That’s the neat part - all always do!

So… a “Make sure all votes are for the only true candidate” army?

And… They didn’t communicate this with you beforehand?

Yeah.

Edge still has its problems, but it’s nowhere near the hot mess it wass in 2015 when it was basically a reskinned IE. Once they switched to Chromium it was still a hot mess, butit did get polished and has all the features you’d expect of a modern browser.

That being said, Edge is the main innovator behind built-in AI chats and similar bloat, which Chrome also likes to shove down people’s throats.

And although the feature has existed as a Firefox addon for ages, I think the first browser to support tab groups and horizontal tabs was Edge.

So since both are pretty on-par feature (and bloat) wise, run the same engine and are made and maintained by billion-dollar corpos gobbling user data, both seem like two sides of the same coin.

So for ‘normies’, it pretty much boils down to which ecosystem you’re more ingrained - that will make you prefer Edge or Chrome.

Us lunatics on Linux and/or ActivityPub prefer an independent option.

Security wise Fairphone isn’t up to GOS standards, so a collaboration wasn’t on the table either way.

I don’t know the situation, but if it’s as this part of your comment implies, then that’s clear bridge-burning on Graphene’s part.

If the current phones don’t have a chip or whatever, that doesn’t mean they can’t reach out to Fairphone and say “Hey, we’d like to promote our OS and join up! However, we requure such-and-such hardware. Are you interested?”

Saying “It doesn’t have the chip, a deal with them will never work” without reaching out isn’t productive.

I assume that Fairphone has quite the problems competing with more established markets and the OS is an afterthought, so they went with /e/. But hey, I might be wrong, and it’s all a conspiracy to maie an illusion of choice with Fairphone+/e/.

But if the mission of Fairphone is fair production and repairability, the fact that security and privacy are afterthoughts seems like a reasonable (but foolish) standpoint. They should care.

However, since the mission of Graphene is security and privacy, that seems like they should be the ones to reach out and try to provide their world-class software to as many people as possible. This probably includes supporting more than one make of phone.

Still. A civilized society doesn’t give every single person in a uniform the licence to tackle, kill and assault whomever without facing any real consequences. Sure, the money’s nice, but not getting tackled would’ve surely been much more civilized.

Aunt Tifa hit a double-jackpot. Second, the money. But first and foremost - she’s still alive. She’s also white, which might have more causal relationships with her getting said jackpot than should be the case in a civilized society.

The problem is that not everyone has either her luck or her complexion.

When the company’s immune to accountability […] backlash changes nothing.

Not really. Backlash is important because it shows there’s an alternative. And not to the company - the company won’t change. But its users, customers and consumers just might.

It creates publicity, which triggers people to talk and think about the issue.

Which is a good thing as well as a driver of change.

Boycotts are also effective. The only problem is, huge companies have their fingers in multiple jars (industries, brands, etc.) and their main customers are other companies.

This gives them a great dose of stability. But if people were to suddenly boycott all of say Nestle’s brands, stores wouldn’t order new Nestle stock.

There’s also no need for extreme backlash in some cases. Just look at Walmart or Microsoft.

Microsoft is bleeding users at a record rate. Sure, the year of the Linux desktop is still not here, but Linux market share has been rising dramatically lately. Why?

Because Microsoft keeps shooting itself in the foot.

Walmart is a similar story.

There’s something about huge consumer-facing companies that makes them extremely vulnerable to losing focus and falling out with consumers.

If some more Boeings fell out of the sky and not just one or two a few years ago, airlines would be looking to clear thenselves of all Boeing stock. This wouldn’t even need backlash.

Backlash is a source of bad PR. And bad PR causes customer loss. That’s profit loss. That’s a bad credit score. Hell, even the government might take a look and find some issues they’d like to check out!

As you can see, this can all spiral out of proportion.

And backlash is the first step in this story.

Please take my sincerest condolences over the loss of your grandmother. I wish health to you, your family, your relatives and your grandmother’s friends and acquaintances.

I especially wish you luck and the strength both mental and physical needed to overcome smoking.

The “doppelganger problem” is really why this is not an easy issue to answer

I wouldn’t agree. Sure, Taylor Swift would own her likeness. But so would her doppleganger.

This could be done on a nonsensical basis such as first-dibs or whose ever is the most well-known, but the only logical option is that both are protected.

So if our Taylor doppleganger goes around just looking and existing with an appearance closely matching Taylor’s, she’s protected under her own likeness.

If she goes on to claim of being Taylor Swift and swindles people, that’s a seperate issue dealt with impersonation statutes.

Even cosplaying as they did with Dolly Parton would be protected under free speech/expression.

Since these protections already exist, a right to likeness only really stops the deepfakes, which is exactly the point.

It also used to be that if one part of such a contract was found to be illegal, the entire thing would be thrown out, not any more.

Not necessarily.

A contract is supposed to be a mutually-beneficial arrangement. I sell you a car for its market value. I work for you for a market price on my time for the position and my expertise.

If there’s a small mistake both sides are willing to amend - there probably won’t even be a suit.

Even if there is a suit, most places’ laws prefer nudging toe contract to the side “less off” in such cases.

Only when there are unreasonable demands by one side, or the contract is so one-sided it can’t be amended is when it gets thrown out completely.

Which is supposed to be almost never.

Therefore, I don’t think the rules themselves changed as much as the goalposts and the reasonableness window have. Quality of life and purchase power is decreasing steadily basically since Reagan.

Contemporary EULAs are taken as acceptable and a fact of life when even 10 years ago T&Cs were laughed at which were much less unreasonable in comparison.

Other types of contracts follow the same general direction, with employment ones being among the absolute worst.

Wait, you guys reboot after an update?

Soo… our-anus?

Well, people still do. Yet it hasn’t been rebranded. And GIMP should follow.

For now. It seems like obvious water-testing.

And even if it isn’t, giving “users” (read: corporate middle managers never actually using the app) the “option” of the “name” “not being” “naughty”.

These all “these” are “concepts” GIMP can do without.

The name is what it is. You didn’t make the app, you don’t set the name. Simple as.

And to the makers/maintainers:

Is throwing old and loyal users under the bus worth it?

The conspiracy theorist in me can see this being the start of the end of GIMP. It wouldn’t be the first or the last FOSS project to “fall from grace”.

I’m not saying it will - I don’t want to do a detailed study of GIMP lore and current politics, but the simple act of potentially enabling a rename in the future is a GIANT FUCKING RED FLAG in my book.

Even with good intentions, it “enables” a “later” “usurpation”.

It’s like deliberately cutting yourself in the middle of pirrhana-infested pool.

The wound’s not deep. It isn’t dangerous. Nor do the pirrhanas notice right away.

But when they do… You’ll be lucky to just lose the leg you cut.

To be honest, this seems like a stupid fix to a non-issue.

There’s already Latex, and the purists calling it Lateh only make it seem like they know and are ashamed.

Or Uranus being pronounced not as your-anus but urine-us. The “alternate/kid-friendly” option is just plain worse. It also teaches kids certain words are bad, which is a bad idea for a multitude of resons I won’t get into.

I say keep GIMP GIMP, loud and clear. No need to be ashamed, because it isn’t shameful.

Attempting to avoid this absolute non-issue by ingenious pronounciation or rebranding just exacerbates the issue.

It’s called “GIMP” and not “Fuck Me then Go Out The Door”. Wether or not GIMP was a moment of “funny humor” or not is beside the point. The “official” explanation is perfectly belieavable, and therefore suitable enough. Just run with it.

If an idiot asks “Why’s it called like [insert-here]”, just say it’s a fucking coincidence and you don’t care. Call them dirty-minded for bonus points.

You’re right.

I never said higher prices were a good solution. Merely a better (i.e. less terrible) one. Most people will budget. A few who “can” quit might.

The only way to truly stop people by raising prices is to price them out completely, making a pack $500 or the like, and that’s an idea not too far from hitting a head against the wall - except the head isn’t even yours!

As always, the best fix is support. Small-group therapy for sharing experiences, writing a diary of smoke info (what/when) and related events (feelings, triggers, etc) with a quick rundown of important info such as a taper plan, withdrawal and the symptoms. Suggesting alternatives that migjt help ease the symptopms.

Perhaps a quick cost analysis for the urge-based spenders might be the little push they need to get cigarettes out of their life.

That cancer is Hamas!

it will definitely save lives that were cut short

Sorry for being pedantic, but it will do no such thing.

The lives rhat have already been cut short - they’ll continue being cut short. That time isn’t something a magic wand nor a ban on sale can fix.

This type of ban won’t even try to deal with the existing smokers. The only thing it tries to do is stop the new geberation from becoming smokers by taking away access.

Which will probably work, but it’s a stopgap - not a solution.

I’d argue a policy of prevention, of raising prices, of limiting the amount of cancer-causing chemicals and of clearly defining and educating people about tapering off (including perhaps cigarrettes of differing nicotine levels like the vapes) would work better than saying “time’s up, young-uns 2008 onwards can’t get cigs”.

I’d also argue a better approach would be a school lesson where kids try a puff of cigarette smoke, hopefully hate it for life, and never think about trying it again. Banning stuff just makes it seem cool and I think this rebellious aspect is what gets most high school kids into the addiction.

Accessibility doesn’t help, but cigs are already illegal to sell to under-18s but we all know how effective that is at preventing teenagers developing the addiction. Altering the rule a bit doesn’t get rid of the problem of it not being properly enforced.

If you just give binary blobs and no sources

The main point is that you give the source to the blobs, so it’s not a black box anymore - new maintainers knowing what the blob does (and how) saves a HUGE amount of time prodding the black box (blob) to infer its behaviour.

And it doesn’t pose a security risk - if anything, more eyes on the code is better. Security through obscurity has been proven a myth since open code has more eyes on it. Security researches have smarter things to do than prod some binary blob when there’s so much code that’s either open source in the first place or at least only they got access to closed code.

What obscurity does is limit the eyes on the code, but the share of bad actors hoping to strike gold to researches looking at it outdoes any benefit.

Will your technically-challenged great-Aunt switch to post-support build when her phone hits EoL

She won’t. But you as her niece/nephew might. And the local repair tech might when she comes to ask. Abd she’s not an idiot, just the technology isn’t mature enough in the societal sense: people don’t think of bringing their phone to a repair shop like they do their cars, which is a fixable issue - even without much advocacy groups time will fix this issue.

hackers [will] be able to remote control her banking app and take away your inheritance before the community can even patch it

You might be mixing apples and orabnes here: why and how is the community expected to “fix” a banking app?

A banking app is a closed blob just like phobes nowadays. It’s a parasitic relationship: blobbed phones are used to justify blobbed apps and vice versa. It’s like saying “well, the foubdation of the building is bad, but to fix it we’d need to also deal with the crumbling walls” - so instead of fixing, it often is better to do a fresh start. But you’re suggesting we should continue making buildings with bad walls and foubdations because we have the wall materials lying around, so why not use them?

Then there could also be licensed code

This is a recipe for disaster. I hope you’re trolling.

The Internet wouldn’t work if DNS were centralized, and the only thing DNS is used for is translating key pairs (basically). Now a single point of failure would have to do code vetting?

It’s the totalitarian dream! Oh, and absolutely out of touch with reality.

Actually, both “persona non grata” (latin has cases) and “gratis coffee/beer/bootloader” both make sense.

Just convert the “x is gratis” into “you’re welcome to [relevant-action-verb] x”.

As in, “The kernel is gratis” = “You’re free to [use] the Kernel” (which is basically “it’s free” in everyday english).

For “Persona non grata” it would be “(You’re a) person not welcome (to [come] here)”.

This is what it originally meant. It has nothing to do with price and everything to do with gratuity. I (a provider) am grateful to you and welcome you to use/come/see/do/whatever.

“Gratis” would be the ketchup packet at McDonalds - they’re happy you paid for a burger so they’ll give you a ketcup packet as they’re grateful you did.