I think there could be more to it. Louis Rossmann had personal issues with the lead dev there a year or two ago due to how they interact in their forum, and I think he had some great reasons to be concerned. Since then the lead dev has stepped away as project lead, but I doubt the bad blood is completely gone.

I think it’s a bit suspicious that they don’t mention what feature(s) FUTO wanted. Given their interaction with other projects, I’m guessing they wanted a “supporter” badge for people who have bought the software (no change in functionality other than the badge). I’m guessing also that due to their interaction with Rossmann, they’re uninterested in clarifying, esp. if it would put FUTO in a better light if they did.

Then again, maybe FUTO is a bunch of scumbags. It just seems the slant against them is so much stronger than the actual negative impact from a handful of repos having source-available licenses instead of FOSS licenses.

My read is that FUTO as a software movement is totally fine, it does what it claims on the tin. The people behind FUTO are a different story, and the main person bankrolling it seems to have friends with odd views (I think they’re blown out of proportion, but they’re still concerning).

You’ll never find a perfect movement. Here’s what FUTO seems to prioritize:

• local first alternatives to big tech
• source availability, but in a way big tech can’t use but home users can
• profitability for devs without coercion or feature gates

That sounds pretty good to me! I’d prefer it to be FOSS, but allowing me to distribute modifications for non-commercial use is probably good enough for most things.

I probably disagree with their founder politically, and I’d run FUTO differently, but I think their software is good and I could maintain it myself if needed, and at the end of the day, that’s what matters to me.

FUTO doesn’t seem interested in getting involved in politics, they’re merely musing philosophically, and their products aren’t profitable, so it doesn’t really matter to me what their political positions are.

The US is terrible. In order from smallest to largest:

1. dime - 10 cents
2. penny - 1 cent
3. nickel - 5 cents
4. quarter - 25 cents
5. dollar - 100 cents
6. 50 cent piece - 50 cents

The penny, nickel, and dime are virtually useless too since they can’t buy much, and the 50 cent piece is incredibly rare.

I’ve always hated that. OCD is a clinical term, not something that means “picky”.

We need two things:

1. much shorter copyright and patent durations, like 14 and 5 years respectively (14 comes from OG copyright duration)
2. stronger enforcement of copyright to protect creators from AI stealing their work

They should happen in that order, and ideally copyright would only be awarded to individuals (or perhaps specifically named lists of individuals, with some reasonable cap), not corporations. The current system is absolutely bonkers.

Eh, I disagree. Slavery being banned is obviously a good thing, but that’s because it’s immoral to own someone else, so it’s essentially just kidnapping. Gambling, on the other hand, shouldn’t be banned for the simple reason that consenting adults should be able to do it if they choose.

Basically, I believe there are two types of rights:

• negative rights - restricts others from preventing individuals from doing things to you (e.g. freedom from slavery, freedom to gamble, etc)
• positive rights - forces others to provide goods or services to you (e.g. free healthcare, right to counsel, etc)

I believe nobody should gamble because it’s a poor financial decision and very addictive (and I choose to avoid gambling), but I also believe you should be allowed to gamble, and the government should ensure that companies that provide gambling services do so fairly (i.e. advertisements about win-rates and whatnot are accurate).

So yes, if gambling wasn’t allowed, people w/ addictions would be better off, but those who aren’t at risk of gambling addiction would be harmed due to restrictions on their freedom. So the question is, do we want government to protect us from ourselves, or merely provide a safety net for when we screw up? I’m absolutely in the latter camp, and I think we should use taxes to fund recovery programs for addictive behaviors in lieu of banning them. In general, I think a tax is way more rights-respecting than a ban.

Eh, not revisionist, just overly simplified. Prohibition massively increased their power and relevance.

Yup, and that’s how the US got the Mafia. We banned alcohol, but people wanted to drink, so the Mafia made that happen.

All a ban does is hurt law abiding citizens and businesses.

Yup, I want “unobtrusive, lightweight, compatible, and secure.” Basically, the best case for an OS is that I don’t notice it.

I care a lot about rendering engine diversity, and Firefox is the largest non-chromium browser, so I use it. It’s fast enough for me, and my handful of extensions gives me what I need.

I don’t like Mozilla either, but here are my priorities in a web browser:

1. FOSS
2. Privacy tools - includes ad blocking; I’d actually be okay with ads if they didn’t track me
3. Promotes open web standards - rendering engine diversity is critical here, I don’t want a repeat of the IE era
4. Security
5. Performance

Firefox ticks all of them, and my issues with Mozilla as an org don’t really come into play. I use a fork on my phone, but I use Firefox on my laptop and desktop because I trust the binaries coming from my Linux distribution maintainers (part of 4).

What does that have to do with the browser? Last I checked, browsers aren’t transphobic.

You do you, but I personally refuse to make product choices based on the person who makes it. Brave is the least bad chromium browser, so I use it as a backup to my main Gecko-based browser. I’m not a fan of Mozilla either, but that’s irrelevant since I pick my software based on what it does, not based on the management of the company that builds it.

Exactly, and that also includes online games like Minecraft. Nobody is going to sue Microsoft because of what someone said or did in a private Minecraft server, though they might if it’s a Microsoft hosted one.

The original article completely misrepresents the initiative:

We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

…

Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers or anything like that, but leave the game in a playable state after shutting off servers. This can mean:

• provide alternatives to any online-only content
• make the game P2P if it requires multiplayer (no server needed, each client is a server)
• gracefully degrading the client experience when there’s no server

Of course, releasing server code is an option.

The expectation is:

• if it’s a subscription game, I get access for whatever period I pay for
• if it’s F2P, go nuts and break it whenever you want; there is the issue of I shame purchases, so that depends on how it’s advertised
• if it’s a purchased game, it should still work after support ends

That didn’t restrict design decisions, it just places a requirement when the game is discontinued. If companies know this going in, they can plan ahead for their exit, just like we expect for mining companies (they’re expected to fill in holes and make it look nice once they’re done).

I argue Stop Killing Games doesn’t go far enough, and if it’s pissing off the games industry as well, then that means it strikes a good balance.

A lot of Steam games don’t have any DRM, and most of the rest are pretty easy to strip.

Give it a shot sometime. Completely quit out of Steam, turn off your internet, and try running some of your older Steam games directly from the Steam folder.

I do this somewhat often when my kids are on my other computer playing games on my account and I still want to play something. It’s a little trickier on Linux since you need something to run the Proton/WINE layer, so I mostly stick to Linux-native games in that pretty rare case.

Yeah, just give me actual temp and wind speed, and I’ll get a feel for what’s cold by going outside.

The article mentions streaming, but anyone know how much of purchases go to the artist? I’m not interested in streaming, but their store looks attractive.

Also, can I redownload the music later? Or is it a one and done deal? Just thinking about backups.

Seems like a decent card, but here are my issues:

• 12 GB RAM - not quite enough to play w/ LLMs
• a little better than my 6650 XT, but not amazingly so
• $250 - a little better than RX 7600 and RTX 4060 I guess? Probably?

If it offered more RAM (16GB or ideally 24GB) and stayed under $300, I’d be very interested because it opens up LLMs for me. Or if it had a bit better performance than my current GPU, and again stayed under $300 (any meaningful step-up is $350+ from AMD or Nvidia).

But this is just another low to mid-range card, so I guess it would be interesting for new PC builds, but not really an interesting upgrade option. So, pretty big meh to me. I guess I’ll check out independent benchmarks in case there’s something there. I am considering building a PC for my kids using old parts, so I might get this instead of reusing my old GTX 960, the board I’d use only has PCIe 3.0, so I worry performance would suffer and the GTX 960 may be a better stop-gap.

… I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror

Or at least source-available, with a grant for modifications for personal use. It’s pretty easy to distribute and use patch-sets if they want to retain some control.

I’d prefer them to be FOSS, but I understand them not wanting to give competitors full distribution rights.