In this context the use of “they” is just proper English though. I can’t fault someone who speaks a gendered language from using gendered pronouns as is proper in that language, but the use of “they” in English is correct and hardly political or exclusive. Every language is going to have rules that may be strange to non-native speakers, but any “confusion” is easily remedied by explaining that’s just how the language works. I find that’s also part of the fun of learning another language. I especially love trying to mix the rules of one language into another to see how silly it sounds. :)

Found them!

https://skins.webamp.org/

Looks like something from HP’s lab.

https://www.theonion.com/hp-offers-that-cloud-thing-everyone-is-talking-about-1819595260

I’ve never heard of Skiff, but it’s sad to see more software gobbled up by VCs. Though it sounds like the back end was never OSS to begin with?

I used to be so excited about a future where people were software literate where we would be building open systems and make a decent living. Instead, people have been force fed locked down systems in the name of “user experience”, all so that a few people can make an absolute killing while the rest of us feed off the scraps (even if the scraps of the software industry are still pretty good). It just makes me sad.

I am extremely appreciative of folks who do make honest open source software though! Many of them do make a decent living too. It’s hard not to lose hope when reading stuff like this, but then I remember that I’m typing this comment using Firefox on KDE Plasma running on a Linux kernel, right next to an Emacs session. Sticking to good open source software is a wonderful thing!

I’ve started using btop to kill processes instead of the ps, grep, kill incantation.

I can hear this photo!

I just can’t take anything seriously that puts such an emphasis on “free speech”.

The blog has a post about “Web 3”, so that’s a bit of a red flag as well.

I love how the top of the page mentions to ditch Facebook and twitter, but then there are links to them at the bottom. I get wanting to spread the word, but it just looks bad.

Also, no source code?

This whole thing just feels sketchy.

Featuring three new EDM songs from DALDO

Sorry, but that’s a bit of a rude conclusion to come to considering you know nothing about me or the fact that I’ve been writing software for over 20 years.

Anyway, I think we’ve both said our piece and I’m happy to just disagree. You seem like a cool person and I’d rather not have us get upset over semantics.

Take care! :)

So is the Linux kernel not open because code has to go through review and may be rejected?

Is Gnu software not open because you have to sign over copyright or may have code rejected for ideological reasons?

Guido van Rossum was BDFL of Python until recently and had pretty much final say on anything that went into the langauge. So I guess Python isn’t open?

Hopefully the XMPP Standards Foundation doesn’t just blindly merge in every pull request that comes their way! I’m sure there have been plenty of people that had to beg and still had their proposal rejected.

You may not agree with the decisions being made about Matrix, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an open protocol or an open process. In fact it’s extremely transparent as another commenter linked to their proposal pull requests on GitHub.

There’s plenty to criticize about Matrix. It may be overly complicated and over-engineered. If there is significant VC involvement, then the threat of enshittification is very real. Element is also quite slow in larger rooms and the search is pretty terrible at the moment.

But, it’s dishonest to say it’s not open. I just don’t want other readers to think it’s somehow closed, when it isn’t. Discord is closed. Slack is closed. Matrix is not.

Also, while being open is a good thing, it’s not a virtue unto itself. Visual Studio Code is an open editor but I stay away from it because I don’t trust Microsoft to not fuck it up. Likewise Chromium is open but I stay away from it because I trust Google even less.

Sorry, but nothing you mentioned has anything to do with Matrix not being an open protocol. I don’t know what you mean by “truly open”. It sounds like a “no true Scotsman” argument.

The spec is absolutely open, and you can see it in what I linked. There are also several servers and several clients if you don’t like one written by the Matrix or Element folks. Heck, there’s even a client for emacs! Now there are compatibility issues since not every server and client implements the entire protocol yet, but that’s not an issue of openness. I used to run into problems all the time with XMPP way back when for similar reasons. I even recall something about Google breaking the XMPP protocol in some ways and causing problems.

I’m not even sure your claim of VC funding is true, since the faq mentions several non VC sources of funding. I couldn’t find anything about VC at element.io, so maybe it’s hidden there, or something has changed a matrix.org?

Still, discussion about not liking their business model is orthogonal to whether the protocol is open or not. Maybe we run the risk of them pulling a HashiCorp and changing some licensing down the road, which would be terrible. But I think it’s dishonest to say it’s not open.

Can you elaborate on what you mean that Matrix is a closed protocol? The spec is open and there are several server and clients to choose from.

Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Mega Man X

“Products are priced based on their cost/value, not the companies overall profit margins”

It doesn’t take much to observe that this is just incorrect.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, and they teach that in your Intro to Economics course, but in reality it just doesn’t work that way.

I feel like that in most games but not in BG3. I do still reload sometimes if I fail a check, but BG3 makes failures fun! It’s rather rare that you’re actually locked out of something, and often times a failure leads to interesting outcomes.

I’m sure there is also a lot that I’m missing and don’t know about, so there’s no sense of FOMO. I really do appreciate that the game doesn’t many things. There’s no tracking that you’re attained 45 of 53 powers, or 237 of 245 hidden biscuits, or that you’re missing that last upgrade point to unlock something cool. I also haven’t come across any annoying skill quests where you have to take down 14 enemies in 12 seconds while hopping on one leg.

Larian has done a great job of writing interesting content for pretty much every outcome, and it’s one of the few games that I feel I will want to replay to see a different side of things. There’s a whole quest line in act 1 that you can only get if you fail a random check. I found that pretty novel.

I misinterpreted the headline and expected a joke article about Epic charging developers who don’t use Unreal.

Came here to say exactly this.

I’d trust the piracy sites more actually. We don’t voluntarily give them our credit card and address.

If you haven’t played it, try Mooncrash too! It’s a great side story to Prey.

The dangerous part is that it sounds like the ad is generated by Spotify.

In the “tech already exists” scenario, an advertising firm will have to guess at the voice people want to hear and submit their own audio files to advertise.

If this works the way it sounds, the ad firm sends in some text and Spotify generates a voice ad based on who you listen to. Less effort on the advertising firm and far more targeted.

Both are bad. The second is worse!

And frankly, it’s another reason not to support Spotify. You are supposed to be paying to listen to music, not support research into this bullshit advertising.

The article doesn’t even mention Daikatana 😥