Readit NewsZuider commented on Normans and Slavery: Breaking the Bonds historytoday.com/archive/... · Posted by u/pepys
Can someone explain what the deal was with selling slaves to Ireland? It makes it seem like Ireland was some wealthy nation buying slaves.
At the time, Ireland was indeed a wealthy country, having made its fortune selling leather to the Romans three centuries before, because the semi-nomadic Irish cultivated large herds of cattle roaming on unfenced plains, while the settled Britons kept sheep. This permitted the establishment of a culturally sophisticated Gaelic Order so stable that it was able to assimilate the invading Vikings and the first wave of Normans, who actually went native and began speaking the Irish language.
The first major release in 27 years. 64-bit internal structures, so data can be huge. Full unicode with all the funky new emojis. Zip filesystems, etc., etc.
There's lots of new stuff, and some old cruft has been dumped, so some programs may need a few updates, but there's still a high level of compatibility. The page above links to release notes with details of what's in and what's out.
Why did they remove tilde '~' as a convenient shortcut for the Home directory?
Zuider commented on Pavel Durov and the Blackberry Ratchet oblomovka.com/wp/2024/08/... · Posted by u/dannyobrien
>"I want to be clear: best practice, ideologically-pure end-to-end apps like Signal absolutely face the same ratchet. What I’m mostly trying to understand here is why Telegram and Blackberry get more publicy targeted."
IMHO it's mainly due to the popularity of the service/product. The concentration of bad actors and the vastness of the audience/userbase make the difference. If Signal was used in the same way, it would get the same attention.
There are claims that Signal has already been compromised by the Five Eyes Intel Agencies, albeit through bribery rather than the overt coercion we see here. The key change is that Signal can no longer guarantee end-to-end encryption based on a passphrase tied to the app itself, and known only to the user.
Zuider commented on Xi Goes Full Stalin with Purge politico.eu/article/china... · Posted by u/mensetmanusman
My conspiracy theory, completely devoid of evidence, is that Codes of Conduct are a way for large corporations to gain control over FOSS projects they covet by creating arbitrary controversy aimed at the current maintainers of these projects. That's why CoCs are written very gray so they can be weaponized in different ways or not at all, depending on the level of coercion required. Corporations don't do this directly but through activists, some of whom are willing pawns and others who believe they're doing the right thing for the world but are actually being nudged into doing things that benefit the corporation.
But like I said, I have zero proof of this. Perhaps it's better as a screenplay than an explanation of how things are going but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if there's some truth to it, at least with some FOSS projects.
From experience, I would agree that the first thing activists who wish to take over a group will do is to behave badly, and then use this as the pretext to demand a Code of Conduct.
They will then subvert the spirit of the CoC, while adhering legalistically to the letter, in order to control others. They allows them divert a topic into pointless discussion of the rules, or to needle someone persistently, while remaining within the rules, until that person reacts, at which point they will insist that he has violated the CoC.
A set of simple “rules of the road” are necessary. They should be common sense, because some people don’t have common sense and need it explained. And there’s always “that guy” who doesn’t care.
Some people really are toxic.
But establishing a minimum standard of behavior is very different from rectifying historical evils and enumerating lists aggrieved groups.
If your groups code of conduct contains specific instructions regarding the situation in the Middle East, you’re overthinking things.
The minimum standard of good behavior need not be explicitly stated, and violations can be dealt with as they arise. The problem with written sets of rules is that they can be subverted and misused.
Zuider commented on Why doesn't Windows have an "expert mode"? (2003) devblogs.microsoft.com/ol... · Posted by u/scaglio
The book "Physics" was written by Aristotle, who is so much of a philosopher that he's often called "The Philosopher". He's also the author of a book called "Metaphysics", pretty much the quintessential field of philosophy.
The entire point of this conversation was that some fields, including physics, get split off from philosophy, leaving behind a mishmash. But many scientific fields absolutely began as aspects of philosophy, and it's only because they're so successful that people deny that.
Aristotle's actual writings are lost. The books attributed to Aristotle are comprised of lecture notes collected by his students, later compiled according to topic, so you get the Ethics, the Politics, the Physics and Metaphysics.
They didn't quite know how to name the last book since its contents were so abstract and unrelated to the everyday world, so they simply called it "the book that comes after the Physics," which eventually became known as the Metaphysics. It is worth noting that the title is a specific reference to the book, not to any notion of the subject matter somehow transcending physics. After all, why physics, in particular?
In the light of that, it is even more jarring to see the term 'metaphysics' being used to describe spiritualism and new age mysticism.
Well, of course he could perfectly recall, but he's not going to rat out his friend.