You could build a FOSS global gossip network and it would still have it's data harvested.

Yes -- but people could audit the code and find out exactly what data was being harvested, make informed decisions, and fork it to create an alternate version that didn't harvest the same data.

(Besides which point, RMS is proposing something beyond software licenses here; he says that such data-gathering should be illegal unless absolutely necessary to the purpose of the business, and heavily taxed if so.)

For example: I guarantee Github's data is scraped.

I was given to understand that the FSF considers Github to be nonfree because it requires the use of nonfree scripts. But I could be mistaken.

Don't put your life on the net, do put disinformation on the net. It is that simple.

It's really not, though. I run uBlock Origin, NoScript, and Privacy Badger, but most users don't. Most people routinely access third-party sites that run Facebook and Google tracking scripts that monitor their browsing habits, and don't even realize it.

And my browser extensions don't prevent other people from disclosing data about me. I don't use Facebook, but of course I know people who do. They've searched for my name, and allowed Facebook to build a pretty good profile of my mutual friends and acquaintances. Some have probably even tagged me in photos.

Of course, I post under my own name and I've posted photos of myself online. And you're right: those disclosures were my choice. But that's not true of everybody. Even if you don't use your real name, even if you don't use social networks, even if you don't post photos of yourself, you still have limited control over that information.

Richard Stallman is falling into the same trap that we've been stuck in for ages - he thinks that there is an easy legislative road out of societal problems.

Did you read the full interview?

He's not just advocating legislative changes; he's advocating cultural and ideological ones too.

This is the same nonsense that people quote when they think that banning guns and knives will eliminate murder...

Wow, you packed an awful lot of straw into that man.

Majority want Gay and Lesbian rights as well as allowing Marijuana and few are fighting against that.

Yes -- now.

As recently as a few years ago, this was not the case; a majority were against those things.

So, are gay rights and marijuana decriminalization right because the majority wants them -- or were they always right, even when the majority didn't want them?

but here's the real issue, do the vast majority of people even want this problem fixed? I do not think they really care.

Sure, but "most people don't care" isn't always a reason in favor of, or against, a particular policy desire. That's tyrrany of the majority.

what Stallman and other technologists MUST come to grasp is that most people fundamentally do not value privacy much at all, so they are willing to trade it away for nearly anything. You have to start at that point and see how you go about helping people

If you're saying that what Stallman should be doing is explaining why people should care, he's been doing that for 30 years. Just how successful he's been, and how effective his methods are, are subject to debate, but I certainly think it's occurred to him that he needs to make a case for why people should care about privacy (among other things).

not playing whack-a-mole with companies that make use of this fundamental aspect of human nature.

I don't think he's advocating a Whac-a-Mole approach. He's advocating sweeping legal changes that wouldn't just affect Facebook, they'd affect any company taking a similar approach.

I think the better advice is, don't answer security questions truthfully.

Questions like "Where did you go to high school?", "What was your mother's maiden name?", "What city were you born in?", etc. aren't hard to find out with an internet search, or just to guess. Hell, depending on your age, you may even still own your first car, in which case somebody who knows your address could simply plug it into Google Street View and see it parked in your driveway.

If a site wants you to set a security question, don't.

If a site forces you to set a security question, lie, and keep a record (ideally in a password locker -- which, yes, probably defeats the entire purpose of having a security question in the first place) of what lie you used. A "correct-horse-battery-staple"-style password is good for this purpose, in case you have to answer a security question over the phone.

"We proactively suspended our self-driving operations, including in California, immediately following the Tempe incident," an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch.

...when you do a thing in response to another thing, that's the definition of reactive.

I've seen people say that Vista was completely unnecessary and existed to fix things that weren't broken. That is, of course, reductive.

It certainly had its problems, chiefly in its UI changes (and the performance issues those changes caused). But on the backend it addressed a lot of significant issues, from creating a viable 64-bit ecosystem to major security improvements (including ASLR and DEP).

Ultimately, it paved the way for Windows 7, which I think it's fair to say is the best version of Windows overall.

Batman v superman and Bright rated equally on Rotten Tomatoes for Critics.

Bright rated significantly higher with audiences than Batman v Superman.

But there are other variables in play. A critic will, presumably, score a theatrical release exactly the same as a Netflix release. An audience member will not. The bar for watching a movie on Netflix is far lower for a typical viewer than the bar for going and seeing a movie in the theater. As such, a mediocre or bad movie in a theater is a more aggravating experience than a mediocre or bad movie on Netflix.

The disconnect between critics and audiences is real (see, for example, the ongoing financial success of the Transformers series), but Bright's performance is categorically different from a theatrical movie's performance, because it didn't cost anything to watch.

Anybody who saw Bright already had a Netflix subscription. Watching Bright cost exactly as much as not watching Bright. The cost/benefit analysis of watching a movie when you're already sitting down and preparing to watch something, on a service you've already paid for (and, optionally, with concessions you've already paid for), which you can also put on in the background while you're doing something else, is fundamentally different from the cost/benefit analysis of going out and paying for movie tickets (and, optionally, expensive concessions) and dedicating 90 minutes of your life to watching a movie and doing nothing else.

Are you suggesting that responsibility is a zero-sum game and can't be shared?

So, if I hire an electrician from London to wire my house because I think his work looks pretty, and he uses the wrong voltage because he doesn't have basic knowledge about how wiring works in my geographic region, and my house burns down, I bear no responsibility whatsoever for making a poor choice based on questionable reasoning?

So, you enjoy fucking pigs? I mean, we're writing sentences that start with "So" and end with question marks; we can just put whatever dumbass strawman argument we want in there, right?

My first thought when Apple announced it was putting a big glass building in Scottsdale, Arizona was "Welp, that idea came from somebody who doesn't live in Scottsdale, Arizona."

Apparently the "architect who is obviously from out of town" problem is not unique to that store.

The good news is that consumers appear to be getting the message that "smart" devices are dangerous; from what I've read, sales are way down. Security vulnerabilities are the most obvious issue, but there's also stuff like this (the vendor fucking with you for unrelated reasons) and the question of long-term support.

Heating and cooling can be matters of life and death. I wouldn't entrust them to the Internet. (Monitoring them, sure, but not controlling them.)