Notices by Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 5

@richardh no, that's true. Given its global dominance, sometimes I have to say awkward things to people who don't know any better. That's why my company established its Terms of Reference: https://davelane.nz/terms-reference
That way I can just say "sorry, I'm just adhering company policy" (those same people, somewhat surprisingly, seldom realise that I *set* company policy)...

@richardh I haven't noticed that... but it's possible that they only use a few necessary cookies and aren't doing any unethical tracking...

Microsoft creates byzantine systems that are pointlessly complex. The purpose of that complexity - against all engineering best-practice - is not technical, it's entirely human: to keep legions of IT techs employed & insisting on their employers persisting with Microsoft (because most of those legions are sharp enough to know that without MS, they'd be unemployed). Most* of the rest of the world carries the cost and daily pain.

* a few of us rejected Microsoft decades ago & have no regrets.

All engineers should be appalled and offended by Microsoft's (financial) success due to their blatant defiance (for non-technical reasons) of the KISS principle (core of engineering) in all of their proprietary software. Turns out you can make more money by being shit... *if* you have monopolies to exploit and are willing to be extraordinarily unethical.

@zkarj nice - I might use that 😀 - it's amazing how rubbish so much MS software is, despite having had 100-1000 (or more) times the resources thrown at its development compared to #libre options. If I was MS, I'd be quite embarrassed. @aligorith

Periodic reminder: there's no such thing as a 'good' or 'admirable' billionaire. Good & admirable people don't become billionaires.

If you haven't seen it, watch Anand Giridharadas explain, brilliantly (ironically, at Google's HQ), why billionaires' 'generosity'... isn't generous: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM <- one of my favourite talks, ever. (probably Anand's last at Google 😂 )

Oh dear. I've had a response from the EFF, and they've defended their choice, saying that 'they don't have the resources' to use a more values-compatible (my term) tool for the job. They need to remember that 'expedience is the absence of principle.' I've written a response their attitude undermines their very purpose for existence, but going to sit on it a bit. I'm very disappointed in the EFF - if *any* organisation on the planet needs to grasp this, it's them. Otherwise, they're a failure.

Ok, so the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) have just asked me, as a "Dear Supporter of Digital Freedom" (I've supported the organisation for a couple decades), to complete a community survey... which uses Microsoft Forms. Are they serious?! What a slap in the face. It's actually gut-wrenching. That's their credibility gone. I'm really disappointed.

@futuresprog that'd be the showstopper for me with 'cloud desktop' - there's no physical place to plant a boot.

@futuresprog it must suck to be renting when the landlord is so openly hostile to his tenants. I prefer to own my own desktop. Luckily, unlike the housing market, owning your own virtual abode is cheaper by far than renting.

My wife is working from home today, with her company laptop (running Windows, of course). I hear this constant stream of distracting bland chirps and pings from the machine as she's working. I cannot imagine a greyer, more 'meh' tool to work with. I just feel bad for her and anyone else with Windows foisted upon them.

Random realisation: for anyone who really doesn't like the smell of eucalyptus, it would really suck to live in Australia.

@taylan good question. The penalties are spelled out quite explicitly in the actual agreements, I believe. I suppose the main danger would be to Italy's borrowing power, i.e. its int'l credit rating could be stripped.

'“Please consider how crazy this system is,” Boyd told delegates from scores of nations attending the hearing. “States that are trying to tackle the climate and environmental crisis and safeguard the human rights of their people are being forced to pay billions of dollars in compensation to the very corporations that have caused this crisis. Instead of making polluters pay, states are paying polluters.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21102023/un-protests-isds-as-economic-colonialism/

We need sharper, principled policy makers.

#CPTPPA #TPPA

@alcinnz yes, pleased to see TPM making gains for sure!

As for the results of the main election, I'm embarrassed by how voters clearly don't understand people, society, or how gov'ts work. Most seem to lack perspective.

I'm just pleased the Greens had their greatest support yet. They've got some fierce new MPs joining their team in opposition.

I really hope a few smug Nat'l candidates, like the one in my electorate, who won Saturday's election by vanishingly slim margins... get their asses handed to them when the Special Votes are counted. And yes, Maureen Pugh, you're one of them.

Watching a mailing list I'm on with education IT people here in Aotearoa... they're wringing hands about how Microsoft is making dodgy changes to the MS Office 365 services they're locked into. They're dealing with arcane details of licensing over which they can have no influence... and yet, they don't realise that the problem here is Microsoft and the fact that the NZ Ministry of Education shackled them with this burden. Imagine there were *no* license considerations. Easy if you try.

@donkeyblam good question. I suppose there's general stuff to read out there, but given the vanishingly low cost of getting into it (e.g. a $5/month commodity VPS) it's something I just learned by doing. I've written up a whole bunch of howtos which give some guidance on VPSs stuff, too: https://tech.oeru.org - a good starting point would probably be the Bit/VaultWarden howto. It's a hugely useful service: https://tech.oeru.org/setting-your-own-bitwarden-password-manager-and-vaultwarden-sync-server

@ocdtrekkie @donkeyblam well, I'm talking about people who are 'hardcore tech' and shouldn't be intimidated by copying and pasting a few commands. These things take ~10-60 minutes to do... and then a few minutes the next time you do an upgrade. Many of the services I use get a few hours of my time per year in admin... and that's a lot cheaper than a) having to spend a bunch of time jumping through proprietary provider hoops, b) trusting them to look after my data, & c) paying them.