this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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the_dunk_tank

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It's the dunk tank.

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There are lots of other galaxy-brain moments there.

"Single payer economies leads to bad things like Bolshevism and Stalin"

@[email protected] Let's hear your rant

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I don't even need to say this but gulag

FOSS has many, many problems but contributing to monopoly is not among htem.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (12 children)

Do not use the term FOSS, it conflates Free Software with Open Source

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (5 children)

as it should, because open source software should be free. GNU can shove it.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

They are seperate because they both have different motivation, tactics, and origins.

Open source could also be used to describe a development methodology (public repo that accepts pull requests/patches with a license that allows redistribution). Free means that the user is entitled to all 4 freedoms (use, study, modify and distribute, or redistribute).

The Free software movement works to create a world of entirely free software. Open source initiative does not make that claim. OSI is more pragmatics (at a cost) while the FSF is more ideologically focused (likewise)

We have this distinction because it matters and that it reduces confusion. GNU doesn't go "shove it."

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago

Open Source is a corporate plot to dilute the meaning of software freedom

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What term should be used instead?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Free Software or Open Source Software, depending on which one you're talking about. They are not the same thing and should not be grouped together.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but I like shorthand things and Stallman's a pedophile, idk, wish the space wasn't dominated by misogynistic weirdos

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

Stallman's personal failings in other areas doesn't discredit his essays on Free software. I don't care for Stallman but I don't want other people in this space to suffer more than they already have for his blunders.

The free software world is more open (pun) than it has ever been. The misogynists are on the way out lest they want someone like Drew Devault to write an essay exposing them (Hyprland)

Edit: in the last 2-3 years after the pandemic.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (7 children)

open source software has problems such as what?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The most popular open source licenses are insufficiently militant and just create a new commons for capitalists to loot.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The most popular open source licenses are insufficiently militant and just create a new commons for capitalists to loot.

I treasure every piece of hate mail I get for my choice of the AGPLv3 in my projects, instead of the MIT or BSD licenses like so many others managing projects in the same niche.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

lmao get fucked nerds

fidel-salute-big

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (12 children)

Too little of it and prominent assholes (Stallman et al.)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No idea about shit, why Stallman is an asshole?

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Incredibly prolific harasser of women and talks a lot in official communiques about ephebophila lea-tired

There was some good article I found the other day, I'll try and retrieve it as an edit later

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

He's playing into that absurd liberal "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product" false dichotomy.

Here's a hot tip for anyone who still believes that mantra: there's absolutely no reason why you won't become the product while you're also paying for the service. In fact, due to the nature of capitalism, the companies which manage to sell your data or to manipulate you and which manage to get you to pay for it simultaneously are going to be the most successful over time (all things being equal for argument's sake.)

You think that if you're paying you're not going to be manipulated, like it's some sort of social contract in the era of digital media? Lol.

The entire conventional PR industry prior to the advent of computers has been predicated upon both manipulating you and getting you to pay for it. But you only need to look at any Google paid services (e.g. YouTube premium) or Roblox or anything similar to see people both paying for it and getting manipulated and being harvested for data to illustrate that his claim is entirely bogus.

This guy talks like a guru. And I mean that in the most derogatory way possible.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

I pay for Spotify, so famously, it does nothing with my data

smuglord

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 11 months ago

So-called "intellectual property rights" are literally government enforced monopolies wtf

[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've read a couple of his books and he's got serious brainworms which is a shame because he's gotta really good insight into what VR is capable of doing to our minds, but he's been anti-socialism since the days when most hackers were largely anti-capitalist robin hood archetypes. He knows and sees all the horrible shit capitalism and silicon valley does and is going to do, but just sticks his head in the sand and doubles down.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

This is from an interview he did with Ezra Klein in 2018. https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897738/jaron-lanier-interview

Jaron Lanier: The first thing I want to do is just confirm the degree of problem that exists... I still kinda have my meal card in Silicon Valley despite of all the things I say and so I'm in these conversations sometimes and I hear people who have done extremely well and have a lot of influence in Silicon Valley say things that just... send me reeling. Because they're just so appalling. And so a fairly typical line of conversation lately has gone something like this:

Lanier: Well you know, um automation is coming and a whole lot of people are going to be thrown out of work. Many many millions of people, many hundreds of millions because they won't be driving anymore, they won't be doing so many other things. We think we can have our algorithms be better teachers, better nurses. All, even the sort of supposedly human-centric "safe" things. Or in the worst case, we'll only need a little bit of human labor to cover the rough spots of the algorithms. But the question is what to do with all these people and a lot of them have been saying, "Ya know, this Opioid addiction crisis has come up at just the right time because actually it will be easier for everybody if a lot of the people that aren't needed are just sedated all the time." Like this is actually positive.

Ezra: Do people actually say that to you?

Lanier: Yeah, I've heard that a number of times, it's sort of an internal talking point that comes up. Yeah I've heard that. Yeah um. I mean, I always fight it, but yeah sure, I've heard it. And I'm not saying everybody says it, but I'm saying there's... it's the sort of thing that one hears. And one definitely hears that...

Ezra: I'm completely flabbergasted.

LAnier: Yeah, I know, I know.

Ezra: That another human being would make this comment to another human being.

Lanier: Yeah, I don't want to name the specific people who have done it, but they're known names, you know? And uh, similarly with the idea of technology being addicted, of using the different techniques like noisy feedback which is what's used in gambling to make gambling addictive. Of using these things to addict people to information systems, it's a very similar argument. That we need to have the people in some sort of a "spot" where they're not going to just burn everything down when they don't have jobs. And then um, the basic income model is thought of as a kind of a ma.. It's kind of like in the matrix movies, ya know? It's just this way to maintain this population of people who aren't doing anything and aren't needed.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I don't want to name the specific people who have done it, but they're known names, you know?

Coward

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

Totally. In his book Who Owns the Future he warns of the danger of data collection by what he calls Siren Servers (aka monopolies) but his answer to it is that we should instead tokenize all our data and each individual could make money by spending their days managing their data to the highest bidder. He knows what the fucking problems are but he's got a giagantic brainworms 'SOCIALISM BAD' button that if you get anywhere near it he loses a considerable amount of his cognitive abilities. Like in that same Ezra Klein interview he's called out for how unsustainable that would be and how people would just find themselves forced to give up their data in order to access services anyway and he just umms his way out of addressing it.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Its just math, bro. You can't argue with it, bro. Long tail of risk made manifest, my dude. We have to be effective altruists, guy. Its really simple but I can't show any of it to you. I just can't show you what's in the box or how it works, because then that would ruin the magic. You don't need to know how any of this stuff works, dawg. Don't look behind the curtain, there's nobody back here. Stop asking all these stupid questions, you're not smart enough to understand, I swear, stop looking or the magic will go away! Dawg, you just gotta trust me, I'm good for it everything is fine, just stop asking how AI works guy dude bro STAWP!

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

@[email protected] Let's hear your rant

In this case, with all that I've just read, here goes.

screm-a aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I will step in for Ulysses in the mean time :)

Single player economies leads to bad things like Bolshevism and Stalin

It truly fascinates me how these super mega-brained silicon tech geniuses (in all their genius) just can’t seem to reckon with the fact that capitalism has left a trail of blood like no other. But what are the “bad things?” Worker autonomy? Redistribution? Oppressed people taking back power? Can’t you just admit that you’re arguing from a moral framework at this point? Odd how no one ever does. It just has to be the case that anything but capitalism is evil and bad as a consequence of simply challenging existing ideology.

Jesus fuck. Are we really going to pretend like it’s possible to quantify something as a complex as a monopoly? Economics is not a science no matter how hard you try to make it so, and economists will eventually cave to this if you dig deep enough. I think they’re renowned in the STEM world for the pretty remarkable feat of enrolling in graduate-level courses as a high school student, but they are very clearly not objective. How the fuck can you possibly make a claim about the veracity of something leading to a monopoly? As I’ve said on this site before, I’m the furthest thing from a philosopher, but how is that not an absurd claim?

All the proof you need to know that our collective understanding of intelligence means jack shit. I sometimes think “Yeah, I guess since there’s this general trend of certain people taking a test annd answering logically/computationally complex questions with ease, maybe IQ is somewhat valid.”

But then I think back to people like Hawking and Einstein who would’ve unquestionably performed well on those types of tests but had an entirely different worldview. And I really can’t help but think it all comes down to philosophy, namely ethics and what we ought to do as human beings.

These thoughts brought to you by a brain that just finished reading Bullshit Jobs so I would like to thank David Graeber for his help with this post.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yer not using enough emotes nor repeating how detached from reality and deep into their own asses these reptiles are to fill Ulysses void

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I've been busy packing and getting ready to ship out in the next few days, and because moving sucks as always, my head's full of bees. All I can do is gesture frantically at what the fuck these servile cheerleaders for billionaires are doing now, though they've been doing the same thing since at least the so-called "Extropian" movement of the early 90s.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

They benefit directly from the system. To question it would mean losing their cushy 6 figure salary where they get to spend all day googling "how do I code this?" and feeling superior to us mere mortals who don't understand the incredible magic of "programming." They have a vested self-interest in defending the status quo, they're modern intelligentsia.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago

It is difficult to get a [person] to understand something, when [their] salary depends upon [them] not understanding it!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

"Single payer economies leads to bad things like Bolshevism and Stalin" lenin-shining

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

bad

as in "wicked bad", which means good theory-gary

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Dude is against open source cuz "it mathematically leads to monopoly" while working for Microsoft.

lenin-rage

capitalism leads to monpoly. not open source. why does capitalism lead to monopoly? because capitalism is competitive, and competitions have winners and losers. when a loser enterprise is vanquished under capitalism, it is either driven from the market through bankruptcy, or it is absorbed/merged into a winner enterprise. Eventually the winner enterprises get so big that it is prohibitively expensive to enter the market in competition with them, and smaller firms simply become auxiliary forces for the large firms, to be absorbed when the charade of separateness is no longer useful. Once all firms are vanquished/absorbed/made into auxiliaries, you have a vertically and horizontally integrated monopoly enterprise. How do you get rid of this monopoly? Under socialism, you would nationalize it. Under capitalism, you simply "trust bust" it like Teddy Roosevelt did, and force a RETVRN to the state of competition. In both situation, ancaptain will complain that you are "punishing winners", of course.

"Single payer economies leads to bad things like Bolshevism and Stalin"

Even if you think Communism is bad, this is idiotic. Single payer policies alone aren't socialism. If an imperialist capitalist state has free health care, Lenin is not going to rise from the grave. And Tsarist Russia, on the eve of the October Revolution did not have a "Single Payer Economy" which led to Bolshevism lmfao.

What led to Bolshevism was the failures of the Tsar and his ministers, the Russo-Japanese War, WW1, the black hundreds, the pogroms, the failure of the 3 dumas, the failure of Stolypin's reforms, the failure of the provisional government and Kerensky, etc. etc. etc. shit this bazinga brain has probably never even read about.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Eventually the winner enterprises get so big that it is prohibitively expensive to enter the market in competition with them, and smaller firms simply become auxiliary forces for the large firms, to be absorbed when the charade of separateness is no longer useful. Once all firms are vanquished/absorbed/made into auxiliaries, you have a vertically and horizontally integrated monopoly enterprise.

Lemme tell you about a lil' something called "Innovation" smuglord

Under communism, there is no innovation because everyone is forced to do the same thing or they get shot. Under capitalism, innovation is rewarded by 1 person becoming a billionaire and everyone else also gets richer because capitalism is when people have money. Do you want people to have no money? No innovation? I know what it's like to live in a communist country (I was born in Ukraine in 1999) and let me tell you, you would change your mind very quickly if you experienced the reality of it.

If there was a monopoly under capitalism, the people would simply vote with their wallets to promote healthy competition because capitalism is synonymous with democracy. Arguably the only thing more democratic than capitalism is the blockchain. I have been huffing lead paint for the past 3 hours straight.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (3 children)

If its all going to tend to monopoly, then why are there so many Linux distros, even after 30 years? FOSS is based

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

Okay... the most charitable interpretation I can give that, is that he means that open source models would lead to monopoly by outcompeting other models, assimilating all other enhancements into an already popular model that has widespread usage. This is in fact the only interpretation that we can go off of because all of the others would just be outright falsehoods. And of course he doesn't say anything more specific to inform us about any other options.

My response is: Yes, I do hope they will. Fuck your profit margins.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Open source software can be coopted by existing monopolies. In what way does it cause them? I’m still listening to the interview to find the clip but my god.

Edit: Oh, I think he’s saying the networks formed by the open sharing of data are unstable and will tend towards the centralization of data transmission. Sounds like a good case for forming a public utility, no?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (4 children)

yeah, of course Netflix never mentioned FOSS or any of the fucked up shit Amazon/AWS does

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Monopolization of what exactly? The use of the FOSS software?

It's not anyone's fault that FOSS is objectively superior in every way.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago

Monopoly is when my favorite tech giant doesn't own the entire market.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This dude was in that shitty tech documentary, right?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Yeah, the one that never talked about the shit it's creators did or any FOSS software

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

He looks like an animatronic hobo

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

No need for body shaming.

But he could have a better haircut.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

He's a hack, doing his job as a hack by saying hack shit. Nothing surprising here.

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