brainchild-adam

Thank you for being open to the idea. Having no personal experience distributing applications against payment, all I can draw on is my experience as a customer.

Threema recently introduced their app, which requires a paid-for license, through F-Droid using their own repository and license shop parallel to their established offer on GooglePlay.

I can only echo rchaud in assuming in theory it should be possible to sell the license and do the check independent of Google like desktop software has been doing for decades.

Whether this is something worth your time is, of course, a totally different question.

Just wanted to make you aware of this in case you weren't.

Nice! Thank you for sharing.

It's probably not something you'd want to prioritize, and you mentioned releasing it quickly influenced some of your decisions. But a way to pay outside of the PlayStore would be nice for those of us who chose to or cannot use it for payment.

Technically, it's a breach of the license agreement Khaled entered into with his customers.

It seems he realized that the lifetime license did not work out for him as intended, and he started looking for a way out. Possibly there are more users on those lifetime licenses than those on newer licenses, or maybe just enough to, in his mind, warrant this step.

He obviously does not want to abandon the project.

He might have no other way of communicating with some/enough/many/all of his lifetime users, so he chooses to use the one thing he has---the (re-)registration process. Or maybe this is the way, in his mind, to get their attention. Maybe because of GDPR.

He seems to reason that after all this time, asking for another contribution is only fair (even though it goes against the original license). He does offer lifetime users the option to email him and get around the need to pay again.

I can understand both sides, actually.

While in principle I disagree strongly with one-sided changes to agreements such as this, at the end of the day we are all only human, and we have to somehow find a way to make life work for us. It has to be sustainable and worthwhile. I see Khaled trying his best, even though I would probably have recommended a different course of action.

This is not Big Corp effing us over. (Which, sadly, happens a lot, and has much more serious consequences.) This is a single developer with, I believe, no ill intentions, possibly making an understandable but questionable move.

The author of the article seems to look more at the principle of the question that this specific case illustrates. I agree with the principle. We need to be able to trust agreements we entered into.

Hm. On the one hand, I find this pretty cool. A singular-focus media campaign, and from what I read one that could actually provide some educational and entertainment value. Might be a good step by GE in terms of managing brand awareness and identity.

At the same time I'm a bit concerned by the influence advertisers and their interests have on media in general. Catering to advertisers does not always seem to align with the possibly more intrinsic goals and values of a newspaper, for example. Or what I would want from a newspaper.

I am sorry, but your comment is so terse that I find it quite difficult to really understand.

I am very interested in learning and growing, though, so maybe you can help me understand what you were trying to say.

This is what I got and my associated comments and questions:

> You are dismissing a level you are apparently incurious about — that of why certain seemingly irrational responses happen.

You seem to be saying: There's something (a) you think I'm incurious about (b) that also is relevant to this discussion.

My thoughts: What exactly is this "level" you are referring to? I do have thoughts on "why certain seemingly irrational responses happen", but I'd first be curious to know what you are referring to.

> Using “highly subjective” for something that is much better understood than you are implying is only an indicator of where you’ve chosen to draw your own boundary in pursuit of a constrained cognitive ability.

You seem to be saying: There is "something" (a) that I qualified as "highly subjective" in my comment ("What raises strong emotions in people"), and (b) that me qualifying it as such is an indicator of a "boundary" (c) which I have drawn (d) in order to "constrain" my "cognitive ability".

My thoughts: I am not sure where your argument against my statement is. How is "What raises strong emotions in people" "much better understood" "than you are implying"? What am I implying in your opinion?

> It’s also an indicator of this limit that the two things you’re inaccurately taking as given are intimately linked: emotionality and reproduction. When things get too complex you conversationally reduce humans to emotional animals and end of

You seem to be saying: (a) I am limited in my cognitive ability, (b) as evidenced by my inability to realize how emotionality and reproduction are linked, (c) the two of which I also "inaccurately tak[e] as given". I also (d) flee from complexity by referring to the fact that we are animals.

My thoughts:

How am I taking emotionality and reproduction as given, and how so inaccurately?

Where do I dispute a link between the two?

What are we in your opinion if not animals?

Also, I read an undertone of both "you are stupid" and "you are evil" in your comment. Was that intentional or am I misunderstanding you here?

Thank you for elaborating. What you describe ads balance to my impression of the crypto world, and like that.

> at the time i just stashed my $ in BTC because it was the only place where i felt i understood the security model.

Makes perfect sense to me. It was something you could wrap your head around more easily.

I also like how you frame onramps, and how you talk about an iterative process.

Curious to see where it all will go.

As to my predictions, I am afraid I am a little pessimistic here.

I obviously know very little about crypto, so I cannot take those unknows into account.

What I do expect in a way is anything that threatens established power, be it monetary or political, to be treated as such: a threat. The more unregulated crypto is perceived as such, the more blowback I would expect. The more it gets regulated, the less useful in solving actual problems it might become, since it might simply become another expression of what now are our regulated currencies.

Does that make sense? Any thoughts?

Thank you!

Thank you for sharing.

I might be reading this wrong, but it seems to me from your description that your grandfather simply did not get "ticked off" by the same things as your grandmother. Those topics do not seem to have generated strong emotions in him. But they seem to have done so in your grandmother.

What raises strong emotions in people seems to be highly subjective. To what extent you are able to have those stronger emotional responses while at the same time not succumbing to the impulses that go along with them, is what I would argue determines your ability to tolerate the stimuli that generate these emotional responses.

Since these responses are physiological, rooted in our survival instincts, they greatly affect our ability to be rational, open, and contextualize. Instead, they move us into increasing levels of black-and-white thinking and fight or flight, first mentally, then physically.

Whenever I explore topics that stir up strong (negative) emotions in myself, I find that they are usually tied to this, if I can get deep enough in my exploration.

After all, we're just animals trying to survive and procreate, even though we have become very elaborate and ornamental in our pursuit of these goals.

Tied to this topic seems to be the ability to tolerate unpleasant emotions.

My impression is that avoiding negative emotions is something we all impulsively attempt, and it takes practice to increase one's ability to tolerate them. This, in turn, seems necessary to tolerate positions so different to our own that they cause us to feel threatened, which can, if the fear is intense enough, lead to outright hatred.

I assume quite some intolerance can be linked to this principle.

It seems our earlier evolutionary impulses (fight, flight in this case) can easily take over unless we not only learn to become aware of them but also to tolerate them.

France is not alone in this. In a way it seems Europe in general is headed for a challenging winter when it comes to energy supply.

I wonder where this will lead.

I assume that once larger parts of the population start feeling the effects of these energy shortages, some dynamics might change.

At the moment, most do not seem to take much notice or care, not that I blame them. Life can be stressful enough as it is.

Does anyone know whether this also applies to the government?

> You say that another entity deciding what you, as an adult, can interact with is unacceptable.

To be a bit more precise, what I am saying is that I prefer a higher level of autonomy in general.

Any society needs to agree on how to organize itself, and questions of power seem central to this.

What I am saying is that I prefer

(a) to be consulted about decisions that affect me, and

(b) that I'd like for these decisions to be based on rational, open-minded, curious, where possible fact-based dialog and eventual agreement rather than power politics or undisclosed, possibly questionable reasoning.

I like to have a say in things, and I like to do so based on arguments I can follow.

> It's not that they don't think ideas through enough to have a well-founded opinion, as you say. They disagree with you.

I question the basis of the disagreement, not the disagreement itself.

Why, exactly, do we disagree?

Here I am just not convinced that it's impossible to move beyond said disagreement if both parties are willing to approach the topic in question with an open mind and, and this seems to be a big challenge, in agreement as to the frame and approach and reference points for said discussion.

In other words, there seem to be people who are quite content with being more impulsive and judgmental when forming their opinions, who feel the need to question themselves and others to a far lesser extent than I seem to do.

There seem to be people who are quite happy to make assumptions I would question.

And there seem to be quite a lot of people who dislike being questioned or shown the flaws of their reasoning.

Even if emotionally unpleasant, I prefer to be questioned in good faith than just being agreed with. It's one way for me to learn and grow.

This, in part, seems to drive a lot of disagreements.

Thanks! I will check them out.

I fail to understand how this example argues for the claim I was questioning.

Am I missing something?

I agree that it's not simple, if that's part of what you are saying. Which makes it such a problem in my view. I look at the principle more than the specifics, and another entity deciding what I as an adult am allowed to interact with, that is one of the central stumbling blocks for me. I have a very strong desire for autonomy, and that includes coming to my own conclusions.

What's good for society as a whole seems a lot more difficult to answer.

This way or that way, I'm not sure most or even many supporters of this kind of access control think its consequences through to such an extent that they would have formed an opinion that I would consider well-founded.

It was simply my first, slightly tongue-in-cheek go-to, since I appreciate the show's setup so much.

On that note, what would you suggest as a prime example for some utiopian future?

> The problem is nobody can entirely think for themselves. People are manipulated by advertising and propaganda which reprograms on a subconcious basis to the point they will not be able to accept basic verifiable facts, let alone anything more complicated.

Could you point me towards any supporting evidence or fleshed-out theories regarding your conclusion in the second sentence of my quote?

I find it difficult to go from "advertising and propaganda", which clearly exist and which can be argued to have an effect, to completely losing the ability to "accept basic verifiable facts".

I generally find this approach quite scary. It seems we are all slowly building our version of the Great Chinese Firewall.

I am aware of the fact that information control is a central part of any power structure setup, and I assume that too many people lack the skills, the option, and even the desire to deeply and meaningfully engage with most topics, but I'd still love to be part of a society where ideas and opinions can be freely and respectfully shared and debated.

I believe in the power of rational arguments, and am quite alarmed by any form of thinking-for-you as I'd prefer to think for myself.

But then, this seems to be our lot as humans. Not even (the stories in) The Orville was free of power politics, as utopian as it was.

Yes, I can relate to that. Next to my Linux machines, I use an M1 Mac Mini with macOS, and I eagerly await the day I can install a Linux of my liking on it and run the Mac from there (looking at Asahi Linux's impressive work).

Also, the system update approach of macOS seems quite hostile to slow and/or metered connections.

Welcome back to Linux!

What made you switch from macOS?

Another vote for Linux Mint. Run it on my trusty X220 (main driver), a Fujitsu (mainly for media and browsing), an HP (media + browsing), and my mom's ancient Dell laptop. Works flawlessly, leaves me in control, gets out of my way, and has, for my taste, wonderfully sane and reasonable defaults.

Hats off to the fine people behind Linux Mint.

Thank you for the detailed account.

Have you used fiat to buy crypto as well, or do you still use the original crypto from when you started?

I can see how in theory crypto could be interesting in the creator space as touched on by you. Do you think Stripe's implementation could facilitate this?

As to medication: sorry to hear you had to go that route, but it totally makes sense to me. Glad to hear it's been working out for you. Yay for crypto in this case!

Thanks for sharing.

Genuinely curious:

(a) Shouldn't the USD then be comparatively volatile relative to goods and services as well?

(b) With the USD (in this case) the de-facto currency for practically all end use cases compared to crypto (ppl need to cash out eventually for practically everything), doesn't this mean that for all practical purposes it's the crypto that's volatile, since it determines the eventual real-life value in USD?

I am both fascinated and confused by crypto currencies.

The idea of a free-as-in-freedom, flexible, secure, and more democratic and independent payment system seems quite attractive.

At the same time I seem to see mainly examples of high-to-extreme volatility, fraud, technical and regulatory exclusion and suppression, and a total lack of real-world practicality.

I am quite sure my view is skewed.

If you have used crypto currencies in real life, ideally for more than speculative investment, would you be willing to share (parts of) the experience? I'd be very curious to learn more about this part of the puzzle of crypto.

How did you acquire crypto? What did you use it for? How did you feel about the transaction? Would you do it again?

Or anything else you'd like to share for that matter.

Thank you for pointing to this resource. I must say, I had not been aware of this market, and I find it quite fascinating for more than one reason.

From what I have gathered, this service is not local-only, but involves both submitting samples and using their web application.

How do you feel about another entity having access to your handwriting as a high-quality font, which in turn could at least in theory be used to possibly impersonate you by them or anyone gaining access to it?

And how do you feel about having to enter all text you want to pseudo handwrite into their web application?

Or maybe I misunderstood how it works? Didn't do a deep dive.