Here’s an interesting video about Zuckerberg’s rebranding:

Why Zuckerberg’s Rebrand Shouldn’t Distract Us

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My ideal Sunday is when my wife reminds me that Monday is a bank holiday at dinnertime and I had forgotten.

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That’s remarkable considering Linux is only 33 years old.

thats a lot of words for contributing for a single year, only half of which was ‘volunteer’

How long have you been contributing?

Two comments about this:

• It is my firm belief that 99% of the population of any country ruled by a dictator are the primary victims of that dictator, don’t condone what their rulers do, have done nothing wrong and are just trying to be good people in unfavorable circumstances.

  The Russians are no different and it isn’t fair to impose on Russian individuals of obvious good will the treatment governments apply to the Russian government, because the Russian government and the Russian people are two very different things.

• Linus said in this interview:

  I’m Finnish. Did you think I’d be supporting Russian aggression?

  and here I’m telling you this: Linus acts like a dipshit.

  I know the Finns very, VERY well, and while they’re generally great people, when it comes to Russia and Russians, they have epidermic reactions of totally unreasonable proportions.

  I understand where they’re coming from and why they react like that, but Russia is to the Finnish people what peanuts are to someone with a peanut allergy: the reaction is totally disproportionate and with zero nuances.

  Don’t ever try to argue with a Finn that a Russian person can be good, and that Putin is also their enemy: the Finn will shut down and stop talking to you - meaning, in their culture, that you can politely go fuck yourself.

  And that’s what we’re witnessing here with Linus: however many years he’s lived in California, he still hasn’t shed that part of his upbringing, and quite frankly, shame on him.

But where does it become obvious and to whom? It should be labeled.

Dude… Nobody needs help understanding that a photo of Trump kissing Musk is a metaphor. And that’s the whole point: it’s designed to be obviously a metaphor. If you label it, it becomes fucking stupid. And if you need a label, clearly you need to get out of the rock you’ve been living under.

Untie that knot in your pants. Obvious doctored photos and illustrations for satirical purposes have been around forever.

It’s not fake news, it’s satire.

Oh, no question. It takes skills to drive a car well - particularly a race car. It probably requires you to be fit too. But you’re not doing the work: the car does.

I choose to draw the line of “sport” at physical performance, because if you start including fine motor skills and intelligence, then you have to include poker-playing, model-making and mathematics and then it becomes ridiculous. And I say that as a semi-professional pool player: whatever I’m doing when I’m shooting pool, it sure ain’t sport, despite my having to train and keep fit.

Similarly, I choose to draw the line of “art” as you doing the art. Asking an AI to come up with a picture, however skillful the prompt, clearly isn’t you making the art.

That’s my take. Feel free to disagree 🙂

Off topic, but…

“AI art” isn’t a thing anymore than “motorsport” is: it’s not sport when you’re not the motor.

I’m still undecided on an electric car, mostly because modern cars are such privacy nightmares on wheel (not Tesla-specific).

But there’s one thing for sure: whatever car I get eventually won’t be a Tesla, and that’s 100% due to Musk’s misguided political gesticulations.

I’m one example of business lost forever to Tesla. One example doesn’t make a trend, but if there’s one, there are others.

I’ve been arguing this many times with many people, and everybody seems to adopt their own way of interpreting things to suit their preferences.

Here’s my line of thinking:

• If the first buyer buys a Google cellphone new for, say, $500 (no idea of the price, just making it up for the sake of explaining), this buyer gives $500 to Google
• If I then buy this cellphone second-hand for, say, $300, the original buyer gets $300 back, meaning Google now has $300 of my money.

That’s a hard no.

Of course, there’s the argument that Google got $500 no matter what and they don’t know who the money is from. But that’s besides the point: I know Google got my money. I most defintely parted with $300 to acquire a Google cellphome, meaning as far as I’m concerned, I indirectly gave Google $300 of my money. And I refuse to give Google any money, however indirect the transaction might be. The only way I could become the owner of a Google phone is if someone gave one to me, I found it in the trash or I stole it.

There’s also the argument that if I don’t buy the cellphone, it might end up in a landfill, so if I’m environmentally-minded, I should save it from the landfill. That’s true, but my counter-argument to this is that a healthy second-hand market for Google phones gives them more value, therefore makes them more appealing to potential buyers and ultimately supports Google’s business.

I don’t like serviceable stuff being landfilled for no good reason (otherwise I wouldn’t pay extra to buy a Fairphone) but in the case of Google hardware, I reckon it should end up at the landfill as often as possible to diminish its value and hurt Google. Of course, I’m only one meaningless guy, but I reckon boycotting Google is a moral duty for anybody who’s concerned about privacy and civil liberties.

And of course, I don’t want a Google product in my pocket because it would make me nauseous. But that’s entirely subjective.

Fire, just in time for winter. Nice!

I use i3 - Sway is supposed to be 100% compatible with i3 - and I find the configuration file very straightforward. What’s different in the version in NixOS?

Yes. On a Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Not if you run the stock OS you don’t.

My comment was generic. The vast majority of Android users don’t unlock their bootloader and install a custom ROM. The people who do that are fringe users.

My point was that when the normal state of affairs is Google controlling YOUR property that YOU paid with YOUR hard-earned, and you have to be technically competent and willing to risk bricking your device to regain control, that’s full-blown dystopia right there.

It’s so ironic that Pixels are the go to devices for privacy roms these days.

It’s so ironic it’s a show-stopper for me. I’m not paying fucking Google to escape the Google dystopia. Nosiree! That’s just too rich for me.

This is why I own a Fairphone running CalyxOS. Yes, I know GrapheneOS is supposedly more secure - I say supposedly because I think 95% of users don’t have a threat model that justifies the extra security really. But I don’t care: my number one priority is not giving Google a single cent. If it means running a less secure OS, I’m fine with that.

There’s no way on God’s green Earth I’m buying a Pixel phone to run a deGoogled OS. That’s such an insane proposition I don’t even know how anybody can twist their brain into believing this is a rational thing to do.

Who truly owns the device is a question that has been answered ever since Android came into being.

Ask yourself: do you have root access to YOUR phone? No you don’t: Google does.

It’s the so-called “Android security model”, which posits that the users are too dumb to take care of themselves, so Google unilaterally decides to administer their phone on their behalf without asking permission.

Which of course has nothing to do with saving the users from their own supposed stupidity and everything to do with controlling other people’s private property to exfiltrate and monetize their data.

How this is even legal has been beyond me for 15 years.

Well if you say so, I defer to your higher authority on bullshit.