GolfNovemberUniform

I believe it's one of the first apps to do it. It's not too responsive on my device now (newer software do be meaninglessly heavier) but M3E is stupid and cool so all apps should be M3E.

Free and open-source software is now going strong with extremely popular and even industry standard products. However with fame always comes abuse which unfortunately affected FOSS as well.

In recent times we saw separate political decisions by big FOSS companies/teams such as the Linux kernel development team prohibiting citizens of Russia to contribute to the project, as well as general rise of political (specifically aggressive left and ultraleft leaning) drama and discussions in the space.

This makes me believe that the situation is only going to get worse. I can't be sure if projects will start implementing restrictions on their use (therefore switching to a model that is not considered free and open-source) but it's clear that contributions will likely and increasingly continue to be affected. This may cause all kinds of issues, up to addition of malicious code that starts on certain (and obviously unreasonable) triggers.

A complete death of the free and open-source model is practically impossible. There will always be people making their code truly free (as in freedom), at least for a limited time. Though when it comes to big players, their free future is at a significant risk.

"But I can always fork it!" - sure you can and your project might even gain solid ground but the political issues will remain, both for you and your contributors.

"Then how do I fix it?" - it's simple - keep unrelated politics away from your and others' projects and don't ban contributors who have political activity of any kind outside your projects, even if you disagree with them. Also create a separate account on social media for all politics-related discussions. Do not use your developer account or especially your project's official account.

Unfortunately there's still no information on the matter. Neither Tobias nor Brodie know pretty much anything.

However I would say the reason for the ban has to be illegitimate if the truth remains hidden even after the negative public reaction. From my knowledge on the FOSS development world and community, the chance of the reason being political is fairly high as the FOSS community stupidly doesn't respect anyone right leaning. The "we won't let you change our system" reason is also possible though.

I've always been a hater of the Anaconda installer. It's not necessarily hard but everything was in wrong places and UX was nonexistent (just try to remember the tile view of steps). Now that I've heard a lot about the new one, I had to try it.

So I downloaded the latest stable Fedora 42 GNOME edition image and booted it off an approximately 15 years old flash drive.

The first impression was "bruh no rounded corners. Imagine using web UI" but then it got better. There's no stupid tile view and the only real complaint is in my case the buttons on the bottom were in a weird spot between the left side and the center (just move them to the right please).

However I'm strict so I also checked the partition manager thing and I actually liked it. I haven't tried doing actual work with it though (as I didn't plan to install anything) so there might be issues there that I didn't notice.

Overall it's a terrific improvement but you do a simple installer so just switch to the GNOME's one duh.

I'm genuinely curious. Other changes are just following modern (and stupid) trends so nothing weird with that. This one though just makes the maximize, minimize and close buttons look smaller than others (new tab in Console etc) which imo creates inconsistency. Also it may not apply to all display resolutions but it does on mine.

As a tech support channel member I sometimes see people not being able to install or repair a desktop OS because of inability to get another PC to create a bootable medium on. I guess such an app should help them because USB-A to USB-C adapters are much cheaper than computers. The only downside (or probably a feature) is it can't flash official Windows ISOs yet.

Today I got banned from Mastodon (infosec.exchange instance) for stuff nobody should ever consider wrong. I can't add screenshots (because I can't register on imgur for some reason) but I can add the comments below:

1. @eff tbh I'm considering joining Meta because I support their recent decisions. The FOSS alternatives are very toxic and don't want to change.

2. @BrodieOnLinux do we have any evidence of you actually living in Australia though?

3. @GossiTheDog ugh how do so many people not understand that opinion based censorship is not democratic at all? It's more nazi actually if you ask me.

4. @nixCraft well I support the changes. Moderation nowadays is pretty terrible and doesn't allow any unpopular opinion or religion. You can use heavily moderated forums that only allow your opinion but for gatekeepers it's not the way to go.

5. @eff @theintercept @jilliancyork ok the first example is kind of hate speech. Calling people trash is kinda bad.

6. @eff now this is better than fake free speech.

However, the admins at least very kindly recommended me finding another instance before suspending my account. That kind of attitude is highly appreciated, even though I disagree with the moderation techniques themselves.

With that out of the way I would like to remind everyone one more time that FOSS social networks do not offer what they claim to be offering. If you're on such a network, you can stay there only as long as your political, religious, cultural and other views are the same as the admins' and the users'. If you want real free expression, I guess you can only get it on Facebook or by creating a new network. In other case you'll constantly be getting reported and eventually banned like in my case.

As many active internet users already know, Meta is changing (or claiming to be changing) their policies to reduce censorship and allow "not popular" opinions on their platforms.

I personally think it's the best decision a social network has made in the past few years. The majority of the internet being significantly left-leaning caused censorship and hate against those who legally and rightfully support a different position. Unfortnately this also affected big "user-focused" networks such as Mastodon and Lemmy to such an extent many of the instances outright banned such opinions.

This is an extremely severe threat to political freedoms and freedom of expression in places that consider themselves democratic. This is why I fully support the Meta's decision and encourage other social networks and communication platforms to follow Meta in this particular decision.

Also I would like to add that considering civil expression or promotion of an unpopular opinion on topics such as politics, gender and religion "hate speech" is ridiculous for a democracy and inclusivity supporting individual, even if such opinions kind of hurt their beliefs. This has already been a problem in the past and now it's pretty much the same but only the "allowed opinions" have changed.

Give freedom of expression back to everyone!

No like seriously, I get that the admins work for free but FOSS is supposed to be about freedom and making products that everyone can benefit from yet still the bias is simply hilarious sometimes and concerning usually.

For the record, I'm talking about conflicts of different opinions here, not justifying hate speech or extremism. I know there is a major difference between FOSS and Big Data in terms of treatment of troll behavior (with the latter supporting it because it generates engagement), but it is clearly being misunderstood and abused now.

I even think I'd rather recommend proprietary options to others at this point because of mental health risks. Yes, I know that some major platforms are quite heavily biased politically (with X even being accused in supporting fascism) but it's not as bad as being biased in everything imo.

Can't we finally understand that the modern trends in most cultures praise exclusiveness (often cleverly disguised as distorted inclusiveness which sounds impossible but is actually a case and it hurts people's understanding of the latter) and work against it? Or at least we could do it for the FOSS reputation.

On the positive note though, Mastodon that is probably the biggest FOSS social platform seems to be pretty good (though probably a bit too close to the Big Data in terms of troll treatment). Could it be because of the size?

I think it's just nice to be able to verify a file with a right click instead of opening the terminal and typing the *sum command. Yes, it is technically bloat, but also good for time saving.

What do you think about this? I'm personally against anything enabled by default, especially if it can cause slowdowns. However I understand the importance of backups so this change makes some sense.