Yeah, I’m not doing that.

I think he’s vocally self delusional. He does actually believe it, but he’s incentivized to delude himself into that belief. And incentivized to say it publicly.

I was a massive proponent of UBI all the way back in like 2010. Got on to invite-only dedicated debate spaces specifically because of my advocacy.

I’d feel vindicated if I also wasn’t so depressed about where we’re at today as a country.

Silicon Valley people who wanted Trump are so fucking stupid its absurd.

They’re for my personal use and they serve the purpose I use them for fine with a 2 second inconvenience for one of them. Worth saving the money or so to replace them for the time being, especially if I need uniform monitors to maximally work with Linux without issue. Also it reduces e-waste.

I don’t give a fuck about what you think of my character, so the only thing calling me lazy and cheap achieves is just makes me think you’re angry for no good reason.

The trick is to buy linux-approved hardware.

So have money.

I have two extra monitors, one of them is technically a small low res LCD TV, another is in an elderly monitor that I can only turn on and off by plugging and unplugging it because its power button work’s 1 out of 1000 times its pressed. They work, why spend money to replace them, they are just used to monitor temps, music players, and Discord.

Also this flies in the face of sustainability. I’d figure sustainability is also a major motivating factor of Linux, given its association with other progressive tech movements like right to repair. If I have some random jank old hardware, it’d be nice to not have to just throw it away for the sake of switching to Linux. In fact, Linux does save some hardware of course and gives them new life sometimes. I’ve revived some old laptops before with it.

I say this as a Linux advocate, I use Windows due to current necessity. I also use Linux (Not just on a Steam Deck, but yes on a Steam Deck). I’d stop using Windows entirely but I’d need to be richer or accept significant downgrades. I’m not the former and I wont do the latter.

I mean, I’ve interacted with someone with active anti-semitic beliefs in a dedicated debate space who eventually changed his views to “Well, its not the Jews fault that they got into finance. They just kind of got funneled into that.” So absolutely people with shitty views can evolve in the right direction. I respect that a million times more than someone who is morally lucky and never budges.

And example of the opposite would be someone who adopts progressive stances of their time and never evolved from there or have selective self serving progressive blinders. “LGB w/o the T”, rainbow capitalists, Red-brown alliance types, etc.

I can sort of understand this instinct. I am not opposed to new people using linux but I think the obsession with “growth” is the wrong way to think about software tools.

For me, “growth” is a means to an end, not the end itself. I want Linux saturation. Largely, I view Linux more as a project to empower good and smart people against stagnant stupidity and reactionary evil of (most of) the super wealthy. Unfortunately, this means taking on masses of fucking morons on board the linux train. If you don’t have that network effect, you are throwing away power, and our enemies will never do that. They will always grab on to and hold in a death grip every piece of power and leverage they possibly can.

So smart and good people (linux experts/devs) need to understand that if they want good things, they need to be willing to fight ruthless (but stupid) monsters, and that also requires ruthlessness and morally grey thinking. And it means accepting the dirty masses into their smart people club, in fact encouraging them in (maybe some of those dumb fucks will stop being dumb by way of being pulled in).

The only good people are people who are brave enough to actively test their beliefs and earnestly question their own ideology (and accept that they even have one).

Almost no one does this. People often even say they “don’t have an ideology”. Its convenient, if you have no belief system there is nothing to question.

While no doubt it may be that most users of DuckDuckGo are anti-AI given the nature of the service and who it attracts, the 90% metric makes me believe that the people who ambivalently use DuckDuckGo’s AI (and are not pro or anti) did not vote in this at all and may find themselves using DuckDuckGo less if they see the surface-level convenience randomly disappear from the service.

So I assume they’ll get rid of the AI and they’ll see a drop in users overtime as a percentage of minimum effort types get confused or annoyed. And then they’ll bring it back as they see a drop in users, annoy the users that hate AI and they’ll leave as well. And neither group will end up ever returning.

This whole poll was a terrible idea.