ddevault

Someone emailed me the other day to share their FOSS voice control system. I was really impressed. It seems to map syllables onto actions in a modal sense ala vim. If I were to build a voice control system, it would look much like this.

https://numen.johngebbie.com/index.html

It's free software, it's local to your machine, you don't have to sign up for it, and it works today.

I don't know the composition of this system or how feasible this arrangement would be given however the system may have evolved, but any planets could co-orbit the star and the black hole around their combined center of mass. They'd probably have to be relatively far away from both to be stable.

I have tried XMPP. It's not much better, but has different problems.

Very bloated and unreliable.

I don't have an answer which is likely to satisfy you. I'm still a grumpy old IRC user. I communicate with non-technical friends and family via email, SMS, and Jitsi Meet. I allowed myself to be persuaded to try Matrix earlier this year and so far I've regret it.

goodpoint's answer is probably the best longer term answer: someone needs to fork Signal and manage it properly. But it's not as simple as just rebranding the software, it needs lots of difficult technical work to fix its many problems.

Typical behavior from Signal. They have a track record of hostility that we as a community should really not be tolerating. I do not use Signal and I tell my friends not to, either. Play nice or don't play at all.

In this specific case I am doing both. I will kick people off for being bigots, and tell them to go fuck themselves.

No, that's not what this means.

"Certain [gender|sexual|racial|etc] identities are not valid" is a political opinion held by those to whom I am quite comfortable telling, as the official policy of SourceHut, to go fuck themselves.

To clarify, I would narrow my statement, perhaps, to something like this: "inaction [regarding a subject with which you are familiar and are in a position to act on] is a political position".

That's not what I am saying at all. Please read the article, it's very specific on what kind of activity is prohibited.

I mean, those are clearly cryptocurrency-related projects which fall well within the scope of this policy. The exceptions are not to let the "good" cryptocurrency projects in -- there are no such projects -- but to make sure that projects which are close to this domain get a fair shake, like something which incidentally uses a blockchain-like data structure, GNU Taler, etc.

Iranians trying to get cash so they can buy groceries are not the problem. North Korea using ransomware to get lots of cryptocurrency they can use to fund their nuclear weapons program is the problem.

Both projects would not be permitted under this policy.

Yes. Hello. We have thought about spreading support requests out throughout more of the SourceHut staff if my bandwidth becomes insufficient, though.

All companies operate according to the moral compass (or lack thereof) of their founders. Some of them simply choose not to state their morals.

I don't think that the slippery slope argument which is being made here and throughout the thread holds much water. We've made no indications that we're planning to address any other use-cases in this manner and we've made the reasoning behind our decisions pretty clear; it's my hope that you can infer our future behavior from these details. If you want any clarifications on SourceHut's position on any other topics, I would be happy to share my thoughts.

Inaction is a political position in support of the status quo. It is the equivalent of saying "I am fine with this".

We are not in a position to change the license terms of SourceHut:

https://sourcehut.org/blog/2022-10-09-ip-assignment-or-lack-...

We just set up a new datacenter installation in Europe and we're working on setting everything up. I can't offer a timeline on when things will move, but it is planned.

Tornado Cash would not be permitted.

You can assume for the time being that this project is permitted on SourceHut. Once it materializes further and its relationship to the social problems of cryptocurrency becomes more clear, we can evaluate it properly. It seems that you at least have a pretty good background on the problems with cryptocurrency, so I'm optimistic about this project. Good luck!

> Will there be further clarification regarding what is the precise definition?

It's intentionally subjective. A tounge-in-cheek analysis could conclude that git is a blockchain, but no one suggests this seriously. The terms establish a worldview and framework around the problems cryptocurrency and blockchain projects impose on society, and it's within this framework that projects will be evaluated -- not simply on the basis that the word "blockchain" appears in their README.

> If there will be some HW accelerator thingie or something for blockchain technologies or cryptocurrency, and the driver for that gets merged into upstream linux kernel, will that make linux kernel un-hostable on sourcehut? If not, why not?

That would likely be permitted on the basis of a subjective analysis of the situation. Linux is a project which is mostly used for use-cases other than cryptocurrency. After all, many blockchain tools already run on a Linux userspace, but that's no cause for dropping Linux.

The rules are not written in stone: they are guidelines that we enforce hand-in-hand with the cooperation of the community and within a space where all participants are encouraged to discuss the situation and argue for their views.

I understand your frustration, but this is not arbitrary: we've outlined a specific niche and clearly stated our reasons for banning it, and set aside a means for projects to appeal.

I am an opinionated person, and perhaps you find some of my opinions unrealistic or unreasonable. However, SourceHut is handled separately from my personal opinions and governed by clear and well-defined values which are much narrower than my personal beliefs.

None. All support requests are handled by a real person, who will hear you out and can be reasoned with.

I'm not sure what this project is for, but on the face of it it does not seem to be a problem. If it develops further and starts to run afoul of these rules, we can discuss it further and if necessary work together to ensure a smooth transition to another hosting provider. If you'd like to clarify more about this specific project, feel free to email me (sir@cmpwn.com) (or just elaborate here on HN).

Legitimate use-cases are not banned, per the article:

> We will exercise discretion when applying this rule. If you believe that your use-case for cryptocurrency or blockchain is not plagued by these social problems, you may ask for permission to host it on SourceHut, or appeal its removal, by contacting support.

Sure. You can reach out to support to request a refund for the remainder of your unused paid service.

None: the mining incidents stopped entirely when we started charging for CI and it stopped being profitable to do it.

People use SourceHut for a wide variety of reasons. One of them is confidence in our strong moral compass and our willingness to make the right choices even if it could impact our profit, as contrasted with typical VC-funded operations in the market. I've never really heard anyone talk about SourceHut offering particularly more or less "freedom" than anyone else.

In a sense, you're correct: this is a political position. But hell, so is everything else, including doing nothing, which is a political position in support of the status quo. We have always prohibited malware and bigoted comments, for example, which is a political stance in the same sense. However, I think that we have justified the stance on cryptocurrency pretty well with objectivity rather than opinion, which to my sensibilities is the key distinction between "political" and "non-political" opinions to the layman, in so far as such a distinction can even exist.

But kicking out projects and kicking out people is not the same thing. We will not ban anyone who expresses support for cryptocurrency -- they can host any of their projects which are not cryptocurrency related and participate in the rest of the platform as always.