craigsmansion's comments

> He hasn’t presented any argument why he should be considered an apologist.

He _literally_ did, himself, in the article he wrote:

"I think the privacy arguments are far-fetched"

and actually acknowledging it verbatim:

"While I'm going to sound like an Apple apologist,"

as in "people who say this are Apple apologists, but I'm only like one if I state it."

> Many invalid points, and straw men in your comment.

Of course.

> A lot to people are claiming Apple is a malevolent entity. In context, it is reasonable for him to rebut that.

The exclusive "or" in "do you trust Apple is acting in your best interests, or do you believe they're a malevolent entity?" still makes it a false dichotomy.

> The straw man you cite isn’t a straw man. It is a solid argument.

"if I have the code, build the code, nothing can hide in the code.":

is not something someone knowledgeable would ever claim, only that having the code and building the code will be at least as safe or safer than not having the code at all. Presenting it as "nothing can hide in the code" and then attacking that is, in my opinion, a strawman argument.

> The author used the word ‘feasible’.

And he is correct in that. No single individual can maintain the software integrity of an entire operating system, but a group of people can do so. The omission here is that that group of people need not be Apple.

The argument here is that without Apple taking control of the user's software the user would fall prey to the privacy violating practices of the likes of Google and Microsoft, which is not true. Hence the "lie by omission".

> If that isn’t a loaded term, I don’t know what is.

The term is from the article: "While I'm going to sound like an Apple apologist,"

He claims he is not X, but has given no argument why he shouldn't be considered X and has presented a lot of arguments on why he should be considered X.

He has presented no reason to assume he is not a devoted Apple user, or in his words, an "Apple apologist".

In short, I'm not sure I'm exaggerating, but that I'm willing to disagree on.

By posing false dichotomies: "do you trust Apple is acting in your best interests, or do you believe they're a malevolent entity?"

It's perfectly reasonable to believe that Apple is acting in Apple's best interest without attributing malevolence.

By downplaying rational arguments: "I think the privacy arguments are far-fetched (because others are worse)"

By using loaded terms: "Dogwhistles

The privacy squad mobilised"

Presenting strawmen: "if I have the code, build the code, nothing can hide in the code. This is a fallacy that people buy in to thanks to effective marketing "

Lying by omission: "It's not feasible for an individual to maintain the list of trustworthy or untrustworthy parties that Apple does."

It's perfectly feasible for a group of individuals. I'll take any group distro maintainers over Apple's word.

He really doesn't just sound like an Apple apologist; he is one.

> GPL tries to reach into the surrounding and supporting code that the commercial entity writes and somehow force that company to "contribute"

Well, maybe that "commercial entity" could have picked a different library to begin with, and your rant has no bearing on the GPL at all?

> When the automaker changes that code, do you really want it back?

Well, if you buy that car, yes?! Because that's the very stipulation you set forth when you published the library.

> If you love our industry,

What a load of bollocks.

Ah yes, "cgroups", according to notable no-nonsense kernel hacker Al Viro:

"it's not just badly written kernel/cgroup.c - the interfaces on both sides (userland and the rest of kernel) are seriously misdesigned. As far as I'm concerned, configuring it out solves my problem nicely."

That was in 2011, so things might have improved. What remains however is that cgroups was added to the kernel, by Googlers, for easier maintenance, but with an implicit understanding that no sane person would actually make use of it to do something important.

... enter SystemD.

> Implicit here is the idea that couplehood and family life were more stable

It doesn't necessarily imply that. What I took from the GP is that people are giving away control of their dating behaviour to large commercial entities with unknown implications.

It's not about technology making it easier for humans to interact, but about changing the nature of the interaction.

In a way it's similar to advertising. If you glance at an advertisement online now, it looks very much the same as looking at an advertisement in a magazine in the 90s, but to everyone on here it should be clear that behind an online ad today, there is a gigantic empire of data-collection and analytics that most people aren't even aware of.

An easy example here is that a commercial entity that matches people has no direct interest in people engaging in long-term romantic relationships, since it might prevent them from coming back. It's best to optimise their matching algorithms on other areas.

That might not matter too much if people were aware of these skewed algorithms, but it's also in the best interest of commerce that people are not aware of it.

It's dangerous to equate normal "behaviour X" with "behaviour X, but digital", especially if the difference provides space for a commercial entity to set themselves up as a middle man who has no incentive to be neutral.

No need for infernal advocacy here. Reddit is to some extent the unfortunate heir of newsgroups, as well as many independent forums, so of course there is going to be a lot of interesting and useful information on it.

The thing I imagine that gives some people such a negative view is coming in contact through the brand "reddit" and being dumped into large controversial sub-reddits straight away.

A lot of people bump into a particular sub-reddit through a search result and have no idea of the dumpster fires elsewhere on the larger "reddit" site.

>and his position on technology and freedom issues.

In the linked article he is cheerleading in favour of closed-off platforms, and promotes ceding control of your software to a third party as a good thing.

But even before this Miguel de Icaza had no integrity left to speak of in my opinion. Some random schmoe actually would have been more believable.

"We think of open source as just a tool in a toolbox"

That's all folks: your aspirations of sharing and building a better world is a tool for MS's greater plan.

Also, the picture could have gone with the caption, "Microsoft: don't be evil. Contract it!"

> Is there a Chinese author and speaker with decades

This is only as I understand it, but technically, yes.

People like to think that the Chinese Communist Party is a single body with a single well-defined set of ideas.

It's not.

It's perfectly possible for academics and even party politicians to utter criticism of the current party direction. They can, for example, advocate the return of fundamental Maoism, or advocate free market mechanisms. As long as you can argue a point of view that lies within the party's tenets, there is usually no problem.

It's different when:

- you are a person of influence.

and

- you argue against the stability of the country (where, conveniently, the CCP is seen as the most important stabilising force in mainland China (by the CCP)).

I don't know if a Chinese Chomsky exists. I have the impression that if he would exist, he would be marginalised by the media, or some of his ideas would be adopted and used in some splintered minority faction of the CCP and hailed as a great but impractical thinker, and mostly ignored.

> but is the US that much better in terms of authoritarianism or surveillance?

Who knows? The last guy who touched upon it had to hide in freedom-loving Russia afterwards.

The PRC has it easy. They don't have to hide their actions behind contortions of "national security", which makes it difficult to compare the extent and pervasiveness of US and PRC surveillance.

Partial transcript:

"We aspire to the idea that a human being can demonstrate competence and earn respect and leadership and authority based on what you do and how you do it."

Video was posted on Nov 8 2018. I think everyone can draw their own conclusions.

You can put them in charge of a country, as long as they are effective.

"Hate the game, not the player", might be appropriate here, but even in corporate games players can simply be so ineffective that they should be replaced by someone who can actually play the game.

"It [the giant hexagon] rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s, the same period as Saturn's radio emissions from its interior."

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

The sun rising in the morning will never make the news, and that's the problem with Debian marketing; an operating system that's so stable and reliable users tend to forget about it, how is that ever going to grab headlines?

Although I'm on Devuan for obvious reasons, Debian still sets the bar of what a Free operating system should aspire to be.

Congratulations and a heartfelt thanks to all Debian developers and contributors; whatever your motivations, you made the world a better place.

> And her job definitely is needed, regardless of how well it's being done.

If I can take a literal potato, stick it in a pot, put that pot in an expensive chair in an expensive well-lit CEO office, have the potato's PA water it every day, and at the end of the year can claim more growth and sustainability, then "how well it's being done" kind of starts to matter.

> Microsoft has better alignment with free web than Facebook or Google.

That would be precious: Microsoft taking Mozilla browser developers onboard, creating a browser, shipping it by default bundled with their OS, and being able to claim it's to prevent monopolies.

It would also be nice for those highly skilled developers who actually believed in the open web to be able to give the middle finger to those in middle and upper management for whom Mozilla is merely a stepping stone to some cozier job at a proprietary software house whilst running Mozilla into the ground.

It was tried in the 70s in Chile [1], but it wasn't anything the odd CIA-backed military coup couldn't put a stop to.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

> offering competitive pay for executives and managers

"competitive" is key here, it means they have to compete.

I know people on the work floor like to make jokes about executives golfing and yachting, but there is some truth to it that these executives are building and maintaining their network and that leads to contracts and revenue that keeps the company in business. That's what their worth is. That's the competition they have to be successful in.

Mozilla gets about 400M in free Google idiot money. If burning through that for a 2.5M salary but still having to fire 25% of your workforce means you are being competitive at the C-level, then most random people can do that for half the money; a quick 1.25M saved.

It's not about a C-level exec getting a large compensation. It's about them failing abjectly and not being worth a fraction of that money by normal management standards.

So this was because of the tabs?

"MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – December 15th, 2004 – [..]The ad, coordinated by Spread Firefox, features the names of the thousands of people worldwide who contributed to the Mozilla Foundation’s fundraising campaign to support last month’s highly successful launch of the open source Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser.

Spread Firefox is the volunteer-run Mozilla advocacy site, with over 50,000 registered members, where community marketing activities are organized to raise awareness and to promote the adoption of Firefox."

(https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl...)