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Defletter

780 karma · joined May 14, 2021

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Defletter··on I switched to Brave
> I do always find it jarring and confusing when I come across gendered language in that context.

While I genuinely do not object to gender neutral language, I often find the opposite to be true: it's extremely obvious when gendered pronouns have been lazily replaced. For example, "If the Minister consults the Commission before they issue a direction, they must notify the Board before they take any further action." Who is "they" in this scenario? And is each "they" referring to the same entity? What this made-up example demonstrates is that, very often, switching to gender neutral language often requires you to rewrite and restructure the text, rather than merely find-and-replacing he/him/his with they/them/theirs. Though wrt to the specific Ladybird PR in question, it really was that simple.

Steel-manning the argument, I can understand a general aversion to updating language just for the sake of updating language: nothing is being added, clarified, or elaborated on. It's not like the section was rewritten to include a new feature and the rewrite used gender-neutral language. If anything, one could easily accuse the PR of being an attempt to pad a resume.

That being said, I do want to reiterate that Kling was being an absolute chud for rejecting the PR the way he did.

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> I don't think that saying someone "might be amoral" is an ad hominem

Ah, the "just asking questions" defence. Wonderful.

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> You may be thinking of the word immoral instead, which would certainly be an ad hominem attack.

Fun fact, saying someone is without morals is also an ad hominem attack.

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> You went beyond "questioning their boycott" when you stated assumptions

No? Me stating an assumption based on demonstrated behaviour is part of questioning their boycott.

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> When OP and others explained how they evaluate projects

Okay, this is the second time you've referenced conversations that have not taken place within this thread, so let me remind you of the flow of the conversation with 1attice thus far:

> I'm excited for ladybird to reach alpha

> [flagged comment that said something approximating "I don't use browsers that don't respect human rights"]

> Fair enough. Which browser are you currently using?

> Iceweasel

> And you are certain that its maintainers comply with your requirements?

> Yes. [later edited to repeat the "yes" and state that I might be amoral]

> From what I can tell, Iceweasel is more or less a reskinned Firefox: there's some code changes to make it compatible with Debian's licensing guidelines, but it would be reasonable (in my opinion) to describe Iceweasel as 'Firefox for Debian'. And so are you also certain that the maintainers of Firefox comply with your requirements?

At no point during this exchange did they explain that they "researched the Iceweasel project before choosing it" or "explained how they evaluate projects" (both quoting you). In fact, prior to their comment editing, both of their answers to my questions were single-word responses. So once again I must insist that you actually show me these comments where they supposably said these things, because I cannot find these comments from 1attice anywhere in the comments or on their profile, so I'm starting to doubt their existence.

Defletter··on I switched to Brave
> Perhaps OP is more concerned with how humans interact with each other than Chromium/Firefox's hegemony.

Fair enough.

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> Perhaps combating the hegemony is only worthwhile to OP if the incumbent treats its users with equal respect.

The issue arose from a pronoun PR, which I regard as disrespectful towards contributors. One can speculate whether that'll trickle down to the users, but I'd imagine most users being unaware of this drama going on behind the scenes. Then again it's a small project largely followed by people who care about the Chromium/Firefox thing so maybe not?

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> OP described that they researched the Iceweasel project before choosing it.

Did they? Where?

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> He's not interacting with the Mozilla community - he's interacting with Debian's Iceweasel community.

> whether it's dependencies support OP's views

Okay, let's say that I do the same thing: I fork Ladybird and give it a new name (Ladybug) and a new icon. Maybe I swap out the IO library for whatever reason. Does that free Ladybug from upstream's drama? Can 1attice now safely use Ladybug knowing that it respects human rights because Ladybird is a mere dependency?

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> I'm not sure it was an attack on your character.

> then devolves into an attack

You're unsure whether their ad hominem was an attack on my character, but you are certain that me questioning their boycott was an attack? Huh?

Defletter··on I switched to Brave
Very true, though the suspicious mind seeking to evade Google's dominance will be naturally wary of then picking a browser that's kept afloat in-part by Google. I do correct my previous assertion though of a "Chromium/Firefox hegemony" since Firefox only seems to hold ~5% market share: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl....
Defletter··on I switched to Brave
> Your takedown of Iceweasel completely misses the point.

This is not a takedown of Iceweasel: it was merely the example that they provided. It could've been anything.

> Some people don't allow imperfection to stop them from achieving their goals to the best of their ability.

One could use this exact argument to explain one's continued use of, shills for, or even contributions to Ladybird, because what does the maintainer being a bit chuddy have to do with combating Chromium/Firefox's hegemony?

And let me be clear, the goal with these comments is not to convince 1attice to use Ladybird against their objections: the goal was to invite them to reflect on their boycott and question whether it was a proportionate response. But instead I got the usual moralistic response where I'm accused of being amoral for not [presumably] not engaging in the same boycott. Alas.

Defletter··on I switched to Brave
From what I can tell, Iceweasel is more or less a reskinned Firefox: there's some code changes to make it compatible with Debian's licensing guidelines, but it would be reasonable (in my opinion) to describe Iceweasel as 'Firefox for Debian'. And so are you also certain that the maintainers of Firefox comply with your requirements?

EDIT: Seems like they edited their comment instead of replying (kinda weird?), answering "yes" to my question. Perhaps I am a pessimist but I am doubtful that every single maintainer involved in Iceweasel complies with their requirements. And presumably this applies to more than just the browser: what OS are they using? What apps do they use? What phone do they have? What bank do they use? What car do they own? Etc. When you take such a hard stance against something over a refused pronoun PR (which btw was definitely chuddy of him), you nonetheless invite scrutiny against yourself, particularly when you say things like "You might be amoral, some of us give a fsck."

What I'm assuming is that 1attice is boycotting public statements, not actual impact. It's why JK Rowling is so hated but not Orson Scott Card: the latter is likely giving just as money money to objectionable causes but he's not being loud about it [anymore], whereas JK Rowling is being loud... very loud. And so buying Harry Potter merch becomes a litmus test for morality, but not buying Ender's Game merch. Alas.

Defletter··on I switched to Brave
Seems like Kling is a wee bit of a chud. The claim about human rights likely stems from the "trans rights are human rights" mantra and is likely is reference to this (https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814) where Kling accused a contributor of bringing "personal politics" to the project for changing one instance of "he" to "they" in a markdown file. Since then he has, for example, apparently gone on to complain about anti-white discrimination in the workplace (https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1874518295350837401).

For what it's worth, the perpetually-offended progressive has become an annoying stock character in our culture. At risk of falling for Poe's Law, the commentor on that PR who said "The denial of non-male users and/or developers is sufficient reason to not use SerenityOS" is a perfect example of this. Another more contemporary example would be the seething outrage over Last Ditch Bar's new mask-optional Saturdays.

Defletter··on I switched to Brave
And you are certain that its maintainers comply with your requirements?
Defletter··on I switched to Brave
Fair enough. Which browser are you currently using?
Defletter··on The Normalization of Inexplicable Failures
To be fair, I'm inclined to believe that most of this pressure to lean (if not rely) on LLMs is not coming from programmers, but rather from middle and upper management: banks are resisting this not because their programmers are holding some kind of line, but because management is not giving-in to the LLM siren call. So that tour of duty, while a good idea, would be more about teaching management skills than anything else.

The normalisation of inexplicable failures is, in my opinion, the consequence of programmers being unable to refuse their managers who have fallen for the LLM siren call, lest they lose their jobs.

Defletter··on Performance of WebAssembly Runtimes in 2026
That's probable, though if we want to give them the benefit of the doubt, it could be a non-optimised benchmark, ie, something that may be written during the average devoper might ordinarily write, rather than hyper-optimised code specifically for that benchmark.
Defletter··on Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux
Nah, Twitter is still absolutely rotten with toxicity. The Great Xodus happened due to the rapid chuddification of Twitter under its new management: it was over politics, not toxicity. As such they brought the toxicity with them like a plague.

Bluesky has this nice feature where you can mute lists, so someone made a MAGA list (https://bsky.app/profile/skywatch.blue/lists/3l53cjwlt4o2s), and yet I was still seeing MAGA stuff on my feed because all the Twitter refugees were screenshotting Twitter nonsense and laundering it into my feed. Utterly ridiculous.

Defletter··on Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux
Stealing that
Defletter··on Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux
I originally had "self exiles" but thought the Xile pun was funnier :P
Defletter··on Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux
Bluesky is pretty decent and has features that I like over X, but much of its user base are from the Great Xodus (pardon the pun): people who frame their switch to Bluesky as some kind of boycott of X, ie, a bunch of moralists. They didn't leave X because it's a hellscape of trashing and toxicity, no, they left because the politics changed. And so Bluesky is now saturated with people who are very opinionated, very loud about it, and very willing to engage in trashing.
Defletter··on The Amazon tax
> I simply said that I disagree with your stated motivations for your vote.

That's a semantic distinction without a difference.

> The way that you discuss your plan makes it sound as if you consider it morally incumbent upon others to follow suit. I do object to that.

That's more or less true: I do believe that people should BDS corporations that knowingly and willingly harm humanity (eg: aid and abet genocide); that it's not within our interests to let such things slide. And while I am biased, this doesn't feel like a particularly controversial take: it feels like I'm just spelling out basic civics. But.. this is also just like my opinion, man. You do you.

Defletter··on The Amazon tax
It doesn't surprise me that corporations [whose primary, if not sole concern is the profit motive] don't care about the morality of their customers. What I don't understand is why you're objecting to me voting with my wallet, something that's been a popular retort against progressive and humanitarian movements for at least the past two decades.
Defletter··on The Amazon tax
Continuing the red/blue pill metaphor from earlier, what you're describing is not dissimilar to Cypher's betrayal to be plugged back in.
Defletter··on The Amazon tax
I wasn't aware of that, no. I can say that it wasn't a feature of our history lessons in school, nor in various Holocaust documentaries I have watched, nor something that came up in conversation with friends and colleagues, nor have I personally seen it when it's been posted to HackerNews (if this is anything to go by: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=IBM%20holocaust&sort=byDate&ty...). I only learned about Oracle's complicity because it has resurfaced in coverage regarding the current ongoing genocide. But you are proving my point: what do I do now with this information?
Defletter··on The Amazon tax
Except that this holds true for everything. For example, I only just today found out about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8yo7_Inikg&t=1157s, ie, Oracle's apparent complicity in genocide. Now that I know this, I now have to rethink things: what am I using that depends on Oracle that I need to migrate away from? This wasn't something I was concerned about just 24 hours ago. This is not to say it's not a valid concern: we should divest from companies and organisations complicit in genocide, but this is demonstrably a case where I have given myself more work, more worry, from gaining knowledge.
Defletter··on Stop sending me huge PRs; a rant
> why do we put it up for human review? I would wager that [...] a human has placed themselves as a gatekeeper

Well, yes, presumably because the maintainers have an obligation to their users (or whoever else they answer to), so I doubt they're overly willing to relegate themselves to being a rubber stamp for whatever some LLM hallucinates as looking good to it.

Defletter··on Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet
The author date was when it was introduced to Parliament, the commit date is the date of Royal Assent. Ditto with the date a referendum was called versus when its results were certified, etc.
Defletter··on Show HN: Git-knife – Edit commit messages, authors, and dates like a spreadsheet
This is, funnily enough, something I've been periodically searching for for nearly a decade, and even renewed my search yesterday. For those wondering, my use case is a model Parliament (context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43474850) and deciding on using git to store the laws, with the commits representing the Acts of Parliament themselves. The problem is that we need to guarantee that every commit has the correct metadata: we do not care at all about the conservation of commit hashes. And if we've accidentally missed a law and need to interactively-rebase it into the git history, it should NOT reset all the subsequent commit dates to the current timestamp. Basically, we're wanting to use git as a historical archive. I'm delighted to have found this.
Defletter··on Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage
Looking around my own cluttered home folder, the pattern seems to be that applications will split their "singlefolder" into a subtree.

For example:

- .sdkman has: bin, candidates, contrib, etc, ext, libexec, src, tmp, var

- .gitkraken has: logs, notif, profiles, repohooks, service, themes

- .mullvad-browser has: Downloads, .cache, .config, .local, .mullvad

- .dropbox has: events, instance1, instance_db, logs, machine_storage, metrics, ssa_events

- .steam has: bin, bin32, bin64, debian-installation, root, sdk32, sdk64, steam

- .xpipe has: cache, logs, settings, shell, storage, webview

...etc

I will say that even though I really don't like having a cluttered home folder, I do appreciate things being more or less in one place and so can be easily uninstalled and cleaned up. Flatsweep even being a thing is a testament to the tedium created by dispersing everything across the file system. It reminds me of macOS and not in a good way: I had an equivalent to Flatsweep on my old macbook but I couldn't remember its name so I searched "macos app cleanup tool", and the first page is just a bunch of comparison articles for the 10 (or whatever) best cleanup tools. This shouldn't be a thing. Alas, it is because applications can't or wont clean up after themselves.

Defletter··on Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage
I'd also add that convenient recursive folder creation was only added relatively recent for many languages (eg: "std::filesystem::create_directories" was only added in C++17). And since "~/" is pretty much guaranteed to exist, the fewer folders you needed to create, the less code you had to write.
Defletter··on SQLite in Production: Optimizing WAL Mode, Concurrency, and VFS Layers
Because that's not what happened? What? Neither smartmic's root-level comment or rdsubhas's response mention it being an ad. I was criticising adhamsalama's dismissal of rdsubhas's comment as AI, who also said nothing about it being an ad. I'm so baffled. Can you not see the structure or the content of this thread?
Defletter··on SQLite in Production: Optimizing WAL Mode, Concurrency, and VFS Layers
"You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes." - Maimonides

I feel like "this is AI" needs to join the ranks "it's not that deep" and "this is a Wendy's" as an annoying thought-terminating cliche.

Defletter··on C/C++ projects packaged for Zig
This is something that bothers me about languages that proclaim C/C++ compat because it's almost exclusively just talking about the ABI. I will say that Zig's build system is definitely one of the better ones, just look at the sqlite3 repo: it just points to the amalgamation zip and compiles it statically, meaning you can compile it with whichever flags you want, knowing it's guaranteed to work exactly how you want. Even though I personally don't use sqlite, I cannot help but appreciate the simplicity here, whereas other systems languages with C/C++ compat (eg: D) cannot do this.

With that said, Zig falls well short when dependencies have more involved build systems that are too obnoxious to recreate, eg: libevent. I have a bit of a sentimental attachment to libevent and would love to use it within my Zig projects, but the only viable options are: 1) dynamically link; 2) have two [or more] separate build steps; or 3) wait until allyourcodebase does the obnoxious work for me. None of which are appealing so I end up using different libraries just for the build-system integration. And by their nature of being Zig libraries, they're usually less known, less battle-tested, and riskier to use because it's more likely to be some random guy's side project.

Putting aside the StackOverflow tier "why would you ever do/want that?" troll argument, the issue is that I'm being obstructed from using the libraries I want to use over build system incompatibilities. It feels somewhat similar to the complaint about having two [or more] languages within the same codebase.

Defletter··on Minecraft Java raises recommended memory to 16GB ahead of Vulkan transition
The biggest issue I have with it was the lack of support for multiple accounts a la World of Warcraft style: why do I need 3 Microslop accounts?
Defletter··on Ah, the Codeberg Drama
Yes obviously, and they've already said that. What they're pointing out is that people are being petulant whiners about it. If we can all agree that Codeberg is free to make its decisions, and a decision has been made that you don't like, then just choose another provider. Going around slandering Codeberg is being a petulant whiner.
Defletter··on I regret migrating to Codeberg
It's always amusing to see people concern troll about slippery slopes as if Codeberg didn't already have requirements (some vibes based) for the repositories they host. But people hate change and will knee-jerk react to announcements like these. It reminds me of the absolute meltdowns people have over Rust in Linux (remember the hysteria when Rust became a hard dependency for apt?).
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