bobcallme's comments

Are you able to offer a more coherent rebuttal? Name calling is what children do. Adults generally offer up an argument; it does not have to be a good or perfect one.

So, criticizing Mozilla is not allowed or using strong language to drive a point? If anything, my original comment did not go far enough. All of the people here helped to kill Internet freedom and the Web. Civil discussion is only allowed if certain organizations/topics are not on the table and their malicious actions just get brushed off like it is no big deal. I was a huge supporter of Mozilla (Project/Foundation) and gave lots of money to support them. As each issue came up, I was brushed off as a crazy loon whose opinion has no merit or weight. Flagging and censorship seems to be the tool of the day to ease the pain of having to deal with an unpopular opinion. As my final and last post to this Brogrammer circle jerk, I leave with this:

First they came for the CEO because he used personal funds to support things that we did not agree with and I spoke out in support of him as a gay man because Free Speech is important. Then they came for the browser, because they believe in a "Free and Open Web"..."Privacy".."Truth":

* EME (can't have a Free and Open web without DRM) * Pocket (just save pages with this non-free service in the cloud, trust us...we care about privacy) * Studies (pushed a malicious plugin that you were not suppose to know about) * Cloudflare DNS (TRR) (we must ignore all system DNS settings at all cost because we trust CloudFlare) * telemetry (we can't trust the user really wants to disable it) * Ministry of Truth [1] (everyone trusts Mozilla to be the gatekeeper)

The laundry list of things keeps growing and these issues fall on deaf ears. "Well, you can fork...change things" I should not have to maintain my own fork of a now shitty browser just so that malicious features are removed or stay turned off.

Hacker News was the last and final place on the Web that I go and participate. I dumped Facebook 8 years ago and I have been kicked off of Reddit (remember when Snowden news articles from mainstream sources were banned from r/technology?). I guess my best bet is to move to an island so I don't trigger or bother the fine folks of Hacker News / YCombinator...

[1] The Mozilla Information Trust Initiative : http://archive.is/jcJWg

How is it great if I don't have the freedom to run my own server. Do you really trust that Mozilla won't hand over your browsing history and saved pages?

> You know Pocket is owned by Mozilla right?

That does not make it any better. So what if they did finally release the sources for the plugin (only took them a year or two to do). They have not released the server component. They are also using it to push ADs that I don't want. I should not have to toggle 50 different things and remove a bunch of stuff before I can use Firefox and then the next update undoes all of that.

Interesting that they would fight for this, but yet they push malware, HTML5 EME, CloudFlare DNS, ADs with Pocket and to be the gate keeper of the truth [1]. Mozilla. The Mozilla Project and Foundation have become quite toxic and this two-faced stance that it cares about its useds is quite appalling.

[1]The Mozilla Information Trust Initiative : http://archive.is/jcJWg

Edit: censored

> You are completely wrong. "Prohibition" was working. Smoking was dropping year after year, thanks to public policies like banning flavored cigarettes, packaging laws, ID laws, and taxes.

The main reason traditional smoking dropped was not because of prohibition, it's because of education and the fact that we had someone (or a lot of someones) who smoked and we had seen what it did to them. If someone is determined to get their hands on something, they will get it on the black market that you are proposing to create.

> What proposed regulation are you claiming makes it harder for an adult to buy e-cigs?

The removal of flavored e-cigarette devices / tobacco from convenience stores. E-cigarettes are already hidden away in most convenience stores and I've been to hundreds of them across the country on my travels. The FDA needs to stop using my tax dollars to lie to teens with their The Real Cost AD campaign because it is not factual. I would support it if they were not lying to teens and they pushed factual ADs (showing parasites is not factual or genuine). Any teen who has had a Biology or health class will see through that (unless you are proposing we stop factually teaching those things in schools).

> Nevermind that part of the FDA's problem is that e-cigarette manufacturers were able to resist regulation by claiming in court they were not a nicotine replacement therapy, but in fact a new tobacco product for people who did not want to quit.

You need proof to back up that claim.

> Besides that - obviously the existence of other problems does not prevent us from dealing with this one, now. The facts, according to the article, are that our tremendous progress in eradicating nicotine addiction has been dealt a serious setback: millions of kids are addicted, most of whom would not have been smoking cigarettes, and vapers are more likely to become future smokers.

More FUD and bullsh*t claims being made. The only reason vapers would start using cigarettes is if you made e-cigarettes / vaping products difficult to get. All of this could have been avoided if parents talked with their kids, administrators did their bloody jobs and stop lying to teens about the things we don't want them to do. I guess that I was lucky enough to grow up in a time where my parents somewhat cared and I had the freedom to make my own stupid mistakes without authoritarians like you proposing to move the bar of adulthood later and in life.

> That's great. That doesn't excuse their easy availability and the clear marketing toward children. That's how the media and government need to be held accountable.

Care to provide a link or example? Because I have yet to see any. Every convenience store that I have been in has most tobacco products hidden and any ADs have just text and no pictures.

> That there are more dire issues doesn't mean we can't tackle less dire ones. The real tragedy is if the government had been on the ball, this would have never been a problem in the first place. E-cigs should have been much more heavily restricted, no flavorings allowed, etc., then people could have still quit smoking and we wouldn't have a teenage nicotine addiction epidemic. As it is, e-cigs have been sold as something basically completely safe and fun, and consequently millions of children are now addicts.

My personal opinion is that you can't expect the government to protect me or you from every single threat. Adding more restrictions, creating a black market and lying is not going to help address this. I still want to see example of ADs that appear to be targeting children to buy e-cigarettes.

> E-cigarettes helped your friends stop smoking. Great! But apparently they're helping other people start.

So, the real question is WHERE are they getting them since all sources require an ID to get them and making them more illegal or difficult to get most likely won't stop them from getting them.

My opinion is that energy would be better spent at addressing immediate health issues and this issue could have been avoided if parents + school administrators + the community were more involved. I don't buy "we could not smell it" since most vaping stuff does have a sweet smell to it.

You are selling this FUD under the guise of "protect the children" when in reality you are restarting the issues we had with traditional cigarettes. The new regulations will pull vaping devices from stores and make it more difficult for those who do need them, thus making them go back to using cigarettes. People should be able to make their own informed choices and be able to put what they want in their bodies. Prohibition never works since it is not currently working (since all retailers are suppose to be checking IDs). This whole thing could have been avoided if parents talked with their children and school administrators did their jobs of enforcing existing policies / laws. There are much worse public health issues that need to be dealt with NOW and this is not it. Ever heard of the opioid / heroin epidemic that actually results in death and much worse health issues?

> ...at the school where I teach.

You are partially responsible for this. Why is it the first response to blame everyone else but it is never the fault of those who are on the front lines (teachers, parents, people in the community)? I am stick and tired of the parents who can't F' talk to their kids ("the government needs to do more!"), school administrators who are not doing their job (last time I checked, having any tobacco / nicotine products on school grounds is quite illegal for both students and faculty : with fines and possible jail time) and the fact that there are much more dire issues in many communities that need to be addressed (maybe the opioid and Heroin epidemic?). The fact that there are much more harmful things that teens can get a hold of should be a priority over this FUD.

> The media has also failed it’s obligations. Most news articles are practically advertisements for e-cigarettes, promoting them as smoking cessation tools and practically harmless compared to other tobacco products. They are not FDA approved and the evidence for their efficacy and safety is sketchy at best.

The media has no obligation to you or me to do anything. E-cigarettes have helped quite a few people I know stop smoking (to the point that they don't even vape anymore). Running factually inaccurate ads like this [1] NSFW is much more harmful than any AD sponsored by big tobacco / e-cigarette companies. Lying to teens is not going to have the desired effect that you are looking for and it's going to make them want to do the opposite. As for the health effects, it is going to be just like anything else that can have undesired / dangerous substances if it comes from a questionable source. I'm sure that e-cigarettes are much better than inhaling traditional combustible cigarettes (I'm not denying that there could be health issues if use continued over X time).

[1] NSFW FDA AD / The Real Cost https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYuyS1Oq8gY

Edit: missing word

Not true [1]. Ubuntu is full of recommendations for non-free / malicious "snaps" and has telemetry (opt out + remove a few packages).

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17326184/firefox-ads-spons...

I'd place my bets that MS would buy Canonical since they already have a relationship.

I'm still a little skeptical since this applies to "Microsoft" and not any of its holding or investment companies. A great move to earn trust is to "Open Source" almost expired or useless patents.

I used it for a while and it was great. Sadly too many people refused to use it because "...it's not git!" :(

No, that is just the cost of compliance.

How is this "Open Source"[1] when everything is licensed CC BY-NC-ND? What was the point of releasing anything if changes can't be made or shared? One might as well get a TI-84 since there are FOSS firmware replacements [2] and it would be much more free than this.

I would have bought one of these if the license was not so restrictive.

[1] https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

[2] Knight OS http://www.knightos.org/

What about the data that Apple collects in macOS 10.13 users? Anonymous data collection is not really anonymous. IP addresses and other logs leak lots of identifiable information even with all of the collection settings toggled off in various preference panes. It is kind of hypocritical for Tim to criticize a practice that Apple currently engages in (you can't claim otherwise once you jump down that rabbit hole).

These marches are a waste of time and do absolutely nothing to help with science literacy.

> ...I can only hope Millennials will wake up and steal it back.

You mean perpetuating theft from future generations and being self entitled? I learned quite early on that you can't and should not expect a single thing from anyone. I hate how many people on here perpetuate the idea of forced theft to provide more money to a broken education system that has a focus on profits instead of what it turns out. I would also go further and say that many schools offer stale programs that don't prepare individuals for their field of study. Self entitlement and socialism are not the answer since there is a price for everything in life and it's not free if the cost is someone's time, energy or life.

What would help is to teach people how to learn, find useful career paths and to create useful things. Getting a useless liberal arts degree does not help if you can't reasonably get a paying job with it.

> So we should take away the power from the user to choose that for themself?

Razer's lack of cooperation is not taking away freedom from the user. Razer did not promise to provide "Linux" support and they are not obligated to do so. The firmwares themselves are already non-free and generally have EULAs tied to them which take away that freedom . If you wanted that freedom of choice in the first place, you should have bought hardware that offers that.

> How exactly does it hurt them to have unofficial Linux firmware?

It does hurt Razer to have "unoffical Linux firmware" because they would have new liabilities, possible legal issues in terms of licenses or an image problem if an update results in a brick.

I can't believe how many people think they are entitled to support for something that was never claimed to be supported. If you want "Linux" support, buy hardware that offers just that.

> Could you add a few more details why you think LVFS has architectural issues?

Updating firmware from a system that is in an unknown state has high risks, especially if untrusted software is being run (like on most Linux systems). What if the user pulls the power or there is not enough juice left in the battery when an update has started? Many consumer devices don't have fallback firmware to account for such issues. Not being able to revert cleanly to a last good known firmware if something goes wrong will be an issue.

> Why do you believe firmware shouldn't be updated regularly just like we're used to do it with regular software?

OEMs quite frequently push updates that break something since they can't account for all of the configurations that their hardware will be used; sometimes they push botched uCode updates or other components they can't fully account for.