I feel like there is momentum in Europe to switch to FOSS. Europe knows that the US cannot be trusted any longer. And this cannot be undone. Europe is striving for independence. Huge amounts of money are being spent on military sovereignty right now. All of us here on Lemmy know digital sovereignty is equally important. Recently an ICC prosecutor was cut off from his MS account because the US doesn’t like the Netanyahu arrest-warrant. These things don’t go unnoticed. It shows that technological dependance is not innocent, it can and will be used against us.

We need to use this momentum. Get involved, mail your representatives (municipal, provincial, national, federal), get petitions running, mail newspapers, go to political party conventions and get this on the agenda. It won’t fix itself. This problem is somewhat abstract and the solutions are just slightly too complicated for the general public. Most people don’t know what FOSS means. If we want this to change, those who see it and understand what needs to be done, need to get in to action.

The US & UK supported the 1953 coup d’état to secure their oil interest. “Economically, American firms gained considerable control over Iranian oil production, with US companies taking around 40 percent of the profits” The Islamic Revolution is a response to this. If the west wasn’t as imperalist, who knows what could’ve become of Iran.

But to be honest, there’s no way western forces will take over control in Iran. Though it’s at a technological disadvantage, their military is huge, as well as their population of more than 90 million. Then there’s Pakistan that has threatened to get involved if the US does. Then there’s Irans proxies, though they’re in a relatively weakened state for the moment. But Iran has allied millitias all across the region. Then there’s China depending on the Iranian oil. I mean, if you want to force your way into World War 3 this seems like a brilliant idea.

How many apps did you ask them to download?

Personally, I only asked for this one, and everyone who is of importance to me chose to do it.

Surely this will work wonders, they’ll never recover from this. Also they won’t have any incentive, because why would you even consider building a bomb in such a friendly environment? Why would there need to be an axis of resistance, let them surrender unconditionally like Trump suggested, because clearly Israel and the US are to be trusted. If only these damned Iranians remained at the negotiating table while we bombed the shit out of them unprovoked. I guess they don’t want peace. /s

And religion. Quite some Christians love Israel, no matter what, because the Bible. Yes, it’s a fantastic argument. And as long as the victims are muslims, they’ll support Israel. If you’re not disgusted by the wars in the old testament, why would you in present day?

Quite happy with my fairphone running /e/OS. So far I’ve not needed to replace anything, except for the battery which was getting weak. So I bought another battery, and I’m keeping the other one as a spare battery.

If the EU liberates itself from US tech dependence through FOSS, we don’t only liberate ourselves, we liberate the world.

If the EU invests massively in free and open source software, pretty soon all across the world countries will hop on the FOSS-train.

If FOSS catches on, it shows to the world the power of collaboration. A power we have mostly forgotten, thinking that competition is a better idea. But competition alone is shit. To give an example. Here in the Netherlands we’re very proud of ASML, a company that makes the machines needed to produce microchips. They’re famous because they’re unique, in that no other company is able to produce these machines. It’s a competitive success, but obviously it’s holding us all back. If they’d share their knowledge companies across the world could try to improve on these machines, speeding up innovation. I’m supposed to think China’s corporate espionage is a crime, but to be honest I feel like not sharing such crucial information with the world is the actual crime. The power of collaboration is easily underestimated, let’s give it a try.

Sadly I do so every week when going to the cinema

“You can’t remember their favourite song, so you try to login to their Spotify account. Then you realise the account login is inaccessible, and with it has gone their personal history of Spotify playlists, annual “wrapped” analytics, and liked songs curated to reflect their taste, memories, and identity”

Instead you could track your listening habits on ListenBrainz. In doing so you safeguard yourself from Spotify ever restricting access to your data, data which they consider theirs. For ListenBrainz of course you must be willing to share your data freely, but it will be for the benefit of all, whilst if you don’t it will only be used for the benefit of Spotify corporates. You’ll help facilitate a healthy online music ecosystem, because people can built apps on top of the ListenBrainz dataset. You can get recommendations from algorithms of your choice instead of having to rely on Spotifys algorithms.

Not working for Listenbrainz in any way, just an enthousiastic user that plugs it when he sees fit :)

Lol, absolutely not

care to elaborate?

We need to reverse this. We need to make sure we only need to win once, to permenantly secure this. This is why constitutions exist. Instead of passively waiting, we need to go on the attack, and strike the final blow, before they do. We need these rights secured by constitutions, so they can’t be so easily taken away from us. I read that for instance Germany has article 10 of their Grundgesetz, which, (in this translation), states:

“(1) The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications shall be inviolable.”

But sadly it’s being followed by:

“(2) Restrictions may be ordered only pursuant to a law. If the restriction serves to protect the free democratic basic order or the existence or security of the Federation or of a Land, the law may provide that the person affected shall not be informed of the restriction and that recourse to the courts shall be replaced by a review of the case by agencies and auxiliary agencies appointed by the legislature.”

I imagine more countries might have these half-ass measures. Laws that read '(1) X is a fundemental right and nobody can ever take it away from you. (2) except ofcourse goverment, who can do as they please’. I suppose ultimately it requires legislators to give up power, and obviously that only happens under external pressure. Currently people don’t seem to care enough to put pressure on these types of issues. I mean, if people cared, they’d move to private services, and if they did then this would be less of an issue. It’s an issue precisely because people don’t seem to care nor understand the relevance of privacy.

So we need people to care temporarily, and then use that momentum to get our constitutions changed. And for that we probably need a scandal, one that’s completely outrageous, while still being quite easy to understand. I don’t know if or how this would come to pass, but I wouldn’t say it’s completely unthinkable. Perhaps we also need some books or films, like a modern 1984, some AI-dystopia. that atleast gets cultural elites, but preferably larger parts of society, to worry about their freedom. In a sense doing the groundwork, and then when minds are ready, we need to strike.

Stay vigilant indeed.

Thinks people shouldn’t take medical advice from him,

…proceeds to give medical advice to people.

FOSS software will win eventually. It may take time, but if good FOSS software is being built by enthusiasts then a time will come where proprietary software fucks up. And when it does, FOSS is ready to take it’s place. And as soon as FOSS has become a standard in some field, why would there ever be a need to go back to proprietary?

A very particular type of prison too

Welcome to the Netherlands. If there’s anything that fills me with pride it’s our cycling culture. Most people have a car too, but I don’t, and I do everything by bike and public transport.

What about the online food ordering market. I reckon that might be an easier first step than consumer products. Here in the Netherlands JustEatTakeaway has a market share of around 90% and requires restaurants to give them a 14% provision. Restaurants don’t have much of a choice, if they’re not on there they miss out on a huge part of the market, it’s like they don’t exist. Why don’t restaurants unite and develop a FOSS protocol that let’s them federate, so the consumer has a central place to browse the food delivery market, but simultaneously makes the providers independant because they can run their own instance if they please. Have these types of ideas been pitched to branche organizations? Restaurants have a clear interest to develop this to free themselves from the platforms with a monopolistic venture-capital-driven strategy.

People with a burn out

he means ‘is showing virtue’. And he’s right.

I don’t know about spotify recommendations, but given the incredible amount of user data they have it makes a lot of sense that they have the best recommendations. I love LB for providing a FOSS alternative, and though they steadily grow, they are still comparatively tiny. But I think they are our best shot at noncorporate automated music recommendations.

For your questions, I have no idea. I’m not tech savvy at all myself.

I’m very much in favor of people supporting artists, but I don’t feel like people should be obliged to do so. I don’t believe copyright is doing society any good, and I think everyone should be free to download/listen to whatever they please. If you make music and set it free in the world, let the world listen. If they like it, they might support you, and if they don’t that’s too bad. Feel free to disagree, but that’s my point of view. If I pay for music it’s mostly by going to concerts. I’ve also donated to artists, for instance to Cardiacs when their lead singer got ill. And Major Parkinson through their kickstarter campaigns.