In the same way biofuels are: Technically yes, but still not that great of an idea outside special applications. (One I could imagine would be someone wanting to live completely off grid using filtered frying oil in an old-but-ridiculously-sturdy diesel generator)

Pretty much the exact same story here, only my obsession was more with PC-DOS RPGs like Ultima, Wizardry, Goldbox games, thanks to my father and older siblings influencing me there.

Fun fact: When choosing my starter for the first time, all I knew about Pokémon was: “It’s a game I saw someone play at school once and it kind of looked like an RPG and I love those!” I genuinely just went with what looked cool to me and had no idea there were “actual” dragon Pokémon.

Also +1 on [email protected] noting, that Gyarados is the cool dragon in Gen1

As a bullied kid that back then just wanted a cool dragon, I protest that insinuation!

That is one really clever idea, that I would love to try out if I had a 3D-Printer! Of course, there is the question of how obnoxious this can get for people around you… (still worth it, even if only to fidget with while alone)

To quote myself from their comments:

So happy to see this one pop up in my notifications, will probably have to watch it twice in a row at least! I don’t want to be the annoying guy advertising other platforms in the comments, so let me preface that I mean this just exactly as is said, as a compliment: You are one of the few channels that I still return to big platforms like YT for, instead of staying in the Fediverse.

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

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.

im sorry that i sound like trolling i hoped that it doesnt sound like that

The dilemma is: it’s impossible to tell from the outside, which is why I try to give advice while not indulging potential troll interests (e.g. spreading the post and forum as much as possible, creating concern). If you truly are in that situation, I don’t envy you, because of course part of those trolls’ interest is also to make things as hard as possible for people that really are caught up in it.

So, sadly, I don’t have any personal experience concerning giving tips to journalists. Looking up “giving anonymous tips to journalists” on DuckDuckGo gives a few potential links, though most are directed at whistleblowers in administration and corporations:

https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/sharing-sensitive-leaks-press/ - this is a guide that seems to go through things to consider pretty well. If you do your own search, you will find links to specific outlets as well, for example Reuters here and the NYT here. If you have reason to believe, that the US altogether is not a good idea, European outlets are also always able to understand English material, of course.

Again, I have my doubts, and sadly there is little to remove them, and I wouldn’t want you to doxx yourself. If you really are in that situation, just know that the downvotes and potential removal are not an indication of judgement of you, personally.

If you want to ask about something like this in the future, best try to hide anything sensitive behind spoiler tags or content warnings where available and not post links to the forum in any way openly - reduct the onion link itself for example, and only keep it available to people you trust to not spread it in malicious ways. And only show the topic list behind a disclaimer, of how this can be disturbing to read - those warnings aren’t there for censorship, but to protect victims/survivors of abuse, which is precisely, why it is a troll tactic to try and spread them without such warnings/disclaimers.

Sadly, it is hard to say if you are serious, or if this post is made by a troll, who wants to spread disturbing material for the sake of hurting people. The latter assumption is also the most likely explanation, why it was removed. Again, if you are serious, this is a catch-22, but do not spread this impulsively, this also goes to anyone reading this wanting to share it randomly out of concern. Firstly, you will have to add Content Warnings, the video you linked and topics discussed alone are enough to cause serious PTSD triggers. This, again, would be another factor why it gets removed (and why a troll wants to spread it).

Again: I am going to treat this like in good faith, even though I am aware that a troll wanting to perversely spread the fucked up shit happening to revel in the power and untouchability is sadly the more likely option. The “billionaire friends” are, for example, a bit sus in how the sentence goes.

In theory: Depending on where you live, the police and such would be the first to go to. If you have reason to assume that this will put you in danger, even an anonymous tip to journalists can help (including the material you posted here, but not in a semi-public forum, where it will reasonably be seen as trolling). I am sadly, no expert on who exactly to contact, but neither you, nor random internet people, should be the people handling this. That is what investigative Journalism flanked by therapists to help them go through shit like that is for.

Speaking of therapists, that would be another first line of people to talk to.

Sadly, speaking from my own experience from watching journalists in Germany investigating forums like that - the police often just let them stay up, partly out of incompetence, partly out of wanting the next success in catching people, instead of preventing forums to exist to begin with.

Now, again, I am here assuming you are serious and in good faith here, maybe against my better judgement, but to the other people coming across this post: Don’t get concerned into spreading this post simply “as is” impulsively. Chances are still higher, this is a troll getting somewhat off from spreading disturbing material.

So far, the closest I had was a PC emulator (can’t remember off the top of my head what it was called), that could present it as parallel-view 3D, which I am good enough at to sustain it for some bursts of gameplay - but the emulated screen was sadly tiny to not overstrain the eyes too much. I’d love to set it emulated like this up in person some time in the future.

Wow, you’re right of course. I completely forgot kwrite still existed, tbh.

I genuinely do a lot of coding in Kate, the standard KDE editor. It’s enough to do a lot of things, has highlighting, and is more than enough when you just need a quick fix.

I am also still using nano when editing stuff in the terminal. Please, don’t judge me.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that is true outside the US as well. People that actually (have to) work with the stuff usually quickly learn, that its only good at a few things, but if you just hear about it in the (pop-, non-techie-)media (including YT and such), you might be deceived into thinking Skynet is just a few years away.

The Wing Commander series in general was such a great showcasing of combining cutting-edge tech with well-designed presentation. I remember watching my bigger brother playing the games and the impressions just burning themselves into my brain.

While this is very funny, and definitely representative of a sort of ignorance/arrogance commonly found in ideologues - I recently learned that most people talking about the effect have, in fact, been Dunning-Krugering themselves.

Insightful video on the topic.

What most people expect the effect to look like:

What the actual results were:

Now, as much as I genuinely respect what their scientists have achieved with DeepSeek, especially with limited resources and import restrictions on hardware, and how it is Open Source and all - this will most likely end up enshittifying 90% of what it touches, still, just as “AI” like that does anywhere. “Good” to see those dynamics are the same on both sides of the Pacific (and Atlantic, actually), including overvalued stocks from hype.

Also, is archive.ph down? I tried .ph and .is and both timed out for me, when I tried to generate an easy-to-share link to the article.

Yeah, his videos and articles are usually insightful - but his thumbnails are often weirdly bad. In this case, I wonder if he thought the original article and his own stance towards it were somehow mor commonly known with people, or if it was an unfortunate attempt at clickbait.