I agree that the steam machine was too early.

I don't know how it could ever start from zero without having to go through a growing stage. I think it was just necessary to have modest expectations, and so far as I can tell, valve partnered with third party vendors and didn't lose $$$ on it.

Moreover, the downstream effect has been to set the foundation for the Steam Deck, which has been a smashing success. It just takes time to build up a mature ecosystem.

I was never, at any point, as much of a child as I was told I was.

Fast forward to today, I ended up killing him and am writing this from jail.

Okay, important question here: are you writing this on Android or iPhone?

My Puxl was from eBay.

To be honest, I don't know much about how credit cards can be associated with phone hardware. I would think it could conceivably be tied to phone #s. In my case the phone is unlocked and it's not an esim, which I understand we will all be moving too soon.

I wonder if it might have something to do with Google Pay or Apple Pay that ties hardware information to payments? And as for Esim, it might make it so that you can't distinguish phones based on their physical sim card so it perhaps introduces a possibility of reliance on hardware.

But this is all speculation on my part. I just don't know and I haven't made whatever precautions would be needed.

That's what I did!

This is not from Google. This is Extinction Rebellion registering a domain to prank Google, by speaking in their voice and resolving to stop funding climate deniers. It's both a cheeky prank and a way to put pressure on Google to take accountability.

Sorry, I was super unclear there. This was not Google.

However, Google also sometimes has done their own April Fools bits, and historically Google has been big part of April Fools hijinks. So I did mention them as a company that does these, and I did post this which is impersonating Google as an april fools prank, but yeah, this particular one was not at all carried out by Google.

I almost forgot today was April Fools day. I feel like since Covid, the national mood (TM) was such that Google and co stopped doing April Fools pranks, and/or if they did them, they were so safe they were groan inducing.

Looking around at the roundup links for 2024, there aren't many that happened this year, from the looks of it. So I wanted to post this one, because it's the rarest of rare - one that I thought was really incredibly well done.

Very good to know. After following your Github link, I found my way to the blog post that it looks like you are quoting:

https://newpipe.net/blog/pinned/announcement/State-of-the-Pipe-2023/

NewPipe is a killer app I would say, with nearly Youtube Red level functionality in something that's free and OSS. A bit afield from privacy, but you do get to access youtube stuff without logging in.

Syncthing is brilliant, although for me it has had a heck of a learning curve to keep straight. Might just be me though.

Beware, mods removed NYT reportage along similar lines as it applied to Russia when I tried to post it. Some topics are forbidden!

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm glad that Amazon wanted to be ambitious, but there's so much great fiction out there that hasn't yet been adapted, even of other Tolkien stuff such as the Silmarillion (not exactly a story but still plenty of rich details about the world).

I will say, it at least goes down smooth as turn-your-brain-off entertainment if you are looking for something that just looks nice. A lower bar to clear, but I liked having something to fall back to when I ran out of House of the Dragon.

That's where the not that weird idea comes into play. It's not that weird to not want to be misrepresented - that's an entirely different thing from trolling, or strawmanning, or seeking out inflammatory topics on purpose. It's a natural and understandable reaction, and we shouldn't respond to it by deciding it's ok to retaliate with increasingly less fair characterizations of their statements.

And again, that's not even within an country mile of being a good faith attempt at charitable interpretation, for several reasons.

You're twisting their words into some sort seemingly overnight goodbye to all software relying on third party libs. A more normal way of taking that is envisioning a more gradual progression to some future state of affairs, where to the greatest extent possible we've worked to create an ecosystem that meets our needs. An ecosystem that's build on a secure foundation of known and overseen libraries that conform to the greatest extent possible to the FOSS vision. Ideally you don't just say goodbye, you work to create ersatz replacements, which there's a rich tradition of in the FOSS world.

Your other point was even worse:

important software shouldn’t reuse code already made, they should reinvent the wheel and in the process introduce unique vulnerabilities

Somehow, you decided that putting words in their mouth about going out of their way to solve the problem only with worst-case-scenario bad software development practices (e.g. lets go ahead and create unique vulnerabilities and never re-use code) is a reasonable way of reading them, which is completely nuts. FOSS can and does re-use code, and should continue to do so to the extent possible. And like all other software, strive to avoid vulnerabilities with their usual procedures. That's not really an argument against anything specific to their suggestion so much as its an argument against developing any kind of software at any point in time - new games, new operating systems, re-implementations seeking efficiency and security, etc. These all face the same tradeoffs with efficient code usage and security. Nothing more or less than that is being talked about here.

It felt like cosmic justice when he was on celebrity jeopardy. He didn't know a damn thing, which was true to my idea of him.

I totally blocked from my memory the very brief period when holograms were a thing

Yeah, I think some corner of my brain I knew this was exactly the kind of thing that would make us go wtf after some time had passed.

we shouldn’t rely on free software made by free labor, and we need to say goodbye to some 60-70% or more of the software we use

Again I'm just reading along, and as a person who cares about, you know, the principle of charity, I don't see how you can possibly think that's the most charitable interpretation of what they said. I took them to mean we should do what we can to ensure these projects have financial resources to continue, not that we should "say goodbye" to them.

And here's the crazy thing: I'm not even saying I agree. I just think it's possible to address a face value version of what they're talking about without taking unnecessary cheap shots.

Mate, we are discussing on two different threads. Chill out. Maybe I didnt get your point so feel free to elaborate or leave it.

I think it would be really good if all of us on the internet agreed to a rule, which is that if you mischaracterize someone or misread them, it's not that weird for them to want you to not do that. So I don't think it's fair to response to a comment correctly noting they are being mischaractized by going out of your way to try and make it about their emotions/mental state.

In what way did I bend your logic?

Well for starters, the person above was pretty explicitly NOT advocating for reliance on third party libs, and perhaps more importantly, they were not in any way suggesting reliance on closed source software. In essence, diametrically the opposite of everything you were talking about.

I think your confusion came in their phrasing of not relying on "labor product." I took them to mean, not relying on people committing their free labor to sustain FOSS. I think you must have read that as not supporting FOSS.

Also - not constructive? But you’re the one that’s being negative.

I think they are right. You took the exact opposite of what they said and "corrected" them for it, which is irritating as hell. And now you're doubling down, which is worse. I would be irritated too!