I guess I shouldn't comment. I haven't used windows as a desktop OS. I was a user of MS-DOS and I disliked it greatly and always tried to use alternatives (with mixed success with DR-DOS and others) before becoming a BSD and Linux user in the early 1990's when Microsoft released Win 3.1. I've seen the ads in the start menu on other folks systems or at places like MicroCenter, but I shouldn't have assumed that it was impossible to turn off.

You know if someone like Fluxbox or Window Maker did this I'd be kind of excited or at least interested. Imagine this announcement: "We've decided to work on WindowMaker full time using YOU as a resource. We'll be adding a lot more features. You're a lazy dick who's used our environment for a long time and despite never donating a dime to the cause, we've decided to make you indirectly responsible for funding our dream. We'll be adding some great new features but we're adding a non-configurable single WindowMaker dock icon that will stream ads and other annoying crap people pay us to show you. We'll probably also scrape your process list for stuff we can relate to ads and maybe dig around in your homedir a bit. If we can get an intelligence community interested, we might do a little spying & telemetry, too. Nonetheless, we'll be adding built in Sprite-based effects and transitions, incredible 3D eye candy, a suite of professionally created (okay AI-created) themes, and really useful task switching features as well as full GNUStep integration if you can stand all that other fuck-shit."

Well that makes one of us. I'm with the "Get that thing away from me, away from my head" crowd.

It's just not something people want. Seeing how far the Internet has fallen from it's original purpose, it's not surprising. We all thought "information wants to be free" and that the Internet would bring it to us. Instead we got a mix between a giant strip mall that puts everyone else in town outta business and an iron rod of control used by governments. It went sideways and now it sucks.

That's one thing if the Net lives on your computer or your phone, but not if it lives on your face like a head crab. I remember seeing Stephen Mann once in the late 1990's and someone asked him about surgically inserting cyborg parts. He was like "Maybe. However, only if it's open source. Anything else is probably a virus. That includes operating systems written by hostile companies like Microsoft." So, I think his spot-on instincts are what everyone else is also channeling "I ain't putting that thing on my head."

Did it occur to you that I'm still alive, it's after CV19, and that basically ruins your whole snarky point ? I'll likely still be alive the next time you faggots try it, too, still refusing to do whatever opportunistic shit you're trying to pull. We'll see you then, pal... just a lot better armed and a lot more pissed off than last time.

All they will "hash out" is how much the plebs absolutely must PAY for their crime of wanting to drive to work. They'll arrive at some kind of unenforceable and ridiculous declarations that for sure won't involve stopping anything that's shipped via bunker oil or trucked to them via diesel. Nor will their regulations impact the private jets they fly in and out of the conference on.

If it's something super scary and severe, then perhaps, but I'd be inclined to believe the exact opposite. I'd assert the next time a bunch of panicked leftists want to shut down small businesses and churches and it's anything short of Marburg or Ebola, you're going to see a lot more refusniks and a lot more protest, divisiveness, and violence than we saw during CV1984. Authoritarians overplayed their hand in 20-22 and I think the "next time" is going to get a lot more pushback, especially if it's anytime soon.

Only The Atlantic could write an article this douchy, paternal, and utterly wrong. Remember when they wrote the Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty after spending two years demonizing skeptics, refuseniks, and scientists as cranks and nutcases for doubting the effectiveness of the more draconian measures in play back then? Yeah, I don't think so. I'll never forget those cunts. Mother fuck the douchebags at the Atlantic and the donkey they rode in on.

There are source generators and decompilers even if you lacked the original code. Code for things like Windows and MacOS are readily available. Things like AutoCAD or Maya might be better guarded trade secrets. However, if the AI hype is real (and I'm skeptical) then they should only need a the documentation showing all the features. Documentation will become like a requirements document and the prompt becomes much easier "Write something in C++ to behave just like this documentation says it should."

Yeah, TFA is the actual load of shit and it's written by an asshole with no critical thinking skills. Talk about a complete lack of skepticism: suuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrreeeeee, people just leave their phone and wallet and walk out into the woods with a .38 then are never seen from again all the tiiiimeee.

What can happen to open source can happen to commercial software, too. He's right, too. Excel is so well documented that soon (or now) you might not even need the source code. Just "make this exactly like Excel" and wait two weeks while feeding in more tokens. So, while they might reach for FOSS right now because they don't have an army of lawyers, eventually folks feed in commercial code they have access to (think licensed Windows application developers who've had the Windows source code for decades). So, what's good for the goose is gonna be good for the gander, too. What they do to FOSS today will befall 'Doze tomorrow (or sooner).

Yeah, the blatant disregard for the work and intentions of FOSS authors is breathtaking. However, just keep in mind Windows, MacOS, IRIX, and other code bases are also available. Plenty of folks have the code. If I feed one of these LLMs enough tokens and my private collection of highly copyrighted/DRM'd vendor's code, it's eventually going to spit out a version of MS Windows or whatever that I can license anyway I want (BSD license for Win 11 anyone?).

I doubt M$ or Apple would let that go unchallenged. If they can win in court, then so can the EFF or others. So, I'm not sure how long the legs are on this idea.

Paul Ehrlich, is that you? Noel Brown? Well, perhaps a Polymarket bet will open up and you can put some money on that bet (and lose it). I'm with the PP, this is bullshit. They'll be flying around like it's fucking free in 6 weeks no matter what happens in The Strait. I say you can throw this prediction in with "There will be no more sea ice" or "Africa will be depopulated by starvation" or my favorite "entire nations will be wiped out by sea level rise by 2000".

Sure, everyone knows we need a complete rewrite of System==D in Rust, sure. What about Wayland, eh? What about DBUS, Pulseaudio, and GNOME3 ? I would also like to donate M4 to the Rust project for rewrite kind of like leaving a baby on a doorstep then ringing the bell and running away. Of course, all of this needs to run inside of Kubernetes (uhm, excuse me "k8", bruh), or else we wont get funding. Bonus for optimizing for RISC-V and also could you just please give me the prompt you used for it all afterwards? Kthnxbye.

... or eschew using tech at all.

If criminals didn't use cars or smartphones, they'd be (almost) invisible to LEOs. Most of the tools LEOs use involve scraping data from one or the other.