I wouldn’t read too much into it. Using “he” instead of “it” is a mistake that a person might make if English is not their first language. It’s pretty easy to imagine that someone working on a browser would not be interesting in messing around with the pronouns in their build instructions. They made an error, and they didn’t think the error was important (which in itself was another error). But it is fixed now. Surely no harm done. They were not actively trying to impede anyone’s progress or deny anyone’s rights, or even say anything negative about anyone at all. They simply made a mistake in their use of pronouns in their build instructions. The mistake is now fixed. And although its fair to take it as a ‘warning’ that maybe there are objectionable views lurking in there, it certainly is not evidence of such views. I really don’t think it’s fair to hang this mistake over them. I’m sure that pretty much everyone in this thread has made worse mistakes throughout their lives. I know I certainly have.

There are real problems transgender people are having, ladybird browser must be low on that priority.

Are you trying to tell me that Ladybird inadvertently referring to a computer process ‘he’ instead of ‘it’ is not a high priority problem for transgender people? What could possibly be worse? :p

(But seriously though. I find it really weird that people are still upset at Ladybird about this. It makes me wonder if there’s some social manipulation going on. Like, is anyone actually upset about this, or is it just an excuse to attack the devs?)

Is this because they used “he” instead of “they” in the build instructions? … They changed that and acknowledged the mistake. Surely that’s enough. It’s the fucking build instructions. I think we can probably find it in our hearts to forgive them.

[edit] Just in case people think I’m joking. I’m not. As far as I’m aware, the critical incident that that has resulted in people calling Ladybird devs anti-trans is that they wrote ‘he’ instead of ‘they’ in the build instructions. That’s what caused the original outrage. And as far as I’m aware, there have been no other incidents. But please, if there is something of substance that I’m not aware of, post about it here.

In many ways, the silky-smooth convenience offered by modern computer software makes everything much harder to learn about and understand. For anyone that used zip files before this Windows feature, the problem is obvious - but for younger people it’s not obvious at all. Heck, a lot of people can’t even tell whether or not a file is locally on their computer - let alone whether it is compressed in some other file.

They removed the soldier’s hand!? That’s serious dedication!

♫ Imagine all the people sharin’ all the world ♪ ♪ Yoo, hoo, oo-oo ♫

Charging for updates isn’t intrinsically bad. A good expansion pack at a fair price can be a good deal for both the players and the devs. But there is a modern trend of games trying to squeeze players for every dollar they can get; and when content is deliberately held back in the hopes of selling it for a bit more money later, it starts to become a bit perverse. The game itself can become an advertisement for selling more bits of the game in the future - and it just devalues the experience.

In the specific case of Stardew Valley, the game is a major hit - and it continues to sell well. So even though existing players are getting the new content for free, the developer is still going to get paid. Obviously he could get a lot more if he charged for it, but he has decided he doesn’t need that. He’d rather just make the game as good as he can make it.

Here’s a personal story of mine, about a different game: Several years ago I was selected to be a beta tester for a major game franchise. I was a very well known member of that community, know for making custom balance patches and bugfixes - and so they wanted me to test their new release. I was pretty excited to be a part of that. But when I got my first beta copy, I didn’t really play it much because the game barely worked. It crashed very frequently, and so my feedback was basically just “it crashes when I do this”. I figured it wasn’t worth trying to give balance ideas when the game was in that state. Anyway… time went on, and things didn’t improve much. There were some graphics changes and a bit of UI work… but it was still super unstable. The release date was getting pretty close. But before it was even possible to do a full playthrough without constant reloads to dodge game-ending bugs, there was detailed plans posted on the beta forums talking about the first 4 DLC packs that would be released after the game launched.

I stopped taking AAA games seriously after that. I was totally disillusioned. They were launching their AAA game in non-functional state, with the hope of fixing the worst bugs in a day 1 patch. Very little useful playtesting was done, and so the features of the game were a bit slap-dash, but yet somehow they were dividing up content for as many DLCs packs as possible. They didn’t even have a functional game and yet they were talking about how to sell more stuff. It was a real eye-opening experience for me; and it really colours the way I see other games that launch in a buggy state, where pretty much the only thing that works is the in-game store.

So yeah, I can appreciate the view that maybe charging for updates is a slippy slope that Concerned Ape doesn’t want to step onto; even if he does have very solid footing for if he wanted to tread that ground a bit.

When writing my previous post I had started writing a list of suggested strategies; but I changed my mind about posting that. I’m not a member of Mozilla. I don’t know what particular challenges they face, and my expertise are not in not-for-profit fundraising. So although I do have ideas, I don’t really want to get into a trap of trying to defend my half-arse ideas against people picking them apart. It’s beside the point. The point is just that it is achievable, as evidenced by other organisations achieving it.

I will say though that they could at least just mention on the Firefox ‘successful update’ page that Firefox is supported by donations, and give a link. A lot of people really like Firefox; and I think that if Firefox asked for donations, they would get more donations.

Supporting ad networks is not a ‘necessary’ evil. There are many not-for-profit organisations that do not use ads for revenue raising.

That definitely is not what I was saying. What I’m saying is that mocking and taunting people does not help social cohesion. It can cause reluctance and spite. We just don’t need that.

It’s good that you are getting support. I do think your jokes here are a bit in bad taste though. It isn’t likely to make anyone feel good about supporting others, or about being supported.

I don’t think its viable to post on Facebook (or whatever). with the goal of getting people to stop using Facebook. People on the site will quickly disregard whatever arguments put forward, because it is very hard to maintain credibility while you are on the site that you are arguing against. And if you do make an effort to maintain your credibility there, then you can end up having the reverse effect - in the sense that you are now a valuable contributor to the platform, and people will like and respect your contributions while staying on the platform.

Criticism one platform is more likely to be taken on-board if posted on a different platform though. For example, a lot of people on Reddit argue against Facebook - and I reckon it probably has an effect the people who read it. But obviously it isn’t the ideal target audience. You really want to arguing against Facebook to people who are actually on Facebook!

I can’t really think of a good way to get people to stop using particular social media en mass. (I’d written a couple of paragraphs about general strategies for changing people’s minds; but I don’t think it was helpful enough to bother reading.) I suppose the best option would be government regulation to undermine the targeted advertisement revenue streams. If these platforms were forbidden from collecting and using personal data for advertising, then the incentive for content-churn would be reduced. Without the money, the corruption would no long be self-sustaining. So political action to support strong privacy laws is probably the best way. Aside from that, probably the best way is to degrade the quality of the platforms. Don’t contribute any content to them. Don’t give them any kind of credibility by linking to them (for any reason, even negative attention). If you feel like being chaotic, I suppose you could create spam bots to just make the place worse, but that’s probably not worth the effort. Actual spam-bots are common enough anyway.

Attention spans just keep getting shorter.

(and when things go bad…)

Ad! Ad!! Oh, it’s an ad. :(

Blocker blocker blocker blocker blocker blocker blocker blocker …

Nevertheless, Valve’s work with proton has pretty much crushed the argument that Windows is needed for games. That use to be a major sticking point, preventing people from leaving Windows - but now not so much.

Well, if your GPU is NVIDIA, you will also need a bleeding edge rolling release distro for now. Other than that, anything that ships recent version of KDE Plasma or GNOME (the first one handles Xwayland with DPI scaling a bit better imo and is generally more functional)

I keep hearing people say this. But I’ve got an nvidia card, and I just went with the default Mint Cinnamon install and I’ve had no problems whatsoever. I guess maybe my card isn’t new enough to run into whatever problems other people are talking about.

… Actually, there is one minor annoyance. I get lots of nvidia flatpak updates; and they are large downloads. I’d prefer not to be downloading gigabytes of graphics card updates every week. But other flatpaks demand that I have the latest nvidia stuff, so … I guess that is an nvidia annoyance that I experience. I don’t expect that to be fixed by a bleeding edge distro though!

But we’re talking about proportions of Desktop operating systems. People using the desktop less might decrease (or slow the increase) of total desktop usage; but there would need to be more reason that just that for it to impact Windows disproportionately.

This diagram helps to show that you and Hadriscus agree on the order of the posts, but not on how to describe it. That’s pretty interesting to me.

• 4, 2, 1, 3 – labeling the posts from top to bottom with which order they should then be read. So the first post is read forth, the second post is read second, etc.)
• 3, 2, 4, 1 – listing the order that the posts should be read if they were understood to be labelled in 1-4 top-down. So we should read the third post first, the second post second, forth post third, …

Yes - tortured using a burning hot gas-light, from what I understand.

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