I’d be so mad if the last thing I saw before plummeting to my fiery death was that stupid smug little sad face and a BSOD

Thanks for taking the time to share that with me. I am no Zionist. However, I do pose the question, because of Red Hat’s stewardship of Fedora, do you believe that makes Fedora morally compromised? Because Red Hat develops systemd, does that mean all Linux distros that use it are thusly compromised as well? ARPANET, the technology that the modern internet stems from, was developed directly by the US Deprtment of Defense. Can a leftist then morally use the internet? I don’t mean this as a sarcastic strawman but as a genuine question in good faith. I myself don’t have an answer, probably a bit yes and a bit no. I will point out the distinction that while Fedora doesn’t have control of what Red Hat does or does not to, it does have direct control over whether or not to implement these age verification laws in question.

What about a distro like Universal Blue, which is directly downstream of Fedora but not affiliated with it organizationally? Where do we draw the line between consent and simple happenstance? Everything is connected to a Nazi, a Zionist or colonialism if you dig deep enough, we live in capitalist hell-world, it’s the foundation of our very society. Consent is implied an in many cases, unavoidable.

That being said you have given me quite a bit to think about and if anything have solidified my decision to move away from Fedora. I hope you don’t interpret my response as adversarial in any way like others who have responded to my post. Cheers

Care to backup your claim? I’m not familiar with that bit.

As far as I’m aware, fedora is a public project and not a org that is “owned” by anyone. You’ve got to do a great bit of mental gymnastics to arrive at your conclusion just to try and make me feel stupid. Why?

Also don’t act like there aren’t serious implications of imposing age checks in supposedly free libre software. Libre software should be a fundamental human right. You can believe in that and also that military interventionism is also bad.

You can conflate my point of view all you want, but let’s dial back the cutesy sarcasm. Thanks.

I’m less twitchy on the AI thing. CEO’s gonna CEO, and I think this whole AI thing is going to quietly die down. It’s just… not as useful as the people pushing it says it is. You can’t just mass-delusion people into thinking something does what it doesn’t do. It writes bad code. It is insecure. It makes people insane. These are facts. The tech is not improving.

Not to mention, I find the Register quite often to be a bit too-cute-by-half in its “reporting”. We’ll see.

https://github.com/BryanLunduke/DoesItAgeVerify

endeavorOS is listed among those who have “decided not to age verify” but I will say the author of this page is a certifiable moron so take that with a grain of salt. Of all the distros listed and not implementing age verification, endeavorOS’s seem the least explicit.

Fair point, but I think at this point it’s extremely likely Fedora will comply, and my issue with this is ideological, not practical. I will not use a distribution that complies with this law because I believe it is morally compromised.

The technology itself is novel and cool. Its the complete and utter meltdown of all tech companies into brainless hype machines that is harmful, which is course, is a function of capitalist incentive and the need for the tech industry to come out with some new paradigm shifting innovation every decade. A normal, healthy society would have been able to leverage machine learning and LLM technology where its most useful, like parsing large amounts of data, or running a local instance on your computer to ask a few questions, etc. We wouldn’t see LLMs in every text editor, pencilcase and pair on sneakers but these snake oil salesmen who run the US economy are absolutely desperate for a new paradigm shift so they can keep making exponentially more money.

The thing is, we don’t need to build these datacenters siphoning comically evil amounts of energy from the grid and making personal compute a thing of the past. Average everyday person doesn’t need cloud compute, they can run a local 4b parameter (very, very small) model on their laptop or phone if they need to ask chatgpt to make them a workout routine or to ask them who won the 1918 world series. But these fucking cretins don’t care, that’s not the point, they are in this because it’s a golden ticket to growth city and once they cash their check they don’t give one hot fuck about the human-spirit-stealing-machine they built.

TLDR: our society is broken and that’s why we keep getting the shittiest, lowest-common-denominator version of everything. everything has to suck by definition because that’s the only version that the system we built will allow.

Microsoft has become spiritually similar to one of those late night infomercial companies. So shameless and deeply unserious.

I live in the US, and I had Lyme when I was a teenager. Simple blood test confirmed it, I was prescribed antibiotics and it cleared up nearly instantly. No one told me it didn’t exist.

Because our sclerotic legislature and campaign finance systems ensure that every single function of “democratic” society is fully and totally captured by the interests of capital

Bad bot

Guy who sells AI says they have the BEST AI EVER! Shocking!!!1

This is exactly where anyone who has an interest in actually changing someone’s mind wants to be.

90% of these conversations, which are often shared between friends or at least acquaintances, can be “won” by listening to the other person and meeting them on their own terms. People are way more receptive to hear what you have to say when they feel like what you’re actually saying is relevant to the points that they are making, etc. For example, if someone complains about immigration, it’s likely that they want Americans to have those jobs instead and see immigration as a threat to their way of life. The way to handle something like this is always to address the problem radically, i.e. from the root, and say something like: “I hear what you’re saying, but what if the countries that most immigrants are coming from didn’t have so many issues that they feel like they need to risk their lives/livelihoods to come all the way here? Why is it that these countries in central/south America have so many economic problems relative to the US?” Now the conversation has been re-framed so that it’s actually addressing a root cause, and this person will walk away at least having a thought provoked about US imperialism and it’s consequences, which is an important concept to understand.

If you simply resort to shutting down topics like this, because you feel a person who holds this worldview is a racist, xenophobe, etc, and therefore morally inferior, you never allow yourself the opportunity to win. You’ve already given up the ghost if you follow your instinct and resort to ad hominem attacks, scolding and finger wagging, and you prove that you lack the rhetorical ability to actually SELL your project, something that is an absolute necessity if you have a genuine interest in the electoral gains of any kind of socialist/populist/proletarian project. My political platform is already popular. People don’t need to be convinced that it’s desirable, only that it is possible, so I am happy to debate and share my opinions with anyone who will listen.

I think the premise is missing a few key points. Namely, do we mean in the context of a one on one debate where I’m trying to either convince someone or others involved, or a dialectic where both parties are attempting to come to an agreed upon truth? How serious is my ideological opponent taking MY point of view, or are we just talking in the abstract, like can you imagine in your head tolerating the fact that others have differing opinions with you and living with that reality.

Basically, I’m a materialist, so for the majority of everyday folks especially including those in my life, I don’t attribute someones political opinions to moral failings or rectitude on their part. 9 out of 10 times it’s due to their upbringing, the material conditions surrounding their childhood and early development, as well as the things that happen to them throughout their life that form someones worldview. Morality might have something to do with it, but ultimately morality is subjective, so who am I to say that someones idea of right and wrong is better than mine. Everyone is justified and righteous in their own mind.

That said, if I’m actively engaged with someone who isn’t taking what I say seriously (as fascists often do, whom I consider by definition non serious actors in a debate), or is simply using ad hominem attacks on my character, I pretty much am done talking at that point. I feel like I come off as very patient and try and empathize with most people, usually because if I’m actually having this conversation in real life, they’re in my family or in my day to day life, and I try to present my opinion as something that’s naturally compatible with their worldview, because I’m confident that my opinions are correct and I don’t need to insult or demean someone to get my point across.

TL;DR, 8