Mastodawn

Gene Cowan 🏳️‍🌈3h ago

The idea that one should be forced to verify one's age or identity to use one's own computer absolutely baffles me.

Neil Brown 8h ago

Perhaps I am some kind of dangerous computer radical these days, thinking that one should be able to buy or make a computer, install one's choice of OSs and software, create a local user account, and get on with one's affairs, privately and without interference.

Quiet enjoyment of one's computer.

* No age or ID verification

* No jumping through hoops to install software, or third parties restricting the software that one can run

* No third party accounts

Tyrone Slothrop 8h ago

Y’know @neil one of these days you’re going to wake up and find you’ve become a revolutionary anarchist, relatively speaking.

Same here. My opinions remain fairly constant, but the Overton Window almost keeps rushing past.

Neil Brown 8h ago

> you're going to wake up and find you’ve become a revolutionary anarchist

Wow. I sound *sexy*.

I think we all sound sexy in our own minds?
Do we not?
😂

@RandyNose @neil @slothrop Speak for yourself, I just sound a bit nasal.

Tyrone Slothrop 1h ago

@RandyNose @neil https://youtu.be/P5mtclwloEQ

(I remember when this came out in 1991, people were wondering whether the video might be hinting at queer sexuality. And yeah, maybe??)

Right Said Fred - I'm Too Sexy (Original Mix - 2006 Version)

YouTube

Janne Moren 8h ago

@slothrop @neil
You know, I'm in my fifties. And over the past 40 years I've gone from a liberal centrist to a socialist radical, without changing my opinions.

Donald Clark 7h ago

@jannem @slothrop @neil can I borrow that? I wear that moniker also!

Janne Moren 7h ago

@dsc @slothrop @neil
It's not mine originally; I believe I've read something similar by others. Feel free to use in other words!

James Cousins 1h ago

@jannem @neil @slothrop @dsc There’s a lot of it going about! The first version I ever saw was the one referred to here: From centre right to hard left Given the long-running trend of parties to the right, hard to believe there aren’t even older versions kicking around.

From centre right to hard left

This was drawn to my attention today by commentator John Boxall. It was in The New Statesman in 2023: In 1962 I was a Conservative. I believed privilege could only be justified by service, high taxes on very high incomes were necessary to prevent an entrepreneurial economy becoming a rentier economy,...

Funding the Future

Who by avalanche who by powder 5h ago

@jannem @slothrop @neil same same

Woozle Hypertwin 2h ago

@Bishopjoey @jannem @slothrop @neil

The more the world shifts right, the harder I feel I need to push in the other direction.

Free healthcare, UBI, no billionaires...

Ruud Steltenpool 2h ago

@jannem @slothrop @neil I think that fits me reasonably well too. Thanks.

Rachel E. S. Lösche 2h ago

@jannem @slothrop @neil lol

David Renaud 2h ago

Ronald Reagan is practically a radical socialist these days

Angela Scholder 1h ago

@jannem @slothrop @neil Hmmm..... I guess I need to redifine myself...

@jannem I feel seen.

Manc AvGeek 53m ago

@jannem @slothrop @neil I feel seen.

GinevraCat 3h ago

@slothrop @neil Exactly

@neil There is exactly one person who gets to decide what happens in my computer. Me.

If you want to run things in my world, you play by my rules and only my rules.

Wait Shit. Am I'm turning in to a conservative, I want things to remain how they were twenty years ago... Is this is what they meant about getting more conservative when you get older?

Andrew Deacon 7h ago

@emily_s No, Conservatives want things to remain the same because they control them, change threatens that control. You want to control any changes you make, that is different.

@aadeacon But I do currently control my computer, and I want to retain that control... I do not want someone else to take away the control I already have over my things

⠠⠵ avuko 6h ago

@emily_s @aadeacon

conservatism in my opinion is about “keeping the systems that control others in place”.

This sounds like you wanting to keep control over your systems in place.

Similar sounding, but completely different.

A 2018 comment by one Frank Wilthoit defined conservatism sublimely:

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protect[s] but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

The travesty of liberalism

More in the suddenly topical vein of ‘who will rid us of those troublesome leftists’ from Sean Wilentz. For Chait, the problem is “It’s obvious to me why conservatives want everyb…

Crooked Timber

Cassandrich 2h ago

@avuko @emily_s @aadeacon Yes, "similar sounding, but completely different".

This is an instance of a general pattern where language is misleading, especially when there's agency and self-referentiality involved. And it's surprisingly effective at manipulating people's values.

Tom 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️5h ago

@emily_s @neil
Doesn't matter what label you put on this attitude, it's principled and it's right.

Get out of my computer!
Get off my lawn!
😅

Ken Milmore 3h ago

@tom @emily_s @neil The lawn is probably negotiable tbh. 🐝🐞🪲

@kbm0 @tom @neil if a corp wants to take control of my lawn they can fuck off. If a hive of bees wants to take over? sure go ahead. Let me know if you need some heavy lifting.

Simon Zerafa 7h ago

Give the world's dangerous slide into extreme right politics, and fascism, using your computer like it's 1999 is seen as radical and anarchist.

Welcome to being radical and anarchist by being the same socialist you were in 1999 😂

Edit: If you think Windows is bad, try setting up a Mac without linking your identity to the device.

Pro Tip: Buy the device with cash and never give the salesperson your email address or mobile number. Good Luck 😁👍

@neil fwiw this should also apply to phones

Neil Brown 6h ago

@Tak Yes, computers.

Cassandrich 2h ago

@neil @Tak Yes. There's no such thing as a "phone" anymore. POTS is a cesspit of spam and scams. Nobody answers it. There are just handheld computers with cellular radios for internet access, which the industry gets to treat as if they were still phones for the purpose of controlling you.

@neil exactly this, which is what we all did last millennium and even several years into this one. Its shocking how fast that went away.
So where would you start, these days?

Eggs now in different baskets.5h ago

@neil I have never used my full name when setting up my user on a personal Linux device.

I generally give computers hostnames that do not identify the devices type.

My email addresses to do not include my name nor parts of my name.

My online usernames are unique per site and do not contain references to my real name.

Not that this helps much with device fingerprinting as it is today but I feel I have to try to do something.

Every act of resistance counts.

tinydoctor 2h ago

I stopped using my real name on online 25 years ago.

@neil It is a war on general computation. Cory Doctorow observed that about 15 years ago.

Skews the balance of power even more towards platforms.

Computation is power!

happyborg 4h ago

@neil I just fell down the rabbit hole of #HomeLab. Actually no, I jumped in feet first and in a less than a week am having more fun with tech than since the 70's-80's.

We can do this!

fedops 💙💛3h ago

@neil you're just getting old.

@neil Ah but they can't charge you rent on your own computer if it's not locked down. :-(

Author-ized L.J.2h ago

@neil only Linux, BSD and other FOSS offerings have this experience now, it seems — so that's like 90% of computer users being registered and tracked from their home computers, without even going into what happens on phones and other devices. I was also baffled when I briefly used Windows/MS Word on another computer and needed to log in with an email to leave margin notes as a different user. On LibreOffice I simply need to type in a different name in the setting, but on Word I had to log in through a remote server. Serious overkill.

@frueheneuzeit 2h ago

@neil https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_in_the_U._K.

Luke Bergen 41m ago

@neil and I've been really disappointed by people who I generally respect coming back with the argument "you're not a parent are you? Do you know how hard it is to stop a kid from breaking out of parental controls when the goal is to join their friends on Roblox or whatever?"

I do get that. But it seems like the classic "we have a social problem here. Let's not try to fix it with tech"

trainguyrom 16m ago

@neil but if we don't verify you're old enough for us to legally harvest every scrap of data we can get away with and sell it to every bidder for advertising and ??? purposes, then we might not be able to legally track every last thing you do on the computer and package it up the data for sale!

@neil I do worry that we're seeing the beginning of the end of personal computing, in the sense of being able to own a machine that you control and that does your bidding.

Neil Brown 8h ago

@hedders Exactly this.

Admittedly, Apple was perhaps already further down the "appliance, not computer" path with iOS than some others, but still...

ZenDragoness//RES 2h ago

@neil @hedders apple was always a sect

Daniel Durrans 8h ago

@hedders @neil I have always considered my computers to be more like cats. They never do my bidding and will often do the exact opposite of what I want before vomiting everywhere. But at least they are independent.

@dan Hah! That made me laugh.

Marcus The Board Gamer 4h ago

@hedders @neil You’ll have a dumb terminal that you pay a subscription for. All this terminal does is connect you to approved services from Google/Amazon/Microsoft. That subscription will go up in price as actual computers die out. The service will get worse over time.

@lordsplodge @hedders @neil Cory Doctorow (yeah, I know…) kind of touched on this in Little Brother. All the kids had these totally locked-down games consoles that were given away free as loss-leaders for the online game companies. But they were powerful bits of kit, and the hacker kids just jailbroke them to run their own software.

ZenDragoness//RES 2h ago

@hedders @neil on that were past

Mike Cox 8h ago

@neil I think we've already gone that way with cars. It's difficult (impossible?) to buy one now that just belongs to you with mno ties to the manufacturer or seller.
Yet we all accept it.

Neil Brown 8h ago

@mikecox This is indeed one of the reasons why I am struggling to replace my car at the moment, because I don't want to accept that.

I might not get what I want.

Steve Bannister 7h ago

@neil @mikecox I suspect it's going to be hard to disable too as the connection is, I assume, shared with the SOS systems.

Allpoints 1h ago

@mikecox @neil Unfortunately, you can't buy what they don't sell.

Thinkb4u 8h ago

@neil @Em0nM4stodon There is nothing to be baffled about. This is 1984. It is happening, stop being in denial. Take a look at the laws being pushed forward all over the West, it is not rocket science.

Neil Brown 8h ago

@thinkb4u @Em0nM4stodon

The fact that it is happening is what is baffling me.

Simon Greenwood 7h ago

@neil
Increased Shareholder Value as always.
@thinkb4u @Em0nM4stodon

Thinkb4u 4h ago

@neil @Em0nM4stodon Everybody should be preparing for 2 devices. One “freedom device” and one “slavery device” mandated by the state. Hopefully we won’t arrive to a situation where our houses are stormed in search of “freedom devices“.