging with you further. (Guess where you just got categorized....)

That "slippery slope" is absolutely vital to slither down if you want to formulate public policy.

If you don't understand why people mistrust "big pharma" or "big government" or "big [sobriquet]" and reflexively dismiss anything that involves them, you cannot formulate public policy that will be effective.

Very rarely do people say "I'm going to dismiss centuries of scientific progress for this quack cure" without a reason. It's maybe not a reason you agree with. It's maybe not a reason reality agrees with. But you know what it might be? It might be a reason that traces back to how "big [sobriquet]" has acted toward such people in the past, often persistently over a long period of time, that has led to that breakdown in trust. In short: you (as in the beneficiaries of the status quo and "big [sobriquet]", directly or indirectly) may be at least partially historically culpable in the opposition you now face.

Now I get it: accepting that you yourself are partially culpable for "irrational" opposition is a bitter elixir to swallow, but if you don't take that first step toward understanding, you can't take the second step to correcting the problem. And the problem will continue to fester and take root until, oh, I don't know, something utterly fucking insane happens and a million of your fellow citizens die in a public health disaster because half your population doesn't trust the very institutions that were needed to prevent said disaster.

So maybe you should learn to enjoy sliding down slippery slopes. Or, you know, die in the next easily-preventable pandemic. Like a million of your fellow citizens (assuming you're American: insert your own numbers for your own country if not) did in the current one.

Not all people can be persuaded by "connected knowing" (not a big fan of this terminology), but many can be (over time).

NOBODY, however, who can't be persuaded by "connected knowing" will be persuaded by "separate learning", so I'm not sure what your point here is.

That's what I said. Fucking capitalists.

Some vultures are just better at hiding their rapaciousness than others for a while.

Apparently you care enough to comment.

Oh, I didn't find Linux in 2004. I switched over to it permanently then.

That would be the concealed Ponzi scheme I alluded to above.

That would probably be why you're having difficulties finding anarchists on Mastodon. "If you want your boomerang to come back well first you've got to throw it."

2004? Nah. I was nearly 40.

I had a great place to get roasted-on-premises coffee, but the guy who ran it got me interested in the process, ran a course in how to do it, and then sold the equipment to do it. I'm a nerd. Of course I nerded out and started doing it myself!

I didn't buy fresh roasted beans. I roasted my own.

Of course I'm a lunatic.

The really tech literate choose one of the BSDs. Probably FreeBSD, though OpenBSD is also out there for those with the urge to self-harm.

The really lunatic tech literate use TempleOS, though.