cutitout

> If I have to communicate to every bad actor how I identified them as a bad actor, that only helps them sidestep my prevention mechanisms.

If you don't, you're the bad actor. If specific actions lead to a ban, the way to sidestep that is to not do those actions. If you don't even look at the actions but some BS meta stuff, or have wishy-washy rules you enforce randomly, you're the bad actor.

I use FreeFileSync to synchronize my Thunderbird and Firefox Profiles, KeepassXC files, web server stuff etc. I also prefer portable applications that keep their preferences in their own folders. So I also don't mind if a machine randomly dies, but I still have all my stuff locally, plus backups, and what I upload is always a copy. Other than stuff that lives on chat servers or social media, of course, Soundcloud and YouTube playlists -- but that stuff, but that stuff will go away sooner than the files I have locally. Stuff that lives elsewhere is just a way to interact with others and show them things, not the keeper of anything that matters to me.

The downside is that I can't just change machines nilly-willy, I need to sync first, at least if things overlap. For example, I can use one Firefox profile on one machine, another on a second machine, and use Thunderbird on a third, but I can't use the same profile on several machines without getting a merge conflict, so to speak. That was confusing and annoying for like a week, since then it's not been a problem, and by now I'm so pampered by it, I simply avoid stuff that doesn't play nicely with my workflow. Smartphone apps, for example, or programs that doesn't allow me to configure the paths it uses, and so on.

Since I use applications and work on data, the OS doesn't that matter much. I mind changing Windows from the ass-backwards defaults much less than sticking with the defaults, and I do that as I go along, i.e. when I use a feature or get annoyed by the default, I just change it. That doesn't require any thought and very little time, so the configuration I would have to repeat on a new system isn't something I consider valuable, I'm pretty sure it takes much less time in total than working with the default config, in the long run. If I had to do it more often than every once in a blue moon, I'd find ways to automate it.

I am just not interested in something that could go away based on the decision of some pointy-haired boss, which is tends to be inferior software in the first place, anyway. Like, compare Directory Opus with Windows Explorer, one is a serious application, the other is a toy that constantly gets in your way.

You haven't addressed a single point. Being an expert should help a person to make arguments, and sometimes does, but it's not an argument in and of itself.

"Making the world a better place" is terribly generic, and not impressive in context of stubbornly refusing to even acknowledge, much less warn users about, an issue that puts actual lives in danger. If they ignored her for so long, what was the excuse before she dared to say "asshole" to adults who dabble with something as serious as this?

> By presenting the issue the way she did, people moved the conversation away from the issue

By HER doing A, OTHERS did B? That doesn't even parse as English, and betrays doublethink.

If it's an issue in any app that can lead to privacy leaks, it's a showstopper issue for something like Signal. It being an issue with any app is even more reason to tell people about it, not less.

> But if a person has something important to say, calling people that don't know about the issue assholes is not a great way to go about it.

I don't mind it at all. If someone uses "being called asshole" as a reason to not even inform anyone, they would have found another excuse. Some people simply register it as strong language and otherwise focus on the content. At any rate, it's very easy to judge what someone says in frustration when you yourself don't even suffer from the situation and/or don't care about those who do.

> But it's not like everyone tries to annoy other, it's more an issue of ignorance.

So she shed light on that, and instead of talking about the important bit, people think it's super important to teach a random person to not be rude, ever? That's what we're focusing on?

> calls them assholes that don’t care about what happens outside of western society

That's hardly her main point:

> For Chinese who are used to a specific IME- like Sogou, trying to type on something else is a tiny bit like a QWERTY user suddenly faced with Dvorak- we can make it work, but it's slow enough day to day that 50/50 they just install Sogou because what's the big deal right?

> The Signal "fix" is "Incognito Mode" aka for the app to say "Pretty please don't read everything I type" to the virtual keyboard and count on Google/random app makers to listen to the flag, and not be under court order to do otherwise.

> Needless to say, Sogou/Baidu dos not respect the IME_FLAG_NO_PERSONALIZED_LEARNING flag. So basically all hardware here is self-compromised 5 minutes out of the box.

> so unless journalists tell them otherwise, which they have not been doing- users will install Sogou.

This is important.

I responded to someone who didn't even attempt to make the case how all users of Parler are "violent extremists", they just pulled out that broad brush to justify a transgression. That's intellectually so dishonest I see no functional difference between that and what one would criticize extremists for, and I don't see a meaningful difference between "not minding" a breach of someone's rights and committing it, so that's the violent bit.

> He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

But if you don't mind their use of "violent extremists" apropos nothing, no, I don't particularly "care to" explain myself to you for using the same phrase in response to them -- I just do it because I can. You could simply remove or ignore my re-using that phrase and my point would stand unchanged. Address the core of an argument, don't just play "gotcha" while ignoring the context and the woods for the trees.

Godwin's law just says that as the length of a discussion increases, the probability of a nazi comparison approaches 1. It says nothing about that even being a problem, much less losing the argument. Even better: as the length of a discussion increases, the probability of any comparison, any string of words, any combination of letters, "approaches 1". Something you can say about anything you might as well say about nothing.

People heard the meme a lot, so they think it has weight without actually having thought about it. Encouraging people to reveal this about themselves, with pride no less, is the singular useful property GL has.

> I fail to see the importance of these people's privacy in the wake of recent events. I also fail to have sympathy for people who trusted this hacked-together Twitter clone with their personal information.

Then I fail to have any sympathy and solidarity with you. You're just another violent extremist in my eyes, and the enemy of my enemy is not my friend by a long shot.