Solar Bear

I envy your life, as it feels like every year the browser assimilates and consumes more and more.

A direct case was not reported in the UK in recent years, but evidence of very likely polio transmission was found in sewage samples two years ago:

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/polio-virus-found-in-uk-sewage-samples-risk-to-public-low

A similar situation happened in New York where an actual case was found a month later:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/polio-found-new-york-wastewater-state-assesses-virus-spread-2022-08-01/

The short of it is, when vaccination rates fall, Polio can be reintroduced via transmission of the live virus found in the oral vaccine, usually taken in poorer countries. If someone were to take the oral vaccine and then immediately travel to a country with lessening vaccination rates, like is currently happening in the west due to the spread of right-wing conspiracy mongering, the live virus still in the vaccinated individual has a low but not zero chance of propagating to the unvaccinated or immune-compromised population there. Samples containing these vaccine-derived viruses are found a few times per year in most places, and it’s a weaker virus so often it leads to no symptoms, but in very rare instances it does take hold with the expected effect:

https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON366

Despite individual cases of polio turning up, either via direct reporting or evidence found elsewhere, it would still be correct to describe polio as being “eradicated” in these countries, at least currently. Nobody is confused by this or demands reclassification of the status of polio.

I don’t follow. We regularly refer to polio as being “eradicated”, even though there have still been documented (but exceptionally rare) cases of polio transmission even in western countries over the last couple decades. That actually sounds like a perfectly apt comparison for the goals of prison abolition, just not in the way you intended.

In short, prison abolition isn’t about abolishing prisons?

Bad name choice in my opinion, as it immediately makes me think: what a dumb idea.

This is kind of like saying being anti-war is a dumb idea because there will surely always be wars fought in defense. Being anti-war isn’t necessarily being an absolute pacifist. It’s about opposing war and striving towards a future where war is a relic of the past. Everybody understands this, but struggles to apply the same logic to other topics.

Striving for intentionally utopian and impossible ideals is a great idea, actually, as long as you recognize it for what it is. I’m a prison abolitionist. Ultimately what I strive for is a society that doesn’t need prisons. I don’t know if total prison abolition is possible, but worst case scenario, we get as close as possible. What’s so bad about that?

Similarly, I’m a communist, in the classical anarchist sense: abolition of state, class, and money. Are these things possible? Maybe not. In fact, probably not, at least not in any timeframe where humanity will be recognizable to us, as it would require true peace between all people and absolute post-scarcity in every way available to everyone. But worse case scenario, we get as close as possible.

Ultimately, adopting a utopian ideal is a recognition that the struggle to do better never ends. We’re never “done”. There’s no end of history. Even if we do somehow achieve it, it must be maintained.

You’re greatly overestimating how many people that is; additionally, it was largely people that aren’t very committed to FOSS that got mad. The project maintainers and most users are fine with it. People who are committed to FOSS ideals are overwhelmingly progressive to leftist. That’s why those codes of conduct were added in the first place, and were largely uncontroversial amongst most actual contributors of those projects.

Agree with the former, not the latter.

This is so cozy and giving me some inspiration for my own environment!

I don’t know, that sounds like hard, thankless work that will take years of consistent effort, dealing with countless setbacks and losses but not giving up, before finally achieving our goals of making real and meaningful change. What if instead if that I just don’t buy Starbucks, will that work?

Plants aren’t sentient. When we say they “feel pain” and “communicate” we don’t mean like sentient creatures. We just don’t have better words to accurately convey the mechanics at play here. Computers also “communicate”.

It really seems like you didn’t have an actual argument, you just wanted to whine and duck away from any pushback.

It seems to me that you’ve just made up your mind and as such are not invested in even trying to understand other arguments.

it’s probably time to come to terms with the fact that better alternatives would have arisen had anyone thought they could truly manage it.

This is the most important takeaway. There’s a lot of people whining about Wayland, but Wayland devs are currently the only people actually willing to put in the work. Nobody wants to work on X and nobody wants to make an alternative to Wayland, so why do we keep wasting time on this topic?

I don’t support anyone. I oppose the worst outcome, and seek to steer our course away from it. Only narcissists and hobbyists hyperventilate about who they are “supporting”.

I engage in politics as a means to an end and nothing more. I take the best option available and I move on to the next task. To do otherwise is to value the self above the collective, and as a communist that is not a luxury I’m afforded.

One of those two will be president no matter what you do. They will then be in a position capable of inflicting great damage. Trump will use that position to hurt more people than Biden. The math here isn’t complicated, and it continually astounds me how many people on the left cannot actually solve the trolly problem when faced with it for real. It really shows which people are engaged in politics as a means to an end rather than as personal expression or a hobby.

Maintaining multiple SKUs with major differences is quite expensive and time consuming, plus confusing for the customer on a global Internet trying to look things up. I expect that this would make at least some manufacturers ship these to other countries, so we would have some options.

The full details are complex but I’ll give you the basic gist. The original GPL licenses essentially say that if you give somebody the compiled binary, they are legally entitled to have the source code as well, along with the rights to modify and redistribute it so long as they too follow the same rules. It creates a system where code flows down freely like water.

However, this doesn’t apply if you don’t give them the binary. For example, taking an open source GPL-licensed project and running it on a server instead. The GPL doesn’t apply, so you can modify it and do whatever, and you aren’t required to share the source code if other people access it because that’s not specified in the GPL.

The AGPL was created to address this. It adds a stipulation that if you give people access to the software on a remote system, they are still entitled to the source code and all the same rights to modify and redistribute it. Code now flows freely again, and all is well.

The only “issue” is that the GPL/AGPL are only one-way compatible with the Apache/MIT/BSD/etc licenses. These licenses put minimal requirements on code sharing, so it’s completely fine to add their code to GPL projects. But themselves, they aren’t up to GPL requirements, so GPL code can’t be added to Apache projects.

Most Snaps have apt or Flatpak alternatives.

I’m simply not going to support a distro that creates a proprietary service and ships it as the default source of software. I will support and use distros that open source their code so that everyone can benefit from it. Whether workarounds or alternatives exist is unimportant, my prime issue with Ubuntu and Canonical is with their principles, not Ubuntu’s quality as a product to be consumed by me.

Look, I’m usually first in line to shit on Canonical, but I can’t get mad at them adopting AGPL. This is objectively the best license for server software. Incus should also switch to AGPL for all Canonical code, and seek to have contributors license their code as AGPL as well.

I will however point out the hypocrisy and inconsistency of it, because the Snap server is still proprietary after all of this time. If this is their “standard for server-side code” then apply it to Snaps or quit lying to us.

Most people do not care about their init system. Fewer still care about your init system. Use what you want, just quit shouting about it.

It’s far better than it used to be. They didn’t get the reputation for no reason. There were lots of Nvidia-specific bugs that have been slowly sorted out over the years. I’m told Wayland is even in a roughly usable state now. But it takes a lot of time to regain the lost trust. Let’s see how long it takes them to support HDR, and what that support looks like.