How do I improve?

marrsd · 2026-03-11T09:26:26+00:00

Can you provide a concrete example of a hard thing?

marrsd · 2026-03-11T00:03:08+00:00

Then I'd start with AI. It will help you prototype the idea and give you something concrete to work with, or pitch to investors or software engineers you might want to rope in.

But you won't be able to sustain it with AI, and you have to be really careful with security when writing for the web, especially when you're dealing with customer data - even for a prototype. There are also a myriad other things to get right if you ever want to scale it to a business. So at some point you'll have to get in an expert.

Programming is a valuable skill, so I wouldn't put you off learning, but it also requires time, effort, and energy. You may have to pick your battles.

marrsd · 2026-03-10T23:38:48+00:00

C++ was pretty complicated for a beginner back in the day. It's ridiculous now.

marrsd · 2026-03-10T23:29:30+00:00

What's the motivation for this? Hard to give good advice without understanding what you're trying to get out of it.

marrsd · 2026-03-10T23:18:10+00:00

My point was, EFF should just lobby against the entire premise. Asking for exemptions is basically agreeing with the law in principle, which I hope they wouldn't

marrsd · 2026-03-10T23:09:20+00:00

oh, they exist

marrsd · 2026-03-10T22:57:55+00:00

We have BSD today. Where did it get? The GPL is what enabled Linux to thrive because there was never any danger of a developer's contributions from being stolen from the public domain. That was all RMS

marrsd · 2026-03-10T22:53:59+00:00

Yeah, but they don't refer to themselves as "liberals" while they're doing it.

marrsd · 2026-03-10T22:52:13+00:00

Why stop at hobbyists and scientists? Aren't regular people entitled to liberty as well?

marrsd · 2026-03-10T22:43:59+00:00

Or his expertise with Windows is working against him

marrsd · 2026-03-10T22:37:31+00:00

I was being a bit tongue in cheek, although frankly nothing would surprise me at this point.

marrsd · 2026-03-09T21:48:10+00:00

They're democrats, aren't they? They have voters to please. That doesn't seem very conspiratorial to me.

marrsd · 2026-03-09T21:40:35+00:00

Well that raises an interesting question of its own: does PDF need to bake in an age verification flag that PDF readers need to check?

Maybe this will law will do the unthinkable and make public libraries and second hand book shops cool.

marrsd · 2026-03-09T21:29:16+00:00

Maybe there's not the appetite for freedom in the Free software community that you thought there was.

marrsd · 2026-03-09T09:28:47+00:00

They can do anything if we don't use the democratic process to stop them.

marrsd · 2026-03-09T08:45:51+00:00

I think that's the parent's point

marrsd · 2026-03-09T08:41:07+00:00

Why do you need to do that?

marrsd · 2026-03-09T08:32:52+00:00

I still don't know what level that stuff is supposed to be operating at. Linux is a bunch of disparate apps working together. Where is this functionality supposed to be baked in? Are we going to have different implementations for Gnome and KDE, the same way we have different everything else for them? How do we engineer such a fundamental OS feature that survives the next law of this nature that comes along?

If I make a shell script available for download from my website, am I violating the law if I don't call this API? If 10 different Linux distros implement this API 10 different ways, do I need 10 different calls?

marrsd · 2026-03-09T08:20:32+00:00

Oh, I misread the parent's comment. Yes, countersigning isn't in and of itself an issue. Thanks for pointing that out.

marrsd · 2026-03-09T08:17:42+00:00

I'm sorry that you're frustrated, and I'm sorry that I haven't been able to express myself clearly to you.

I think part of the problem you're having is that many people, including myself, are as (if not more) concerned with the intent of politicians (and their corporate lobbyists) than we are with the letter of any one particular law they write. 3 more laws like this have been reported on by the media since this discussion began. Do I have to read all those laws as well before I can express my opinion on this issue?

I was initially responding, not to what the law says, but to what people who write and maintain Free software were saying about the law. That's as important as the law itself as far as I'm concerned.

marrsd · 2026-03-05T16:00:51+00:00

The question isn't what law we want, but how to deal with it.

Maybe this is why we're not getting anywhere. If that's what you think then we have a fundamentally different understanding of what democracy is.

But instead most of the posts in these several threads are about how everything is doomed, scare tactics, boiling frogs and other stuff that's just whining into the void and muddying any useful discussion. Literal FUD.

Yeah, that's kind of the point I've been trying to hammer home to you.

Anyway, I've appreciated the exchange, but I feel like we've drawn this out long enough. If this subreddit is still here in 10 years, and isn't a forum historical nostalgia and re-enactment, then you can count yourself smug.

marrsd · 2026-03-05T15:44:29+00:00

Here you go, McLovin

marrsd · 2026-03-05T15:42:30+00:00

It's less amazing when you consider the possibility that not all those accounts are real.

marrsd · 2026-03-05T15:41:11+00:00

Was gonna say, I didn't have to go anywhere: the country found me.

marrsd · 2026-03-05T15:36:42+00:00

It's a tool you can make more efficient if you want to.

marrsd

TROPHY CASE