TheTechnician27
@TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
- Comment on ‘It’s real y’all’: People are sharing their tariff receipts, and my wallet is not ready for what’s coming 12 hours ago:
After the death of real, actual investigative journalism platform BuzzFeed News, should we really be posting
BuzzFeed seems like an inappropriate source for a community called /c/economics (RIP actual investigative journalism at BuzzFeed News). Given economics is a social science like psychology or anthropology, it feels like posting to /c/psychology with “If You Did More Than 14 Of These Things Growing Up, You’re Probably An Anxious Adult Now”. No offense, of course, OP; you do great work on Lemmy, and these tarrifs are fucking corroding the US economy.
- Comment on “This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.” 4 days ago:
Oh god, it’s real.
- Comment on The scandalous story of Fred Trump: how Donald Trump's father made his millions 6 days ago:
OP, come on, this is from a crap website called Love Money It’s overwhelmingly likely that it was written entirely or predominantly by an LLM at worst or researched by skimming Wikipedia at best.
For context, Yahoo! News is two things:
- Yahoo! News is a real thing that employs its own writers. It’s hosted on news.yahoo.com.
- news.yahoo.com also syndicates news. This ranges from highly professional and credible to bottom-of-the-barrel slop. Effectively, news.yahoo.com will host anything as long as it gets clicks, and those clicks ride on the idea that people see Yahoo! News and think it sounds vaguely credible.
- Comment on When you think that YOU are always correct 1 week ago:
9gag-ass meme tbh
- Comment on There should be something like a flea market where hobby gardeners go to share sprouted seeds 1 week ago:
Maybe my farmer’s market is really lax, but I’ve seen people sell young plants there (also mushroom starters, which I thought was super cool but had no room for).
- Comment on Pope Joan 1 week ago:
Transvestigators: “Trans X will never be real X!”
Also transvestigators: “Trans X are apparently so functionally indistinguishable from biological X that you can’t tell from thousands of hours of footage (including their voice) from public appearances and paparazzi voyeurism taken at almost every possible angle over dozens of years, including childhood pictures. Instead you need to resort to convoluted, pseudoscientific, unreproducibly arbitrary, per-person diagrams. This applies to dozens of celebrities. But they’ll never be a real X tho!”
Transvestigators are scum, but I feel if I were trans that these “investigations” of obviously and openly cis people would make me feel more affirmed than basically any other form of external validation.
- Comment on i truly believe that there's an open war between Humanity vs. Advertisers and their allies. 1 week ago:
It’s a job that only exists in capitalism
Not true.
- Comment on LibreOffice: We still see people on the fediverse recommending OpenOffice, despite it having year-old unfixed security issues 1 week ago:
Outdated on Windows? Because on Linux, the LibreOffice UI is great, imo.
- Comment on LibreOffice: We still see people on the fediverse recommending OpenOffice, despite it having year-old unfixed security issues 1 week ago:
Lee-bruh is definitely the way to go since it fluidly connects to the first syllable of “office”. If you do “lib-ray” or “lee-bray”, you’re forcing a ton of unnecessary annunciation on yourself.
- Comment on Shinji need a little bit of motivation 1 week ago:
bruh OP, Asuka is 13, and Rei is 14 and
(spoiler)
basically Shinji’s mom??
Go to horny jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
Why pay for anything ever if it’s going to potentially get taken away?
Because it’s called “lifetime”? As in the entire point of the product is that it will not ever be taken away with the exception that the company goes out of business? “Why pay for anything if there’s nothing enforcing the core premise of the product?” The gardener advertised a “whole-yard mow” for $100, but I’ve already gotten the area around the driveway, and honestly would it really be that bad if they just stopped right now?
You can talk about odds all you want (although I think around $100 million in VC funding puts those odds squarely in favor of “lifetime” users getting the floor sawed out from under them Looney Tunes-style), but the fact it’s even possible is what’s deeply disturbing, because it’s deliberate. Lifetime’s meaning should be unambiguously stipulated in a contract, not inferred. Know why? Because companies out there advertising “lifetime” subscriptions right now have little disclaimers like “approximately like five years or so but honestly we don’t really know or care lol this license disappears whenever we want it to”).
People are assuming it’s for the lifetime of your Plex account, but my response is: based on fucking what? Plex on their website doesn’t seem to specify this anywhere, even in their terms of service. People asking on their official forums receive responses saying things like “probably for the lifetime of your Plex account” with no sources to anything. I’m not trying to sealion here; I literally can’t find a single instance of Plex stating officially in writing or verbally what “lifetime” actually means to the end user. If Plex isn’t going to rugpull, why can’t they add a single sentence to their TOS saying something like: “The purchase of a lifetime pass grants the user a non-transferable license for [blah blah] starting from the date of purchase. This license will not be revoked unless 1) the associated account is terminated by the account holder or 2) the aasociated account is terminated by Plex for one or more of the reasons outlined in section [blah]”?
They could, they should, they don’t, and you have no good explanation, otherwise you would’ve offered one by now. They have enough money to afford a legal team that wouldn’t overlook that. The answer is that they want to reserve the right to destroy the “lifetime” pass whenever they want. If you can find official documentation from Plex Inc. saying that if I buy a lifetime pass today for $250, the license will only end with the termination of the account, then I’ll have no idea why they make this too hard to find, but I’ll take back everything else I said in this comment and stop using “lifetime” in scare quotes. I genuinely want to know if they say anything about this anywhere.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
Another reason donating to FOSS is better than paying for proprietary software. Proprietary software devs get to run around stealing whatever code they like from the open-source community and never suffer any consequence because they don’t make their source available. I can think of a select few proprietary projects that have the balls to be source-available.
If you want to intentionally create a system that lets you evade accountability for stealing code, “fine”, but I have zero respect for you or your product, and I’m certainly not paying you a dime. I’ll put my money toward the developers who work to better the world instead of the rat fucks who steal from them to make money and pollute the software ecosystem with proprietary trash.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
You literally said you have Plex pass in the other comment, why are you playing dumb?
They care about the people who don’t have a “lifetime” pass? Having empathy for others who don’t have what you have, caring about the ethics of a company whose products you use (and who you’ve given money to), and taking a stance that software should be as free and open as possible aren’t “playing dumb”. If anything, as someone who isn’t just using Plex for free, they’ve earned more of a right to complain, because they’ve shown they’re willing to pay for quality services but think this one is exploitative.
Maybe they’re worried that existing features will become locked behind a tier that the “lifetime” pass doesn’t apply to? Maybe they’re worried that their “lifetime” pass won’t be so “lifetime” if “lifetime” wasn’t explicitly defined to mean lifetime at the time of purchase? Anything bad that can happen will happen with VC-fueled enshittification.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
I also want to emphasize that relicensing from the GPLv2 to something proprietary is damn-near impossible for a project this large with a team who are so ideologically motivated to make FOSS. If I today submit a PR to the Jellyfin codebase, they can’t legally relicense to a proprietary license without 1) getting my consent to give me ownership of their work (I’m not likely to be paid off or convinced it’s a good thing that work I submitted for free is being enshittified), or 2) removing my work from the project if they can’t get in touch with me or if I say no. To emphasize: this process is affirmative.
Thus, the process is to survey who’s contributed to the project, reach out to anyone whose work is still in the project (preferably in writing in a permanent, court-admissable format like email), ask them to transfer ownership of their copyright to you, keep track of who’s said no, said yes, or not answered, fulfill conditions for anyone who wants something in return, and meticulously rip out all of the code from people who say “no” or don’t answer. One of the project’s major contributors died 10 years ago? Legally, too fucking bad: they didn’t relinquish shit to you. Rip out that legacy code and start over.
Just like for instance if you want to take a Wikipedia article and own it for yourself, you can’t just go ask the Wikimedia Foundation nicely. You have to contact every single contributor whose work is extant in that article, and rip out work that isn’t explicitly given to you by its owner.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
Some points as someone who does not use Tailscale:
- Tailscale the software is under a BSD license. Plex is proprietary.
- The discussion in this thread about Jellyfin is less corporate versus non-corporate (where in the context of proprietary software this would be payware versus freeware) and more FOSS versus proprietary software.
- To be clear, Tailscale is proudly doing the same Series C venture capital bullshit as Plex. They’re seemingly just as corporate as Plex, but at minimum, the software as it exists right now isn’t tied down to Tailscale.
- Additionally, Jellyfin + Tailscale means that you’re using Jellyfin, which is FOSS. Using FOSS doesn’t just benefit you but also everyone else using it because it benefits greatly from the network effect. Any money that goes to Jellyfin that would’ve otherwise gone to Plex is given back to the community and hard-working developers rather than lining some soulless venture capitalist’s pocket.
- With Jellyfin + Tailscale, everything you’re using locally is FOSS. With Plex, none of it is. And even taking corporate into account, with Jellyfin + Tailscale, most of what you’re using locally is non-corporate. With Plex, all of it is.
TL;DR: This isn’t a binary “corporate versus non-corporate”.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
Dollars to donuts it’s the corpo-fascist “tread on me harder, daddy” version of “freedom” they’re advocating for.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
Not quite. Jellyfin does take in donations, but they intentionally hide this feature on their website – first you need to go to their
Contributepage, then you need to read “Find a way to contribute” blurb and notice and clickOther, then you need to clickHelp Pay for Expenses, then they give you a speech practically asking you to reconsider:As a project, we generally do not like asking for donations - we are entirely volunteer-run and intend to keep Jellyfin free as in beer, as well as free as in speech, forever. We do not wish, support, nor intend donations to privilege any user’s voice or priorities. That said, if you do want to help us cover some operating expenses like our VPS hosting, domains, developer licenses, metadata API keys, and other incidental expenses, check out our OpenCollective page to donate. Our entire budget as well as all expenses are publicly visible there.
And then you have to click that link and intentionally donate money – any amount you want either one time or monthly. The level of integrity compared to Plex – who take in VC money hand over fist and are descending into nickel-and-diming their customers – isn’t night-and-day: it’s the surface of a star and the center of the Boötes Void.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
same can be said of FOSS. back channel deals, betrayals, hostile takeovers. all of these things can(and have) happen to FOSS projects. all under a false pretense of “openness”. it’s stupid easy to change licenses and lock out contributors. it’s happened several times. although you can technically argue anything before the license change could be forked, the event usually puts a bad taste in the public mouth and contributions dry up anyway. nobody wants to support a project with uncertainty.
“you could technically argue”??? That’s literally, unambiguously the law. That’s how the licensing works. This isn’t a technicality; it’s a fundamental, widely understood feature of the license. On top of that, licenses like the GPL have extremely stringent requirements for changing the license. (Here, Jellyfin uses GPLv2, so we’ll go with that.)
Everyone with work in the current codebase has copyright over that work under the GPLv2. Nobody relinquishes that to some centralized entity. Thus, you have two options for every single individual person whose contributions are still extant in your project: 1) get their consent not just to relicense but to the specific license you want, or 2) remove their work from the project either because you can no longer contact them or because they’ve said no.
The fact that you called this process “stupid easy” for anything but the smallest, most insular project is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve heard today, and I’m not even wasting my time with the rest of your comment given how shockingly willing you are to not just speak about things you have zero understanding of but to somehow arrive at the most false statement possible about them.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
Absolutely true for FOSS. For freeware? My opinion is that it’s money wasted because, unlike FOSS:
- I have no way of auditing what I’m putting money toward.
- There’s no way for the community to keep it going if it stops or goes to shit.
- Money given toward proprietary software is money that would be better spent to FOSS whose developers actually give a shit about bettering the world.
- Proprietary software isn’t worthy of your respect or support. At best, use it if there are no FOSS alternatives, but don’t give money to something that could rapidly enshittify at any moment with no recourse and no way or recouperating your money.
- Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing 2 weeks ago:
Exhibit #46,853 for why freeware will inevitably fall out from under your feet and why you should exclusively use FOSS wherever possible.
- Comment on After they kill Wikipedia history will be AI hallucinations. 2 weeks ago:
Not only that, but MediaWiki is FOSS, and all existing content on all Wikimedia Foundation (except for a relative few kept on fair use grounds) are at most as restrictive as CC BY-SA 4.0. So you’d have whatever exists on Wikipedia currently (plus Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, etc., keeping in mind too that there are many Wikipedias besides English) plus the software that interacts with that data, other countries which haven’t fully descended into fascism, the members of the Wikimedia Foundation, a bunch of pissed-off editors, and a pissed-off public… I think a new, substantially similar non-profit would crop up in the UK etc., and very few things would have to change about the content that’s on the platform (where the UK has more restrictive speech laws).
- Comment on 'Starter homes' cost at least $1 million in over 200 U.S. cities, Zillow data finds 2 weeks ago:
A starter home?! This home is a finisher home! A shelterer of GODS! The GOLDEN GOD!
I am untethered, and my rage knows no bounds!
- Comment on List of Alternatives to Adobe Programs 2 weeks ago:
I’m really disappointed not to see Okular there. It’s FOSS, and it’s very cozy and useful.
- Comment on So true 2 weeks ago:
My dad: “The plain peanut butter sandwiches will continue until morale improves.”
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
This user’s entire history (username included) is spent signal-boosting attacks against Wikipedia. (Incidentally, they just deleted one from this very community because they got called out for it). This user is a ridiculous troll and should be banned from communities for their transparent, bad-faith agenda. I’m sure if there’s a story worth posting, somebody other than “wikipediasuckscoop” can post it. It’s so transparent that in an age where the Internet is blanketed with far-right disinformation, one of the last remaining bastions of truth that refuses to compromise and bend to said disinformation will come under attack by bad-faith, far-right actors desperately flailing to discredit it. This user doesn’t give a single shit about gender equality; they simply aim to discredit a resource standing in the way of their agenda.
A gender gap is a longstanding and severe issue on the English Wikipedia, but there’s a lot this article leaves out about its monumental and ongoing efforts to increase its coverage of women and to welcome more women into the project. This especially includes WikiProject Women in Red, far and away Wikipedia’s largest collaborative project whose entire purpose is to create new biographies about women. A large part of this biographical underrepresentation stems less from a bias in the editors themselves and more from the way that historical women have often been left out of published, reliable sources, and it’s taking scholars enormous efforts to bring those women to the surface today. It also says: “just 10-15% of its editors are female.” What this fails to acknowledge is that there’s an option simply not to declare your gender at all. To be clear, the ratio is atrocious, but 10–15% is likely an underrepresentation: women may be substantially less likely to self-declare their gender than men. The Wikimedia Foundation has outreach, activism, etc. focused specifically on recruiting women to the project and has for well over a decade now. Wikipedia really is trying, and its experienced editors are constantly aware of this.
The article does put forth three hypotheses for why this gap exists, but I don’t think they put forth compelling evidence that the reason it exists is because of the culture on Wikipedia or in general is Wikipedia’s “fault”.
- Comment on Wiki Wars: Editors and propagandists are fighting for influence over the online encyclopedia’s most controversial entries 3 weeks ago:
This user’s entire history (username included) is spent signal-boosting demonstrably false, bad-faith attacks against Wikipedia. I have no idea how this post has a ratio of 28–0 when the article’s premise is that the ADL of all organizations is a good arbiter of what is antisemitic when it comes to coverage of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. The article starts with “This past March, researchers from the Anti-Defamation League accused Wikipedia of biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Newsflash: it isn’t. The ADL consistently treats anyone who dares to challenge Israel’s genocide as antisemitic. This user is a ridiculous troll and should be banned from communities for their transparent, bad-faith agenda. I’m sure if there’s a story worth posting, somebody other than “wikipediasuckscoop” can post it. It’s so transparent that in an age where the Internet is blanketed with far-right disinformation, one of the last remaining bastions of truth that refuses to compromise and bend to said disinformation will come under attack by bad-faith, far-right actors desperately flailing to discredit it.
I’d like to point out that when the article says “propagandists” (i.e. people opposed to Israel’s genocide) and arbitrarily delineates them from “editors”, what it’s failing to point out (likely because a) its author doesn’t understand shit about fuck or b) its author doesn’t care) is that any article related to a conflict between Israel and Arab countries is extended protected by default (on top of other heavy editing restrictions). This means that it can only be edited 1) on a registered account 2) which is at least 30 days old and 3) which has made at least 500 edits. This isn’t 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 typing “Izreel sux lololol” or even just some random sockpuppet account trying to insert anti-Israel bias. You have to be an experienced editor to make changes to these articles. Every single one of these even remotely controversial public changes is put under a microscope and discussed ad nauseum by other experienced editors on the corresponding talk page – not just to make sure that it’s covered without bias per NPOV but that its claims are suitably backed by reliable, independent sources.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
This user’s entire history (username included) is spent signal-boosting demonstrably false, bad-faith attacks against Wikipedia. I have no idea how this post has a ratio of 28–0 when the entire article’s premise is that the ADL of all organizations is a good arbiter of what is antisemitic when it comes to coverage of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. The article starts with “'This past March, researchers from the Anti-Defamation League accused Wikipedia of biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Newsflash: it isn’t. The ADL consistently treats anyone who dares to challenge Israel’s genocide as antisemitic. This user is a ridiculous troll and should be banned from communities for their transparent, bad-faith agenda.
- Comment on Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google senior executives told employees to destroy messages 3 weeks ago:
I read this as “incinerate”. A principled, pragmatic opposition to the death penalty in any case I can think of is the only reason I would disapprove.