ambitiousslab

Here in the UK, the new tax year just started. I've sent the order to fill up my ISA for the year. Here's hoping that Trump reverses the tariffs shortly after my buy order gets fulfilled(!)

The tariffs are a bit scary for me. They seem like a way to directly introduce inefficiency and waste into the market. I guess index funds are based on the assumption that over the long term, markets get more efficient and this makes the stock prices go up.

I am still confident that will continue to happen in the long term. But the talk about "dismantling globalism" does make me wonder if any of these underlying assumptions are going to be proven wrong eventually.

I still think common sense will prevail "eventually". These tariffs give a rallying point for the opposition in the US to start kicking in, and rationality to return. But it is funny how, with each downturn, you start to think "maybe this time it's different"!

The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers

Completely agree with this! The big opportunities to get mindshare will come completely out of the blue, and likely as a result of massive blunders on Adobe's side.

We never know when the blunders will come, we just have to be ready and provide the next best user experience so that the free software is the "obvious" place to switch to.

As we saw from the twitter/reddit migrations, the fediverse did get a large amount of traction, but bluesky became the obvious alternative because its UI was basically the same.

And that's fine - the fediverse is it's own thing and many people (myself included) don't want "adoption at all costs" - but I think it's worth pointing out that it does hinder adoption in these big moments.

I have a lot of respect for free software projects that deliberately replicate the UI of an existing proprietary project. They make it so easy to recommend for people to switch when those moments come.

What I have seen is that once people get a taste of free software that really easily solves their problem, it makes the benefits "real" to them and they start to look for other alternatives on their own.

Distributions handle this for you. Installing your software through a distro, instead of getting it from each individual software authour, means that you trust one organisation instead of hundreds of individuals.

For instance, Debian has a strict set of guidelines for Debian developers (who have the right to upload packages). They will be familiar with the software they are packaging, are often independent from the upstream authours, and are expected to check the package for various issues, including licensing, security, version incompatibilities etc. In addition, every upload is signed, so you can see who is responsible for everything.

And when something slips through, as almost happened with xz, the analysis and recovery all happens completely in the open. There may not have been enough eyes on xz to prevent the vulnerability in the first place, but once it was discovered, there were at at least hundreds of people dealing with the aftermath, all in the open.

Compare this with proprietary software, where you'd be lucky if such a vulnerability was even disclosed, vs just silently patched.

Another benefit to postmarketOS is that it runs (close to) mainline linux.

In the android world, vendors fork linux, put their own (often badly written) patches on top to make the device work, and then stop maintaining this fork after a few years.

postmarketOS carries as minimal patches as possible and actively works to mainline what remains. This makes the "10 year support" goal very achievable, as once a device has mainline support, it will get updates as long as the linux kernel itself is maintained.

By making everything standard and relying on the upstream kernel and linux stack as a whole, any improvements made to phones also benefit laptop and PC users, and vice versa. So, we have one big platform that can support any kind of device, sharing resources so everyone benefits.

I've used Mobian stable and pmOS stable on both the Librem 5 and PinePhone Pro.

I also can't give in an-depth comparison, but apart from the obvious (differences in available packages, versions and OpenRC vs systemd), I found them basically identical. Both had difficulty keeping the modem connected for more than an hour at a time, but otherwise did everything I expected (wifi, text messages, mobile networks, adaptaive apps, cameras, music/podcasts, etc).

For now, I'm sticking with pmOS, as, for the current stable version, Mobian doesn't offer prebuilt Librem 5 images with full disk encryption support (I can't remember why - this is specific to the device, and I'm hoping it will be fixed in the next release).

Yes, me too! But, only if I have the autonomy to improve things where I can. Otherwise, I just find it demotivating

I agree, it's a great UI in terms of speed and no JS, but it's not super intuitive and not helped by the way it's been split into modules.

Basically, each subdomain (git.sr.ht, todo.sr.ht etc) doesn't link to the others - the only one that links everywhere is the root "sr.ht". You can think of sr.ht as a "hub" that links to the others. So - to take an example:

• You can open "tickets" (todo.sr.ht) from https://sr.ht/~delthas/senpai/
• But - if you click on "source" (git.sr.ht), the references to the other pages anymore (including back to the hub)

So, in your case, if you replace git.sr.ht with just sr.ht in the URL, it should take you back to the "hub" for that project. Then, if the tickets feature is enabled, you should see a link to "tickets" there.

The frontends provide other benefits on top of just privacy - e.g. invidious lets you watch youtube videos without javascript, download videos directly on some instances, etc.

On iPhone, I recommend Monal.

Monal comes close.

nlnet is the main one that comes to mind.

How much money do you donate?

I am very privileged to have some money left over after fulfilling essential needs. So, I set a fixed amount a while ago, and then whenever I am able to make a saving (e.g. switching to a cheaper phone plan) or get a pay rise (if it ever comes), I'll put some of the gains into donations.

When do you donate?

I remember reading somewhere that many organisations prefer regular donations to one-off donations, even if the regular amount is smaller, since it helps them plan better. So I always give regular donations, even if the amount is smaller to compensate.

I have everything set up as automatic donations in liberapay and OpenCollective. So, it's pretty seamless!

If anyone ever wants to gift me anything, I'll ask for them to consider a donation to a project instead.

Do you have a minimum donation amount?

I try to avoid payments under £5. Below that point, way too much of the money goes to fees. For some projects where I donate a small amount, I donate yearly instead of monthly instead.

How do you decide what projects to support? Do you forego donations if you’ve contributed in other ways?

I don't donate to every project I benefit from, but I care a lot about XMPP and Linux on Mobile, so I donate mainly to projects in these areas. I've also contributed code to some of these projects, but I keep donating as I want to support the ongoing maintenance as well as just individual features.

Do you donate to all equally or do you have some sort of ranking? Is it by amount of use, subjective preference, something else?

I care about XMPP as a whole succeeding, so I donate to many projects I don't even use myself. I wanted to donate to clients and servers for each major platform, so I split the clients like this:

• iOS clients: 1 project
• Android clients: 1 project
• Linux clients: 4 projects
• Server software: 1 project

Then, I donated an equal amount to each platform (so, for example all the Linux clients combined would get the same as the single Android client).

However, since I was donating so little to each Linux client, I decided to gradually increase the amount I donate to those over time.

I've also recently started donating to libraries / ancillary projects in the same space. But I don't have much money left to play with for them, so the amount is smaller :(

Linux on Mobile is simpler as I only donate to two projects, so I just donate equally to both.

So, long story short, it started with some kind of structure, but has become more subjective since then :)

What platforms do you prefer using? Liberapay, Opencollective, Patreon, ko-fi, Paypal, Monero, actual post?

I really like liberapay, especially as it mostly works without Javascript. But Opencollective is pretty nice too. If the developer themselves gives a preference, I'll normally use that platform.

One thing I'm interesting in knowing is - do people generally prefer donating to fewer projects, but with bigger amounts, or vice versa? One criticism of my approach is that, because I am spread quite thin, I risk not really helping any project that much, whereas if I focused on one or two projects, at least those could benefit a bit more.