Umm… You’ve seen NSA’s data centers?

“No way every domestic telephone call is being recorded and transcribed!”

Next moment:

“Woah! Gnarly dude! A.I. that’s been trained on ludicrously large datasets! It can mimic your mom’s voice, dude! Here, check it out! It can also write e-mails like a human!”

All the leaked intel points to: this is a very real and possible situation. Better not think about it and stick your head deeper into the sands.

On a technical level Google knows where 80% of Americans are, because they’re using Google’s Android. It could report back what cell-tower their mobile-computer is using, or it could be using the mobile-computer’s GPS, or it could take the SSID of any nearby WiFi or Bluetooth device and compare it to a map that’s diligently updated daily by every Google Android user. To say Google knows where every Google Android user is is very technically possible. It’s also technically possible to infer other things with a satisfactory probability, like where the other 20% are.

The NSA, CIA and FBI were the data harvesters. The solutions to their needs were financed by them and we got… for instance, Google. They had vasts amounts of data and needed a way to search through it. Likewise the intelligence-agencies wanted ways to impersonate others digitally and… oh look, we have live ‘deep-fakes’. I won’t bother espousing how the economy serves the state’s needs first and any consumer commodities are second- or third-order artifacts, but really? You don’t think the very thing advertisers are doing now–in no way secretly either–are not technically feasible for the rapacious, infinite-money pits of the secret-police?

Right–I forgot! Only communists have secret-police!

I take personal offense (on Sony’s behalf). How could you possibly frame innovation and progress as anti-consumer behavior? The reality is that the industrial mega-corp is providing the services and products consumers actually want. If they didn’t capitalism would be sure to punish them and they’d die an economical death. Children’s entertainment is funded via their parents and neither child nor parent is choosing to buy physical media. You can’t blame Sony for holding on to stock that no one wants to buy. ‘Gamers’ can have their emotional outburst, but things will continue as normal and they’ll have forgotten about it after nap time.

I agree. Disclosure of A.I. use should be mandatory.

My main concern with A.I. use is its ability to hide incompetence. If a new agent introduces code that was entirely written by illegal-software that violates copyright law–A.I.–then that should be made clear, even if competent-programmers review the new inclusion and approve of it. Otherwise people are left with the impression that this new agent is a competent programmer. A.I. use–undisclosed–creates false reputations.

The disclosure being encouraged and not mandatory is purely to protect the egos of programmers currently utilizing A.I. products.

However I do respect their decision and I maintain projects should be self governing.

I think the most optimal way of doing this would be a self-made shell script that expresses your preferences. You could then run it from whatever live-environment you choose and the result would be a familiar setup. The /home directory being on a separate partition from the rest is useful for preserving large-quantities of user-data.

I’ve been impressed with the capacity of microSD cards. The idea of mounting /home to a microSD card and having a materially-portable home has been a novelty I’ve so far resisted.

Even systemd-less distros need to implement ‘fake’ systemd components. It’s like a cancer. No one’s voluntarily using sub-components of systemd without systemd. It is a monolithic thing.

Good to have you back in the corpo., kid. Stay blind as we shunt you into a new era of authoritarianism. You’re absolutely right. Freedom is inconsequential compared to framedrops. Framedrops should never happen. Linux is far too buggy to be used. It’s little more than a toy at this stage. Check back in ten years. Until then your trusty Windoz3 eleben with enhancements from Givbidia will distract you! No, don’t look there! Ad!

one common runtime

The year is 2XXX. The one common runtime to run them all is within reach… we all just need to use XXXXXXXXXXXX. Scratch that, we’ve just built XXXXXXXXXX. Hang on, scratch that… we’re now all doing something different.

Just a throw away comment, but as a user I do avoid flatpaks. It takes forever to install anything and it’s just absurdly ugly in design. The benefit is… ? I genuinely don’t know.

The people who want software to just run, whilst having no understanding of a computer are actively being herded towards entirely different ecosystems by capital. They’re already patrons of businesses. Capital spends a portion to ensure they stay patrons. No one is paying advertisers to advertise GNU+linux. No one is paying OEMs to ship GNU+linux. No one is lobbying governments to entrench GNU+linux into organisations.

Those that want it to ‘just run’ on a unix derivative are probably a very queer minority.

I am absolutely acrid towards computer users. Look, it’s just like the app store! Just press this button and it will work! That’s all software: press the correct button and it will work. Users don’t give a fuck. Libre software will never entice users like commercial software does because only commercial software can pay for users.

Capitalism & software on a comment about flatpak’s removed design and the common runtime to rule them all. I’m getting lost; what’s new. Does flatpak actually have any momentum? AppImage? I genuinely don’t know.