libre
Welcome to libre
A comm dedicated to the fight for free software with an anti-capitalist perspective.
The struggle for libre computing cannot be disentangled from other forms of socialist reform. One must be willing to reject proprietary software as fiercely as they would reject capitalism. Luckily, we are not alone.
Resources
- Free Software, Free Society provides an excellent primer in the origins and theory around free software and the GNU Project, the pioneers of the Free Software Movement.
- Switch to GNU/Linux! If you're still using Windows in
$CURRENT_YEAR, take Linux Mint for a spin. If you're ready to take the plunge, flock to Fedora! If you're a computer hobbyist and love DIY, use Arch, NixOS or the many, many other offerings out there.
- Those on Apple Silicon Macs can consult Asahi Linux for available options.
Rules
- Be on topic: Posts should be about free software and other hacktivst struggles. Topics about general tech news should be in the technology comm or programming comm. That doesn't mean all posts have to be serious though, memes are welcome!
- Avoid using misleading terms/speading misinformation: Here's a great article about what those words are. In short, try to avoid parroting common Techbro lingo and topics.
- Avoid being confrontational: People are in different stages of liberating their computing, focus on informing rather than accusing. Debatebro nonsense is not tolerated.
- All site-wide rules still apply
Artwork
- Xenia was meant to be an alternative to Tux and was created (licensed under CC0) by Alan Mackey in 1996.
- Comm icon (of Xenia the Linux mascot) was originally created by @ioletsgo
- Comm banner is a close up of "Dorlotons Degooglisons" by David Revoy (CC-BY 4.0) for Framasoft
s?If my graduating Computer Info Systems class is anything to go by, 90% of humans don't know fuck about computer technology.
I watched a guy in my security class sit through two ads to watch a video, then clicked on a random spot on the video and activated another ad. Also had some people click on the fake download buttons lol
The amount of "tech people" that weren't using any sort of ad blocking was astounding. When I was doing IT stuff I figured it was just normie endusers barely undrestanding how shit worked but god damn, it was rather appalling.
My main professor in college pronounced "kernel" as "Curr-nell". Our computer lab mentor, who I basically carried through her first 2 years, insisted that URL was pronounced like the name "Earl" with a Y on the front of it. I applied for that job when she did and never even got an interview.
Looking back on the girl that had no business being in a programming degree not understanding how to properly format HTML/XML, not so bad compared to some of the dumb shit I witnessed.
I originally was going to major in computer science but unbeknownst to any of the freshmen, almost the entire CS department got poached by another school the summer before. So you had a bunch of inexperienced professors and even more student teachers, along with this fuckwad boomer who came out of retirement but didn't really want to teach. The department head was a smart guy, but he had only finished his doctorate three or four years before I got into college.
Anywho, you had a bunch of students who had no place being in CS and wanted to skirt by like they did in high school then get a six figure job immediately after graduation. Even worse, because the department had only a handful of experienced professors, there wasn't any quality control.
As an example, one of the TAs who was supposed to be grading program submissions was just slapping on As to any program that compiled and didn't seg fault. So you had people submitting Hello World with a menu for a program that was supposed to sort a tree of linked lists and passing classes with flying colors they should have failed. These should have been graded by professors, but some of them were teaching four to six classes each term.
I remember one class I submitted basically nothing except documentation for the final program because I got bogged down in my other classes. The TA's grade came back and said the program did everything it was supposed to. Motherfucker, there was no program. I was willing to bite the bullet and get like 15/100 because my grade in that class was fine and I had other classes I needed to devote more time to.
Sorry I'm rambling. My point is I was one of like 10 people in the freshman class of 70ish who was doing well in all my classes. As I got to upper division, the students who had been passed when they shouldn't have got absolutely fucked as the department started sorting its shit out and getting real teachers. They basically knew nothing and we were over halfway through our degree.
Everything was still a mess, though, and I realized I didn't enjoy what I was doing the way I did in high school. Trying to dodge sketchy professors each term felt like I was wasting money. I switched my major to painting and printmaking, deciding I would just have three minors in math, physics, and computer science. >!I ended up dropping out of college with 5/6ths of my degree due to depression and surviving a suicide attempt that left me disabled.!<
Our main professor just got tenure so they couldn't get rid of him and he basically checked out after that. In order to pass his class you just had to show up and turn in something. He gave B's to broken uncomplilable code. He gave A's to compliance code that had even the remotest of functionality. I found out 2 years ago at my last job that pretty much no one took programmers from that school with a CIS degree. I worked with 3 people who graduated from the same school with CS degrees, including my boss. To put it bluntly, I was mediocre lol.
Calling a presumably adult woman a girl when also shitting on their technical proficiency is rough, comrade.
how to properly format HTML/XML
You mean by properly configuring your text editor to auto-format, right?
I didn't mean anything by the girl thing. I guess I default to using "girl" a lot. sorry if that came off ruder than intended.
But MS Notepad doesn't have code formatting either.
She really wasn't supposed to be in those classes. She was going for business management or something and had to take a handful of programming classes like we had to take a handful of marketing and accounting classes.
Thanks comrade. CIS/MIS is pretty notorious for what you're describing so it's not too surprising.
Not that the bazingas in the CS department are any better but I'd be less surprised by it in an IS program just cause you're usually in or more adjacent to the business school.
Higher than 90
I was gonna say 95% lol.
I had to show a guy I sat next to in class how to watch instructional videos on Youtube at 2x speed
One person I sat next to in intro to web dev almost ripped my USB drive out of my computer to save something with barely even asking and I lost my shit over it because I had a modified hacked version of Portal 1 on it that didn't need the Steam runtime so I could play it on the school computers. In hindsight that was probably on me since I really don't think she had any business understanding what I was actually doing. I mentioned a few other horror stories in my reply to @[email protected]'s comment if you wanna cringe a bit lol.
Depending on where you live this might be illegal or at least go against uni guidelines since might infringe on some privacy rights you have.
10 years ago when I started college, I watched 100s of freshman lug their g*mer laptops into the lab for tutoring the night the intro CS class homework was due. They were too busy the rest of the week gaming to do the homework, so they began 4 hours before it was due and begged for help.
Most of them didn't make it to their sophomore year. I don't feel that bad, the work load was not that heavy, the tutors were there every day of the week. I had a really hard time grasping programming at first, so I was there daily. The homeworks were given a week ahead of time, the lecture notes spelled out 80% of the solution, and the tutors loved to help. The students just didn't want the help.
This conjures a similar feeling. idk maybe I'm being a dick.
I don't think you're being a dick. I've worked with college students extensively and the reality is that many of them don't actually want to be there or think they can skate by without really putting work in. Some of those people probably had legitimate excuses, but many people just prioritize other things or don't quite yet have the habits or emotional discipline they need. And that's fine but they're not the ones to be catered to or else professors lose all compassion and refuse to give any leniency because they've been played by the late submission gamers too many times.
I remember being this. I was hideously depressed and experiencing my first vaguely supportive community. It was what it was
I knew a few folks who were on the depressed side and I didn't mean to lump them in. I saw a lot of it first hand and the behavior was different ime. Like the lazy kids were very "give me the answer" while the people having a seriously hard time were not pushy and sorta silently fell behind.
A lot of my friends didn't make it to graduation. It was really hard seeing it happen but they weren't in a headspace to accept help. A couple times a month there'd be a classmate who would just stop showing up.
At least it's not facebook. 
Might as well set up some sort of sandbox for it as a side project
Call your professor a filthy casual for not having a TeamSpeak server.
TeamSpeak still exists?
It can if you just believe hard enough.
I had to use it for a fleet in New Eden earlier today, cannot recommend.
yep, they're still making new changes to try to compete with discord, it's just that nobody cares
Should be mandatory to run a matrix server for computer science course
Install it in a VM. It will prove you know a lot more than double clicking the discord.msi file or whatever.
What @mathemachristian.lemm.ee said. I dunno how much shit you want to stir, but they might be using this as an alternative to an approved system for the university, so bringing this up to IT or Dean of Students and concern for FERPA might cause an inquiry. THAT said, you might end up having to use Microsoft TEAMS, or Zoom, or Slack. So I'd think twice before bringing it up.
Computer science students can't be taught to install anything more obscure than the most popular app, I guess.
I'm surprised they don't force you to use Slack or Teams so you can become familiar with git repo notifications and project management hell.
From a privacy POV Teams or Slack would probably be preferable to discord tbh.
Honestly, I can understand why they'd use discord. The big advantage of discord is that it's free (no fees per user per month) and you don't need to use server space for it.
Honestly, I can understand why they'd use discord. The big advantage of discord is that it's free (no fees per user per month) and you don't need to use server space for it.