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Wow - regardless of whether one agrees with RMS, alone the fact that this submission has been heavily flagged already (and will thus drop from the frontpage soo

by jpdus 8y ago

Wow - regardless of whether one agrees with RMS, alone the fact that this submission has been heavily flagged already (and will thus drop from the frontpage soon) tells you a lot about the power of Apple and their fans here. HN urgently needs to address the flagging problems, this has been the case for many important but controversial topics recently and leads to a degraded quality of frontpage submissions in my view.

hellofunk 8y ago
I have not flagged this article, partly because I’m curious to see the debate here. But I’m sure those who have flagged it did so because this article is not objective, this is a very extremist position with a lot of cherry picked arguments that are obviously from a personal bias he has against Apple. Many of the points he is specifically isolating for Apple are quite true of most of the big tech firms.
- jpdus 8y ago
  Yep, definitely true (but his points for other firms like google are directly linked above the article, this I would deny that there is a clear bias). I have no side in this game (no affiliations to either Google or Apple) but this points about Apple are both true and relevant and thus imo no reason to flag. You can still just ignore the topic. Flagging just kills the discussion and during recent times this often happened to legit but controversial topics (e.g. OpenAI for-profit announcement was heavily flagged and buried as well).
- kilburn 8y ago
  RMS is an extremist, openly and unashamedly. He doesn't try to hide it, he tries to argue that his extremist position is the morally correct and long-term best for society though. > from a personal bias he has against Apple. Many of the points he is specifically isolating for Apple are quite true of most of the big tech firms. He bashes all big techs for most of those points too. See the links at the top where he complains about Airbnb, Amazon, Amtrak, Ancestry, Apple, Discord, Ebooks, Eventbrite, Evernote, Facebook, Google, Intel, LinkedIn, Lyft, Meetup, Microsoft, Netflix, Patreon, Pay Toilets, Skype, Slack, Spotify, Twitter, Uber and Wendy's. If there are missing companies there it is probably because he didn't have the time, not because he does't want to complain about something regarding that specific company ;)
  - ken 8y ago
    So by this standard, is there a computer that I should use, or is all computing in 2019 unethical? I see he's using a >10yr old Intel CPU, presumably to avoid the Management Engine, so presumably he thinks it's OK to pay money to these companies in certain circumstances?
    - slfnflctd 8y ago
      > presumably he thinks it's OK to pay money to these companies in certain circumstances When they're behaving in what he considers an ethical manner, or at least offering some ethically designed products, I think so. He's hoping to help catalyze a revolution of sorts regardless, and AFAIK is still waiting for the hypothetical ideal entity to arrive (which probably isn't going to happen any time soon). I look at Stallman's lifestyle as a form of performance art at this point. It's more than this, for sure, but that's the best way to describe its immediate impact much of the time. However, we will likely be chewing on the thoughts he has brought forth for generations to come.
    - kilburn 8y ago
      By RMS's standard, it seems that it is ok to reuse old systems (irrespective of which company built them originally) provided you can use them without binary blobs (irreplaceable built-in no-source firmware is fine though). Quoting his "how I do computing page" [1]: > I use a Thinkpad T400s computer, which has a free initialization program (libreboot) and a free operating system (Trisquel GNU/Linux). It was not sold that way by Lenovo, however; small businesses buy them used, recondition them, and install the free software. This is one of the computers endorsed by the FSF. Of course I'm pretty sure he would also approve buying and using any open hardware product [2] (provided it can run using only free software). There are some initiatives popping up in this space, such as: - The siFive HiFive's [3] (Risc-V based), that can get you a fully open, slow system for $3k (1k for the base board + 2k for the PCIe-and-others expansion board). - The Talos™ (Power9-based) systems [4], that give you 2019-grade performance at ~2-3x the usual price. All in all, not a pleasant stance to make, but definitely doable for some folks. [1] https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_computing_hardware#Fully_open-source_hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_computing_hardware... [3] https://www.sifive.com/boards https://www.sifive.com/boards [4] https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html
- Alterlife 8y ago
  > Many of the points he is specifically isolating for Apple are quite true of most of the big tech firms. I am an apple fan myself, but this is not true. He isn’t “singling out” apple. Apple is the subject of this article. Perhaps there should be other posts about other tech companies, perhaps there already are, it doesn’t matter. The discussion is the ethical behaviour of companies, and This post is specifically about Apple.
ndr 8y ago
How can you see this has been heavily flagged?
ksec 8y ago
So what are we suppose to do other than flagging for utter nonsense like this one? I can give you a pass what whatever ideological view in Stallman's own little world. But things like >Apple pioneered techniques for avoiding the US corporate tax (even though it is far too low) in order to pay next to no tax. Apple is the largest Tax payer in the US by far. Given how other company dodge tax I sometimes wish ( as an Apple Shareholder ) Apple did that too, but they didn't. Apple Pay every single bit of Tax, and until the money are being bought back to US they don't have to pay profits earn offshore. You can argue about whether Apple should pay tax in EU. But that is a completely different Topic. >Apple turns a blind eye to environment in China. >Worker abuse Apple didn't build Sweatshop. Plain and Simple. And neither did Foxconn. No one was forced to work Overtime. People wanted to do it because they make Money. And for people coming out from village in China, getting into Foxconn was the first step into City. And if you are wondering why there are people suicide, there were no more than a 100 people over the years in total out of a peak of 2 Million employees by Foxconn. And then you thought he was against Apple, and you start looking at all the other parts like Amazon. And the first line: >Amazon has so much power over the US retail economy that it imposes its power over all participants. I would have expected anybody doing any sort of programming to be half decent with logic. And since anyone doing programming would have know how to use a computer, and doing a little Google Search on Government Official Data, he would have known Amazon, despite being a household name is actually not quite a dominant player in the whole US retail revenue segment. And countless other examples, bashing for the purpose of bashing. If this is not Spreading FUD I don't know what is. And if we don't flag FUD and I don't know what where we should begin. FUD is FUD, I am not giving a free pass to RMS. Edit. And this reply has 5 up vote and 5 down vote in the space of 5 min.
- how-rude 8y ago
  Yeah, and for people like you who invested in oil companies global warming is an "utter nonsense".
  - ksec 8y ago
    And your argument makes absolutely zero sense. Coming from an Account created 20 min ago.
jmull 8y ago
I didn’t flag this, but I don’t see why this nonsense derserves special protection. If the flagging mechanism quickly moves trolls like this off the front page I think it’s working.

by jpdus 8y ago

hellofunk 8y ago

I have not flagged this article, partly because I’m curious to see the debate here. But I’m sure those who have flagged it did so because this article is not objective, this is a very extremist position with a lot of cherry picked arguments that are obviously from a personal bias he has against Apple. Many of the points he is specifically isolating for Apple are quite true of most of the big tech firms.

jpdus 8y ago
Yep, definitely true (but his points for other firms like google are directly linked above the article, this I would deny that there is a clear bias). I have no side in this game (no affiliations to either Google or Apple) but this points about Apple are both true and relevant and thus imo no reason to flag. You can still just ignore the topic. Flagging just kills the discussion and during recent times this often happened to legit but controversial topics (e.g. OpenAI for-profit announcement was heavily flagged and buried as well).
kilburn 8y ago
RMS is an extremist, openly and unashamedly. He doesn't try to hide it, he tries to argue that his extremist position is the morally correct and long-term best for society though. > from a personal bias he has against Apple. Many of the points he is specifically isolating for Apple are quite true of most of the big tech firms. He bashes all big techs for most of those points too. See the links at the top where he complains about Airbnb, Amazon, Amtrak, Ancestry, Apple, Discord, Ebooks, Eventbrite, Evernote, Facebook, Google, Intel, LinkedIn, Lyft, Meetup, Microsoft, Netflix, Patreon, Pay Toilets, Skype, Slack, Spotify, Twitter, Uber and Wendy's. If there are missing companies there it is probably because he didn't have the time, not because he does't want to complain about something regarding that specific company ;)
- ken 8y ago
  So by this standard, is there a computer that I should use, or is all computing in 2019 unethical? I see he's using a >10yr old Intel CPU, presumably to avoid the Management Engine, so presumably he thinks it's OK to pay money to these companies in certain circumstances?
  - slfnflctd 8y ago
    > presumably he thinks it's OK to pay money to these companies in certain circumstances When they're behaving in what he considers an ethical manner, or at least offering some ethically designed products, I think so. He's hoping to help catalyze a revolution of sorts regardless, and AFAIK is still waiting for the hypothetical ideal entity to arrive (which probably isn't going to happen any time soon). I look at Stallman's lifestyle as a form of performance art at this point. It's more than this, for sure, but that's the best way to describe its immediate impact much of the time. However, we will likely be chewing on the thoughts he has brought forth for generations to come.
  - kilburn 8y ago
    By RMS's standard, it seems that it is ok to reuse old systems (irrespective of which company built them originally) provided you can use them without binary blobs (irreplaceable built-in no-source firmware is fine though). Quoting his "how I do computing page" [1]: > I use a Thinkpad T400s computer, which has a free initialization program (libreboot) and a free operating system (Trisquel GNU/Linux). It was not sold that way by Lenovo, however; small businesses buy them used, recondition them, and install the free software. This is one of the computers endorsed by the FSF. Of course I'm pretty sure he would also approve buying and using any open hardware product [2] (provided it can run using only free software). There are some initiatives popping up in this space, such as: - The siFive HiFive's [3] (Risc-V based), that can get you a fully open, slow system for $3k (1k for the base board + 2k for the PCIe-and-others expansion board). - The Talos™ (Power9-based) systems [4], that give you 2019-grade performance at ~2-3x the usual price. All in all, not a pleasant stance to make, but definitely doable for some folks. [1] https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_computing_hardware#Fully_open-source_hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_computing_hardware... [3] https://www.sifive.com/boards https://www.sifive.com/boards [4] https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html
Alterlife 8y ago
> Many of the points he is specifically isolating for Apple are quite true of most of the big tech firms. I am an apple fan myself, but this is not true. He isn’t “singling out” apple. Apple is the subject of this article. Perhaps there should be other posts about other tech companies, perhaps there already are, it doesn’t matter. The discussion is the ethical behaviour of companies, and This post is specifically about Apple.

ndr 8y ago

How can you see this has been heavily flagged?

ksec 8y ago

So what are we suppose to do other than flagging for utter nonsense like this one? I can give you a pass what whatever ideological view in Stallman's own little world. But things like >Apple pioneered techniques for avoiding the US corporate tax (even though it is far too low) in order to pay next to no tax. Apple is the largest Tax payer in the US by far. Given how other company dodge tax I sometimes wish ( as an Apple Shareholder ) Apple did that too, but they didn't. Apple Pay every single bit of Tax, and until the money are being bought back to US they don't have to pay profits earn offshore. You can argue about whether Apple should pay tax in EU. But that is a completely different Topic. >Apple turns a blind eye to environment in China. >Worker abuse Apple didn't build Sweatshop. Plain and Simple. And neither did Foxconn. No one was forced to work Overtime. People wanted to do it because they make Money. And for people coming out from village in China, getting into Foxconn was the first step into City. And if you are wondering why there are people suicide, there were no more than a 100 people over the years in total out of a peak of 2 Million employees by Foxconn. And then you thought he was against Apple, and you start looking at all the other parts like Amazon. And the first line: >Amazon has so much power over the US retail economy that it imposes its power over all participants. I would have expected anybody doing any sort of programming to be half decent with logic. And since anyone doing programming would have know how to use a computer, and doing a little Google Search on Government Official Data, he would have known Amazon, despite being a household name is actually not quite a dominant player in the whole US retail revenue segment. And countless other examples, bashing for the purpose of bashing. If this is not Spreading FUD I don't know what is. And if we don't flag FUD and I don't know what where we should begin. FUD is FUD, I am not giving a free pass to RMS. Edit. And this reply has 5 up vote and 5 down vote in the space of 5 min.

how-rude 8y ago
Yeah, and for people like you who invested in oil companies global warming is an "utter nonsense".
- ksec 8y ago
  And your argument makes absolutely zero sense. Coming from an Account created 20 min ago.

jmull 8y ago

I didn’t flag this, but I don’t see why this nonsense derserves special protection. If the flagging mechanism quickly moves trolls like this off the front page I think it’s working.