Why should they have to vet everyone? If I learn that the people who deliver my packages, manufacture my phones, or grow my food support practices that I deem fundamentally harmful to society, I change my behavior accordingly. Where does this weird idea come from that I have to vet literally everyone for my rejection of Brave to be valid?
> The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Are you referring to Eich, or the people who react to his political choices?
You're probably going to want to take a look at how your smartphone battery is made. You're taking a principled stand on the basis of not using a browser from a company cofounded by a guy that voted differently than you, but it sounds like you're willfully ignoring the child slave labor used to create the device you're using to type that opinion.
Do as you please, but it makes no sense to me, and doesn't strike me a principled at all: it's basically virtue signaling. But then again, I don't view people that hold different political views as my enemy. They're just people I disagree with, and they can still make a great browser, even though we disagree on some things.
Sorry, but if you think that the issue is that Brendan Eich "voted differently than" me, you're either not understanding or willfully misrepresenting what this discussion is about.
I'm not sure what you're so upset about. He gave a thousand dollars to a political campaign that was in favor of outlawing gay marriage in California. This is standard political stuff that people can agree or disagree on.
What exactly is a "technical difference", and why is only that relevant? I am more than my interactions with software and companies, just like every other human. Why should I focus on an arbitrary subset of factors when making decisions?
And the non-technical factors are what my friends and loved ones have to experience due to Brendan Eich's choices. So again, why should I ignore them? I'm more than a user of software.
Because when we decide on a goal for our technical work and decide on an acceptable code of conduct inside the project, our differences outside the project don't matter to our collaboration within the project. This is a core foundation of the Free Software and Open Source movements. (And it's worrisome to me that it's being eroded.)
My point is that this same setting aside of irrelevant (to the technical aspects) differences should apply to use of software in addition to development of software.
> Because when we decide on a goal for our technical work and decide on an acceptable code of conduct inside the project, our differences outside the project don't matter to our collaboration within the project.
That's a choice you are free to make. Other people can and will make different choices. Many people never shared that principle, and instead happily exercised freedom of association to not support or spend time around awful people.
Projects are not some magic boundary in which everything outside is left outside. You can't dump piles of money into hurting your colleagues and expect them to see that as a neutral choice.
I'm not working on a project together with Brendan Eich, I'm choosing not to use a product from which he directly profits. I sincerely hope that we both agree that this is a completely normal and rational choice.
I think I failed to explain my point: Just like OSS contributors don't have to agree on anything but the goal of the project and how to treat each other while working on it, people shouldn't decide what software to use based on anything but the technical merits of the program.
Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Not that I actually recommend Brave: I have no opinions on it. I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
But why? You haven't given an argument. In our capitalist societies, I have two avenues of influencing public life: my vote and my wallet. Rich people like Brendan Eich have a much more impactful vote due to their capital, so the only real avenue I have left is my wallet.
So please explain: why shouldn't I use my wallet to prevent people like Brendan Eich from shaping society against my friends and loved ones? Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
> Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Or I can use Firefox and strengthen the competition.
Fair enough. My argument is this: as a society we need to live alongside people we disagree with, perhaps even disagree with fundamentally. My ideal is to not judge people's work in one field by their work (or opinions) in another. I think that this way we can get more done in the fields in which we are in agreement. How well do you think the United States would have gone without the Three-fifths Compromise? IMO not well. Do I agree with the slaveholders? No. Do I think the compromise was better than refusing to work with them at all? Yes.
> Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
Thanks, with that argument I can better understand where you're coming from. But I would counter: compromise on a social level doesn't require all individuals to compromise too. Boycotts etc. have always been a tool for individuals to make their voices heard, and to influence the exact compromise that is reached.
Since we're apparently still trying to find a compromise on this topic, it seems imperative to me that I continue my boycott of Brendan Eich's companies, so the eventual compromise will have better terms for my friends and loved ones. Unless I see definitive proof that this approach is worse for the people close to me, I won't give up the only social tool I have to protect them.
> Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
First, Brave has lots more monetization avenues than just the crypto stuff. But even if I turned all of that off, I would increase the usage stats of Brave while decreasing the stats of Firefox. Just because Brendan Eich doesn't profit quite as much off of me doesn't mean he gains no profit.
Brendan Eich didn't personally write the code, and he doesn't benefit from Firefox using it. If anything this hurts him, since Firefox is catching up to an advantage of Brave without investing their own development resources.
No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
But that still means you have a couple of years with a higher concentration of methane, and given the higher impact this is obviously very relevant, no?
Of course this is inside human control - we are directly responsible for what's happening! Unless you're one of the people who are willingly putting their head in the sand, I don't understand how it makes sense to act like this is still in question.
Why should I, you completely missed mine... in that "guilt" is not appropriate or healthy here... you are not personally, directly responsible. That isn't to say that nothing can be done, but guilt serves nobody.
We seem to have a couple generations with literally toxic levels of guilt in so many ways that is completely unhealthy.
The AI can also only ever predict that you might die. So how should these predictions be weighed? Say there's a group of five children - the car predicts a 90% chance of death for them, vs. 50% for you if the car avoids them. According to your comments, it seems like you'd want the car to choose to hit the children, right?
What is the lowest likelihood of your own death you'd find acceptable in this situation?
> No. There is NO demand for transit from people living in the city. None. The demand is from _companies_ that force people to work in/near dense city cores.
Am I missing an obvious joke here? Because I've lived in multiple cities with great public transit, and this quote couldn't be further from the truth - the people love their public transit options, and they keep voting to build it out further.
The cost of housing further backs this claim. The market is usually right - and amenities like a tram or great public transit lead to higher prices particularly near the stops or in a certain proximity. With extra travelers you get shops and small business that spring up that corporations like Starbucks can't as readily compete against. That further drives interest and development and you create a positive economic feedback loop.
"Die Regelung habe bereits in den Zeiten des Kalten Krieges gegolten "und hatte keine praktische Relevanz", teilte das Ministerium mit. Sie sei auch nicht sanktioniert. Im Gegensatz zur alten Fassung gilt die Genehmigungspflicht nun auch außerhalb des Spannungs- und Verteidigungsfalls."
The rule existed, but apparently they broadened the scope. In any case, even if the rule is ignored nothing happens - so the question is of course why that rule exists in the first place of course.
When there's a rule with a condition that meant the rule hasn't applied for decades, and then the condition is removed so that the rule always applies, it's no longer the same rule.
Plenty of people in Germany (on all social/political levels) still talk about climate change, and have done so without pause before, during and since Ukraine.
If you think that everything "seems to be fine after all", you're in for a very rude awakening.
Is that your perception, or do you have data to back this up?
For context, here's one source saying public concern for climate change has fallen in Germany from 42% to 34% from 2022 to 2025, in line with other European countries. [0] This was a study done by a German sustainability non-profit.
Here's another source stating that globally, news coverage about climate change has diminished by 38% from 2021 to 2025. [1]
Here's a third source stating that the share of German citizens who claim to be "very concerned" about climate change has dropped from 50% to 33% from 2019 to 2025. [2]
> Even if Trump's approach is worse than Biden's, which I'm not sure of, that still does not mean it is bad for the country.
But the discussion isn't about whether it's bad, but whether it's in the countries best interest. If you switch to a less effective & more damaging policy compared to your predecessor, it's not in the countries best interest, even if it's (supposedly) better than nothing.
One scary thought however is: once automation has progressed this far and there are enough mostly autonomous humanoid and/or military robots, what power does the suddenly jobless general population have against those who own and operate them, which will mostly be rich people - and the government, which is in many places made up of other rich people?
I'm not saying this is a likely scenario. But as far as I can tell, we will objectively be mostly at their mercy. And how merciful have they been over the last few decades?
> The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Are you referring to Eich, or the people who react to his political choices?
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