communism

@communism@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Backup/Server Options - is Syncthing / Nextcloud really the go?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You’ve not made it clear what exactly it is you want. Nextcloud or syncthing are good for syncing personal files. If you want to make server backups, they’re not gonna be the way.

  If you want to automate backups, you could just use a cronjob to make a tarball and rsync it?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I see, that’s interesting. Well glad that it’s not hard to switch away from systemd on Debian for those who want it—although I still think if you don’t want systemd you should just pick another distro, given that the Debian installer doesn’t let you pick another init.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  On Debian you can use both sysvinit and openrc

  Huh really? Then why does Devuan exist? (I don’t use Debian for context)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I use Alpine for servers because I like its simplicity. Not in terms of computational power requirements, just in terms of user experience.

  Alpine is an interesting choice for hosting

  I’d say servers are one of the main uses of Alpine, second to containers. It would be a much more unusual choice for a desktop OS.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Alpine already uses OpenRC. There’s no option to use systemd with Alpine.

  Popular alternatives include runit (which Void uses), OpenRC (Gentoo and Alpine), s6, sysVinit, dinit. The suckless people have also written some suckless inits—I think one of them’s called sinit.

  So what are the alternatives that work with both Alpine and Debian?

  None. On Alpine you can only use OpenRC and on Debian you can only use systemd. Most distros don’t let you change out the init system. If you want systemdless Debian look into Devuan.

  Judging from this post, I would say you should not be looking to change out your init system as, no disrespect intended, but you really don’t seem to know what you’re talking about. You don’t even know what init systems your operating systems (Alpine and Debian) are using, let alone the details of different init systems.

  Some people have strong opinions about init systems. They are nerds with reasons behind those opinions. You don’t seem to have many reasons and you don’t seem to be particularly invested in the debate. I would say it’s not worth your time to change operating system (which is what you would need to do to change your init) just because you heard vaguely that systemd is bad. If you reach a point where init system matters to you, then you won’t need to be asking the questions you’re asking in the OP.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LibreOffice is right about Microsoft, and it matters more than you think.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the point about convenience is more about familiarity than Windows being inherently easier. Speaking as someone who switched from Linux to Windows previously, I found the change very difficult as a lot of the FOSS software I was using didn’t have Windows versions. I had a nightmare trying to read one of my LUKS-encrypted drives on Windows. I was practically using WSL for everything. That’s not that Windows is inherently harder than Linux; it’s just that I was used to Linux and the FOSS ecosystem, just as some are used to Windows and their proprietary ecosystem.

  If your hardware isn’t working properly, you have to find drivers that run on Linux; if the developer never made Linux-compatible drivers, you have to figure something else out.

  Most drivers come pre-installed with the Linux kernel or your distro—I never had to manually install any drivers for my current hardware. Compared to Windows where you will have to go out of your way to install graphics drivers for NVIDIA or AMD depending on your graphics card, if you want to make the most out of your card’s capabilities.

  Installers made for Windows don’t need any special TLC; you double-click them and they work.

  See, I think if you’ve used Linux for any length of time you’d quickly find the system of package managers way easier than the system of having to hunt down an .exe on the internet, guess whether or not it’s a legit copy or if it’s malware, and manually manage updates for all the different software you have installed.

  I agree that people stay on Windows out of convenience, but it’s not convenience as in Windows is inherently easier, but it’s convenience as in you’re used to the way things work on Windows. Because in my perspective, things do “just work” on Linux, and that’s because I’m used to the way things work here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Is Now Being Sued Over Sunsetting Windows 10⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I doubt that would hold up in court as false advertising given the significant time gap between them marketing Win 10 that way and them releasing Win 11.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Is Now Being Sued Over Sunsetting Windows 10⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That wasn’t legally binding.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leaving GitHub. Music server alternatives?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re still avoiding the point:

  I will never wait for any individual or group to give me the go ahead to do what I think is the right thing. BDS isn’t perfect.

  The point isn’t that you have to follow the BNC specifically. The point is that announcing you’re not using any software hosted on GH, on a small social media platform, is far from organising a boycott. If you are serious about organising a boycott, that is what you do in the movement, with the masses. As it currently stands, you are simply making a personal consumer decision.

  Personally, I don’t think it’ll be possible for this to become a mass boycott (which it needs to in order to have effect), just because you’re going to struggle to explain to everyone what GitHub even is let alone how to boycott any software that’s hosted on it. That’s why the demand to boycott GitHub ie not host your own software on there is far easier; that only applies to people who make software, who do know what GitHub is and understand how to not use it. If you don’t know what GitHub is then you’re already boycotting it. Meanwhile, your version of the boycott requires teaching people what git is, what a git repo is, and what a git forge is, and then giving them a very long list of software that they need to boycott in order to join you. For the reasons that BDS explains in terms of their tactic of targeted boycotts, that’s not going to work, because in practice very few people will boycott the full list of software and everyone will boycott a few GitHub repos and those repos will be different for each person.

  At the end of the day, boycotting is a political strategy to force change through. It’s not about showing how moral you are. If you can’t get a critical mass of people with you, your consumer decision is as impactful as your decision of what shirt to wear today.

  I will drop as many projects as I can. Media players, web browsers, mail clients, social platforms - can all be changed for more ethical alternatives. It doesn’t have to be black or white.

  That’s still avoiding the real problem of defining strict boundaries for your boycott. It is still entirely unclear to me how I could join you even if I wanted to. What are you proposing we boycott? I adhere to BDS, who have given pretty unambiguous guidelines on how to boycott. Even their Microsoft boycott accounts for “do as much as you can”; they acknowledge that some people will be forced to use MS products, and encourage people to move away from them unless they have no choice. That’s understandable enough and the average person knows exactly how to join that boycott if they want to.

  Like I said, if you’re serious about this, you need to go somewhere other than Lemmy. And if you’re not serious about this, then stop pretending you’re making a political decision, and accept that you are just making a personal consumer preference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leaving GitHub. Music server alternatives?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No, I’m not arguing that we should be users of Microsoft. You’re still not understanding what I’m saying. I don’t use Microsoft’s services, including their free ones. Software that happens to be hosted on GitHub is not Microsoft’s software.

  You can do whatever you want as an individual. But as a political actor, you should be participating in organised boycotts, such as BDS’s boycott of Microsoft. BDS’s boycott is already fairly wide-sweeping, going as far as to ask people to e.g. stop playing Minecraft and Skyrim, even if they already own the game. Avoiding using Microsoft’s products like this is effective because, even if you’ve already bought the game, you lend Microsoft more cultural capital by proliferating their products.

  BDS has not, on the other hand, called for a boycott of all software that happens to have a GitHub repo. If you think they should do that, take it up with BDS. If BDS called for such a boycott, it would get much more momentum behind it.

  As it currently stands, you are boycotting all software that has a GitHub repo on your own. This is not going to have any effect. You are going to be hard-pressed to get people to join your boycott. What kernel do you use? The Linux kernel has a GitHub mirror. The majority of FOSS projects where collaboration occurs off of GitHub still have a read-only GitHub mirror. Is your boycott suggesting that everybody should be using OpenBSD? That’s going to be a very hard sell.

  BDS has achieved huge victories because it offers targeted boycotts that the average consumer is perfectly capable of doing, and it has a mass movement behind it. There are also grassroots boycotts that have been organised outside of BDS, such as the Starbucks and McDonald’s boycotts, but again, these caught on because they had the backing of people active in the movement and were willing to organise said boycotts. You’re a random Lemmy user who, if you are serious about organising a boycott, you’re in the entirely wrong place to do so. You won’t achieve anything doing what you’re currently doing.

  You’re welcome to make whatever consumer decisions you want, but don’t confuse that for political organising.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leaving GitHub. Music server alternatives?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m also opposed to “using [Microsoft’s] free stuff”; I’m arguing that using software that happens to use GH isn’t using MS’s stuff at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leaving GitHub. Music server alternatives?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t see a reason to avoid using software hosted on GH. I moved off GH when MS bought it, and all that entailed was no longer hosting my own software on GH, and using alternative FOSS git forges. That still has a similar effect, and when a critical mass of devs move off GH, the rest will follow suit. The main draw of GH is that everything’s on there; when that’s no longer true, it will no longer be the main git forge. Especially once Forgejo adds ActivityPub integration; I imagine that’ll speed the process along a lot.

  A lone user boycotting all software hosted on GH is realistically not going to make any devs move their projects off GH. You may say that it doesn’t have to be a lone user, but I think you’ll be hard pressed to get a whole movement of people refusing to use any software hosted on GH.

  I also think the boundaries of your boycott are just too ambiguous. What if you download the software from somewhere other than GH, and it just has a GH repo? Is that ok with you? Is it that you just don’t want to touch MS’s servers? What about software where the GH repo is just a read-only mirror, and the main collaboration/development happens elsewhere, like a GitLab or Forgejo instance? I would rather struggle to see an argument for refusing to use software in either of those cases.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How we Rooted Copilot⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I know that? I’m just saying that MS categorised it as such. It would be strange to include the part about MS’s responses if MS also found that the vulnerability was not what the researchers claimed it was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How we Rooted Copilot⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  MS said they fixed it and categorised it as a “moderate severity vulnerability” so presumably they did in fact gain root access to the container

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Tea cup" app - user database leaked today (incl. drivers license & IDs). Daily reminder not to give your ID to online services [THEY DO NOT PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Aside from the fact that it was stored in a public database, there’s no need to store photos of the IDs at all. The account can just be marked as verified and move on.

  Also I doubt that measure would keep a man out if he really wanted to join…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your VPN recommendations for accessing self-hosted applications from the outside?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  In that case, wireguard. I only occasionally need to access a service that’s not exposed to the internet, so I use ssh -L, but that would be quite inconvenient for your own use case.

  I know tailscale exists but I’ve never used it, only tried wireguard on its own. Maybe there’s some huge benefit to using it but wireguard worked fine for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK wants to weasel out of demand for Apple encryption back door⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you the UK? No, you’re someone who lives there. The UK is a state.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The bizarre, dismal page you see if you open YouTube without an account.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Isn’t this better than trying to make it so that you never click off YouTube, the way it works if you are logged in? I would much rather have no recommendations than have an algorithm give me recommendations with the express purpose of maximising ad revenue extraction from me

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK police working with controversial tech giant Palantir on real-time surveillance network⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  People already do this on “low-tech” levels ie community monitoring and alerts, but yes it’s not been done on particularly high-tech levels in a similar manner to the surveillance state

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you’re in the market for a $1,900 color E Ink monitor, one of them exists now - Ars Technica⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the use case would be for laptops, for people who want to comfortably use their laptops outside or just want their laptop screens to be easier on the eyes. Only slightly different to a tablet insofar as it has a physical keyboard, so i imagine the tablets could be adapted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay…? Your point?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How is it not transformative and intentional to reinterpret neurological signals as music?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky has started honoring takedown requests from Turkish government⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean it also means I inherently have an off-site backup, which is important given that my home occasionally gets raided by the police. I’m not worried about data access since I use FDE on everything, but data loss is a real concern.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I know what you mean; I think it would be hurtful to people with Parkinson’s, but whatever, I luckily don’t have Parkinson’s so not much point arguing it.

  Characterising involuntary but normal phenomenon as intentional or artistic is maybe a little less gross, but still asinine.

  That seems like a very bizarre take. Isn’t that a very common artistic device, to find creative interpretations of natural phenomena, and to imagine intention where there is none? I mean, art is subjective so maybe that’s just your personal taste, but it seems like a strange thing to be offended by to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It seems to be the journalist presenting it as such, but in any case, I don’t think the artists are suggesting it’s equivalent to what the guy made when he was alive. It’s an interesting artwork riffing off of the fact that the person whom the DNA belonged to was a musician.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a pretty misleading headline. The news article is about a cool art installation, in which an artist has used a deceased composer’s DNA to produce electrical signals that are interpreted as music. Still cool, but it’s not “composing music” in the same sense as the alive musician was composing music.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky has started honoring takedown requests from Turkish government⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I rent because of government surveillance; I want my server in a different country.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky has started honoring takedown requests from Turkish government⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not an outlandish amount, but for instance I have my own VPS where I host a variety of services, and it still has under 1TB storage. Most hobbyists who rent a VPS would have less storage than that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly half of U.S. adults believe LLMs are smarter than they are.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Given the US adults I see on the internet, I would hazard a guess that they’re right.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Check your DVDs for disc rot — Warner Bros. says it’s replacing them⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know about the US specifically, but oftentimes, and definitely where I’m from, laws can have a small amount of “common sense” leeway and judges can find justifications for rulings if they want to rule a particular way. e.g. I have pirated games that I legally bought because there’s literally no functioning “official” download link anymore, if anyone were to ever prosecute me for that, even if it were illegal technically a judge could find a way to rule it lawful out of sympathy or whatever other reason, if they wanted to. A lot of the time it’s “the government can’t have possibly intended this law to be enforced this way, therefore I rule XYZ”.

  In any case, as you said, I’ve never heard of anyone being pursued for that. And if it’s not enforced, it’s not a law.