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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: May 24th, 2021

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  • Because it’s a wall of text trying to justify why we’re all struggling, and I think people are just done trying to engage with such “galaxy brained” theories that are completely removed from our lived realities. Especially when people probably have better things to do than some point-counterpoint internet argument.

    Not to mention, this “sound theory” is just that: a theory. Frankly, all of economics is entirely made up! That’s not to say it’s not a valuable and important study, but it’s also not based on any natural laws. It’s an entirely human construct and something we don’t fully understand. ANY economic theory can be torn apart in thousands of ways by adjusting the models a bit. In the west we’ve been fed the theories from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan for longer than most of us have been alive, and it seems like those theories are falling apart around us! I think a lot of people are seeing that when GDP goes up and “the markets” go up, we don’t get anything. But when “the markets” go down, we have to immediately shoulder the burden. We see our hard work being absorbed by investors seeking their ROI. We see our loyalty repaid by mass layoffs so executives and investors can earn even higher profits.

    So when someone tries to justify it all using the same theories and models that seem to be causing the problem, I don’t blame people for just down voting and moving on.

    We’re tired of being trickled down on and it’s time for a new theory.






  • I don’t use Flatpak much, but I rarely see issues. Sometimes I see minor things like themes not quite being right, but its never been bad enough for me to spend the time to fix it.

    I suppose another downside is the need to have the base runtime packages, so it could take more disk space if each app uses a different one. In practice apps will share runtimes though.


  • I’ve never heard of Skiff, but it’s sad to see more software gobbled up by VCs. Though it sounds like the back end was never OSS to begin with?

    I used to be so excited about a future where people were software literate where we would be building open systems and make a decent living. Instead, people have been force fed locked down systems in the name of “user experience”, all so that a few people can make an absolute killing while the rest of us feed off the scraps (even if the scraps of the software industry are still pretty good). It just makes me sad.

    I am extremely appreciative of folks who do make honest open source software though! Many of them do make a decent living too. It’s hard not to lose hope when reading stuff like this, but then I remember that I’m typing this comment using Firefox on KDE Plasma running on a Linux kernel, right next to an Emacs session. Sticking to good open source software is a wonderful thing!




  • TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.catoPrivacy@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    7 months ago

    I just can’t take anything seriously that puts such an emphasis on “free speech”.

    The blog has a post about “Web 3”, so that’s a bit of a red flag as well.

    I love how the top of the page mentions to ditch Facebook and twitter, but then there are links to them at the bottom. I get wanting to spread the word, but it just looks bad.

    Also, no source code?

    This whole thing just feels sketchy.



  • So is the Linux kernel not open because code has to go through review and may be rejected?

    Is Gnu software not open because you have to sign over copyright or may have code rejected for ideological reasons?

    Guido van Rossum was BDFL of Python until recently and had pretty much final say on anything that went into the langauge. So I guess Python isn’t open?

    Hopefully the XMPP Standards Foundation doesn’t just blindly merge in every pull request that comes their way! I’m sure there have been plenty of people that had to beg and still had their proposal rejected.

    You may not agree with the decisions being made about Matrix, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an open protocol or an open process. In fact it’s extremely transparent as another commenter linked to their proposal pull requests on GitHub.

    There’s plenty to criticize about Matrix. It may be overly complicated and over-engineered. If there is significant VC involvement, then the threat of enshittification is very real. Element is also quite slow in larger rooms and the search is pretty terrible at the moment.

    But, it’s dishonest to say it’s not open. I just don’t want other readers to think it’s somehow closed, when it isn’t. Discord is closed. Slack is closed. Matrix is not.

    Also, while being open is a good thing, it’s not a virtue unto itself. Visual Studio Code is an open editor but I stay away from it because I don’t trust Microsoft to not fuck it up. Likewise Chromium is open but I stay away from it because I trust Google even less.


  • Sorry, but nothing you mentioned has anything to do with Matrix not being an open protocol. I don’t know what you mean by “truly open”. It sounds like a “no true Scotsman” argument.

    The spec is absolutely open, and you can see it in what I linked. There are also several servers and several clients if you don’t like one written by the Matrix or Element folks. Heck, there’s even a client for emacs! Now there are compatibility issues since not every server and client implements the entire protocol yet, but that’s not an issue of openness. I used to run into problems all the time with XMPP way back when for similar reasons. I even recall something about Google breaking the XMPP protocol in some ways and causing problems.

    I’m not even sure your claim of VC funding is true, since the faq mentions several non VC sources of funding. I couldn’t find anything about VC at element.io, so maybe it’s hidden there, or something has changed a matrix.org?

    Still, discussion about not liking their business model is orthogonal to whether the protocol is open or not. Maybe we run the risk of them pulling a HashiCorp and changing some licensing down the road, which would be terrible. But I think it’s dishonest to say it’s not open.