69 karma · joined August 20, 2025
I think even critics of the GNU project and the FSF would have to admit that as historically accurate. I can only presume, then, that your comment is based on a lack of awareness of the history of FOSS licencing.
Perhaps a read of this would be a good start:
I'd like to leave the question of why that's true as an exercise for the reader, but your comment makes it sound as if you have trouble with this concept, so let's be explicit - a state operating autocratically can, and often will, rubberstamp whatever it decides it wants to do.
Had a quick look for the numbers from FISA to give you an example of this. https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2013/06/fisa-co... says that they denied 11 requests for surveillance warrants out of 33,900 requests over 33 years of operation.
That's a pass rate of 99.07%!
So allow me to say - a warrant wouldn't have changed anything, they give them out like nothing.
In the article though, it does say: "ICE did not respond to requests for comment from SAN. It is not clear whether ICE or any other law enforcement agency obtained a warrant to use an IMSI catcher — commonly referred to as a “Stingray” — to conduct surveillance."
Very much appreciate the insider story. I've had a quick browse of your blog and will go back to it when I get a bit more time. Kudos to you for pursuing your interests boldly.
How many lives is a CEO's life worth to you? How many lives is "the life of the President" worth?
Imagine a process called A, and, as you say, we've no idea how it works.
Imagine, then, a new process, B, comes along. Some people know a lot about how B works, most people don't. But the people selling B, they continuously tell me it works like process A, and even resort to using various cutesy linguistic tricks to make that feel like it's the case.
The people selling B even go so far as to suggest that if we don't accept a future where B takes over, we won't have a job, no matter what our poor A does.
What's the rational thing to do, for a sceptical, scientific mind? Agree with the company, that process B is of course like process A, when we - as you say yourself - don't understand process A in any comprehensive way at all? Or would that be utterly nonsensical?
Personally I do somewhere between one and three strikes with companies. Of course I still must use certain things at certain times, but generally a lot of them can be avoided if you develop the habit of looking for other solutions. It's great fun, actually, once you accept the challenge.
It's only a small action, but it's good on a personal level to practice any kind of resisting.
Particularly when the mistake you're correcting was so reasonable and charming. It's an excellent example of an "eggcorn".
If you haven't heard of eggcorns, fear not: the word "eggcorn" is itself an autology, i.e., a word that is an example of the phenomenon it describes. So if you remember the word, "eggcorn", you should be able to remember the concept. An eggcorn is a type of malapropism, but one that could plausibly fit the context of the misheard original word or phrase.
So, for example, "eggcorn" could plausibly have been the word for the object which we actually call an "acorn".
Similarly, when I read "into death hears", I immediately knew what the writer meant, and had a little chuckle to myself thinking about how it actually made total sense. So perhaps we could point out to them nicely the lovely eggcorn they were using, rather than text-shouting.
My curiosity is piqued by this. Do you mean to say you've moved there from somewhere place? And what do you mean, why is it the only country for which you're politically optimistic?
I don't mean to pry, and have no ulterior motive or point in asking. It just seems like a strong statement, and I cannot guess what you mean, or if I'm missing some cultural insinuation here or something. Taiwan does sound like a very interesting place to me, generally, though.
> Here's the definition from the esoteric programming language wiki, which is a lovely resource for anyone interested https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language:
> "An esoteric programming language is a computer programming language designed to experiment with weird ideas, to be hard to program in, or as a joke, rather than for practical use."
"With 144 independent computers, it enables parallel or pipelined programming on an unprecedented scale. Map a data flow diagram or an analog block diagram onto its array of computers for continuous processes without interrupts or context switching."
And then there's the legendary https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Orca
"Orca is an esoteric programming language designed to quickly create procedural sequencers, in which every letter of the alphabet is an operation, where lowercase letters operate on bang, uppercase letters operate each frame."
Esoteric language =/= any non-mainstream language.
Here's the definition from the esoteric programming language wiki, which is a lovely resource for anyone interested https://esolangs.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language:
> An esoteric programming language is a computer programming language designed to experiment with weird ideas, to be hard to program in, or as a joke, rather than for practical use.
Do you disagree with some part of the statement regarding "AI" in their CoC? Do you think there's a fault in their logic, or do you yourself personally just not care about the ethics at play here?
I find it refreshing personally to see a project taking a clear stance. Kudos to them.
Recently enjoyed reading the Dynamicland project's opinion on the subject very much too[0], which I think is quite a bit deeper of an argument than the one above.
Ethics seems to be, unfortunately, quite low down on the list of considerations of many developers, if it factors in at all to their decisions.
[0] https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/#What_is_Realtalks_relation...
If you make an app for interacting with an LLM and in the app the user has access to all sorts of stolen databases, and other conveniences for black hats, then you've got what was described above. Or I'm missing something?
Or they have and they simply don't care, or they feel they can't change anything anyway, or the pay-check is enough to soothe any unease. The net result is the same.
Snowden's revelations happened 12 years ago, and there were plenty of what appeared to be well-intentioned articles and discussions in the years that followed. And yet, arguably, things are even worse today.
https://cybersecuritynews.com/fraudgpt-new-black-hat-ai-tool...
This subjective and lovely history of the Great Firewall of the PRC was posted recently, about the to and fros in the methods of this kind of thing, and is really very good, if you're interested:
100% literacy, but all we read is garbage, and all we write is short and shallow. 100% computer literacy too, if that term means making accounts, clicking on links, scrolling up and down, taking videos of things, and commenting.
The internet has ended up being a massive drain on people's energy, and driven communities apart. Of course, there are exceptions here and there amongst the better educated classes, people who manage to shield themselves from the worst transgressions of the behemoths running the tech infrastructure that dominates people's lives.
And, of course, these exalted internet users then vehemently argue that the internet is great, and people just aren't using it right, like them. And round and round the thing goes, getting worse and worse for most people.
Loads of VPNs are simply, someone other than the local ISP gets your data. Mullvad seems trustworthy, as an exception to this, and who else? And even then, Mullvad faces issues from websites and censorious countries trying to block it and bother its users all the time.
Not like those hair-brained philosophers!
Sigh. One would have to possess an impressive level of ignorance in the history of philosophy and science in order to hold such a view. What would Raymond Smullyan, or Bertrand Russell, or Henri Poincaré, or who knows how many others, have to say about this remark, I wonder.