Comment by ur-whale
Comment by ur-whale 2 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by ur-whale 2 days ago
[flagged]
> unless you're still using the spying machine
So a computer?
If you use a free operating system https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html then you have less chance of being spied on. At least you can check
I don’t think they need to for there to be value. Sure, maybe there’s spyware in free software that they haven’t found. But we know that these advertising companies are putting e-stalking code into all their products right now. Trading that certainty for an unknown is a net benefit.
> At least you can check
I don't think they enable me to inspect e.g. my CPU's firmware, or that they're able to provide any guarantees about the hardware itself.
So it still just makes for a large shopping bag sized trust-me-bro box executing hundreds of billions of instructions a second. But now with a false sense of comfort.
I'm more than happy to concede on this being overly dramatic though, provided you concede on having been engaging in a similarly unserious hyperbole of your own.
I don’t think that free software is an unserious hyperbole, actually. (It really does exist, even though big tech wants you to think it does not). But yes of course the hardware must be free too, at least insofar as it does not impede on our freedom to understand what it is doing to the software we run on it, and the firmware must also be free software
> I don’t think that free software is an unserious hyperbole, actually.
Me neither, considering that doesn't even work grammatically. Very clearly I was referring to "unless you're still using the spying machine" being the unserious hyperbole.
> It really does exist, even though big tech wants you to think it does not.
I must have been continually missing "big tech's" efforts on that front. They do engage in other efforts that go against either the spirit or the proliferation of software freedom, but what you describe I legitimately have not witnessed at all.
Our ideals do not simply change the fact that chrome and its derivatives are the most used browser by a big margin at this moment. And, looking at how this came to be and how things were with IE before it, they are going to stay a bit longer still. Stop being in denial about the way most people function: they don't care, they will eat the most convenient slop they are being served and not question it much. Because it doesn't matter as long as it allows you to browse your socials.