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Why would a free software project leave GitHub just to run a proprietary "stack"?

You could try one of the self-hostable free software alternatives listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_source_code_host...

It's absurd that so many open-source and / or free software projects are happy to host their public-facing development infrastructure with a private company running proprietary software.

Tavis Ormandy started tweeting at AVG about this subject several months ago.

And it's been pointed out that they aren't able to remove the extension from users' machines due to how it bypasses the Chrome security system. So their best bet was to ask AVG to do the right thing. AVG won't or can't.

So, what can Google do? Just silently accept it? The 90-day policy is worthless in this case.

If the vendor is incompetent and the bug is being actively exploited, then it's reasonable to violate the 90-day policy, which is designed in the spirit of cooperation with competent vendors.

6 months ago they decided to limit inline installations [1] and they probably started reviewing poorly-rated add-ons like this one at that time.

http://blog.chromium.org/2015/08/protecting-users-from-decep...

Do you have a citation for this? I'd love to share it with a friend of mine who is afraid of being a victim of terrorism in the US.

Yeah, this sucks.

You can install the Let's Encrypt client in a way that you actually have control over by using the GNU Guix package on any GNU / Linux distro.

The installation has no side effects to your system (since it's Guix / Nix) and the myriad of dependencies is packaged and versioned.

> So, basically, we should restructure our entire economy so some multi-millionaire's luxury vehicle and lawn won't flood on an island?

The economy will restructure itself and the area will depopulate. The article mentions the role of banks and insurers. Almost nobody can afford to buy a home without a mortgage or to self-insure.

Already, many Florida homeowners have only one option for homeowner's insurance: the Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, which is a non-profit "insurer of last resort". There is no profit in insuring the Florida coasts.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Property_Insurance_Co...

The cool thing about Olimex is that their hardware designs are open-source, so anyone could make a compatible motherboard with the faster chips.

> The old man the boat

When spoken aloud, this is easier to understand. A fluent English speaker will be able to put the emphasis in the proper places.

If this means that apps like OsmAnd can do traffic-aware navigation, it will help the entire OSM ecosystem. I try to use OsmAnd but I often have to use Google Maps in order to route around traffic in my city.

They should really work with the major OSM app vendors to get live data from mobile devices.

I think the issue in most US cities is capture of zoning boards by property owners and developers. They have made it impossible for supply to meet demand.

For example, new apartment buildings in New York are required to include parking if they are taller than a certain height (I think 6 stories). That drives up the cost unnecessarily, in my opinion.

Of course you should use it when you think its appropriate. For example, if you left your boots on the ground, it would be appropriate to describe them as "boots on the ground". If you are talking about the historic center of a city, call it the "inner-city".

But for the examples you gave upthread, it would be more accurate and useful to say "ruined credit" (and in that case, it's really only for some years) or "ruined marriage".

If someone spent their life in prison and lost their mind due to a wrongful conviction, I'd call that a "ruined life". And if you feel your life is ruined, you should say it.

But I read the phrase "ruined life" and I really don't think it communicates anything except for "bad thing". So why not just express the value judgment and say "That's bad and here's why" rather than trying to describe a life as "ruined"? It's another phrase that has lost whatever meaning it once had.

Those are all major problems. I think that "ruined life" is crap Newspeak. It's like "boots on the ground", "inner-city", "financial crisis", "cloud", and a billion examples from the "business world". These phrases prevent thought and communication rather than facilitate it.

Aside from that, people will respond to those problems in a myriad of ways. Almost all of them keep living and return to their baseline emotional state again. Using the phrase "ruined life" ignores human resiliency which is very powerful. It makes us sound like teenagers experiencing our first heartbreak.

I'm very interesting in maintaining security and privacy while still being able to use the internet, so please don't interpret this comment as a dismissal of your concerns. I share your concerns 100%.

But I hate the phrase "ruin lives". How are lives ruined? Bad things happen to people all the time, and their lives continue. It's really a poor way to talk about these issues.

Why would you use YouTube if you care about these issues? The whole business is based on monetizing your effort without compensating you.

Sure, youtube has a big network effect, but that doesn't matter for the use case of using it as a host for videos shared on social networks or embedded in other sites.

You could try something like MediaGoblin instead. Taking these steps help ensure that we never have to worry about YouTube letting some random claimant knock our videos offline again, at least not without them filing a claim against a registrar, VPS host, etc.

From MediaGoblin.org: "MediaGoblin is a free software media publishing platform that anyone can run. You can think of it as a decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc."

The population of France is about 7.5% Muslim. France has had a close relationship with the Muslim world since the 19th century when they colonized parts of North Africa and the Middle East. Sadly, the position in French society of colonial immigrants and their descendants is not very high. Also sadly, France has had a lot of experience with this sort of violence, both in the colonies and "at home".

If you know the attacks were carried out by Muslims, there's no reason to assume these attacks were carried out by refugees.

> Personally, I find that Facebook has become my address book

Before disappearing into outer space (leaving Facebook) I found that Facebook had become my address book.

I think that is Facebook's greatest use: a self-updating address book. Instead of all my friends having to update their address books when I make a change, I should update my contact info and the changes should automatically be available to them. It's a great idea. Now, we just have to make it happen outside of a closed system.

A good graphic designer will work with people like sociologists, psychologists, etc to convey the information in the most effective way based on some set of requirements. If a graphic designer does not approach their work in this way then they aren't really doing anything.

Interesting. Since the difference between not buying something and a boycott is communicating your intentions to the public, I think this is really a restriction on speech.

Depending on your needs, you could try Syncthing [1].

IMO the major functional differences between it and Dropbox are:

* You have to provide the servers that Dropbox provides. I.E. you have to provide the level of availability that you want. [2]

* FOSS licensed.

* Because your data is only ever stored on your machines, you are only limited by your own storage and bandwidth.

[1] https://syncthing.net/

[2] This requirement has actually loosened to some degree because the latest version of Syncthing introduced relay servers. So you still need to provide available storage servers, but you can use relays to overcome partitions in your network.

In the case of sites like what.cd, I think that FLAC 16/44 rips of CDs and vinyl are useful for creating distributed backups of our cultural corpus. But I agree that 24/192 FLACs of vinyl are ridiculous.

This is true. Mastering for vinyl is basically a completely different set of skills than mastering for other media.

> it just sounds like a waterfall with a few bandpass filters changing between the verse and chorus.

That's a good way to put it. I hate over-compressed music. It sounds terrible and is no fun to listen to once you notice the issue.

But, are you an audio engineer? I ask because I work in the field, and all engineers I know accept that dynamic range compression is a necessary part of creating recorded music. The problem is when you abuse compression to create a wall of noise with no dynamic range.

It's like autotune: you can use it to correct one bad note, or you can abuse it create T-Pain.

The engineers behind The Pixies and Nirvana [1], and all dubstep producers use or have used compression at various stages of the creative process.

[1] I guarantee you that whoever mixed Smells Like Teen Spirit spent a lot of time doing the compression on that song.

This is always the issue with mechanisms of control like "trusted computing" and cryptography in general. The question is, "who is in control?"

Cryptography can be used to control you (for example, signed BIOS), or you can use it to be in control (encrypted email). I think that "trusted computing", when properly implemented, could be a powerful tool for users.

In this case, the concept of a "trusted computing base" is different from "Trusted Computing".

From the mailing list:

> 1) The container tools I'm working on are completely declarative.

> 2) There are no disk images.

> 3) Software and other files shared amongst many containers are deduplicated system-wide.

> Once again the fundamental building block of every Guix tool, the immutable store, proves to be an invaluable asset in overcoming the problems of our imperative predecessors and contemporaries.

> Guix is great, but it is its own OS with its own ecosystem. The point here would be to unify the API to package management on the ecosystems that already exist, such that you could interact with the package manager in ignorance of its host OS the same way you can currently interact with e.g. a Docker daemon while ignorant of its host OS.

I think there has been a misunderstanding. Guix is a standalone OS-independent (Linux only) package manager. I am using it on Debian right now. The software installed by Debian has no knowledge of the Guix software and vice versa.

GuixSD is the OS built around Guix.

> I'm not convinced he analogue hole won't ever be plugged.

The analogue holes for visual media are the two holes in your skull where your eyeballs sit. The analogue hole won't be plugged until you can implement a secure path into the human brain.

> This is one reason why getting insurance coverage as a type 1 diabetic is almost futile as pretty much anything could arguably be caused by your diabetes.

Do you mean that insurance won't cover things related to type 1 diabetes?

They claim they can't do it on any new Intel hardware because the hardware is fundamentally incompatible with the FSF's goals: http://libreboot.org/faq/#intel

I know that there are unintended consequences of everything. You have to have the courage to reevaluate your choices, not just make a change once and then be done forever.