Join our Discord server
crying in decentralization efforts
The Discord-based “support” makes it a “meh.” The main devs alt-right BS makes it a “hard pass.”
Lemmy was created by a tankie, many of whose opinions I abhor.
As long as it’s FOSS and doesn’t inherently promote their beliefs, I will use the software.
I agree it’s not great and I’d prefer if it weren’t made by imbeciles
Tankies are annoying, but they’re not on the same level as fascists.
TBH, it is very difficult to me differentiating between the different flavors of authoritarians.
Maybe someone can make an easy to understand comparison matrix? You know, “Kills people because they have a different opinion.”, “Suppresses minorities.”, etc.
There’s basically ideologues versus hateful people versus indifferent sociopaths (overlap is common)
I consider political ideologues and “technocrats” and extremely pedantic rule-following bureaucrats to be different flavors of ideologues (has a specific worldview they try to enforce / uphold)
Fascism, just like Communism or even a Dictatorships are not inherently bad.
We as humans key in on the oppressive authoritarianism of them as the evil in the system.
That’s why I’d recommend you lump them all together as “oppressive authoritarianism” until one of them proves us otherwise, and not to need to find the nuances between them to prove they’re bad.
Fascism, just like Communism or even a Dictatorships are not inherently bad
No offense but what the fuck are you even saying
Fascism is absolutely inherently bad, there is no removal of its evil, oppressive, and authoritarian traits after which anything is left.
In their defense, if everyone was perfect everything would be perfect.
But you’re absolutely right. As long as humans are human there’s no way to separate human nature from authority. And as a result, any system that doesn’t strictly limit scope and authority is inherently bad.
Fascism, just like Communism or even a Dictatorships are not inherently bad.
Absolutely incorrect. Without getting into anything about the viability of a “good” dictatorship, that’s a different discussion… Fascism is absolutely inherently bad. The entire ideology is based on: lies, hatred, discrimination, oppression, censorship, unjust hierarchies, desire and ability to eliminate large swathes of their own population based on some inconsequential aspect of who they fundamentally are, etc.
It’s folly (at best… dangerous at worst) to equate fascism with far-left ideologies, or even include them in the same league when it comes to evilness. Not a single aspect of socialism as it exists in theory, so to speak, is objectively bad/evil. What happens is evil people use it as a vehicle to seize power. On the contrary, fascism is evil to the core. There is not a single redeeming factor to it.
While you might not agree with the methods of the “far left” (I certainly don’t w.r.t. tankies), the ideology of socialism is based on: worker’s rights, egalitarianism, equity, social safety nets, mutual aid, etc.
Nothing about it “in theory” is anything remotely close to evil. Now compare that with fascism…
Both facists and tankies have genocided disabled people and selectively killed anarchists.
As a disabled anarchist, they end up seeming pretty similar to me.
I’ve recently been reading some anarchist texts (Emma Goldman, Kropotkin…), and I really like a lot of their ideas. Love the way Kropotkin writes too.
However (and to be clear, I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface), the past decade or two has had a profound effect on my opinion of people in general, and their ability (and/or desire) to organize and self-regulate at such a scale. As such, anarchism just does not seem like a viable solution in the modern world.
As we’ve seen, even with our relatively structured, centralized, government, so much of it was just so easily steamrolled by a handful of bad actors. Our “checks and balances” turned out to just be empty words.
If anything, the past couple of decades has made it abundantly clear to me that what we need is a strong federal government where nothing is based on good faith, or social norms, but actual rule of law. No, it shouldn’t be optional to release your financials. No, you should not be able to just ignore it when your chode son-in-law’s security clearance is denied like a dozen times. No, you don’t get to just do whatever the fuck you want because you were elected President.
How do we stop that without some kind of centralized government?
And yes, I understand the dangers here… But it could be done right. South Korea seems to know how to deal with coup attempts. Same with Brazil…
As a disabled non-anarchist, fuck both parties
As a non-disabled non-anarchist, yeah fuck them
mbin is better.
Is there any source for this?
i know there was a thing at the beginning of the project where they wrote a lot of the documentation with masculine pronouns (assuming the reader was male), and when they were asked to change that for gender neutral pronouns, they said no because “they don’t want politics in their project”
beyond that however, idk if they eventually changed that or if they did other bad stuff
edit: here is a source
Not really. A random person submitted a PR with just one pronoun change in the code comments (not the documentation, and not anything remotely visible to the end user).
The developer rejected the (useless, in my opinion) PR.
No, there is no source, because it’s an overinflated nothingburger created to stir up controversy and division.
Alt right bs?
Why always discord… Why!!!
because a turn key platform they don’t have to self host and maintain frees them up to do the work.
Oh shit. I despise Discord, why not a normal forum?!
I’m with you. I install Legcord now so that I don’t have to install that shitty application on my actual computer. I highly recommend it for those communities that refuse to use anything else!
You don’t have to install anything. It’s a website. I don’t understand why people install the app (or any app that is a website in a wrapper).
Might want to look into Legcord, because it is definitely more than just a wrapper, friend.
deleted by creator
Looks like a confused Swedish dude that when questioned about his use of English pronouns defaults to not wanting to get political. Is there more besides a misguided decision to avoid relevant political topics?
I think we should chastise people that insist on not getting political, but not necessarily boycott everything they do. Or at least we should apply the same moral demands to Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft or Google when choosing which browsers to support. Which of them is the least bad?
There is nothing political about acknowledging peoples’ existence.
Existence? Because somebody used a wrong pronoun?
Language is extremely powerful. This is all part of the erasure (an integral part btw).
Hmm I don’t think you really understand what happened.
The developer wrote a comment (not visible to the end user) using the male form.
A random person opened a pull request without any useful changes, except for changing that comment from “he” to “their”.
The developer rejected that PR because it’s politically motivated and it doesn’t add anything else.
Right, except that’s not politically motivated, and is a useful change for people reading the code, both for women and non-binary people.
Calling pronouns “political” is the dogwhistle they always use
I know what happened. Is it a stupid, unnecessary fix? Sure, probably. But that doesn’t mean it’s political. Trans people simply existing is not a political issue.
You’re right, words are meaningless and language has no bearing on society at large. after all, fuiebt eidiowb rhe efifo quifopim.
There’s a big difference between negating the existence of people and what happend in this case, i.e. somebody writing a comment (only visible to him and other developers) using the male form.
Disclaimer: I’m not a software engineer or anything, and while I can usually figure out how to install something from git, that’s as far as my understanding of the platform goes…
Was it an unnecessary edit? Sure, maybe. Hell, could have just been someone trying to get a reaction (mission accomplished). That does not mean that the edit was incorrect in any way (gramatically, syntax-wise, etc.) or political. It’s just someone being annoying.
But it’s only political, if you agree that trans people should not exist (or I guess just that you are woefully ignorant on the subject of gender).
The hyperbole here is insane. My trans friend’s Japanese parents are supportive of him, but they have some trouble with pronouns. If you’re not a native English speaker and learned the standard pronouns, then I think it’s just naturally too confusing. Pretty much all of them are translating in their minds in real-time.
The hyperbole here is insane. My trans friend’s Japanese parents are supportive of him, but they have some trouble with pronouns.
Can you really not understand that we’re talking about two completely different situations?
They refused to use the right pronoun. One is a mistake. The other is a choice.
They refused to accept a PR from a random person with just one single word change for a string that only the developer himself is seeing.
I think the developer has all the rights not to accept such a PR which adds nothing to the program. And I think people that really care about gender inclusivity should stop focusing on this useless nitpicks, which makes inclusivity appear like made up by a bunch of trolls.
It’s pretty telling to focus on the dev’s right to reject inclusivity while simultaneously rejecting and deriding everyone else’s right to judge them for that.
And if it was such a useless change, why didn’t the dev reject it for that instead of saying it was “political”? He’s the one that declared the word itself, not the utility of the change, was the problem. Calling everyone else “trolls” for pointing that out is just disingenuous.
Don’t think we should be scared of the word “political” or “ideology”.
Yeah, that too… Everything is political if you want to really get into it. People just want to be able to ignore it until it directly affects them.
Indeed. It’s a privilege to be able to stay inside your little circle and say “we don’t do politics” or “ no ideology here”.
ugh transphobia rots people’s brains
it’s not too hard to just be a decent person ppl
I see zero reason to out the “transphobic” label on the dev.
Think and read before labelling people.
deleted by creator
there may also be the possibility of the dev simply not wanting to define his views publicly out of the blue, because regardless of stance, you will make enemies, potentially hindering the projects development or facing personal repercussions.
It should be allowed for someone to not out themselves as either transphobic or an ally. If the person does have issues with pronouns, it’s better if they simply keep to themselves instead of loudly proclaiming it. The other way around it’s the same - even if someone is pro trans, it might not be suitable for them to openly speak about it - it might even put them in danger.
I agree with you that this is often a dog whistle, but it might also be a poor choice of wording.
I can’t see anything about this on DuckDuckGo. Do you have a link?
https://mkultra.monster/tech/2024/07/03/serenityos-and-ladybird
This was a little „write-up“ back when everything became more public.
I’m surprised this got any kind of attention.
Here’s the turn of events from my perspective:
- Someone submits a 1-line PR changing the gender used in a code comment
- PR rejected on the grounds that the change is “politically motivated”
- Submitter got mad, and proposed removing the rule against “politically motivated” changes, calling it “white supremacist,” which is closed
- Someone wrote a blog post about it
Here’s my analysis:
- Stupid change - don’t make PRs that simply correct an irrelevant typo in a comment somewhere; some people do this to put stuff on a resume (look at how much FOSS work I do!), and it just wastes everyone’s time
- Stupid response - it should’ve been rejected because it’s a useless change, not because it’s “politically motivated”
- Stupid proposal - do you really want to waste a bunch of time fighting over wording in a comment? Because that’s the kind of crap you get without a rule like this.
- This is all about an irrelevant change to a comment? Why is this getting so much attention?
“comments must be accurate,” is not a rule you should bend. Bending it even a little leads to last programming and shit code.
True, but that only applies if it’s misleading. For example:
// pythagoran theorem distance = abs(p2.x - p1.x) + abs(p2.y - p1.y);Fixing that makes sense because it’s wrong and misleading (it’s actually Manhattan distance), and a quick glace is insufficient to tell the difference.
But fixing a typo or something that wouldn’t be confusing is just noise and should only be fixed with other changes. For example, I intentionally misspelled Pythagorean in my comment above, fixing that to be the right spelling would be a useless change, even if the distance formula used the hypotenuse. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable policy to reject PRs that only fix spelling or similar to reduce noise for the maintainers.
Yep, I understand but disagree. Maybe it comes from working with so many ESL coders, but I’ll happily accept typo corrections because it’s not always obvious what words should be if you’re not steeped in the culture.
It really depends on the project.
If you’re a larger project, you can see a ton of these from people hoping to land a commit to put “contributor to X” on a resume somewhere. Those add up and are really distracting and possibly automated. They waste everyone’s time, especially if they spawn a bunch of conversion like this did.
If you’re a smaller project, it doesn’t matter as much. I work with ESL coders too, so I get it (1/4 of my office is ESL immigrants, and ~2/3 of the broader team is ESL). I fix comments all the time, I just include them with other changes.
So it depends. But in general, a high profile project should reject this noise to discourage this behavior.
I should be an idiot. I dont see a direct relationship between race and sexual orientation. Even if the PR was rejected because a pronounce how the hell this is white supremacist?
Well, didn’t the Nazis also discriminate against gay people?
That said, it’s a massive leap to go from “rejects 1 line PR that only changes gender in a comment” to literal Nazi…
“We don’t accept ideologically motivated changes” = White supremacist language… Yeah, sounds about like what I expected…
Thank you for sharing.
deleted by creator
Someone else posted a writeup about it.
It wasn’t in documentation, but a code comment. No user would see this.
One part was a rejected change on the README, which was trying to remove this “white supremacist language”:
## On ideologically motivated changes
This is a purely technical project. As such, it is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics or religious beliefs. Any changes that appear ideologically motivated will be rejected.
Someone changing “he” to “they” (original PR that started all this) in a comment as their only change could absolutely be seen as “politically motivated.” My understanding is that if changing the comment was part of some larger useful change, it would be fine (as would using “she” or “they” in a new comment), but just changing the gender of a pronoun in a comment is a useless change.
If the comment said “she,” would someone have been motivated to make this change? Probably not. Should changing this from “she” to some other pronoun (he or they) also be rejected? Yes, on the same grounds as changing it from “he,” it’s not a useful change and just wastes everyone’s time. If you’re in the code already, then go ahead, correct silly language like this if you care to.
deleted by creator
I never said they were.
Someone changing “he” to “they” (original PR that started all this) in a comment as their only change could absolutely be seen as “politically motivated.”
Look at the fallout in the comments on those PRs, it quickly devolved into politics and quickly away from any technical merit.
If this exact same change were included with other changes, I highly doubt anyone would’ve cared about the comment. The issue isn’t with the text of the comment, but with the likely motivation and the actual merits of the PR. Many projects immediately reject tiny PRs because they clog up the review queue, and that appears to be what’s happening here, plus all the political nonsense in the issue comments.
They are political, because people (I’m not one of them) think they shouldn’t be allowed and there are only two genders (e.g. the current president of the US).
deleted by creator
“Don’t Be Evil” happily indexing while Bingcrosoft sleeps
Maybe disabling JavaScript helps?
DDG search is garbage, I’m sorry… Whenever I switch to a browser that defaults to it, I’m reminded why I always switch it back to Google (unfortunately). Even Yandex is better, and that’s prob Russian spyware.
there’s startpage which is a Google wrapper if you’re interested
Actually just tried this for the first time yesterday after switching to librewolf. Have only used it once, but already seems better than DDG.
Try out SearXNG.
I have previously, and was not impressed. Maybe it’s better now?
I’ve been using Startpage for the past couple of days since installing Librewolf, and I kind of like it. I like the “Visit in anonymous view” link under each result… Works to let me see reddit posts (Linux troubleshooting, etc), despite not being logged in, and being on a VPN.
Totally excessive in view of the facts.
There are so few alternative browsers and the collapse of the privacy is so global. That seems to me a minor point in relation to the goal.
Under that POV stop using Volkswagen because Hitler invented it.
deleted by creator
Wow. Calm down omg. This is not a witch hunting.
Transphobic main dev […]
Do you have a source?
Here we fucking go again.
Don’t be a dick. The dev is not transphobic, and you know it.
deleted by creator
what r they gonna do if it’s open source and doesn’t collect data. worry more about ur OS
I’m pretty sure my Debian doesn’t collect personal data either
deleted by creator
the EU wants backdoors to encryptions, so eu not any better.
deleted by creator
I donate to Ladybird and Servo, and I hope they succeed. We need serious competition and a check on Mozilla (not to mention Chrome and Safari).
That said, I’m sad that neither Ladybird or Servo are licensed under strong copyleft licenses. We need user-oriented browsers now more than ever, and strong copyleft enables that. I worry that, even if these engines are successful, they will be co-opted by proprietary browsers and eventually superseded by them.
This happened before - both Chrome and Safari ultimately derive from KHTML, Konqueror’s browser engine. If KHTML had been licnesed under the GPL instead of the LGPL, Chrome and Safari (and not just their engines) may have been free software today. Or, at the very least, it would have been much more difficult for Apple and Google to get started.
That said, I wish Ladybird the best. There donation = no influence policy is excellent, and I really, really hope they can stick to it in the long term.
How does one have a donation = no influence policy?
Huge companies donate to make open apps like this reliant on them. Then they threaten to pull the donation if that doesn’t happen…
Strong Copyleft licenses protect from this by allowing others to fork and keep an app going without being taken advantage of.
If Google donates 1 billion dollars tomorrow, and over several months, Ladybird will expand to use that money. Then Google can threaten to stop the donations unless LB does something like “make ad blockers worse”
It’s a web browser. The only money they will make is from donations. Unless they do something wonky with their business model, like charge. Then no one will use it anyway.
Frankly at this point I’d be willing to contribute to a strongly copyleft, privacy focused browser even if it meant yet another fucking ‘subscription’
That would not have changed much, since browser engines are million-manhours projects and a small group of devs doing that voluntary, just isn’t enough.
Isn’t servo mostly a Mozilla-led project? I thought servo would probably just replace gecko as the engine firefox used if it ends up succeeding
Iirc it started its life that way but Mozilla abandoned it and the community picked it up
Servo is developed by Igalia at this point. Mozilla is not involved.
To go along with the alt right stuff, one of their major donors is Shopify.
Good, the world is in dire need of competition in this arena.
Alright, read up on it a bit more. Sadly the language choices (C++ now, maybe Swift later) rubs me the wrong way for something that needs to be incredibly secure against attacks. I really really support additional browser engines, but likely not this one.
Thus I think Servo is a better choice for those looking to contribute. IMHO.
Quite happy to see Servo coming along again. I am still excited for Ladybird and it seems more likely to deliver a truly viable browser sooner.
I am not a Swift dev but I think it has decent memory safety as well. I think it is one of the reasons Ladybird is moving to it. They evaluated Rust and decided it lacked the OOP features they needed.
The C++ that Ladybird writes is also very good. They have their own standard library (written for SerenityOS) which is very modern including memory safety and security. Still C++ though of course.
A good breakdown on their progress: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200604
We definitely need more competition in the browser space, I just wish it wasn’t using such a permissive license as the BSD.
You’re free to fork and use a more restrictive license, that’s one of the cool things about BSD licenses. It’s not like it’s something dumb like the CDDL, which is incompatible with the GPL (and many other licenses) and the reason ZFS can’t be directly included in the kernel.
I’ll be great. The big question is how long it’s left until a stable release
Ladybird says 2026. Given the current state and progress, I believe it may be quite usable by then. I use it sometimes for basic surfing and leaving forum comments. It works surprisingly well often though it is still far from general use. I think the dev team tries to use it themselves for things like Discord and GutHub. They did a demo last month where it “almost” ran Gmail.
I am not sure that Servo has set a timeline. I expect it to take longer.
If you don’t mind my asking, what forums do you use? I’m trying to find new communities.
Just installed it on void. Still not quite usable for daily use but it’s not bad.
I love it when I see Ladybird come up! ESPECIALLY now with the ongoing enshittification of FF lmao
same slogan everywhere, plant pictures for a strong greenwashing aesthetics, old white men smiling reassuringly. 5/7 homepage.
Totally not related to recent events
