Europe’s militaries right now can just Desert Storm Russia, probably in time for Christmas. They don’t want to pay the human cost, however negligible it is in comparison to what Ukraine has already paid.

OOXML is Microsoft’s proprietary format it itself doesn’t implement consistently.

Either you meant OpenDocument or you meant that you want a magic wand.

Linux is still mostly US-dependent as a project.

That already works, even India and China have (unnoticed by Western public opinion) transitioned from growth to stable situation, and it’s predicted their populations will be shrinking.

We are going to have the problem of too few people, not too many.

It’s different between countries, I suppose.

Also people want different things. For me customizable desktops (say, FVWM however I want to script it) are important, because I easily get distracted and overloaded. I also can’t ignore aesthetics, and in my subjective taste Apple style is concentrated bad taste combined with arrogance. Also there’s something in their UI design making me feel nausea and get tired faster. I don’t know what it is.

Other people want something else.

It comes from subjective experience in a country where Apple is traditionally not very popular.

I also can’t separate their disgusting advertising from their products, subjective again.

I’ve met some folks who’d use an Apple laptop as part of their general attempt to look more competent than they actually were, for managers and such. Or maybe just for their ego.

If your choice is between Windows and MacOS - I dunno. Depends on how AuDHD-tolerant one can make MacOS. What I usually see doesn’t inspire confidence.

We have some client’s engineers who use MacBooks. I’ll just say that I’m wary of anyone technical using MacOS at this point.

Though some of our devs use them too, but from what I’ve seen, they could just as well use Linux.

I’ve recently seen a nice description of that - “peasant mindset”.

People who are not ready and willing to peacefully discuss reality with literally anyone, and most of all marginal and weird viewpoints, like sovcits and antivaxxers, because those are more interesting, - have that “peasant mindset”.

(I’ve found something like that in my head too this morning, so sharing the thought.)

Aggression is a sign of fear, and fear is something we feel when we are not ready to change our mind if we get some good arguments, or when we get bad, insufficient arguments, but are pressed to change our mind anyway.

Why can we not be ready for that, feel powerless before that possibility of deciding to think differently 5 minutes from now?

Because there’s something that we follow like a peasant follows their master. It’s the assumed identity, the family, the group, the party, the state, the nation. Such a decision, and a decision to discuss reality preceding that, is an act of defiance toward those. It’s a conflict, and we as humans sometimes try to avoid conflicts. It’s like discussing orders. Only there’s not a single soul above us who is entitled to order us how we vote or how we think.

Every decision worth making is destructive, everything new comes in the place of something old and something that could be, there’s nothing to fear.

Changing one’s mind by a conscious decision after careful consideration is a sign of having personal dignity. Not changing one’s mind in the same situation is too a sign of having personal dignity.

Keeping your head down and trying to eat anyone not in line is not.

(too long again)

I thought I’m alone. A rather obnoxious person just plainly refusing to reason.

Surprisingly few. I usually block people who think it’s a good idea to incorporate my comments into their witch hunt and go my way with a pitchfork. That is, those who use offensive or derogatory tone instead of arguments.

Israelis are more known for putting backdoors wherever they can than Russians, for example.

Anyway, nation-states are not the only kind of group with malicious interest. Maybe a maintainer is a member of some mafia, I dunno. How are you going to know this?

Many things can be done with FreeBSD. Again, in our time it may get some popularity again not because of such events even, but because of their possibility and to avoid monoculture (in the context of backdoors too).

No, it’s not. But the US is closer to it than some Americans think.

That’s the point of FOSS as copyleft, to use the law to protect “free and open” information. This allows bigger projects, because contributors don’t have to keep their heads down.

At the same time maybe this is a downside, not an upside. As the reason why it has all gotten so big and complex and corporate-influenced.

This does very little to protect against supply chain attacks.

Your example shows that too.

Increasing modularity and reducing complexity of software seem to be the right way to that end. Plan9, GNU Hurd, Minix3 are interesting in that context.

It’s not decentralized on the level of project development, the visible proof of which is what we’ve seen happen.

How many times have you seen two branches of a significant project to coexist with comparable popularity?

I wonder if there’s some way to manage an open source project so that it’s not subject to particular national laws in this way.

Yes. Pseudonymous software development. I’ve seen Ross Ulbricht’s name today, so we also know the risks.

Naturally this is closer to some underground warez than to copyleft, because the legal ways of protecting copylefted information against appropriation will not be available. A different paradigm.

I’m thinking about that conspiracy theory of Linus having been made an offer one can’t refuse, when some time ago he took a vacation and returned with news about seeing the error of his ways.

It almost coincided with Stallman being canceled for one of his usual highly socially unacceptable, but in principle consistent opinions. With most of the attackers being frankly some new random corporate-associated people, not very active in real communities.

Maybe I’ll re-read J4F and compare Linus from there to these events. Canary and all.

EDIT: Before you downvote this for the mush in my head (thx Linus) propagating conspiracy theories, offers one can’t refuse are not exactly an impossible thing. And WWII radio games, where, having captured an enemy station’s operator, one of the sides could either imitate their style in transmissions or just force them to transmit what it wanted.

If you insert yourself as a side of a war and also imply that people doing this should be on the front lines, then apparently you are?

And I don’t.

What a bullshit argument. Oh yes, untrusted software from random sites in any other top-level domain is safe.

that social skills can be learned, for non-neurotypicals that might require more help.

Mostly unlearning them requires help. It’s called imitation and considered harmful. It takes away a lot of energy with nothing to show for it.

That little that can be learned mostly, too, consists of gaining experience to help unlearn imitation.

That was my point. Experience with people should be gained. Learning to imitate something should not.

Helplessness - yes. I’d tell them, other than therapy, to just keep trying to talk to girls, and stop trying to become “better” inside, because that’s what makes one dull and boring.

… for the very reason that Fortran you can grasp in an evening.