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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I hate the fact that none of the big names support CalDAV natively. DAVx5 is cool and all, but app developers really need to step up their shit and support CalDAV already. Not just Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar but CalDAV as well. It’s not like they need to rebuild their apps from scratch.

    At this point you might just be better served using a web app instead of a native mobile app. Maybe K-9 Mail transformation into Thunderbird Mobile might bring some good news, but I’m not holding high hopes.

    Maybe we should, under the EU’s DMA, force anyone that bundles a calendar/note app with their phone OS to support CalDAV as well as any proprietary protocol of their choice.


  • I work in IT, and different definitions of what SaaS means are starting to wreak real havoc on the architecture as a whole.

    We are better served just quitting the acronyms and taking the time to talk about a more detailed description of what the service actually adds in terms of value.

    Amazon Prime is a subscription for shipping, video streaming, gaming benefits and more. Since software is not the primary goal, but a means of delivery for these other services, I will not consider Amazon Prime SaaS.


  • So your system knows the exact situation and still is slowing down my bike, just at the moment I need to accelerate to avoid being overrun by that large truck heading into me.

    After reading the article, it seems like the system is supposed to temporarily jam pedal assist, turning your ebike into a regular bike. And the system would need to be installed in all street legal ebikes for that to happen. Since you’re still free to accelerate by pedaling like a normal bike user, that significantly reduces the amount of situations where the pedal assist would actually save you. If you can’t avoid collision by pedaling harder, you probably had no chance in the first place.

    Considering most of the inner city’s roads now have a 30 km/h speed limit for cars, collision safety is probably even less of a concern now.

    I do share the concern of others in the comments that such a system would probably be broken on day one, and you have a bunch of script kiddies with flipper zeros running around bricking ebikes.

    The only way for that not to happen is to use proper encryption for any wireless signals being used to control this system. Considering the Dutch governmental reputation for IT failures, this is probably not going to go well.



  • Yeah I believe this to be a fallacy. If all your contacts use WhatsApp, they still haven’t grasped the concept of installing two applications side-by-side. Or they don’t fully understand why people are using signal over WhatsApp. If you fail both of those, congratulations, you’ve failed to be a self-aware tech user and you’re now demoted to a braindead consumer.

    I know, mind blowing right? Point is, society in general should not accept others forcing you to keep the WhatsApp monopoly in tact, which is exactly what’s happening here.

    It will take some time but eventually adoption will spread, even among your contacts. It’s just a matter of critical mass, and there are some pretty compelling features within Signal that make it a worthy replacement.


  • I think it depends on the adoption of Linux on the desktop. When more people get a taste of what freedom of software brings, they are going to want that for their phones as well.

    That or we might just be years away from the next big thing where everyone walks around with AR glasses and the cycle starts all over again with companies competing for a duopoly, and we’re just fucked.


  • Others in this thread have covered most of the points already, but it is mainly software support for certain key things I want to do using my phone, such as online banking.

    I realise most of this is just anxiety about taking the plunge and seeing what it’s like, so if I have money to burn I might just buy a second phone just to see if it’s a viable option for me.

    But yeah, I wish mobile Linux was popular enough for there to be support from key service providers. Though it might be a long shot since “desktop” Linux is still growing and we haven’t yet seen the support shift.


  • It was a big mistake by Google to base the Android Framework entirely on Java. Pivoting to Kotlin because you’ve discovered that working in Java produces nothing but garbage does nothing to fix the situation either.

    Can’t wait for generic Linux phones to be a (more popular) thing so we won’t have to deal with this clown world nonsense anymore.





  • It crazy how worked up non-customers get over this stuff. It’s not like rabid apple fans are grabbing their pitchforks.

    See, here is where we disagree. The amount of revenue Apple generates, makes them an example for other companies, and you see them start making the same dumb choices.

    I want this trend of tech enshittification to stop and the brain-dead Apple fans are to blame. Because they allow themselves to get milked for revenue, the whole consumer space has to deal with companies trying hard to nudge the boundaries with every new product. All aimed at extracting just a little more money than they did before.

    So no, in addition to not buying their shit devices and services, it actually helps to make others stop buying their shit as well. I am done allowing people to take the easy way out and to stay ignorant about the consequences of their choices. If you praise Apple to me, you’re going to get an earful.





  • From personal experience working in a Microsoft ecosystem, it’s mostly a matter of being able to hire the right people.

    There is a near-infinite source of IT workers that have some expertise with Microsoft software and services. And those kinds of numbers simply don’t exist for the Linux world, especially with all the different configurations out there.

    Medium-sized organizations have to employ a strategy of throwing enough idiots at a problem in order to keep things running. This also creates some of the issues they need the idiots for because no one has detailed knowledge of how things work.

    My attempts at proposing a linux-based application server have been met with all sorts of “but our domain policy”, “we can’t guarantee continuity”, “none of my people know how to admin this stuff” type responses.

    It definitely is a matter of mindset, but there is also a big commitment to make if switching systems to Linux. And that is a choice managers will only make if the benefits are clearly illustrated in a businesscase.


  • While I’m not exactly an expert user of AutoCAD (my background is architecture, industrial design and full stack development), I know enough about the software where I can tell it’s based on a lot of legacy spaghetti code.

    It’s the same for Solidworks, which I know through and through, including the shitty VBA scripting environment. My CAD teachers always used to say the software is built like a wooden playhouse, which has been extended over the years to include a second story, a slide, a swingset and a roof extension. But underneath it all, it is still the same “don’t fix it if it aint broke” codebase that Dassault has taken their chances on since the '90s.

    The second someone invests any kind of money into an open source alternative, the way Blender has done for the mesh modeling industries, both Autodesk and Dassault systemes stand to lose their respective monopolies on 2D and 3D CAD.

    But the trend is not limited to CAD software only, it is also highly prevalent in software providers for governmental tasks. Most of which sell the same products for years without iteration on their codebase. The result is that government organisations have to deal with shitty software that requires their individual users to connect to the database (yes, you heard that right, every user has to manually input database credentials that include all grants on all of the relevant datasets). Most of these cronies are reselling badly thought out software, where they’ve outsourced the development to third-world shitholes. Is is a goddamn miracle that there aren’t more major incidents with government organisations.

    The only solution for this kind of bullshit is open standards that encourage an open source approach to these kinds of critical applications. Where more parties are actually encouraged to build their own software and where the businessmodel is built around being a service provider and not a magical black box salesman.

    If you’re able to stop worrying about generating revenue based on your intellectual property and focus on generating revenue from the service you provide, surrounding your product… you’ll automatically build a better product.




  • For this to become a serious issue a couple of conditions need to be met:

    • there has to be enough second hand supply to meet demand and keep prices low.
    • …which means lots of people need to circulate their games.
    • …which means they didn’t like your game enough to want to keep it in their collection for replayability
    • …which means you made an unremarkable game

    Now, given the fact that I have full confidence in your ability to create something worthwhile (because you would do so from passion), this cycle will likely be broken at some point.

    There’s also the other option where people will circulate their second hand games with the knowledge they’ll be able to buy back another copy somewhere down the road.

    But yes, you’re right that this will bring a new factor to the gaming industry that everyone has to take into account. Keep in mind that your financial security in the indie gaming sector is fully dependant on wether you develop something worthwhile. You are in no way entitled to be able to make a living from publishing games regardless of their quality. Which is the beauty of the indie games segment: the more love and care you put into your game, the bigger the chances are that it’ll be a success.