The funny thing is, before Google existed, people had no idea if their marketing attempts were working. Maybe they had some ways of knowing or guessing, but there was no way to know how accurate their metrics were. Internet-based advertising, and tracking-based advertising in particular was supposed to change that.

And now that we sit here with a duopoly of advertising giants, we’re back to the stage where marketers just have to trust that their provider is giving them good helpful information. And how are they supposed to know whether they really can believe it or not? They can’t of course! So we’ve come right back to where we’ve started.

But considering they still spent tons of money before Google and Facebook gave them these “analytics”, it looks like they probably don’t even care that much.

As others have mentioned, this is a matter of threat model. To be realistic, a sufficiently determined government will always be able to access your communications, but companies like Facebook and Google can only access them if you give it to them willingly. On the other hand, if other people you communicate with do this by themselves, then you’ve gone through all that effort for nothing. It’s also worth pointing out that it cannot be proven that a regular phone does not have corporate spyware installed, so this may be another way your information could leak to companies.

That said, it is pretty insulting that tech companies have decided that they’re simply entitled to everyone’s private communication data. That for me is probably the biggest motivator in trying to avoid their services as much as possible.

Pathlib is very nice indeed, but I can understand why a lot of languages don’t do similar things. There are major challenges implementing something like that. Cross-platform functionality is a big one, for example. File permissions between Unix systems and Windows do not map perfectly from one system to another which can be a maintenance burden.

But I do agree. As a user, it feels great to have. And yes, also in general, the things Python does with its standard library are definitely the way things should be done, from a user’s point of view at least.

Of course. It’s all about control. They see users as property, an object to be sold and traded.

Do not ever allow yourselves to be disrespected like this.

It’s a large and very complicated piece of software with a single implementation. It’s practically impossible to fork, so users are forced to adopt whatever changes the maintainers decide to implement. This could include things like forced dependencies (incompatible with mulb libc for example), or other poor design choices (like binary logging, which is very controversial). And it forces its adoption in places that do not want it (as in cases like the one we’re discussing here, where it’s becoming harder and harder for Gnome to be used without it).

I’m not going to argue about whether systemd is good software or not. But the biggest problem with it is that it’s basically a way for Red Hat to exert control over the entire Linux ecosystem.

Think of it like Chrome/Chromium. Everybody naïvely thought we were never be where we are today when it was announced, but look at where we are today. While it’s technically open source and an excellent browser, above all, it’s a tool for Google to exert its control over the WWW, such as disabling adblockers, implementing DRM, deciding which CSS/Javascript APIs should (or should not) be adopted, etc. systemd could very well be Red Hat’s vehicle for imposing similar requirements on desktop Linux.

can’t even provide basic answers to questions that help desk people know

University is not a job training program though. A degree demonstrates that you have the skills to figure things out, not that you already have everything figured out. Even with decades of experience, it takes me a bit of time to spin up on a new library, framework, programming language, etc.

Companies are supposed to provide this training, not just to new hires, but to all employees. It does take a little extra time to teach new hires, but their salaries are also lower so it should balance out. And if they want to keep those employees around, then they should give them generous pay increases so they don’t just jump for a salary increase.

Not to mention tone-deaf. Maybe you shouldn’t talk about life-saving technology when your technology anti-saved a life…

And that’s ignoring the fact that they’re using inferior technology. Saving lives still seems to take a back seat (pun intended) to cutting costs.

That’s fair, but to me, the cost of a new device isn’t how much I pay for it - it’s the time I invest in using it and maintaining it, as well as how much I rely on it. The biggest reason that I think open hardware and software is important is not just the cost, but the reliability - the fact that it will still be working tomorrow. That is worth a lot more than money to me!

The tactic only becomes illegal when it confers the ability to exclude competitors from the market.

You’re probably right in a legal sense, but I think that’s a bit stupid. It’s very difficult to draw a line that delineates between when a company has the ability to exclude competitors or not. It requires a lot of costly legal battles and a length appeal process to prove, and nobody will create that court case without significant financial means to be able to prove all of it. And if the court rules against you, all of that time, money and effort achieved nothing and just leaves you with a heavily damaged reputation.

From a practical perspective, it sounds like a very weak legal framework.

Exactly. All these devices can just be bricked the moment some corporation decides they’re not worth supporting anymore. Never buy a device that is so heavily dependent on running on another company’s services.

Really fascinating how this is happening in coordination all of a sudden. I’m practically certain that this is all coming from a small group of investors (maybe even just a couple) who are trying to influence companies as hard as they can into making everyone to start using it.

Staying quiet because it will make daddy angry to talk about it is still abuse.

Okay, fair point. What I mean is, don’t bring it up unless the toddler starts talking about it again. Stupid of CNN to bring it up again for no reason.

It’s a little stupid to bring this up. You have to treat the Trump administration like toddlers, ie. when they ask for something, you just have to be firm, ignore it, and wait for it to go away. Raising the topic again will just make your toddler throw another tantrum.

I get that he was asked this by a member of the media, but nobody should be talking about this. You just have to change the topic - again, exactly the same way you deal with toddlers.

Really? That’s interesting. But the group membership list must be persisted somewhere, no? Otherwise, you wouldn’t know where to send and receive messages. So where is it persisted then?

And also, how would you add someone to a group? When you add a new user to a group, would he be able to view all previous messages? Is it possible for this to scale to, say, a thousand or a million users?

But they must still have your phone number and associate it with your username. So it would still be easy for a government organization to force Signal to give up the identities of all people who join a group.

The effect is very similar though. Ultimately, lobbying is most beneficial for interests that are entrenched and/or extremely wealthy. The only difference is the way that they approach it. Bribery is a very narrow means to supporting your cause, but lobbying is much more vague and difficult to define.

Wikipedia is quite resilient - you can even put it on a USB drive. As long as you have a free operating system, there will always be ways to access it.

Agreed. People just think the first tool that they learned is the easiest to use. I’ve been a longtime Gimp user and find it pretty easy to do what I want.* The few times someone asked me to do something in Photoshop, I was pretty helpless. Of course, I’m a pretty basic user - I wouldn’t dispute that Photoshop is more powerful, but which one is easier to use is very subjective and the vast majority of the time, it just boils down to which one you use more often.

I’ve seen the same with people who grew up on Libreoffice and then started smashing their computer when they were asked to use MSOffice.

To add to subignition’s point, there is a value in learning useful software. More complicated software means that there is a learning curve - so while you are less productive while learning how to use it, once you gain more experience, you ultimately become more productive. On the other hand, if you want the software to be useful to everyone regardless of his level of experience, you ultimately have to eliminate more complex functionality that makes the software more useful.

Software is increasingly being distilled down to more and more basic elements, and ultimately, I think that means that people are able to get less done with them these days. This is just my opinion, but in general I have seen computer literacy dropping and people’s productivity likewise decreasing, at least from what I’ve observed from the 1990s up until today. Especially at work, the Linux users that I see are much more knowledgeable and productive than Apple users.

But without Microsoft’s “PC on every desktop” vision for the '90s, we may not have seen such an increased demand for server infrastructure which is all running the Linux kernel now.

Debatable, in my opinion. There were lots of other companies trying to build personal computers back in those times (IBM being the most prominent). If Microsoft had never existed (or gone about things in a different way), things would have been different, no doubt, but they would still be very important and popular devices. The business-use aspect alone had a great draw and from there, I suspect that adoption at homes, schools, etc. would still follow in a very strong way.