john01dav

9 ms·

121.
by john01dav 1y ago
> It's amazing to me how the use of a UPS is not as ubiquitous at home. Most users don't see enough failures that they can attribute to bad power to justify the cost in their mind. Furthermore, USPes are extremely expensive per
122.
by john01dav 1y ago
I'm thrilled to see robust investment into open mobile OSes. Ideally they'd establish open standards for other OEMs to unilaterally support. I wrote more about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=455962
123.
by john01dav 1y ago
The idea of routing all my traffic through a data company like Google is horrifying. If I ever got Google Fiber I'd have put everything through a more trustworthy VPN.
124.
by john01dav 1y ago
We should have terms and rigorous standards for software that is proprietary but not otherwise restrictive of user freedom. Most (weighing by how commonly it's used) software is either traditional, abusive, proprietary software like Wi
125.
by john01dav 1y ago
What I'd like to see is open standards for smart phone software: standard ways to have drivers with a stable ABI and API (the goal here is to decouple specific OSes or kernels from specific hardware, if the drivers are free that's
126.
by john01dav 1y ago
Having an ugly UI is not a good argument for paying obscene quantities of money for spyware that doesn't even support all OSes.
127.
by john01dav 1y ago
They have a responsibility to engineer it properly and to fix consequences of poor engineering, since they are selling something as capable of various features and presumably safe.
128.
by john01dav 1y ago
Paris and other climate accords have much ado about fractions of a degree, leading me to believe that that's highly consequential.
129.
by john01dav 1y ago
It's not "their devices". I recently bought a house and the previous owner kept trying to influence what I did with it, and everyone -- even those in government who ultimately had to help enforce my ownership rights -- agreed
130.
by john01dav 1y ago
Absolutely hilarious, and gives me some self awareness tbh
131.
by john01dav 1y ago
I'm not convinced that the average customer of consoles is considering the tradeoffs fully, and even if they are it distores the market away from freedom since the average customer doesn't see the long term effects of freedom bein
132.
by john01dav 1y ago
The closest that I know of to this is GPLv3 with sold proprietary licenses. Then, when selling proprietary licenses, you can adjust the price to what you think that the customer can afford. There's debate on how ethical such adjustment
133.
by john01dav 1y ago
You'd need to define "technical measure", or you'd have endless litigation to do it in courts. Trying to define that reasonably precisely is how I came up with my proposal.
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by john01dav 1y ago
What would this third division consist of?
135.
by john01dav 1y ago
No, I explicitly want the game console business model to be shut down. As it stands now, they sell hardware at a loss to then extract value later, at the cost of user control over what they bought. I'd like to see consoles cost what th
136.
by john01dav 1y ago
I want regulation that divides all software into two categories: part of the hardware, or not part of the hardware, with specific requirements. Part of the hardware: - Can be restricted to specific devices - Must be available under GPLv3, i
137.
by john01dav 1y ago
This would make it no longer free software as per the FSF's definition. We could turn many more things into GPLv3, which would prevent this, however. Then, Android and iOS can use them if and only if they go under GPLv3 too, which incl
138.
by john01dav 1y ago
Yeah, I would not use Ubuntu if I can help it. I'd still rather use it over Windows. This is why I specifically said "The good non-profit distributions," and not "Linux distributions" or some other broader phrase.
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by john01dav 1y ago
If I created a program that took screenshots and keylogged everything that you did, and then put it in your computer, you'd rightly call it malware. But, when Microsoft does this, it isn't? They aren't exactly trustworthy (as
140.
by john01dav 1y ago
I use Linux at work and at home. I give Linux running Cinnamon to non-technical family members. I would not give a Chromebook. They're extremely locked down, and I don't want such things to have market share since that forces othe
141.
by john01dav 1y ago
These so-called security features have wildly different threat models than other security features. Secure Boot and TPM are ways to attest that what is running is what Microsoft signed. This is only useful if I think that non-nation-state a
142.
by john01dav 1y ago
It is impossible to configure recent ipads in any other way. There are no established 3rd party OSes that you can install, even with great effort. IOS does not respect user freedom. As an example, see the restrictions on running code that A
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by john01dav 1y ago
They will probably charge extra for it. I asked a public school IT person how he was handling FERPA with the new privacy violations on windows 10, and the answer was paying exorbitant fees.
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by john01dav 1y ago
The biggest category of games that don't work on Linux are those that demand a root kit (where they attempt to justify it as anti-cheat), and not letting a root kit on one's computer is desirable for many reasons.
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by john01dav 1y ago
It's user-focused in the sense that the user's goals drive the design. The good non-profit distributions, such as Debian and Arch, would never even try to require or push an online account, since that is contrary to the user'
146.
by john01dav 1y ago
This website is very unclear to me. I see links to what look like articles, but there's no information on where these come from. Is it a link aggregator like HN or early reddit? Is it a search engine of some sort? Are these even real a
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by john01dav 1y ago
> I wish that more developers had this same stance of refusing all options with abusive practices like platform exclusivity. I don't touch consoles. They're cesspits of abusive practices: computers that can't do general pu
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by john01dav 1y ago
Game devs should just design their games to be cross platform from the start, thus making this problem go away. Every major language compiles everywhere, so all that you need to do is not use libraries that tie you to a specific OS. When I
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by john01dav 1y ago
> If you find an answer to this, you will understand what happens now. Is there some answer that you're expecting people to find?
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by john01dav 1y ago
You can get $25 iphones from old generations. Old iphones don't give status symbolism SK they're cheap

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