Yeah those for…next loops are pure communism.
Would have saved us a lot of trouble if it had been this whole damn while.
I genuinely used to believe this too, but the CCC opened my eyes to anarchism, and then HN opened my eyes to plutarchism.
I iterate now between several modes of: “GPLv3 is the best license humanity can use to better itself, decentralised projects are mandatory to keep authoritarian regimes at bay, but damn do I love using MIT projects in my hobby code projects, and hmm it would be nice to make some side income with said hobby project…”
Each of these contradictions of the other, which bothered me in my late 20s, but now I think it’s relatively normal to inhabit several conflicting ideals at once
It’s fine to contradict yourself, as long as you don’t impose those contradictions on the world or externalise that tension. Hold it within yourself, and I will hold mine.
But I need to be heard and seen at all times! I have an attention deficit problem!
I feel you on the license thing. There’s the appeal of software that can’t be easily corporatized and then there’s the idea that if I could just get lucky with my own project, I wouldn’t have to work for some soulless company generating value for shareholders.
So basically the problem is capitalism
As usual
I dream of a world where UBI is ubiquitous and people can just eke out a living following their passion projects and the need for closed source projects just vanishes…
Rant/Fantasy:
I also dream of a world where capitalism exists but there’s a mandatory enforcement of the Gini Coefficient being less than 5%. As in, people still trade goods/services with each other, can absolutely make money, corner markets and bribe regulators to keep their competitors out, with the caveat that the most they can ever make by putting in such time and effort towards corruption makes them at maximum only 5x richer than the average person.A hard cap limit on the maximum wealth would IMO enable capitalism to actually function properly, the state wouldn’t have such strong powers over the individual, and nor will the individual wield really that much power over others. I’m probably veering now into anarcho-capitalism, which is always dangerous territory because the greatest propenents for it tend to be cryptobro eugenic shitheads…
Edit: Oh and such enforcement would require some kind of god-level regulator without any humans in the loop, so I’m going to call it “anarcho-muted-capitalism-AIkillerdroneregulator”. I’m also going to stop talking now.
If we have to live under capitalism, wealth cap is the best outcome. Wealth cap ensures no more private equity, better utilization of capital and goods (no more super yachts!), and corporations become coops. But then it’s a dangerous territory towards Christianity… So any kind of centralized government requires to be a benevolent god… hmmmmm
Please, do not stop talking !
5% would be 20×
What’s to keep someone from bribing someone to make it so they can make more money than other people
how do you make that calculation just out of interest. I “vibed” 5x but didn’t know how to calculate it
5 per cent/per 100. 20 goes into 100 5 times so 5 goes into 100 20 times. Also 5 is half of 10 that goes into 100 10 times? Idk how does math even work
All would be cool if it weren’t for rent and having to pay for food.
My general approach to licensing these days is:
- binaries, apps, products -> AGPLv3, fuck you I don’t care if your company can’t use my shit
- libraries -> MPL-2.0 or LGPL, grr… maybe you can use my library…
For things I might try selling: BUSL. It isn’t FOSS. It’s source available, but it turns into FOSS after some time period.
I’m not super happy with MPL-2.0: https://piefed.social/c/[email protected]/p/2231796/does-the-mpl-2-0-have-a-giant-loop-hole
I wish we had something closer to OSL 3.0, but OSL itself has its own problems. :/
For things I might try selling: BUSL. It isn’t FOSS. It’s source available, but it turns into FOSS after some time period.
Yes! Time bomb licenses are the way forward
Licenses are wonderful and amazing. It’s incredibly cool that we have so many choices.
Companies are outright stealing artists full works and selling access to systems trained on that work.
Licenses are for me and you and our friends. Corporations DGAF. They will steal your source available content, de-compile your binaries and wrongfully sue you out of existence if you dare to raise a case against them.
Sure, if you can get someone to represent you for free, you might be able to take a year off work and end up with a small payday.
Corporations DGAF. They will steal your source available content, de-compile your binaries and wrongfully sue you out of existence if you dare to raise a case against them.
Also true. Although, that doesn’t mean you should bend over and make it easy for them by licensing things as MIT. GPL if you can, MPL if you must.
we have so many choices.
I’m actually not sure about this. I wish the FSF or someone would come out with more licenses for different use cases.
I’m actually not sure about this. I wish the FSF or someone would come out with more licenses for different use cases.
I disagree. I find that there is a license for every use case. What use case are you thinking of that does not have a license?
There is no contradiction between GPL and making some side income.
In fact, it’s more likely, since for example, you could make corporations pay for being able to use your code under a different license.
If it was MIT, they can just use it and give you fuck all.
Or, as the SME on it, you can offer paid support for it
You could literally sell the unchanged Linux kernel, the GPL allows that as long as you abide by the other provisions. Convincing someone they should pay for something that you also have to provide for free might be a tad difficult but it wouldn’t be against the license
hmm it would be nice to make some side income with said hobby project…"
This is a symptom of being forced to live under capitalism. If your needs were generally met by society you wouldn’t have this urge.
I actually really hate that every hobby should be incorporated into hustle culture these days. You crafty? Sell what you make. You like fixing things? Charge people for it. You play video games? Stream.
We’ve built a world that only cares about cash and it’s exhausting
I like to fix things. I more like to fix things for people in my community to help build community.
I remember hearing about repair drives or something along those lines in my community where handy volunteers spend a day fixing peoples things for free
Some of it might be practical.
E.g. selling knit plushies or hats so people in your community get food quality items and at the same time you get more funding for your hobby and don’t have 100 hats lying around.
But yeah. I dream of an alternate reality where I could just go borrow a community oscilloscope when needed for a project since I don’t have the €450 right now to put to that. (My projects require at least 100 MHz 4 channel and might as well spend the extra 50 for a good Siglent with 10x more memory depth)
(please please please be my prof next semester…)
Wasn’t even the wildest. Before compsci I was doing mechanical engineering.
We had an assignment to design a railcar layout for transporting livestock. It gave the minimal parameters for the animals, established client driven acceptable losses for the livestock, etc…
We all cracked away at it. After we handed them all in, the profs were like “nowhere in the spec was the actual animals named, was no one curious?”
Silence.
They had given us a literal Nazi RFP discovered post WWII. It was for moving people to fucking concentration camps.
“You’re smart people. People are going to ask you to do bad things. They’re going to try and hide thier intentions. Don’t collaborate with Nazis. Don’t ever use what I teach you to hurt people.”
Those sound like bad-ass professors!
I would love to have a copy of this assignment! That reveal must have been a real gutpunch. Something that may have actually stuck with most students.
I feel like this isn’t super new. You haven’t been able to do things like talk academically about network security or cryptography without being incredibly critical of government for decades.
My professors sure were. I felt really bad for them, honestly. They were the driving force to make philosophy and ethics courses mandatory at my university in order to recieve a comp sci degree.
“If you work in these areas long enough, at a high enough level, you WILL be asked to compromise something for the benefit of a state actor, and you might not even realize it’s happening. The person asking you to do it might not even realize what is really happening.” Was what our prof told a packed lecture hall.
When I was at Uni, we had a mandatory Ethics class for Comp Sci/Comp Eng. I think it was for all majors under the Sciences banner.
This is pretty much my inspiration for self hosting. A three letter agency needs to infiltrate my network or show up to my house with a warrant. I’m not going to be able to stop them, but at least they’ll have to work for it. I’d love a CSI Miami’s episode level of effort for them to discover that I’m just a fucking nerd sharing Linux ISOs.
This made me image an exchange like
Agent 1: OK McNulty, you have finished your forensic scan of that scumbag’s computer. I can’t wait to hear whether we are taking this monster down for espionage, stealing classified information, or even just another copyright infringement case. What is really in that folder of “Linux ISOs?”
Agent 2: You are not gonna believe this…
I want to hear that lecture!
maybe post the notes for critique? this is bait
I’ve seen a world where access to knowledge and power is paywalled. And I’ve seen the one where that freedom is a granted right. I know which one I picked, and it’s because SO HELP ME, IF I CAN’T FIX IT MYSELF, I WILL BREAK IT MYSELF!
I can’t help but broadly agree, computing is the new de facto means of production. It is inherently political.
Republicans have never forgiven Alan Turing, and much prefer the contributions of IBM during the same period.
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Isn’t it funny how people who “have things” are less likely to be all that interested in leftism. And those who don’t have “things” look at them, want more leftism because they want want the “things” the people who have “things” and they don’t have.
And neither side understands the other.
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That leftism is a product of ressentiment from people who don’t have “things” against people who have “things”, I guess. ContraPoints-level take tbh.
I hate billionaires, not because I want to be a miserable sociopath with too much money, but because they are largely the reason that any kind of improvement to our planet and species is being blocked. I support socialized healthcare, not because I envy those who have the money to pay for live-saving healthcare, but because I don’t want to fucking die, etc. etc.
There certainly are people like BadEmpanada, who oppose unions and welfare so that “first-worlders can suffer”, but they certainly don’t reflect what leftism is in general.
BE


I agree, and I’d add it’s not even a specifically left wing impulse either. The Roman Republic of all institutions was deeply concerned with the idea that republics shouldn’t have private princes as well as kings. The fact the Roman Republic failed to contain its oligarchy to the point of fundamental destabilisation into arbitrary power is evidence people ought to pay attention to left wingers when they say the same thing about billionaires and the concentration of wealth.
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BE on twitter and BE while actually speaking seriously are like two different people. He seems to have an unhealthy addiction to creating twitter ragebate. I would not take it literally.
They don’t understand either side.
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That’s a different person you’re replying to
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What do you mean?
I have more things than I could ever want.
I want more agency.
Ayn Rand has entered the chat.
I have plenty of things, and still support pretty left wing ideas (except for the violence that some people here seem think is required to be considered left).
Isn’t it funny how people who “have food” are less likely to be all that interested in leftism. And those who don’t have “food” look at them, want more leftism because they want want the “food” the people who have “food” and they don’t have.
It’s still garbled, but makes a better point.
Your edit makes a good insinuation “they’re just things” people think objects are frivolous things that tie you down because they’ve never experienced genuine lack.
Not like lack of toys, but the bear necessities of survival.
The basic necessities should just be provided, by that I mean food and shelter and basic medical care. If people want to live luxuriously that’s fantatic, going and toiling, innovating or improving their situation in someway should be encouraged; but no one should ever be shelterless and hungry.
Leftists aren’t jealous of rich people. Slanderous and incorrect
I just want to be able to live life as carefree as they can without regards to money. It’s a bit of jealousy but it’s not the overriding reason for it.
civil engineer […] didn’t know what gentrification was…
Sweet jebus on ice-skates. The guy was potentially a literal if not figurative architect in service of one of the most profound mechanisms of gentrification and hadn’t heard of it?! That’s like designing cars and being unaware of traffic jams and induced demand.
What do you mean with critical theory?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
There are different forms but it’s basically getting woke to class struggle between people who own shit and rent it out and people who get paid a bit to use the shit, but never actually get to own real shit or control what shit they decide to do.
I’m putting it pretty bluntly and pretty woke…ly, and a lil but Marxly. It’s also about analyzing systems we use to organise ourselves and what they do to us. Basically how to get people to actually wake up to how and why things are how they are and maybe how they could be different / better.
In the context of STEM students who focus on inputs, outputs, and engines at the expense of considering societal impacts (or simply telling themselves it’s the job of poor humanities students to get elected and pass laws to constrain the most egregious negative externalities of technology) it’s asking who an efficiency is for. Efficiency cannot exist in a moral vacuum. As Kim Stanley Robinson summarized in The Ministry for the Future (2020):
… there is good efficiency and bad efficiency, good inefficiency and bad inefficiency. … preventative health care saves enormous amounts in medical costs later, and is a good efficiency. Eating your extra children (this is Swift’s character’s “modest proposal”) would be a bad efficiency. Any harm to people for profit is likewise bad, no matter how efficient. Using an over-sized vehicle to get from point A to point B is a bad inefficiency, and there are many more like it; but oxbows in a river, defining a large flood plain, is a good inefficiency
Well, programming lessons taught in 2016 are still pretty much going to teach programming now, so it shouldn’t be too hard if you put your mind to it.
Programming?
scoffs
Woke.
I’m Antigramming like a true Patriot.
My programs are pat/riot
“…because when we go online, we free ourselves from consumerism, racism, and get to express ourselves however we want without it getting back to our school or employer.”
Honest Trailers may have gone downhill from thier peak, but Hackers (and the OG Dune) videos gave great lines worth sharing
We definitely do not free ourselves from either of those online
It’s not even that “hardcore” of ideology honestly. It depends a lot on the lens you view it through your society. If it’s far right, then saying “water is a human right!” is going to seem extreme leftism.













