Wish I had a choice, at work. Technically I can run Linux or MacOS, but I’d need to run a Windows VM for a few things anyway.

As someone who works for a very large company, on a team with around 500 people around the world, this is what concerns me. Our team will not be 500 people in a few years, and if it is, it’s because usage of our product has grown substantially. We are buying heavily into AI, and yet people are buying it when our leadership teams claim it will not impact jobs.

Will I be able to take a unit of 2 people down to 0 people? No, I’ve never seen a process where I could eliminate every human.

Socially speaking, this is also very concerning to me. I’m afraid that implementation of AI will be yet another thing that makes it difficult for smaller businesses to compete in a global marketplace. Yes, a tech-minded company can leverage a smaller head count into more capabilities, but this typically requires more expensive and limiting turnkey solutions, or major investment into developers of a customized solution.

I’ll go ahead and pre-dial 911.

We don’t even have it on desktop, yet. I wouldn’t use them as much as I do at work, where I use them to actively manage dynamic workflows. But it sure would be nice to be able to collapse some shopping tabs I typically have open, into one pinned tab group, or researching various projects.

Once they do it, I sure hope they put some more thought into how pinned tab groups should behave. They should either be to the left of all pinned tabs, or between pinned tabs and unpinned tabs. It drives me crazy in Edge, how new tabs tend to open to the left of my pinned tab groups.

Actually, I exclusively use Firefox Focus on my phone, so I don’t really care there. But I do wish they’d get out of this half-assed support for tabs, there. Just let me create new tabs without long pressing links. Maybe put a limit on number of tabs to 3 or 5. I’d also love to have a “send to desktop” option, without having to go to regular Firefox and tab sync.

A lack of government regulation would not be good for them, because it would empower their competition, and that’s the last thing they want.

This is how they do it when there is some regulation, they abuse the regulation. But without regulation, they would be free to destroy the competition with unlimited anti-competitive practices.

To me, the big problem with libertarianism is that it requires a big level of maturity from the population. It requires private regulatory and certification companies, union of workers to seek working rights in a non-violent way, and people to support charity initiatives that help the poor and endangered. All of that is not impossible, but people are very used to that being a government responsibility, it won’t happen over night

This is the problem with every philosophy, it’s an ideal that someone dreamed up. Over the last 100 years or so, we’ve lost a lot of self-sufficiency as individuals and communities, but also made some progress in other areas like civil rights. It’s a constantly changing landscape, with stronger and weaker among us, and different people trying to help or take advantage. So I agree, nothing can happen overnight, and no single social or political philosophy can be directly implemented, successfully. These philosophies should be seen as altruistic goals, with a series of challenges that society faces along the path.

Those challenges are why I’m concerned with our vilification of past failures. We can learn from those failures, and borrow the good ideas, to address challenges going forward. Knowledge of the past allows us to adapt to the future, and create a system that truly suits what we become.

But if we don’t start caring for our neighbors, as well as those across the globe, we’re lost. My morning cup of coffee, or pack of cheap t-shirts, should not lead to someone living in poverty. Likewise, my purchasing it should not enrich some individual too far above others.

Yeah, and to be fair, I have no problem with folks being what makes them happy. But the, uhh… enthusiasm makes it hard to avoid.

Oh thank god, I’m so sick of blocking furry communities. Damned things multiply like rabbits.

Then people are wrong, and we should correct them. Left wing libertarians stand in direct opposition to capitalism, and have more in common with true right wing libertarians than the extremist capitalists who are taking over the mind space of the philosophy.

This is the far right libertarianism, which has essentially become an extremist, authoritarian form of capitalism. In essence, those with immense power tell us that nobody has any right to oversight and regulation over others. Their power becomes insurmountable, and their control over the economy becomes absolute. We live according to the standards they provide, because we have no alternative.

Every system of government becomes corrupted like this when thieves and liars take control. This is not libertarianism, it is simply the flavor of authoritarianism this go 'round.

Real liberterianism comes in many forms, along the left to right spectrum. On the left, there is a belief in redistribution of natural resources to the community. Personally, I believe we should be embracing local cooperatives for food, energy, medical care, and beyond. On the right, there is more allowance for imbalance by embracing business to drive innovation. Those who innovate succeed, and accrue wealth. But a true libertarian should support a near 100% estate tax, which would limit the imbalance, because you should have what you’ve earned for yourself.

The thing that we lost that leads libertarianism to fail, is our sense of community, a sense of humanity. A responsibility when you see your neighbors suffering, to help them. Once the rich went off to live in their ivory towers, they lost sight of the rest of us.

I don’t see how any system could succeed, considering the circumstances.

[Edit] And honestly, we need to stop vilifying entire philosophies because they were previously corrupted. Just because communism was implemented in a manner that oppressed millions, doesn’t mean there is no good to the philosophies behind it and socialism.

We should be borrowing the good from everything, and remembering the bad. A blanket condemnation of failed experiments makes both impossible. No singular philosophy will be effective in this imperfect world, only in theory is that level of refinement possible.

I agree. I have privacy concerns, but ultimately, I think I care more about freedom and open source. I have very real concerns about the rise of authoritarianism in America, and I’m trying to balance that against a preference for more open services like mailbox.org and fastmail.

How did the industrial and information revolutions work out for us? Sure we live lives of convenience, but our entire existences have been manipulated into making the rich richer.

Looking at long and short term trends in the wealth gap, I have absolutely no faith that this will go well.

I’m much more worried about the social implications. Namely, the displacement of workers and introduction of new efficiencies to workflows, continuing to benefit only those who are rich and in power, and driving more of us towards poverty.

It’s not an immediate existential threat, but it’s absolutely a serious issue that we aren’t paying enough attention to.

They block countries that originate a lot of spam from signup, which includes the US @smokedclover@feddit.de. You can use a VPN to signup, though I did have to reach out to support at one point very early on to finalize some provisioning. I don’t know if it was related to the geo-blocking, it’s been awhile. But I’ve had no problems since.

It’s aggressive marketing. Or unfair marketing.

I believe the technical term is “horseshit”

Configuring local software vs delegating to a web service

Agreed, but unfortunately, unless they implement VJOURNAL in their caldav implementation, I’ll probably switch to Fastmail when my prepay is up.

Correct me if I’m wrong, I very well might be, but doesn’t Bluemail do the same thing as the new Outlook for their “instant push” feature? I don’t see how else they’d accomplish that.

To be fair, they aren’t journalists. They’re a privacy-centric mail provider that is warning their customers.

Yeah, I gave Apple a try over the last two years, largely because I was annoyed with Google and wanted to ditch Android. I’ve been fed up since about 6 months in, but gave it some more time, which led to an eventual waiting game to get the replacements I want.

I just picked up a Thinkpad P14s g4 AMD with a 7840u, 64GB of RAM, and a 3 year onsite warranty for $1270 after taxes. I added a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro for another $270. I can’t imagine spending more than that and only getting 8GB RAM (and less warranty), which is what I have assigned to the GPU. Plus I get to run Linux, which I really didn’t realize how much MacOS would leave me wanting.

The thing I’ll miss is the iPhone 13 Mini size. I found iOS to be absolute trash, but there’s just not an Android phone that’s a reasonable size. But at least I can run Calyx/Graphene on a Pixel and get a decent OS without spying.

I do like the M1 MBA form factor, too, but I’ll grab the Thinkpad X13s successor for portability and get a better keyboard. I don’t need top end performance out of that, I really just want battery life and passive cooling.

And don’t even get me started on the overpriced mess that are the Airpods Max. I much prefer the Audeze Maxwell and Sennheiser Momentum 4 I replaced them with.

There’s way too much emphasis on a few songs from each artist that seem to make them more money, or are otherwise pushed by the record companies. AI or not, if it gets me deeper tracks in my daily mixes and artist radios, I’ll pay the extra for that and lossless.