thedriver's comments

thedriver | 2 years ago | on: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

iPhones end up being cheaper in the long run. They get software updates much longer than almost any Android phone, and at least here even small cities have local shops that repair them. It's also just a superior user experience.

I wish they kept on making the mini models though. I'm using a 13 mini, which has been really nice. Most modern smartphones are uncomfortable to carry in the front pocket of slim pants.

thedriver | 2 years ago | on: How Red Hat’s Open-Source Negligence Is Doing Actual Harm to the Linux Community

Yes, someone can buy RHEL, request the source, and then share it away. And they can do nothing about it.

However, it doesn't mean that Red Hat is required to keep doing business with them, or that they are automatically entitled to receive all future updates.

As I said, GNU never said that the source code must be downloadable by anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world, from some public repository. It would be a completely valid business to sell binaries and then only provide the source code on request. This of course does not fit some people's idea of what free software is about.

There are of course a lot of ways that people can use to obtain RHEL source code even from now on, but I think that some people underestimate how much friction this can cause for the downstream derivatives.

thedriver | 2 years ago | on: How Red Hat’s Open-Source Negligence Is Doing Actual Harm to the Linux Community

I'm actually with Red Hat on this one. There are many other great distributions that you can use, such as Debian. People are just angry that they can't get an exact copy of a paid product and 10 years of support for free.

If there are non-profits and hobbyists who have been using one of the free derivatives, and this change causes problems for them, I feel sorry for them. But actual for profit companies could very well pay or use something else. If you want a similar system for free, you can use Fedora or CentOS Stream. And RHEL even gives you 16 free installations for non-commercial use. If you can't pay for RHEL and that 16 installations isn't enough, you most likely don't actually need it. So many companies rely on free labor of others in the form of FOSS, and they seem to be angry about the idea that they would actually have to make a contribution.

RHEL also isn't just stealing software others wrote, they are a big contributor to many of the projects that RHEL is built upon.

Besides, FSF/GNU never said that you can't charge money for FOSS or that the source code must be published for anyone in some git repository. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

thedriver | 2 years ago | on: Neanderthal Flute

Some of the comments here seem absolutely ridiculous. What is the probability that a perfect flute just happened by accident and survived until this day?

For whatever reason, a lot of people have this fixation that humans were somehow significantly less intelligent all the way until the modern industrial era. Based on what I've read, human brain hasn't significantly changed in tens of thousands of years. People in the stone age didn't have significantly lower cognitive abilities.

thedriver | 3 years ago | on: Nextcloud and OpenBSD = <3

>Do you run it at your home or on some VPS?

I run it on a rented dedicated server. Yes, it's pretty expensive, but I also use it for other stuff and this is a hobby for me.

>My current VPS is on DigitalOcean, which asks for $100/month for 1TB storage

Some VPS providers let you attach HDD based storage to a VPS, that's a bit cheaper. For example Upcloud (https://upcloud.com/pricing) prices HDD storage at 0.056€/month. Which is not exactly cheap, but not terribly expensive either.

It seems to be hard to beat big cloud services like google drive in storage pricing. I haven't tried this myself, but Nextcloud can use external storage like Amazon S3 (see the link below). But even then it's hard to beat 2TB for $9.99

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/config...

thedriver | 3 years ago | on: Nextcloud and OpenBSD = <3

Nextcloud is fantastic. I'm personally running it on a Debian 11 server. I like the web-ui more than for example onedrive or gdrive, and it's not even that hard to setup.

thedriver | 3 years ago | on: Android launches yet another way to spy on users with “Privacy Sandbox” beta

>With hardware remote attestation there will no longer be any point in even owning an android phone anyway. Android is obviously inferior to iOS in every way but the whole point was you could have control over the machine and do whatever you wanted. Now apps will be able to verify that you "tampered" with the phone and will refuse to run, and since it's hardware cryptography it cannot be faked without massive effort. Might as well get an iPhone which at least isn't a shitty Google product.

Wait a minute, will something like this really come to Android phones? I guess that installing a custom rom will become impossible at the same time?

If this happens, then there truly isn't going to be much point in using an Android phone over an iPhone

thedriver | 3 years ago | on: Mysterious doodles hidden in a 1,300-year-old book

>I find it curious that archaeologists or historians (?) seem to take a lot of things like this so seriously and assume everything has some sort of symbolic meaning, rather than just some teenager scribbling on a page or painting his hand on the wall of a cave just 'because'.

Yes, it's definitely funny how they completely fail or refuse to consider this possibility. Humans weren't any different in 10 000 BC. Evolution doesn't work that fast.

thedriver | 3 years ago | on: Toward policy for open-source software as infrastructure

Could it be possible to create an open-source license that allows hobbyists and researchers to use the software for free, but would require commercial users to pay? Or does something like this already exist?

Of course, enforcing that might be pretty difficult in practice.

thedriver | 3 years ago | on: Tech's Elite Hates Labor

>The tech industry is desperate to somehow frame a period of time where it took advantage of low interest rates to recklessly overhire and overinvest as something that created entitled workers.

But in a way, didn't it do exactly that? Lots of tech workers have the audacity to complain about having to show up to the office, like it's some form of oppression. Or act like getting laid off is something really cruel, while getting months worth of severance.

thedriver | 3 years ago | on: After Callous Layoffs, Workers Are Done with the Full-Time Work

On the other hand, another way to have more financial security is to save and invest money. That way you have time to figure out something new if your current job ends for whatever reason. If you get paid relatively well, like many tech workers do, it's not that hard to save a decent amount of money. The lifestyle creep just gets most people.
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