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Comment by atherton94027 | Hacker News Reader

For all intents and purposes you'll be able to move an open weight model wherever you want.

I really dislike this rhetoric, you sound like the FSF guys who are like "you're not free until you're running coreboot with zero binary blobs". Sure they have a point but also, most people are fine running regular linux.

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Reading your comment made me realize that I love that the position of the FSF is held by someone, in the interest of stretching the Overton Window to that side.

Very much with you on that. It’s not a position I personally hold by any means, but I appreciate its existence connected to a prominent long-standing organization.

Most FSF guys actually have very nuanced views on the topic and you’re doing everyone a disservice by reducing it to an extremist sound bite.

That's literally the official FSF position.

https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw

> For example: the Free Software Foundation only purchases desktop machines which support Libreboot, and Thinkpad X200 and X60 laptops with Libreboot. All desktops and servers we buy are KGPE-D16 motherboards, which are supported by Libreboot. As a result, all of the workstations used by the FSF staff have a free BIOS.

https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html

> Except where noted, all of the distributions listed on this page fail to follow the guidelines in at least two important ways:

> ...The kernel that they distribute (in most cases, Linux) includes “blobs”: pieces of object code distributed without source, usually firmware to run some device.

They are extreme, uncompromising, and live by their principles.

They are also the reason you can buy a computer meeting those requirements instead of being a pipe dream.

Damn, that's awesome. I suddenly feel like replicating their setup and seeing how it goes.

For even more of a challenge, try replicating Richard Stallman's personal setup:

https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

> They are also the reason you can buy a computer meeting those requirements

The latest libreboot-compatible laptop I could find, at https://libreboot.org/docs/install/t480.html, is from 2018 -- not sure if that would still be available?

Technoethical sells a refurbished T400 with GNU Boot.

https://tehnoetic.com/laptops/tet-t400s

Libreboot actually isn't free anymore by FSF standards because it has binary blobs for the Intel Management Engine. Neither is Coreboot which has blobs for many other things. Most modern computers cannot boot without binary blobs for ME, which is why GNU Boot was created.

If you want a modern/new computer, Purism sells them with the management engine "neutralized" but it's still not free by FSF standards because they haven't bypassed it entirely.

https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/

Thankfully he didn't say that they're all like that. Instead he pointed out the few that are as a well known example of similar behavior.

If you reread the comment with a fresh mind you'll notice that you misunderstood what he wrote

When attacking archetypes of people, there is some responsibility to make clear who you’re attacking and why, even to someone who’s not being hyper-open-minded. At least if you want them to learn from you: which may or may not be your goal. When you attack/signal you’re on the offensive, it is foolish to believe that they won’t knee-jerk attack back and become closed minded at least a little.

Regardless, the “misinterpretation” of the parent comment is actually a plausible interpretation. I suspend my judgement on what the actual “correct” interpretation of the original comment is: there are too many plausible interpretations to deductively decide. But I do know that since they first comment brought up a contentious issue, they should have put more work into crafting their message so there aren’t so many plausible interpretations that are contradictory. Or alternatively, they should have specified more precisely who they were talking about without a shadow of a doubt. That is if the commenter cared to be properly interpreted, but that may not be their goal. There are many reasonable reasons why that wouldn’t be their goal.

When you read someone's comment there is some responsibility to read the words they wrote and not attempt to attack them for an argument no reasonable person would extract from those words.

Reasonable people could interpret the original comment in many other ways than was probably intended.

I like when people are open minded to people who are closed minded/attacking them. It’s an admirable and difficult trait to attain. But to expect that from others is foolish. Most people can’t stay objective/curious after being punched in the face.

You used a lot of words to defend a strawman argument

As you ironically strawman me. Your hypocrisy knows no bounds!

Angry girlfriend SMS essay

You have a lot of angry girls texting you?

It is the FSF itself who has these extremist views.

Unless the US Gov bans inference companies from serving Chinese models to US customers...

good luck doing it to inference companies in singapore or the netherlands. or one of the decentralized networks that dont look useful right now. the world is already sick of america acting like it can do whatever and force their rules on the rest of us.

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