It's been almost a year since the war started. Here are my condensed thoughts.
1. It is only Russia's fault.
And by that I mean a few who control Russia.
A bunch of talking heads say that US pushed Russia to invade, NATO bla bla bla. Does not matter if that's true, it is Russia who invaded Ukraine. They are dropping the bombs, they threw the first punch and keep on throwing more.
2. Russia has no excuses.
Russia is a nuclear weapons collector. They have the most numerous nuclear weapons in the world. Even if Ukraine joined NATO, even if Ukraine hosted some American nuclear weapons, it made 0 difference for Russia. No one is suicidal to ever attack Russia. For fucks-sake no one dares to attack North Korea because they have one and a half nuclear weapons...
So when Russia or others are blabbing about how they had no choices, that it is the Americans' fault fo
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It's been almost a year since the war started. Here are my condensed thoughts.
1. It is only Russia's fault.
And by that I mean a few who control Russia.
A bunch of talking heads say that US pushed Russia to invade, NATO bla bla bla. Does not matter if that's true, it is Russia who invaded Ukraine. They are dropping the bombs, they threw the first punch and keep on throwing more.
2. Russia has no excuses.
Russia is a nuclear weapons collector. They have the most numerous nuclear weapons in the world. Even if Ukraine joined NATO, even if Ukraine hosted some American nuclear weapons, it made 0 difference for Russia. No one is suicidal to ever attack Russia. For fucks-sake no one dares to attack North Korea because they have one and a half nuclear weapons...
So when Russia or others are blabbing about how they had no choices, that it is the Americans' fault for this, then this is pure nonsense of course.
3. The situation is very complicated.
Some say the world should keep on providing arms to Ukraine, some say this is terrible and only prolongs this war so more people will die, some say they should defeat Russia (now is the moment), some say Ukraine should accept some compromises and negotiate some peace talks....
But now that this war has created a lot of damage already it is hard to say wtf anyone should do next. Allowing Russia to take those Ukrainian territories seems like an invitation to grab more from Ukraine in the future. And it just feels wrong to let them do that...like terribly wrong.
4. The others are also big bullshitters.
On the other hand "the rest" are also complete idiots by thinking that Russia wants to take Ukraine, then the other tribes. Same way that no one dares to directly attack Russia, Russia cannot dare to attack any NATO members. It is pure suicide for both sides.
5. The profiteers.
Lots of people take advantage of this war. The ones selling weapons, the ones hosting the refugees, and lots of others who deal with the tons of money transfers for aid purposes or other purposes. Many people are getting rich because of this war.
6. USA and the rest are the opposite of saints.
USA; France, Germany and others, are supplying weapons to all sorts of dictatorial tribes around the world. They have killed, tortured, and destroyed a lot over the past decades. They are charlatans who pretend to care about Ukraine. Some might, but very likely they only follow their own interests. So fuck off with your superheroes attitude. You are not here to defeat the evil, you are here to prioritize only your own interests while sitting on the shoulders of dead and enslaved people.
7. The damaged ones.
Like with all wars, the ones suffering are not the ones who started the war. Are the ones that do not want any of this. Some are dead, many are refugees now.
8. I don't trust Ukraine.
The image of Ukraine, the heroes, I do not buy. I am sure there is some truth about what is being negatively said about them. Like them being influenced by the US, being engulfed in corruption, abusing in the past the areas that Russia occupied, that a bunch of people from those regions wanted to be part of Russia, especially in Crimea, and so forth.
9. Putin has failed.
Let's be naive and take Putin's words as true. If he wanted for the Russian people in those occupied regions to not be persecuted and treated badly, he achieved the opposite. He destroyed those areas, those lives. And made most of the world hate Russia and Russians.
If he was scared of Ukraine and how it was becoming a US puppet, and how they were getting new weapons and such, well...now Ukraine is even more a US puppet and has more weapons than they ever had. And they will get more. So, another failure.
If he wanted to push NATO further, then he achieved the opposite. NATO is closer and has more weapons now.
If he wanted to flex his muscles, he showcased that Russia has none.
All he achieved is dead people from both sides, destroyed homes and families, a worldwide hate on Russia; he isolated Russia in all regards, he showcased how badly prepared his army is, and made everyone look good and "come together" in this fakish fashion but one that made USA and Europe produce more arms, and ally against Russia.
10. The future is a constant suffering.
After all I am seeing, this war will drag for a long time. At best they get tired, exhausted, and will seek for a "peace deal" that may last for a bit of time, to then fight over those bordering regions again. Russia would love to destroy Ukraine, USA would love to drag Russia into a prolonged war.
It is an insane game that should not have existed in the first place.
I'll leave you with this image:
The nearest galaxy to us. Billions upon billions of stars. Even more planets. We are in this vast Universe....on a small round rock. Why aren't we helping each other, create a wonderful life for us all, and go explore the rest of the Universe? Why do we fight...?
We know who we are, from a scientific perspective. But almost no one understands....humans, despite the vast amount of knowledge about the universe and us, are still living like "citizens". Patriots, workers, statuses....Zombies.
@Tio I feel like a lot of people are just picking sides when it comes to politics, so its nice to hear a more balanced view from you. Apart from the NATO thing, one theory I've heard is that Putin started this war because Ukraine has a lot of untapped oil reserves which they could sell to other western counties if they join EU, which means Russia will lose their market share. None of this justifies Putin's war, but I expected you'd mention this because war caused by trade/profit is worse IMO..... Its also surprising to see how the US and other countries are acting like heros/protectors when I'm fairly certain that they have their own interests in mind, and not to mention they have a history of engaging in war & abuse themselves. See this video where 2 members of the European Parliament from Ireland points out this hypocrisy -
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@Tio I feel like a lot of people are just picking sides when it comes to politics, so its nice to hear a more balanced view from you. Apart from the NATO thing, one theory I've heard is that Putin started this war because Ukraine has a lot of untapped oil reserves which they could sell to other western counties if they join EU, which means Russia will lose their market share. None of this justifies Putin's war, but I expected you'd mention this because war caused by trade/profit is worse IMO..... Its also surprising to see how the US and other countries are acting like heros/protectors when I'm fairly certain that they have their own interests in mind, and not to mention they have a history of engaging in war & abuse themselves. See this video where 2 members of the European Parliament from Ireland points out this hypocrisy - reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/co… I'm not saying any of this to justify/support Russia, I know they're no saints either. In fact, just a couple of days before the Russia-Ukraine war began I was watching this documentary called "For sama" which was about the war in Syria, and guess who was helping the dictator bomb civilians there? yes it was Russia. So I don't trust any of these countries when they pretend like the good guys, their actions say more about them.
We're in the 21st century right now, and yet so many wars, exploitation & poverty. This is very sad and makes me feel ashamed to be a human being. Calling these countries as tribes is accurate, because that's what they are, primitive...... We're all on this tiny little rock suspended in a universe that's so vast and enormous that our brains can't even comprehend its size. I'm not trying to be poetic here, this is the actual scientific truth and the reality surrounding us. The earth will live on and the universe will continue to exist, with or without us. So for the little time we have in our lives, we can either choose to spend that time dividing each other into little tribes and drawing imaginary borders on this planet, or we can choose to be be smart and recognize that we're one species, to spend our time helping each other instead of fighting for this or that.
Yes I've heard about the resources part, but since I am not very informed about I wanted to avoid mentioning it. But you're right, that should play some role too. I am happy you mentioned it. And I love that hashtag! #AttackTheWorldWithSolutions
I should use more such hashtags. You are very good at that :)
@Tio (9) Indeed Putin should receive a NATO award for best recruiter. Sweden and Finland would never have joined if he hadn't put in the work to convince them.
Being born in Russia and followed this story from the inside, I can say that there's a third side of things here, which usually is ignored by many.. I think, it's because a big part of the political work is to create narratives, which may give a way of controlling the masses, like creating this nationality, homeland and patriotic kind of stories, which people may follow and feel more of participation and, so told, "to make a difference" (which is total BS in the most cases of course). During the time of war it's "Good vs. Evil" type of narrative, which makes it easy for people to root for "Hero type of guys" obviously and to justify the hard decisions which usually follows "A battle of a light with the darkness"..
But back to my point, the third side of things is actually a simple story of Putin guy, who's just a thief, mobster and really average person, being put in charge of entire country with 140+ millions of people lives, just because "our best idea" to organize our societies is to make one person or 1% other people to lead the way and to decide the destiny of others. F
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Being born in Russia and followed this story from the inside, I can say that there's a third side of things here, which usually is ignored by many.. I think, it's because a big part of the political work is to create narratives, which may give a way of controlling the masses, like creating this nationality, homeland and patriotic kind of stories, which people may follow and feel more of participation and, so told, "to make a difference" (which is total BS in the most cases of course). During the time of war it's "Good vs. Evil" type of narrative, which makes it easy for people to root for "Hero type of guys" obviously and to justify the hard decisions which usually follows "A battle of a light with the darkness"..
But back to my point, the third side of things is actually a simple story of Putin guy, who's just a thief, mobster and really average person, being put in charge of entire country with 140+ millions of people lives, just because "our best idea" to organize our societies is to make one person or 1% other people to lead the way and to decide the destiny of others. From his point of view he got one chance from billion of billions to get his "lucky penny" and the source of enourmous, almost infinite rich and power. And as everyone in this world is trying to find something to make money out of, to trade, trade, trade in order to survive and, if found, would cling to it whatever it costs, would try to make sure that nobody else can milk it, except himself and his friends and relatives, Putin is no different, but in his case, he got a fucking jackpot. Now, his Ukranian war is just an evolution of the idea to save his "magic throne" which gives him, the average guy, so many treasures. First, he tried for 20+ years to terrorise Russian citizens, slowly but steady stealing the rights to speak freely or to be guaranteed with certain level of safety and others. The rule was simple: you're not having any claims to the "throne", so you can live your life and we are not touching you, probably.. But after the time it stopped working. Some people (like Navalny) were too stubborn to continue to claim for Putin's "piece of the pie" and led certain amount of others after themselves, constantly threating the status quo. And after all of this the only card left to play by Putin is to convey another narrative: dehumanize Ukranians, Americans, Europeans, Aliens from Alpha Centauri, whoever else "us against them", just for the sake of saving his stolen money and the status which guarantees it for him. Thus, the war is born. All of these "NATO expansion", "Ukranians are US puppets" are to unite people around the certain idea and to blame everyone, except Putin & Co. Those are just the political narratives again and total BS of course, we should not be deceived by them. The reality of course is that a majority of people are becoming just a tool of manipulation, killing and destroying..
This is direct outcome of our trade-base society. While Humans are measured by the level of "profit" they gain, "status" they have, while it's still the measurement of "success" and also the stepping stone of basic "survival", wars, poverty, child labor, suffering, you name it, aren't going to change. With the perspective of our current environment, Putin is just another by-product of the current way of things, there were many, there'll be many more.. There's no "measurement" of being kind to others or to love, to make others happy (as a result ourselves too, because when people around you are happy, not in stress and not in fear for their lives, more chances you'll be too), but we should try at least to focus on people's environment and what makes them to behave cruelly and dangerously, to build a system of caring about people, not political/business interests..
I would like to state also that I condemn any wars, no matter of the cause, time and conditions. I believe this is the worst possible of all Human interractions and there can't be any political narrative to justify it happening, no fucking way. I'm really sorry for what comes to the people of Ukraine and their lives and so to the Russians and anyone who suffered. Would it be any chance for me to have that value in this trade-base world to stop it, mind you, I would do that immediately.. yesterday already.. shit, I would even prevent it from happening in the first place.. but since I'm not, I can only hope that the end of it isn't that far away.. FUCK THE WAR!
@Aaron and @Alexio made me aware of this chatbot called ChatGPT and I said to give it a try. I was so impressed. Like....shockingly impressed. You need to make an account at chat.openai.com and then you can simply use it. I asked it many questions and the answers are impressive.
How many male cats are in the world? Well the answer is complex so it gives you a more complex answer telling you that it is hard to answer that.
I'm sorry, I do not have a specific number of the number of male cats in the world. The number of cats, both male and female, varies greatly depending on the country and region and also it is hard to measure this number accurately. Cats are popular pets around the world and many are not registered, making it difficult to estimate the total number of
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@Aaron and @Alexio made me aware of this chatbot called ChatGPT and I said to give it a try. I was so impressed. Like....shockingly impressed. You need to make an account at chat.openai.com and then you can simply use it. I asked it many questions and the answers are impressive.
How many male cats are in the world? Well the answer is complex so it gives you a more complex answer telling you that it is hard to answer that.
I'm sorry, I do not have a specific number of the number of male cats in the world. The number of cats, both male and female, varies greatly depending on the country and region and also it is hard to measure this number accurately. Cats are popular pets around the world and many are not registered, making it difficult to estimate the total number of cats in the world. Additionally, there are also many stray and feral cats that live in cities and rural areas. However, it's important to keep in mind that the number of cats, both male and female, is constantly changing due to births, deaths, and adoptions. It's worth to mention that the number of cats should be controlled and managed to prevent overpopulation and to protect the health and welfare of the cats and the environment.
Is trade bad? Again, it gives you a more balanced answer.
Trade is not necessarily bad. It allows countries and individuals to exchange goods and services, which can lead to increased economic growth and greater access to a wider variety of products. However, there are some potential downsides to trade, such as the displacement of domestic workers and the potential for exploitation of workers in developing countries. Additionally, trade can also lead to environmental degradation if proper regulations are not in place.
It's important to note that trade policies are complex and have many aspects that can be evaluated differently by different people. For example, some people may be against free trade while others may be in favor of it. It's also worth considering that trade policies can have different impacts on different groups of people, and not all trade policies are created equal.
I may not agree with that answer, but it is a balanced one and non-controversial for our society. I managed to talk to the bot about communism or mental disorders and dive deeper into the studies made about mental disorders and how placebo plays a role. I was impressed.
Now, I wanted to make a short article about it to point out a few important things. Mind you I only tested it one day and read a little about it, but my points are still valid. Read the wiki page here.
So, first of all you have to test it to see how good it is. I can't just tell you that. If you don't have time, trust me I am not easily impressed by these AI-BS chatbots. But this one is damn good.
However....second....despite being so damn impressive it is deceiving. I asked about TROMjaro and it said
"it includes several features designed to protect the user's data and online activity, such as the Tor network for anonymous browsing, and support for encryption. "
Well NO. We do not include Tor. And we provide "support for encryption"? haha all Linux distros do....what's that answer....
Also
"It also includes a wide range of pre-installed software that covers most basic needs, including a web browser, email client, and office suite."
We do not include any email client.
You see, it can say things in a confident way, and yet be so wrong. I now wonder how many of the things it said to me were also blatantly wrong....
TROMjaro Linux is not a widely used distribution and its development status is uncertain, it may not be a good choice for beginners or those who need a more stable and supported system. It is more suitable for advanced users or those who are looking for a more privacy-focused and customizable Linux distribution.
Well TROMjaro was built specifically for those who are not technical....which is exactly the opposite of what this chatbot said.
In any case, the fact that it does not provide any sources for whatever it types, makes it pointless for me, and dangerous for everyone since it can misinform you quite easily. Double checking every fact it says makes it pointless anyway.
This chatbot is like a "smart friend" that everyone think he's smart. But can you just believe this "smart" friend and ask him about anything? Nope....that's naive. Worse is that this chatbot is created by a company who wants profits. I can never trust that.
I tried some technical questions too, that are not fact-based really, like how to do this or that for this or that program. And it gives you instructions and pieces of code. That's fabulous. With CSS seems to do great, with others not so much. It failed a couple of times by providing wrong pieces of advice or outdated. You see this bot is trained with data up to 2021....so it lacks new data.
But it can create really cool poems. I asked it to create a poem about boots and shoes :) and it did:
Boots and shoes, oh how they march, Through rain and snow, and city arch. From stilettos to work boots, Each with their own unique roots.
Boots, rugged and tough, Built to withstand and never huff. Shoes, sleek and refined, Always looking sharp, never behind.
Together they take us to new heights, Through all our daily plights. Boots and shoes, our trusty feet friends, Until the very end.
Quite an impressive job.
So these are my thoughts overall:
The chat is fabulous and awful. It is fabulous how it can create sentences that make sense and keep up with a normal conversation. I think it has great potential. It is amazing to be able to quickly ask something and have such a piece of software deliver a quick and friendly answer.
But it is awful because it can tell you untrue and dated info. And even if it may do so rarely, it is dangerous to use it. You can become very confused and misinformed. And being owned by a company can never become a tool for the betterment of humanity, but a tool for selling more shit and collecting data. They are already in bed with Microsoft and wanna make huge profits.
If this would be open source (fully) and not owned by any company but community driven, I'd be over the moon excited. I'd look forward to new improvements and even help test stuff. But right now am not at all interested, despite it being impressive in many ways. I may at best use it to get some CSS code and stuff like that, but likely I'll forget about it. For now :)
Its funny how people are blaming AI instead of pointing out the widespread systemic issues that are the real root of our problems. Worried about kids using AI for cheating? Maybe schools should just be about learning new things and not about judging and ranking students based on arbitrary tests & scores. Worried about people loosing jobs? Maybe this wouldn't be so much of an issue if we cared for all human beings instead of normalizing wage slavery. An intelligent species would know that reducing manual labor is a sign of progress and should be celebrated & encouraged. Tools like AI should help people get things done more quickly and efficiently instead of working against them in this mindless profit-driven competition. Its not AI that's the problem here, its this BS trade based society that sees you as a tool and not a human being. As long as you work like a well oiled tool you're able to live an ok life, but as soon as you're not able to or if a better tool comes along (like AI in this case) then your survival is under threat.
Now its important to note that these AI tools and the ones making them are also influenced & driven by this trade based society. That is why almost all of these programs are proprietary software, and I'm sure they'll try to milk their users one way or another by introducing little trades here and there. They might put ads on their website to trade your attention, or put their service behind a paywall/subscription to trade your currency, or collect data about you to trade your info. So #TradeRuinsEverything, even useful tools like AI are used to make a profit for the rich in our society.
In 2011 after I released the TROM documentary someone who was helping me proofread parts of it suggested that I should run a donation campaign to buy a new computer that I desperately needed in order to redo the documentary with a proofread script and voice overs instead of the text-to-speech I had used.
Seemed like a crazy idea to me to ask for so much money. But I did. And I raised over 1.000 Dollars. I was shocked. I was sleeping in a bunkbed in the same room with my sister. I woke her up to tell her. I was so happy.
I had a super shitty computer but then I managed to buy a fantastic one. I remade the TROM documentary and released in 2012.
Even before this, from 2007 to 2010 I had a blog in the romanian languag... show more
In 2011 after I released the TROM documentary someone who was helping me proofread parts of it suggested that I should run a donation campaign to buy a new computer that I desperately needed in order to redo the documentary with a proofread script and voice overs instead of the text-to-speech I had used.
Seemed like a crazy idea to me to ask for so much money. But I did. And I raised over 1.000 Dollars. I was shocked. I was sleeping in a bunkbed in the same room with my sister. I woke her up to tell her. I was so happy.
I had a super shitty computer but then I managed to buy a fantastic one. I remade the TROM documentary and released in 2012.
Even before this, from 2007 to 2010 I had a blog in the romanian language that had a decent traffic. I asked for little support to help me pay for the hosting, but only got a 1 dollar donation one time, despite so many considering my blog very interesting and useful. I did some video series like today's Daily Dose of Internet and such, that had thousands of views per episode, and was recommending movies, documentaries and more on my blog. So it was not simply a personal blog. Regardless no one helped me financially despite being broke as hell.
After I released the "remastered" version of the documentary I created the TVP Magazine. Monthly issues, digital, well made. I wrote for it, designed, all that. Did it 8 months for free then I had to go for a massive donation campaign to help me work for a full year. By that time I was so broke, yet I was doing a bunch of online projects that thousands enjoyed. I had to survive in this trade bullshit society.
The golden age of donations.
It was a period of time when websites like Indiegogo or Patreon started to emerge. Platforms where people were mainly asking for donations to support their projects. Looked genuine. Honest. Real. Not many were using them, I was one of the first to create an account with Patreon.
So we did an 18.000 Euros Indiegogo donation campaign for TVP Magazine:
To my shock we raised the amount. It was exciting.
It felt like a genuine help. We were doing THIS and to keep on doing THIS we needed THAT. There were no "perks", no bullshit, no special clubs for those donating. That's how donations should be. If you donate because you want a tshirt, or be mentioned on some page, or whatever other crap, then you are not genuine. You are not there to just support a project, you want a handjob too. A scratch on your back, a thank you so that you can feel a bit more special. It is about you, at least a bit. And that's awful.
We got support for some 3 years but in that meantime websites like Indiegogo, Kickstarter or Patreon started to become more and more scammy and full of prostitutes. The notion of "donation" morphed into pay-me-and-you'll-get-to-see-my-tits sort of thing. Plus the so many scams...so many "cool new tech" that will become reality, you just have to chip-in a bit and you'll also get a piece of the pie when we bake that cake. Then these projects disappeared. And people were angry.
But what angered me was the complete and utter rape of the action of donating. How can you call it a "donation" when you get something out of that? If I give you some money and then you'll give me something, but you'll only give me that something if I give you that amount of money, then that's a TRADE my friends. THAT is NOT a DONATION. So Patreon transformed into a marketplace where people were buying access to special clubs, merch, and all sort of "perks". Pretending to "support" the "creators". In fact they were buying shit from merchants.
SciShow, who joined later on than we did with our projects on Patreon, relies on subscriptions rather than support:
For 500$ a month you can have sex with one of their staff members.
Look at this:
Are you telling me that these are "creators" that others "support"? Fuck off, these are merchants like everyone else, and they sell shit. And people pay to access that shit. The same ol' trade game.
These are some of the most popular merchants on Patreon.
Hell yeah, even Mastodon sells shit: Access to their select club and ads on their joinmastodon website for your "company".
This is a very very sad world.
Of course it does not work for me to rely on donations when I do not engage into these marketing tactics. If it weren't for 3-4 close friends who helped the project/me over the years, I don't know what I would have done. To give you an example I am trying to raise 250 Euros to pay for the backups for some 30 websites: like our Friendica instance, Nextcloud, Peertube, Matrix, SearX, Cryptpad, VideoNeat.com, TROMsite.com, TROMjaro.com and so much more. Currently only 35€ was donated.
At least hundreds of people are using these websites/services, if not several thousands. If only 100 of them would donate 3€ a year we could over the backup costs. But they don't and they won't.
In general a small fraction of people donate to the projects that they use. A few years ago when I looked into this, it was like 0,1% of those subscribed to some youtube channels who also donated to these "creators". Even when these "creators" (merchants) sell shit, the support is relatively small. But probably there are more such people supporting you if you also give them shit in return. After all, humans are used to this "I give you but you also give me" mentality. So now that TROM provides nothing but the TROM project, probably it is not as exciting to "support" as the other projects are.
Fuck me The Moneyless Society who are blabbing about how this monetary system is the cancer, has this on their front page:
The link leads to here:
The irony is astonishing. Their Patreon is equally as bad:
You see I wanted to walk that talk. If I say this bullshit trade-based society is awful, then I won't play by its rules when it comes to TROM. Never sold anything, never inserted ads, collected data, provided special access to those who provided financial support for the project. That's the real way of doing this sort of work. I prefer that over selling shit. I'd rather see the TROM project dying than transforming into yet another trading practice, marketing nonsense, influencer-on-patreon whore.
TROM is not a popular project, maybe in part because of our content that's at times lenghty and upsetting for some. Maybe in part because we don't play by the marketing rules. I had the dignity to move from facebook, twitter and youtube, to the fediverse entirely, despite "losing followers". I had the courage to write/publish some 40 books and never sold any. I had the guts to provide 20+ services over trom.tf and treat everyone as equal. To me that's priceless, and I am so thankful to a handful of humans who still see that value in what I do, and follow the work, and some support it financially in order to keep this boat afloat.
Humans nowadays trade nonstop. For games, in games purchases, netflix, entertianment, crypto-investments, buying special access from the people they follow, and generally being consumed non-stop. Even if TROM gets more popular, it may not be exciting for these consumers since TROM gives you nothing but TROM. And they may want a handjob or some other stuff like that.
TROM is not a whore and never will be. It will stay honest, decent, humble, and non bullshitter. We are walking the talk until we cannot.
If I do not raise the money for the backups I will pay for them myself. If I cannot sustain some of the TROM.tf project I will discontinue them. As simple as that. To rely on donations, the real ones, is the only way to stay unbiased in this trade-based society. But it sucks that donations have transformed into purchases.
BUT:
I need to remind you that all of these whores and charlatans that I've been talking about, are like that because of the trade based society we live in. We are forced to be like that. At the end of the day I am NOT accusing any of them. Just pointing them out, as they are victims, nothing more.
90% of these creators or influencers who has a "donation" page is actually just a paywall for their exclusive content and other "special perks". Its crazy how ubiquitous this has become, and its very normalized to the point that if you have a genuine donation page today then people might ask you if you give out any "perks"
"For 500$ a month you can have sex with one of their staff members" 😂😂😂 Very good post Tio 🙂 I'm proud of you for keeping it going and always staying real 🙂
I needed a new laptop to get rid of my old one that was not portable. I made 3 posts already about this journey: 1, 2, 3 - so I will try not to repeat myself.
My mission: get a sturdy and powerful laptop that can last me for a decade. Upgradable and fixable in a reasonable manner. Big screen, yet portable. Do it!
After months of searching and thanks to Roma and Guil primarily, who donated 98% of the money for the laptop, I settled for the Dell Inspiron 7620 2-in-1 16 inches. It has a c
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This is it:
I needed a new laptop to get rid of my old one that was not portable. I made 3 posts already about this journey: 1, 2, 3 - so I will try not to repeat myself.
My mission: get a sturdy and powerful laptop that can last me for a decade. Upgradable and fixable in a reasonable manner. Big screen, yet portable. Do it!
After months of searching and thanks to Roma and Guil primarily, who donated 98% of the money for the laptop, I settled for the Dell Inspiron 7620 2-in-1 16 inches. It has a core i7-1260p - 12 cores 16 threads. An Nvidia MX550, 64GB of RAM and 4TB NVME. 4k screen, 16:10 aspect ratio.
I will tell you why I chose this one.
First let me tell you the negative parts of this laptop, since none can be perfect for me I guess. Then I'll tell you why overall it is a great laptop for me.
What I don't quite like.
The keyboard. You see I write a lot and I want a great keyboard. This one is too shallow. I miss the depth of the previous keyboard....but I guess I'll get used to it eventually. The keyboard is also in German....since I bought the laptop from germany, ebay, second hand but unused. Basically brand new.
The Y and Z are switched but I chose a QWERTY layout in TROMjaro so despite showing differently, the letters are in a QWERTY format. I will try to also manually switch them but I am affraid not to break them.
I also kinda don't like the arrow keys...
The up and down arrows are too tiny. This is a bad design on any keyboard.
To add salt to the injury... this layer:
It is a layer of some sort of plastic/glass on top of the metal chassis, that is great for the touchpad but the edges are a bit sharp so when I type my arms get cut a bit in these edges....that happens when I sit on my desk. Like 99% of the time....
SO the typing experience is not that great. Not awful, and I will get used to it, but yeah....that's the biggest downside so far.
Another slight discomfort: opening the laptop to upgrade was a scary experience. You have a few screws but once you start unscrewing them the top part of the bottom case starts to violently try to get out, and things are bendy and make noises. Maybe the captive screws on that side should not be fully unscrewed but loosen and then try to open the case little by little.
Like all laptops (almost) the bottom detachable case has plastic bits inside that clip into the laptop, and these are always sketchy...so I even broke 2 while opening it. Was not a great experience but I guess next time it will be easy. Luckily the entire laptop is made out of aluminium so even without these plastic things everything can close pretty tight.
It can be loud and it is a bit heavy. Having a dedicated GPU the fans will be pretty loud when you do intensive tasks, but probably that's quite normal... Also it is heavy for a "tablet" and quite huge. So this is not really comfortable to use it like that. On the desk is properly fine.
Software-related issues.
Since this laptop is quite new, not even a year old, the hardware is not flawless with Linux. The worst of them all: the speakers will stop working after a few minutes of use. You have to restart pulseaudio for them to work again for a bit. Then they stop again. This seems to be a bug that was reported and should be fixed with newer releases of the kernel. I can easily put up with that since I never use the laptop's speakers - I have external ones - but for most people this would be a reason not to use Linux on this laptop.
The Hibernate mode kills your laptop. I found out the hard way. I had to fix some bad sectors on the drive because it was not booting up anymore. Probably another issue that will be fixed in the near future, but for now no Hibernate mode. Suspend works ok tho.
If I turn the screen brightness down completely, from the keyboard, I cannot bring it up again. I have to shut down the laptop from the power button....that sucks.
The face recognition camera does not have any real support in Linux so that's not usable....this is the case for all laptops as far as I know.
Closing the lid won't respect the XFCE settings I setup for it, so it won't turn off the screen, or lock, or else.
Basically, with Linux, this laptop is not easily portable. You can't use the speakers, you can't hibernate it, you can't even close the lid to have it turn off the screen....
So, you may wonder, why did I keep this laptop if it has these issues?
First of all the software related issues will be fixed and they won't bother me much at all. Pretty much every laptop I had to install Linux on, had some sort of issues like that. It is normal when you create an operating system for ALL laptops out there.
Second, the hardware-related issues are not that bad. I am getting used to the keyboard and I won't have to open up the laptop that often anyway.
So, then, the good parts.
The build quality is great.
This is all metal. Slimbook for example felt flimsy, this one feels really sturdy. I can kill a human and a dog with this laptop and I am sure it will still work :). The hinges, metal, feel like they will last me a lifetime. It barely bends, no cracks, and feels really solid overall...
It is also super slim and of course bendable 360 degrees:
Look how great that looks. So thin, so portable. This is a lot more slim-book than the Slimbook one :). And the charger is also tiny compared to the Slimbook or my previous laptop:
The touchscreen is also a plus since I can test TROMjaro directly on my own machine.
Speaking of the screen, the screen is AMAZING. The blacks are so black that if I were to select a 16:9 instead of 16:10 resolution I can't even tell since the black borders are as black as the screen's chassis. The colors are vibrant and it looks amazing from all angles.
Also...am I crazy or 3-4k resolution is no different from Full HD!? I tested with this laptop and there is 0 difference in how it looks. That's good since I can use the FullHD resolution and this improves the battery life. From my initial tests it can last some 5-6 hours on wifi doing things. Others have tested this and it can last some 20h if you are not connected to the internet and just watch local media.
When the speakers work they are very loud and sound great, despite only using 2 of them out of 4 in Linux.....when they will all work this laptop will sound amazing am sure.
The touchpad is great. Smooth, HUGE, and looks neat.
The glassy surface that cuts my arms while typing feels great when using the touchpad :D
Speaking of looking neat, there is only 1 logo on the back.
And that's not even that visible. I like that.
The port selection is perfect. On the left side you get an HDMI, normal USB, and two USB C / Thunderbolt - meaning they support any sort of connection basically.
On the right side you get another normal USB port, an audio jack, and a full SD size card reader.
So you can be sure that this laptop can connect to anything.
For example the way I set it up now that I have to work on TROM II and need a bunch of external stuff, I use a USB-C dock. It connects to the laptop into one of the USB C ports. One cable, mind you. This dock has the following connected to it: 3 HDDs totaling 14TB of data + my headphones + speakers + external microphone + mouse + external display + projector + 1GB Ethernet + power charging so that it also charges the laptop + webcam.
This is so amazing. It means I can quickly unplug one single cable and take the laptop. Then plug it in and all of those are connected.
The webcam is also better than your average laptop camera, like for example many times better than Slimbook's. The built-in microphone I've heard is also very good but I have not tested it yet. The webcam also has a physical shutter so you can block it.
THE INSIDES! I think this is the only laptop-convertible in the world that's 16inches and has a 16:10 aspect ratio, is so slim yet all metal build, but allows you to replace the RAM and has 2 slots for it. This was a must for me. It was advertised as 32GB max, but I easily added 64GB of RAM. DDR4. And I upgraded the NVME M2 to 4TB.
To compare it now with the Slimbook Executive 16, that one costs 1.750 Euros with 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. Sure, the CPU is a bit better and the GPU much better (useful only if you play video games which I do not). This laptop, the Inspiron 7620 costed me 1.100 Euros and with 64GB of RAM + 4TB SSD around 1.700 Euros. MUCH MUCH MUCH better in all regards than the Slimbook offer.
Lastly the power button it is also a fingerprint reader:
And I managed to make it work in TROMjaro - wasn't that difficult. How amazing that now I can unlock the computer with the fingerprint and works perfectly fine. Or when I install new packages....FINGERPRINT! NO more typing my very long admin password :).
OVERALL.
For 1.700 Euros I got a great laptop. It has a big and amazing screen, great port selection, fantastic build quality, great touchpad, good webcam and mic, ok upgradability and repairability, great CPU and good GPU. Touchscreen, bendable 360 degrees, consumes less energy than the Slimbook, small power charger (USB C), great price overall. In time I'll get used to the keyboard too and the software related issues will be fixed.
Ok ok, a very long post.....but to me this machine is important since it allows me to do the so many projects I am doing. It is an extension to my brain. So it matters to me.
Now I plan to give my old laptop to a dear TROM friend who has helped the project a lot for the past year or two. If I manage to send it to the other side of the globe somehow to not break our pockets. I want to give my older stuff to others who can use it for longer.
I will try to get "laptops" out of my head and in a week or so focus again on TROM II. I spent a lot of time searching for a good laptop and I feel like I have finally found it. It is time to move on :)
Quick background: I want to buy a laptop that is really well built, easy to upgrade and repair, and portable. Has at least a 16inch screen and a decent battery, plus a good keyboard.
Some 2 weeks ago, after spending many weeks searching for a good laptop, I finally decided to order the extremely expensive Slimbook Executive 16. I was at first more inclined to buy the twin from Tuxedo because it was black and I could buy it without Nvidia, so much cheaper.
BUT.
The Tuxedo people told me that although on their website it says: These laptops are actually made out of plastic and that magnesium alloy is steamed on the chassis themselves. What!? I made sure I got it right so I asked them to confirm several times. And they did. At best their website is dishonest, at worst they want to trick you. Which one is it? You decide.
Now, because TUxedo and Slimbook provide laptops that are honestly almost, if not entirely, identical (just check all of their models – chassis, hardware, sizes, etc.) I asked the Slimbook people if theirs are also plastic with coated magnesium alloy. They confirmed at least 10 times I think, that this is not true. Theirs are purely metal: aluminium+magnesium alloy, as stated on their website.
I decided. Slimbook.
It arrived: Took a while but it arrived. I live in Spain, they ship from Spain, 5 hours away from where I am. Ok. Anyway.
First impressions were that it does not feel like a sturdy laptop. I have 2 to compare it with. First is my plastic laptop. Slimbook feels sturdier than my laptop. Second is Sasha’s laptop which is a 13inch fully aluminium laptop. Slimbook feels like plastic compared to that one. I can beat you with Sasha’s laptop for sure, and I could even kill you with it, then I am quite sure it will probably still work. But I can’t do that with Slimbook. Yes magnesium alloy is lighter than aluminium, but idk…it feels like a well built plastic laptop to me. Which is not a good thing for me since I want a very s sturdy one.
So, the way it is built, for me, is not what I was looking for. I am inclined to believe this is “a plastic laptop with magnesium alloy steamed onto it”, like the Tuxedo folks were saying. Call me crazy but I won’t be shocked if the Slimbook people willingly or not misinformed me about their build quality.
Funny that they have a sticker that says “Protected by Magnesium”. Protected…hm…. I don’t know but if I were to sell laptops that are fully metal built, I would advertise that like “Chassis made out of aluminium and magnesium alloy!”. Again, maybe this is a conspiracy I am creating inside my head but things smell fishy to me.
The keyboard is a bit odd. Some key symbols are not centered yet others are… Not something that bothers me too much, but still an odd thing to see.
The charged is a fat-charger for a slim-book 😀 It is massive. That makes this laptop not very portable since the battery form my initial tests, is not great with that Nvidia card. Maybe lasts for 2-3h…maybe a bit more. Maybe it is normal for such a powerful machine.
The worst part: the screen colors are washed out. Look: I do not care about little differences, but this is a massive difference. My old laptop has a more contrasty look, a lot more. Slimbook is super washed out. I tested on Sasha’s laptop and her screen is almost identical with mine. So idk which screen looks more like most screens out there, but for sure I prefer my old laptop screen and Sasha’s screen. If two screens from two different laptops look a lot better than the Slimbook’s one, maybe it is the Slimbook that’s not doing well.
And this is awful because I checked the documentary I just edited the colors for, and on my screen and Sasha’s looks great, on Slimbook looks not that great….what is it happening? Maybe this model has a fucked-up screen!? IDK…but this is the worst thing for me, something that if not fixed I will return the laptop. I can maybe put up with the rest, but not with this for sure.
Speaking of screens. You know I’ve been saying that 2k 3k 4k screens are a BS marketing unless we talk about very large screens and content to match that screen. Well…Slimbook has a 16inch 3k screen. If I switch between 3k and fullhd I can’t really tell any difference. Maybe my eyes are not the best, but I feel like this is just a BS marketing thing.
Now…the screen size is perfect for me. I love the 16:10 aspect ratio. I love how light it is. I like how it looks and I despise those many stickers. The webcam is decent, the speakers are great. I can’t open it to look inside because they added a sticker to one of the screws to stop you from doing that and I am concerned I can’t return it if I open it up. Speaking of that, the bottom part of the chassis feels like pure plastic to me. Quite flimsy even when it is attached to the laptop.
Overall this laptop is a monster in terms of hardware. That’s fantastic. But the build quality, although not bad at all, is not at all a sturdy one in my view. I would feel concerned to carry this laptop around for long. The battery is not great at all and if you leave it on the bed for example, the laptop gets super hot super fast.
I will test it for longer but so far idk what to say….because on one hand I LOVE the screen size and the overall size and weight of the laptop. But at the gigantic price of 1750 Euros….(sure I got it 150 euros cheaper), but at that price you expect a fantastically well built laptop that will last you for a decade. At least that’s how I think.
Maybe that’s how laptops are built nowadays….light, seem fragile….maybe I will keep it eventually. But idk…if not I will return it and search for a new one next year after TROM II is done. I may be inclined to go for a good Thinkpad or older models that were better built.
Let’s see if Slimbook will convince me to keep it….I kinda doubt….
I think my laptop also has a similar keyboard, the keys are a bit shallow and it also has the same tiny up/down arrow keys. These are not a big issue, I'm sure you'll get used to it. I find the shallow keyboard faster to type, the tiny arrow keys I don't use that much but it was fine for me when I played Supertux2 (Linux's FOSS alternative to SuperMario)
Also I'm actually surprised to see Linux having such good support for fingerprint, to even use it for sudo authentication. Does the fingerprint only work for when you wanna install packages in pamac or does it work every time you use sudo, even in the terminal? Either way, it might be a good idea to write a setup guide for fingerprint reader on the #Tromjaro forum.
The fingerprint support is a hit or miss. For example on my sister's laptop, a lenovo from 2018, it does not work.....but on my very new one, works....I want to add the support in TROMjaro by default and indeed write a tutorial on the forum about it.
Yeah, I think its safer to manually type out password for the terminal. And for the login screen and GUI package manager it might be something the developers of that specific program implemented 🤔
It is almost impossible to find this laptop in Europe
The BIOS is quite feature-full. You can setup profiles for the battery to make it last long. Like for me I selected that I mostly use the laptop plugged in. You can tweak a bunch of things in there. So that's a big plus.
I got a refund for the Slimbook Executive 16 that I sent back. Although they refused to pay for the transport which, form what I read online, should have been covered by the refund. It was around 20 euros in total and I didn't want to "debate" over it anyway. They were generally nice over email and I also removed their stickers from the laptop and perhaps I should not have done that. So it is ok.
Am happy that I returned it because I want to test other laptops. Now I am convinced I will order (to test) the Dell Inspirion 7620 2 in 1:
It has a 16inch screen at 16:10, something I fully love. I has a good keyboard it seems with no nonsense numpad: ... show more
I got a refund for the Slimbook Executive 16 that I sent back. Although they refused to pay for the transport which, form what I read online, should have been covered by the refund. It was around 20 euros in total and I didn't want to "debate" over it anyway. They were generally nice over email and I also removed their stickers from the laptop and perhaps I should not have done that. So it is ok.
Am happy that I returned it because I want to test other laptops. Now I am convinced I will order (to test) the Dell Inspirion 7620 2 in 1:
It has a 16inch screen at 16:10, something I fully love. I has a good keyboard it seems with no nonsense numpad:
It is very well built I've heard. Fully aluminium. A bit heavy at 2kg, but because it is really sturdy I'v read. My laptop is 3kg....and shitty built :D
It is also a convertible and has a touch screen + fingerprint reader:
Not that I'd use these much, but it is a nice bonus considering that I tweak TROMjaro for touchscreens too, and now I can directly test it on my machine and not rely on the old tablet that we have. I would also love to add a proper fingerprint reader support to TROMjaro, so now I can test it.
As for the internals, I will go for the i7-1260P CPU and perhaps the MX550 Nvidia GPU combo. Not as powerful as the Slimbook, but a lot more than my current laptop. The advantage is that this combo consumes a lot less power than what Slimbook had under the hood. Which means much better battery life (they say it lasts all day) + a much slimmer and usb-c power adapter that you can buy for like 20 Euros from any tech-store if you need to replace it.
So in a way although the Slimbook is half a kilo lighter, its charger is massive so....this Dell with such a small charger despite being heavier I would like it to be like that.
Another cool thing about this laptop is that it has dual channel RAM slots that you can upgrade. For a 2 in 1 this is quite unique. They say max 32GB in total, but I've heard you can put 64GB and I will try that. As for storage unfortunately it only has 1 m2 slot and they say that it supports up to 2TB, but again I've heard you can add up to 4TB. I will compromise to 2TB of storage if this laptop is as good as I read it is, but 4TB would be perfect for me....will have to try and see.
Actually the entire laptop seems quite easy to fix and upgrade:
And being a bit popular you can already find components despite being released just a few months ago. They have a detailed manual about how you can replace and upgrade parts.
Speaking of that, the awesome Framework 13.5inch laptop that is marketed as very repairable (and it is) clocks at around 1.400 Euros with the same CPU and no GPU. This Dell clocks around 1.300 Euros new via ebay and around 1k second hand via the same ebay. So it is much cheaper overall, seems very durable, much larger screen, yet still relatively easy to repair/upgrade.
Oh and I've read that the speakers on this Dell, 4 of which, are one of the best out there. Same goes for the webcam that even has a camera shutter for privacy.
Overall the laptop (in theory from what I read and see) seems quite slim, very robust, very powerful, decently upgradable and repairable, amazing screen, good keyboard, great speakers and good webcam, great battery life. At least in theory, let's see in practice.
I will likely buy it second hand since this laptop is a very new model and so second hand units should be barely used. Getting it much cheaper allows me to buy a 4TB m2 and even some 64GB of RAM, if the laptop can handle all of that.
For now I will continue with the work on TROM II but I plan in February or so to order it and test.
Massive thanks to Roma and the few others who donated for my laptop campaign. Basically Roma made this possible.
The laptop is my sole enabler of everything you see TROM-made. Websites, video editing, TROMjaro and all of that. Therefore it is the most important piece of technology in my life, and thus I want to choose with care. Basically I would love to just have 1 laptop and that's all.
Anyway, I am sharing these in case it helps others too.
I was trapped into a mystery for the past few weeks. You see, I like what Slimbook and Tuxedo provide for the Linux community in terms of making their laptops geared towards Linux. And I want to buy a new laptop. Now....their laptops look like identical twins. So I thought it is the same company that makes them but different brands. They confirmed this is not the case. One is a Spanish company, one is a German company.
Ok. Fine.
But Tuxedo told me their Infinity series, which I was keen to buy, was not made out of magnesium alloy like they advertise on their website, but made out of plastic and the magnesium alloy is steamed onto it.
But look, the Slimbook looks identical:
Even inside, ports, specs, weight, ... show more
I was trapped into a mystery for the past few weeks. You see, I like what Slimbook and Tuxedo provide for the Linux community in terms of making their laptops geared towards Linux. And I want to buy a new laptop. Now....their laptops look like identical twins. So I thought it is the same company that makes them but different brands. They confirmed this is not the case. One is a Spanish company, one is a German company.
Ok. Fine.
But Tuxedo told me their Infinity series, which I was keen to buy, was not made out of magnesium alloy like they advertise on their website, but made out of plastic and the magnesium alloy is steamed onto it.
But look, the Slimbook looks identical:
Even inside, ports, specs, weight, EVERYTHING! Yet the Slimbook people told me: no no, our is FULLY metal. No plastic what-so-ever in the chassis.
Which one was right? Me, CONFUSED.
If they are so identical they must come from the same manufacturer....right? I then watched this video review of the Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 and bellow someone comments that they basically buy these laptops from a Hong Kong manufacturer named TONGFENG Computers....and Tuxedo confirmed in the reply:
Now you can go on the TONGFENG Computers website and you'll see those laptops hk.tongfangpc.com/thin-6h1-ser… - they are identical to the Slimbooks and Tuxedo ones.
I asked the Slimbook folks if they get them from there and rebrand them, but they said:
I'm sorry, but due to company policy, which I'm sure you understand, we do not provide that information.
At least I like that Tuxedo seem more honest in that regard. Maybe because they had to respond to the claim publicly!?
Now on the TONGFENG website they claim that these 16inch laptops are "all metal design":
Look, it is not a bad thing ok!? Of course these are not German or Spanish manufacturers, these are German/Spanish companies that buy laptops and rebrand them. Then they sell them. However Tuxedo advertises the laptops as "made in Germany":
So, my thoughts are these: both Tuxedo and Slimbook buy their laptops from the TONGFENG Hong Kong company. They simply deal with the software side of things to make them more Linux friendly, and do some custom chassis/keyboard prints. After testing the Slimbook Executive 16 my feeling is that Tuxedo seems more on the honest side of things and those laptops are made out of plastic with magnesium alloy steamed onto them. They are not bad at all, and I may buy a Tuxedo eventually if I can't find better alternatives.
But they for sure seem not honest to me. None of them to be honest. If Tuxedo tells me one thing but one their website they write another....or if they say their laptops are "made in germany" while they are not....then....you get the idea...
I do not trust any company. Period. They are entangled with whatever they trade so they can never be reasonably honest. Maybe Tuxedo and Slimbook do want to do good things and I still have that hope. Overall maybe they are nice people, but they for sure are shady, here and there at least.
In a trade-based society humans will sell you anything, and wrap it to appear as if they do so because they care. It is an old tactic. But they need to care about their profits too, more so. So don't simply take it for granted when these Open Source driven companies tell you that they are there to do a good thing for the Open Source. Be skeptical of their claims.
Both the Slimbook and Tuxedo people provided a great email support for my questions. All are nice. The Slimbook Executive 16 was very well put together, but probably not by the Slimbook team, but the Hong Kong one. I am still tempted to buy a Tuxedo to test it, these next months, but don't expect much honesty from companies in general.
Or that they claim their laptops are made out of magnesium alloy when in fact are plastic with magnesium alloy steamed on them? Something they confirmed to me several times over email.
Not bad laptops at all, but deceiving practice in my view.
They’re not rebrands, they’re chassis from other companies, they assemble the computers entirely in Germany, AFAIK. As per the magnesium, I don’t know the difference between an alloy or vapor bonding. Not issues at all for me, especially after using these devices, I can attest if their quality.
Well at best they are "assembled in Germany" but not "made in Germany". If that's not deceiving...
And I wonder if they are even assembled more than changing the ram, ssd, or the motherboard. Like add them to chassis. In any case maybe we can tag @TUXEDO Computers to clear some things up...
Except regional labels like that can be more or less permissive. Like Swiss Made for watches doesn’t mean everything has to be made in Switzerland. Maybe Made in Germany doesn’t require to be that strict either, while still being allowed to use that term. In any case, I don’t give a crap about that stuff, what matters is the quality of the final product!
Except regional labels like that can be more or less permissive
Yeah well I care more about why would you try to use that label anyway. Marketing I suppose.
don’t give a crap about that stuff, what matters is the quality of the final product!
Of course the quality matters, but being deceptive is a red flag. Are they also deceptive about the materials used for the laptop? Or other things? idk...
That’s not deceptive, that’s a term they might be legally allowed to use. Just like “Made in France” here: people know it doesn’t mean every si file thing came from France.
Nah that's naive. Let's be honest. If they say on their main page "made in Germany" but it is made in Hong Kong, that's objectively deceptive. If I order from China, via Amazon, a pair of headphones, then I paint them and put a logo on them and say they are made in Spain, that would be deceptive at best.
Again, nothing wrong with the laptops being made in Hong Kong. And they seem good quality. But what they do in terms of marketing is deceptive at best.
From what I know, they pick all the components that go inside, they assemble them, they test the hardware, etch the keyboard layouts and logos, develop drivers or improve on existing ones, and work on their own suite of software to enable it to work well with the device. That’s more than enough for me to differentiate their devices from just rebranding!
Interesting. Every-time I clicked that link it redirected me to the homepage. So it seems that if you select EN for your website, then click that "made in germany" it basically sends you to the same EN homepage.
Now that you sent me the link directly it worked. But it is only in German.
I have translated it but the translation is not great I suppose. From what I understood you guys are choosing the hardware that is most compatible with Linux (although Nvidia is notoriously not very compatible). And then you develop some software for it as seen here github.com/tuxedocomputers
I understand that the hardware is ordered from companies such as Tongfang, assembled there or at times in Germany. You also provide a repair shop for these laptops.
Did I get it right?
If so, I think the wording is misleading. These laptops (the hardware) are not "made" in Germany, but at best "assembled" in germany together with some basic software support.
Would it be more fair to change that and say "Assembled in Germany with custom-made software support"?
I think many people would feel outraged if Apple advertised on their website "Made in the USA". Even tho Apple, from my knowledge, designs some components themselves and do most of the software for their products. Still, you can't call that "Made in the USA" because it is not made in the USA. At best "Designed, developed and assembled in the USA". I hope you get my point.
If you hadn't bought this up then I would've for sure thought that Tuxedo and Slimbook makes their own hardware from the ground up, makes sense why the Slimbook people don't want to provide you that information. But to be fair, designing & making laptops from the ground up is expensive, so its not a bad thing what they're doing in terms of improving linux compatibility. I just wish they were a bit more honest about what they're doing.
BTW, That company's name is TongFang, not TongFeng.
Yeah that's what I don't like if they give the impression that they make these laptops. Call me crazy but if I see on a website that sells laptops "Made in Germany" I would expect the laptop to be made in Germany....
I wonder if they just customize the laptops a bit and resell them, at least that's what I get from that YouTube comment. If this TongFeng company sells completely assembled laptops then why does Tuxedo & Slimbook have to reassemble them? That youtube comment mentioned they do keyboard lasering and chassis logo printing, maybe that's what they're referring to as "assembling" ? 🤷
TBF, their work on software and all is great, its just that there's not enough transparency from their part.
Even if they assemble in Germany it is misleading to say "Made in Germany". Their software work is all good, and all that. Great that they contribute the the FOSS community. But I still think putting "Made in Germany" on their main page is misleading. And I am quite sure it is done consciously since people associate germany with well-made products. So I believe they use that as a marketing strategy.
And just to say this, I do not want to "stab" Tuxedo or anything like that, but if I see such practices I will be vocal, regardless if they also do some good for the Open Source world.
> Even if they assemble in Germany it is misleading to say "Made in Germany".
This maybe a bit subjective, because there are many steps involved in manufacturing something. When that TongFang company says that their product is made in China, they probably mean its assembled in China, I'm not sure if all the individual components are made in China itself. Or maybe it is, IDK 🤷
Also its good that you are vocal about such things, I don't think you're being rude, its honest criticism.
It baffles me that it can be subjective....if you say "This laptop is made in Germany", but you order the hardware (and perhaps entire laptops) from somewhere else (regardless where), then it is beyond me how that sentence makes any sense. Maybe that Hong Kong company also orders parts from somewhere else, regardless I was talking about "not being made in Germany" but at best "assembled and customized in Germany".
My experience with this world tells me that this is a marketing scheme.
Of course the hardware has to be made in the country at least, but the framework and stuff could be imported from other parts and assembled there, I think that's how most products are made, rarely a product is made entirely in one country. I don't think Tuxedo & Slimbook could claim they make the laptop themselves, since its made by the TongFang company. So that is probably a marketing scheme like you say, they make it appear like they build their laptops from the ground up.
I made a blog post a few days ago when I received my Slimbook Essential 16 and basically I was not happy with it. Now things have changed, some of them 180 degrees. But still not enough to keep it.
Why? How?
First of all, I need to take into account a few external factors: 1. I am in the middle finishing the TROM II documentary. I did not want to distract myself from it until April or so. I need to finish until May. The only reason I bought this laptop was because of a limited 150 Euros discount. 2. I work on many things, servers, stuff, including WebApe and I may have to take 2 new WebApe projects this month. Not a great idea to be distracted by a new laptop now. 3. I have TB of data and hundreds upon hundreds of packages and custom config files....moving them over to the new laptop will take me many many days.
Ok. What's up with the Slimbook.
The build quality I am still not 100% liking it.
... show more
I made a blog post a few days ago when I received my Slimbook Essential 16 and basically I was not happy with it. Now things have changed, some of them 180 degrees. But still not enough to keep it.
Why? How?
First of all, I need to take into account a few external factors: 1. I am in the middle finishing the TROM II documentary. I did not want to distract myself from it until April or so. I need to finish until May. The only reason I bought this laptop was because of a limited 150 Euros discount. 2. I work on many things, servers, stuff, including WebApe and I may have to take 2 new WebApe projects this month. Not a great idea to be distracted by a new laptop now. 3. I have TB of data and hundreds upon hundreds of packages and custom config files....moving them over to the new laptop will take me many many days.
Ok. What's up with the Slimbook.
The build quality I am still not 100% liking it.
I got used to it. It still feels more like plastic than metal to me, feels super light and all of that, however using it for the past days I realized it is very well built (put together). Not bending, no flexing....really good. I opened it up after they allowed me to, and that made me like it much more. Inside, everything is well organized and very well put together. Feels more like a metal build now to me that I opened it up.
It is also fantastic that you can put up to 64GB of RAM and has 2 M2 slots that support at least 4TB if not 8...This is crucial for my needs. Also opening it up was so easy, I loved it. Unscrew a few screws and that's it, the bottom cover can be easily removed. Great job with that!
Despite this, I am concerned that being so light and plasticy-feel, it will easily be damaged in time. But being so light is fantastic in terms of portability. Speaking of that, the charger is massive and will annoy you if you want this to be portable, which kinda makes it being so light, less relevant. If this had an AMD processor it would have made a lot more sense since right now the battery is not that great. Overall will last some 4-5h and I've been using the Slimbook app that allows you to switch to an energy saving profile. If you use the Nvidia card, even a bit, it drops down to half. Considering that batteries degrade quite fast, this is not a great beginning.
That keyboard...
I type a lot (I write books) and I need a decent keyboard. The keys are a bit too shallow for me, it feels a bit weird to type, but the worst part is that some key symbols are not centered as mentioned previously. After a few days of use I still did not get used to this. It looks weird especially at night when they are lighten-up. Looks like the laptop is tilted one side. The keys feel a bit "cheap" and not that "fun" to type on. Plus I HATE the numpad...I'd love a normal keyboard...big keys...centered....
The camera is usable or bad, like it is the case with most laptops. But probably no one uses them since all laptops have shitty cameras. And the speakers are ok.
That touchpad!
I hate touchpads - I can never use them. But Slimbook made me love their touchpad. It is an amazing experience. Smooth, glassy, HUGE. Makes it so easy to use it, even for someone like me not used to them. Great job with that. Tho, again, even that is a bit not centered which looks weird....
What about that screen?
At first I hated it because I thought it as washed-out. And it was, compared to my laptop and Sasha's. But then I realized it was like that only when it came to blue-purple....the rest looked great. Just so happened that the default TROMjaro wallpaper was the most obvious in that regard. I then compared the Slimbook screen with our phones and other screens and it seems that my and Sasha's laptops are the ones adding more contrast at times, for blue and purple. Anyway, the colors are probably more accurate on the Slimbook after all, but yeah many screens, many color variations...
In any case I ended up LOVING the screen. 16'' and a 16:10 aspect ratio, with those thin bezels makes the perfect screen for me. For video editing, designing books, websites, you name it. Awesome. I can't go back to any screen after this experience. So much so that this will be the first thing I'll look for in a laptop.
A beast. But does it matter?
The core i7-12700H + Nvidia 3050ti make up for a great (on paper) hardware. However for the day to day use, even for me doing so many things at once, it makes exactly ZERO difference. Even on my laptop I can have hundreds of tabs opened, watch stuff, edit, whatever. Could make a difference in terms of video editing and code compilation. Unfortunately in Linux the GPU is almost never used. All in all, great hardware, but unless you do heavy video editing, code compilation, or game, you don't need this.
Speaking of hardware....from my tests there is almost zero difference between a normal SSD that has like 1GB speeds r/w and these new M2 that have many GB speeds. Unless you posses hundreds of GB of media and copy them frequently....there is no difference. Just marketing.
Actually I'd say I have confirmed, for me at least, that fullhd screens are almost identical to any K screen for a 16'' screen. M2 SSDs are as good as SSDs for pretty much most uses. And the difference in power (GPU and CPU wise) only matters for specific tasks. The vast majority of those are ok for the vast majority of people.
Marketing....
Summary.
The Slimbook Executive 16 - things I like: - lightweight, easy to carry around - very well built - great screen - amazing touchpad - great hardware - perfect ports availability and slots - easy to open and upgrade
Things I did not like: - feels more like plastic than metal - massive charger - overall bad keyboard - not a great battery life - bad webcam in dimmer conditions - bloody full of stickers - extremely expensive
For 1750 Euros (1600 with the discount) I would definitely want a fully aluminum build, a good keyboard, and a decent battery. Maybe even a fingerprint reader....could be cool to have that and super useful.
I want to mention something unique and special about Slimbook: their support. You can talk to humans there, and they are super friendly. Many thanks for putting up with my many questions and helping me out. Stellar support.
Where from here?
I would like to see other laptops too. Lately I found 2 candidates but of course I will look for more. For example I found the Dell Inspiron 16 to be a great choice:
Comes in different hardware variations, even with AMD for some. That keyboard looks amazing from photos (no numpad). Centered touchpad and huge. All aluminium built, thin, even tho heavier.
The downside, max 34GB of RAM and I think max 3TB of SSD....fuckers...You can change these yourself but what I realized is that the vast majority of these well-built laptops have the RAM and storage soldered into the motherboard. No way to upgrade them. Such a fuckery.
Anyway, the second exciting choice is the Dell Inspiron 16 2 in 1: Not as powerful as the Slimbook, but a lot more than mine. Can transform into a tablet and has a touchscreen. Although I may not use any, it is likely more solid since it is built for this. Sasha's is similar to this, but at 13'', and I love it.
This one too has a 32GB RAM and 2TB SSD limit...
I can find these on ebay from 800 Euros to like 1.400 Euros. Much cheaper than the Slimbook. Even new are not more expensive than the Slimbook Executive 16.
Anyway, I will package the Slimbook and send it back. Then I'll focus on TROM II and these next few months I'll look to see if I can find better alternatives. There is a slim-chance I will buy the slim-book again :) . It was very interesting to have it around to test, and i went from "I won't keep it" to "I'll keep it" a day after another. Last night I was almost sure I'll keep it. But I do not want to rush with this since it is an extremely expensive thing for me to buy. I don't want to regret my decision.
Honestly if this Slimbook had a powerful AMD and was around 1k Euros, I would not have thought twice.
Quick background: I want to buy a laptop that is really well built, easy to upgrade and repair, and portable. Has at least a 16inch screen and a decent battery, plus a good keyboard.
Some 2 weeks ago, after spending many weeks searching for a good laptop, I finally decided to order the extremely expensive Slimbook Executive 16. I was at first more inclined to buy the twin from Tuxedo because it was black and I could buy it without Nvidia, so much cheaper.
BUT.
The Tuxedo people told me that although on their website it says:
These laptops are actually made out of plastic and that magnesium alloy is steamed on the chassis themselves. What!? I made sure I got it ... show more
Quick background: I want to buy a laptop that is really well built, easy to upgrade and repair, and portable. Has at least a 16inch screen and a decent battery, plus a good keyboard.
Some 2 weeks ago, after spending many weeks searching for a good laptop, I finally decided to order the extremely expensive Slimbook Executive 16. I was at first more inclined to buy the twin from Tuxedo because it was black and I could buy it without Nvidia, so much cheaper.
BUT.
The Tuxedo people told me that although on their website it says:
These laptops are actually made out of plastic and that magnesium alloy is steamed on the chassis themselves. What!? I made sure I got it right so I asked them to confirm several times. And they did. At best their website is dishonest, at worst they want to trick you. Which one is it? You decide.
Now, because TUxedo and Slimbook provide laptops that are honestly almost, if not entirely, identical (just check all of their models - chassis, hardware, sizes, etc.) I asked the Slimbook people if theirs are also plastic with coated magnesium alloy. They confirmed at least 10 times I think, that this is not true. Theirs are purely metal: aluminium+magnesium alloy, as stated on their website.
I decided. Slimbook.
It arrived:
Took a while but it arrived. I live in Spain, they ship from Spain, 5 hours away from where I am. Ok. Anyway.
First impressions were that it does not feel like a sturdy laptop. I have 2 to compare it with. First is my plastic laptop. Slimbook feels sturdier than my laptop. Second is Sasha's laptop which is a 13inch fully aluminium laptop. Slimbook feels like plastic compared to that one. I can beat you with Sasha's laptop for sure, and I could even kill you with it, then I am quite sure it will probably still work. But I can't do that with Slimbook. Yes magnesium alloy is lighter than aluminium, but idk...it feels like a well built plastic laptop to me. Which is not a good thing for me since I want a very s sturdy one.
So, the way it is built, for me, is not what I was looking for. I am inclined to believe this is "a plastic laptop with magnesium alloy steamed onto it", like the Tuxedo folks were saying. Call me crazy but I won't be shocked if the Slimbook people willingly or not misinformed me about their build quality.
Funny that they have a sticker that says "Protected by Magnesium". Protected...hm....
I don't know but if I were to sell laptops that are fully metal built, I would advertise that like "Chassis made out of aluminium and magnesium alloy!". Again, maybe this is a conspiracy I am creating inside my head but things smell fishy to me.
The keyboard is a bit odd. Some key symbols are not centered yet others are...
Not something that bothers me too much, but still an odd thing to see.
The charged is a fat-charger for a slim-book :)
It is massive. That makes this laptop not very portable since the battery form my initial tests, is not great with that Nvidia card. Maybe lasts for 2-3h...maybe a bit more. Maybe it is normal for such a powerful machine.
The worst part: the screen colors are washed out. Look:
I do not care about little differences, but this is a massive difference. My old laptop has a more contrasty look, a lot more. Slimbook is super washed out. I tested on Sasha's laptop and her screen is almost identical with mine. So idk which screen looks more like most screens out there, but for sure I prefer my old laptop screen and Sasha's screen. If two screens from two different laptops look a lot better than the Slimbook's one, maybe it is the Slimbook that's not doing well.
And this is awful because I checked the documentary I just edited the colors for, and on my screen and Sasha's looks great, on Slimbook looks not that great....what is it happening? Maybe this model has a fucked-up screen!? IDK...but this is the worst thing for me, something that if not fixed I will return the laptop. I can maybe put up with the rest, but not with this for sure.
Speaking of screens. You know I've been saying that 2k 3k 4k screens are a BS marketing unless we talk about very large screens and content to match that screen. Well...Slimbook has a 16inch 3k screen. If I switch between 3k and fullhd I can't really tell any difference. Maybe my eyes are not the best, but I feel like this is just a BS marketing thing.
Now...the screen size is perfect for me. I love the 16:10 aspect ratio. I love how light it is. I like how it looks and I despise those many stickers. The webcam is decent, the speakers are great. I can't open it to look inside because they added a sticker to one of the screws to stop you from doing that and I am concerned I can't return it if I open it up. Speaking of that, the bottom part of the chassis feels like pure plastic to me. Quite flimsy even when it is attached to the laptop.
Overall this laptop is a monster in terms of hardware. That's fantastic. But the build quality, although not bad at all, is not at all a sturdy one in my view. I would feel concerned to carry this laptop around for long. The battery is not great at all and if you leave it on the bed for example, the laptop gets super hot super fast.
I will test it for longer but so far idk what to say....because on one hand I LOVE the screen size and the overall size and weight of the laptop. But at the gigantic price of 1750 Euros....(sure I got it 150 euros cheaper), but at that price you expect a fantastically well built laptop that will last you for a decade. At least that's how I think.
Maybe that's how laptops are built nowadays....light, seem fragile....maybe I will keep it eventually. But idk...if not I will return it and search for a new one next year after TROM II is done. I may be inclined to go for a good Thinkpad or older models that were better built.
Let's see if Slimbook will convince me to keep it....I kinda doubt....
> The battery is not great at all and if you leave it on the bed for example, the laptop gets super hot super fast.
I just want to share a small tip here. Speaking from experience, I can say that its a very bad idea to use your laptop on bed, I've seen a laptop literally turn itself off because of overheating. Most laptops have their vent holes on its bottom and you have to make sure they're not closed off, so a flat and sturdy surface is always preferred.
They are talking about how this global trade based society pushes us all, from individuals to companies, to pollute, mostly care about profits, destroy the nature, enslave others, coerce. And are taking direct steps to overcome this by providing humans with their basic needs trade-free (as a first step), so that we help humans have a good life, and not pollute and waste as much, and get involved more to reverse the effects of pollution and destruction.
They have also started to ban all advertising because they rightly say that this is only going to create more needless consumption. I am so happy abo
They are talking about how this global trade based society pushes us all, from individuals to companies, to pollute, mostly care about profits, destroy the nature, enslave others, coerce. And are taking direct steps to overcome this by providing humans with their basic needs trade-free (as a first step), so that we help humans have a good life, and not pollute and waste as much, and get involved more to reverse the effects of pollution and destruction.
They have also started to ban all advertising because they rightly say that this is only going to create more needless consumption. I am so happy about that. Online or offline, ads are illegal.
They are working with all governments around the world to make a global transportation system that is trade-free, so that we phase out cars entirely. Universal healthcare is also on the agenda together with trade-free education. Two meals a day for everyone, trade-free access to the Internet, investing a lot of resources in non-meat food alternatives, and kick-starting a massive sharing platform (online/offline) so that we can all share the vast amounts of wasted and unused stuff that we have around. Even sharing a room/place to stay. How amazing! This, they hope, will incentivize people to re-use, rather than buy useless shit all the time.
Lastly, they realize that laws and rules do not work, so their overall approach is to create a better society from within the current one. One that does not rely on trade but on share. This way we can make companies and profiteers obsolete, with time. The focus will be on how to protect us and the nature, using renewable energies, less polluting practices, and so forth, since there is no incentive to do otherwise. All, while decoupling ourselves from the need for trade. Have a lot more free time, get more educated, get involved.
On the front page of the BBC website I see an article about Mastodon:
That is great, but also not so.
It is fantastic that more people are joining the fediverse, but I am concerned and annoyed about a couple of things:
A. Popularity gets polluted
In a world where trade is the main activity for humans (jobs, money, data collection, all that crap), the more people will join, the more of these charlatans will, who want to promote their own shit on the platform. After all a lot of accounts on Twitter/Facebook are made for companies and to sell shit. They will start to do that on the Fediverse. Watch out!
B. Musk should not be the reason
If people move to the fediverse because of Musk, this is not ok. If they were not put off by Twitter's ads, control, data colle
... show more
On the front page of the BBC website I see an article about Mastodon:
That is great, but also not so.
It is fantastic that more people are joining the fediverse, but I am concerned and annoyed about a couple of things:
A. Popularity gets polluted
In a world where trade is the main activity for humans (jobs, money, data collection, all that crap), the more people will join, the more of these charlatans will, who want to promote their own shit on the platform. After all a lot of accounts on Twitter/Facebook are made for companies and to sell shit. They will start to do that on the Fediverse. Watch out!
B. Musk should not be the reason
If people move to the fediverse because of Musk, this is not ok. If they were not put off by Twitter's ads, control, data collection, and centralization in the first place, then they have no clue what really fucks things up in this world. Is not just billionaires, it is the system making them and all of the above fuckery. So if platforms are trade-based: they ask you something in return (money, data, other currencies, attention, etc.) then this platform is a dangerous one. But I doubt most people understand that.
C. Misunderstanding about Mastodon/Fediverse
It is a great shame that people who write about this network only focus on Mastodon and do not understand how this works. That BBC article does make it look like the network is Mastodon. But that's gravely wrong. There are plenty of networks, some a lot more feature-rich than Mastodon. I understand, for newcomers can be confusing, but for one the more you talk about it the less confusing it becomes, and second if you do not talk about this then you completely dismiss the power of the federated network and its decentralized nature.
For example, if they were to recommend Friendica (which I use and provide a public instance of) then they could have mentioned that Friendica connects with Twitter too, and you can bring all of your friends in a second to Friendica, from Twitter. Get their posts in Friendica, reply to them, get notifications and all that. MUCH easier to come from Twitter to Friendica! Also Friendica is so feature-rich...and works with any Mastodon app....
D. Concentration is bad for federation
Speaking of promoting only Mastodon, they basically talk about 2-3 instances when they make these articles. Now people flock there, and we have a situation in which very few instances have most users...these instances are so powerful now. @Eugen 💀 and others should have not accepted more than say 100.000 users or less on their instances. This is so bad I can't explain. It means ONE single human can destroy connections and fuck things up for hundreds of thousands on the fediverse. Terrible!
Also this fuckery from the BBC article:
My god...the "donation" practice has been entirely corrupted nowadays isn't it? If admins ask for donations that's entirely different from someone asking you for money in order to get access to their network. A donation won't get you anything in return. This is why our struggle at TROM to explain why trade is essential to understand. Something is not free when you have to trade for it in return of getting that thing.
So, BBC:
If I have a Mastoton instance and say "You pay me 10$ a month and then you can join" then that's not free. You have to trade 10$ in order to join the network.
If I say "You join but you need to watch these ads that you cannot disable" then it is not free. I want your attention. So you trade your attention in order to join the network.
If I say "You can join the network but I collect data about you to make a profit off of it"....you guessed it, it is not freee. You traded your data for accessing the network.
However: if I say "You can join my network. I do not want anything from you. But if you want to donate you can." Then it is FREE. No trade. You can or cannot donate. And you can still join the network.
3 days ago I was writing about a laptop I bought for 100 Euros that impressed me. How well it was design making it so easy to upgrade and repair. This post social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc4…
Well now I have an exact opposite example. A few years ago we bought a very cheap laptop for my father. 2 core processor (intel), 4GB of RAM, some 500 GB HDD. 200 Euros or so. And the build quality is awful. Plus the way you open it up....
For example you have to open the entire back plastic panel to access anything. The screws are black on a black panel, the plastic quality is terrible, and then you have to somehow know that this:
is not just a rubber thingy to make your laptop stand better on a desk...no no, it hides screws inside of it. So you have to unglue that. ... show more
3 days ago I was writing about a laptop I bought for 100 Euros that impressed me. How well it was design making it so easy to upgrade and repair. This post social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc4…
Well now I have an exact opposite example. A few years ago we bought a very cheap laptop for my father. 2 core processor (intel), 4GB of RAM, some 500 GB HDD. 200 Euros or so. And the build quality is awful. Plus the way you open it up....
For example you have to open the entire back plastic panel to access anything. The screws are black on a black panel, the plastic quality is terrible, and then you have to somehow know that this:
is not just a rubber thingy to make your laptop stand better on a desk...no no, it hides screws inside of it. So you have to unglue that.
What a terrible design. I remember some 2 years ago when I first opened it up to change the HDD with an SSD, I almost broke the plastic panel trying to take it apart because I was unaware there are screws underneath those. Terrible design!
Then how do I put those rubber legs back? Glue them back? Awful!
After you struggle to open it, you find this:
It is easy to change the drive and the RAMs. However only 1 slot for the RAM. WTF! I've never seen a laptop with only 1 slot for the RAM. This is terrible. I had another RAM stick of 4GB around and wanted to upgrade it to 8GB but guess what, there is nowhere to add another stick...
Actually this was the reason I opened it again tonight, to only find out about this stupid thing.
The worst part is that the hinges are metal screwed into the plastic case and because it is so difficult to open, I broke both hinges....the plastic they were screwed into broke completely. And trust me I opened many laptops this never happened to me before. But this build quality is complete shit.
This happened 2 years ago when I first opened it. And made it so difficult when I reopened it again because I was afraid I will completely destroy it....I tried to glue them but in vain. Basically you can still close the lid, but it is a shitstorm and it will break completely sooner than later.
All in all, it is a complete fuckery this laptop. Poorly made out of shitty plastic. Difficult to open up to the point where you will break it. You only have 1 RAM slot. Not worth it.
I found a newer version of the same Fujitsu laptop, same model. Double the hardware power. Core i5, 8GB of RAM, 180 GB SSD. Same ebay seller. 200 Euros with 1 year warranty. I will tell my parents to perhaps buy that one. And this laptop we can sell for 16 Euros or give it to someone who won't be able to do much with it...
Will see but this is the exact opposite example of my previous one.
A relative of ours who does not have much money, had an old computer. Then she had no more. It went kaboom. We thought to do a good deed an buy a laptop for ...
Release TROM II, have a wonderful TROM meeting in May, save as much money as possible + work to make some more and buy a motorhome. By October next year have the motorhome, some monthly income from WebApe (hopefully) and then go travel across Spain, Portugal, go to Norway see the Fjords and other parts of Europe :) . Basically see the nature side of it.
While doing that make more TROM books, more TROM-Casts, more videos, meet new orgs and projects, spread the word about "trade is the origin of most problems" and the antidote "trade-free".
If we manage to buy a motorhome and all works great with that, and if I manage to make WebApe a monthly income generator (or if we find other sources), then we can support ourselves and TROM for a long time. Maybe we can get enough financial support from donations for TROM...that'd be amazing but idk...
After that I'd like for us to go to Hawaii for a bit, because I'd love to see that place, then USA and buy a motorhome there (sell the old one) and travel across USA and see the national parks.
... show more
My plan for the next year.
Release TROM II, have a wonderful TROM meeting in May, save as much money as possible + work to make some more and buy a motorhome. By October next year have the motorhome, some monthly income from WebApe (hopefully) and then go travel across Spain, Portugal, go to Norway see the Fjords and other parts of Europe :) . Basically see the nature side of it.
While doing that make more TROM books, more TROM-Casts, more videos, meet new orgs and projects, spread the word about "trade is the origin of most problems" and the antidote "trade-free".
If we manage to buy a motorhome and all works great with that, and if I manage to make WebApe a monthly income generator (or if we find other sources), then we can support ourselves and TROM for a long time. Maybe we can get enough financial support from donations for TROM...that'd be amazing but idk...
After that I'd like for us to go to Hawaii for a bit, because I'd love to see that place, then USA and buy a motorhome there (sell the old one) and travel across USA and see the national parks.
That's my "dream" now. And I am working on it.
Because you see, I want to have a wonderful life while also screaming about this bullshit society and propose realistic solutions for this BS. But I can't just scream and be angry, this won't even last. I want to also enjoy life, see the nature that is left, meet the humans that are still humans and not citizens, and so forth.
So let's see....for now I will get back to work on TROM II.
A relative of ours who does not have much money, had an old computer. Then she had no more. It went kaboom. We thought to do a good deed an buy a laptop for her. A cheap one. So I found one on ebay, for 100 Euros. Second hand. Yeah, 100 Euros. Fujitsu Lifebook E734 i3-4a. 4GB of RAM, 320GB HDD. Intel Graphics card. From 2014.
It is a bit scratched on the top lid, but other than that looks really good. Top lid made out of some metal, same as the top part where the keyboard is:
So I want to say a few things. First, the build aspect of it impressed me!
... show more
A relative of ours who does not have much money, had an old computer. Then she had no more. It went kaboom. We thought to do a good deed an buy a laptop for her. A cheap one. So I found one on ebay, for 100 Euros. Second hand. Yeah, 100 Euros. Fujitsu Lifebook E734 i3-4a. 4GB of RAM, 320GB HDD. Intel Graphics card. From 2014.
It is a bit scratched on the top lid, but other than that looks really good. Top lid made out of some metal, same as the top part where the keyboard is:
So I want to say a few things. First, the build aspect of it impressed me!
It is meant to be repaired and upgraded, at least mostly. From the bottom you can easily access the Drive, RAM, and the DVDroom (whoever still uses those). Just 1 screw holding them in place. So easy to deal with those.
The best part:
You can take the dust filter out, no screws needed, from the back of the laptop. In a second. Clean it, and put it back. This is the best feature (hardware) wise that I've seen for a laptop so far. I need to open up my entire laptop to clean it once a month, else it starts to overheat and does not work well at all. Imagine if I could simply take the filter out and clean! How in the world are not all laptops equipped with this!?
I love that thing so much!
Now, when it came, only had 1 issue. When the fan kicked in, it made a very loud noise and made the laptop vibrate....was quite bad. The best part is that I managed to open it up in a few minutes by unscrewing just some 10 screws. It was very easy to open this laptop up and that I loved. I quickly accessed the fan and cleaned it inside. I had to add some special oil to make it run smoothly. This is a very old fan so this may happen. That fixed it.
I of course nuked Windows and installed TROMjaro. Everything worked!
Bluetooth, wifi, keyboard keys, function keys....all! Runs so smooth and fast. The processor is more than enough for most uses for most people. The RAM is fine, depends how many websites you have opened in tabbed windows, but you can cheaply and easily upgrade that.
Overall for 100 Euros you can get a great laptop second hand. Well built, not that bulky at all, and useful for most people.
I also love how easily I could switch the TROMjaro layout into a Windows-like, something this person may be more familiar with. Lovely!
Point is, we should re-use. Second, I have seen several laptops over these past decade and this one is the best designed so far in terms of how easy they made it to repair and upgrade. All laptops should be like that. This is 8 years old but looks 20 years ahead in terms of the thinking that went into designing it for repair and upgrade.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I also got a 1 year warranty for this laptop. Not bad at all for 100 Euros.
oh man.. I used to have a Fujitsu laptop some time ago for a brief while. It rocked, except the screen was shit. It was Fujitsu p772 if I’m not mistaken. Totally could rival thinkpads in terms of build quality and maintainability.
Good choice! Fujitsu has excelent and very Linux friendly Laptops. I have an E751 with openSUSE and a S762 with Lubuntu and both work great and otb with GNU/Linux.
A Trade-Free operating system based on Manjaro Linux Designed for your brain, but you can install it on a computer.No more ads and trackers consuming you, no ‘free’ trials, no …
Well that's the Manjaro spin we made and I am quite happy with it :) - lots of custom, different, unique things that we did there. Hope more will find about it :D
In short, I need and want to finish the TROM II documentary before our TROM Meeting in May next year. And I need 0 distractions.
In long....
2019.
I remember brainstorming with @Aaron about this documentary some 3 years ago.
The idea was that we have so many materials for TROM (think about the latest book, The Origin of Most Problems that is over one thousand pages long) that we definitely need a documentary of some sort to introduce people to these ideas. Maybe a 1h long documentary or so. And make it quick. I was kinda convinced I can do it in like half a year....
2020-2021
A year or so later I started to work on it. I said, let'
... show more
In short, I need and want to finish the TROM II documentary before our TROM Meeting in May next year. And I need 0 distractions.
In long....
2019.
I remember brainstorming with @Aaron about this documentary some 3 years ago.
The idea was that we have so many materials for TROM (think about the latest book, The Origin of Most Problems that is over one thousand pages long) that we definitely need a documentary of some sort to introduce people to these ideas. Maybe a 1h long documentary or so. And make it quick. I was kinda convinced I can do it in like half a year....
2020-2021
A year or so later I started to work on it. I said, let's do it! But I needed financial support. I made a donation campaign for 13k euros to allow me to work for a full year on the documentary. I only raised 2-3k. So I didn't have the money. I thus delayed it...
I even made a sort of video-campaign for it....
My idea was to make a script, to write it, but I ended up writing more and more....then I thought "Fuck it, I cannot make a short documentary....I wont limit myself. I will make it as long as it will be.". So I wrote more and I was starting to incorporate our books into the documentary. Lots of scientific papers, lots of science, lots of facts....and I started to realize that this will become a huge documentary and perhaps boring...also....wtf do we still need "proof" that this society is fucked-up? And to explain "trade as the origin of most problems" (the core of the documentary) we should not need "facts" as much as a way to make people rethink that the problems we see today are a result of trade. Many voice it by accusing "money", corruption, capitalism and so forth.
Anyhow, after talking with others I kinda got convinced that I should ditch the script and do a more personal one. A documentary that's easy to follow and makes sense for most people. So I decided to interview a few of my TROM-friends. Also, I would be a talking head too.
That was easy to do. Sit down and record. Of course I had a sort of script/notes for it all. We started to record in June 2020.
And finished in May 2021...
Took almost a year to finish the recordings...which I would have considered insane if you told me when I started it. But you know the Covid19 pandemic started and we got busy with that, mentally (following the news) and physically - a bit restrained by the restrictions.
It was also when I had to deal with some serious stuff for TROMjaro and took me a lot of time to deal with...
On top of that I released a new massive project: trom.tf/ and we were adding new services to it.
We moved all of our videos and social presence to alternative platforms that were trade-free. This was a massive amount of work but something I am extremely happy I did. We also moved the many websites we had to a new, unmanaged server since it was far cheaper and far more powerful....this was very new to me. I had to learn how to manage a server. Took at least a month or two to get used to it.
We were also TROM-casting.....and we were suffering tremendously money-wise. I was quite depressed about all of it. Felt really down because I didn't know how to continue the work.
So that period of time was quite busy and stressful for me. In July 2021 I started to edit the documentary. Luckily I got some financial support and that allowed me to work on it.
I had over 40h of recordings....with 2 cameras. Was a lot more difficult than I expected. I did a of of work.
The rest of 2021 I spent trying to work on the documentary but also stressing about the financial situation...plus a ton of work on trom.tf - from technical to moderation and everything in between. Oh, and we moved TROMjaro from Gnome to XFCE...for those who understand what these are they get it that it was very difficult.
Took several months to work on and off and make it stable. At times I worked everyday for weeks on end. I had to postpone the documentary work several times because of this.
Between dealing with TB of backups, moving servers, creating new projects, trom-casting, tromjaro (remember I was also testing hundreds of apps for our tromjaro library), moving our materials to alternative platforms and such....I tried to work on the documentary too.
2022
This year I worked a lot on TROM II. By June I was able to finish some 2h of it. See. But then I had to stop again because we were financially fucked again. I launched WebApe, a webdesign project to help me make some money. That took some time to create and then to try and find some websites to make. Thanks to @Alexio I managed to get 3 projects. That was not financially sufficient. It was still stressful.
Luckily our financial situation greatly improved. Thanks to @Guillaume , @Roma @Aaron and a few others who donated big amounts of money, and especially to @Sasha who managed to make some money too. Now we were fine. Now we are fine!
I managed to add 30 more minutes to those 2h in July/August. Then cut the rest of the 20h into the last remaining 3h of the documentary. I tried to start working on these 3h but I could not much....busy with tromjaro, trom.tf, videoneat and the rest. TROM-Cast no more either....
NOW
You see I am busy with more things than what I just explained. Since the start of the documentary I did a lot of new projects and a lot of work in many ways. I also spend time replying to emails or having long discussions on the TROM Discussions chat. I do many things....no wonder that I could not finish this documentary yet.
Now it is October 2022. And things seem perfect for me. We have enough money till next year, same time. So I should not worry about money for at least a year or so. That's absolutely FABULOUS. I've never been better financially actually. But let's not celebrate yet since my calculations only take into account our basic needs. Who knows what else may intervene. Also, what do we do after 1 year?.... Therefore any donations are immensely important to prolong this work. And I am always transparent with whatever money we get for TROM.
Anyway, I have money now. And it is quiet here (summer is gone). Things should be calm and relaxing. Now it is the perfect timing to work and finish the documentary. Unless some weird things may happen, like a World World 3, or the hosting company kicking me out, or who knows...
All of the trains work great: tromjaro.com, videoneat.com, trom.tf, tromsite.com, tromnews.com.....my websites. All!
Therefore I will have to force myself to get back to TROM II.
I will mute the TROM Discussions chat for now, so that I am not distracted. I am really sorry that I have to do this. There are over 100 people in that chat. But I truly need to focus on TROM II and I will 100% get distracted if I leave the chat on. People will comment there and I cannot help but check it and respond...it is great to see more and more people there, and no worries, as soon as TROM II is released or close to be released. the chat will be available for all to comment again! I am 1 human and I can't do everything, please understand that I need some quiet time to finish this.
And won't even open my email until later on in the day or something like that. I need to isolate myself. Let's see how it goes...
Trust me it starts to annoy me this documentary....I do not want to work on it for so long...I want to do new things. New videos, books, talks, debates....etc. So let me finish it :D.
TROM Meeting in May
Next year, in May, we will organize a meeting- Similar to this -
And I definitely want the documentary to be done by then. Things look exciting again! Cannot wait! 6-7 months Tio boy! FINISH IT!
Go Tio! Hope you will have some productive time, friend :loveheart I, as someone who has been priveleged to see little sneakpeaks from the upcoming TROM II documentry, can only say that I absolutely loved what I saw and it's going to be fabulous! :smiling face with hearts: In my humble opinion it is one of the most important stories ever told and can't imagine something more suitable, especially, in times like these in the world, when we keep suffering with so many problems without realizing at all the most possible origin of all of them..
No. Some people ruined and abused the practice of "donating" especially in the online world. Donate means: I give this to you andI do not expect anything in return. This is why it is donation and not a payment for a product/service. Anyone has equal access to everything that we produce at TROM, regardless if they donate or not. Same as Wikipedia.
If anyone asks you for a donation and in return they give you some perks, then that's not a donation.
So in short a donation is not a trade, because I do not give you anything in return for your donation. It is a one way street: you donate. That's all :).
It would be the case if the donated money would be expected to be used for whatever, but the expectation of donating to Wikipedia is that it will be used to work on Wikipedia and not to buy alcohol or cigarettes for some random person on the street.
So I'm donating to Wikipedia and I'm getting a better quality Wikipedia, I'm getting something back for it, the only difference is that I also let other people use the fruits of my donation.
That's about your expectation. But nothing to do with trade. Trade is a practice between at least 2 humans, else we go into the abstract and anything can be seen as trade, including you reading a book in order to get educated. You "trade" your time to get educated. But we are not talking about this. This is too abstract and goes nowhere.
So between you and Wikipedia there is no: I give you that in order for you to give me this. It is: I help your project because I like what you are doing. So there is no trade involved. Unless you define your expectations as "trade".
It is true that people likely donate to support some specific cause, therefore they have some internal expectations. This is totally ok, and it is still not a trade in my view. Since there is no exchange between us.
If you feed your brain with culture, then culture is your operating system. But culture is a human invention. Often too simplistic, moronic, competitive driven, trade-influenced. A culture of celebrities and those watching them, dreaming of becoming one of them. Shallow values, fake smiles, fake lives.
If you watch movies, listen to music, scroll endlessly on social (ad) networks; you tiktok daily, gossip, small talk, come'here drink a beer; if you are enculturated, you are missing out on something mind blowing.
This:
And this:
And this too: ... show more
If you feed your brain with culture, then culture is your operating system. But culture is a human invention. Often too simplistic, moronic, competitive driven, trade-influenced. A culture of celebrities and those watching them, dreaming of becoming one of them. Shallow values, fake smiles, fake lives.
If you watch movies, listen to music, scroll endlessly on social (ad) networks; you tiktok daily, gossip, small talk, come'here drink a beer; if you are enculturated, you are missing out on something mind blowing.
This:
And this:
And this too:
And this weirdo:
And this, wtf that is:
Or these:
THE WORLD: The REALITY.
The center stage of your life. You are the center of the universe because your experience is yours, and that makes you the most important creature in the universe for yourself. And the reality is something we, humans, recently discovered. Plus, it is not being "marketed". And thus, it is not "popular". So many do not know about "it". The "reality" is, for most, a geeky thing...science and such...
Immensely misunderstood.
You are being tricked into culture/society. You are being fooled and scammed. By this:
This:
Or this:
And this weirdo:
You are not part of that "world". It is not yours. You are only here to watch it, get jealous, to consume and be consumed; to dream about illusions.
But if you realize that you are part of a humongous universe, and of an evolutionary process taking up billions of years, then you are as equal as anyone else. We are all in this, and it is about us, because we discovered this world. Embrace it. Force it into your essence!
As harsh as this may sound: stop watching movies or listen to dumb music. Stop using Facebook, Tiktok and the like. Games? Fuck them! Don't copy this retarded society. Don't be tricked by it. Netflix, Spotify, "smart"-phones, whatever the shit it is advertised to you: clothes and fake holidays, are all a scam. You'll live and never realize what you truly are, a HUMAN.
Everyone tells you to consume these stupid useless shits. Because they are traded. Refuse!
I am telling you from my personal experience. I too was watching movies, and all sorts of shows, football, and all that. Was obsessed over some. But me, my life, felt mediocre at best. I am not like those famous people, I am not as good looking, well dressed, and so on....It is impossible to escape these feelings when you are soaked into culture.
But then I forced myself to watch documentaries, and read about the real world. For years. Felt very unnatural and uncomfortable. But after some time that gets into your system. Now I feel as important as any living creature. We are truly the universe looking at itself.
These used to mean "stars" in my world:
But now the only stars in my world, in my head, in my reality, are those that I see in the night sky.
That's the difference!
You are star-stuff, literally. The story of you, and the importance of you, is far greater than you may imagine. This is not some inspirational corny post, it is true all that I am saying. A star had to explode, for the elements in your body to be created.
A frog, a fish, a mountain, that grass and the blue sky. Only made of a handful of building blocks. Same ones. A lego-like world. A mystery waiting to be revealed. An endless process of discovery. We will never know the full story of ourselves.....how the universe began....what was before that....where do we go....and that, to me, makes us immortal. Because we are, the universe indeed.
How beautiful! How real!
I wish we would all realize who we are, rather than what we are told to be, by a culture oiled by trade.
You know I made a post some months ago being quite concerned about WW3, and I really try to keep my tits calm when it comes to such scenarios since I have seen so many times speculations about all sorts of things and normally nothing radical happens in this world, in any regards.
I haven't posted about the situation in Russia in some time, but I kept an eye on it via AlJazeera, BBC, Euronews but also the awful rt.com out of curiosity. Things slowed down a bit for the past months, but became a lot more tense for the past weeks. There is a serious worry that this can still escalate into a WW3, as unimaginable as it may seem even for those acknowledging that it may happen. Like me.
Russia (Putin kinda leading it) seems to have very few options on the table other than some small nukes to "scare off" the world. And Ukraine is pumped full of weapons and support.
Russia already set the stage to ... show more
You know I made a post some months ago being quite concerned about WW3, and I really try to keep my tits calm when it comes to such scenarios since I have seen so many times speculations about all sorts of things and normally nothing radical happens in this world, in any regards.
I haven't posted about the situation in Russia in some time, but I kept an eye on it via AlJazeera, BBC, Euronews but also the awful rt.com out of curiosity. Things slowed down a bit for the past months, but became a lot more tense for the past weeks. There is a serious worry that this can still escalate into a WW3, as unimaginable as it may seem even for those acknowledging that it may happen. Like me.
Russia (Putin kinda leading it) seems to have very few options on the table other than some small nukes to "scare off" the world. And Ukraine is pumped full of weapons and support.
Russia already set the stage to not allow itself to go down in a controlled manner. Declaring some 10% of Ukraine as "theirs", and Ukraine having no interest in backing down, to the contrary taking that territory back, combined with the inability of Russia to fight on the ground and hold onto territories....makes me think that these crazy minds that are in power in Russia, are very close to use bigger weapons like nuclear ones.
Problem is, once they do, it is like trying to extinguish a flaming cooking pan by pouring a liter of water on top of it. Ukraine + the rest supporting them will probably respond in kind. Explosions, the big kind, will happen. We are past the "sanctions" card, we are past the threats that seem to have 0 effect, and now the morons may go on a full-war approach.
I hope I am wrong, again, but seems quite a tense situation.
And as much as people hate Putin, he is not the only one there. He has a lot of supporters and people around him. Whatever they think, they have started a big fight and they won't back away easily, or at all it seems.
Let's see how things will progress....probably we will see 2-3 more months of fighting on the ground, to then who know....a nuke or two!?
Fucking awful bunch of humans this society has created.
There is, of course, a possibility. However, the way things have been going and the way Putin has been acting does not point in that direction.
His recent annexation of a large part of Ukraine is an example of the lack of focus in that direction. Yes, he has declared a large part of Ukraine to be Russia ... but what part, precisely? No one knows. That's the most crazy part of the annexation - NO ONE knows the borders of the annexed region. They have not been defined anywhere. At all.
So, how serious can this "line in the sand" be when Putin hasn't even shown where this "line in the sand" even is? Even the laughable time President Trump drew a modified hurricane map with a sharpie marker had more definition.
Of course, the quintessential problem is that there was no place to draw this "line in the sand" where the Ukrainian forces hadn't already crossed. So, there was no way to say, "Don't cross this line or we nuke!" They were already across the line before the threa
... show more
I wouldn't take anything RT says seriously.
The short answer to your question is "No".
There is, of course, a possibility. However, the way things have been going and the way Putin has been acting does not point in that direction.
His recent annexation of a large part of Ukraine is an example of the lack of focus in that direction. Yes, he has declared a large part of Ukraine to be Russia ... but what part, precisely? No one knows. That's the most crazy part of the annexation - NO ONE knows the borders of the annexed region. They have not been defined anywhere. At all.
So, how serious can this "line in the sand" be when Putin hasn't even shown where this "line in the sand" even is? Even the laughable time President Trump drew a modified hurricane map with a sharpie marker had more definition.
Of course, the quintessential problem is that there was no place to draw this "line in the sand" where the Ukrainian forces hadn't already crossed. So, there was no way to say, "Don't cross this line or we nuke!" They were already across the line before the threat!
The talk of nukes seems to only be directed toward Ukraine's western allies ... a desperate ploy to get them to ease off on the military support.
But there's no way to use nukes to threaten the Ukrainians themselves. They've seen Bucha and Izjum. They know that they either push Russia out of Ukraine or they're dead. Whether it's from a nuclear bomb or shells and bullets to the back of the head ... the Ukrainians simply have no choice.
I dont take it seriously either. I am simply curious what they say at times, for my personal satisfaction and to see how it compares to the other ones.
The short answer to your question is "No".
I can't be so sure. No one knows. I worry that Russians have to go beyond the bluff. They can't play any other card in my view. We will see....
Putin's best card is one he can play at any time ... simply take his ball and go home. This means admitting that the Russian military is kaput as a world leader, but at this point all of his potential allies or flunkies have already come to that conclusion.
So, really, what has Putin got to lose by just ending the war, including giving up Crimea? It's a bitter pill, but that pill has already been shoved halfway down his throat.
I know there's all this talk of how Putin's regime will collapse and/or break apart if Putin doesn't keep up the appearances of invincible military strength, but he's got powerful internal security institutions ... he'll probably stay on top. His chances that route are pretty good, probably; much better than if he throws around any nukes. And in any case, any illusions of invincible military strength are moot by now.
So the TZM frontpage still talks about a future event in 2021...
I saw them a little active on Twitter this past year or two, since I can follow via Friendica. But not much going on. It is sad to see such movements dissolve....
Also TVP...last "news" on their website was from 4 months ago, and that's a news that I am really surprised to see it coming from TVP....
Jacque and Roxanne were so against associating TVP with any such low tech and local project...idk what happened there.... show more
So the TZM frontpage still talks about a future event in 2021...
I saw them a little active on Twitter this past year or two, since I can follow via Friendica. But not much going on. It is sad to see such movements dissolve....
Also TVP...last "news" on their website was from 4 months ago, and that's a news that I am really surprised to see it coming from TVP....
Jacque and Roxanne were so against associating TVP with any such low tech and local project...idk what happened there....
As for their RBE website that was announced as this big thing....is dead. If you look at their "progress" then for the past 3 years is none. Same percentage bars that I never thought amount to anything...see the same page via waybackmachine.
The previous news was still about this and was almost a year old, and the one before, 2 years old. So their only news is once a year.
They also post on Twitter from time to time, but all are recycled old posts....
TZM without Peter felt empty even years ago. It was Peter Joseph that created this basically, and the one active and so on. He is still active, mostly ranting on Twitter although he was banned weeks ago so no more Twitter rants. I think he found refuge on Facebook...worst place out of all. Told him to come to the Fediverse but ofc he will never reply to my 5 emails I ever sent to him. I can't follow him now since I need a FB account to do so, and fuck that.
He still does his podcast tho and I keep an eye (or ear) on it. I've heard he works on Zeitgeist 4, and he released some 2 years ago a docu-drama thingy that for me was too artistic.
But hey, the guy tries and is one of the 2 or so that are still active since 2010s when we all kinda started to scream out loud.
Same TVP is dead without Jacque Fresco...he was the soul of the project. After he died, TVP died too.
It is sad to be honest...both of these organizations had a lot of good/important things to say, even if I disagree now with some of the things they say. I have collaborated with TVP for some 4 years, and been close to a bunch of TZM people for several years too. But now, from what I can tell, both of these are truly dead. Again, unfortunately.
I wish I could see them being active again, and screaming how this monetary system fucks things up. Of course, I'd be annoyed that they don't talk about trade and just "money", but hey we have a lot more in common so we could work on that. Or could we? Because I could not work that out with TVP....
2009 to 2014 or so were "magical" years for me, in the sense that my (our) screaming was loud and loud. TZM and TVP were huge, they had world tours with lots of people coming at their talks; Zeitgeist documentaries were getting millions of views, and TROM came out as a new thingy that attracted hundreds of thousands of eyeballs. Occupy Wall-street, protest against money and the rich...the Internet was fuming with these.
Felt like a global movement against money. A step closer to "trade". I feel this nostalgia thinking about this...almost like I am getting deeply sad....because then I felt like things are rolling, and greater things will happen.
And here we are more than a decade later....silence.
But TROM never died and I plan to push it harder and harder.
TROM continues and we work on a huge ass documentary + other things. 30+ active projects under the TROM umbrella, and more to come. We are not dead, we'alive and kicking. Screaming, doing. All that. And I am making reserves of motivational juice so that I am going to use that as a rocket booster after TROM II is released. I want to challenge "the world" with this "trade is the origin of most problems". I (we) have a lot to fucking say! I am still young, and I am still motivated. I have time and energy. I have not gave up!
I always thought that TVP & TZM were much much bigger and had lots of followers, so I'm surprised to know that they've been in decline. I agree this is kinda sad....
I think it was on the TROM website where I read this quote, or maybe on the book, but it said something like "Projects and people die, ideas survive" So maybe there are still many people who were inspired by these ideas, all is not lost. TROM II and Sasha's book could have an impact, so let's see.....
They were a lot bigger, but now idk...from what I can tell they faded away kinda. They themselves are not active it seems, at all. So even if they have some "followers" those will get bored eventually.
"Projects and people die, ideas survive" - yes I used to say this after I left TVP, as a way to emphasize on the ideas behind such projects not the projects themselves or the people behind them.
But yeah....let's see....after TROM II and the book will be released. They won't be the end of anything, but the beginning of new things to come from us. ;)
Yes, TROM II especially feels like a new beginning, and the book too maybe it'd attract more people to check out this project. And at this point we already have like a dozen different services and such, its not just a simple documentary like how it was when you first started, its much bigger than that.
When Snowden showed us the NSA leak, When Putin's exposed by Navalny the "prick", When COVID-19 hits hard like a brick....
The active of us, they scream and they try The rest of the world, observes and goes by, The climate, the plastic....we're going to die?
Scientists tell us, there is no more time: the bees they are dying, the ocean is hot, the corals are bleaching, the people are fucked;
The voices of all who tell us the truth, Became like a music, repeating on mute.
And who has the time to care or to act, When Putin decides it is time to attack: bombs and guns, dead people in slums; fake news, fake clues, fake people, CONFUSE!
... show more
When Snowden showed us the NSA leak, When Putin's exposed by Navalny the "prick", When COVID-19 hits hard like a brick....
The active of us, they scream and they try The rest of the world, observes and goes by, The climate, the plastic....we're going to die?
Scientists tell us, there is no more time: the bees they are dying, the ocean is hot, the corals are bleaching, the people are fucked;
The voices of all who tell us the truth, Became like a music, repeating on mute.
And who has the time to care or to act, When Putin decides it is time to attack: bombs and guns, dead people in slums; fake news, fake clues, fake people, CONFUSE!
Remember Iraq and Afganistan? The Syrian migrants, the sound of a gun? Remember the lies, remember the dead? Remember the suffering and the tears you shed?
Now go back to bed! These problems you see, they will never end.
And when you wake up, just use your "smart" phone One thumb is enough to scroll all alone, And read yet again, how others still scream, And how nothing changes, the future is grim.
A scandal, a war, corruption, or all, They roll day by day, tiktoking away, What's new for today?
You're busy all day, consuming, consumed Confused and abused, your anger diffused I hope you're amused!
haha I've always written these sort of things, since my old days when I had a blog in the romanian language :D - but I realized i can do them in english too. It just comes to me and I write thoughts like that rarely.
So the whole thing is satire and its talking about issues like climate change, wars, corruption, etc and also about the people who don't care about these things and spend all their day consuming media on TikTok, Facebook, etc, which also gives them a skewed perspective of what's actually happening in the world. Scientists are shouting about climate change saying we don't have enough time, but nothing changes 🙁 @tio @frankie @thebiologist837
Oh, so when you set a title for a post on Friendica, platforms like Mastodon interprets it as a blog post and so it just shows you the title with a link to the full post. Now what doesn't make much sense is that the pictures in these posts are still shown on mastodon, I don't know why 🤷 @tio @frankie @thebiologist837
I'm not sure how it shows on Pleroma, but Friendica actually supports inline images, so these images you see they're actually shown in between the lyrics. But on Mastodon all images are shown below the post, even for Friendica posts. And I think mastodon only supports 4 images maximum, Friendica doesn't have a limit like this because its a blogging platform, not a microblogging platform like mastodon.
Ugh yeah...it sucks that they are limited like that. When I add inline images I add them for a reason where I add them....can anyone screenshots how this looks like on Mastodon, Pleroma or other non-friendica platforms?
See the screenshot. Because you've set a title for this post it'll only show that title and a link to the main post, this is nice when writing blog posts. But if you didn't set a title then the post will show as a normal post, but the images will stay on the bottom 😐
hmmm I see....It is better to show it as a link to the original. But damn...I thought it can show it as it is originally. Nothing against Mastodon I think it is fantastic what they do there, but why are people flocking to platforms that are more limited in the tens of thousands, than platforms that are feature-rich!? Well I guess because people go for whatever becomes popular for whatever reasons.
I mean on Friendica you can also make short posts, but then you can make huge ones. Bot of the worlds.
Anyway....I am so glad I found Friendica and it allows me to express myself fully. I would be unable to do this on Mastodon for example.
Actually mastodon does show you the entire post like this when you don't set a title, but when you set a title for your Friendica post then mastodon will consider it as a blog post and show a link instead.
If you call a software "free" then you should not trade for it. It means, it is given to you without any conditions attached to it. You should not give your data to them, your attention (ads), your currency and so forth. You can't say "free software" and sell it.
That's not free in any universe, and the language is confusing. Call it Software with the Source Code Open (public). Public Source Code Software. And then you can talk about what you are allowed to do with it, such as you can modify it, copy it, distribute it, etc..
If say Mozilla calls their VPN as "free" as in "the source code is open and you can 'fork' it", but they charge money for the service....it makes 0 sense. I can "fork" the code, ok, but can I use it with their VPN servers? No. Then what is the point of that!? Call the VPN client as "Public Source Code Software" that can be Edited/Shared/Copied or whatever "license" you want
... show more
If you call a software "free" then you should not trade for it. It means, it is given to you without any conditions attached to it. You should not give your data to them, your attention (ads), your currency and so forth. You can't say "free software" and sell it.
That's not free in any universe, and the language is confusing. Call it Software with the Source Code Open (public). Public Source Code Software. And then you can talk about what you are allowed to do with it, such as you can modify it, copy it, distribute it, etc..
If say Mozilla calls their VPN as "free" as in "the source code is open and you can 'fork' it", but they charge money for the service....it makes 0 sense. I can "fork" the code, ok, but can I use it with their VPN servers? No. Then what is the point of that!? Call the VPN client as "Public Source Code Software" that can be Edited/Shared/Copied or whatever "license" you want to attach to it. And call it a day. I am not saying they do that, but I see in their FAQ this:
Weird to say their "competitors" are "free" VPNs. Anyhow...
Imagine if I say "We have free applepies come and get some".
You come to my place and I say "It costs you 15$ a pie". Because you see, the recipe for the applepie is free, you can come and get it and make your own applepie, if you buy the ingredients and cook it yourself....
This would be ridiculous. I can call my applepie as "free applepie recipe" and I'd be a lot more clear. But that's how they are doing with many "free and open source software" that are sold. Imagine the fuckery.
I am quite annoyed by this "free software" as in "freedom" but not "free beer", whatever the bullshit. Look, if this X piece of software is called "Free Software" but I have to trade my data, or currency, or attention to it, then it is EVERYTHING but free.
Insane how the word "free" makes 0 sense nowadays.
At the end of the day, if humans were not to forcefully live under a trade system where ownership and the accumulation of stuff is important for trading reasons, they would not give a shit about these. They would make some software and whatever, forget about licenses. Take it, fork it, share it, who the fuck cares. The only reason they care about it today, is because they can lose their trade advantage. If you take my shit (software) and trade it, I will lose. 'cause I also have to trade for food and stuff. So this system forces us to be scumbags with each other.
I created a lot of books, all are available here tromsite.com/books/ - are they "free", what license are they under? People ask.
Fuck this nonsense. I do not trade them so I do not care. They are there and are trade-free for anyone, you do not have to give me anything in return. Do what you want with them. That's how we all should be. And I had to invent this trade-free thing/idea simply because the "free" had no more meaning in today's world.
The struggle is real, companies, charlatans - well merchants of all shapes and forms - are gonna maximize their trade advantage and skills, and in doing so they are abusing, raping, concepts like "free".
If a software is only available to you for a limited amount of time, then you have to trade currency to use it, IT IS NOT FREE.
If a software locks certain features unless you trade currency to unlock them, then IT IS NOT FREE.
If a software puts ads into it, so you have to trade your attention, then IT IS NOT FREE.
If a software mines your data, IT IS NOT FREE.
Got it? :D
We have a trade-free library of hundreds of apps here tromjaro.com/apps/ - these are properly "free" apps. That's the difference.
Humans...wasting their time on this planet with licenses, rules, laws, fuckery....focus on solving cancer, explore other worlds, understand the nature, etc..
I am quite annoyed by this "free software" as in "freedom" but not "free beer", whatever the bullshit.
Freedom is a very broad concept, that includes free from currency exchange, but is not at all limited to it. In general a freedom is a freedom from one constraint. Free software has a very precise definition in terms of four "fondamental" freedoms. This is an absolutely correct use of the word "free".
Just because it is not free in the one meaning you have in mind doesn't mean it is not free in any sense. Using the word in another meaning than your favorite one is not abusing it.
I can "fork" the code, ok, but can I use it with their VPN servers?
It makes sense to call a software free and to sell a paid service based on it, as long as you don't call the service itself "free". Is Nextcloud free?
The only reason they care about it today, is because they can lose their trade advantage.
How are the free CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA about keeping a trade advantage though? How about the GPL, the MIT, the Apache, ... ?
Free software, free beer, free housing, free food, free access, we use the word "free" mostly to mean "money free". That's how it evolved, in contrast to "paid" that we are forced to in this trade based society. That being said, calling it "free software" that costs 10$ is very unusual and thus very confusing.
Yes I know what the "freedoms" of FOSS are, we even made a few videos about it, but my point was that it is confusing and nonsensical to even have such approaches.
Just because it is not free in the one meaning you have in mind doesn't mean it is not free in any sense.
In a trade based society free is associated with the opposite of trade. Free housing, free meal, free water, free....something else. Free software ignores exactly that "freedom" which is the most popular one. Free Software means you can sell it, mine people's data (data trade), insert ads into it, and so much more. However you can edit, redistribute the code, and a few more things. That is why it is hellish confusing.
It makes sense to call a software free
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Free software, free beer, free housing, free food, free access, we use the word "free" mostly to mean "money free". That's how it evolved, in contrast to "paid" that we are forced to in this trade based society. That being said, calling it "free software" that costs 10$ is very unusual and thus very confusing.
Yes I know what the "freedoms" of FOSS are, we even made a few videos about it, but my point was that it is confusing and nonsensical to even have such approaches.
Just because it is not free in the one meaning you have in mind doesn't mean it is not free in any sense.
In a trade based society free is associated with the opposite of trade. Free housing, free meal, free water, free....something else. Free software ignores exactly that "freedom" which is the most popular one. Free Software means you can sell it, mine people's data (data trade), insert ads into it, and so much more. However you can edit, redistribute the code, and a few more things. That is why it is hellish confusing.
It makes sense to call a software free and to sell a paid service based on it, as long as you don't call the service itself "free".
That is the service, the software itself. Nextckoud for example is a trade-free software since you can grab the source code and install on your server and have it work as Nextcloud. You can not do that with Mozilla's VPN. They have it baked in their own VPN and servers. Unless you setup your own VPN service and use that somehow as the client, then sure. But it is light years away from Nextcloud or similar services.
How are the free CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA about keeping a trade advantage though? How about the GPL, the MIT, the Apache, ... ?
Because they want to avoid companies from abusing these pieces of software and later on be sued by them. Unfortunately if you don't attach any such license today to your software Microsoft can grab it and slap a proprietary license and even you can't use it anymore. The truth is even with these licenses everyone does as they wish.
Yes I know what the "freedoms" of FOSS are, [...] but my point was that it is confusing [...] to even have such approaches.
In a trade based society free is associated with the opposite of trade.
The confusion arises from the English language, which uses the same word "free" to mean "gratis". In French, when I say "libre" it is clear that it has nothing to do with "gratuit". This is why, even in English, people often use FLOSS, with L for Libre.
I agree many people are still confused with that, but the solution is to edicate them to make it less confusing, rather than just erasing the difficult concept
Yes I know what the "freedoms" of FOSS are, [...] but my point was that it is [...] nonsensical to even have such approaches.
What is nonsensical about such an approach? Those freedoms make sense, granting them makes sense.
Because they want to avoid companies from abusing these pieces of software and later on be sued by them
It is a legal advantage then, not a
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Yes I know what the "freedoms" of FOSS are, [...] but my point was that it is confusing [...] to even have such approaches.
In a trade based society free is associated with the opposite of trade.
The confusion arises from the English language, which uses the same word "free" to mean "gratis". In French, when I say "libre" it is clear that it has nothing to do with "gratuit". This is why, even in English, people often use FLOSS, with L for Libre.
I agree many people are still confused with that, but the solution is to edicate them to make it less confusing, rather than just erasing the difficult concept
Yes I know what the "freedoms" of FOSS are, [...] but my point was that it is [...] nonsensical to even have such approaches.
What is nonsensical about such an approach? Those freedoms make sense, granting them makes sense.
Because they want to avoid companies from abusing these pieces of software and later on be sued by them
It is a legal advantage then, not a trading one. It would still exist in a society that has no trade but only a law that requires to cite the author of some piece of work.
Keeping a company from usurping author's rights does not necessarily have anything to do with a trading potential. One may want to avoid their words be put out of context to advocate for the opposite opinion. One may also want people to know that they are the author so that they can come to them for question, instead of a company that could misreply for evil purposes.
Licenses can also be used to promote trade-free approaches. Copyleft licences can legally ensure that a modified free software stays free. CC-BY-NC license can legally forbid to use the work for trading purpose.
Nextckoud for example is a trade-free software since you can grab the source code and install on your server and have it work as Nextcloud.
You literally said "I can "fork" the code, ok, but can I use it with their [...] servers?", as a way to argue that Mozilla VPN is not free, this would also make Nextcloud non-free.
Now the point is that Mozilla VPN is just not free. So instead of raging against the definition of free software, you should probably just complain that Mozilla VPN is not one...
The confusion arises from the English language, which uses the same word "free" to mean "gratis".
And yet this is an english-born idea. So perhaps they should have chosen a better wording for it. Of course the context takes care of this, but here the association of free-software with also paid-for software that can be the same thing, is utterly confusing.
What is nonsensical about such an approach?
Like I explained in the post, it is nonsensical to even have such labels/licenses. People should just do things, and that's it. Like we do at TROM. Or others who are doing similar work.
It is a legal advantage then, not a trading one. It would still exist in a society that has no trade but only a law that requires to cite the author of some piece of work.
Heh and this is the interesting point now, why a society where trade is not the main thing, would even have such a law? Licenses are to protect the ownership of digital stuff. But why? Because people are mean and egocentric and want their na
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The confusion arises from the English language, which uses the same word "free" to mean "gratis".
And yet this is an english-born idea. So perhaps they should have chosen a better wording for it. Of course the context takes care of this, but here the association of free-software with also paid-for software that can be the same thing, is utterly confusing.
What is nonsensical about such an approach?
Like I explained in the post, it is nonsensical to even have such labels/licenses. People should just do things, and that's it. Like we do at TROM. Or others who are doing similar work.
It is a legal advantage then, not a trading one. It would still exist in a society that has no trade but only a law that requires to cite the author of some piece of work.
Heh and this is the interesting point now, why a society where trade is not the main thing, would even have such a law? Licenses are to protect the ownership of digital stuff. But why? Because people are mean and egocentric and want their name on the software? No. Because they use that enforced ownership to either gain some trading advantages (only I can sell it) or avoid being punished in the game of trade, where others can grab your software and trade it, thus making it not available for you, or you may be sued if you are using it. So it is all-about-that-trade.
Licenses can also be used to promote trade-free approaches.
Why not labels, and not licenses? We use the "trade-free" label and attach it to our stuff, but it is not a license, meaning we do not "mandate" this or that. Difference.
Copyleft licences can legally ensure that a modified free software stays free.
And that's what I'm talking about. It is necessary in a trade-based society else why would it matter? Say I release a video player and label it trade-free. Or do not label it. I publish the source code and that's all. Anyone can grab do whatever they want, etc.. No rules, no laws. Simple. Efficient. That's how the world should be if it were to be saner.
You literally said "I can "fork" the code, ok, but can I use it with their [...] servers?", as a way to argue that Mozilla VPN is not free, this would also make Nextcloud non-free.
I am confused. What? I NEED Mozilla's VPN servers/proxies else their VPN client is a dead piece of software. I do not need anything from Nextcloud. I can install it on my server and has all of the features of Nextcloud. The Mozilla VPN client has no purpose other than connecting to other servers around the world to let you change your IP. And since this last part is under a paywall of Mozilla, their client is a dead piece of software unless you can fork it and have your own servers around the world and set them like that. Isn't that the case?
MegaSync has their desktop client as open source. So? Can it be used for anything other than the MegaSync services?
So perhaps they should have chosen a better wording for it.
Does a better wording exist in english though? Hence borrowing "libre" from French or Spanish.
why a society where trade is not the main thing, would even have such a law?
I provided two motivations for that: - avoiding one's word being taken out of context to mean something else - have users' questions directed to the right person
I think the latter is very important, and is also why scientific publications are signed.
To this you can also add that usurping someone's work as our own is also misrepresenting our own capacities, hence abusing anyone trusting us to reproduce this quality of work.
And that's what I'm talking about. It is necessary in a trade-based society else why would it matter?
Of course, promoting a trade-free approach only makes sense in a trade-based society. I think you got slightly confused with the structure of my comment.
I NEED Mozilla's VPN servers/proxies
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So perhaps they should have chosen a better wording for it.
Does a better wording exist in english though? Hence borrowing "libre" from French or Spanish.
why a society where trade is not the main thing, would even have such a law?
I provided two motivations for that: - avoiding one's word being taken out of context to mean something else - have users' questions directed to the right person
I think the latter is very important, and is also why scientific publications are signed.
To this you can also add that usurping someone's work as our own is also misrepresenting our own capacities, hence abusing anyone trusting us to reproduce this quality of work.
And that's what I'm talking about. It is necessary in a trade-based society else why would it matter?
Of course, promoting a trade-free approach only makes sense in a trade-based society. I think you got slightly confused with the structure of my comment.
I NEED Mozilla's VPN servers/proxies else their VPN client is a dead piece of software.
You would not need their servers if their VPN (I mean both client-side and server-side) was free, you would only need some servers. In fact, it could also be the case if their client only was free, as long as it has an API that one can use in their server-side software.
unless you can fork it and have your own servers around the world and set them like that.
Yes, that is the point, if their software was free and you could fork it and deploy it on a bunch of servers, you wouldn't need their servers. But you could still pay to use them. Just like Nextcloud.
So again, the problem is not that being a free software does not prevent it from being the heart of a paid service, it is simply that it is not a free software.
Yes Open Source Software, or Public Source Software.
I provided two motivations for that: - avoiding one's word being taken out of context to mean something else - have users' questions directed to the right person
These are not the primary motives for such licenses from what I can understand. Since these licenses imply a lot of restrictions of use. Saying that the author desires to be mentioned when his/her work is forked is one thing, the difference between licenses and how you can use or not a piece of software is another.
You would not need their servers if their VPN (I mean both client-side and server-side) was free, you would only need some servers.
True. I give you an example: Borg. We can easily implement Borg as a backup solution both as the client and as server. But Borg also provides services for a charge for borgbase.com. In such a case yes, the Borg server and client software are "free" as in trade-free, but not BorgBase.
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Does a better wording exist in english though?
Yes Open Source Software, or Public Source Software.
I provided two motivations for that: - avoiding one's word being taken out of context to mean something else - have users' questions directed to the right person
These are not the primary motives for such licenses from what I can understand. Since these licenses imply a lot of restrictions of use. Saying that the author desires to be mentioned when his/her work is forked is one thing, the difference between licenses and how you can use or not a piece of software is another.
You would not need their servers if their VPN (I mean both client-side and server-side) was free, you would only need some servers.
True. I give you an example: Borg. We can easily implement Borg as a backup solution both as the client and as server. But Borg also provides services for a charge for borgbase.com. In such a case yes, the Borg server and client software are "free" as in trade-free, but not BorgBase.com. Mozilla's VPN server and client can be the same, is true, but I do not know if they are. Can one deploy a server and a client using their software easily?
But that is truly besides the point of this post. I was talking about Mozilla addressing their VPN Service, not software, and calling it "free" + the free software" ideology that is very confusing. That0s the salad I was talking about.
If Mozilla would say: "Our server and client for the VPN are Open Source and here are the things you can do with the code, but our VPN service is paid for" then such a clear message would be far better than what we have today.
Yes Open Source Software, or Public Source Software
I don't really agree : those words really carry the meaning that the code is publicly available, not that you are legally free to use it in various ways.
Why not labels, and not licenses?
I fail to see the difference between what you call a label and a very permissive license.
Since these licenses imply a lot of restrictions of use.
Depends on the license. Except maybe for the GPL, none of the licenses I cited seem that restrictive.
Personally, I mostly use free licenses for those reasons. I think it is legitimate that I get cited as the author of my work. There might also be some ego component to that, but not necessarily about money earning potential.
While it might not be the main raisons people use licenses or labels, I think it is enough to not call them nonsensical.
I don't really agree : those words really carry the meaning that the code is publicly available, not that you are legally free to use it in various ways.
That's why licenses can clear things out. It is better than calling it "free software". Much better. I don't like licenses, but is better with them + Open Source, than with them + Free Software. Anyway this is an old debate, but in terms of wording I find it a lot more confusing when using "Free Software".
I fail to see the difference between what you call a label and a very permissive license.
A license (or licence in American)[1] is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A label is not an enforcer.
While it might not be the main raisons people use licenses or labels, I think it is enough to not call them nonsensical.
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I don't really agree : those words really carry the meaning that the code is publicly available, not that you are legally free to use it in various ways.
That's why licenses can clear things out. It is better than calling it "free software". Much better. I don't like licenses, but is better with them + Open Source, than with them + Free Software. Anyway this is an old debate, but in terms of wording I find it a lot more confusing when using "Free Software".
I fail to see the difference between what you call a label and a very permissive license.
A license (or licence in American)[1] is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A label is not an enforcer.
While it might not be the main raisons people use licenses or labels, I think it is enough to not call them nonsensical.
From what I know licenses are a "legal" reinforcement of some ideals, such as for software you cannot do this or that with it. Considering that they are rarely respected anyway from what I know, then yes I would stand behind the label of "nonsense". Why not make a piece of software and put it out there and forget about these licenses? Wouldn't that be a better approach? Less headaches, less debates.
How come I can do that? With books, even some software/code, videos, and so on. I'd love to see such a world...
From what I know licenses are a "legal" reinforcement of some ideals, such as for software you cannot do this or that with it.
Note that it is the opposite : licenses don't tell you what you can't do, but what you can do. The default situation is that you cannot do anything, and the licence allows you to do things you would not have the right to otherwise. For example, if there are two licenses with no additional information,it means that one can use either of them, rather than both.
Note that it is the opposite : licenses don't tell you what you can't do, but what you can do.
And by telling you what you can do, they tell you what you can't. It is the same. "You can share the code ONLY if you mention the original author". "You can modify and redistribute ONLY if you use the same license." And so on. No sane society can make use of these.
Software licenses are, in my view and under my arguments, useless and primitive. A sign of a traumatized species. And I am not even exaggerating. Think about it, if you make a software, why in the right mind you want to restrict its use? Unless you are traumatized by this society and you want to "own" that software for your own gain or out of fear. Mind you, a reminder: a piece of software is digital so it can be copied endlessly. Put these together....to me this attitude of software licenses are a sad outcome of traumatized humans.
And by telling you what you can do, they tell you what you can't. It is the same.
It is not the same, in the sense that if there is no license, you cannot do anything. You cannot publish a modified version of any text you find in a book or online, that is called plagiarism and is due to existing laws. By licensing your projects, you allow for things that would otherwise be forbidden. The license does not have to have associated conditions, see the WTFPL.
Whether plagiarism should be a thing is a legitimate question. But in this world where plagiarism exists, licensing is a way to guarantee your users that you won't sue them for plagiarism. If you publish your books without any license, the publishers of a modified version need to trust that you won't change your mind and sue them for plagiarism.
In this world, the trading advantage offered by licensing your work is actually smaller than the one of not licensing it. Licensing your work is giving up some of your trading advantage in favor of your user.
It is not the same, in the sense that if there is no license, you cannot do anything.
To put it simply, when a license allows to do something under certain conditions, it does not establish that you cannot do it otherwise, it reminds it.
If we are in someone's home and I remind you that you cannot take anything, I am not the one forbidding you.
To put it simply, when a license allows to do something under certain conditions, it does not establish that you cannot do it otherwise, it reminds it.
Licenses are about restrictions. Take the less restrictive of licenses, MIT:
The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)[6] in the late 1980s.[7] As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license compatibility.[8][9]
It is not the same, in the sense that if there is no license, you cannot do anything.
This is a weird concept. We have no licenses for our TROM materials and it means the opposite of what you just said. It means there are no restrictions.
You cannot publish a modified version of any text you find in a book or online, that is called plagiarism and is due to existing laws.
And again this is a result of how trade traumatized humans into guarding their stuff, even if they are digital and endlessly able to be replicated.
But in this world where plagiarism exists, licensing is a way to guarantee your users that you won't sue them for plagiarism.
Exactly as I was saying, humans apply these licenses and such because of trade reasons primarily.
In this world, the trading advantage offered by licensing your work is actually smaller than the one of not licensing it. Licensing your work is giving up some of your trading advantage in favor of your user.
How can t
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It is not the same, in the sense that if there is no license, you cannot do anything.
This is a weird concept. We have no licenses for our TROM materials and it means the opposite of what you just said. It means there are no restrictions.
You cannot publish a modified version of any text you find in a book or online, that is called plagiarism and is due to existing laws.
And again this is a result of how trade traumatized humans into guarding their stuff, even if they are digital and endlessly able to be replicated.
But in this world where plagiarism exists, licensing is a way to guarantee your users that you won't sue them for plagiarism.
Exactly as I was saying, humans apply these licenses and such because of trade reasons primarily.
In this world, the trading advantage offered by licensing your work is actually smaller than the one of not licensing it. Licensing your work is giving up some of your trading advantage in favor of your user.
How can that be? If I attach no license it means anyone can do whatever they want with my books. It means I do not care about these things. If I license it it means I restrict it.
If I attach no license it means anyone can do whatever they want with my books. It means I do not care about these things. If I license it it means I restrict it.
This is how you would want it to work, but it is not how author's right law works. From Wikipedia :
Both systems provide for a monopoly right granted to the author for a limited term which can be transferred to another person, which was initially the right to copy or otherwise reproduce the work (hence “copyright”) but has since been expanded to take account of technological developments.
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Exactly as I was saying, humans apply these licenses and such because of trade reasons primarily.
That's an opinion of yours. Author's rights include moral rights, of which I gave examples earlier, which have little to do with trading.
This is how you would want it to work, but it is not how author's right law works.
You want to force me to be an author or follow certain rules. But I am not. I am not an author. I am a human. I created some things and I put them on the web. Digitally. That's all. Whatever one does with them is up to them. As simple as that. That's how a sane society should work.
That's an opinion of yours.
It is not. It is a direct result of trade. Authors need to own their work in order to trade it. Else they would not bother with licenses.
Author's rights include moral rights, of which I gave examples earlier, which have little to do with trading.
These are a tiny minority of reasons of course. Most authors trade their books, if all they cared was the "moral right" whatever that is, then they should not trade them and sue others who use them for educational purposes and such.
I am not forcing you to anything, I am explaining to you the legal status of unlicensed work.
I am a human. I created some things
Isn't that precisely what "author" means?
These are a tiny minority of reasons of course.
But they are part of the reason. My point is not that they are as proeminent as trade-based reasons in today's society. As pointed by @Rokosun , trade is indeed the reason copyright and author's right came into existence, themselves causing the existence of licenses.
My point is that the existence of those reasons could justify the existence of some form of author's right, and hence of licenses, even in a trade-free society. While it is not that incorrect to call them products of trade, they are not nonsensical in the absence of it.
I am not forcing you to anything, I am explaining to you the legal status of unlicensed work.
I understand. If this is true and digital stuff that has no license attach to it is restrictive by default then as @Rokosun explained it is very likely a result of trade. An I was explaining how I do things but then you said I am not right since this "author's law" or whatever. I explained I am not an author and I do not care what people do with my books. Writing books does not make me an "author", makes me a human who writes books. An "author" is usually someone who has that as their job. Mine is not. I also write blog posts, do videos, and a lot more. Am I a video editor, software developer, and what not? You can call me that, but that is misleading since these are normally "jobs".
In any case, I doubt that work that has no license attached to it becomes restrictive by default. But if that's the case then ok, the retardation is not surprising to me.
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I am not forcing you to anything, I am explaining to you the legal status of unlicensed work.
I understand. If this is true and digital stuff that has no license attach to it is restrictive by default then as @Rokosun explained it is very likely a result of trade. An I was explaining how I do things but then you said I am not right since this "author's law" or whatever. I explained I am not an author and I do not care what people do with my books. Writing books does not make me an "author", makes me a human who writes books. An "author" is usually someone who has that as their job. Mine is not. I also write blog posts, do videos, and a lot more. Am I a video editor, software developer, and what not? You can call me that, but that is misleading since these are normally "jobs".
In any case, I doubt that work that has no license attached to it becomes restrictive by default. But if that's the case then ok, the retardation is not surprising to me.
My point is that the existence of those reasons could justify the existence of some form of author's right, and hence of licenses, even in a trade-free society.
Yes but as I said before the approach should perhaps be labels rather than licenses that are a reinforcer of laws. And they do not work anyway.
While it is not that incorrect to call them products of trade, they are not nonsensical in the absence of it.
Give me an example of a license in a trade-free society that makes sense?
An "author" is usually someone who has that as their job.
This is only onf of the definitions of what an author is. I think the first one is the most prevalent, unless you can proof the opposite. It is (very clearly, I think) the one I meant.
It is the first time that I hear that copyright might only apply to works created in a professional context. I can tell you that it does not work that way in Belgium, see the government's website. I have no reason to believe it is different in other countries, but feel free to contradict me with proofs.
Give me an example of a license in a trade-free society that makes sense?
CC-BY. The right to be recognized as the author of
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An "author" is usually someone who has that as their job.
This is only onf of the definitions of what an author is. I think the first one is the most prevalent, unless you can proof the opposite. It is (very clearly, I think) the one I meant.
It is the first time that I hear that copyright might only apply to works created in a professional context. I can tell you that it does not work that way in Belgium, see the government's website. I have no reason to believe it is different in other countries, but feel free to contradict me with proofs.
Give me an example of a license in a trade-free society that makes sense?
CC-BY. The right to be recognized as the author of your work exists independently of trade, see the examples I mentioned above.
Think about scientific publications. Being recognized as the author of a publication makes people likely to come with you for questions. It also encourages them to collaborate with you on related people. There is trade involved, as publications are the key to getting positions, but not only, otherwise people would stop signing single-authored papers once they have a permanent position.
Look, you can create any world of imagination that you desire, but you cannot force that on anyone else. I write many things, books is just a word to describe these text-based things that I put under a different link. Are all people who write online, authors? No. We can stop at that, because this is becoming repetitive and non-fruitful.
The right to be recognized as the author of your work exists independently of trade, see the examples I mentioned above.
Sure, that can be important for some. But in a saner society you do not have to enforce it. What would be my reason not to mention the author of a scientific paper for instance? Unless I copy that paper and try to sell it under my name. Yes there are other minor motives but they fade away quickly if the ones based on trade are taken into account.
What I called an author in this conversation is exculisively the definition 1 on Wiktionary :
The originator or creator of a work, especially of a literary composition.
In this sense, yes, a person writing an online publication is called its author. I am not forcing anything onto anyone, I am only using words to talk about them.
This is also what the law considers as an author, which is how the term "author" appeared in this conversation. Please understand that and stop complaining about me (and the law) not using your favorite definition of the word.
You refuse to understand that a label vs a job are different. I write many things in many places. That's what I do, for fun. If you call me a bluba-duba or autheur or whatever, is your problem. This is different from someone who specifically writes for a magazine or books and it is paid for that, and his/her job description is that of an author. Also someone who studied to become one and has a "diploma".
Anyway what is the point here? Are you saying that if I, the human Tio, write stuff and put them online in various forms and in various places, then if I do not add a license to these things I create (videos, photos, text, etc.) then I legally restrict them from being used because I want it or not, the law says that?
If that's what you say, fine, you may be wrong or right, it does not matter. Anyone can still use my stuff without giving me anything in return. 99% of the internet is like that. Get used to it.
You refuse to understand that a label vs a job are different.
I understand that very well, but I never said anything about a job here. When I said author, I always meant it in the sense of creator.
Are you saying that if I, the human Tio, write stuff and put them online in various forms and in various places, then if I do not add a license to these things I create (videos, photos, text, etc.) then I legally restrict them from being used because I want it or not, the law says that?
Yes. If you sue someone for distributing copies of your work without permission, you will win. If you do the same for a licensed work (and they respected the terms), you will lose.
You think that releasing a work without license makes the user free to copy it, but it is not true : they are free to copy it only under the condition that they trust you for not suing them in the future. Licensing your work frees them from the need to trust you.
I understand that very well, but I never said anything about a job here. When I said author, I always meant it in the sense of creator.
A "creator" means many things...
Yes. If you sue someone for distributing copies of your work without permission, you will win. If you do the same for a licensed work (and they respected the terms), you will lose.
Good luck with winning at that for comments and whatever you post on the web. You talk in theory, in an "ideal" legal world whatever that means. The reality is different.
Look at the web for a few hours and tell me where you see licenses. Most of the time you do not. Is the world full of lawsuits? No. You need to prove you "own" a piece of whatever "work" you did and where you posted and if you made it public and what not. If it was as you said all companies would put their stuff online without any license, and whoever touches it they will be sued into oblivion. The opposite is true, they hide it and spend a lot of energy on that. They register trademarks and so forth.
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I understand that very well, but I never said anything about a job here. When I said author, I always meant it in the sense of creator.
A "creator" means many things...
Yes. If you sue someone for distributing copies of your work without permission, you will win. If you do the same for a licensed work (and they respected the terms), you will lose.
Good luck with winning at that for comments and whatever you post on the web. You talk in theory, in an "ideal" legal world whatever that means. The reality is different.
Look at the web for a few hours and tell me where you see licenses. Most of the time you do not. Is the world full of lawsuits? No. You need to prove you "own" a piece of whatever "work" you did and where you posted and if you made it public and what not. If it was as you said all companies would put their stuff online without any license, and whoever touches it they will be sued into oblivion. The opposite is true, they hide it and spend a lot of energy on that. They register trademarks and so forth.
You think that releasing a work without license makes the user free to copy it
My friend are you the god almighty telling me how my work can be used? Jesus haha. If I say anyone can use it trade-free, then that's how it is.
they are free to copy it only under the condition that they trust you for not suing them in the future
Calm down my god. Or calm down, my god :). Let's stop with this nonsense honestly. You should become a lawyer and deal with the paperwork and all that fun stuff and give me some space. My work is trade-free, you want to accept it or not.
While it is not that incorrect to call them products of trade, they are not nonsensical in the absence of it.
We can't say with 100% certainty how a trade-free society would look like, we might be able to make some kinda speculation by looking at how trade impacts our world today, but that's all. And with that being said, we could say that licenses won't be as prevalent if trade didn't exist because most licences are used today for trade purposes, even copyleft licenses are an indirect result of trade. And I understand your point that there are other use cases of licenses, but almost all of these reasons are caused by a distrust in others, and a big reason for this distrust is that there are lots of charlatans in our trade based society who're waiting to take advantage of our work, one way or another. So maybe if trade didn't exist then people will have more trust with each other, because they're not competing with each other anym
While it is not that incorrect to call them products of trade, they are not nonsensical in the absence of it.
We can't say with 100% certainty how a trade-free society would look like, we might be able to make some kinda speculation by looking at how trade impacts our world today, but that's all. And with that being said, we could say that licenses won't be as prevalent if trade didn't exist because most licences are used today for trade purposes, even copyleft licenses are an indirect result of trade. And I understand your point that there are other use cases of licenses, but almost all of these reasons are caused by a distrust in others, and a big reason for this distrust is that there are lots of charlatans in our trade based society who're waiting to take advantage of our work, one way or another. So maybe if trade didn't exist then people will have more trust with each other, because they're not competing with each other anymore. Like I said before, we can only speculate right now how it'll be, but looking at how trade has a big impact on creating distrust between people, licenses could become obsolete if this distrust goes away.
Maybe you should reply instead of me from now on. These days I have 0 patience and am a bit frustrated with the documentary so I can't handle these discussions that well haha. Pisses me off when I see this waste of time that people engage in, that doesn't work anyway. If anyone "violates" your "license" you better have good lawyers and a lot of money to do something about it....so they are bullshit even for trade purposes, unless as I said you are a big company and can enforce them....
Anyway, thank you so much for keeping calm and reasonable and explaining things so well and so nice. I wish I was more calm but well...sometimes I lose my patience :D
Its good to see when people genuinely engage in such discussions, and there was a lot of good points explained here. But I can understand why Tio can lose patience very easily. For one he's very busy with his work, and he does a lot of stuff, so he's more busy than most people. And the other thing is that I'm sure pretty sure Tio has had this exact conversion before, with different people. This is something I've experienced myself after joining TROM's chatroom, different people coming in and asking the same questions, and so we have to individually explain to these people how it is and everything, so many repeated conversations. This can get boring real quick, now imagine going through that for a whole decade, LMAO 😂 I remember asking Tio to be less ranty and stuff, but after engaging in these discussions myself and experiencing first hand how exhausting it
Its good to see when people genuinely engage in such discussions, and there was a lot of good points explained here. But I can understand why Tio can lose patience very easily. For one he's very busy with his work, and he does a lot of stuff, so he's more busy than most people. And the other thing is that I'm sure pretty sure Tio has had this exact conversion before, with different people. This is something I've experienced myself after joining TROM's chatroom, different people coming in and asking the same questions, and so we have to individually explain to these people how it is and everything, so many repeated conversations. This can get boring real quick, now imagine going through that for a whole decade, LMAO 😂 I remember asking Tio to be less ranty and stuff, but after engaging in these discussions myself and experiencing first hand how exhausting it can be, now I don't say that to him anymore. I try to help by joining these conversations so Tio doesn't have to do everything on his own. But I wish there were more people who properly understands TROM and are able to explain these ideas, currently this is a very much underrated project with just a handful of people behind it.
Yeah it mostly depends on my mood to be honest...these days I was in a very bad mood. A mix of the freacking heat and feeling physically uncomfortable and then my inability to do the work I wanted for TROM II and so on...
I am really nice generally and I do not think I've been the opposite in this discussion, but I do have to admit that I feel like these days I have little patience. It is always good to understand your moods and even broadcast them to others so that they can understand you better.
I spent years and years on fb comments for 2-3 pages, thousands a month probably...having so much patience everyone was telling me they were amazed by that. But this kinda consumed me over the years.
Anyway, trying to be more calm...it is also that this post was a rant more than anything, so I wanted to just write that take it off my chest and move on, but so it happens that in the digital world people can comment haha. This is not a bad thing in general but at times I wish I can disable all comments on some posts. Hm...that can be a great Friendica feature....
Tbh, I am quite pissed by the way you and @Tio repeatedly reduced the whole thing to his ability to remain patient when explaining things. This is a conversation, not a sermon that he is giving me. If he had had the same conversation several times over the last decade, I wouldn't have to explain what copyright regime applies by default, or even what an author is.
@Liwott Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about this discussion in particular, so this wasn't directed at you. I'd say this is actually one of the better conversations we've had, because you were also explaining some good points without loosing patience, and at least for me (who's relatively new to this project) this wasn't a repeated conversation. But when Tio brought up this thing about patience I just wanted to say this, because I don't know how many people know it but discussions like these are very common around TROM. So even though I don't wanna discourage people from having these conversations, its good to have an understanding of the situation. So when Tio is frustrated with TROM II and because of the heat, he can't have a conversation like he normally would.
Also I wouldn't say we reduced the whole thing to his ability to remain patient, we just went off-topic that's all 🤷 @Tio
Tbh, I am quite pissed by the way you and @Tio repeatedly reduced the whole thing to his ability to remain patient when explaining things. This is a conversation, not a sermon that he is giving me. If he had had the same conversation several times over the last decade, I wouldn't have to explain what copyright regime applies by default, or even what an author is.
I think you have to get used with people having honest conversations with you. That's what we try to do and we try to expose our "weaknesses" if there are any. It can be a "weakness" to have the same conversations for many times, it gets you tired. You should appreciate our honesty rather than getting pissed off at that. And understand us better.
That being said, the conversation is not about what is "legal" since that changes from month to month and it is not something I would ever consider as relevant to discuss about. Laws are man-made rules. Inventions. We talk here about the confusion of word
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Tbh, I am quite pissed by the way you and @Tio repeatedly reduced the whole thing to his ability to remain patient when explaining things. This is a conversation, not a sermon that he is giving me. If he had had the same conversation several times over the last decade, I wouldn't have to explain what copyright regime applies by default, or even what an author is.
I think you have to get used with people having honest conversations with you. That's what we try to do and we try to expose our "weaknesses" if there are any. It can be a "weakness" to have the same conversations for many times, it gets you tired. You should appreciate our honesty rather than getting pissed off at that. And understand us better.
That being said, the conversation is not about what is "legal" since that changes from month to month and it is not something I would ever consider as relevant to discuss about. Laws are man-made rules. Inventions. We talk here about the confusion of wording when it comes to the use of "free" and how what we understand by being free is being sucked under the gravity force of trade, making the concept a mere smokescreen that lure people into trading without them understanding that.
The conversation is about these words losing all meaning and the practice of trade being so hidden behind these concepts. Did I ever mentioned laws in the post? I hope I did not.
If anyone "violates" your "license" you better have good lawyers and a lot of money to do something about it....
Yes, in this world, you have to trade just to ensure that your rights are being respected. This does not make the rights in question nonsensical, but on the opposite it strengthen the need to fight for them.
So @Liwott you mentioned that if someone doesn't apply a copyright to their works then it'll automatically become restricted. This is actually true but it wasn't always like it, in the past it used to be so that anything you create will automatically be part of open domain (ie, anyone can use it for whatever purposes) unless you manually go and apply a copyright to your work to restrict it. But later they changed the law to make it so that every work you make, from the moment of creation it becomes automatically copyright restricted. And I believe this change in law is what inspired people to create permissive licenses like creative commons. I recommend you watch this short video they made because it explains all of these - creativecommons.org/about/vide…
So @Liwott you mentioned that if someone doesn't apply a copyright to their works then it'll automatically become restricted. This is actually true but it wasn't always like it, in the past it used to be so that anything you create will automatically be part of open domain (ie, anyone can use it for whatever purposes) unless you manually go and apply a copyright to your work to restrict it. But later they changed the law to make it so that every work you make, from the moment of creation it becomes automatically copyright restricted. And I believe this change in law is what inspired people to create permissive licenses like creative commons. I recommend you watch this short video they made because it explains all of these - creativecommons.org/about/vide…
So now the important thing is, why did they change the law? And why did copyright even become a thing in the first place? This idea that you could somehow own information and have the right to restrict it. This is where trade comes in, because if you look at the bigger picture then all of it happened because of our trade based society. So here's the situation:
Everyone is forced to trade in order to survive, its like they somehow have to earn their right to live. Technically the do have the "right", but in practice they can't live unless their basic needs are met, which require them to trade.
And so considering the above point, the only way creators can make a living is to somehow sell their work. And this is why copyright was first invented, to give a trade value to art and other works.
So now that every piece of Art and other work can also be owned and traded, this gives rise to things like plagiarism where someone can take someone else's work and make money off of that. Trade again give rise to this fear in people's mind, that others would steal their stuff and use it to make money. And mind you, we're not talking about stealing physical things here, people are afraid that someone could steal information that they somehow "owns". And so yeah, this fear is probably the reason why they changed the law to make everything copyright restricted by default.
You mentioned this as to why licenses are necessary:
licensing is a way to guarantee your users that you won't sue them for plagiarism. If you publish your books without any license, the publishers of a modified version need to trust that you won't change your mind and sue them for plagiarism.
Yes this is the point of licensing, and I'm not saying its useless. But ask yourself why you're afraid that the creator would sue you? Because this is a real thing that happens, there are people who make a lot of money from this and they're called "Copyright trolls" - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyrigh… So these are people who abuse the copyright law for their own trade benefit, and they're more common than you might think. So this fear you have that the creator would sue you, its not an irrational fear, and its again directly or indirectly created because of trade. So in this trade based society where you can't really trust anyone (because anyone could be a charlatan, a copyright troll in this case), you need a legal statement from someone saying that they allow their work to be modified, because their words simply aren't enough.
Why do people constantly have this fear that others are there to take advantage of their work? Because the unfortunate truth is that this is a norm in our trade based society. So I think this is what Tio meant when he said that copyright laws are a result of traumatized humans.
if someone doesn't apply a copyright to their works then it'll automatically become restricted. This is actually true
Where is that true? And if it is then it is purely retardation. Won't be surprised and won't accept it anyway. People should do stuff and move on. Anything else is a reaction due to this trade based society or their ugly upbringing.
And great job at explaining what I was also trying to explain. You have more patience :D
I know you don't care about any of these BS copyright laws, you don't have any issue with others sharing your works. But whether you like it or not, according to our current legal system you are considered as an author and you reserve all rights to your works, whatever you wanna do with those rights 🤷
I actually don't know what we could do to make our work public domain these days, most people go with creative commons licenses because it can be used to enforce certain things, say if you wanna prevent people from trading your works then you can do that too. Copyright law was initially invented to restrict and trade information, but copyleft licenses like creative commons, GPL, etc are like a hack we can use to do the opposite, to permit sharing and prevent trading.
That video is 20 years old. Do you have anything more recent?
But whether you like it or not, according to our current legal system you are considered as an author and you reserve all rights to your works, whatever you wanna do with those rights 🤷
I am "considered" haha. Ok. Not going to care about what am I considered. I am not an "author", I just write stuff. Are you an author for writing these big posts? Do you own the right to your posts now or how does that go? These things are such a waste of time I swear...
@Tio That video is where I learned this from, and its an official video explaining why they started the creative commons license. But if you want more recent info then I'm sure you can easily find that, I think @Liwott shared a Wikipedia link before that had more info on the legal status of unlicensed work.
And BTW, I do agree that these are a waste of time, its stupid for us to argue about who "owns" certain information, these things are only relevant in a trade based society. In a sane society people would consider these things unnecessary.
I think you may have understood now that a licence is not an enforcer but rather a legal protection against copyright's enforcers. Most of them offer that protection only in limited cases.
Let me ask you : is there a difference in content between your trade-free label and the Unlicense? Formally, the unlicense has the advantage of being explicit. If one is unfamiliar with your website and sees the trade-free logo on another page, they won't get what the label means.
I think you may have understood now that a licence is not an enforcer but rather a legal protection against copyright's enforcers.
Of course it is an enforcer. It says you can only do this and that with the code. Let's try not to go in circles here. Licenses DO say you can ONLY do this or that with the software. In that sense, yes it reinforces rules as to what you are allowed or not to do.
is there a difference in content between your trade-free label and the Unlicense?
Yes. Trade-Free is an idea to promote a concept. An educational movement, not a license. It is to highlight the bad effects of trading a good/service. Unlicense is a "license" with legal bounding en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlicens… - you can even sell an Unlicensed piece of software. That is the opposite of it being trade-free.
Formally, the unlicense has the advantage of being explicit. If one is unfamiliar with your website a
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I think you may have understood now that a licence is not an enforcer but rather a legal protection against copyright's enforcers.
Of course it is an enforcer. It says you can only do this and that with the code. Let's try not to go in circles here. Licenses DO say you can ONLY do this or that with the software. In that sense, yes it reinforces rules as to what you are allowed or not to do.
is there a difference in content between your trade-free label and the Unlicense?
Yes. Trade-Free is an idea to promote a concept. An educational movement, not a license. It is to highlight the bad effects of trading a good/service. Unlicense is a "license" with legal bounding en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlicens… - you can even sell an Unlicensed piece of software. That is the opposite of it being trade-free.
Formally, the unlicense has the advantage of being explicit. If one is unfamiliar with your website and sees the trade-free logo on another page, they won't get what the label means.
That's why we link to trade-free.org/ for more context and we work on making it more clear. It is a new idea. We work on a documentary about this entire thing.
Sorry for insisting in this subthread, but I would want to understand better what the trade-free label entails, as it is not that clear to me from the website.
Licenses DO say you can ONLY do this or that with the software.
No, they say can do this or that with the software. I know I said it already, but I think you missed a subtlety in a previous comment of mine : if there are two licenses, you can choose which one to apply.
Let me go on with a (limited, but I think very clear) pie analogy. You cannot have free applepie with a voucher for illimited pearpie, but if you have both vouchers for illimited applepie and pearpie you can have free applepie. So the pearpie voucher is not restricting you to only pearpie. (edit: got confused with the apples and pears 😅)
you can even sell an Unlicensed piece of software. That is the opposite of it being trade-free.
Do you mean th
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Sorry for insisting in this subthread, but I would want to understand better what the trade-free label entails, as it is not that clear to me from the website.
Licenses DO say you can ONLY do this or that with the software.
No, they say can do this or that with the software. I know I said it already, but I think you missed a subtlety in a previous comment of mine : if there are two licenses, you can choose which one to apply.
Let me go on with a (limited, but I think very clear) pie analogy. You cannot have free applepie with a voucher for illimited pearpie, but if you have both vouchers for illimited applepie and pearpie you can have free applepie. So the pearpie voucher is not restricting you to only pearpie. (edit: got confused with the apples and pears 😅)
you can even sell an Unlicensed piece of software. That is the opposite of it being trade-free.
Do you mean that one cannot sell a piece of software that was obtained trade-free? So the label allows you to do what you want under the condition that it is not used for trade? Makes me think about the anti-capitalist software license.
No, they say can do this or that with the software.
We will endlessly go in circle with this. IF you have a train that goes from siberia to berlin, in a world without borders, then that's great. You go, no restrictions. Now someone comes and invent borders and do not allow border crossing freely. And so others invent VISAs. VISAs allow you to go from one tribe to another, so to travel you now need VISAs now, while before it was free.
Some are saying VISAs are a positive thing, they allow you to travel from one country to another. Hurray! However they are seen like that simply because the "default" state (that of borders and restrictions) is, well, restrictive. VISAs are in fact restrictions. You are only allowed to this or that tribe, if you do this or that. Hope that made it a tiny more clearer.
Licenses are like VISAs, they look as if they give you freedoms, while in fact they restrict the use of the software that should have been free anyway (digital, endless copies, remember!?). Like travel should.
Do you mean that one can
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No, they say can do this or that with the software.
We will endlessly go in circle with this. IF you have a train that goes from siberia to berlin, in a world without borders, then that's great. You go, no restrictions. Now someone comes and invent borders and do not allow border crossing freely. And so others invent VISAs. VISAs allow you to go from one tribe to another, so to travel you now need VISAs now, while before it was free.
Some are saying VISAs are a positive thing, they allow you to travel from one country to another. Hurray! However they are seen like that simply because the "default" state (that of borders and restrictions) is, well, restrictive. VISAs are in fact restrictions. You are only allowed to this or that tribe, if you do this or that. Hope that made it a tiny more clearer.
Licenses are like VISAs, they look as if they give you freedoms, while in fact they restrict the use of the software that should have been free anyway (digital, endless copies, remember!?). Like travel should.
Do you mean that one cannot sell a piece of software that was obtained trade-free?
If you sell a piece of software it is not trade free. That service/product is trade based. If you grab it trade-free and now you are selling it, again that's not trade-free. You are trading the software as simple as that. Don't try to look at trade-free from the lenses of licenses. As I said it is not a license.
You saying that any digital work that is created and no one puts a label on it, it becomes restrictive, is the most nonsensical thing I've ever heard. And if it is true it solidifies that stupidity. In a trade-based society this does not surprise me at all. But I do not care. Our stuff is trade-free anyway so anyone can use them as they wish to. End of the story. :)
Yes, that is the point, if their software was free and you could fork it and deploy it on a bunch of servers, you wouldn't need their servers. But you could still pay to use them. Just like Nextcloud.
From what I understand Mozilla's VPN is preconfigured to use their own paid servers by default, right? And there is no easy way to just deploy a bunch of self-hosted servers because I think the server code is still proprietary.
If you actually wanted to setup your own VPN service this then you'd be using things like openvpn or wireguard, because these are actual trade-free programs you can use. Nextcloud is comparable to wireguard/openvpn, Mozilla VPN is more similar to this one - github.com/meganz/MEGAsync MEGAsync is the open source client for the cloud service provider MEGA, and its made to work on their own paid servers, no other ones. Of
Yes, that is the point, if their software was free and you could fork it and deploy it on a bunch of servers, you wouldn't need their servers. But you could still pay to use them. Just like Nextcloud.
From what I understand Mozilla's VPN is preconfigured to use their own paid servers by default, right? And there is no easy way to just deploy a bunch of self-hosted servers because I think the server code is still proprietary.
If you actually wanted to setup your own VPN service this then you'd be using things like openvpn or wireguard, because these are actual trade-free programs you can use. Nextcloud is comparable to wireguard/openvpn, Mozilla VPN is more similar to this one - github.com/meganz/MEGAsync MEGAsync is the open source client for the cloud service provider MEGA, and its made to work on their own paid servers, no other ones. Of course you could say that anyone can fork the code and make it work with self hosted servers, and if someone actually did that then that fork will be trade-free, while the original software will still be trade based. This is an important distinction to make, just because something can be turned into a trade-free software doesn't mean its trade-free in its current form.
My point was that if Mozilla VPN had been free in the FSF sense (both client-side and server-side), then Mozilla VPN would have been as trade-free as NextCloud. This was in reply to @Tio 's point that Mozilla VPN is free in the FSF sense and yet is not trade-free. Since then, we understood that the server-side software is indeed not free in the FSF sense.
Something can be Free Software and yet Trade-Based. Can be open source and you can have the freedom to fork it, but it itself can collect data, insert ads, hide features. The fact that you can fork and remove those trades is another thing, beyond the original software that is trade-based.
Nextcloud doesn't come stacked with their enterprise edition and all sorts of BS that you have to remove. At least not much at all. But making something Free Software does not guarantee it will be trade-free.
So that we may end this long and dreadful conversation:
Your argument is that if you put no license on your online content, then it automatically becomes restricted, from a law perspective (at least in certain parts of the world). Meaning, in this case society does not care what the owner wants to do with their work, they force them to make them restricted from the get-go.
This could be true, I do not know. Let's take it as true. Ok.
Then your argument is that licenses are necessary in such a situation since they can allow others to use your content. With a license you have some "freedoms" that result from a default and restrictive situation to begin with. But without a license you are only left with the default restrictions.
In that sense, your argument is that licenses are good because they provide some freedoms.
I hope I got it right.
Now looking at things in this way, I can see how you are interpreting the situation
So that we may end this long and dreadful conversation:
Your argument is that if you put no license on your online content, then it automatically becomes restricted, from a law perspective (at least in certain parts of the world). Meaning, in this case society does not care what the owner wants to do with their work, they force them to make them restricted from the get-go.
This could be true, I do not know. Let's take it as true. Ok.
Then your argument is that licenses are necessary in such a situation since they can allow others to use your content. With a license you have some "freedoms" that result from a default and restrictive situation to begin with. But without a license you are only left with the default restrictions.
In that sense, your argument is that licenses are good because they provide some freedoms.
I hope I got it right.
Now looking at things in this way, I can see how you are interpreting the situation as positive in terms of licenses that give you permission to copy, distribute, and so forth.
Now my argument is this:
I totally understand why many good people use licenses so that they can do all of these and protect themselves from future lawsuits too. They are forced. And I argue that this is done because of this trade-based society. If we were not to be traumatized every day by trade, trade, trade, and thus accumulate, own, accumulate more, we would not need any licenses to begin with, especially for digital stuff that can be endlessly replicated. I understand your argument that some may want some sort of “licenses” so that the credits are given to the originator, but I argue that this is not an important driver of how licenses are used overall.
I also say that the work I do is simply there and anyone can use it as they wish. I put no license to it because I fully disagree with how we do things today. I label my work as trade-free, so that no one needs to trade anything with me in order to get what I’ve created. A pure form of free. I understand that from a “legal” standpoint my work is restricted apparently, but not restricted by me (the owner) which is beyond ridiculous; but I give no fucks (to put it mildly). ‘legally” I was not allowed to share my life with Sasha, because of our “visa” issues. Laws are primitive concepts and I refuse to accept them as imposing over my life.
All that being said, licenses are mostly a reaction of a traumatized society, because of trade primarily. And I refuse the concept of any license. Everything we do, we do it in a humane way and ask nothing in return for it.
I do what I do at TROM, the way we do it, and that's the most important thing when it comes to our content. If I made the content, I have a say in what to do with it, not the society. And we say it is trade-free. If people cannot “trust” us from a “legal” perspective simply because we have no “license” attached to this work, then they do not understand TROM anyway and I could not care less.
in this case society does not care what the owner wants to do with their work, they force them to make them restricted from the get-go.
In practice, nobody imposes anyone to exercise that right. It is just that the right is reserved to the author by default. Someone can legally publish a work, leave everyone do what they want with it for ten years, then start suing everyone for plagiarism. So, as I explained in a recent comment, licensing a work is not a way to give yourself more freedom, but one of giving a garantee to people wanting to do stuff with it.
in this case society does not care what the owner wants to do with their work, they force them to make them restricted from the get-go.
In practice, nobody imposes anyone to exercise that right. It is just that the right is reserved to the author by default. Someone can legally publish a work, leave everyone do what they want with it for ten years, then start suing everyone for plagiarism. So, as I explained in a recent comment, licensing a work is not a way to give yourself more freedom, but one of giving a garantee to people wanting to do stuff with it.
Now about your argument
but I argue that this is not an important driver of how licenses are used overall.
This may be true or not, I don't know. My point is not that it is important wrt trade-based motivations, it is that because of this (and consequences I mentioned), licenses can still make sense in a trade-free world.
I put no license to it because I fully disagree with how we do things today. I label my work as trade-free
I am not certain whether the label counts as a licence. If you state publicly and clearly enough that anyone can use your work, then it amounts to giving them a license I think.
When I talk about license-free, understand free of license and label. If you put your work online without any statement on whether people can use it, then you keep your right of accusing them of stealing it. To take your pie analogy (I know copying is not theft, but I think you will understand what the analogy means) : if I see a pie with a "free pie" note and take a bite, nothing happens; if I see a pie with nothing written and take a bite, I can be accused of stealing that bite.
If people cannot “trust” us from a “legal” perspective simply because we have no “license” attached to this work, then they do not understand TROM anyway and I could not care less.
My point above is not about the people not understanding your point, it is about them not believing that their approach is genuine. If you want, it is about people so traumatized by trade that they cannot believe right away that your trade-free approach is genuine. Licensing your work can give them some garantee so that they can embrace the trade-free approach without having to bet on your good faith.
In practice, nobody imposes anyone to exercise that right.
True, but that "right" is added by default to your work. Which I think is not a good practice.
If you put your work online without any statement on whether people can use it, then you keep your right of accusing them of stealing it.
But online there can be no theft. Only copying. That's why I find these approaches "nonsensical". No one can steal your work. The only (or at least main) reason that people are bothered by that is as we explained: trade. They can lose their trading advantage if their work is attributed to others that are making a profit off of it. At times can be an issue of the owner not wanting their work to be attributed to others, I get that, but as I said before that is likely not a huge force behind this entire situation.
if I see a pie with a "free pie" note and take a bite, nothing happens; if I see a pie with nothing written and take a bite, I can be accused of stealing that bite.
The analogy cannot work for
... show more
In practice, nobody imposes anyone to exercise that right.
True, but that "right" is added by default to your work. Which I think is not a good practice.
If you put your work online without any statement on whether people can use it, then you keep your right of accusing them of stealing it.
But online there can be no theft. Only copying. That's why I find these approaches "nonsensical". No one can steal your work. The only (or at least main) reason that people are bothered by that is as we explained: trade. They can lose their trading advantage if their work is attributed to others that are making a profit off of it. At times can be an issue of the owner not wanting their work to be attributed to others, I get that, but as I said before that is likely not a huge force behind this entire situation.
if I see a pie with a "free pie" note and take a bite, nothing happens; if I see a pie with nothing written and take a bite, I can be accused of stealing that bite.
The analogy cannot work for digital stuff. It is more like if you come across a pie recipe and you take a photo of it to make the pie at home. Even if the pie recipe doesn't have a sign saying: you can take a photo and make your own pie. Anyway....digitally all is different. When you publish something on a public website, you...well...publish publicly. Accept search engines to crawl and index your site and all that. It is like putting your apple pie on a public dinner table where you know everyone came to eat, and you expect others to eat your pie too.
If you want, it is about people so traumatized by trade that they cannot believe right away that your trade-free approach is genuine. Licensing your work can give them some garantee so that they can embrace the trade-free approach without having to bet on your good faith.
You can take it that way too, but since we always mention our stuff is trade-free and make it obvious, then whoever knows about TROM knows about that too.
Around 2005-2007 I was swimming in the online world. I had my own blog, and I was following other blogs too. Seemed genuine. You were following brains, and some were interesting. Others followed your brain. It was nice.
Even when it came to videos I was using at least 3 platforms, one of which was Youtube. Posting on Youtube could get you random views and lots of engagement, out of nowhere. It was more real. At least that's how it felt.
In 2011 I was able to release an Internet documentary. It went a bit viral. Others released similar documentaries/videos back then and they got a sort of reach. We were screaming about how fucked up our society is, and some of us also about what we could do to change that.
It kinda worked.
I remember those "activists" who would go out on the streets trying to make the rest aware of similar things. Like these guys:
And I was thinking....man they have no chance to make anyone stop and listen. Because they were in the middle of a movement. Like a physical movement. People moving from their places to other places. Jobs. They were out to trade. Trade their skills, time, energy in order to be able to have a roof over their heads, access to food, healthcare and so forth. Mostly via the currency called "money".
These zombified people had no time to listen and think. Imagine a subway full of these workers....they NEED to go to their job. Are obliged to. They cannot stop.
So I thought it is pointless to intervene in that environment. That's why I chose the Internet. The Internet felt more like a park. A place where people went in their free time from their jobs, to explore new things. it was new. And not so busy.
That's why it worked to create new things and have others pay some attention to them.
Not anymore!
The society we live in is based on trades as I keep on saying and as it is so obvious. You trade, I trade, your mom trades, your dad trades. Everyone is forced, compelled, and incentivized to do that all of their lives. This has created a rat race, inequality, and overall shitty behaviors, zombifying all humans.
And now the park has become the subway.
The trade world took several years to fully migrate from the offline to the online. Now we do not have blogs anymore since Facebook provided humans with an easy way to share their thoughts, photos and videos, at the expense of trading for that. They lied that their service is free. Humans had to trade their data, attention (via ads), and currency to reach more people. But Facebook took off and no one would bother having their own blog.
Youtube was not a video sharing platform anymore, but a video trading platform. You could convert your views into currency, and youtube inserted ads into your face to make you a better consumer. You traded again your attention and data to youtube.
Facebook became a place where you trade with them, but also where people did not simply post their thoughts there, they used their reach to trade for currency or products. What posts? There you see ads with ads. Youtube ironically called their users as "creators", while these zombies all they cared was how to make more views (again) to trade for a new car, a new house, paying the rent.
Google, Facebook, and a few more companies started to orchestrate the Internet. What you search, what you see, what you do not see, what incentivizes you to post a video or to write a post....all directed by a few companies that all they wanted was the same old thing: to trade.
What was once a park, it is now a subway full of zombies that go somewhere, to trade. Attracted like a powerful magnet, the idiots go to TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and the like, all because they are sucked in by a combination of tremendous power and influence from the part of these companies, coupled with the non-interesting life that most workers have, and lastly the fact that on these platforms many can become traders themselves.
The Internet is not a park, is a subway. Even worse, it is a bazaar. A place mostly full of useless shit where the sellers harass you to buy their shit.
That's the Internet now. All of those Youtube "creators", Instagram "influencers", Facebook Pages, and so on, are most, if not all, merchants. Most of the online content is shit, for the sake of trading it. Most of the platforms are bazaars. There is no more park anymore. Most care about the views, the engagement, the likes...platforms care to optimize for these, for ads, for money making. It is an ugly place.
That's how I feel.
Watch this video about Youtube and tell me....is this a "video platform"!?
So now if I want to say something important to humans, and I want to do it online, I feel like those people in a subway practicing their "activism". Seems pointless. Everyone in the online world is going somewhere: check the Twitter, check Youtube, watch Neetflix, see what friends posted on Facebook...there is no more casual walk in the Internet world to discover new things, to stop and listen for a bit.
But yeah....despite this I am continuing my work. I will release a new documentary this year, even if I know very well that it won't have any big impact. I continue with the 30+ projects that we have. I see no alternative. I could choose the Online over the Offline in 2007. But now what can I choose?
It is ok, this species will disappear eventually and our trace in the Universe won't exist. At least that makes me more relaxed to think about. :)
what? :D
Rokosun
in reply to Tio • •@Tio
... show moreI feel like a lot of people are just picking sides when it comes to politics, so its nice to hear a more balanced view from you. Apart from the NATO thing, one theory I've heard is that Putin started this war because Ukraine has a lot of untapped oil reserves which they could sell to other western counties if they join EU, which means Russia will lose their market share. None of this justifies Putin's war, but I expected you'd mention this because war caused by trade/profit is worse IMO..... Its also surprising to see how the US and other countries are acting like heros/protectors when I'm fairly certain that they have their own interests in mind, and not to mention they have a history of engaging in war & abuse themselves. See this video where 2 members of the European Parliament from Ireland points out this hypocrisy -
@Tio
I feel like a lot of people are just picking sides when it comes to politics, so its nice to hear a more balanced view from you. Apart from the NATO thing, one theory I've heard is that Putin started this war because Ukraine has a lot of untapped oil reserves which they could sell to other western counties if they join EU, which means Russia will lose their market share. None of this justifies Putin's war, but I expected you'd mention this because war caused by trade/profit is worse IMO..... Its also surprising to see how the US and other countries are acting like heros/protectors when I'm fairly certain that they have their own interests in mind, and not to mention they have a history of engaging in war & abuse themselves. See this video where 2 members of the European Parliament from Ireland points out this hypocrisy - reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/co…
I'm not saying any of this to justify/support Russia, I know they're no saints either. In fact, just a couple of days before the Russia-Ukraine war began I was watching this documentary called "For sama" which was about the war in Syria, and guess who was helping the dictator bomb civilians there? yes it was Russia. So I don't trust any of these countries when they pretend like the good guys, their actions say more about them.
We're in the 21st century right now, and yet so many wars, exploitation & poverty. This is very sad and makes me feel ashamed to be a human being. Calling these countries as tribes is accurate, because that's what they are, primitive...... We're all on this tiny little rock suspended in a universe that's so vast and enormous that our brains can't even comprehend its size. I'm not trying to be poetic here, this is the actual scientific truth and the reality surrounding us. The earth will live on and the universe will continue to exist, with or without us. So for the little time we have in our lives, we can either choose to spend that time dividing each other into little tribes and drawing imaginary borders on this planet, or we can choose to be be smart and recognize that we're one species, to spend our time helping each other instead of fighting for this or that.
#AttackTheWorldWithSolutions is a great slogan, thank you my friend Tio for introducing me to it :)
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Tio
in reply to Rokosun • •Yes I've heard about the resources part, but since I am not very informed about I wanted to avoid mentioning it. But you're right, that should play some role too. I am happy you mentioned it. And I love that hashtag! #AttackTheWorldWithSolutions
I should use more such hashtags. You are very good at that :)
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clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛
in reply to Tio • • •like this
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Roma
in reply to Tio • •Being born in Russia and followed this story from the inside, I can say that there's a third side of things here, which usually is ignored by many.. I think, it's because a big part of the political work is to create narratives, which may give a way of controlling the masses, like creating this nationality, homeland and patriotic kind of stories, which people may follow and feel more of participation and, so told, "to make a difference" (which is total BS in the most cases of course). During the time of war it's "Good vs. Evil" type of narrative, which makes it easy for people to root for "Hero type of guys" obviously and to justify the hard decisions which usually follows "A battle of a light with the darkness"..
But back to my point, the third side of things is actually a simple story of Putin guy, who's just a thief, mobster and really average person, being put in charge of entire country with 140+ millions of people lives, just because "our best idea" to organize our societies is to make one person or 1% other people to lead the way and to decide the destiny of others. F
... show moreBeing born in Russia and followed this story from the inside, I can say that there's a third side of things here, which usually is ignored by many.. I think, it's because a big part of the political work is to create narratives, which may give a way of controlling the masses, like creating this nationality, homeland and patriotic kind of stories, which people may follow and feel more of participation and, so told, "to make a difference" (which is total BS in the most cases of course). During the time of war it's "Good vs. Evil" type of narrative, which makes it easy for people to root for "Hero type of guys" obviously and to justify the hard decisions which usually follows "A battle of a light with the darkness"..
But back to my point, the third side of things is actually a simple story of Putin guy, who's just a thief, mobster and really average person, being put in charge of entire country with 140+ millions of people lives, just because "our best idea" to organize our societies is to make one person or 1% other people to lead the way and to decide the destiny of others. From his point of view he got one chance from billion of billions to get his "lucky penny" and the source of enourmous, almost infinite rich and power. And as everyone in this world is trying to find something to make money out of, to trade, trade, trade in order to survive and, if found, would cling to it whatever it costs, would try to make sure that nobody else can milk it, except himself and his friends and relatives, Putin is no different, but in his case, he got a fucking jackpot. Now, his Ukranian war is just an evolution of the idea to save his "magic throne" which gives him, the average guy, so many treasures. First, he tried for 20+ years to terrorise Russian citizens, slowly but steady stealing the rights to speak freely or to be guaranteed with certain level of safety and others. The rule was simple: you're not having any claims to the "throne", so you can live your life and we are not touching you, probably.. But after the time it stopped working. Some people (like Navalny) were too stubborn to continue to claim for Putin's "piece of the pie" and led certain amount of others after themselves, constantly threating the status quo. And after all of this the only card left to play by Putin is to convey another narrative: dehumanize Ukranians, Americans, Europeans, Aliens from Alpha Centauri, whoever else "us against them", just for the sake of saving his stolen money and the status which guarantees it for him. Thus, the war is born. All of these "NATO expansion", "Ukranians are US puppets" are to unite people around the certain idea and to blame everyone, except Putin & Co. Those are just the political narratives again and total BS of course, we should not be deceived by them. The reality of course is that a majority of people are becoming just a tool of manipulation, killing and destroying..
This is direct outcome of our trade-base society. While Humans are measured by the level of "profit" they gain, "status" they have, while it's still the measurement of "success" and also the stepping stone of basic "survival", wars, poverty, child labor, suffering, you name it, aren't going to change. With the perspective of our current environment, Putin is just another by-product of the current way of things, there were many, there'll be many more.. There's no "measurement" of being kind to others or to love, to make others happy (as a result ourselves too, because when people around you are happy, not in stress and not in fear for their lives, more chances you'll be too), but we should try at least to focus on people's environment and what makes them to behave cruelly and dangerously, to build a system of caring about people, not political/business interests..
I would like to state also that I condemn any wars, no matter of the cause, time and conditions. I believe this is the worst possible of all Human interractions and there can't be any political narrative to justify it happening, no fucking way. I'm really sorry for what comes to the people of Ukraine and their lives and so to the Russians and anyone who suffered. Would it be any chance for me to have that value in this trade-base world to stop it, mind you, I would do that immediately.. yesterday already.. shit, I would even prevent it from happening in the first place.. but since I'm not, I can only hope that the end of it isn't that far away.. FUCK THE WAR!
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