nske

Whereas when I'm faced with a donation button that leads to an empty box waiting to be filled, or even to a number of presets, my mind goes in too many directions:

"Is this particular project more worthy of donations than dozens of other free software projects I am using every day? What am I using every day, let me think, Linux, FreeBSD, Xorg, GNU, vim -jesus that'll be a long list, I can't donate to all of them. Well maybe I could just give a few quid to all, but donating a few quid to some of these projects would be a joke -the big ones receive a lot of funding regardless. And it would be too much effort just to find the details on how to donate anyway." So now I have to factor in not just how much value I would attribute to each project which is hard enough as it is, but also how much difference it could make -how much the project is in need of funding.

It just feels too arbitrary and exhausting to deal with all this, so in the end I don't bother. Obviously some people don't overanalyse things and just act spontaneously -sometimes I do too, but rarely. I don't think I'm the only one that has this mental block.

On the other hand if a project says "you like this project? If so, please click here to donate $x" -then that's awesome, I like the software, it's asking for $x, $x is a reasonable amount, so I just do it and move on. Or I don't, if I don't think $x is reasonable (I don't think that's happened, normally free software authors are very modest in what they're asking when they do that). Giving me a single choice taps to the spontaneous part of me, asking me to pick an amount myself triggers my analysing part.

The ideal for me would be if there was a platform that asks you to put a total amount you're willing to spend every month, then asks you to select the projects you're using and a rating of how much you appreciate each, then it factors that along with some objective development activity measures to distribute the amount between the projects, perhaps with an increased weight to smaller projects. I think someone actually posted a similar idea here recently.

a) At a personal level, it forces the user to make choices. Making choices is exhausting. Should I donate $1, $10, or $100? Should I donate based on my perception of how much each project lacks funds, based on how much value I extract out of the software -which is not easy to quantify anyway- or just send an amount that I wouldn't miss? Should I donate one-time and forget about it or set a recurring donation? If recurring, shouldn't I monitor the project's development to decide if a recurring donation should continue? Then would it not be fair to hunt down every single free software project I'm using and evaluate its needs and value in order to donate to that as well?

Personally I admit that I rarely donate to free projects as an individual, unless they explicitly ask for a fixed amount that I find reasonable, because I dread the process of such decisions.

2) At a business level, usually there is a complete detachment between the value drawn out of a piece of a free software and the process of donations. The company is there to maximize its profits and minimize its costs, donations exist at a separate sphere that has more to do with financial/tax or PR incentives than the intrinsic value of the free software project, so all donations tend to get send to recognized charity organizations.

Very often the people who understand the value that a piece of free software brings to the business, have the right mindset and want to donate, but there is no process to make it easy for them to do so (it would be awkward to put a purchase order to the finance department for a donation).

For that reason, I would encourage every free software project that cares about funding to sell something at a fixed price, that can pass for a standard purchase in the eyes of a non-technical person -i.e. call it support/maintenance plan, or premium forum access. Even if in reality it adds nothing to the value of the software, it makes it easy for IT departments to support projects they are using that they would otherwise not be able to. Speaking from experience, it's very frustrating to see how much a company spends for bullshit and not be able to donate even a small amount to projects that bring much higher value to the company.

Once Skype was rewritten as an Electron app, I noticed the same performance issues. MS Teams at work, same.

This on very decent computers.

I really feel there has to be something that Keybase does differently on the front-end.

Perhaps the (late) CCP deserves credit for improving economy, infrastructure, efficiency and quality of life, to the extent that it did. And for being less cruel than its predecessors.

It is just that from the perspective of westerners, it is hard to judge positively a government that still has no respect for individual freedoms and private aspects of people's lives -i.e. looking the social score system, it is a step to the wrong direction.

My worry is that if the Chinese people become complacent and just feel grateful that they have more prosperity than before, the day where they are able to enjoy the freedoms that every person deserves will be far. And that, if they are not used to having free access to information and being in control, it will be more likely for someone less peaceful than the current CCP leadership in the future to start a war or something.

And if this progress happened to coincide with loosening up the restrictions of personal freedoms and the censorship that you mention, perhaps the case is that a government that allowed more freedoms might had facilitated even more progress.

The server is open-source so you could host your own server -though that's not very practical due to the client situation (not really a variety of configurable ones, so you'd probably need to change/package/distribute the official).

What's problematic to me is that a government censors information that could change people's minds. How can we call "legitimate" a government that is not allowing those who are supposed to be the source of its legitimacy, to access opinions and ideas that could influence their choice of which party they would legitimise?

Of course it would be hypocritical to say that our western governments don't try to do the same. But at least they are forced to limit the scope of their control to information that can somewhat fit under the umbrella of "National Security" -and at least their propaganda is forced to compete with everything else out there. Censoring by force books, websites and public media that express vastly opposing ideas is out of the question -as it should be -don't you agree?

I didn't say that all electron apps have to suffer, at the same time it seems to me that there is a strong correlation.

Keybase has been one of the very few performant and usable "new-style" applications that I've used -and the only one of its kind.

Sadly I am forced to suffer electron-based vomit every day -between Skype, Teams, Whatsapp, Hangouts, Facebook messenger and whatever else I might be fortunate enough to be forgetting. It sucks that I might have to be on the lookout for a decent encrypted chat application that I don't actually hate, again.

Not sure why the use-case of chat communications has been afflicted by so much crappiness -as if it's a curse.

However they would still be able to borrow good bits from each other and gain insight on how things could be done differently, so arguably the end result would be a win. From a technical standpoint that is -I think where it gets messy is when we try to factor in the business implications.

I think the same reasons that we have to thank for that we also have to blame for the fact that we are less easy to change our ways of modeling reality, both at the lower and the higher levels as we become older. In some ways we become more humble, in some other ways we are becoming more rigid. In practice I guess we are becoming better in modeling the world around us in those areas that have not changed too much, but at the same time we become less willing or able to revise our models drastically or create new ones, which would be a good thing in areas that have incurred some fundamental changes.

This accumulated "wisdom" often leads to choices and behaviors that cannot be rationalized by those younger, but it can be tricky knowing when that's a case of modeling a situation better and when it's a case of reading patterns that did not exist or missing/underestimating some important variables.

I think it is exciting but also a bit scary to see these changes happening to ourselves with age and trying to see how effectively we can identify and compensate for their negative side through awareness!

To understand the tax mentality of Greeks, it's worth pointing that not a single Greek government existed in modern history that didn't have multiple corruption scandals and blatant misspending/mismanagement incidents come to light. And only a small percentage of those incidents probably ever came into light. The last two generations got used to knowing that tax money vanish into a black hole, needless public sector hires, ridiculous under-the-table contracts, etc, all while the public health system was suffering to the extent that bribing the doctors to receive decent service became the norm. That practice extended everywhere: you'd bribe for your driving license or you'd likely fail even if you did everything right, you'd bribe the tax inspectors or you'd face fines even if everything was in order, etc. Not saying that this makes tax evasion a good thing but it does feed some interesting thoughts about how hard it is to change a system that keeps mishandling tax money while failing the people and how the natural urge of the people in these cases is to just avoid contributing into it however they can.

For starters there are limits to how many gambling licenses are available from the government each year and companies have to apply and pay for them.

But my comment was mostly targeted to several other comments here that seemed over-eager to accept something should be rendered illegal simply because it's addictive and some people can't control themselves.

As for adults however, my philosophy is that we should stop treating them as kids that need to be told what they are and aren't allowed to do. Loot boxes are addictive? So is sugar, alcohol, sex and 1000 other things. Do we want to go down that road?

If someone wants to gamble a percentage of his income, that should be his choice. If he wants to gamble away all his money or even put himself into debt, also his choice.