I dunno.

Multiple people in my friend group are aware of the issues with big tech companies.

But the second you bring up FOSS with them, or Linux gets mentioned, they either disengage completely or get angry. One of these people heads an IT department.

I don’t know why they react that way. The weird part is, they’ll happily use FOSS software like VLC or something Minecraft launcher. The second you say it’s FOSS they actually seem less into the software, not more.

Adding an optional extra search engine isn’t the end of the world.

They also have Google and Bing, which aren’t nice either, yet nobody was doing this performative outrage over optional search engine inclusions before.

Oh he knows. But this lets him feel edgy and different

There are plenty of these, yes. But there are also plenty of consumer-grade GPUs being used for it too.

Firefox adding another search engine choice isn’t really headline news to me but cool I guess, especially if it’s another option that’s not Google?

I’ll continue using something else, though.

Nah, BMWs were actually pretty great, for a time. Well put-together, fairly reliable, engaging to drive, very comfortable, pleasantly designed.

I daily drive a 2003 E39 5 series with 260,000 miles on the clock. Mechanically it’s great.

I did have to sort some rust out a while back, but that’s par for the course in the UK. Salted roads, never far from the sea, constantly damp roads spraying all that salty road grime under the car. For the love of god people, rust protect your cars.

The way smartphones have evolved has been awful.

When they first started gaining traction, I thought that over time, as the hardware improved, we’d increasingly see devices that were essentially mini PCs, with all of the freedoms that come with it. That as hardware became more capable, PC and smartphone software stacks would converge.

I yearn for proper Linux phones. Plenty of gnome apps are already ready in terms of UX (try shrinking them down to a smartphone screen size, they’ll seamlessly switch to a smartphone UI, it’s pretty incredible). Maybe one day.

Not surprised a user from a tankie instance is angry about a western country imposing rules on a domestic company for reasons of national security, but is completely fine with China allowing barely any western countries in their market at all and, when they are, enforcing that they must be run by Chinese and have a close relationship with the government.

It’s bad when the west takes an inch, but it’s good when China takes a mile.

I can see the logic of being able to set certain items that you always want in stock, and your fridge being able to tell you if you’re running low or if it’s beyond its expiry.

Can smart fridges do that? I don’t think so.

Even if they can, it’s probably not worth the extra expense, complexity, data mining, security concerns, or the fact that Samsung or whoever can shut down functionality whenever they want.

I just want a basic fridge-freezer.

They’ve continually called for switching to renewables though, and put out a bunch of videos on how damaging climate change is and will continue to be…

They literally didn’t do that though…

Except you lied about who they are owned by.

Why make yourself out to be virtuous and caring about the truth when your entire premise is a lie?

I get the frustration, but it does actually cost money to make content, especially high effort content like this.

Add on top of that the fact that the people involved need to be able to eat, have a home, provide for their families, have a life.

People would complain if they were sponsored by some shitty VPN provider or the like, and also complain about them trying to sell merch. I certainly wouldn’t work for free, so I don’t see why they should have to.

It’s not really that hard to do a couple of key presses to skip ahead, either. It’s what I do.

They don’t say that, though?

They say things like “with effort, we can solve climate change, or minimise its effects.”

Which is very different. And personally, I hate over the top doomerism where everyone says everything is fucked beyond repair all the time.

A product like the Framework laptops is inevitably going to be more costly.

Not only do they not have the scale of Dell, HP, Apple, etc, but they also need to use modular components, factor upgradability into the design, etc.

Even for the DIY ones, someone has to hand assemble it fully, test it, then strip it down again. That’s additional cost and process complexity.

For a while, but only people that closely follow Linux news would know about it.

I didn’t say they have to like it, that would be silly.

I’m criticising them for making an incorrect statement, being corrected on it, then acting extremely proud of being ignorant of the facts, and committing to not informing themselves.

Imagine being this proud of ignorance. I can’t wrap my head around it.

GoG is also a Storefront for closed source software, genius. Do you think the software on GoG is open source? Lmao

GoG has regional pricing too…