Rewriting the GNU coreutils in Rust sounds fine. Rewriting it with an MIT license? That's giving away the store.

This is one of those times when I think programmers and other technical people need to take stock of the social aspect of what they are doing—which is dismantling a monument to the social ownership and control of software.

Listen, I don't use (GNU/)Linux on my own machines; I use a proprietary operating system because my needs for hardware that doesn't suck completely dwarf all my other computing needs.

But free operating systems are an important part of social infrastructure, and although they have not been able to keep up with hardware advances, they provide an excellent way to *take back* old machines and breathe new life in them, while divesting from the corporate treadmill of "AI", subscription fees, and whatever else.

I think it is far more important that we OWN this infrastructure, bound permanently to the public good, bugs and all. It is a false decision, that we must choose between buggy & insecure software vs. social control of the software. A good-faith coreutils rewrite in Rust would have been GNU licensed.

You want to simultaneously juice Canadian tech and cripple American tech? Offer expedited citizenship for LGBTQ+ Americans

Trust me it'll work

I see that recent versions of #Chrome will no longer run #uBlockOrigin, “because it doesn’t follow best practices for Chrome extensions”, i.e. it prevents #Google from tracking you.

I switched back to #Firefox(*) long ago, but if I were still on Chrome this would be a 100% deal-breaker for me. A browser that can’t run an ad-blocker is literally useless to me.

(*) Actually LibreWolf, which is merely Firefox with more privacy-oriented default settings.

Some advice:

As much as I support local political and social action (not just now- I’ve been at this a very long time now and am very experienced at it) beware of political actions posted by unknown groups.

Back in the first Trump administration, a number of us found ourselves at actions that were actually run by extremists in both directions.

Do not go to an action if you do not have some idea of who is running it. Do not go if they don't have some local connections you can check out. 1/2

Hey Americans (both in the US and abroad), you know how you feel angry at your government, and embarrassed?

Now imagine if every day, random strangers from around the world yelled at you for the actions of your government, calling you a transphobe, and saying you violate treaties, and you're responsible for starving people.

Now imagine that some percentage of those people also made up some accusations, extending it to things the US isn't doing.

Good... now imagine they've been doing it for decades.

That's roughly what it feels to be an Israeli.

What if you're not American. Maybe you're a Canadian, or Brit, Australian, or from Ireland, and they yell at you for all the things America does, including both the true and untrue ones. And they make you pledge not to support America, or have any American friends, or family.

That's what it's like being a Jew.