Could you please define this. As it stands authoritarian is the thought terminating cliche of choice for the unintelligent and uneducated to avoid having to investigate and reckon with the questions of substance such as class content of the state, state form, satisfaction of the people with the government etc.

Normally I don’t respond to low level comments like this, but the intellectual laziness here is mind boggling. Dictionaries exist for a reason.

The people hold them accountable, through the mechanisms I described previously

So, free and fair elections. Well, now we’re back to square one, and pretty much describing how Western democracies work.

Nordic countries offer sizable concessions to their working classes because the Soviets were right next to them, and already offered better safety nets.

Ah, yes, the soviet Union, definitely not imperialist. Sarcasm aside, they literally did not allow their population to leave. They killed people who dared to leave. That’s not a sign of things going well, to mention just one.

The state serves private interests in capitalism

Just because you repeat it a hundred times doesn’t make it true. The very mechanisms you described are used (with varying degrees of success depending on how well the democracy functions) to keep the state accountable to the people.

you’re again giving examples of concessions given largely because of working class organization, not through the “democratic processes.”

So then why are these mostly things that parties campaigned on, got voted into power for and then implemented?

Fascism is a result of the decay in capitalism and imperialism

That’s a very, very broad interpretation that many historians would disagree with. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it’s the case. How do these capitalist structures decay into imperialism then?

consultative democracy

Yes, but who enforces the consulting and the usage of the information gathered from consulting? Without accountability, that’s just fantasy and/or simping for authoritarianism. Let’s not forget, every authoritarian leader, party or Organisation has its supporters who will claim they’re not authoritarian.

Capitalism inevitably tends towards centralization of the essential means of production and distribution into fewer and fewer hand

Except when it doesn’t. There are plenty of examples where countries that have capitalism based economies moved significantly to the left. Look at Nordic countries, for instance.

Very few leftist parties can get anything done in western countries because the media is largely controlled by capitalists

What about all the public broadcasters? There are many countries where they’re quite strong. And as to parties getting things done, what about:

• Minimum wages
• Welfare systems
• Massive improvements in workplace safety
• Universal healthcare
• Childcare

I could go on and on, but that’s not the point. The point is that fascists are trying to weaken the electoral system because they know how effective it can be. Otherwise, they wouldn’t give a fuck. And part of the way they do that is by downplaying its efficacy in order to wear it down and eventually get rid of it.

A single party system can be more democratic if it’s a consultative democracy and reflects the will of the majority, like how it works in China

Oh really? How do you hold the people in power accountable, then, if they’re part of the only party that is allowed to exist (which that party itself decided, what a coincidence!)?

In capitalism, a tiny class of people controls the most essential means of production and distribution for society.

False, that is the result of capitalism when it goes unchecked, not the definition. And different countries have different levels of checks on capitalism.

The state represents their interests, and any parties that exist must represent them

Yeah, no, that’s not the case. Otherwise explain to me how many western countries have leftist parties and even marxist-leninist parties. It’s just not the will of the majority. Which leads me back to the point: your (or even my) satisfaction with the results don’t measure how democratic a country is, despite the FUD spread by authoritarians and wannabe authoritarians to destabilize democracies by encouraging people to not participate.

How the hell are elections not indicative of democracy? I mean, just because you have elections doesn’t mean you have a proper democracy (e.g. if there is only one party available), but how those elections are run says a lot. They’re the core of any democracy. Democracy is, by definition, the people being ruled by the people. So you need some form of governance that is accountable to the people.

And capital is far from the only thing that determines if parties are viable. Yes, it plays too much of a role (especially in the US, but there are many western countries that aren’t the US), but let’s not pretend it’s some mysterious being that decides everything. That ignores so many important factors.

Just because the majority of the people in a country disagree with you doesn’t mean it’s not a democracy. In many western countries there are (still) free and fair elections. This is verifiable. But democracy lives off of active participation, and there are people (read: fascists) who see democracy as a threat and do everything they can to sow FUD in order to reduce election participation.

…maybe because many westerners are worried about losing their democracy? I mean, when democracies Fall, they usually don’t make room for better democracies, historically speaking.

Well it has, indirectly. Plenty of times, it has given politics and unions a basis for demanding those improvements. Looking back over the last century or so, conditions have improved, drastically.

Did somebody say Vodka???

This is an age old discussion. The FSF doesn’t “approve” of Debian because it contains proprietary drivers (which are already in the Linux kernel). Even when Debian didn’t have these drivers by default and you had to go out of your way to download an unofficial version that did have these drivers, that was too much for the FSF. Thing is, in most cases you need those drivers to get your hardware working properly. For instance (and IIRC), the latest WiFi version that has a WiFi card available where the drivers are fully open source is WiFi 4 (back then WiFi N).

There will always be a compromise (setting aside the ID thing on Discord, which is a whole other can of worms and affects open source software as well). Even if you’re running only Linux (or FreeBSD or whatever other open source OS), there are in all likelihood still closed source drivers being used. Or, you decide to limit yourself to WiFi 4 or ethernet connections, for instance. OK, now you don’t have any closed source drivers anymore, yay! Except… The processor and processor architecture your computer is running on isn’t open source. Shit. And in fact, there currently is only one open source processor architecture: RISC-V, but that still has a bit of a ways to go until it’s ready for mass adoption. And even then, I’m sure you’d find something closed source in whatever computer you’d be using. It’s always (at least in the current day and age) a question of how much you can realistically have open source.

The situation with that game definitely seems a little more extreme in the other direction, unfortunately. The question that I’m wondering is: the game is open source, what’s preventing you from compiling it yourself? That way you don’t have to run it through steam. And if there aren’t proper instructions, check the license of the original project, it may just be a violation of that license (since a clear compilation path is practically a part of the source code, since without you can’t compile it and thus use it properly otherwise).

The goal is to create a more secure version of the program. Since (safe) rust eliminates entire classes of security relevant bugs, a rust version has the potential to be much more secure that the C version. And since rust can eliminate entire classes of bugs, we can put more energy into finding bugs like the ones presented in the article.

The weaker license is unfortunate, though.

Ouch, I looked through a bit of stuff… This person seems to have been through some shit (to put it mildly) and is having trouble processing things. Reminds me of my lowest points when I was in an abusive situation as well as the time after. I hope things get better.

The question is really: what is your goal? You say Open Source software development - which software are you talking about? Are there certain projects you’re looking at? Are you looking at starting your own project? Are you trying to move the open source ecosystem forward generally? (Also, what is your current skillset? Are you just getting into development or are you fairly experienced already in other platforms?)

If it’s the first, follow the project and see what they’re doing. If it’s the second: look at the requirements. Most likely though, you will be stuck with Android, because the iPhone is even worse, and Linux on phones is far from being daily driver worthy for the vast majority of people. Alternatively, as people mentioned, you could try a Cross-Platform framework, but do be aware that these have downsides, as well. If it’s the third: why not try to see what you can do to improve the situation of Linux on phones? Depending on what you’re already capable of, you may already have the prerequisites to move that area forward, something badly needed IMO.

I know it’s a meme, but sometimes you can really help people by just listening. Sometimes that’s all they need. And they’ve chosen you. See it as an honor.

Doing that can reveal a whole bunch of interesting patterns. I was repairing something on a circuit board once and was trying to figure out the wiring. Trying to get more light, I shone my phone’s flashlight at it. At some point I suddenly realized that the circuit board lets a bit of light through. I realized that, at least for some of the board, I could shine a flashlight onto the other side and see pretty exactly how the circuit was laid out. It also looked really, really cool.

Oh, so now you’re eating Jolly ranchers out of the carpet?

And with that memory freshly back in your mind, I’m out.

I get the impression there’s more to unpack here. Why does your brother feel responsible for something your ex did and you never told anyone about? I don’t think volunteering at a women’s shelter will solve the problem, there seems to be something more deep seated than that. I think therapy would do much more. He can still support domestic violence victims if he finds this is something he legitimately wants to do (and there are many ways of doing that).

EDIT: you mentioned he had a couple of dwi’s/dui’s… That really sounds more like something where a therapist could help. Again, if there still is a legitimate wish to support domestic violence victims, then that can be looked into then.

Honestly, I want to like Kodi, but even this first screenshot looks much better than anything I’ve been able to muster together in Kodi.

How did you know? /s

IIRC, there was a time when 4chan figured this out. You have three guesses as to which direction this went.