cecilkorik

I love Forgejo, I’m glad you are happy with it too. Their upgrade process is pretty minimal/straightforward (at least it has been so far) and their runner configuration is a bit heavy to set up initially (I maybe took the security recommendations a bit too intensively despite the fact that I’m running a completely private site, but allowing systems that run arbitrary commands automatically is legitimately a bit intimidating) but has been really nice and reliable now that it’s working.

I’m very conflicted about Stardock. Brad Wardell has some very… uncomfortable and problematic issues around things he’s done and said and his games have often failed in one way or another. On the other hand, he does seem to genuinely have empathy for his customers in a way that most businessmen generally don’t, especially nowadays. I mean, I got this email too and over the years I’ve been given several gifts of free games and expansions other things and just given a general feeling of accountability and generosity from this company that are just… unheard of. I don’t want to give them a pass for the things they’ve done wrong but… like damn, their apologies are pretty convincing.

The artist said it has been resolved to his satisfaction, and they listed him as a consultant, and consultants normally get paid, so I think it’s reasonable to assume he did get paid fairly, although he may not be able to disclose that directly.

I think there’s room for a little bit of nuance that page doesn’t do a great job of describing. In my opinion there’s a huge difference between volunteer maintainers using AI PR checks as a screening measure to ease their review burden and focusing their actual reviews on PRs that pass the AI checks, and AI-deranged lone developers flooding the code with “AI features” and slopping out 10kloc PRs for no obvious reason.

Just because a project is using AI code reviews or has an AGENTS.md is not necessarily a red flag. A yellow flag, maybe, but the evidence that the Linux Kernel itself is on that list should serve as an example of why you can’t just kneejerk anti-AI here. If you know anything about Linus Torvalds you know he has zero tolerance for bad code, and the use of AI is not going to change that despite everyone’s fears. If it doesn’t work out, Linus will be the first one to throw it under the bus.

I have actively and deliberately chosen not to be the kind of person who just “gives up” anymore so I’m not really sure what it is you’re trying to convince me of, but I don’t think it’s going to change the direction of my efforts. The steering must continue, and even if the ship goes down anyway, it will go down with me still at the helm.

It’s being built inch by inch. You won’t even know it’s there until you realize you can’t squeeze through it anymore. The trend is extremely obvious: TPM, Secure boot, Windows Store UWP applications, forced updates without consent, or intentional opt-outs that conveniently get ignored or forgotten when it’s convenient for Microsoft to force something. They are intent on taking full control of PCs and locking them down exactly the same way Android phones are locked down, they will follow a few footsteps behind what Android is doing now by preventing third-party apps and app stores, but it’s obviously coming, because they are on exactly the same path for exactly the same reasons.

I don’t imagine we can save everybody either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. The more they tighten their grip, the more will slip through their fingers, and all I care about is that the rebellion against Windows grows large enough to survive indefinitely, if not thrive.

Good luck, although I’d caution you with the general principle of “Don’t let perfect become the enemy of good”. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

It’s good in principle, and it’s good you’re learning to build and control your own software, but Windows is a dead end at this point. Start planning your escape to Linux before the cage door starts closing.

Where did I sound like I was panicking? All I’ve been trying to do is have an opinion, share that opinion, discuss that opinion, and defend that position when it is attacked by people turning the things I’m saying into catastrophic strawmen.

It’s not even that strong of an opinion, if I’m being honest, but I do believe in the principle that these are discussions worth having and if that means I have to be devil’s advocate then so be it, but it doesn’t mean I have to be treated like the literal devil.

Hockey is the sport of peace, they are all intellectuals and their opinions on politics should always be considered relevant. /s

But we’re number one in having an Alamo.

I’m not so sure about that, the airport terminal near me also has an Alamo. I guess maybe Texas is tied for number one on that.

It’s literally in the title: “Assault charges dropped against Ontario man who confronted [emphasis mine] home intruder”

My point of view is that the altercation became necessary the moment someone smashed windows and used the smashed window to gain entry into the house. You’re forcing someone into making a split second decision at that point, and you can’t expect those decisions to always be the correct one, and I don’t think it is criminal to make what might be the wrong decision (or might be exactly the right decision) in such an extreme situation. In the even more extremely unlikely event that the intruder actually had a legitimate reason to be breaking windows and entering the house that way I would call it a very regrettable and unfortunate accident, and it is a very difficult stretch to imagine that actually happening in the real world. But accidents do happen, and they are unfortunate. I don’t think that kind of accident would happen very often.

Otherwise I have to assume they are probably either going to try to get the fuck out as promptly as possible which I would strongly encourage them to do, or they are armed and are going to be starting an altercation themselves with me in the very immediate future which will likely result in my demise. And it’s definitely self-defense at that point. I don’t think it is reasonable to be waiting for proof of the need for self-defense to actually start, because by that point it’s probably too late.

Mere self-defense is not what I’m talking about though. This says the man confronted him. According to my understanding of the way courts interpret self-defense, that is, therefore, not self-defense. If you go after a guy who’s broken into your house and you’re wielding a baseball bat, that is, at least as far as I understand it, assault with a weapon. It doesn’t matter that he was in your home, and it’s not self-defense because you were the aggressor, and entering someone’s house is not an “assault”.

I’m not an expert and I’m not pretending I am, but this is my understanding. Maybe my understanding is indeed incorrect. Maybe you have a better understanding. Either way I hope to never be in a position where I would have to test it.

I agree with all those things and I think they’re very reasonable. Without getting too much into the weeds about the local case I mentioned, I don’t have any problem with the actions of police in that case, but I do have some serious problems with the laws that are in place.

Maybe I am giving the accused in this case too much credit, it’s something I do often. And maybe I’m mistaken, but I believe the reason this guy is not being punished for what he did is not because what he did is not an actual crime (as far as I know, it still is) but because police are simply declining to prosecute it in this particular case. The outcome may be the same, but I think those are very different situations. That is the part I am not so comfortable with, I think those are fundamentally different things and I don’t think the police should be ones left with the responsibility for making that decision. It’s the difference between being owed $200 for passing go, and being gifted $200 for passing go. You’ve got $200 either way, but gifts aren’t required by the rule book.

All I’m saying is that I think the law should be much clearer about this kind of situation to avoid the police having to make those judgement calls, because they can feel very arbitrary in that case, and in my experience that often leads to having those judgement calls applied in very inconsistent and unequal ways, especially if the person accused could be vulnerable to certain prejudices that do seem to exist in our world, and sometimes in our police forces and justice system too. I understand it’s not going to solve that particular problem on its own, but if the laws or legal precedent were more explicit and specific to define when exactly we might consider something to be reasonable use of force in defense of one’s home, I think we could avoid a lot of the questions and uncertainty that we see in this case.

I wasn’t going to bother replying to this dumpster fire of people taking my comment way too seriously and assuming I meant things I didn’t say, but your comment seemed reasonable enough in tone but so over the top in conclusion that it feels like maybe an opportunity to try to clear up a bit of misunderstanding.

I’m perfectly willing to debate what “reasonable interpretation of it” means, including how that explicitly excludes the extremely robust and often fatal American interpretation of it, if people want to do that, but the article you linked suggests you’re not looking for reasonable interpretations of it, you’re looking to cherry pick the worst to imply that’s what I’m recommending, which I’m not. Neither standing at someone’s door nor trying to open it are crimes, nor should they be. Are there gray areas? Sure, we can certainly discuss what’s reasonable within those gray areas and edge cases. What you linked is not a gray area, it is absolutely wrong. I acknowledge that.

Kevin McCallister was supposed to be a mild joke, lighten the tone a bit. I didn’t think anyone would be able to take seriously the idea of having enough advance warning of a burglary for creating elaborate rube-goldberg booby traps for home invaders. Clearly I was wrong about that. My hope was that it would trigger a little bit of a thought process in readers that would prevent people from being so kneejerk angry about this topic, not make people angrier.

Furthermore, it is not in fact about me at all, not that I expect you to ever believe that since you can clearly peer directly into my mind by using my words that I choose to post on the internet. Whether you believe it or not, I am in fact a big teddy bear, and I have no illusions that I would personally hurt anyone in this way or ever have any personal need for this. I know myself, and I know exactly how I would react to a violent home invasion, and I can assure you, it would be utterly stupid and naive in the exact opposite way of violence.

However I do have a strong sense of justice and empathy for people who, through past trauma or mental state, have a violently strong aversion to people entering their very clear and extremely well-defined personal spaces where they have what I feel is a very reasonable expectation of safety and comfort, and when the facts are as clear as they are in this case, I don’t think those people who do react violently to a very clear invasion deserve to be further threatened or victimized by the legal system that presumes they don’t have any legal right to do that. My point of view may be tinted by the fact that in my hometown several children ranging from age 3 to age 12 were recently brutally raped and some left with permanent life altering injuries by a well-known and previously convicted sex offender. I would really strongly appreciate it if people did not break the windows and doors of other people’s houses while there are people inside and attempt to enter them, and I really do not have much sympathy for those who do think there are any valid reasons for that.

The United States has a lot of fucking awful laws and rules, but one of the few I actually agree with is castle doctrine, or at least a reasonable interpretation of it. Anyone entering the interior of my home with intention to do harm while breaking things without significant advance warning and just cause and/or my explicit permission should have no legal expectation of safety and no legal protection, and there should be no consequences whatsoever if I decide to unleash my inner Kevin McCallister on their soon-to-be-very-sorry ass. FAFO.

And it’s wild how much even that has been absolutely normalized by all these shitty lazy developers and platforms. Vibe coding it just going to make it worse. All these programs that look nice on the surface and are just slop on the inside. It’s going to be a mess.

Phys ed is generally bullying and bodyshaming 101. It is a foundational pillar of society.

If the NDP grows too strong they’ll just consolidate the Liberals and Conservatives into the Canada Party or some bullshit. The problem with democracy isn’t democratic in nature, it’s corruption from the power structures that form and become self-protective. Democracy is just the game we play, the veneer of choice that makes what’s going on look nice and legitimate. These power structures and the people in them are playing meta-games above and beyond it. We can’t fix these things by modifying the game itself, it may help, it may disrupt them for a bit but they will just find new and probably more powerful ways to metagame the system and entrench themselves at the top.

Things like party politics, strategic voting, media bias, these are just tactics they use. How do we fight against them? I don’t know, but I know we can’t use the game itself, we have to play the metagame against them. Or at least prevent them from using it against us.

I not only still remember, I will never forget. I am an NDP supporter for life now, until and unless they betray us too.