Notices by Aram 🌈♾️ (imsnif@hachyderm.io)

#Bikepacking tip: don't forget your snorkel

@aral I've been told this - and I totally believe your superior experience - but honestly, I use firefox (and used Netscape before that) and have not seen an ad in twenty years. So I'm not sure what I'm doing differently.

@aral This might be a bit of a weird take on this, but I think the most concrete thing most of us can do against this is use and encourage the use of ad-blockers.

We can't compete at scale with this sort of money. Free services will always trump donation-based or paid services, because that's what we're used to as consumers.

We *can* however try to make this industry totally not worth it for VCs to invest in. And this is where ad/tracking blockers at a massive scale come in.

@ellie

> Thank you!! When is this released?

> Why is this not a priority?

> But why does it work in <software that I think is the same but isn't>

> I'd gladly implement it if you tell me how

> This is the only feature I'm missing in order to migrate from <software that I am using for similar stuff>

@aral Thanks for this. I'm in a similar position as the author and it was good to read.

Voicing such opinions in Israel subjected me to violence, denial of work and social ostracism.

It's a hard place to grow up in and I'm glad to have had the privilege to emigrate.

The saddest thing for me is hearing the same lines of proapaganda I was raised on parroted by Europeans in my adopting country. I do my best to set the record straight when I can. At least here I don't get beaten up for it.

@aral @ProfessorCode I'm not sure what you mean by "defensiveness" in this context, but respectfully, you called this "a little gesture we could easily carry out". IMO that's trivializing, but I'm open to being corrected here. Maybe I totally misread you and owe you an apology.

@aral @ProfessorCode Agreed. Can we also agree that their work shouldn't be trivialized?

@aral @ProfessorCode I spend 100% of my time writing free software as well, and I totally agree with you.

My team also includes people who spend many hours on branding, marketing and community management for said software. They do it for free, out of passion for the art - just like you and me.

They are rightfully offended and feel excluded when their work is belittled. I know this was not your meaning or your intention, but please take a moment to consider this.

@aral @ProfessorCode First - I am not here to fight.

Second - branding work is hard. Marketing work is hard. We sometimes tend to look down on them as technical people, belittling them in comparison to reverse engineering bytecode and other heavily technical tasks. I don't think that's either beneficial or fair.

I am on your side here - but since inclusivity is also important to me, I implore you not to hand-wave this sort of work and thus its practitioners away.

@aral @ProfessorCode Respectfully, changing a popular project's name is an extremely hard and arduous endeavor.

I'm not saying I don't think it's called for (I do), but I also don't think we should be presenting it as as a little gesture that could be easily carried out.

The git branch on the other hand...

Dear #rustlab2023 attendees,

I came back from the con and tested positive for Covid-19. Please consider getting tested as well.

@aral If the weather's nice - cycling up a hill. If not - cycling up a hill in the rain.

Happy weekend, fuck capitalism!