> Xorg proper is now reverting a lot of their changes
They're returning to a previous state which they believe possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary? Somebody should come up with a word for that.
You mean the Unabomber was right? Technology inevitably leads to totalitarianism?
Cars are not inherently tools of government, it's just they've been regulated such that that is their direction of development. Personal computers were similarly not that way either.
The key problem in both cases is imposing the requirement to be connected to the internet, after which it's game over.
This story actually helped crystallize why I have been quite so knee jerk against things like Codes of Conduct.
The whole point of a Code of Conduct, Homeowner's Association, or anything else which attempts to codify politeness, common sense, respect, etc. is to be used as a bureaucratic bludgeon against someone. And, while those may get put in place to get used against a single egregiously bad person, they then stick around to get used by the far more numerous petty political jerks.
It's always weird to me when people cannot fathom that others think and operate differently, here we have an entire thread of people essentially insisting that social status _must_ matter to everyone.
I'm on the spectrum and growing up I worked with special needs kids with my mother as she ran a non-profit focused on specials needs community. Let me tell you, some people are simply not cognizant of social status and there's a whole swath of people who are passingly aware but find it irrelevant to their life. Solitary creatures that go their own way exist in all kinds of highly social species.
This thread feels akin to threads you occasionally see where a bunch of selfish people insist altruistic acts _cannot_ exist. Their insistent claims against the possibility of altruistic acts only reveal their internal state, they aren't high quality arguments, just assumptive assertions by people who can't imagine alternate mental states.
Some people just want to spend their lonely numbered days free.
FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc. They're often found under labeling like "commercial digital signage" or "business display" or the like, they seem to often try to avoid using "TV" (if being cynical maybe to make them harder for normal people to discover and confuse them if they do). But they're often nice panels aimed at serious running hours, without this sort of junk (which would give enterprise IT conniptions) and can have very useful feature support like 802.1x authentication which so many devices still lack. Players like NEC will even advertise their use of an RPi compute and wink at lack of spyware [0] for some of their products, but lots of major "smart TV" providers also have a commercial lineup.
I think they're well worth considering, particularly for the HN crowd, granted I suppose for people who truly want built-in netflix or the like without connecting something like a Roku or Apple TV maybe it's less optimal. But even they might change their tunes back to the concept of separate boxes and normal panels if they dislike all the ads and data tracking.
HN is guilty of this constantly. Everyone who posts here is implicitly in the right and users unequivocally back that attitude, even when it realistically is a scenario of "maybe you were a shit employee and were fired for it and your employer isnt in the wrong?" or "your Show HN really isn't that impressive". We're not allowed to say anything critical of other HN users without being downvoted or reprimanded by dang.
So why is it any surprise that every startup company has precisely the same back-patting culture?
As a sidenote: "Carbon footprint" as a concept is mostly about industry gaslighting consumers. The original intent was to divert attention from industrial policy to consumer choice. Unfortunately the consumer has very little choice all in all as our economy runs on fossil fuels and individual choice matters very little [0].
"Carbon footprint" was originally invented by the public relations agency Ogilvy & Mather for BP as a concept to divert attention from industry to individuals.
That's not to say that public pressure is not a good thing. It is. But the actual causal effect it has for a better future is in the form of creating political sentiment. Individual carbon economy is mostly about promoting a political sentiment via signaling.
But generally it's a fools errand trying to scientifically balance your "carbon footprint" since this was not an engineering concept to start with. If it makes you feel good to plant trees do it! Trees are awesome. Buying less stuff you don't need is also always good I think. For example I use my cell phones until something irrevocably gives up and drive my current car as long as possible (generally making a new car is always more resource consuming than driving the current one I think).
[0] For example Vaclaw Smil "How the world really works" discusses our fossil fuel based economy at length
This is a useful analysis of what "being an adult" means. I've noticed that the moment when I feel like avoiding social discomfort or potential conflict as the precise moment when I have a choice: either be an adult and understand what I want and communicate it, or avoid it and dislike myself and project those feelings onto others.
Invariably when I choose to behave like an adult I feel empowered and ultimately at peace with myself and others in the end. If I choose avoidance, resentment builds, and further avoidance follows.
The idea that avoidance behaviors can be selfish or agreeable cuts through much self-deception. This can be helpful when I tell myself "I'm just being nice" because it adds the proviso: "yeah, but I'm not being an adult." Which I could see being a really helpful inner monologue in those situations.
This is also intimately connected to the concept of "taking responsibility", which begins with not avoiding something which "someone else" might deal with so you don't have to.
https://github.com/savitasinghvit/piwm/blob/master/piwm.c