It’s not just that it is open source. It also has the largest software ecosystem of other open source software.

Yeah, they could use TempleOS, but then they’d need to write their own Office replacement. Or they can use Linux and use/fork LibreOffice.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, Linux has been the nerd community’s go to OS for replacing Windows for decades.

I personally don’t like adding kernel functionality specifically for the benefit of wine

Well, luckily, you can personally have a kernel without that functionality

That is just the constant issue these people put in the public trust are learning but have to held to task to.

I think the people who’ve gained a career in politics understand the rent seeking game and it is the people who have forgotten what the stakes are.

I don’t buy for a minute that these highly educated people with degrees from prestigious universities don’t understand the historical context that they’re living through. The amount of corruption on public display is shocking to anyone who is paying attention.

We’ve just become complacent and have, collectively, forgotten what the stakes are.

You’re right, the people who are able to make decisions are able to make objectively bad long term decision and the amount of people who want to hold them to task is so massively diluted by a bunch of people who’ve grown complacent due to being born in and living through a period of time that has, historically, been largely positive.

(( Huge asterisks there, obviously. I mean there’s no world wars, widespread slavery or feudalism. Totalitarianism is limited to corners of the world where we’re largely discouraged from thinking about. North Korea is, objectively, an ongoing crime against humanity but most people living in western democracies have no context to understand that reality so it’s feels like a fantasy setting in a movie or TV Show. ))

There are still functioning democracies that haven’t gone off the cliff despite everything and the Internet has given us an organizational tool that has never existed in human history. We’re living through Interesting Times, but there’s still hope.

I’m a USian and also have worked in tech for decades. I hope Europe succeeds, there needs to be competition.

The US is in a similar position when it comes to manufacturing. The various business interests have sold our country’s capabilities in exchange for short-term profits.

Offshoring was wildly profitable for decades, why pay people domestically to do a thing when you can pay less to people in another country to do the same thing. Thanks to this, we now import the vast majority of things from overseas because we have little to no domestic manufacturing capability. The massive industrial manufacturing base that carried the US economy after WWII was deconstructed in a few decades

Most of the money that was being poured into US tech companies from all around the world was funneled back out into foreign manufacturing centers who now control the market for electronics hardware. Apple has spent hundreds of BILLIONS investing in SE Asia’s electronic hardware manufacturing industry because it was cheaper. This helped create an entire industry that renders any attempt to create domestic production unprofitable.

The US made a lot of billionaires and not much else. Today our tech sector is largely just software running on hardware that was manufactured elsewhere and imported. (It would be a shame if someone invented a thing which could create software at scale)

The only reason that the US remains dominant in these fields is because we’ve strong armed every other country into accepting our Intellectual Property laws which subordinates your laws and regulations into a system for enforcing our monopoly.

Once that link is broken, and the EU imports their own hardware and writes their own software irregardless of US IP laws then the US tech sector will collapse.

Here’s Cory Doctorow explaining what that would look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jsstmmUUs

It’s viable because all of the important components are open source. That’s the entire genius of open source, if you’re capable enough then you’re immune to future changes. You can fork a project and take over development. It only costs developers and that’s well within the budget of a modern western country.

Any country who is going to undertake the effort to move away from Windows will have the resources to support distros which align with their country’s interest or create their own. Even North Korea has their own distro of Linux, I’m sure the EU countries can find the talent required to ensure their software meets their needs.

As an individual, you’re right. You’re largely at the whims of the people who volunteer their time to the kernel, the software ecosystem and the individual distributions. If you have infinite money then those problems become a line item in your budget.

I certainly don’t assume that.

I expect your elites to operate with the same selfish motivations as ours. That includes wanting to exploit the situation in order to utilize public funds to grow a private tech sector where they stand to profit immensely.

They will also want to protect themselves personally from continuing to be predated on by their elite counterparts in the US who utilize this technological dependency for spying and coercive tactics.

Our elites and politicians share a similar playbook when it comes to doing exactly what they want while pretending to struggle to do anything else.

Technology is important for making the government run more efficiently and the US tech sector has historically provided the tools for making that process more efficient. It was easier to use the tools available from a close ally than it was to devote the resources towards building up a domestic technology sector.

We’re in a different world now, both politically and technologically. The US government has been using this dependency to gain advantage in other areas by spying on our allies. The trend towards right-wing nationalism also creates a real danger that this could escalate into even more coercive tactics.

Now, the cost of cultivating a domestic tech sector is now much lower than the cost of having all of your government functions held ransom by a foreign power. Especially when everyone can see how rapidly the US’s posture towards allies has changed.

That being said, it takes time to build a tech industry and swap to domestic production. The US’s tech sector growth was subsidized by the entire world and built over decades. It will take time to replicate that in the EU (and even longer if there isn’t a unified initiative).

Until then, your governments cannot help but be dependent on Microsoft and other US technology companies who are using emerging technology to enable new capabilities (i.e. Palantir).

As one commoner to another, I hope your country is shocked by the turmoil that we’re going through and can build something better.

It’s overselling it, but the move towards digital sovereignty isn’t a passing fad.

The various revelations over the years about the US spying on allies and Microsoft famously telling the EU(?) that they could not guarantee that their data would not be turned over to the US government has all but ensured that this is going to happen as a matter of national security.

They can’t have their government dependent on systems that could be disabled at any time for political reasons, like the sanctions applied to the ICC judge on the genocide case against Israel.

It was one thing when the US was an ally, but now we are not a dependable ally and these countries are reorganizing their security posture in recognition of that fact.

Linux is the only viable operating system that is not vulnerable to US government sponsored supply chain attacks. While it may not be deployed everywhere immediately, the directive to agencies to start planning for the transition is the first step in the process and critical services will transition much sooner.

This will happen regardless of what happens in the election, Trump has exposed the weaknesses in our system of government and the attitude of US elites towards other countries. No sane country would trust US tech given the direction of things.

And this, for the readers in the future reading this post from their flying cars on Mars (or Roko’s Basilisk), is what we call trolling in the ancient times.

Let’s leave it unsettled so future nerd historians, 100 years from now, can hate us for not asking and write books speculating about it.

If you wear programmer socks you get a pass

I think we’re passed the statute of limitations now, but I clicked the “I am over 18” button when I was not over 18.

Please don’t tell the Interney Police

deleted by creator

Good job, you caught the one person who failed to read the TOS before making their account, which we all do always every time.

That hypothetical doesn’t seem to have happened in reality, because these terms have been standard in almost all TOSs for decades and yet age verification is not suddenly an easy sell.

Do you not read the terms of service before creating an account on social media?!?!

I’m sure exactly zero kids have read the TOS and left the site. There isn’t so much as a pop-up that attempts to enforce it.

As others have already mentioned, most Lemmy instances have this exact term in their TOS (which you read, right?)

Now the question is, did he put the x as a variable i.e. they couldn’t agree how to write it so he used x as a stand-in, or was he using x phonetically.

Probably the latter, and yet…

we need sl for ncmpcppc

Can’t accidentality start blasting music if I never stop

My goto is:

nc CTRL+R

Well, I’ll give it one thing. It’s easier to spell than my current terminal music player: ncmpcpp