stegosaurus

Interestingly I've had far, far less issues in Arch over a year or so of using it, than I did trying to use Debian stable ~10 years ago.

It could be that I'm just more of a unix beast now and so do it automatically without thinking. I remember having to edit Xorg configuration files, having tons of unsupported hardware, etc.

Arch has basically just worked for me on all my machines with the exception of some esoteric features (e.g. zfs requires a bit of fiddling).

What problems have you had in particular?

Lazy language, perhaps.

Ultimately, I doubt that every piece of media that is currently on YouTube will be available for as long as I need them. That could be a year, or it could be fifty.

For my purposes, if a video gets taken down, it's lost forever, I probably won't be able to find it again.

But 'Guinea Pig Noises Loud Squeaking Sounds.mp4' lives on my hard-drive forever. ;)

I feel the same way about webpages really. wget -> it's mine until my hard-drive and all backups die. bookmark -> it's mine until my hard-drive and all backups die, PLUS the site goes down. Also immutable, which can be a bonus.

It's more videos I've already seen.

I find it absurd that I can have a copy of a video in my brain, but potentially not be able to show it to someone else. It feels like an arbitrary limitation on knowledge transfer. If we had brain-computer interfaces I could just push my (analog fuzzy) version out into the screen again!

Tagging and categorization can be fixed later. I generally find grep -i a good enough solution.

I wasn't really advocating a huge library either. I think the idea I have is that there's not really a benefit to trying to 'optimize' watching movies.

I guess I see it in the same way as healthy eating, or something. I really bloody like cookies. They're super tasty. If I end up with pack of freshly baked cookies they're gone in a few hours. So why give myself that temptation?

What I actually want is the ability to do it. I think it's good for my mental health to have a treat every now and then, but not have it take over my life. So basically, it should be difficult, but not too difficult.

In a similar vein, downloading a YouTube video before watching it gives me that window of self control before there's more exciting stuff battering me in the face to continue.

I've been using computers and Internet since childhood - I'm not a luddite by any means. But I think it's far too easy nowadays to get caught in bad behaviour patterns because of the instantaneous nature. It takes active effort to digest deep topics.

I don't think I'm a pious enough person to be self righteous! Maybe I'd feel different if I were more financially secure and had more time for pure leisure? I don't know. :)

This looks like a way to break BitTorrent, as other posters have outlined.

Streaming in general (apart from via a local server) frustrates me. The entire idea is simply a way of relinquishing control to an external body. Hard drives are not that expensive, and patience is a virtue. I'm very happy that youtube-dl exists, for example, because otherwise when Google disappears I'll lose a lot of useful material I have access to at the moment.

Regardless - I'm surprised to see this here. Sci-Hub is one thing - it's an educational resource.

Mainstream media... I just gave it up rather than pirating it. I'm not 18 any more - my friends don't really care about the latest Marvel flick. The movie companies have lost even my mindshare now. Books, online reading material, educational videos, all free, all a better use of my time, all less likely to leave me wanting a fast car like James Bond.

I like the idea but it's still an odd compromise.

The Jorno looks like I'd be better off carrying a full size laptop. It's not about fitting in my pocket, it's about usability on the bus, train, standing up, etc.

The TextBlade is vaguely the same as far as I can tell?

I want something like the Pyra - a Blackberry keyboard - something I can hold and press with my thumbs. For a sit-down experience I have a laptop. The phone gets pulled out in other situations.

I don't want or need a touch screen at all. The BlackBerry was an excellent experience. I'm fully aware that I'm in a niche.

Well, I'm me, and it's a bad thing for me.

I don't want the world to change so that these devices don't exist. I'm just sad that there aren't options. It feels like a huge waste of potential. Creation benefits us all.

In a world without something like the IBM-compatible PC we'd likely never have gotten to the point of creating smartphones because the tools simply wouldn't exist.

Very interested in the Nexus 7 progress. I may have to pick one up and grab a hardware keyboard.

Killing off Android and getting X11/Wayland on there with a regular DE would be amazing.

I can deal with WiFi only - a workaround would be to just carry around an android device or similar as a hotspot.

I just wish all devices were more like PC's.

My desktop computer is a glorious, glorious device. I have millions of different bits of software for it, many operating systems, open source, proprietary, etcetera. It's all there. It really feels like my machine. If I don't want Windows, I blow it away and install Linux, BSD, Plan 9, code my own bootloader, whatever.

My laptop is a bit less so (can't find the perfect form factor for me, can't upgrade it, etc) but it's very similar. It's mine. I have spice, vnc, rdp, ssh, sftp, ftp, irc, <insert a million other things here regardless of whether I actually ever use them> as commandline tools that just work and aren't filled with adverts or in app purchases or 'please add this to your google account'.

Phones and tablets? Complete write off. My smartphone is basically a toaster. Android and iOS make what could be a general purpose computer into a Fisher Price experience. It's really sad to me.

I'd love a modern version of the Psion Series 5. The Pyra (https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/) looks like a decent candidate. All I need is a Linux distribution with an API or commandline 'sms' and 'call' tool.

The mainstream is basically focused on creating a slightly more interactive version of a portable television, which I find deeply saddening.

I don't have children. I can't afford them.

I think the solution is to move away from cities. I'm planning to do so. I'm just going to be sad if it means leaving my country because you don't want me anywhere near you, even if it means I'm on the horizon from your window.

The issue is that taking away that choice is damaging to many people. I think that the statement "most people in the West agree" glosses over an important detail - perhaps most people who have the money agree, and the others are forced to go along with it.

I would far rather have a home that has 'risky banister railings' if that meant I could actually afford it.

Mental health is as important as physical health, if not moreso - what's worse, risk of eviction, or having to pay attention near the stairwell? I get that this is an isolated example, but I'd take worse insulation, no solar, worse security, everything, if it meant I could get a home and slowly improve it myself with time.

If that means I have to live rurally - so be it - but as far as I can tell that means living outside of the country I was born in (UK), which is quite sad.

Do I think I pay too much tax? Yes and no. I'd like to pay more, but I have basics to take care of first.

I think that taxes should be reserved for those with some level of financial stability/independence. I don't know how to come up with a benchmark for that, though.

If I earned what I do now in a low cost of living environment, then I could pay 80% and still get by just fine.

Put simply, as a UK citizen, to a very good approximation, a worker earning 50K pa pays the same amount of tax whether they own a 5 bedroom home outright or whether they live in a tent. (Council tax / property tax exists but is generally small).

I don't think that's an efficient policy. It makes bootstrapping much more difficult than it should be.

Interesting video, but it feels a bit 'icky' to me, for lack of better words.

The voice feels patronising, perhaps even scary, and towards the end it suddenly turns into a description of a dystopia. If this were an advert I think it'd have most reaching for the remote control fairly rapidly.

It's a real challenge to describe these issues without looking unhinged.

So basically it's either a game of coming up with ridiculous schemes to skirt the law, or lying.

I'd rather have a judge say to me 'we think you're the wrong sort, go directly to jail' than have to sit there and say 'no, you will not have my keys, because I will not allow you to violate me in that way'.

I'm sure there are other bits of the legal system that are just as smelly. This is just one I'm familiar with technically.

It really feels like a manifestation of some dystopian novel.

I can't imagine being in that situation, it feels so utterly absurd. I can move some numbers through some wires, knowingly or unknowingly, or be arbitrarily targeted, and then somehow society/the state decides that I have to now do their tasks.

Meh. If it comes to it, I'll spend my time watching waves crashing at the beach until you decide to lock me in a box.

RIPA is psychological torture. Give us the keys or we'll take away your life. This is the society I live in. Bankrupt.

Same.

ES and QuickPic tipped me over the edge into just uninstalling everything and using my phone as a phone. Two very good programs that gradually became malware, pushing cloud options onto me, pushing arbitrary notifications when I installed other apps, etcetera.

I now have a very basic CM install with a few OSS F-Droid applications. The phone is used predominantly as a phone and for anything else I go and use a computer with a much better ecosystem.

Just another law that exists to arbitrarily criminalize people as far as I'm concerned.

If a government agency claims that you have indecent images on your hard drive and opens an investigation, you can be forced to give up your keys.

It doesn't matter if you're innocent - your data is out there now. Forever.

I see your words. Let's do some math.

Please explain to me, using a worked example, how a person earning 30,000 GBP pretax (triple minimum wage) can buy an apartment that costs 200,000 GBP (cheapest I can find anywhere apart from under Heathrow Airport).

For extra credit, work out the additional time taken for the purchase if the person buys 500 pints per year at a cost of 5 GBP per pint.

Affordable housing is a misnomer. Definitionally: afford: 'To have the financial means for'.

Affordable housing in London, UK.

Does it cost 3.5x the minimum/living wage, affordable to a single person? ;-) Does it cost 6x the minimum/living wage, affordable to a couple? Not there yet.

Instead it costs some percentage of market rate.

Which generally ends up being 20x min wage or similar. Yes - as a person you'd need to become three, four, five times more useful before you can get this starter home.

As far as I can tell it's just trolling. It genuinely feels like those with wealth laughing at the lower classes, there's no other explanation for such a ridiculous use of language.

A Bentley does not become 'affordable' if I offer it to you for 50% off.

Even minimum wage would be a high bar to set because it doesn't feel affordable to everyone. But at the moment we're saying 'the top 10% can afford it so that's fine'.

Non-linear utility of money.

Going from $1bn to $50m (a loss of 95%) in wealth might be psychologically damaging but you're still independently wealthy. You'd lose the jet (if you chose to buy one), but you'd keep the house, the car, the neighbourhood, etc.

Going from $1m to $50k (a loss of 95%) is absolutely enormous. You've lost the house and the retirement fund and you're starting from scratch with a deposit.

The realistic case for most labourers is worse than that. How much risk is involved in moving to a new town for a job? Training in a certain discipline? Deciding to have children or not? All of those are far more impactful on the middle class than on the wealthy.

The thing is that even these cities aren't that vulnerable.

Imagine you're a terrorist.

Where are you going to attack for maximum impact? Piccadilly Circus? Heathrow? Gatwick?

Or a random suburb out at the end of a line somewhere?

To me personally all of this just seems like fluff. I can't be the only one that feels this way.

I don't want to 'prove I'm a human' to view your crappy site. I'll go and look at the other bits of the Internet instead.

As an individual browsing, the only contact I have with CloudFlare is a bouncer telling me 'no shoes no entry'.

Your entire company to me feels like a pointless gatekeeper because of these shenanigans (on and off of Tor).

To be perfectly clear - CloudFlare, as a brand, is tainted to me, and I expect to many others.

Fundamentally I don't think CloudFlare cares because their customers are not the viewers of websites - and if the viewers of websites come to think of CloudFlare as toxic - it still doesn't matter to them directly.

'Unfairness' is an incorrect term and brings to mind whining.

It is inefficient.

It is sub-optimal, for the progress of humanity, that good, motivated developers have to spend most of their time (or frankly, any time) on capitalist nonsense.

Work on a supermarket checkout, feed a few people, make a few pounds.

Fix a big in the linux kernel, millions will use it, you get zero.

Totally and utterly bonkers.

Most of these cases strike me as being quite worrying with regard to 'just following orders'.

A police officer must, must have discretion. The individual, the team, that steps into a home must be able to decide whether taking items is the best course of action and be free to do so without coercion.

Otherwise, you have robots acting on instructions from higher ups. That's not a reasonable model for society.

That doesn't answer my question, though. All of those are reasons to suspect Tor exit nodes, but not reasons to place CAPTCHAs on standard article pages on a site.

The only vaguely reasonable one I can see there is 'ad click fraud', and I think that fundamentally restricting the usefulness of a site for advertising purposes is awful.

Why do CAPTCHAs even exist for standard websites (as opposed to account creation, etc)?

Wouldn't something like rate limiting or proof of work achieve the same result? If you're simply allowing someone to browse, you don't actually care whether a user is real or not. You care about stopping automated comments/spam.

Is this just another tentacle of the advertising industry?

Pressure is the wrong term to use because life doesn't have a difficulty level. For lack of a better term.. it's nonlinear.

Thought experiment: you're working at a charity for a cause you absolutely love. You're putting in 12 hour days, but you love it, you're happy to make the sacrifice. Everything is going well, your health is good, you're completely devoted to the cause.

Then, you make a discovery. Perhaps the CEO is embezzling company funds. Something like that, that you can't change and have no control over.

In an instant your motivation can disappear and you find yourself depleting willpower, forcing yourself to continue.

I personally think that ultimately it's a matter of people sticking on the wrong path for too long. If you find yourself losing faith, it probably is time to shake things up.

But the world makes this hard. We're not castles. Marriages, leases, etc, other people exist.

And so it goes.

>> I don't want to research the 200 brands of almond milk or 85 sushi restaurants in my neighborhood

Neither do I. I'll just pick one arbitrarily. It's almond milk. I might even just skip it entirely. I don't even really need milk, if giving up advertising meant I had to drink water that's fine.

I think the issue here is that you're approaching this from a consumerist viewpoint to begin with - it's difficult to explain exactly what's wrong because it's a completely foreign approach.

"risky because you could be fired and lose your $42,382 income"

What good is said income if you have no free time, and no savings building up to produce future free time?

Let's call it a day here - you think I'm insane, I think you're insane, we won't reach a consensus.

"You'll run out of time because you have to go to the job that pays your rent."

I think we have a fundamental disagreement here in that I don't believe that the answer to having a bad work-life balance is to try to increase your efficiency outside of work.

If your job is taking over your life, you owe it to yourself and to the entire labouring population to try to fix that situation.

Coping strategies are rarely good long-term solutions.

Okay, so you've identified a prerequisite, then. People need to be taught autodidactism. If you're correct and the idea is valid, then tautologically they cannot do it themselves.

Why?

Because without being able to teach yourself, programming is a sisyphean task. What happens when you're done 'learning to program'? You just stick at that level forever?