open source license violations/takedowns of legitimate open source forks, and other anti consumer practices. casual users likely unaffected, unless you're philosophically offended (rightfully, imo)
102 karma · joined February 22, 2015
I agree with everything except this. The sequels are by far the worst books I've read this decade. The memories of reading them actively causes me psychic damage. I wish I could Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind myself just to extract the distaste from my brain
And even if you ignore the historical parallels, there are already cases of: officers using Flock systems to stalk dating partners[2][3], immigration enforcement using Flock data to track targets[4], and ICE/CBP bypassing the systems in place that let local jurisdictions choose not to share with federal agencies[5].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Goals_Foundation
[2]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2026/01/12/menasha...
[3]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2026/02/24/mpd-off...
[4]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...
[5]: https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/2025/10/21/leaving-t...
[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/degrees-of-freedom/gala...
It is a very rare occurrence that my distro's packages are more than a week out of date from upstream releases
> That's precisely why software authors prefer to release as flatpaks
This implies that "software authors" do "prefer" releasing flatpaks, a plainly false statement for the vast majority of software.
> distros can't provide assurances that software will work
based on interpretation, either plainly false or a misrepresentation. They can't guarantee that software will always work because they operate in the realm of reality, but their raison d'etre is to package software together so they interoperate.
> They can't fix it if it's broken
In fact, distros regularly patch software so they're not broken before (if ever) those patches are merged upstream
> a tiny minority of users
A "tiny minority" of users prefer using their system's package manager? Implying that the vast majority would prefer all their software be packaged and flatpaks and appimages and docker containers? I don't know where you're pulling these numbers from but I bet it smell crazy in there
Google found it a convincing enough argument to warrant re-enabling ftp support last year, in light of the pandemic: https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/15/ftp_chrome_deprecatio...
That doesn't mean I'm against deprecation completely. But you can't pretend it won't affect people
> Low wages are the most common reason people cite for leaving food service work. But in one recent survey, more than half of hospitality workers who've quit said no amount of pay would get them to return.
> That's because for many, leaving food service had a lot to do also with its high-stress culture: exhausting work, unreliable hours, no benefits and so many rude customers.
a ton of government and scientific datasets are provided over FTP
> Libera Chat is a Swedish nonprofit organisation, feel free to read our bylaws[1]. The organisation is run entirely by volunteer staff who are the members of, and have equal voting power in, the organisation. Libera Chat’s purpose is to provide services such as a community platform for free open-source software and peer directed projects on a volunteer basis.
> Most decisions are taken by the membership as a whole. The board primarily deals with organisational tasks like managing our bookkeeping and keeping the member list in sync...
> The board of the organisation comprises a chair, a treasurer and a representative from each of our specialised teams. Board seats are elected by the membership...
> In addition to this the organisation has two auditors elected by the membership. Their role is to audit the board’s actions on behalf of the membership. Their yearly audit report, along with the annual report and bookkeeping of the organisation, will be published in a yearly transparency report