> The suggestion that the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) becomes intoxicated from eating the fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea) is an attractive, established, and persistent tale
> Possibly the most iconic is the story of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) and marula fruit. According to this widespread lore, elephants across Africa preferentially feed on the fallen, fermenting fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea), becoming intoxicated
“Ultimately, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
I feel "people should not have have consequences for what they say", and "people should be able to avoid consequences for what they have done", are separate concepts. One does not require believing in the other. For example I believe the former, but for the latter I believe everyone should be punished when they break the law.
People should have consequences for what they say, but not from the government. You should never be prosecuted for what you say, no matter how vile. But other people are free to exercise their rights in response, including freedom of association.
So if public figures with a sizeable following start calling for you and your family to be chased down and gutted like animals, should they legally be allowed to do that? Do you actually believe that?
> I feel "people should not have have consequences for what they say", and "people should be able to avoid consequences for what they have done", are separate concepts.
'Saying' is an example of 'doing', and the moderation to speech happens after the fact, including (yes) in USA. Consider the case of a person yelling fire or 'he's got a gun!' when there is none, or a death threat.
Not as clever as it may sound. It is perfectly possible that someone has nothing to hide in a good way, whereas someone without anything to say for himself cannot be easily imagined as a good faith social individual. So in a way this is comparing apples to bad apples and claiming they are perfectly equal.
TPUs can be more efficient, but are quite difficult to program for efficiently (difficult to saturate). That is why Google tends to sell TPU-services, rather than raw access to TPUs, so they can control the stack and get good utilization. GPUs are easier to work with.
I think the software side of the story is underestimated. Nvidia has a big moat there and huge community support.
>Windows is strictly quite a bit less configurable than Linux.
I wish I could agree, but I just can't: the OP may be correct, depending on which Linux desktop environment he's talking about.
*My* Linux is indeed much more configurable than Windows, but I'm using KDE. However, that's only promoted by a few distros like openSUSE. Most users are going to get GNOME shoved in their faces whether they like it or not, and no, GNOME is *NOT* more configurable than Windows. GNOME needs to be used exactly as the GNOME devs want you to use it, because otherwise it'll just break on the next update. For many users who are not Linux experts, and perhaps use Linux at work where their IT departments only allow them to use GNOME, they think GNOME==Linux because that's what most distros push so strongly, so I can see why OP would make such a claim.
I think there are two factors that lead people to make statements like that. The first is a given: they're talking about configuring it as a user, not a developer. Obviously Linux can do whatever you want it to do if you build your own distro from source. But additionally, while Linux is also substantially configurable in userland, those configurations might not actually cover the cases people need. You can, for example, pick between GNOME, KDE, etc -- which, on a pedantic level, is "objectively" more customizable than Windows, where you have exactly one option. Yet, if the settings within all of the off-the-shelf GUI shells do not serve the use cases the settings of the single option on Windows does, users will have every reason to assert that, on a practical level, the degree of customizability is inferior and not sufficient for them.
The idea that KDE is not objectively more configurable, in every way, than Windows, is lunacy.
However, GNOME is completely the opposite; doing anything differently requires installing special extensions, which break every time an update happens. The devs do not want you changing it from their One True Vision for how a desktop should work (which, apparently, is almost identical to a tablet).
People who aren't Linux experts or long-time users may not even know about KDE, Xfce, etc., and just think that GNOME is the only way to use Linux. Most distros push it very strongly, and even in corporate environments it's pushed hard. My company uses Linux, but the IT department only supports GNOME; luckily I'm able to install KDE but I'm basically a reneage by doing so.
So if we're comparing Windows (which has only one DE, the Windows one), to GNOME (which for many users is synonymous with Linux), I'd say he's right: Windows is much more configurable and easy to customize.
Why the Linux world has gone this way, I honestly have no idea. It almost seems like a conspiracy.
> My personal pet peeve is the GTK/Qt divide. Theming has an extra step, as you have to pick a matching theme for the other toolkit apps you inevitably end up using.
Is this perhaps an issue of fractional scaling? I’ve run Openbox/Blackbox on Linux for ~15 years and never had these issues. Not 100% sure I understand the issue at least.
Things look mostly fine (to me) and even if they don’t, the apps still work as they should (no blur). AFAIK Openbox/X11 just uses the DPI the monitor reports and things scale as they should.
Sounds like an issue with Gnome/KDE to me, not with Linux?
I may be wrong, I’m not seeking a super polished look or want to tweak my UIs a lot.
Yes, this is a KDE/GTK issue, but this is also a real-world case.
Linux Greybeards, a hypothetical man with astute technical and sexual prowess, might not be bothered by follies such as proper text rendering, but it is an issue if desktop environments have any chance to compete with mainstream operating systems.
> Yes, this is a KDE/GTK issue, but this is also a real-world case
I believe you when you say it.
> Linux Greybeards, a hypothetical man with astute technical and sexual prowess
No need to be snarky. I was speaking from my own Linux experience (just like you did?), not trying to impress anyone.
Text renders fine in Openbox, hence the question about the issue being with Linux or GTK/KDE. I’ve honestly never heard of these issues or experienced them myself. Perhaps because Openbox is simpler (no fractional scaling AFAIK) so I’ve likely been “shielded” from such issues (never heard about theming or issues like this tbh).
> made around the time when French cars had the worst reputation
A reputation well earned IMO…
> There was no part on this which didn't get replaced during the scant few years he owned it, and it left him stranded like half a dozen times
French cars have a philosophy of more maintenance than German cars. On the other hand, Frenchy spare parts are often cheaper and easier to replace.
E.g. a timing belt replacement on PSA HDI takes just a few hours and costs €2-300. On a VAG TDI, the same procedure is almost a full day at a (competent) workshop and costs ~5-10x as much.
> Openbox does everything I need it to. I don’t want Mac or Windows, they both suck in ways I can’t change.
Sure, Linux can be rougher, but at least I’m not helpless here. I can make the changes I need, and the software is generally less broken IME
> The suggestion that the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) becomes intoxicated from eating the fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea) is an attractive, established, and persistent tale
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article/16/4/2020007...
> Possibly the most iconic is the story of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) and marula fruit. According to this widespread lore, elephants across Africa preferentially feed on the fallen, fermenting fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea), becoming intoxicated
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