That first article, though I have read it through a translation app, is truly insane. The judge's quoted statement is just terrifying:
« L’ensemble des membres de ce groupe se montraient particulièrement méfiants, ne communiquaient entre eux que par des applications cryptées, en particulier Signal, et procédaient au cryptage de leurs supports informatiques […]. »
Translated via DeepL:
"All the members of this group were particularly suspicious, communicating with each other only via encrypted applications, in particular Signal, and encrypting their computer media [...]".
Clandestine behavior, he says. Is the judge seriously thinking along the lines of “if you've got nothing to hide…” and associating ‘clandestine behavior’ to being a criminal? That's scary.
I do all of those things too because why wouldn't I?
Is there anything as to the outcome of the arrests? Also what was the reason in the first place for the police to be interested in these people?
I think that's perhaps the worst, but the incompetence shown by the government and the judge is honestly just scary.
Translated with DeepL as well for consistency.
As for the notions of how Tor and Tails work, although they are at the heart of the accusations of "clandestinity", they seem quite vague.
An agent from the DGSI, for example, will write, seemingly confusing the two: "Thor [sic] allows you to connect to the Internet and use reputed communication and data encryption tools. All data is stored in the computer's RAM memory and is therefore deleted when the machine is switched off". Could it be that this person is referring to Tails?
As for the examining magistrate, he cites seal minutes relating to Tails keys, which do not work on cell phones, as evidence of knowledge of "complex techniques for reconfiguring your phone to make it anonymous". He adds, as does PNAT, that Tor enables "anonymous Internet browsing using public wifi" - as if he thought public wifi was necessary for its use.
Preemptive defeding I think is bad. You can’t convince people to move to better options if you never have a chance to interact with them in the first place. Obviously there may be reason to defed in the future but to do it prematurely is a mistake that will isolate the fediverse in a way that is uninviting to new people unfamiliar with the space.
As long as they’re federated, they can track your movements. The fediverse doesn’t need Meta to be successful. And if it can somehow gain benefit from it, that will then become a weakness that Meta will exploit.
It’s not a question of if meta will fuck the fediverse over, but how and when. Pre-emptive defederation is the best way to mitigate those effects. You’ve seen their track record, the time of “benefit of the doubt” is long gone.
Federating with an entity that is publicly traded and has shareholders to answer to surely has a goal of endless profit growth - that’s the nature of capitalism. The current spirit of the fediverse is one not driven by profits. What we have now will very likely change into something that doesn’t resemble our current experience once it’s engulfed by Meta.
We don’t need to convince anyone to do anything. The network effect is what matters - the larger the network, the more useful it is, which makes social media a natural monopoly. The way we beat them is by having a more robust network that doesn’t enshittify and retains users long term. Eventually people will realise that Threads is worse because most of the rest of the network has excluded them. They’ll find their way here.
We can defederate for any reason. If people don’t like it, they can go elsewhere, but if that means they’re joining a smaller, shittier network, well, I guess that means they’ve chosen the less popular option. It’s up to them.
Eh ... maybe a lot of people are just coasting through life and not thinking too hard, just letting things happen at them. Whenever I see an advertisement (which is honestly not very often anymore, and generally happens on accident), my first thought is "Somebody spent a lot of money to produce this ad and get it delivered to my eyes. People don't spend a lot of money for no reason; they must want some of mine, and I'm not going to give them any."
That's all ads are, people - essentially anonymous strangers - asking you to give them money. When you think about ads in those terms, it requires zero effort to not give strangers money.
Of course, a product or service is being offered in exchange for that money, but said product or service is necessarily less costly to produce and deliver than it is to purchase. There is always profit, and sometimes that profit margin is quite high. Remember, too, that "profit" does not mean the compensation that labor and administration receives for their parts in producing and delivering the product or service. Profit means money that goes into owners' pockets, whether those are private or public owners. Those owners receive compensation simply on the basis of their status as owners, separate from any work they put into production or delivery.
That's capitalism. When you buy a thing, part of the profit margin of your purchase is basically just giving money to the owners because they are owners. This means that the purchased thing costs an amount of money representing a fair exchange of value, plus another amount of money that you get nothing in return for.
I know this line of thinking has kind of skidded off the runway, let me bring it back: Always remember that every purchase you make in a capitalist system includes in part your giving money to someone who is very likely more powerful and wealthy than you, for which you receive nothing in return. When you remember this, it is obvious that most advertising is designed to increase that wealth transfer, and not to increase equitable exchange of value.
I honestly don’t care too much about wealthy people getting richer, that really doesn’t impact me at all, I just care about whether a product has good value. An advertisement means the product doesn’t stand on its own, so they need to put it in front of my eyes in order to sell it. As in, I wouldn’t find it any other way.
So I ignore all ads, outside of coupons, when I look for discounts on products I need anyway. I don’t buy things because they’re on sale, I buy more of something I need because it’s on sale (I have plenty of storage space at home). If a product is worth buying, I’ll find it when searching for solutions or from recommendations from friends (who found it in their own research).
So I block ads because they can only cause my harm (tracking my personal data and whatnot), and I don’t feel bad because that’s not how I buy products anyway.
People have been ignoring wealthy people getting richer since the the days of Rockefeller.
The influence of the rich over government is becoming substantially stifling. The supreme Court right now is a prime indicator that this is becoming a problem that will affect us all.
“The rich” don’t have that much control over government, that power tends to come from larger lobbying groups. It just so happens that many rich people run large corporations, but the lobbying would happen even if those corporations were run by less wealthy people. The interests of these groups don’t often align with the interests of the public at large.
The problem is that large lobbying groups (corporations, unions like police and teachers unions, PACs, etc) have a lot of influence in governments, not that rich people exist. The focus, then, should be on fixing issues surrounding lobbying (e.g. campaign finance reform) and reducing the benefits to that lobbying (IMO, reducing scope of government so lobbying accomplishes less for powerful groups). That’s a very complex topic and there aren’t any good solutions, but rich people getting richer isn’t the problem here, it’s a symptom of the problem.
Yes lets “reduce the scope of government” so that the people who spend billions on lobbying, can instead use those billions to create their own fiefdoms. This is a good alternative.
Reducing the scope of government doesn’t mean removing the regulatory power of the government, it just means focusing the government on its essential roles. For example, instead of complicated emissions standards with tons of loopholes, implement a carbon tax and increase it to reduce total pollution. Instead of safety regulations for automakers, hold leadership of companies criminally liable for negligence and charge massive fines for incidents.
In other words, simplify government to price in negative externalities instead of directly trying to prevent those externalities, and the market will correct to eliminate those costs. The more complex government policy is, the more opportunity there is for corruption (it’s often cheaper to create a loophole than fix the underlying problem).
Who do you think wrote the “loopholes” into the law? The fossil Fuel Lobbyists. Those weren’t oversights. It wasn’t like some selfless senator was crafting legislation, and wouldn’t you know it, he accidentally defined a light-truck in a way that SUVs still qualify. Aw Shucks.
As far as criminal liability for corporations, do you think that our current representatives just don’t think of these “unique” and possibly even good ideas? No! They are PAID by lobbyists to pass the laws that the lobbyists have written specifically for the industry they are representing. Your entire premise is combination of just-world fallacy, and a healthy dose of the wisdom of the markets. But you are absolutely wrong on both accounts.
our current representatives just don’t think of these “unique” and possibly even good ideas?
I think our electoral system is broken, so whether our representatives think about them is irrelevant, it’s not getting passed unless it fits with the party strategy. And sometimes the party strategy is to cozy up to the fossil fuel industry or whatever.
I’m under no illusion about that.
My point is that this isn’t some problem inherent to “rich people” and making rich people poorer won’t solve the problem. The problem is a huge mess of issues that all work together to reward backroom deals, and that’s the kind of thing larger organizations like corporations, labor unions, and PACs have the time to deal with. And that’s the nature of things anytime there’s high stakes, like with government power.
Everyone will have their pet solution(s), be it electoral reform, campaign finance reform, term limits, etc. Those are all well and good, but as long as there are rewards for hiding loopholes in the legal code, it’s going to be a problem. So my solution is more of a perspective that we need simpler, more easily audible laws, and the way we get that is by restricting the types of regulations we can enact (e.g. the government shouldn’t define the difference between a light truck and a passenger vehicle, all vehicles would pay a carbon tax, as well as a weight-based road fee). Unfortunately, that’s not possible until we do some of those reforms (my preferred starting point is electoral reform, such as ending FPTP), and even then it’s going to be an uphill battle.
Regardless, my point about rich people not being the problem stands, they’re merely a symptom of a larger problem.
Due to Apples walled garden, its going to be difficult to nearly impossible. I know it’s not the answer you want to hear but moving to an Android/ pixel system is going to be far, far easier and will produce better results. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but that’s the reality of the iPhone ecosystem.
As an experienced Android dev and former iOS dev: pushing someone to Google products is not going to improve someone’s privacy. Apple is not “good” in terms of privacy, but Google is much worse. The only real options in that area are MicroG-based Android OS-es, or fully de-googled ones. However, custom ROMs are often not problem-free though. In that case, a Pixel phone is probably still the best option.
As someone who runs 7 servers in different datacenters (including cloud, local, and 2 in my home rack), being able to test and update on one system, then push that update to all the others, is a dream. Immutability is a step in that process, since it prevents weirdness from creeping in between updates. My only gripe right now with the options is they all still feel bloated. I miss original Rancher. All I need is Docker/Podman, and maybe wireguard to string the servers together. Likewise, my data hoarder computers need only zfs and enough on top to link them safely (so, wireguard). If I could focus on 2 stacks that I can push out elsewhere easily, I would be soooo much happier. Sain immutability tools are honestly magical.
They’re spot on. I had this thought last week while trying to find an ISO. It’s like it’s a state secret or something. 😆
Fedora, OpenSuse, Arch, Gentoo, Kali, and Armbian all make it easy to find an ISO or image to get started. The free RHEL downloads are the only thing more hidden then Debian downloads.
The ISO is one tenth of the problem. The average non-techie Linux neophyte is not going to have a clue what to do next once they have downloaded this ISO thing, even if they somehow managed to pick the right one. Debian’s onboarding for ordinary users is just disastrously bad.
Why does every single distro HAVE to cater to noobs? If someone wants "easy" Debian, then they can use Mint or Ubuntu. Debian is the distro you go to once you've outgrown those two. It's meant for technical applications, like servers and network infrastructure, not really something like casual browsing or gaming.
As someone who uses Debian for browsing and gaming, I agree. It is a tool that you pick because you have a goal in mind and I pretty much never recommend it as an intro to Linux for new users. The only reason I continue to use it as a desktop/laptop is for consistency between all my machines so I don’t have to remember how to use 8 different package managers.
Anecdata: I used Debian before using Ubuntu. Debian is not just for servers, it works fine on personal computers. And ethically it is better than Ubuntu, more so now than ever. But the onboarding process is a mess. When I have just replaced my laptop and I’m on bad wifi struggling to ditch Windows, and I don’t have a piece of paper handy with all the arguments on an obscure dd command, and I risk bricking my machine, I need a bulletproof onboarding process. That was why I moved to Ubuntu. I never cared about “outgrowing” an OS, my concerns are more about privacy and ethics. Well, one would hope that these things might be available to all people one day. That was what Debian was supposed to be for.
Apparently by “people” you are referring to experienced technical users like yourself. Everyone else will need to learn what an ISO is, which one is needed, and how exactly to transform that file into a bootable USB stick. This means intense hand-holding from beginning to end. Which is possible, because other distros manage it. Debian does not.
If a user is that far down the technical literacy ladder, they do not need Debian, they need Ubuntu or Mint or one of a dozen other distros that prioritize UX over production.
You gotta download it either way, netinstall or not. At least that way you can pick and choose what you actually need. Are you trying to set up a computer in the woods?
Yeah, but there is a point. I’m not a Linux newbie, but sometimes you can get lost looking for the iso file that includes firmware, or non-free, or certain desktop. On most distro’s pages, the big fat button leads to a direct link to the iso file and another to a torrent at most.
Well that’s nice, I think last Debian I downloaded what buster or something so I might have been talking about old experiences. They’re still making the user navigate through an FTP-like file structure to find the current amd64 iso?
I gave it another shot having not attempted for a few years, I was looking for the most complete, stable, non-free, offline, x64 image for a USB flash drive. I failed very quickly because I didn’t know whether I needed a CD or DVD image. A few minutes of clicking through random and irrelevant “FAQs” and I finally found an answer I understood but only through experience, CD images are smaller than 700mb and my flash drive is large, so I wanted a DVD image. Back to the top, and I found the image I needed.
So it took a few minutes, and I’ve done this several times before. A new user would have absolutely no clue.
You’re describing that you want something that isn’t the standard installer, with the ability to do offline installs. A new user with no clue about anything would probably just use the top link and run the graphic installer, ending up with the same system as if he/she had downloaded the dvd version. Is your criticism that internet is a requirement for the standard installer?
Correction. A new user, meaning an actual normie Windows user rather than a nerd like people in this discussion, will get absolutely nowhere trying to install Debian. “Here’s the ISO” means nothing to the average person and anyway that’s only 5% of the process of getting the thing up and running.
Would a normie Windows user know how to install Windows on a computer without OS? Of course, this hypothetical user doesn’t have to, because he/she probably bought a computer with Windows pre-installed. Is there any OS in the world that is easy to install if you don’t know what an iso file is? Which measurement are we using when the claim is that Debian is difficult to install? What is an easy install?
What a fatalistic attitude. Or is it gatekeeping? So what if Windows is hard to install for noobs? As you say, they never need to do it. The subject here is Debian, not Windows. And yes, other distros are easier. Have you even tried? Obvious example being Ubuntu but Fedora is even easier, go check it out. Assumes no knowledge of terminology, contains a native tool for making the boot stick, it’s step-by-step all the way to first boot. My claim that Debian is hard is based on first-hand experience of it and other distros. Seems you are more interested in defending Debian’s honor than making it better. I want Debian to be better. Do you?
I am not trying to gatekeep. It could be that I’m blind to why debian is hard to install, I think it’s about the same as ubuntu or mint or fedora etc. Which means I’m not the right person to improve this area. I do want to lower the thresholds, and currently I’m helping out with that in other areas. This discussion started with the claim that it was hard to find the iso, which I disagree with, and now I’m not sure what we’re disagreeing about.
Fair enough, apologies for the slightly aggressive tone. ITT there were certainly others who seemed to believe that installing Debian is a simple matter of identifying an ISO file and that Debian is somehow a user-friendly distro. To me at least, these claims are completely out of touch.
I do want to lower the thresholds, and currently I’m helping out with that in other areas
Kind of. My criticism is that a new user will end up with that net installer without realizing it, which may not be what they want, confusing them further. Bypassing the website is not a good solution, there’s important information there like the install guide. ISO downloads are only one example of how the website is hard to navigate, even if they manage to skip that step it’s only going go make it harder in the future.
I see, so then there are two options: 1) Make the full offline installer the default, or 2) put all options side by side and explain the difference.
The first option isn’t good because any default will not fit everyone, there will always be someone looking for what isn’t the default. The second option would just be confusing for the person who knows nothing about computers. “I have to read a wall of text to decide what to download? This is too much!”
I mean, there’s no way to win here. Is there any OS avaliable that can have one installer that fits exactly everyone, or a way to have a list to choose from if the user knows nothing about the choices?
There is something “clunky” about the website, but to be fair, the first page has a big button to download the installer, which leads to a page where the first link is the version most people want, the second link leads to instructions how to get it onto a usb (or cd/dvd) for linux/windows/mac, and clearly visible a link to all the other versions of the installer that people might want, with explanations what they are for.
For me it’s hard to put my finger on why the website is bad, all the information is there. I do agree that it just somehow feels bad, but I don’t understand why.
I don't think it will die for quite some time, but Linux distributions will eventually all switch to Wayland as support grows.
Xorg will survive for a long time. X is still part of many BSD flavors, other UNIX variants, and academic institutions still use it. The project will continue to be maintained for years as some die-hard contributors stay aboard.
They are a video creator first and foremost, not a writer for a blog or a magazine. It’s like demanding a janitor to make and serve you a meal just because they work in a kitchen.
And then asking the janitor why they’re a janitor instead of a cook. Like, if you don’t like videos that’s fine, but what is the point of commenting on one saying “god I hate videos.”
It’s especially funny that they said that everyone defaults to videos when, at least with Linux related stuff, thats definitely not the case. This guy is one of the few not terrible Linux content creators, there really aren’t many Linux dedicated content creators to begin with, so what’s the harm of this? Go read the arch wiki or a blog if that’s what you prefer, but don’t needlessly shit on a different format that others may prefer or enjoy.
Wow, thanks for calling me stupid man, really appreciate it. Lemme know when/if you’re interested in having a civil conversation instead of spewing insults every other sentence.
You’re downvoted to oblivion for being right. Well you could’ve phrased it nore civil and friendly though 😌
I miss the Internet of the beginnings. Pure, simple and efficient information. Mostly. I’d argue the downfall slowly started with geocities and the rise of “funny” animated gifs and music in websites.
And it all went bonkers with “web2.0” and sites needing 15 fat libraries and megabytes of visual pleasures to just tell the time…
For many kinds of content, I also prefer text over video for exactly the reason you say—it takes less time to read. In particular, if a company can choose a medium, I wish they close text more often. So, there is a kernel of a reasonable point here.
All that said…
Beyond just the totally unacceptable tone, even the reasonable part of the comment is misplaced here.
This is not a company, it is a single guy. Projecting onto his videos your thoughts on the motivations of the “marketing” dept seems a bit silly.
Most importantly, this guy is a YouTube content creator. His job is to create videos for YouTube. People ( regular people ) ask him to do that. Insulting a YouTube content creator for creating content on YouTube is….well…I do not not want to start the name calling but let’s just say the insults hurled above apply more to the person making those comments than they do to the guy who made this video.
As for the bigger picture, there is room in the world for both text and video. Have you ever watched television? Do you constantly rant that everything on TV should have been a book or an article? What was more popular: Game of Thrones or a Song of Ice and Fire?
Despite your preference, video has more reach. This has been true since there has been video.
There is a lot of demand for YouTube videos. There is enough that regular people are able to make a small business for themselves out of creating YouTube content. That is what is happening here. Telling somebody to stop creating content that their fans enjoy and that funds the life that they want is pretty hostile and not very smart.
YouTube is entertainment. This is not content you have to consume. It is not about efficiency. It is not content that would have been produced some other way. If you do not like it, don’t consume it. Please though, do not waste everybody’s time complaining that it exists.
Oh no, don’t get me wrong. Of course Youtube isn’t evil/bad per se. It totally has a reason to exist. And of course youtubers make videos. And yes, i simply don’t consume YouTube unless i have to.
But, i am not on Youtube here. I am not here to grant someone a buck for a view. I don’t want advertisement. And i certainly don’t want videos. It personally pisses me off that i so often click on an interesting post here (lemmy in general) just to end up paywalled or in a damn video. That is all. I’d love a simple feature to opt out of posts that just advertise their youtube-video. If I’d want that, I’d go to, well, Youtube 😁
Not ranting about the existence of this video (it might be awesome, what do i know), but it’s just totally misplaced imho.
Like i wouldn’t want to browse YouTube to find videos of a picture or a text. Yeah sure it’s called “social MEDIA”, which includes all media. I’d just love to select what to consume.
I do think an option to suppress video content would be useful for people that really do not want to encounter it.
That said, this was not shared by the original content creator. This is not an advertisement. This is a Lemmy user sharing what they found to be interesting content with the rest of us. I really cannot be bothered by that.
I look to Lemmy to curate good content and let me know that it exists. How much time I have to dedicate to it is on my end. There are plenty of articles that I open and decide I do not have time for as well. Sometimes, I get value just from the comments.
If somebody else watches the video and leaves a useful comment about it, or starts an interesting discussion, that can be valuable and that can be read. So, I am not sure that getting rid of all video content would be a net positive for me even I never watch them.
At the very least, the comments here can be a gauge of what video content is most worth watching.
I dunno how that would be a trustworthy gauge. We talk here and i still don’t know the content of that video 😁
Sure, to each his own, but still…it’s lemmy, not reddit. And also this is a linux-post. I wonder how the efficiency of Linux goes with the inefficiency of videos with ads in it. But that’s just me, and I’m just annoyed by no client (that i know of) having such simple feature to just ignore video-posts, especially if it’s YouTube. Or just links to reddit or even nastier paywalls. Even if i might miss a good discussion or real information in the comments i would never see.
Though, Of course, you’re not wrong with all you said.
100%. I get where he’s coming from, but making it seem like this is all a conspiracy by marketers is just ridiculous. If you prefer text, that’s fine! But no one is going into the arch wiki and spamming about how they should ditch it for video. Different things appeal to different people, and writing off an entire format just because Google has enshittified YouTube is just dumb.
Amen. So this. I always audibly sigh at this shit. The tiniest piece of information is always wrapped into tons of useless crap and blahblah which could’ve been a highly informative block of text or a table. As if the net wasn’t already full of bloat anyway.
I play videos on the back ground or on the side while I code. The visuals are nice sometimes to clarify something but the audio is the bulk of what I am taking in.
This is one of the areas I see this whole “AI” thing being super useful. It could probably transcribe the video, separate the text into coherent sections and paragraphs, and take stills from the video as pictures. If the AI is smart enough, it could selectively pick out the right stills.
Yeah for some reason lemmy just discards any formatting (including line breaks) when parsing website content. But I think that’s because Lemmy has a very weird way of dealing with line breaks in general.
I know that, but it uses some weird Markdown implementation where new lines aren’t actually new lines for some reason. GitHub Markdown doesn’t have this issue.
Ensh*ttification = Capitalism. Every point, every annoyance, every spy attack, all lock-ins, and so on, is a result of that archaic sponsored belief system…
not Linux but some open-source software with premium features that have menu items with diamond icons or something like that pointing to those features. you cannot hide the menu items and it keeps sending you notifications to subscribe to an annual license.
Some distro that uses the Ubuntu repos blocked users from even installing snapd manually without jumping through a bunch of manual hoops. It’s one thing to not preinstall it, but that reeked to me of exactly the “we know better than our users” attitude they were accusing Canonical of.
Some distro that uses the Ubuntu repos blocked users from even installing snapd manually without jumping through a bunch of manual hoops. It’s one thing to not preinstall it, but that reeked to me of exactly the “we know better than our users” attitude they were accusing Canonical of.
To quote Clem, head of Linux Mint: “At a time where GNOME applications are less and less designed to work anywhere else than in GNOME, a project like XApp is extremely important.”
Libaidwata breaks backward compatibility with older gnome versions and amongst other things doesn’t allow theming natively, so the Cinnamon team are going to have to fork off and maintain the older code which works so they can continue to have theming and stuff with Gnome apps.
Gnome seem to like doing the opposite of the Linux philosophy which says interoperability should always be a priority so that the code can be shared as freely as possible.
I can’t tell whether they are stupid or lazy over at Gnome. It’s not enough to strip the DE down to nothing but now even the code that worked with previous, gnome still widely used, is being dumped.
Gnome isn’t bad, at all. The team has caused controversy and made mistakes, but gnome’s experience is great.
Talking about ubuntu, snaps suck, and it is more “bloated” than what you’d expect, but still, ubuntu isn’t half bad. Is mint better for what the ubuntu audience wants? Yes. Does ubuntu still work well? Yes
snaps (and the way canonical is pushing them) are awful at best. snaps are the one reason ive been meaning to hop right now, but its not the first time canonical pulls shit like this.
I was using Snaps until last year just to know how they are doing. Snaps did not feel much slower. However, I felt like I became mature enough to use Debian, so jumped ship.
a) having apt packages link a script that downloads the snap. That’s the first problem I had, back when I used Ubuntu as as snaps were rolling out. It gave me big trouble updating on bad internet connection.
b) making the server fixed and proprietary, restricting the freedom to do things differently and offer different changes to other users, that we’re used to in the Linux and FOSS world
Instead of reformatting it just logs you out and demands buying a Heal Crystal for 350 Linux Diamonds. You can buy Linux Diamonds in packages of 400 for just 9.99 or buy the 800 package to get a 10% discount!
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