Digital-Citizen

None of this inspires confidence that the code can be trusted.

It's a shame this code isn't so good out of the box, but for all we know there are proprietary devices purporting to do the same job which also have poor code. The difference between the devices is we can review, edit/improve, share, and run the improved code for this device. The software freedom is a feature unto itself. So one is still better off with this device (or another device that runs on entirely FLOSS) over any proprietary device that purports to do the same job.

Because a lot of GPL'd software is best of breed and (contrary to other threads here) apparently integrates quite well. It says a lot about Apple's view of their customers (none of it good) that they'd rather distribute a badly broken proprietary SMB replacement for Samba than continue with Samba until a suitable replacement that meets with Apple's licensing desires could be found. GPL-licensed software helped get MacOS X to where it is; Apple has been a GPL licensee for most of MacOS X's existence (and still is for some programs).

And as for that tired slur about the GPL being a "viral license", Robert Chassell's essay (reproduced below) still applies. Software freedom is good for us all, and being treated with equal rights to run, share, and modify the program was apparently very useful to a lot of people (apparently including people at Apple).

From https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/vaccination.en.html

When others hurt me, I try to defend myself. But some tell me that this makes them sick. They tell me that I should permit people to rob me of my work. They tell me that I should never try to defend myself.

They tell me that I should stop using the GNU General Public License, a license that vaccinates me against hurt. Instead, I should adopt a license that permits other people to rob me with impunity. They want me to adopt a license that forbids me from fighting back. They want me to give up my right to benefit from a derivative of my own work, a right I possess under current copyright law.

Of course, the language is a little less feverish than this. Usually, I myself am not called “infectious”. Rather, the legal defense that I use is called “infectious”. The license I choose is called “viral”.

In every day language, words such as “infect” and “virus” describe disease. The rhetoric is metaphorical. A legal tool is not a disease organism; but it is popular to think of the law as an illness, so the metaphor has impact.

The people who want to rob me use language that says I make them sick when I stop them from robbing me. They do not want to draw attention to the so-called “disease” that makes them ill: my health and my rights, and the health and rights of other people. Instead, they choose metaphor to twist people's thinking. They do not want anyone to think that I am a good citizen for stopping crime. They want the metaphor to fool others into thinking that I am a disease agent.

The GNU General Public License protects me. The connotation of “virus” and “infect” is that my choice of defense gives an illness to those who want to rob me. I want freedom from their robbery; but they want the power to hurt me. They get sick when they cannot hurt me.

To use another health and illness-related metaphor, the GNU General Public License vaccinates me; it protects me from theft.

Note that the theft about which I am talking is entirely legal in some situations: if you license your work under a modified BSD license, or a similar license, then others may legally take your work, make fixes or improvements to it, and forbid you from using that code. I personally dislike this arrangement, but it exists.

Not according to the Ziff-Davis article they haven't:

- Microsoft's Mark Russinovich presumably heard what Stallman said at his talk (which was said to be a "mostly standard talk"). Stallman's talk usually includes a clear description of how the free software movement he started predates the open source development methodology by over a decade and stands philosophically distinct as well. Yet Russinovich claims Stallman's talk is "OSS-related" which is right in line with why the open source development methodology was started: corporate cooption of a social movement that was posing a real threat to proprietary software.

- ZDNet's article continues on this theme at the top and bottom of the article (as to be expected of corporate news which makes up the majority of computer news coverage and repeater/pointer sites like this one): "Each time Microsoft makes another open-source-related move these days, there are still always folks on Twitter or in comments on blog posts who caution that Microsoft hasn't really changed and never will be a true friend of open source. This change in Microsoft didn't happen overnight, but the momentum is growing.". Microsoft like "open source" instead of "free software" because open source doesn't question proprietary software, and thus doesn't question delivering proprietary software to OSes that respect a user's software freedom (the freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software). The same opposition is as it was before, only the PR campaign has changed from namecalling ("Linux [sic] is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches") to appearing warmly welcoming ("Microsoft [heart symbol] Linux [sic]"). They dare not call a complete OS GNU/Linux (which it most likely is in both quotes) because that might bring software freedom to mind (I'll bet Stallman mentioned this as this too is part of every talk he's given for many years).

What Ziff-Davis calls Stallman's "distaste for Microsoft" is clearly-explained and principled objections based in the facts of how computers work and an ethical examination of how we ought to treat each other with computers. But in corporate media it's necessary to downplay principled examination and explication in order to diminish the severity of the objection.

Microsoft wants users to run a GNU/Linux system as a VM on top of Microsoft's system as that helps Microsoft collect payments (licensing or rent, depending on the details of hosting) and, perhaps more importantly, spy on literally every bit of data that the user's OS deals with. Spying is big business and directly tied to proprietary control over the user. Microsoft offers a service to help users host their VM on Microsoft-owned hardware (so-called "cloud computing") too. Just to show the stark difference: Stallman, by comparison, explains what "cloud computing" actually means in https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#CloudComp... and why you should only run VMs on free software systems you own and control.

No, Microsoft hasn't changed. In fact, nothing of substance has changed because ethics are too deeply rooted for any change and computing has only really altered in that more people are being offered computing services more than ever before. Software proprietors are still unmotivated by the same principles that software freedom activists are. Microsoft's change is quite superficial and PR-related: Microsoft has shifted their campaign from more honest but harsh terminology to more deceptive terminology which appears friendlier. The social harm of proprietary software continues apace.

A lot of things I use everyday are BSD licensed. Stallman cannot really make any such demands.

That those programs are licensed under one of the BSD licenses doesn't have anything to do with Stallman's use of the term "GNU/Linux" and recommendation that others join him in using the term "GNU/Linux". This is not a "demand" as you claim. Stallman explains his position in brief in https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Linux , at length in https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html and there's a FAQ as well.

In fact the specific point you raise has been raised before and is addressed quite well across multiple questions in the FSF's FAQ on the term GNU/Linux:

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#others -- Many other projects contributed to the system as it is today, but they don't insist on calling it XYZ/Linux. Why should we treat GNU specially?

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#distronames0 -- My distro's developers call it “Foobar Linux”, but that doesn't say anything about what the system consists of. Why shouldn't they call it whatever they like?

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#bsd -- Should we say “GNU/BSD” too?

For a while Debian has distributed multiple systems where GNU was the predominant OS atop other kernels--GNU/Linux, GNU/kFreeBSD, and GNU/Hurd. It helps people understand the major components involved by naming things according to what they are. Such naming is also fair to those who ask for a share of the credit for their major contribution to the overall work, as the GNU Project asks people to give them a share of the credit for their major contribution.

There's no call to write in such patronizing ways.

It should be up to the user to decide whether to take on updates, regardless of what you think because that's their computer and not yours and you each deserve control over the computers you own. Just as freedom of speech means sometimes people will say things you disagree with, free software computers means not everyone will keep up with the updates. But not offering software freedom is unethical and neither Zoom nor Apple are distributing software freedom. Apple has a clear record of using the power of a proprietor to expose their users to harm (more examples at https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html ) and this story is an example of how Zoom apparently does as well.

What you and other posters are tellingly refusing to address is the immorality of software nonfreedom. As I wrote before, this is the core of the issue.

According to the article, "Apple said the update does not require any user interaction and is deployed automatically.". There's nothing moral about using "silent updates" (updates the user has no opportunity to decide whether to adopt).

Apple certainly wasn't looking out for their users' privacy and security when they let an iTunes bug go unfixed for 3 years (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8912714/Apple-iT... for more). That bug was said to allowed government spying. Apple's iPhone back door lets Apple delete a user's apps (per http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358134/Apples-Jobs-co...) but Steve Jobs said it was okay because we can trust Apple ("Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull."). Back doors aren't moral, they exist to grant another party over the device the user bought and should own.

The root of all of this is the power of proprietary software (software the user can't inspect, share, or modify, and in some particularly restrictive cases can't always run). Proprietary software is unjust power over the user. There's nothing moral about proprietary software.

Neither the MIT X11 license (one should be careful to identify which MIT license is being talked about as MIT has used many licenses for software) nor the modified (or 3-clause) BSD license look out for patent treachery. For all the user knows, perhaps your organization holds patents which read on the software you're distributing and this program is a means to give them something that tempts users to run, modify, and share software landing them in a patent infringement lawsuit. It's great that you write and distribute free software, but if you insist on using a non-copylefted free software license the Apache 2.0 license is a better choice for users of your software.

But it is also in user's interests to look out for derivative works because that means users of those derivative programs get software that respects their software freedom. Proprietary derivatives of non-copylefted free software means software that doesn't respect a user's software freedom.

The public domain isn't recognized everywhere and licenses like Creative Commons Zero (CC0) which has a fallback of being all-permissive for regimes where a public domain won't work doesn't look out for patent treachery.

The FSF warns against using CC0 for software (see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 for the full comments): "For works of software it [CC0] is not recommended, as CC0 has a term expressly stating it does not grant you any patent licenses."

If you really want people to be free to use the software as they wish, you can't ignore software idea patents. That naivety actually works against the users as they would be lured into dealing with the software believing it to be free but then trapped by a patent infringement lawsuit.

But at a certain point you just have to realize that there are differing points of view, that is just the way things go, and "progress" includes all of them.

No, this is too broadly accepting and not carefully discerning as reality requires to make sage judgments nor will it help us understand the ethical underpinnings of the software freedom movement (very much related to one of the major problems in the essay -- the author frames the issue around "open source", a developmental methodology which eschews ethics and is therefore of great use to proprietors. See https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/05/10/how-free-software-and... for more on this). Proprietary software is a "differing point of view" and your statement tries to get us to accept that it is merely another acceptable alternative among many. Seeing proprietary software as some form of social progress means accepting the inherent harm of proprietary software, the very reason why the free software movement was founded in the first place. I will call proprietary software harmful and in no way progress for anything worth defending. The goal isn't to maximize one's ability to have power over someone else, it's to ensure specific and well-identified freedoms for all. Strongly copylefted free software where license terms are defended does this.

Because Mozilla (unlike most other web browser publishers) publishes free software -- software users are allowed to run, inspect, modify, and share at any time for any reason. This is known as respecting a user's software freedom. Programs that don't respect a user's software freedom are called non-free or proprietary.

That's the saving grace of Firefox. That's what makes Firefox better than any of the other currently widely-used browsers. A program's technical problems can be fixed, a program's speed can be improved (Mozilla recently proved this in the most recent versions of Firefox), but software freedom cannot be added to a proprietary program.

Therefore if you don't like how Mozilla treats add-on programmers or Firefox users, you have the software freedom needed to make a free derivative of Firefox which behaves in a better way (where "better" is up to you to define, it's purposefully vague). Perhaps you want your Firefox derivative to let its users easily install whatever add-on they like that will persist across restarts, or get add-on updates without hassles by checking multiple sources for updates, or installing add-ons signed with unfamiliar keys after getting a user's approval. I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas you could come up with to implement.

But with software freedom the limits of what you can implement are limits you impose on yourself.

This doesn't make Mozilla or Firefox evil and distributing free software is respectful of the users. Don't confuse unrewarded labor (complaining that Mozilla doesn't make Firefox do what you want) with respect for the users.

The Dissent add-on, similarly, is really just another single point of censorship forum. We can't evaluate whether it is better at respecting user's free speech until they are challenged in a serious way (such as the implicit threats to big social media firms when they are given vague inactionable requests to 'do better' when their CEOs are brought before Congressional hearings and told to respond favorably to Russiagate lies). Already on this forum we see some posters confusing freedom of speech with reading something that echoes their views. One post, for instance, claimed "[Dissent's] audience is primarily folk on the far/alt-right". As George Orwell said, "Freedom is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear". Or as Noam Chomsky reminds us, "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech.".

So both Firefox's add-on repo and Dissent's forum are singletons that don't liberate users so much as they establish their respective admins as censors. Perhaps you could come up with a way to let users more easily distribute comments from their own comment database so that all comment threads on a website come from multiple servers, and no censor power exists because no single user has admin control over all of the comment servers. Dissent is also free software (licensed under Apache License 2.0) so even if you believe Gab or Dissent aren't to be trusted, you could choose to improve Dissent to make it decentralized.

This is still user-hostile bullshit and some people at Microsoft really need to be beaten with a rubber hose until they get it through their heads that they don't own our devices.

If you run proprietary software on a computer, the proprietors have far more say in what that computer does than you do. This is true regardless of which proprietor is involved, the user's ostensible control over updates, and the ostensible high-level purpose of the software (an OS, an application, a word processor, a flight simulator, etc.). This particular proprietary software gives Microsoft a universal back door through which Microsoft can impose any change they wish (see http://www.informationweek.com/microsoft-updates-windows-wit... for an example). Even if update control were respected in full, update control does nothing to change the fact that what's running is proprietary software -- user-subjugating software.

The frequency or UI of updates is a minor detail. It's the least the proprietor can get away with to give the simulacrum of user control. Microsoft has tried other means to do less but they were discovered and news reports effectively outed Microsoft (for instance, there's the time Microsoft had Windows send reports even when configured not to per http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...)

So rather than engaging in harsh language or threats of physical abuse, I think a more productive way to address your understandable frustration is to switch your remaining proprietary-driven computers to a fully free OS running on fully free hardware (such as an FSF-approved free software distro -- https://www.gnu.org/distros/ -- running on a "Respects Your Freedom" device -- https://www.fsf.org/ryf ) and then install only free software on top of that.

I agree; I think this thread and a couple similar threads (basically repeating the same objection) are vastly overrated. Not spying + hardware and software under user control is far more important than whatever someone considers lagging video or anything that animates, particularly for a device people insist on calling "phones". I might prefer no animated GUI.

Not only is that acceptable, if they deliver a device that respects the user's software freedom, respects the user's privacy, leaves the user in control as much as they wish to pursue (with both software and user-serviceable hardware), and still deliver a device that can handle phone calls it will be far ahead of their competition. I'll be interested to see how far such an endeavor goes on those points.

That is how unique a privacy-centered tracker[1] is these days -- such a novelty when virtually all of the other comparable devices on the market routinely run proprietary code and lack the ability to physically disable connectivity completely under the user's control (and via hardware, not software).

[1] I call it a tracker because I believe that's a more honest name for what these devices do when they're enabled on wireless and phone networks -- they request their geolocation many times per minute (and, in so doing, allow others to track that location as well). Handling phone calls happens far less frequently.

You're correct and worse still is the reception on discussion sites like these: it's sad that people encourage us to take pity on billionaire organizations that apparently don't hire and train the people needed to do decent work and avoid what has become a pattern of ugly security handling.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8912714/Apple-iT... is a story about how Apple didn't fix a remotely-exploitable bug in iTunes for years after being notified about it. During that time governments were said to have used this bug to infiltrate users' computers.

And the worst part of it all: The majority of Apple's software (certainly both FaceTime and iTunes) are proprietary programs -- user-subjugating software that does not respect a user's freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the program. This means that even the most skilled and willing users are prohibited from fixing the problem and distributing a fixed version of the program to help their community. So, rich or poor, proprietors do their users a disservice by distributing proprietary software.

If the Input Mono Condensed you're referring to comes from https://djr.com/input/ I recommend reviewing that font's license.

https://djr.com/license/ is a non-free license (the license does not respect your software freedoms to run, copy, share, and modify the software). The license is revocable under unclear and incompletely specified conditions: This license can be terminated at any time for no declared reason "without the obligation of notice or opportunity to cure [a breach of any term of this agreement]". The license tries to place limits that could go beyond what power copyright law grants in Massachusetts, USA (the region the license will be interpreted within). In other words, copyright law in your region may grant you more rights than the state of Massachusetts, USA grants.

I don't know what Librem 5 will offer in the end, but I think your response argues a false dichotomy with zero evidence. There is no "automated transparent and trusted global support infrastructure [...that requires] zero user interaction" for anything and (given how we improve things in real life) apparently such a thing is unnecessary. If you want to know how something works, you either learn how it works and do the vetting & improvement yourself, or get someone you trust to do this work on your behalf. Computer hardware and software is no different. The question is whether you're allowed to do this work at all, whether it's possible for you to hand someone you have good reason to trust the device and software to do this vetting for you.

There are many good reasons not to trust Apple or any proprietor. You claim an iPhone is "the most secure hardware and software combination you can get" but you offer no evidence to let us understand how you arrive at that conclusion. Proprietary software (such as iPhone's default OS, iOS) is untrustworthy by default because nobody but the proprietor has permission to inspect the software's source code, alter the software to fix problems or improve the software, or help the community by distributing improved software. You don't have the freedoms of free software (running, modifying, sharing published computer software including commercially). So in order to estimate Apple's trustworthiness we can't examine the thing itself in the most reasonable and thorough way. We have to fall back on something else such as Apple's reputation and consider how they treat their users. Apple left years-old remotely-exploitable security bugs in programs thus leaving users vulnerable (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8912714/Apple-iT... or https://truesecdev.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/hidden-backdoor-... for details). When it comes to iOS issues things are no better: iOS is the prototype of a software jail (hence the term "jailbreaking" to liberate one's device, and thus the user, from such control). Apple can and regularly does extract data from iPhones to give to the state (per http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/05/new-guidelines-outline-...) and Apple's claimed security improvements rely on software users can't vet, improve, or share. https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html has lots of examples of various kinds of Apple proprietary malware many examples include software iPhone users run. Apple also works against letting users get fixes without going through Apple, slows down iPhones users won't "upgrade", and disallows using older versions of iOS or non-iOS operating systems (because why let users control their computers).

This is all par for the course with proprietors; proprietary software (nonfree software, software that doesn't respect a user's freedom and community) is often malware (software designed to mistreat its users). The worst part is that because these programs are proprietary, motivated and knowledgeable users are not permitted to vet, improve, or distribute software that could benefit themselves and the entire community.

But we've had media lying before, media lying about objectively important issues of life and death (far more important than allegations of Trump campaign colluding with Russians) such as headline NYT articles alleging justification for invading Iraq (the greatest crime of its century), and yet the discussants here and in corporate media want us to take this seriously.

One has always had to be careful reading the media. Only those who don't understand history take refuge in feeling sorry for themselves about lying media.

It's important not to lump together the proprietary browsers (where the limit you speak of can only be worked around if the proprietors allow) and free software browsers which respect your software freedom, like Firefox.

You could modify Firefox source code to let you run whatever add-on you wish. With Firefox whatever changes you want are limited only by your willingness to implement them (either by doing the work yourself or working with others to get those changes made).

You can even distribute the improved Firefox variant browser to others and help the community. Hacker News recently had a story about some hackers doing exactly this with a variant they call Librefox. Other examples of Firefox variants include IceCat and the Tor Browser.

Firefox has been and continues to be libre in the sense of software freedom -- free to run, inspect, share, and modify. Anyone who complains about how Mozilla runs their variant of Firefox should thank Mozilla for that licensing choice so that with other people's hard work, the world has multiple variants to choose from all of which are also free software (as far as I know).

You won't see such improvements for non-free (proprietary) software because it wouldn't be legal to prepare or distribute them and because modifying binaries is remarkably difficult. Any improvements the proprietor distributes are untrustworthy unless they are freed. I think it's great that software freedom exists and that people are willing and able to distribute variants that serve their needs.

They [Microsoft] have lost me for life. I'll be switching to Mac and Linux from here on out.

The power you rightly object to is not limited to Microsoft, or the Windows OS. That power comes from the power of proprietary software over the user. All proprietors possess that power and leverage that power largely in ways we can't describe in detail until it is too late to stop it from being used against users. But we know that all proprietary software is untrustworthy precisely because it doesn't respect a user's software freedom.

Microsoft got caught leveraging that power against their users before, this isn't new. But given how long it took us to learn about some of their abuses, it's a safe bet that there are other ways they have of using the Windows OS to report on the user without their consent and do anything else the endpoint is capable of doing. After all, Microsoft has a universal back door on every version of Windows. Since a lot of those endpoints are connected to the Internet, it is not hard to get those endpoints to do whatever Microsoft wants them to do.

https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html has a list of Microsoft's back doors, insecurities, DRM, instances of surveilling users, and more.

Switching to Apple won't address the underlying problem -- a lack of software freedom. There's plenty we know about Apple's proprietary malware too listed at https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html. But picking one proprietor over another isn't gaining freedom, it's switching masters.

Consider a free software GNU/Linux distribution (some are listed at https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html) and run it on hardware you get to control (https://www.fsf.org/ryf has pointers to such hardware), and then install nothing but free software on top of that. That will go quite a ways to keeping you in control to the degree you're willing to look into things or have others do this work for you. I find it's a big job I can't do all myself, so I have to trust others in this. There's no known guarantee against malware. But a free system is the best practical means to avoid malware, and computer security is impossible without free software. The structure of proprietary software immediately tells me that we simply can't do away with the malware you mention if we run proprietary software. You'll also need to have a stiffened spine against those who try to frame the issue around convenience -- run the software on this website, install and run this program, etc. -- because there are a lot of ways to run proprietary software on your computer these days (installed or not). Liberating yourself from forced upgrades, ignored/reset settings, advertising, nagging, surveillance, DRM, and more is all possible. But not with proprietary software.

It's a nonfree license (which alone is sufficient to make me look elsewhere for functional replacements); the license disallows commercial redistribution and contains no language that permits modification.

This license is also sufficiently unclear that I'm not sure what rights exist for licensees. With licenses that have been reviewed (such as the reviews on https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Fonts ) I can find amenable free software licenses.

I do not have the time or the money to personally develop a secure web browser for the rest of the world, nor does any other individual. Your demand is unreasonable.

Apparently some people do, that's why we have Firefox derivatives like the Tor browser and GNUZilla, among others. Also, I made a recommendation not a demand. I continue to recommend that you consider what software freedom grants you in light of what you say you want other programmers to do for you.

I want a browser that is reliable, high quality, respects my privacy, and nothing else. I don't want addons baked into it. I don't want to be spied on.

I recommend that you look into what you're getting with software freedom -- the single most important aspect that makes Firefox different from Google Chrome, Microsoft's web browsers, Opera, or Apple Safari. All of the items on your list can be changed by using your software freedom. And this doesn't have to involve you learning to program (though that wouldn't be a bad idea). It could involve you asking programmers nicely to help you out, or hiring programmers to improve Firefox to be what you think it should be, or getting funds together with others who share your views to collectively fund programmers who work on your shared goals.

As it stands your desire reads selfishly because it is indistinguishable from you saying that you want programmers to develop a free software (free as in freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify) web browser you trust without you doing anything to help vet its trustworthiness or modify the software until it becomes software you trust. We don't have to settle for doing nothing; software freedom lets us have as much control over free software as we wish to have. The limits are on us to make things better.

How did you reach the conclusion that you had to trust ProtonVPN?

For VPN service, I trust Mozilla more than to just about anybody: they're nonprofit, have clear and transparent governance, have many mission-driven employees, and would lose more than they could possibly gain by breaking the terms of service on a VPN.

It seems to me that none of these are reasons to trust either Mozilla or ProtonVPN. The reason to trust Firefox is that it is free software (free as in freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify). If you don't like what Firefox is doing, you have the permission you need to change your copy, or hire someone to vet and/or change the copy you run, and you can help others by distributing your improved version. The seeds of coming to trust Firefox are in its software freedom, not in any public relations effort or perception about Mozilla's employees.

So there's nothing about Firefox that compels you to trust or use ProtonVPN. The limits of how trustworthy you want to make Firefox are up to you individually and other Firefox hackers collectively.

It's not, of course, as you point out. One can't defend the ethics or law on the basis of what's good for a particular political party. One should come to a proper understanding of relevant US law, and US jurisdictional limitations (Assange is an Australian citizen and as Chris Hedges points out in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hyZktgMp4Q "he isn't bound by any law to protect American secrets"), but the hyperpartisanship you speak of is remarkably corporate media driven and not in interest of the American citizenry. Most Americans call themselves independent and did so around the time of the 2016 US election (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/01/08/a-... and https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160907114001.h...). I think it's because more people (particularly young people) are coming to realize that a two corporate party division is not addressing their needs as citizens of a wealthy country, and the Democrats and Republicans take remarkably similar sides on the most major issues of the day that get national interests involved (chief among them: war -- the single issue that costs the most money and lives).

You'll find similar unnecessary disclaimers before any serious discussion of Pres. Trump these days (such as "I'm no fan of Trump but...") as if a black-and-white ('for us or against us', remember that?) view is right and proper and must be dismissed before any serious discussion can begin. Even when what they're about to describe is a continuation across US administrations. Majoritarian issues don't get that kind of framing. I rarely hear anyone say anything resembling "I'm no fan of mass surveillance, but...", or "I don't like extrajudicial murder like what the US does with the drone war, but...".

I don't find it hard to identify what's so awful about amazon.com even if there's currently no other existing website to do the same job at the same scale:

- I think that Javascript is widely used needlessly forcing lots of unnecessary reflows and repaints; this slows down searching and using the site.

- I find the searches are broken to the point where it is easier for finding stuff using another search engine which indexes amazon.com's webpages.

- I don't like collapsing portions of the webpage (such as long reviews). I'd rather download simple static markup and scroll through reading what I want presented to me in the order I've chosen.

- I don't want to see JS-based image/movie previews; inline images and using a modern browser's built-in video is much better as those can be styled in the way the user wants and obey other user-centric preferences as the web ought to do.

So to me saying 'it works' is putting commercial interests above my user interface interests and interests I deem more important such as how Amazon treats its workers. At best I'd say this puts into perspective how overvalued website development really is for commercial interests and how wildly off the mark website development is at identifying and building on something simple and easy to use. I've also found that Amazon purchases are often misleading (selling used merchandise as new, selling USB keys that hold less than the advertised storage size, and more) which means more time and money spent not really knowing what's on offer and higher chance of returning bad merchandise. All of this taken together means I shop elsewhere.

Here's another interview with Wolff:

Transcript should arrive here eventually: https://therealnews.com/stories/amazon-gets-3-billion-in-ny-...

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlECXGQfVyY

Some of the highlights of the jobs points that makes it clear the exact figure of the promised number of jobs is virtually irrelevant precisely because so little is asked of Amazon here:

- Ben Norton says that in 2017 NYC gained over 72,000 new jobs. Therefore the money NYC is giving Amazon with virtually no strings attached effectively buys them about 4 months of job growth. That's a remarkably low number of jobs for such a large amount of money.

- It's not even clear if the 25,000 jobs are new jobs or if Amazon will shift workers from one location to HQ2. This means New Yorkers are subsidizing job movement for extant employees.

- There are no performance guarantees for Amazon in this -- if Amazon doesn't add the promised number of jobs, or if those jobs turn out to be significantly less attractive (perhaps near minimum-wage jobs, it takes Amazon a decade to add these jobs, or the jobs are done remotely thus pitting New Yorkers against the rest of the world) there's no penalty for Amazon to pay. No Amazon profit-sharing to NYC.

Perhaps but I think that point misses the underlying issue at hand -- with proprietary software users don't get any real control over the software. Even the corporate-friendly computer press reported plenty of stories about Microsoft's software which bear this out:

Microsoft repeatedly switches a flag which urges Windows users to "upgrade" to Windows 10 when users had said no. http://www.computerworld.com/article/3012278/microsoft-windo...

Microsoft forces some Windows systems to switch to Windows 10 by silently downloading Windows 10 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/11/microsoft...

This forced "upgrade" had adverse effects on some users with poor connectivity. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/03/windows_10_upgrade_...

Once the switch to Windows 10 was accepted there was no way out https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/01/windows_10_nagware_...

Windows 10 is quite nasty for many reasons all of which boil down to being nonfree, proprietary software. For example, it by default sent core dumps to Microsoft or whatever organization Microsoft chooses. http://betanews.com/2016/11/24/microsoft-shares-windows-10-t...

Windows 10 ignores users' so-called "security" settings putting a fine point on how insecure they are. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/windows-10-microsoft-b... and https://archive.fo/2ey80

https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html is filled with more references to still more stories of how Windows runs against user's security interests and control over their own computer.

So when the Privacy Company "recommends admins of the enterprise version of Office ProPlus in the Netherlands (although many of them should also be applicable to other countries) [...] Apply the new zero-exhaust settings" there is no reason to believe that one gains privacy from Microsoft in so doing. Ultimately one's control over proprietary software only goes so far as the proprietor will allow. This remains true notwithstanding user's requirements or willingness to investigate and implement whatever the computer owner wants changed.

Microsoft is merely illustrating the inherent and unjust control over one's computer proprietary software has. It is this power that is at the heart of what's so wrong with these recommendations, nothing to do with a relatively minor quibble over whether one set of users has different requirements for privacy or security than other users.

It's tough for me to say because I've read multiple estimates and they vary by a factor of 10. Amazon's promises https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazon-selects-new... are one thing, what actually happens as the deal is approved and implemented is another.

I don't take Amazon's numbers seriously until they show that they will live up to their own hype. If Wisconsin's Scott Walker was elected on making 250,000 new jobs in 2010 he has fallen far short of that. One of his job-creating deals was Foxconn, something he used to tout heavily but tried to shy away from when he last ran. Foxconn's 13,000 (I'm assuming human) job figure for Wisconsin hasn't been met. I'll believe it when I see it but I still don't see how New York is getting a fair deal in this; it seems like they have no problem attracting businesses to their city and don't need to give nearly as much as they are.

Richard Wolff in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTth4Rb25H4 does a good job of concisely making the points on just how bad a deal this is for New York and Virginia (which are together funding over half of the costs of this project -- $5.5B versus Amazon's $5B according to the New York Times) -- and all for an estimated 2,500 jobs in New York. Here's what he said:

This is a shocking display. What they are calling a government-private partnership is nothing of the sort. It's a public subsidy to Amazon. The New York Times reported $5 billion in this project will be invested by Amazon. $5.5 billion dollars will be invested by New York and Virginia. That is a subsidy of over 50% of the cost of this project. We the taxpayers will be either paying higher taxes to fund this private company, among the richest in the world, or, if we don't get our taxes raised, the government will deliver fewer services to us because it has given this enormous subsidy to a company. $5 billion from Virginia and New York where Mr. Bezos, the owner of Amazon, is himself the owner of $160 billion. He didn't need it, the company doesn't need it. We are being asked to subsidize. All of the profits will go to the private companies and their shareholders. We, the public, will be funding more than half of this project. Shame is what Mr. DeBlasio ought to feel rather than posing in the PR as if he has delivered something. [...]

The projected number of jobs in the New York area from this is 2,500. That's a very small number and will have no effect on the unemployment problem of this city [New York City] it's just too small and that's not a surprise [...] because the kind of work Amazon does is highly automated; it uses machines for 90% of what it does. And half of the people it's likely to have working in New York will be brought in from other parts of the Amazon empire.

It's unfortunate that neither this BBC Micro game nor the Fort Apocalypse game are free software -- software one is free to run, inspect, share, and modify (even commercially).

The Crazee Rider software seems to lack a license at all. Thus no permission is granted to engage in the freedoms of free software.

Fort Apocalypse is also nonfree; it is distributed under a nonfree license -- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ -- that even the license's author recommends against using for software per https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm... .