palata

How does that compare to, say, Mint?

Disclaimer: I run on Gentoo, so I genuinely don't know.

> it's annoying switching, because I'm used to it so much

Since you're switching to Debian, could you tell me what you don't understand in Debian that was working fine on Ubuntu for you?

I am not an Ubuntu user, so it's hard for me to know. But I find it very surprising that after 10 years on Ubuntu, it would be "annoying" to switch to Debian.

But we're talking about running a server in production here.

If one can't be bothered to install what is needed, maybe one should not run a server in production?

Quickly running something on your LAN for testing is different, but if you expose it to the Internet, probably your main concern shouldn't be "this is not installed".

Policy makers are really bad at understanding what they are trying to regulate. But it sounds like the most basic skill one needs to solve problems is to understand that in order to resolve a problem, one needs to study and understand it.

Did those people never learn how to solve problems? Shouldn't we have people who understand how to solve problems in those positions?

It is valid here, but also for every single important debate. They don't understand energy, they don't understand climate change, they don't understand physics.

Luckily, France will soon elect their next president, most definitely someone who doesn't understand either. As if the people cared more about showing they are pissed and less about actually solving problems.

At this point is has to be bad faith.

"I don't understand why people don't want to depend on AND share all their data with the company that makes me too rich".

"They should be conservative with building more RAM, because it would be very bad [for me] if people could afford RAM and run open models locally".

The very first thing is that you need to own your domain. Once your email is, say, [email protected], then you can switch provider whenever you want and nobody has to know.

Back to your question, I'm a happy user of Migadu.

I thought it actually was a CI pipeline

Sure, it doesn't contradict what I said. The number of Signal users connecting through Corvus is probably a rounding error for Signal, it's not worth doing anything against it.

Signal is a non-profit. They won't shut you down because they want to make profit. They may shut you down if they think you lower the quality of their service. I'm pretty sure that with Corvus you're not on their radar because probably almost nobody is using Corvus, right? Or do you have tens of thousands of users?

"forgot" :D

> The scientists found no evidence that frequent ejaculations mark an increased risk of prostate cancer. In fact, the reverse was true: High ejaculation frequency was linked to a decreased risk. Compared to men who reported 4–7 ejaculations per month across their lifetimes, men who ejaculated 21 or more times a month enjoyed a 31% lower risk of prostate cancer.

I think they wouldn't want a third-party client to become mainstream. That a few people bridge matrix to signal is not exactly a problem.

You can totally fork their projects! You just can't call yours "Signal" (trademark I guess?) and you can't connect to their servers. Molly seems to be tolerated, somehow? Maybe because it is niche.

But clearly connecting to the Signal servers with an outdated, modified fork is against Signal's goal.

It explains perfectly why Signal does not want third-party clients.

To the haters: I am not saying that it is perfect, in an ideal world we could have secure third-party clients. I am just saying that it is pragmatic: in our world, we don't.

Signal has forever been a pragmatic approach to private messaging, and it succeeded at that: Signal literally put E2EE on the map!

Signal has a threat model, and they do the best app they can addressing that threat model. Which means that they cannot accept third-party clients or federation. They don't say "you cannot use XMPP or SimpleX or Matrix on the side", they just say "we provide this, if you benefit from it, use it for free".

Still, there is a very vocal minority that takes every opportunity they take to explain how "insane" that is, and how they "cannot imagine how anyone with some kind of intelligence wouldn't be revolted". I believe it is the same posture as those complaining about Android or GrapheneOS not giving root access ("even in the advanced settings"). The fact is that if you want root access on your phone, you should install a system that gives you root access, and not select a system that does not and then complain.

Signal is great at what it does. It's okay to also want something else while acknowledging that Signal is great at what it does.

> Rather than stand themselves, the students pulled together a slate of trusted figures—not just academics, but also farmers, lawyers, artists, teachers, and a former basketball player.

I came here to say that it's not "just academics", as many of the comments here seem to imply.

Academia actually involves a lot of politics... just not the kind that says it's all the immigrants' fault.

> That the PHDs will be overly confident

Definitely a risk, but politicians are professionals at being overly confident. With this selection (there are not only PhDs, and not only academics), there is actually a chance of... actually trying to understand the problems?

> Politics is a skill

It very much is, but I don't believe it is the skill of "solving problems" or "making society better".

Politics is about getting elected. Convincing the people that it's all the others' fault, that you know better, that you will save the world. And then when they get elected... we naively expect them to solve problems. But we selected them for their capacity at being selected, not their capacity at understanding the big problems society is facing...

Agreed. And let's not forget that those are engineers who develop stuff like electronic cigarettes or... well... bombs.

> actively detrimental for climate advocacy IMO.

Wow... actively detrimental?

I mostly agree, but I would like to mention that we are destroying our planet also because of the other fields of engineering :-).

Sure, software has a lot more malpractice ("let's ship barely-tested, unfinished stuff"), but let's not say that "the other engineers" are making the world a better place merely by "being real engineers".

I disagree. It's about believing in something and making their way to the uncomfortable truth.

I think it's good that you have reached that point. Now, if you don't mind my asking (I'm curious):

Did it take 17 years for you to get there, or was it a while ago and you just say now that you were into crypto 17 years ago?

And I don't mean to be offending here: people routinely take years or decades on similar things. I have been observing that with climate change for 20 years now. And I see many many people who are still in that process. Actually I would argue that most people out there haven't reached the point where we can have the discussion, they seem to be in the "denial" phase still.

I think that software engineering is very much engineering.

I just think that the level of malpractice in software engineering is a lot higher than in other engineering fields, for some reasons.

So you do agree with me that AI does centralise power, and you hope (like me) that open weight models will change that.

I think we agree. It's just that at the moment, AI centralises power. Everything else is hypothetical.

> what do you mean they don't in practice?

In practice most people don't use open models?

In practice, right now, they don't. I hope they will, obviously.

Then about inequalities... you don't run an open model on an affordable RaspberryPi. The more money you have, the more you can leverage AI. Open weights or not.

I feel like there are infinitely many philosophies. From "I don't care" to "here is a list of 200 things your project must honour in order to be respectable" through "I just find this cool".

As a user, I like it when I own the devices I buy and can install and modify the software I want. That's not always the way it is, and that's life. I won't go to other projects and tell them that they must change something because I want them to.

> even if i did i think there would be a strong argument that the benefits outweigh it.

I disagree. I think AI centralises power and reinforces inequalities, and that's before we talk about cybersecurity and carbon footprint.

It is not clear at all that the benefits outweigh that.

What is clear, though, is that it's a very useful tool to write software.

I am sympathetic to their cause, as I understand why one may be against what AI represents (in multiple dimensions).

But I believe that the anti-ai crowd will end up with contributions by people who pretend they don't use AI. Which may be fine if what you want is that "contributors own their work to some extent" (i.e. they need to understand something in order to pretend they didn't use an AI), but for those who don't want AI because of the inequalities it creates or the carbon footprint, then... well it doesn't work.

You should not contribute if you don't find it worth it. There are many reasons to contribute. Maybe it's easier for you if your patch gets upstream instead of maintaining a fork, maybe you want to be part of a community, maybe something else.

I don't know if it's good for your CV. I have done a ton of open source before AI was a thing, and the truth is that nobody cares. I still have the basic coding test in interviews, even if the team interviewing me is actually relying on my open source work in their project.

And AI making it easier to contribute to a project, I think it's even less valuable today. Do it if you want to, that's all!