But my question is, how long has this been going on for? I'm in my late 40s. I remember as a kid thinking Schwinn bicycles were the "cheapo" brand. My father, however... would would be in his 90s now... remembered them as a top tier brand.
I have this theory that the reason a lot of prices on goods we've loved our whole lives don't keep up with inflation is because brand loyalty has SUCH power that it's worth it for people to buy and enshittify those brands -- so that they can sell them to us as we age at the prices we are used to paying for them.
They make newer "luxury" brands to sell to younger people who are still deciding what a "reasonable" price to pay for something is.
> So, my question is: are the people that are upset with the "ambiguity" people who neither
> (a) want to buy a license nor
> (b) be bound by the AGPLv3?
No and no. People first want to know what the correct licenses are even before deciding which licensing path (including buying a commercial license) to take. You don't just commit to buying a commercial license without first understanding your options and comparing those options. People want to know what those options are.
People are upset that a company cannot get the simple matter of open source licensing right. It's the easiest kind of licensing. But they cannot get it right. These upset people would now never want to do business with this company.
People who would have otherwise been happy to purchase a commercial license would also stay away from the company because messing up open source licensing is a red flag. Who knows what kind of mess would be present in their commercial contracts. Yes, you can hire a lawyer to sort it out but I'd much rather do business with a company where I'm confident that the company is acting in good faith even before lawyers get involved.
> If so, I have no sympathy.
Your sympathy means nothing to me when I am picking vendors for my business. When I'm picking my vendors, I'm going to rely on professional legal expertise available to me, not the sympathies of random strangers on the internet.
> On the other hand I am also a realist and I don't think that Linux will take over the Desktop, but it will certainly have its biggest growth year ever in 2026.
I _love_ Linux, but I agree with this as well. I don't think Linux will ever be easy enough that I could recommend it to an elderly neighbor. I hope to be proven wrong, though.
What frustrates me about this particular moment is that at the same time Windows is getting worse, I feel that OS X is _also_ getting worse. This _is_ an opportunity for Apple to put a big dent in Windows market share.
> I don't think Linux will ever be easy enough that I could recommend it to an elderly neighbor.
The only reason I wouldn't do this is because that elderly neighbour wouldn't be able to install Linux and might not have any obvious place to get support from. Where can Grandma go to get support for her Linux laptop, even if she's willing to pay?
However, in a world where they can buy a laptop with Linux preinstalled and receive support from the same shop they bought it from if they do run into problems, then absolutely I would (not that that support is going to be great, but then they're at least no worse off than they were when they need support with Windows or a Mac, and I imagine they'll run into less problems on Linux than on Windows, given their use cases are likely to be very narrow and simple, i.e. web browser, e-mail, maybe simple office stuff).
> What frustrates me about this particular moment is that at the same time Windows is getting worse, I feel that OS X is _also_ getting worse. This _is_ an opportunity for Apple to put a big dent in Windows market share.
Aye, I agree. MacOS has been getting a bigger slice of the pie, but it's hard to ascribe what's the main cause, and to what extent each cause is contributing. We got the M chips being ungodly good (even the M1 is still serviceable, and damn right affordable even at this point), Windows growing worse, but the laptop market is also contracting, with a steady stream of people leaking out, saying 'screw this, I'll just use my phone or tablet. I don't need a PC for anything anymore.'.
All the casuals I know use a Mac for a laptop because they want something simple and functional, and Macs do that job, but they keep doing that job worse and worse. Everybody else casual might have a Windows laptop, but barely ever use it. The rest are gamers and power users, and thus need a proper machine and can't stick to a phone and tablet.
Apple could attract from the groups who would otherwise be done with non-phone/tablet computing, but their offering is growing weaker and weaker.
Yeah. I immediately went to the snowflake icon at the top of the page thinking it would turn the animation off. Instead, it changed the background color :-(
I can't stand animations while I'm trying to read something, and this one is particularly egregious.
It change the background color AND turns off the animation.
(TBF, it slowly fades the animation out, probably for aesthetic reasons, to avoid a jarring sudden stop. I do agree, though, that a sudden stop would probably be more appropriate in this context)
Ohhh thank you! I thought the same as the parent comment: I expected that button to turn off the animation immediately. I guess the author wanted the yellow background to "melt" the snowflakes?
Hah, that's a blast from the past! You've reminded me of "Ameko", which added a little cat to the Amiga Workbench, walking around over the windows. I think I had it from a magazine coverdisk.
I love Microcenter. Built my current gaming rig with all parts purchased there. It's been about 8 years, so not sure if they still operate this way... but when I built my PC, I:
- Went online, ordered everything for pickup (didn't pay yet)
- Drove there, they had it all bagged and ready
- I showed them online prices for some of the parts
- For the ones they could verify (I think it was all of them) by going to the website and checking, they matched the prices
- Then I paid and took my stuff home
I also got my M1 MBP there (it was 25% off when the M2 models came out).
Please, if you have a Microcenter near you, give them your business. I don't want them to go away. Once all this memory madness dies down, I'm going to go there to build a new gaming rig.
One thousand percent yes. And I'll repeat because people need to see it called out as often as possible: this is due to malicious compliance by websites. Period.
I'm so cynical now that I can't read articles like this without my first reaction being to look at how it benefits companies that profit from ads.
My two theories here?
1. An attempt to shift liability from companies having to comply with GDPR to browsers having to comply.
2. An attempt to consolidate all cookie consent into the three (?) browser engines we have... so efforts to thwart it can be focused on just those places.
I'm not sure... but... maybe in this one single instance, I'm rooting for the bots.
I mean, it's burning ad dollars and causing advertisers to rethink their strategy. Who knows, maybe that will eventually lead to the realization that web pages that are 20% content and 80% ads are just luring bots and not customers.
On the other hand, the money being burnt is going to Google, Meta, etc... and helping fund massive surveillance infrastructure. To be honest, I'd prefer it if it all just went to shareholders. Heh, maybe that'll be the sign that we've hit peak surveillance infrastructure: Google and Meta dividend payments go up :-)
But I have trouble sympathizing with someone who writes this:
> Mouse Movements: Did the cursor move in natural, human-like arcs, or did it snap between points?
> Scrolling Patterns: Was the scrolling speed variable, with pauses and upward scrolls, or was it a perfectly smooth, mechanical glide?
> Time Between Interactions: How long did a "user" wait between clicking a link, hovering over an image, or adding an item to the cart?
I read that as: "We're tracking every movement, every hesitation... so that we can feed it to our models and determine how best to keep you addicted".
I knew it was happening, and I know I'm editorializing there... but they are getting closer and closer to just coming out and saying it.
Heh, I came here to say this when I saw the top level thread that started this comment. As far as GP is concerned:
> I remember they were always confused and surprised to get a random call from a stranger
That's probably the only thing different about Ham radio. Random calls are kinda the norm :-)
I got my license less than a year ago, and in some ways, it reminds me of the "old internet"
* Way fewer ads. In fact, in ham radio, you aren't allowed to advertise. Maybe the absolute best thing about it. Without a legislative change, there will never be (legal) ads.
* Trolls haven't taken over. If you're an ass, you could lose your license. No ham wants to lose their license.
* It's as technical as you want to make it. You can go DEEP into technical things (I haven't even scratched the surface there). You can also just get a hotspot and a handheld for a few hundred bucks and be talking to people across the world after an evenings work of configuring it all.
If you want to talk to strangers who want to talk back... and who, for the most part, aren't jerks -- get your ham radio license.
Bonuses (above and beyond the old internet):
Amateur radio clubs are everywhere. They are filled with nerds who love the hobby. They can be _very_ social -- so there is opportunity for plenty of In Real Life (IRL) interaction.
Yes, it's mostly guys, mostly over 50, and (in my experience) mostly caucasian. If you are intimidated by that, that's totally fair. But, give them a chance -- check out your local club. Most I've visited are _very_ welcoming... and they want nothing more than to get more people interested in the hobby.
Never played with OCaml, but I spent the past few days learning about F# (my understanding is that it inherits a lot from OCaml). Tooling seemed great: I used JetBrains Rider; VSCode and Visual Studio are also options. Support seemed great: good official docs; good book choices. Ecosystem seemed great: entire .Net class library.
I’m been on the JVM for 20+ years, but an opportunity came up to leverage some of my other experience to get some CLR work… and I dove in.
F# has diverged from OCaml a bit, but they're still very similar.
I mentioned in a top-level comment that F#'s "lightweight" syntax is basically what I want when I use OCaml. I know ReasonML is a thing, but if I'm writing OCaml I don't want it to look more JavaScripty - I prefer syntax like "match x with" over "switch(x)" for pattern matching, for example.
I know some people dislike the way F#'s newer syntax makes whitespace significant, and that's fair. But the older verbose syntax is there if you need or want to use it. For example, something like
let things =
let a = 1 in
let b = 2 in
let c = 3 in
doSomething a b c
Thank you! I knew this, but of course blanked on it when I came up with an Ocaml example.
There are a few other places I prefer F#'s syntax, but overall it's not the reason I'd pick F# over OCaml for a project. It's usually mostly about needing to integrate with other .NET code or wanting to leverage .NET libraries for specific use cases.
Can't lose either way - they're both a please to work with.
I used to fiddle with F#, its tooling is good, but it's interweaved with too much dotnet c# cruft and also there's the dark shadow of Microsoft. I wish it had zero cost abstractions like Rust because most things you write in F# is also slower than C#
But my question is, how long has this been going on for? I'm in my late 40s. I remember as a kid thinking Schwinn bicycles were the "cheapo" brand. My father, however... would would be in his 90s now... remembered them as a top tier brand.
I have this theory that the reason a lot of prices on goods we've loved our whole lives don't keep up with inflation is because brand loyalty has SUCH power that it's worth it for people to buy and enshittify those brands -- so that they can sell them to us as we age at the prices we are used to paying for them.
They make newer "luxury" brands to sell to younger people who are still deciding what a "reasonable" price to pay for something is.
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