For your own sanity, please let this go. You are responsible for your own actions. If you buy a pen from a psychopath and he uses the money to buy a bullet and shoot someone, that’s not your fault. He’s responsible for his actions.
It’s like everyone somehow forgot that other humans are sentient beings with their own agency. Main character syndrome run amok.
* It's a heck of a lot of money to send to any company, so it makes more sense to pause and consider what you're funding. I can't put that much effort into every <$100 purchase without going crazy.
* Tesla is far more about Musk than Microsoft is about... whoever runs Microsoft these days. There's a very specific person tied to it.
* Driving a Tesla is seen by the world as a statement of some kind in a way that running Windows simply isn't. It's worth considering if that's a statement you want to be making.
Also consider: There are thousands of employees at Tesla and thousands of shareholders. Do you also need to individually vet every one of their opinions before you enrich them by buying a Tesla? What if they don't all have the same opinion? Are you supposed to take a poll and go with the majority? This is silly.
But it can certainly influence other people's perception of you... I think what we all have to decide though is how much that matters to us, should we decide to buy one anyway.
> Do you also need to individually vet every one of their opinions before you enrich them by buying a Tesla?
I think most people's negative image of a company/project tends to come from the leadership, or the most public leader, and not all the individual employees.
To that end I would consider Linux to be a tool mainly led by a habitually emotionally abusive person (Linus). Or when people mention Kitty I point out to them Kovid's many personal attacks on end-users, etc.
For some reason a lot of people in tech (and probably everywhere) seem to have real issues with staunch dogmatism and god complexes. I know people make mistakes and that's fine, but I'm talking about the ones that show consistent and daily life-long problems with usually no remorse.
You don't know everything, none of us do, and there can actually be other valid perspectives if you allow yourself to be wrong occasionally. Definitely not enough introspection/self-reflection going on IMO.
I'm sure people will downvote this but I don't think people should be forced to (or shamed when they don't want to) separate the art from the artist.
Yes, this is a concern, and it's a direct result of the phenomenon I'm talking about. There are violent, stupid people who will attack you because they think that buying a product means you endorse every political opinion every person who made that product ever had.
I'm actually looking to buy a car soon, and I've considered this in regard to Tesla. Do I want to deal with having my car keyed or painted or set on fire because of what someone thinks about Elon? Do I want to potentially put myself or my family in danger because someone thinks that attacking a random Tesla consumer is the best way to effect change in the world? And, frankly, no, I don't. But that's what I'm talking about. If you find yourself attacking strangers or destroying their property because you disagree with the politics of some CEO the person you're attacking has never met, you are in fact the bad guy.
The gas chambers are their most horrific deed, but Nazis were still Nazis before they gassed anyone. Therefore gassing does not define them.
The key to stopping Nazis is to do so before they get the gas chamber stage. If you let it get that far, you're too late. So you have to rely on other clues.
Nazi salute are about as oblique as you can get. They should have been a wakeup call.
As if "having the best car for you" is some sort of moral imperative or necessity, as if buying a less luxury vehicle is some sort of unthinkable option.
>You could write your Senator / Congressperson to support laws that would curtail Elon's actions.
Ah yes, tell the government that supports elon and that elon is part of to simply not do those things. Surely that is a workable option right now!
Just to honour the Godwin law, take the Eduard Pernkopf anatomy manual as an example, a fascinating example of this discussion.
There is always a tipping point where practicality beats purity, and I think it's ok trying to stretch it, respecting other's choices in the way of course. No need to judge.
If you know upfront that's what's going to happen, why wouldn't you have a degree of responsibility?
"You don't have all the details, he could be murdering a bad person"? Something like that I guess?
You think I can only understand the conditions if.. what? I've directly worked at the factory? Published a peer-reviewed study?
> You know that the workers would be better off not having the option of working in the Zara factory?
That’s not the only other option and presenting it that way is intentionally dishonest.
This entire line of thinking, as presented, is absolute sophism and bad faith.
When do you think you understand the conditions? When you watch a TikTok video about it? When you read an artistic the Atlantic? When you watch a segment 60 minutes?
Deciding what bank you will get your home loan from -> not something you do every day, it's ok to do some research
Deciding what cafe you will get your next lungo from -> not worth your time
I think what you're not realizing is that most people don't care. They don't care and they don't think about it. They just scaffold really weak logic to justify the whole thing and then go about their day. So when you ask them they have convoluted reasoning why they're ok with it. This blog post is that convoluted reason.
Ultimately the real reason is that we just don't care.
(And if you’re going to jump in the comments about them being evil, check your privilege. None of these tech companies operate literal death squads as several non-tech companies did as recent as a few decades ago, and probably still now.)
__If you buy gold from someone who poisons a river (to extract the gold more "efficiently"), soon your whole forest will suffer from deceases and degradation.__
You may feel tiny and powerless but it's sane and healthy to care for the whole ecosystem and think about aftereffects of everyone's actions.
If that's not happening, then we need to fix the government so it does happen. Expecting each individual person to be their own EPA and research how every single item they consume is produced idiotic and doomed to failure.
> Expecting each individual person to be their own EPA and research how every single item they consume is produced idiotic and doomed to failure.
That's a false dichotomy. There are many middle grounds between researching every single item you buy and dropping the problem as a whole. You can focus on items which are most likely to bring negative impact, you can draw information from journalistic reports and material produced from dedicated associations. There are many ways to be sensitive to economic externalities of the things you buy without getting insane and without considering the whole problem moot on general phylosophycal principles.
you should shop at "walmart" or where-ever your dollar is the most effective. and that gives you the most stability and and position to challenge whether the current Walton regime's love of China is a good thing or not. but cutting your nose off to spite your face does nothing useful.
It's not easy, but if you're serious about it is best done in community, with support and strategy. So, the opposite of main character syndrome, I would say.
It's also very odd that you take an analysis that is fundamentally systemic and translate it into purchasing from an individual psychopath - under what assumptions is that a valid comparison, one with any merit? It's not like corporations exist in a vacuum, only to emerge from the void to casually sell a single pen, the money with which they use to buy a single bullet. We as individuals, as communities, exist in feedback with the systems that we are a part of, including (surprise) corporations. So, yes, we have power to shape them, though (again) not easily.
The bus boycotts in the US Civil Rights movement are a good example. "Hey bus company, we're going to stop riding your buses until you end your racist seating policies". It's clear what they wanted to happen, and it was in the power of the boycotted company to make that happen.
This new thing is something else. Just a general "don't buy from this company because ... uh ... vague noises about evil". Like, what is it exactly you want this company to do? How will you not buying from them force them to do that? Do they even know what you're asking for?
This is not about trying to effect any sort of change. It is just plain virtue signalling so you can appear righteous to others. There is zero chance of anything happening in the world because of this.
Sure, there is definitely a performative thing out there, and maybe this is that.
My point is this - now is a time when we need more collective action, not less. So, rather than taking up space putting down someone who may simply not know what the next step is, why not give the world the energy that it so desperately needs? Now is a time to encourage people. What you (yes, you) put out in the world matters.
> There is zero chance of anything happening in the world because of this.
So far we've accomplished a 71% drop in profits, and we aren't letting up. This has caused him to turn tail from DOGE and to cry on his earnings call about it. We are having an impact, and it is impacting Musk's and Tesla's behavior.
Though I recognize depending on people's mental health it can be stressful to think about and if you can't then it's okay, one of my friends in particular was worrying about what she was buying to the point where it was a significant source of stress in her life and that wasn't good (though therapy for her general anxiety helped a ton so she's now concientious about what she buys while not stressing over it. It took her a while to get there though).
It is a form of trained helplessness to fixate perpetually on consumption.
If someone wants to do good in the world, go out and do it. help someone for real. I think it is lack of real connection that leads people to navel gaze about the third order consequences of their clothes or software.
I think this substack [1] summed it up perfectly:
>I was 16 when I realized I had to kill myself. I was in a Denny’s with my friends, looking at an empty glass of Diet Coke. The glass was produced by taking the raw resources of a foreign country, exploiting its workers in horrible factories, and sent to me to drink out of. And I didn’t really have any other option for getting liquid from a nearby water source into my body, it had to travel through moral atrocity along the way. It wasn’t just one glass, of course. It was everything. It was the shoes I was wearing (shoes were a big deal in those days) and the flooring I walked on and the food I ate. The only moral act was to kill oneself, and failure to do that meant you accept your role as a vicious monster. (The depression helped, but maybe the depression/guilt causality was reversed.)
https://deathisbad.substack.com/p/does-the-omelas-kid-have-a...
Right now in your community are tons of organizations looking for people to actually help.
I've restored nesting habitat for endangered birds. And I just happened to be able the beach when volunteers came around. That did more than stressing over what I bought ever did, and it was just hanging out at the beach. There are orgs for driving people to medical appointments. That can be an amazing impact on someone's life and on yourself (more than buying the right ketchup).
Make yourself financially strong so that you can help others. Sacrificing your money to make a point is wasted virtue signaling.
I mainly see people who shop correct/rescue animals as the most minimal helpers who want to feel they are helping. There is an old woman dieing crying in your town right now because she's overwhelmed and doesn't know how to get to an appointment she needs. An no one cares. But if I buy the right ketchup, that matters? If I drive 2 hours to save a dog (while the old woman dies crying and alone, unable to get to the doctor, a 15 minute trip) I'm a good person?
There's a better viewpoint on that, though: ignore moral responsibility, think in terms of agency. Choosing from whom you buy is one of the few ways you (as an ordinary citizen) have to make the world a little steer towards a better form of itself. My own choice alone won't change much (which is correct, otherwise we'd be in an economic dictatorship), but if many people consistently care about that capitalism will work its magic and make wonders happen.
This doesn't mean that the shooter doesn't have his own agency and his own responsibility for his actions. It just means that his responsibility for his actions doesn't diminish your responsibility for yours, even if your actions involve him.
It seems to be a common idea that we can just overlook the abuses committed by the other people we deal with, as things "I'm not responsible for", regardless of our actual ability to do something about them. I have no special insight, but I think it's a common idea because it lets us feel better about ourselves while we do nothing. But "feeling good about oneself" isn't a solid way to build or evaluate a moral framework.
Absent government will (which has been the reality for decades), we have no way of stopping this bad behavior than to stop funding it. But since nearly every company is engaging in bad behavior, "stop funding it" means becoming a hermit and not buying anything, which is also not feasible for enough people.
Don't play that game. You aren't a consumer you are a human being. Today you can impact for the positive. Choose your shopping based on savings/health, and invest that money into your local foodbank or helping someone at something like Kiva.org (I don't keep up, is Kiva bad now?) or other local charities where you can actually have an impact.
It's crazy how people have been convinced to give up and do the most barely needle moving things to feel moral.
probably you too. awesome people sometimes screw up, but that's OK. if you really still think that "everyone sucks" then maybe you are in the 5%
I think what started as edgy realism and critical analysis shot well past its utility and has become toxic and destructive.
Skeptical counternarratives are useful as a counterpoint to keep people honest and realistic. When they become the dominant narrative, they are destructive and self fulfilling. People are awful, they deserve to suffer. The deck is stacked, don't try. Life is pointless, why bother. Good deeds don't matter because they are insignificant at global scale.
A society or individual that hates itself will not fulfill any of the virtues it holds dear.
Every major OS update Apple changes something that breaks either specific programs or restricts the OS further which leads to breakage.
The "too many files open" error could be fixed by raising the limit of open files (there are instances where a tool really does need lots of open files and isn't leaking) but nowadays I need to break the security of my own hardware to maybe be able to raise it as Apple adds hoops and is changing what to do every so often.
I wanted to make a genuine effort to get into using Linux because it's the only OS I'm not super comfortable admin'ing. I bought a secondhand Lenovo t440 and installed Linux Mint on it. Everything seemed to work well, boot was nice and quick, no issues with WiFi chipset or sleep and battery life was at least okay.
It was fine for browsing the web with Firefox for my normal web browsing, and made a great netflix machine.
Then I kept trying to do other things. I was playing with Blender at the time and despite the laptop being old at the time, it Mint installed a broken intel graphics driver. It couldn't render anything without artifacts and was unusable. The fixed driver was older than the release of Mint I was using. Why didn't Mint install an up to date driver?
I wanted use my steam controller to control mouse and keyboard input exactly like you can on any windows machine. In Linux, it required you to hand edit some config files to allow Steam to even communicate with it's own controller. Like what the fuck? Why?
I wanted to dual boot Windows to play more steam games (this was before proton) but if you want to dual boot Linux and Windows, you have to install windows FIRST. Otherwise you have to be an expert in x86-64 boot semantics to do the configuration required. So this was impossible without reinstalling everything.
So fine, I decided to just install Windows on it. Windows pulled the license details out of the BIOS from the previous owner (whoops) and auto-registered itself, and had the fixed intel graphics driver from the get go. I installed steam and the steam controller worked as expected. Battery life was SIGNIFICANTLY better.
THAT'S usability. THAT'S "just works".
Mint basically takes a years old Ubuntu, then an even older fork of a DE, uses an abandoned protocol then rolls it together and adds even more bugs to it. It's honestly one of the worst distros that exists.
Ubuntu, Fedora and (open)Suse are the only ones worth using if you want a smooth experience (ie. the corporate ones).
Edit - also needing to install Windows first to dual boot is a result of Windows installation wiping existing bootloaders.
Mint, OTOH, installed just fine and is working great.
But this is kind of a personal thing. My wife likes Windows with a super cluttered desktop and I absolutely hate the idea of any desktop icons and I like everything hidden. I have a colleague who has OSX with again, a ton of desktop icons and like 20 things open at any given time, just looking at his screen gives me anxiety.
Can you name a couple?
Yeah, I'm really missing Excel and VBA...
Between Google Sheets, Gnumeric (Python "macros" are so much better than VBA), R Studio, I definitely don't miss Excel an iota.
Google Sheets is a better choice for average Joe spreadsheet user, make a spreadsheet, some nice graphics, share it. Gnumeric has better scripting and better maths functions. R Studio is better for data analysis. I have a degree in economics and didn't touch Excel for any of it (Stata, R, Python got me through).
In fact, I could go further and write an entire dissertation about how Excel as a program is cursed and a net negative to society. The amount of times I've seen broken spreadsheets lead to real business problems is way, way higher than it should be. So much of what people do in Excel should just be handled by a Python script or something. Whoever thought it was a good idea to couple data and functions and then to put that in the hands of Jane from accounting did a massive disservice to all of society.
I suspect the main thing I'm missing is Schedule I. And I think even that can be had if I go enable proton or something? Haven't really looked into it yet.
Windows 11 feels a practical joke played on humanity by Nadella.
The new Macbooks have amazing hardware, but the software quality has deteriorated considerably - even spotlight has bugs nowadays.
However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve.
If the Linux Software Foundation started a Linux-On-The-Desktop project that addressed core usability and stability issues, I would gladly contribute monthly towards it.
Also, power management? Linux seems really power hungry. I expect 6ish hours out of the battery I have, but with Linux doing browsing and coding I get 2 to 3ish hours, even with cpu throttling and the dimmest back light settings.
Have mainline Fedora or Ubuntu solved these issues?
Because computers are complex, and there are many computers with many different hardware configurations nobody can answer if it solves the issues for you.
I do think that power management isn't there yet though on the other hand.
Pick any model on this list that has all green boxes. There is no step 2. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Lenovo
(Sent from my thinkpad with perfectly working sleep)
Supporting arbitrary hardware is hard for an open-source project.
Sticking to solid brands with well-tested models has other benefits.
??? I've had 3 laptops over the last decade+ and sleep/restore has worked on all of them. You using some weird distro or DE?
They make heroic efforts in supporting a variety of hardware but if you have the choice it's better to use hardware with better support.
There are vendors like System76 and Dell who offer Linux support
Ubuntu has a certified hardware list:
I'm confused that people think it normal to go to Apple to get an Apple device to run Apple OS, but the idea of going to a Linux vendor to get a Linux laptop to run Linux is a weird idea.
(I think the design of the webcam is to blame)
THere’s a reasonable chance if you get a lenovo thinkpad or similar very mainstream laptop it will just work there as well, but get a framework anyway because they’re good and you deserve a nice laptop.
Some countries they don't export to.
Other countries the VAT + import tax just adds up.
This has not been true for over 20 years. You just need to buy known good hardware.
(Anyone know when exactly we first got reliable sleep on the early Thinkpads with APM?)
Hm. You can't really repair or upgrade them, so you don't own the hardware at all. That's far from amazing.
Back in the day, Apple laptops used to cook and kill themselves with poor GPU heat management.
Several versions of macbooks shortened a display cable such that it would degrade over time because it simply wasn't up to task, and eventually your screen would be borked and have absolutely ungoogleable issues (this happened to me)
They had an entire run of macbooks with flawed batteries.
The entire keyboard fiasco, all in an effort to bikeshed computer thinness FFS. Meanwhile even before the butterfly tech, macbook keyboards have always been trash. They have un-ergonomic keys and no travel and just seem to prioritize aesthetics over usage.
Internal connectors have 50v backlight pins right next to logic level pins which means instead of a drop of water just killing the backlight power supply, it routes 50v through everything and kills half your mainboard components.
Pre M series macbooks hard thermal throttling issues if you charged them from the ports on one side, but not the other.
Apple laptops have NEVER had good thermal management.
Soldered SSDs that are stupidly tiny, especially in the early M1 machines that had 8gb RAM and bad swap behavior that was actively killing people's SSDs
Apple buys good screens to put in their machines, and the frame is pretty rigid, and THAT'S IT. Nothing else about their machines is a step above other laptop manufacturers hardware wise
Had this happen to a 17 inch PPC, red line in the middle of the display then completely dead. Had to be hooked to an ext monitor. Never knew i it was a cable or inverter thing.
All of the things you say may be true, but I have never needed to repair one and in that time I travel constantly and generally have beat them to hell with daily use. My milage may vary of course, but what in theory might be poor and bad design decisions didn’t materialize to poor quality in my experience.
For what it’s worth, my wife is now using the one I just retired…so it ain’t dead or unusable yet.
Not sure what you use your desktop for. If your issue is that you need certain professional applications that are not compatible with Linux you may be out of luck.
But if your complaint id "core usability and stability", I am not really sure what you are complaining about.
I migrated my personal laptop from Windows to Linux Mint around 3 years ago, and it's amazing how much more stable and easy to use it is in comparison - case in point, back in Windows days I would have to do a fresh install every year or so.
And don't get me started on OSX. I have to use it daily on my work-issued laptop, and I deeply loathe it how it is hostile to more technical users (I would sincerely prefere using Windows than that crap).
How will that help you install Linux.
If you regulate away bad practices, capital will flow elsewhere. The level of equity investment in IT (and the valuations) is largely due to bad practices; fixing that will take away the OP’s favorite toys.
Bit of an aside, but this is not true btw. Even in situations which most closely approximate what you describe, there is a positive, nonzero floor to profit taking. This is typically explained as the opportunity cost of allocating money, which is not just the known alternative investments you are giving up, but the unknown-unknown risks. Among certain schools of political economics, it is also taught that this is a built-in action bias towards holders of money. Essentially, the rich get richer (quantified).
My point on regulation shifting capital allocation away from a sector stands, regardless of detail.
I’m not criticizing democracy. It works and has good sides and downsides compared with say communism. But man does democracy like communism come with major downsides.
The question is why is democracy worshipped? Don’t worship it. It’s one side of complex 6 sided die. I was going to say one side of a coin but the situation is much more complicated than that.
Just use the tools that let you be productive. It's okay to separate the art from the artist. And if you really do care about the global well-being, then... force yourself to the switch (for the moral greater good, after all!) and don't complain about it on the internet?
> I drive a Hyundai car, shop at Reliance stores, wear clothing made by Zara. Why am I not concerned about the poor behavior of these other organizations? It’s not like they’re any better than Google, Microsoft, or Apple.
> Honestly, the reason is not entirely rational.
Honestly I don't have the answer and it's a great question. There seems to be a mix of passion, trends, media, social exchanges and probably tons of small parameters making this happen in our heads.
If there was no freedom to amass fortunes, these people would still exist, and they would do even more damage in whatever theoretical social structure we would have.
* And to a lesser degree, the self-interest everybody naturally possesses.
** Minimizing negative externalities is the responsibility of government accountable to the people.
The biggest issue people face when switching is the desire for it to be the same as their previous OS. It's not. It never will be. It's different (and IMO better).
Like GNOME Shell, so many people hate it. No dock, no way to minimize Windows, etc... Until you actually try to learn it a little. Launching apps is super quick with the search, you can bring up overview with 3 finger swipe up on the touchpad, scroll virtual desktops with 3 finger sideways swipe, arrange your windows with meta + arrow keys, etc... Its nearly as keyboard driven and quick to use as a tiling window manager yet my wife can use it as well (she's very much not technical).
As for apps, there's an app for everything normal people need to do. For developers, it's easily the best OS. Games, it's got most of them. I guess if you're an accountant forced to use Excel don't bother (and if you're not forced to use Excel, Gnumeric is better anyway).
I think most FOSS developers completely miss this point, assuming their goal is to get more people to use their software.
Sure GNOME can be usable if you learn a different way, but you can't force everyone to do that. Not even most people. So I think if they really cared about doing what's necessary to get a lot more users, they're going to have to make their product more like what the potential new users expect, whether the developers like it or not.
That’s rare, and is a very difficult motivation to understand. Such projects are also usually a mess.
To me this is like people getting upset when their favorite indie band "sells out", even though their increased popularity is always seen as a much bigger positive than any potential downsides of the "sellout".
Mobile: I own Librem 5, and it was the biggest purchase disappointment I have ever had. I've been ridiculed by my friends while I was waiting for it for years, and when it was delivered, it was too outdated to use. The only silver lining from this is that mobile support exists in GNOME and KDE now. Hardware is still not there.
VR: I have not seen any viable option.
I'm optimising, and hoping that with AI it would be easier to support all of this, but now it looks kinda gloomy.
Filling your mind with negativity makes you unhappy, outsources your power and attention ("minimize my impact", "do less bad"), and distracts you from doing good.
Who am I kidding, progressive economic theory hasn't progressed passed "lets kill everyone who is better off than me"
Actually most of the time this is SW business which is dysfunctionnal. I totally agree with the phrase "asshole companies", which make people's life miserable on purpose.
I think awful people is a bit unfair to the folks at Apple. They are probably much like other people, maybe a bit nicer judging by my years of using macs.
Large corporations will never be perfect but not much is. At least they are not Comcast or HP.
mergy•9mo ago
You also need to be persistent after that jump and not retrench when you can't pull from the familiar.
You'll get there at some point just don't think or care about the awful people - think about how and in what way you want to operate directionally going forward and it will click.
disillusioned•9mo ago
the_third_wave•9mo ago
That wasn't much of a leap you were planning it a mouse got in your way, especially given you seem to have planned this "leap" in the 90's - solidly within Windows 9X territory which was infamous for its instability and reboot-tendency:
pjerem•9mo ago
Which is a shame because in itself, most Linux distros _are_ easy. The ergonomics and the rationales are, imo, better/easier to understand than Windows or even MacOS.
In fact, even _installing_ a modern distro is easier than installing Windows 11.
What’s hard is not Linux, it’s switching. It requires to, well, think different :)
Having said that, I honestly think switching from Windows to MacOS is harder. I appreciate working with macOS and it can be pretty ergonomic but it’s honestly barely usable without installing and paying for half a dozen sharewares.
wink•9mo ago
I have used Windows on the desktop since 1994, I have used Linux on desktops since 1998 (work machines being 50% or exclusively Linux since 2010ish) and I got my first mac last autumn. (Planned Linux but some unimportant things stood in the way, so I gave it a shot).
Working on Windows is pure pain for me. I use it as my gaming/browsing machine and every time I have to touch code I hate it.
Linux is 100% fine for work, but I noticed I am having problems with games with my usual setup with tiling window managers (i.e lots of fullscreen usage and non-easily-resizable windows, also getting my Logitech's G keys recognized).
macos is... 90% fine actually. I hate some small things but otherwise it just works, the windows key as cmd is actually in a nicer position than ctrl, but that might be my weird hands.
So if I wasn't playing certain games with certain keybinds, switching to Linux fulltime would have happened like 10y ago for me.