An entire generation thereby grew up with personal computing represented by vendor-controlled handheld appliances, and naturally regarded actual PCs in the same manner.
And their skills to manage a PC atrophied too, leading to a feedback loop.
When I buy a table saw, I don't expect DeWalt to hang around my workshop telling me what I can and can't cut, watching and logging what wood I use and when I use it, what my finished product looks like, changing the features and buttons on the saw in the middle of the night. Why the fuck do we tolerate this from software??
It's gotten to the point that Linux is the only sensible option, and not all distributions! Some of them are letting telemetry and metrics and A/B testing creep in. And some third party Linux software is just as intrusive and demanding as commercial Windows/Mac software.
There’s an invite link to a chat group as well, at the bottom of the page.
Bit of a nitpick, but this is certainly not true of their userspace, where an `npm install` can just install a keylogger or read your ssh keys, or do whatever it wants -- except for updating your video card driver.
So yeah, don't be so confident in it working out. Unfortunately gnu/linux desktop is severally lacking in security (and by desktop I mean a headless personal use as well)
We should be removing those incentives at every level: legislative, societal, government and private.
When we connected them to the internet.
Today, even free software can have telemetry and ulterior motives.
You have choices. Make them.