Fice

We need a way to embed project metadata into .git itself, so source code commits don't mess up with wikis and issues.

Fossil (https://fossil-scm.org) embeds issues, wiki etc. into project repository.

Vulnerabilities such as spectre are only relevant if you run untrusted non-free software. Also these vulnerabilities show that sandboxing is not effective on current CPUs, and specific mitigations does not solve the problem in general.

They can't distribute firmware blobs simply because FSF and GNU do not in principle participate in distribution of any non-free programs.

Also consider that if a manufacturer can distribute opaque firmware updates to your system, it practically has remote control over it, е.g. Intel can activate a backdoor in specific CPUs when needed by publishing a microcode update.

As a Russian I'd rather call it the Putin's war.

From my own experience, JPEG quality and compression efficiency can differ a lot depending on the encoder implementation. It would make more sense to compare specific encoders rather than formats in general.

In 2014 (WebP was released in 2010) Mozilla claimed that the standard JPEG format is not used to it's full potential [1] and introduced mozjpeg project that is still being updated [2]. I wonder how it compares today with current WebP implementations.

[1] https://research.mozilla.org/2014/03/05/introducing-the-mozj... [2] https://github.com/mozilla/mozjpeg

Of course, no one will be making cars intentionally unsafe, but the law is also a risk factor, the risks of getting fined, jail time or licence revocation count too, and these risks can be made higher.

Advertising does not simply suggest you something that you might need, it often tries to manipulate you into needing something, and with the amounts of personal data being collected and advancements in machine learning this manipulation becomes dangerously effective.

Telling computers and humans apart is a wrong goal. Every request comes from a computer that is commanded by some human. And why shouldn't users be allowed to use automated user agents when they don't do it for spamming or anything malicious?

CAPTCHA is essentially a proof-of-work variant where challenges are designed to be solved by humans rather than computers, and same as any PoW it works by means of consuming some limited resource (human time, processor time, energy).

There is also Simutrans-Extended (https://bridgewater-brunel.me.uk/) — a fork that adds even more detail and realism to the simulation and tries to achieve better game balance.

Human-sized computing: a reasonable level of complexity for a computing system is that it can be entirely understood by a single person (from the low-level hardware details to the application-level quirks).

"Personal Mastery: If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual."

Dan Ingalls. Design Principles Behind Smalltalk, 1981. http://worrydream.com/refs/Ingalls%20-%20Design%20Principles...

Can a vendor be held responsible for anything an unauthorized pirated copy of their software does?

You don't. That's a way to punish all users of pirated software.

Software vendors can deliberately leak "pirated" copies of their programs to Russian torrent sites with backdoors and other malicious code added. That could be an effective countermeasure.

Using git is no big deal, but storing the repo on Github means sharing the information with a third party (Microsoft) even if the repo is kept "private".

Disruption of the Internet service will be very damaging to Russian anti-war protests.

Our perception of time is very subjective: it is affected by our age, by what we are doing, and it is known that it can be significantly altered by consuming certain substances. We learned from others that there was time before we were born, but do we feel that? In my own subjective perception of time the moment of my birth seems to be infinitely far in the past, and I can't be sure that the final moment of death will be a finite point approachable by consciousness.

Crazy how evil Google is.

And the even worse evil are the website owners who betray their own users by placing third-party trackers on their own sites.

This is not enough if we don't stop DRM (which Firefox also supports).

DRM essentially means: only allow access with a program that implements certain required measures to restrict user's control over their own computer. Using content decryption blobs to restrict user's access to media streams handled by their own computer — is only a beginning, Web DRM will be eventually extended to allow more restrictions, including those to make it much harder to interfere with the display of ads.

I'd go further and say that computers are supposed to be used by programming them.

I think that Google using data to personalize ads and recommend videos is ethically ok.

Advertising does not simply make people aware about some goods and services, it often works by manipulating peoples desires and fears. And to manipulate effectively, ad companies need to collect as much information as possible about every person. Google collects and manipulates at scale when it becomes a threat to society and culture.

Not the whole team. There are people with different opinions.

I use a mini-ITX board (GA-C1007UN), which has an embedded Celeron CPU and two GbE ports. It serves me for almost five years now as a home server, router and Wi-Fi access point. The downside is that it requires an ATX power supply and is not completely silent.

DRM is fundamentally incompatible with open source and free software. DRM is all about restricting what your computer can do (what code it is allowed to run), so it can be trusted by third parties with handling protected information. Content providers want to be able to trust your computer in not allowing you to have full control of what it does.

If users can execute their free software rights (modify software and run modified versions), they can instruct their computers to do anything, thus DRM would not be possible. Binary blobs like Widivine are not complete DRM solutions on systems where users can still modify their display server or kernel. As DRM gets more widespread, content providers will require more strictly locked systems, that's why mobile devices are shipped with locked bootloaders and PCs have secure boot and TPM — most current hardware is ready to support strict DRM.

The only approach to DRM is to boycott its use completely, there is no workaround or compromise.

That book has both Strossen and Stallman in the list of authors: https://www.wetheweb.org/post/about-the-book

The article in question: https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

The only change is that now they are doing it in public.

They very conveniently started to do it in public when Stallman's reputation was severely damaged by the media spreading lies about him, when he lost his home, when he most needed support. And they started by publishing a vague defamatory statement against him, and they used the GNU projects website for that. And they continued to defame him on the mailing lists.

Could there really be any excuse for their actions? Was it acceptable even if they believe that they were doing it for the good of the GNU project?

do you think that GNU will just fold when he’s no longer with us?

Either fold, have new leadership, or become a formal declaration of endorsing some values (not really a project). Maybe it will eventually center around one subproject and become mostly associated with it (Guix as THE GNU OS).

The problem is that the Guix maintainers want to remove Stallman from his own project while he is alive and active, and they pursue their intention with methods that are unethical, disrespectful and destructive to the community.

Even RMS never suggested they leave the GNU Project (to my knowledge) <...> what makes you think it’s a good idea?

I don't really want Guix to leave GNU, I'm questioning the motivation of the maintainers.

I haven't heard of anyone harassing him for having Asperger's

I may have worded this badly (not a native speaker, it takes a lot of time for me to find the right words and formulate my thoughts in English), but what I meant is that they are using Stallman's peculiarities (which are likely ASD-related) against him to destroy his character. See the message I linked earlier where Wingo refers to multiple posts on stallman.org suggesting his very biased interpretation of their meanings and of Stallman's behavior.

And it could be painful for RMS: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-10/msg004...

I can empathize with people who wouldn't want someone who says those things to represent an organization that they work with, regardless of what caused the person to say them.

But GNU is Stallman's project (and it is not an organization), he started it. They could just leave and continue working on Guix independently. Some projects join GNU, some leave, no one is forced to work under Stallman's leadership. But it appears to me that Guix maintainers feel so attached to the GNU identity, that they want to hijack it instead.

distance themselves from RMS

Why wouldn't Guix just leave the RMS's GNU Project then?

GNU is a collaboration of free software projects that was started and is lead by Richard Stallman. Remove the leader, and what's left is just a collection of projects sharing the GNU brand. And it looks to me that this is what the Guix maintainers are trying to do: reduce the GNU project to a mere formality (participation in it would mean no more than a simple declaration of support for Free software), keep the GNU brand, position Guix as THE GNU operating system.

Yes, and it's painful to see him being harassed for it by Wingo and others.

RMS probably has an autism spectrum disorder.