I used to dread this approach (it’s part of why I like Typescript monorepos now), but LLMs are fantastic at translating most basic types/shapes between languages. Much less tedious to do this than several years ago.
Of course, it’s still a pretty rough and dirty way to do it. But it works for small/demo projects.
The book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman seems really relevant here. The thesis is that different modes of information are best suited to different tasks. Postman argues that television is best suited for entertainment. So the programs that do well on TV will naturally tend to be entertainment.
That book was written in 1985, but the core observations are also applicable to modern cellphones (which have become, for the majority of users, entertainment devices).
Postman then talks about how our communication systems have degraded as a result of entertainment being the strength of our current modes.
Looks like they’re positioning themselves as an open-source Roblox competitor. That would be awesome. Especially so if they follow through on the promise of standalone mode.
I’m interested in how they’re sandboxing C# code. Seems like an engineering problem full of pitfalls. I’ll definitely be peeking at this!
Antitrust action is badly needed in this area. It is ridiculous that I need permission from my device manufacturer to install software on hardware I own. There is no viable alternative than to live in Apple and Google’s ecosystems. This duopoly cannot be allowed to keep this much control of the mobile platforms.
There needs to be a mandatory override for any lock down put in place by a manufacturer. I understand the need for security, but it should be illegal to prevent me from bypassing security if I decide to on my own device. Make it take multiple clicks and show me scary warnings, that's fine.
Technically Android still allows installation of anything if you use the debugging tool. Maybe that is where we have to draw the line, I'm not sure.
Aside from everyone pointing out that you can't do that on most phones, there's also the fact that installing your own OS will block you from using many apps that check your secure status.
I've been wanting to get into OS dev for years now, I may make an attempt at it soon. When I was younger I built my own kernels for the early OnePlus phones. Maybe I can build an alternative to Android, doubtful but I like a challenge.
The hardest part to making an alternative is the app ecosystem, you almost need a complete suite of 3rd party apps built before you can get any initial adoption.
Pardon my ignorance, but isn’t code signing designed to stop attacks exactly like this? Even if an npm token was compromised, I’m really surprised there was no other code signing feature in play to prevent these publish events.
Code signing just says that the code was blessed by someone's certificate who at one time showed an id to someone else. Nothing to do with whether the content being signed is malicious (at least on some platforms).
I sympathize—the web needs a decentralized chat platform. And Matrix seems to be the current best solution. But ignoring real issues with the platform is actively harmful.
For example, if you’re active in any FOSS channels, you’re likely to receive spam invites to rooms containing illegal content (with disturbing room images and names that appear on the invite). This has been a known issue for years, and a high visibility issue about it (with responses from Matrix’s managing director) from last summer remains open and largely unaddressed.
This issue link is for the Element client, but it contains links to several related proposals for home servers, clients, and the protocol, many of which are still open/completely unresolved. Notably, the MSC related to invite blocking via policy servers or suggestions about ignoring invites via client settings.
“This undermines the entire point of the open graph protocol (at least for images). If you have to manually review every image that you include then what's the point in it being a machine protocol?”
Bingo.
Ianal but it feels like if you provide an image via an open graph link, you’re implicitly licensing that image to consumers of the Open Graph protocol to be displayed alongside a link/link metadata.
If the media company didn’t have the rights to relicense that image for consumption via Open Graph and/or the original licensor didn’t want their images appearing via Open Graph, that media company shouldn’t be using Open Graph.
That is such a frustrating situation. I hope the courts would have ruled in your favor but I understand why you chose not to test it.
Prenda Law. They ended up disbarred and in jail eventually. But it took a Federal Judge calling bullshit in open court and making personal referrals to the IRS, the DOJ, and the various State Bar Associations.
I’m glad that there are distros catering towards less techy people. Linux needs this. But I take issue with selling open source projects that could otherwise be downloaded for free.
The $48 Pro version resells open source software (Blender is mentioned on their website) and slaps on a few themes. Even if legal, this just seems highly unethical.
They aren't selling a product (open-source software). They are selling a service - the effort to customise the distro and package it with free, useful softwares. Hopefully, they also donate some time and money back to those free, open-source softwares. Note also that GPL has never been hostile towards commercial software. In fact, with MySQL (before it was owned by Oracle), the FSF even endorsed MySQL's dual-license open-source business model.
> it is highly unethical to resell open source software produced by volunteers intending to make their work free.
Why? ZorinOS users can still download Blender for free if they don't pay for the mega-pack. You have to imagine that it's not very hard for Zorin to follow GPL guidelines ("here are your 13,000 source tarballs, good sir") with this business.
You also can't prove that any of these volunteers are against downstream repackaging of their work. If they were really ideologically against the idea of people being able to sell Free Software, then they probably wouldn't be putting time into a GPL project. Commercial redistribution of GPL software has been a thing since the 90s, with much larger pricetags than $48.
Strongly disagree on the "unethical" part.
Maintaining a distribution is a lot of work, and the infrastructure also costs money.
Paying for the distribution of software is totally fine. You are not even forced to pay anyway.
I disagree with them, I find selling free software to be a pretty solid and ethical way of funding free software, but why would they not have the right to have an opinion on this?
I certainly have strong opinions about many software vendors, who distribute proprietary software, often full of ads and tracking on top of that, why would I not have the right to find that strongly unethical?
Since it seems to be without any grounds that the other user is anonymously accusing named individuals of acting unethically, I wanted to ask what gives him that right?
If he has a real argument, let's look into it. If not, then he's slandering innocent people without any due and the question is then why in the world they should care about this persons opinion?
> the question is then why in the world they should care about this persons opinion?
Oh yeah, that's totally different. All we know if that this commenter finds the practice unethical and that's it. There's pretty much nothing one can do with this information without some further backing.
> he's slandering innocent people
That's a bit strong, they are just saying that it seems unethical. They find that maybe it's unethical. It's not less nuanced than that. Ethics is all about opinion anyway. We all have our own views on what's ethical and what's not so this can't be an objective statement from the start.
Of course, it’s still a pretty rough and dirty way to do it. But it works for small/demo projects.