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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: December 3rd, 2024

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  • That sucks. I know what it’s like to feel like the only voice of reason when your company is shooting itself in the foot.

    I see from other comments you’re already looking for a new job, which is a very good idea. From your description of this buyout, it seems very likely that you’re about 6 months to a year out from the layoff stage of the private equity playbook.

    At the end of the day you’ll always have the experience you gained from building all that stuff. Perhaps you’ll get a chance to build it back even better somewhere else!





  • Anecdotally, I’ve had way more audio issues in Windows than I’ve had in Linux.

    Linux audio setups don’t always work out-of-the-box, and sometimes require a bit more configuration, but once you get them set up the way you like, they stay that way.

    Windows audio configuration is flaky as hell. It’s constantly changing with updates, and I’ve had so many issues with drivers just silently failing. It seems to have the most trouble with discrete sound cards and USB audio interfaces. I can’t tell you how many Discord and Teams calls I’ve had in Windows where the first 5 minutes is re-configuring audio settings that didn’t stick. This is basically a non-issue in my Linux setups.

    macOS audio is probably the best combination of easy to configure and it works consistently. The biggest downside is that you need a lot of 3rd party software to do anything more advanced than setting a single device and volume for the entire system.

    Note: I primarily use pipewire now. I used to have more problems back when I used pulseaudio.










  • You can never be 100% sure, but there are protective factors that make it less likely, and they mostly boil down to incentive structure:

    • Ownership - Is the project run by a non-profit? A for-profit company? A hobbyist? This is the best indicator of a project’s long-term trajectory, because it generally indicates the purpose behind creating it.
    • Business model - How does the project make money? Donations? Subscription? One time payment? Generally models where you can outright purchase a copy of a particular version is insulated against future updates you don’t like. Donations protect against exploitation, but run the risk of the project being unsustainable and abandoned.
    • Source - Open source code isn’t a silver bullet, but (especially with good licensing) it can make enshittification less likely as it’s a lot easier for dissenters to spin up a fork / competitor. It also makes it very difficult to hide sketchy stuff like data collection and back doors.
    • Red flags - You should avoid anything that is SaaS, backed by an investment firm, or publicly traded. All of these involve incentive structures that encourage and reward exploitation of consumers and employees for increasing profit margins.

  • Just leave poor people alone and public domain should start at the death of the author(s).

    I generally agree, but it gets complicated with works that have many contributors, like a film. Does the costume designer own the rights to a movie more than a writer? A director? A stunt coordinator? Who among them gets to decide how that work can be used? A consensus among hundreds of people is very unlikely.

    FOSS projects deal with this issue a lot when a project wants to change licensing for example, but they need every contributor’s approval, some of whom may be very difficult to reach.

    Also, selling the rights to an IP can be a huge windfall for creators if it gets big enough and they’re okay with giving up control. This is especially common when the original creator wants to retire.

    “Intellectual property” is a complicated concept, and I don’t know if a perfect system can exist. Though, it could easily be better for creators than it is now.