yam

yam OP wrote (edited )

A friend of mine once pointed out: abusers don't abuse everyone.

Definitely. What I could be concerned about is that the threshold for what's seen as abuse is rather low for RMS, such as having a mattress in his office:

“He literally used to have a mattress on the floor of his office. He kept the door to his office open, to proudly showcase that mattress and all the implications that went with it. Many female students avoided the corridor with his office for that reason…I was one of the course 6 undergrads who avoided that part of NE43 precisely for that reason. (the mattress was also known to have shirtless people lounging on it…)”

The author immediately jumps to conclusions that it's about RMS being a pervert rather than being frugal. He's never been paid salary or travel expenses from FSF nor charged anything for his talks and events, because he doesn't want to exclude anyone, and the office was where he lived:

Until around 1998, my office at MIT was also my residence. I was even registered to vote from there.

It has to taken into the account that RMS has some powerful enemies. To me, the rape allegations against Julian Assange appeared questionable too, but it's difficult to mention this without coming across as rape apologist.

Is the following evidence about RMS's abusive behaviour, or is it some random person telling a bad text editor joke, because that is what much of the evidence against him looks like:

I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”

It's the pettiest things that are used against him now. We should at least examine what someone really means when they call him out for being a "creep":

Stallman is brilliant — software he’s written is at the bedrock layer of modern computing. He’s also a certifiable creep. Circa 2011, I posted a series of links regarding Stallman’s weirdness and creepiness, including video of him picking something off his foot and eating it,, his deeply hypocritical stance on cell phones and supermarket discount cards, and his truly bizarre and inadvertently hilarious 7,000-word rider for speaking engagements.

0

yam wrote

Among other things, it was claimed that the description of the addon is too detailed and thus violates the Chrome Web Store rules.

Just installed it. Being removed from the Chrome Web Store is the true sign of quality for an anti-tracking add-on.

5

yam wrote

such as telling a woman he'd commit suicide if she didn't sleep with him.

Yea, except not really:

I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him.

Not to defend the behavior but the exaggerations don't serve anyone.

−1

yam wrote (edited )

First you start dunking on vegans and veganism:

Tbh I think I dislike most vegans and dont really have a problem with carnists.

Veganism in most cases is just a bullshit reason to be a shitty person.

Then you share wild claims that veganism causes more animals to be killed:

But everyone would move to plants so more plants would have to be grown. More food would be wasted/ farmers who kill animals make more money and more animals would be killed.

What you are writing doesn't give me the impression that you care a lot about animal liberation. Could you help me explain what I got wrong?

(And before that, you've shown you're happy to go straight to ad-hominem attacks, when I list some stats about Bitcoin's impact on climate, and now you complain about bullying, but never mind...)

6

yam wrote

as if it's better to just let meat rot in the trash or to buy produced rather than acquire and consume meat without spending money.

It's not all vegans that hate on eating dumpster dived flesh. From a utilitarian point of view it doesn't harm anyone, even if it's gross. It's a debated point.

for a site where i frequently see critiques of ideology itself this hardcore subscription to veganism is ridiculous.

Carnism is also an ideology even if it's invisible to you. You don't magically become free from ideology by eating eggs and cheese.

8

yam wrote

The linked video, "Guy Breaks Up Fight By Eating Chips", is wonderfully elusive de-escalation.

It's a useful guide but not applicable in some situations. I've often seen harassment of someone while they're doing a talk or lecture. In that case starting a random conversation (Distraction) with the target is useless, because the issue is that they're being distracted. An open call out (Direct) can further escalate the situation. In such a case, I've been told that it's best to divert, by kindly asking the harasser to have a conversation elsewhere.

6

yam wrote

Reply to comment by !deleted30689 in by !deleted30689

I think it's a stretch. In my experience, those who want "back to normal" are more likely to believe that "things are getting better" or just plain climate denialism rather than anxiety.

4

yam wrote (edited )

Carnism involves ideology

According to Melanie Joy, who popularized the term, carnism is an invisible ideology, much like racism. You can be racist even if you don't self-identify as racist (I hope we can agree on this). If you enact racism, you're a racist; if you enact carnism, well, you're a carnist.

6

yam wrote

Tor is not a magic wand for anonymity.

Totally, and people should be aware of this. Valid point.

What really worries me about Tor is not the flaws, but the fact that you are helping the U.S. government

This is such a far out veganism-kills-animals or antifa-are-the-real-fascists style argument. You could make the same point about Signal.

That whole issue of malicious end-nodes harvesting traffic isn't possible over HTTPS-connections. Again, it's true that Tor isn't a magic wand, but I would not blame Tor for government emails allowing unencrypted login. I would blame the government network administrator.

I'll remain skeptical about an author that claims that Tor is "compromised" while publishing guides on how you can Change These Windows 10 Settings Right Now to Protect Your Privacy.

6

yam wrote

that it may be prepared to launch nuclear weapons in response to a cyber-attack

But that's okay. The UK should be completely secure from cyber-attacks as their public service Windows XP computers have mostly been equipped with fully secure anti-virus software, so no chance such a thing will ever happen.

(That said, I couldn't find that cyber-nuclear-retaliation claim in anywhere the article.)

3

yam wrote (edited )

This issue illustrates a larger problem with Tor: it only encrypts traffic through the Tor browser, thereby leaving all other (non-Tor browser) traffic exposed.

The author is apparently not aware of torify or Tails.

Tor may leak IP addresses when accessing files, such as PDFs or other documents, which will likely bypass proxy settings. Windows users are also vulnerable to different types of leaks that will expose the user’s real IP address.

I don't think it's fair to blame Tor for Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Windows being buggy.

Tor Project agrees on the benefits of adding VPN

Ummm, no? From Tor Project:

Can I use a VPN with Tor?

Generally speaking, we don't recommend using a VPN with Tor unless you're an advanced user who knows how to configure both in a way that doesn't compromise your privacy.

So much wrong in that article, I can't even ...

6

yam wrote

"Planes aren't so bad":

In pledging not to fly because of aviation’s outrageously large emissions (per-person emissions, mind you, not in aggregate, where aviation only accounts for 3 percent of global emissions), she famously took a high-tech wind-powered sailing boat across the Atlantic to speak before the UN.

Right damn below, "Hypocritical vegan is evil because planes!":

The irony had not dawned on her that her microscopic climate impact from these efforts was completely swamped by the emissions needed to make possible her five-week vacation across the Atlantic. Roughly estimated, the emissions of her round-trip flights add about 3.3 tons of CO2 equivalents to her climate footprint, increasing her average annual German per capita figure by more than one-third — or an entire year’s worth of CO2 emissions for the average person in Botswana.

4