Ferk

You are mixing different ideas of freedom. Software freedom is not the same as freedom of choice of software.

You don't need Linux to have choices of what software to use, you have that in most (all?) proprietary systems, in some you might even have more choices than in Linux.. even if it includes proprietary software.

This is analogous to how being a free person (not a slave) is not the same as having freedom to choose who to work for, even if some of them are slavers (ie. having freedom to choose your master).

Yes, Flatpak is overall a better approach when compared to AppImages, since being dependent on a known runtime ensures the program will run whenever the runtime is available.

What I wish they would add is a way to run the flatpak in a portable way. Because as it stands, AppImages is the only option for that. Flatpak doesn't really allow to have a portable installation in a pendrive, for example. At the moment there's no replacement for AppImage in such use cases, which is a pity.

But there's no fundamental technical design roadblock in flatpak that would prevent it from supporting this in the future, imho. theoretically one could create a program that mounts the flatpak file into a ramfs layered with the runtime and run it.

Installing them is not difficult. It's the same as any other flatpak.

The problem is when running them (actually, when running any flatpak, not just CLI tools) you need to type out the whole backwards domain thingy that flatpaks use as identifier, instead of having a proper typical and simple executable name like they would have if they were installed normally.

I end up adding either symlinks or aliases for all my flatpaks because of this reason. After doing that it's ok.. but it's just an extra step that's annoying and that the flatpak devs have no interest on fixing apparently.

Since they are closed source, we can't know. We can find out that messages are being sent at certain moments, but not what data is being contained in the messages, communications carrying this sort of data are always encrypted (for obvious reasons).

For legal reasons they often include some vague allusion in the terms of service about collecting information.. but they are never very clear on what data exactly they take when and how, so it's left up to interpretation.

For me it beats the 8bitdo by a long shot. I think the 8bitdo only has 2 back buttons, does't it? the vader has 4. And now with Steam input support they are all programmable. I like the feel of mechanical buttons too.

Yeah.. I've been waiting for a steam controller 2 for way too long. The horipad is the only "traditional" controller that has capacitive joysticks.. but beyond having that, the reviews for it are not that great.

Flydigi Vader 4 pro has that + 2 additional face buttons + adjustable tension on the sticks + hall effect joysticks + a toggle next to each trigger to reduce the travel distance + clicky mechanical switches.

And this same Steam beta version that added 8bitdo support also included support for this controller as well so that you can remap the extra buttons (but it's only detected as a vader if you are using the included dongle and the controller is set to dinput mode).

The only thing I'm missing is capacitive joysticks that can be used for turning on/off the gyro.. that's a pity because I find the gyro kind of annoying to use without that.

If I remember correctly, Valve stated that for being "Steam certified" the controller needs to have capacitive joysticks to regulate the gyro, similar to the "Horipad" that they partnered to release.

I was hoping that 8bitdo would launch a controller that actually has this because it makes gyro much more viable, to the point that I really don't like using gyro without that.

But this announcement is just to indicate explicit compatibility for steam input (which has been available in the beta for a while, btw). I don't think this is a huge change since technically they were compatible before too.. even if it was through the xinput / dinput interface without being recognized as 8bitdo.

I still feel that the distinction is not so clear.

Why is "banning lead" seen as a biological "change", but "banning soda" is tagged as a "social effort"?

I re-read it and I get a feeling that what it's talking about is not so much "biological" vs "social" but rather.. "physiological" vs "psychological", and arguing that psychology can be a lot more complex to deal with than physiology. Which I guess is fair.

The Free Software movement wasn't really anti-commercial, they explicitly allow commercial purposes as part of the freedoms to protect, it's part of the first freedoom they defend, "freedom zero".

And it's not like the open source movement wasn't inherently political either.. wanting more companies to join the movement is actually a political position.

But also, it's not like the Free Software movement didn't want to have more companies adopt their philosophy.. they did want that, I mean that would have been awesome if it had happened. And when possible the FSF has actively tried to convince companies to get on board, they even have run programs to help companies promote themselves as certified by the FSF, such as the "Respects Your Freedom (RYF)" certification.

What makes the Free Software movement different is that they actively see proprietary software as evil. They see freedom as a right, something mandatory, not something to merely be "open" to. Going out of your way to not use closed source software, to the point of crippling yourself digitally if necessary, is then the ethically correct behavior. Whereas the "open source" movement sees it more as an option, something that can be useful but not strictly necessary, they wont consider it inherently bad/evil to use proprietary.

This is akin to someone considering buying ethically sourced shoes as something optional vs considering it a moral obligation so as to not be complicit to evil practices. Or say.. saving energy being an option that might be convenient for you personally vs a moral obligation with the planet.

The business model at the time for most commercial projects was based on offering software as a product, not as a service, so they didn't want to release their code. When eventually the shift towards services started to happen, companies gravitated towards the "open" side because it allowed them to take advantage of free software while retaining proprietary software for those situations in which it benefited them, without being flagged as "evil" by the same community they were working with.

It's ironic how WebP lossless mode is actually better at compressing the image than the lossy mode.

I bet most people would use the default thinking that they are making a compromise and that increasing the quality would make the compression worse. They wouldn't know unless they tested making the images themselves, because it's not easy for users to differentiate lossy webp from lossless webp.

This imho is why lossless should be in its own format, instead of trying to make a single container format do everything like WebP was trying. A new compression level for PNG would be most welcome.

The social and the biological are deeply interconnected and there's a point that the differentiation becomes arbitrary rather than something fundamental. Our instincts, our goals, our desire for survival, our push towards surrounding ourselves with people to feel protected, our desire to feel loved and cared for, our feeling of empathy.. all kinds of ideals, objectives and goals, everything that comes "from the heart" is deeply linked to our biology, it's not something that comes from rationality and logic, they only make sense "emotionally", and emotions are deeply rooted in evolution and our animal brain.

I honestly don't think the left is more social or less biological than the right. It's true that the right is less flexible to change, but that doesn't mean they are any more (or less) rooted in the biological than the left is.

There are many philosophers of the mind that agree that intelligence and consciousness are separate things.

Some examples are Daniel Dennett and John Searle.

There are also currents of thought in philosophy of the mind that disagree that even things like "slime mold" are mindless. Both from the materialist direction (like panpsychysm) and from the idealist direction (Bernardo Kastrup's idealism).

Most philosophers of the mind would disagree that the reason for their field to exist really has anything to do with any specific terminology / position. I'd say it has more to do with curiosity and the interest for seeking truth. Like most fields of philosophy do.

Your definition of intelligence, which is what the AI companies use, has made people more confused than ever about “intelligence” and only serves the interests of the companies for generating hype and attracting investor cash.

I'd argue it's your definition, which includes consciousness, what makes AI an attractive term for investors. Precisely because you say intelligence include awareness and it can lead to people to misinterpret AI as self-aware.

Promoting your definition helps the interests of the companies who want to generate hype, and causes just as much confusion as you attribute to mine in that regard.

At least mine is simpler and makes it easier to invalidate the hype, since if intelligence isn't awareness then AI isn't awareness. Many philosophers have agreed with that, for years, before LLMs were a thing. John Searle for example is famous for the Chinese room experiment.