Let’s say that we have a more recent micro SD card of 1 TB. So to contain the same information in a punch card (with a byte density of 80 byte/156 cm² = 0.512 byte/cm²), we would need a card of 512,820,512,820 cm². If I’m not mistaken that would be a punch card the size of 51 km²!! This is wild :O

I get your point. But isn’t it in the interest of large tech companies that their users stay as unknowing and uninformed as possible? They don’t want you to know how to actually tinker with their systems, how to change stuff yourself or have any control over technology at all. The more docile people are, the better they can sell their products (both the actual product to the people and the people’s data to their consumers). And so there are those people who are not OK with being on a dumbed-down system because they want to know how it works and have control over it, so they go over to Linux.

This is not too different from modern cars that no one can really repair on their own. Consumers are totally dependent on the company producing the car. And planned obsolescence can be implemented even better in a system that is out of the control of the user.

Another point is that huge tech companies often have the most comfort and ease in their products. Yeah sure, they have the means to make it so. But this automatically makes leaving these platforms/products so much more uncomfortable. Consumers are already so uninformed but dependent on tech that they would obviously stir towards the more comfortable situation.

Using tools (be it digital or manual) you can actually control sure is more work and has a certain learning curve. No one denies this. But from a political standpoint I think it is important for people to have control over the tools they use, over their own life. Let’s not allow capitalism to take away even more freedom and control from us as it already took.

All I found about that gitlab incidence sounded like it was one single event and more importantly that they’ve learned from it. So I don’t get the critique there. But yeah, apparently they’ve had a security hole a few days ago.

Wow, thanks! What an interesting read :O (But also really sad to watch the video on the templeos site)

The open eyeballs scare me! Looks like hungry worms impersonating humans

Interesting question!

I have the feeling that intense interests often lead to being awkward because it is assumed that “normal” people don’t so this. If I start passionately talking about my interests, neurotypical people often don’t get why I’m so intense about it and either find me boring, too much or cute (in a patronizing way). And having learnt to mask a lot and not show my interests, I often feel frustrated not to be able to share my interests. So for me, being awkward and having special interests are tied together.

But still, I’d rather be awkward than being such a boring person without the passion for their interests. I’m also trans and queer, and I wouldn’t like to be a cishet person either. Although it sucks so much not fitting in society and frequently being discriminated against, I wouldn’t be me without these traits. I would just be a very narrowminded, boring and passionless person I guess (I obviously don’t know how to imagine being someone else, not meant to be offensive). In my utopia, people would just be accepting of others and different needs and expressions.

Same. I often find people identifying with “nerd stuff” and wanting to be seen as nerdy somehow annoying for exactly that reason. I didn’t choose to be awkward or to have intense special interests.

Hail Seitan! --> many vegans (including myself) swear on pure gluten :D

And yes, I also know people who also cannot be vegan because of all their dietary restrictions.

I guess the similarity of arch users and vegans lies in the fact that both groups are very much outside the norm. So you often have to distance yourself from the assumed default (windows/apple computer, omnivore diet). And just talking with other people, it comes up often by itself. If someone asks me to fix their windows PC, I have to tell them that I haven’t really used windows for nearly a decade now. And if someone invites me over or to a restaurant, I have to tell them that I’m vegan. But people who are inside the norm often don’t deal very well with outsiders, so they have to invent tropes like the annoying vegan. What is actually annoying them is their own double standard they have to live with (torturing/killing animals and having a large ecological impact vs wanting to be a good human being).

But obviously there are also some people who use arch or are vegan and do it to provoke a reaction, to feel special and morally superior.

Interesting video. Although I strongly disagree with him on why “mastodon diehards” don’t want to federate with meta “because they just don’t like the company”. He mentioned it himself in the video that big companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc actually adopt a certain protocol just to make it obsolete and destroy the competition. This is a real threat with many previous examples to draw from. Why would he frame it as if only some mastodon nerds want to block meta because of some silly reason? This is misleading at best.

He also fails to make the connection that the example of the 90ies would just repeat if big companies adopt the new protocol. Someone develops a new protocol to escape the walled garden(s), big companies come in and erect a new walled garden. What about this is any good if we cannot keep it open for everyone and away from corporal greed leading to enshittification?

Statements like these make me be very wary with this channel. He is pretty oblivious and naive of capitalism.

(And also interesting to see that Abigail Thorn doesn’t want tumblr to join the fediverse)

Well, a fork of Clementine :) Both are great music players that have a playlist-centered approach to music. Have been exclusively using them on my computer since many years.

strawberrymusicplayer.org/

https://github.com/strawberrymusicplayer/strawberry

Clementine -> Strawberry :)

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Thanks! Ever tried it out yourself?

I guess because the author is actually mostly playing small games on android: “Admittedly, I am not much of a gamer, and never have been.”

Good on android are also unciv, feudal tactics, beat feat and flowit!

Not Foss, but free without ads or trackers FOSS and my all-time favorite is “Simon Tatham’s Puzzles”. This is so addicting I go through a cycle of playing it obsessively until I have to delete it and wait a few months until installing it again xD

ETA: thanks for providing the sources. Couldn’t find it on fdroid because of the different name :)

Not that easy not to use the services of the big tech companies, is it? I don’t get why you would even give them extra money if their main profit is selling your data anyways. The only solution I see is to try to establish independent, people owned spaces/websites and so long the majority is under control of the big tech, don’t feed them your data and don’t feed them any money either.

As I understood it, OP is complaining about the semantics of the term ‘public company’. While the term would suggest that it is benefitting the general good, it instead is not interested in the public good at all. The term is rather about how a company is making its money, which regardless of being a public or private company is usually having adverse effects on the wellbeing of people. In this sense, coining a company ‘public’ seems to be quite cynical.

As a German native speaker my brain nearly exploded trying to read the English subs but still understanding everything they say x)

Bandcamp is really my favorite site to buy or download music. I love just what you said about it, that I can prioritize what I want to pay for :)

Ah OK, interesting! Well, if you have access to a family subscription this seems like the way to go :)

I mostly use bandcamp + yt-dl to get music (or I actually buy it as well). But it is a bit tedious to import the files into my library…