The elitist idea that it’s okay to exclude people from public service for not having property cannot be framed as “harm reduction” when in fact it fails at that. The people who have mobile phones and subscriptions are the same people who can afford Wi-Fi at home, data plans, etc. These are people who are already served by the private marketplace. You merely give them a convenience at the expense of spending money in a way that marginalises the needy. It’s not just discrimination you advocate – the money is poorly allocated when it should go toward serving precisely those you exclude; the ones underserved by the private sector. By catering for the more privileged you only introduce harm by creating a false baseline that harms the excluded groups even more. Libraries were more inclusive 10 years ago, before they needlessly introduced these SMS-imposing captive portals. And some still are inclusive. Some poorly managed libraries have gone in an exclusive direction and this trend is spreading.

We’re at #2.

Who? Which library is at #2? Some libraries are entirely inclusive and treat everyone equally. Some libraries have regressed and have no pressure to join the inclusive world. You’re opposing the pressure that’s needed to make them better. That’s not helpful… that just enables the problem to worsen.

Having services for some rather than none is quintessential harm reduction.

No it’s not. It increases the harm. We have already reached a point where many governments assume everyone is online and they have used that assumption to remove offline services. So people who are excluded are further harmed by the exclusivity as it creates more exclusivity. If a public service cannot be inclusive then nixing it ensures the infrastucture is in place to compensate knowing that the service is not in place.

extremely childish and harmful.

Elitism is extremely childish and harmful. Respect for human rights is socially responsible. It’s the adult stance.

Unified Declaration of Human Rights, Article 21:

“2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.”

If a library is exclusive the threat of defunding has two outcomes:

• compliance – to become inclusive and (if necessary) show the door to elitists therein who think it’s okay to exclude people
• closure

Either outcome is better than directing public money toward exclusive services. In the case of closure, the same money can rightfully be redirected toward other libraries that are inclusive.

Compliance splits into two possible outcomes:

• exclusive services dropped entirely; inclusive services like book/media access continue
• exclusive services reworked to become inclusive

Both of those are better outcomes than inequality. Dropping an exclusive service invites pressure to fix it. In any case, the elitism of exclusive public service is unacceptible because it undermines human rights.

(edit) One thing I did not consider is the exclusive services getting non-public funding. If Wi-Fi is going to be exclusive/elitist, perhaps it could continue as such as long as Google or Apple finances it. In any case it’s an injustice if one dime of public money goes toward a service that is exclusive, which has the perversion of potentially excluding someone whose tax funded it.

Yes, and it’s coming quite fast considering how few people are working to fend it off.

Anonymity is part of privacy.

Specifically, anonymity is confidentiality of identity. Confidentiality is part of privacy, which is a broad concept. So when a tool or mechanism works against anonymity, it works against privacy. It may not work against a privacy aspect that you care about, but it’s privacy nonetheless.

You’re referring to anonymity, not privacy.

Anonymity is part of privacy; not a dichotomy.

Sign-up still requires a phone number… -.-"

Thanks for the warning – that was my first question. It is my top reason (among many other reasons) for avoiding Signal.

Checkout Matrix/Element or Session,

All 3 of the sites you linked are Cloudflare sites (thus antithetical to privacy). Yes, I know you can use some of that tech without touching CF, but when they run CF websites it reveals hypocrisy & not understanding the goals of their audience.

I can’t watch videos but I will say that my biggest problem with the iME is not the security issue, but the anti-consumer aspect. Intel decided non-corporate consumers (who do not want or benefit from iME) can be disregarded marginalized. So disabling iME is insufficient and misses the problem.

The answer is to boycott iME CPUs. I never bought an intel CPU after 2008. I write this comment from a 16 year old PC just fine. I have pulled some more recent hardware out of dumpsters, ensuring I do not support anti-consumer products.

#YaCy is an open source crawler that you can run and feed Searx with. I recall some searx instances that run their own YaCy. YaCy can also share indexes with other YaCy instances.

indeed. I cannot reach this link from tor:

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html

Mozilla is not in danger so long as they continue to serve Google. You cut 83% of Mozilla’s revenue and I guarantee you there will be problems.

The reason why firefox and chrome work so well, is that they literally have been in development for over a decade.

How can you say they work well?

Basic functionality is still crippled. For example, when images are disabled in Chrome, animated GIFs are still downloaded and played. Chrome does not even have the option to disable animations. When both images & animations are disabled in Firefox, animated GIFs are also still downloaded (wasting the credit of those on fixed bandwidth plans and thus defeating the purpose for those who would use the feature)… but they are simply not played automatically. Great.

These are not just bugs… these are the sort of blunt stark defects that do not reflect the quality of mature projects. I mean shit, still today cannot disable animations in Chrome despite bug report 14 years ago. WTF. That is not “working well” when it can’t do something that basic.

so it’s an obvious choice for academia to teach.

I can’t agree. You could perhaps say Matlab is the default/non-critically-analyzed choice for academia. GNU Octave uses the same language as Matlab. A student who masters GNU Octave will be able to use Matlab just fine.

IIRC, Matlab’s significant difference is Simulink. So if a class actually intends to cover Simulink then it’d perhaps be fair enough for just that class to use Matlab. But even that’s not ideal. Ideal would be the school paying students to add what’s needed in GNU Octave.

Perhaps also noteworthy that Gitea is a fork from Gogs. And AFAIK, gogs is the original work.

It doesn’t matter what that expenditure amounts to. Whatever that figure is, Microsoft recovers it. I guarantee you it’s profitable for Microsoft in the end.

Forking doesn’t imply control.

It does. That’s the reason for forking. You get control. If you don’t, then you’ve done something wrong.

A forked version of chromium would still want to keep up to date with the upstream project.

That’s the choice of the fork owners, because they get control. They can take or leave upstream changes at will.

You seem to view this public option with an unrealistic view of how software development works. Especially in the public sector.

I’ve worked on software projects in both the private sector and public sector.

Somebody comes in with a requirement to do something in the fastest and cheapest way possible.

This reflects an unrealistic view of how public sector software development works. What you describe is how the private sector works. You cannot superimpose your understanding of the private sector on the public sector and assume it works that way.

The engineers go off and fork chromium and simply reskin it because that meets the brief.

It depends on the budget. Public budgets can be tight and they can be loose. It’s a spend-it-or-lose-it scenario. If you do not spend every dime of your annual budget, you get a smaller budget next year. So there’s a unique incentive to spend in the public sector. If (and only if) the budget is tight, indeed they would fork something (not necessarily Chrome).

And that’s merely the start of the project. In software development, we don’t just build something and walk away from it. Especially for government projects - the software is continually under maintenance. So after the fork (if that’s what the budget is limited to) the project does the necessary to meet new requirements as they emerge.

The public sector isn’t going to be interested in trying to make the optimal browser if they are forced to create one. They are going to be interested in meeting the brief in the fastest and easiest way possible.

That’s not how the public sector works. It’s a world of difference between the private sector. What you’re describing is the private sector. Unlike the private sector, public sector workers are not blocked from “gold plating”. Public sector workers have the freedom to produce polished work. Their wages tends to be lower than what they would fetch in the private sector, but what they gain is intellectual freedom and creative license. This is why NASA workers love their work environment and employee retention is high despite relatively low wages.

In that case it would depend on whether “reskinning” implies forking. If they fork and exercise control over the code thereafter, that’s fair enough. Otherwise, no… it’d be insufficient to secure sovereignty from Google if the code continues to simply automatically mirror Google’s.

That was quite vague and still hard to interpret the trade you mention. But I’ll say generally security benefits from:

1. a good number of careful eyes on the code
2. bug bounty programs
3. audits
4. red teams

Closed source has the false sense of security pitfall, which stems from the mentality that code secrecy is a protection of some kind. That pitfall is avoidable simply by not using it as a crutch for lacking security. Open source automatically avoids that pitfall. Bug bounties (2) help get motivated eyes (1) on the code (eyes motivated by generous legit rewards, as opposed to the reward of a zero day in the wrong hands). From there, I see no advantage to closed-source here.

It’s not the governments responsibility to ensure that a law suit is profitable.

Nonsense. Of course we expect to get a court remedy when a business or person scams or cheats another. Otherwise why even have civil courts? It’s a foolish idea to think the government has no responsibility in providing a functional justice system. Where do you think the responsibility for justice in disputes lies, if not the government? You have don’t even have leverage to negotiate an out of court settlement unless the threat of losing your ass in court is real. Even if you live in a small indigenous tribal community, there’s a tribal leader serving as the “government” to arbitrate disputes.

It’s noteworthy that you used the term “profitable”. When I wrote the example I had recovery of actual damages in mind. But that’s fine, we can run with that too. When a lawsuit generates profit, that means we’re dealing with tort or statutory damages. Since it would be small claims, we can nix tort. Statutory damages refer to situations where the law sets out a penalty for violators whereby victims need not show actual damages. E.g. telemarketers breaking the TCPA, or credit bureaus breaking the FCRA. In these cases, the people elected Congress to write law to protect consumers, and as representatives of the people Congress opted to codify statutory penalties that are directly actionable by victims. Of course the gov has a responsibility to support their own law and make violations thereof actionable. This is what they were elected to do.

And a new browser isn’t going to do what you think it is. Any attempt by a government to create a browser is just going to use Blink anyways.

You’ve misunderstood my position. This is also non-sequitur logic. Blink is not a browser, so if you build a new browser which makes use of Blink, it’s still a new browser. (Hence the non-sequitur). From there, whether Blink is sufficiently brand-agnostic to effectively offer sovereignty from tech giants is a separate question. If yes, then Blink inside of a Google-free creation is fit for purpose. If not (due to Google steering things even from the rendering engine), then Blink would defeat the purpose and thus it would be unfit for purpose.

Yes, these things are inconvenient. Meaning they are achievable items but at some personal cost and effort. They are not insurmountable.

You’re not getting it. It’s not achievable.

Pre-web:

• cost of posting a letter to the secretary of state: 55¢
• filing a lawsuit for $200: $90
• return: $289.45 ← achievable because this is a positive number

Post-web:

• cost of travel to Washington DC: $400
• filing a lawsuit for $200: $90
• return: -$110 ← unachievable because this is a negative number

Do you understand the math? Pre-web, it was possible to sue a corporation for $200 and recover $199.45 of that. Post-web, that is insurmountable. If you try, you lose even if you win the judgement. Post-web, the only way to win that case is to use the web. You are therefore forced to use the web in the US.

And a new browser isn’t going to change anything.

Of course it does. A public option can give sovereignty from US tech giants. Otherwise you have the injustice of a government forcing people not only to use technology but to subject themselves and the people to the influence of surveillance capitalists.