I did, and from what I heard, it is a big myth that the results were actually as useful as the first assessment on discovery of them had been. Later studies have, as far as I know, been much more sobering as to the “usefulness” of the data acquired there.

The website you link also immediately shows the problem (even in presentation, presenting them quite sensationalist, immediately highlighting, that there is no possibility of neutrality in assessing the results): The “cruelty for cruelty’s sake” in the conditions of the experiments cannot easily be removed from the results. Making the data in the end only useful for very specific circumstances, and hard to untangle. Lets take venereal diseases for example - it ultimately shows how they spread and interact in conditions of forced mass rape under conditions of extreme squalor, as documented by people not engaged in proper double-blind environments. The usefulness of that is not as high as the myth surrounding Unit 731 or Mengele’s experiments might suggest - and as your linked website also shows, there is a material interest in selling that myth of “forbidden, evil experiments resulting in knowledge”.

So, this has actually been one of those things often claimed, you may have heard of it or maybe even thought it yourself (I certainly had the thought as an edgy teen). Stuff like “For all the horrors, they probably did make some progress with experiments in concentration camps” or similar things.

Now, beside the point of it being unacceptable to do so ethically - the stuff done there was also quite useless. I currently can’t do the work of searching for and gathering all the sources again, but to my memory: the cruelty and dismissal of humanity made the “results” of those “studies” mostly useless garbage, saying nothing at all worthwhile for science, and being clearly tainted ideologically.

Because, while you may think that in some “ideal” world, you could have neutral research on unwilling humans, the reality has always been, that the conditions needed to get humans to do such experiments on other humans, necessitate the kind of ideological distortions, that mostly make the results useless in the end. There’s simply not enough psychopaths that are also willing to do proper, frustrating, hard-work-necessitating, non-self-aggrandising research - and to get non-psychopaths to do it, you need an ideology that ultimately removes their neutrality and the neutrality of the research.

The only things I remember being deemed “useful” and “properly” done from a scientific perspective in the recovered “studies” were things like “lethality of grenades by proximity to the explosion” - something that is questionable to begin with in value and that can also be determined with sensors of different kinds - as well as “effects of massive hypothermia and frostbites” - which as far as I remember basically just confirmed what has been estimated from case studies in a broader way, as well as animal studies (the latter, admittedly, have their own legitimate controversy).

Being a clever bastard with a gangster mindset, of course Putin would have been paranoid one way or the other, so that won’t change much I think. But things like that happening - no matter if it will end up being explainable as a proper accident or a failed assassination attempt or whatever - tend to undermine the mythos of being invulnerable and always 3 steps ahead of the game, that people like Putin want to disseminate about themselves. That’s my current hope in the political climate.

Sounds like an easy way to do unproportional damage to projects with a bit of location spoofing.

I can understand the tensions from the housing crisis, and I can also sympathise with not having a lot of personal sympathy for the Americans moving right now, who most likely won’t be refugees as such, but just people with the financial privilege and ability to choose where to emigrate.

But long-term, depending on how shitty the shit-show will get, there might be tent cities for persecuted Americans in the future, both for you and for us here in the EU (and, ironically, in Mexico, of course). You can say that you don’t like it, and you have every right to - but at least in my eyes, it’s an international duty to human rights when that point comes, and I, personally, won’t give a shit what people feel, then. The international community will have to take them in unless we want to follow the international trend of fascism and say “empathy is the problem” like Elon. (Even though I actually don’t think this would be about empathy, it’d be about upholding what remains of international standards, duties, laws and human rights, eventually with force if necessary)

My personal thought was “Aww, poor tech-bro capitalists are learning what the actual, obscene fundamentals of their antisocial ideology have always been, and that they were in fact not high-IQ genius technocrats knowing better than anyone else how to run mankind”.

But then I realised they most likely learned nothing and will claim that they, themselves, would never have been so stupid.

Musk having a persecution complex and paranoid delusions of the world being out to get him for his inherited identity alone and not for his actions and role in politics and the economy? That’s just unpossible!

Wow, I guess they have now literally reached the earliest one they could do a live action remake of. Good to know that even while things have been heating up globally, the underlying current of absolute boredom in this dystopia is going strong.

What is this about? This?

Haven’t been on reddit and am notoriously often living under a rock when it comes to news outside my personal interests.

I think that is utlimately valid - although I think the other options are all coming with their own problems. You will then have to instead live with the interests of tech corporations (including nonprofits who ultimately need funding) and advertisers collecting your data, whose interests will ultimately not be much less malignant - or small free software projects of a sometimes quite limited scope. The latter, I think, is also a valid niché, but will leave the overall standards of the internet to corporate interests.

Considering how the CEO here acts for Brave, in my opinion, this is not simply about him being an asshole or being politically questionable. To me - everything about him screams “grifter taking advantage of people’s legitimate concerns” - and he has a material interest in your data as well. Brave always felt to me like trying to sell and market privacy instead of proving to me, in their fundamentals, that they actually have my interests in mind.

Which is why I, personally, do not really understand choosing Brave above LibreWolf (or Tor Browse, occasionally), if privacy is your #1 priority.

Oh, yes, it wasn’t a direct answer, also, I’m not the person you answered to. Ultimately, my comment was more meant as an overall addition to the discussion, building on the idea of what a solution to:

Which I think is one of the big issues with OSS projects - many are based around a very small number of people being motivated to work on something for free. And it dies if that stops.

might be.

But as answers to your two points. #1 - I have no idea where they got that from, myself #2 - I think you answered that one yourself rather well, and I wanted to build on that one.

Sorry if that was confusing, my brain is also good at confusing myself at times, can’t imagine how that is for others at times.

I can somewhat understand the overall criticism, because Librewolf - as far as my understanding goes - would be in trouble without the work being done on the code upstream.

Personally, I know that this does not exist (yet), and to some people that put privacy above everything else with a more libertarian slant, this might sound like the worst option imaginable, but my “dream” way to handle it within the current economic system would be:

Have an open source, FOSS base, web-engine and all, developed with public funds similar to public broadcasting in many countries (Bonus if carried by international organisations instead of just national. Think a UN institution like UNESCO or WHO, but focused on making the internet accessible neutrally and to all). On top of that code, projects that want to put privacy above all else could still feasibly built projects like LibreWolf (an even Brave), relying somewhat comfortably on secure fundamentals.

I know, sounds like a dream, which it is at this point. But every other solution within the current economic status quo I personally thin of, I see no chance of enshittification not always encroaching and creating crises, if not outright taking over.

Another classic:

Ah, that makes the context more understandable. Also, good job on providing that service, I think it’s actually great to have that in the ecosystem.

I do not put any limits on the database and even my lowest capacity plans have a very generous soft-limit 100GB media storage.

Actually, wow, yeah, having a quick look at your site, that is a very good and competitive offer for these prices and services provided, all things considered.

Yeah, I personally wouldn’t choose them, but I think they do fill a niche for non-techie users, who will gladly pay a (sometimes hefty) premium for having less hassle on the setup and maintenance sides, when compared to getting A VPS or dedicated server somewhere (or setting smth up at home).

Their videos are also usually pretty informative, including e.g. the one about managing mastodon storage - since it’s topical here.

Teslas are jampacked with cameras.

Which will show a masked figure of weirdly indeterminate height (possible wearing hidden plateau shoes) setting fire to it in the middle of the night, how curious 🤔

It’s only half-topical, but let me say one thing: farmers are romanticised waaay too much in my opinion. Yes, they usually have a more precarious business, and agriculture as such is, of course, very much the foundation of our societies and very lives.

But don’t be blinded by the image of homesteading and such - most farmers are basically just business owners, with their class interests often removing them from a large part of the population. Many of the seasonal workers for example have shit pay on top of shit conditions, and they are notoriously overrepresented with some kind of “rurally wholesome” image, when they can be just as much business assholes, that mainly own a piece of land and the machinery necessary to use it for agriculture.

This will only get worse, because bankruptcy like this has one main effect: consolidation, even more farmland operated by big business, even though I personally think small business like this one is clearly already not as good as people tend to make it out as.

Right? I thought that looked like some serious ideological, “but hurting business is too far!”-brainrot.

But the article is actually really confusing to me:

One in five Americans plan to turn their backs for good on companies that have shifted their policies to align with Donald Trump’s agenda, according to a new poll for the Guardian.

That means ~20% plan to boycott themselves, which is not necessarily the same as supporting a boycott. Participating != supporting. Not supporting would e.g. also potentially mean attacking people like the person with the sign in the article photo, or ruining a Thanksgiving dinner with a huge family argument. While supporting can also mean “I support the movement, but for this and that reason, don’t participate myself” (that may be due to genuine dependence on some boycotted things, or just lack of motivation, or a feeling of not knowing how to, etc.).

Then the article goes on with a quote:

When 20% of Americans are permanently changing their consumption habits and nearly a third of boycotters say they’ll hold out indefinitely, convenience may no longer be the decisive factor companies think it is.

Again, that seems like 20% are actively boycotting, which is actually a pretty big number for a movement like that.

But then, there is another conflicting number just one paragraph away:

When asked about the boycotts that have been making headlines over the last few weeks, 36% of Americans said they are or will be participating.

So, wait, what? Why are the numbers so significantly different?

Last month, a Harris poll found that 31% of Americans have reported similar goals to “opt out” of the economy this year in light of the changing political climate.

Wait, that is yet another number, where are the 20% coming from even?

Also, I swear, maybe I am imagining it, but I think the article changed while I was typing this, because I remember wanting to structure an argument around them later using the “support” wording again, but now I can’t find it any more. Maybe I was misreading, that happens to me at times, but it wouldn’t be the first time a news outlet has changed an article while it was already live without a notice.

To anyone not wanting to click, here is the neat graphic with some more demographic info from the article:

Yeah, that one really isn’t Linux’s fault either, and both on Linux and Windows, it’s always “exciting” to see which dev used which wild, new scheme for their config/save files.