You could probably make a big enough threat to the companies just by saying, “If our audit finds you are, in fact, sending meritless denials to try and pad your bottom line, you need to reach out to all those impacted and inform them that the denied services will be covered 100%, along with any follow-up care needed as a result from the treatment you denied. And the fine is 150% of the cost of all claims you denied.”

Shareholders ultimately don’t care about the CEO, they can get another one. Hit their bottom line hard enough, and they’ll take note, though.

At lot of this strikes me as non-issues, or even bordering on entitlement.

Well, for instance, if you’re contributing your own code, there is a high bar to clear. It often feels as if you need to surpass whatever the existing functionality is. Just to get accepted, you have to offer something better than some existing product that may have been around for decades.

Well, no kidding, that’s how it works in most things. Why would a project accept a contribution that doesn’t add a previously missing feature or improve on the implementation of a current one? I would be pretty suspect of using a program that accepts a random commit so that a college kid can check the “Timmy’s first accepted pull request” box and let them pad their resume.

Some would-be contributors are very familiar with programming, reading, and writing code, but they may never have opened an issue or sent a pull request. This is a scary first step. Others may have the necessary tech skills, but not the creativity. Where should they you begin? Also, if someone is scared, that can result in impostor syndrome. The fear that people all over the world will see your bad code is a powerful factor reducing the urge to share it.

These are all things that the greybeards being maligned had to figure out at some point, I don’t really see the harm in new contributors being expected to do the same, especially when there is an abundance of documentation and tutorials available now, which simply didn’t exist in the past.

For instance, there are a lot of folks doing mods for video games. This can be a very creative activity, there is lots of room for innovation, as well as outlets such as streaming to reach an audience. It applies to all sorts of games, such as Pokémon, Elder Scrolls, and Minecraft. Game modding is a great way in. It could even be a way to set up a company, or to make a living. But it’s not considered as FOSS. For novices getting interested, it could even be attracting people away from getting into FOSS development.

Again, nothing new here. No, game mods weren’t nearly as prevalent in the past, but new devs have had the choice between contributing to FOSS software and contributing to/creating proprietary programs for as long as FOSS has been a thing.

I don’t think the old guard should be dismissive or rude to newcomers when their contributions aren’t up to the standard expected to be accepted, but they also aren’t getting paid to be these peoples’ mentors. It kind of reminds me of posts I see in language learning communities, where people would get all upset, “I completed the Duolingo Spanish tree, but the cashiers at my local Mexican restaurant speak too fast for me to understand and they switch to English when I try to talk to them in Spanish.” Cool that you want to try and use the language, my friend, but these people aren’t being paid to be your tutor, and you may well be making their job more difficult and/or holding up other paying customers by trying to force random people to listen to your extremely basic, and likely incorrect, Spanish. They don’t have an obligation to put everything else in their work or life on hold to try and stroke your ego.

Curiously, I don’t see any mention of what, in my view, is likely a much more serious issue to getting new generations of contributors involved, as well as having a more diverse set of contributors. Access to technology and relevant education is far from uniform. If little Timmy from Greenwich, CT has had a personal computer he was free to mess around with to his heart’s content from the moment he could read and attended a well-funded school with the possibility of studying computers, programming, and early exposure to things like Linux from grade school onwards, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that he’s more comfortable working with these concepts and more likely to wind up contributing successfully to FOSS projects than my friend Lucas, in Brazil, who only got a second-hand computer when he managed to get accepted to university, and had no real concept of Linux/FOSS until I explained to him why I couldn’t just install a random, Windows-only program he thought would be useful to me.

To draw another language learning comparison, it’s like how in the US, most students will only study a second language for a couple of years in high school and two semesters at university, if they attend higher education, and then you periodically have people going, “How come so many Americans fail to speak a second language compared to students in Europe?” Then, you look at the curriculum in countries like Germany, and realize they begin teaching students English as early as grade-school, often adding another foreign language later on. Is it any surprise that, when they have nearly a decade of foreign language instruction, compared to the mere two years many Americans get, alongside a fair bit more exposure to and encouragement of engaging with foreign language media, that they wind up being more proficient at using said language on average?

It’s hardly a perfect solution that will completely mitigate all of the issues with getting younger and more diverse groups of people to contribute to FOSS projects, but I don’t doubt that having access to computers in the home from a young age and access to more extensive education on computers and related fields from a much younger age would go a long way towards getting more people involved. Of course, even then, having the downtime to be able to dedicate to contributing to/maintaining FOSS projects is a factor that will disproportionately favor historically privileged groups. Even if she has the knowledge and ability to do so, a single mother working three jobs in the Bronx in order to keep a roof over her family’s head, food on the table, and the lights and heating on simply might choose not to spend what little free time she has writing a badass new MPD client in Rust that has plugins to integrate with Lidarr and automatically fix metadata with beets based on matching the hashes of files to releases on various trackers in order to scrape the release data from them, no matter how cool the concept might sound to her. And it’s not really something I could blame her for.

Beyond games, hardware support would still be a pretty big one. If Linux is widely adopted enough, it makes more and more sense for hardware companies to make sure their new devices will be supported on launch day. Not having to worry about my network card being too new from a brand that has poor/no Linux support would be a pretty big factor in influencing my purchases the next time I’m looking for a laptop. Pretty sure I’ve also encountered people complaining about being unable to use all the features that their new GPU offers under Windows, because the company hasn’t released a Windows driver and devs working on Linux are still in the process of reverse-engineering things to write an open driver that is feature complete.

Another big one would be configuration of peripherals, as there are a fair number that assume you have Windows to run their proprietary configuration tool. I’ve come across mice like that, as well as mechanical keyboards that require some proprietary Windows program if you want to flash the firmware and customize your layout.

More Linux users also makes it a more attractive target for devs in general. That could mean you get a cool, new hobby project that someone is working on and decides to make a FOSS Linux version, could mean companies at least offer a Linux version of their proprietary software that doesn’t have a comparable Linux alternative. There’s a lot of software out there that people need for work or school, especially in more niche fields, where there’s not a viable Linux alternative and your job/school isn’t going to change their entire workflow just for you.

I’m sure others can come up with further examples that wouldn’t occur to me.

I think the biggest pro for me would be that sane policies at the federal level that are broadly popular in my region could stop getting blocked by yokels representing states that sometimes barely even have the population of the semi-rural county I grew up in in the Northeast. Ditto for not having to worry about corporate interests from those same states filing frivolous lawsuits that manage to block the implementation of the odd policy that does make it through, like student loan forgiveness.

Also, I’m not above admitting that there’s a great deal of appeal in the potential schadenfreude of all the “But I don’t want my taxes paying for the trans, minority welfare queens getting bottom surgery! Down with any social safety net!” Republicans from the South and Midwest being forced to reckon with the fact that they have actually been the welfare queens this whole time, and it’s only been by the grace of those dang liberal states paying in disproportionately high shares of taxes that get funneled towards red states that their shithole states haven’t yet collapsed entirely. Let’s see how Alabama fares with its whooping 1.1% of the national GDP when they no longer have federal funding to prop them up. Their top 5 employers are all public institutions that likely depend on federal funding to remain operational, and 2/5 of them are military bases. Good luck, guys, the South will fall again.

For cons, obviously it’ll suck for the people who still live in those states until they finally move, but that’s been the case for a long time. If the decent regions help finance the move for those who are willing to leave, but unable to for lack of money, I’m kind of fine with it. Same goes for overlooking criminal charges when people are unable to leave their state due to some BS non-violent crimes landing them on parole and being refused travel permissions. If Mississippi wants to lock you down as exploitable labor because you got pulled over with some weed, or loaned a kid a book that said gay people actually aren’t the spawn of Satan sent to destroy US civilization, come on over. They can keep their sex offenders and violent criminals, though. For the folks that don’t move because “Oh, but my family is here and I love them too much to move away,” or similar reasons, good luck with living through the second feudal age, but that’s your own choice.

Likewise, it’ll be sad to see them destroy national and state parks in the name of business, as well as visiting those places while they still exist being a much riskier proposition.

Honestly, I think most red states severely underestimate how poorly things would go for them if they were to be cut loose, while overestimating the popular support they would enjoy and their international appeal as trade partners. Even for the ones who are in a relatively favorable economic opinion, like Texas, would probably see absolutely insane levels of brain drain from industry and higher education that would leave them dead in the water, barring state-sanctioned violence to prevent people from leaving.

That said, their economies would be devastated. Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky would all see between 20.7%-30.7% of their overall revenues for state and local governments vanish overnight if they stopped receiving federal funding. States like New York and Texas could probably come away at a net profit just by retaining the taxes they’d previously passed on to the federal government, even factoring in how many new services would have to be provided for at the state/regional level that were previously financed by the federal government. For the states like New Mexico, Mississippi, and Alabama that manage to claw back almost all of what they contribute in federal taxes, if not get more back in federal funding, good luck. Somehow, I suspect their new, libertarian overlords in Texas aren’t going to be so keen on subsidizing their impoverished neighbors to any real extent.

Have they tried pulling out the “Make a vehicle that’s not a massive and shitty death trap,” or “Boot the Nazi from the company” stops? Because, I suspect doing those two might help it out.

Native English, then Spanish, Portuguese and French, in order of proficiency. I speak Spanish all day at work, have a fair amount of Brazilian media and a sizable Brazilian population here that I interact with on occasion. Ironically, though I’ve been studying French the longest, I didn’t have any real use for it aside from reading after high school. Now, there’s a couple of French podcasts I’ll listen to, but I still find French television to be pretty boring, so I mostly get to use it at a French book club, on the rare occasions I can attend. Currently, about halfway through a degree to try and address how lopsided my skills in French have gotten, while also having an easy option to tick the box for jobs that want a degree, but don’t care what it’s in.

I still have a long list of languages I’d like to learn, but they tend to share the unfortunate characteristics of simultaneously being difficult to learn, while also having very limited practical application for me. One of these days, I’ll actually stick with learning something more useful again, like German, rather than going through Japanese, Icelandic, Finnish or Irish for another round to see if I can stick it out.

a test showing me how little I know, and a time-eater that causes my wife to wonder what happened to her husband.

Worth mentioning, but this gets much better with time. Part of it will go away as you learn new things, and is the same as learning any other new thing, be it using Linux, picking up an instrument, or learning another language. Hand in hand with this, you’ll also just get better at knowing where and what to look for to find answers to your problems, and how to ask for help in a way that includes all the relevant info and is more likely to get you a reply that sorts out your issue sooner.

It can definitely be overwhelming initially, but it’s always helpful to get familiar with the man pages and info pages, which are two forms of documentation that come built-in with your Linux install (along with other systems like the BSDs, if you ever wander over that way. OpenBSD man pages are amazing, fwiw, and may be more helpful at times for finding example commands). You can usually run

man command

to get a man page for most commands in your terminal, though not all. Info pages exist for GNU software, and can often be more thorough in their documentation.

man fstab

for example, will give you a general overview of how fstab works, and also include a list of other man pages at the bottom, under the heading SEE ALSO, that can be helpful in understanding related systems. If one of those entries is followed by a number in parentheses, you type the command slightly differently to access that section of the man page. For example, the fstab page suggests looking at mount(8), which you’d find with the command

man 8 mount

info info

in a terminal will get you a helpful primer on how the info system works, which is good, as it can be somewhat more complex to navigate than man pages and uses a lot of Emacs keybindings.

Both can be a bit daunting when you first start out, but it’s worth at least being familiar with, as you can access them without any internet connection, helping you to do things and troubleshoot issues when you’re unable to go online, for whatever reason.

Finally, don’t overlook the utility of the various wikis out there. For Linux Mint, the Debian Wiki should be pretty decent, and the Arch Wiki is also generally pretty helpful, though may not always work for Debian/Ubuntu-based distros, since it may reference features in newer releases of packages than are available elsewhere. They’ll often include basic setup and configuration guides, as well as a troubleshooting section that outlines how to solve commonly encountered issues.

I mean, white women were the single demographic group to benefit most from affirmative action, despite racists preferring to paint it as a program that only benefited African Americans in their reverse racism arguments, so yeah, they count in my book. Especially when you consider that a large portion of far-right white men want them to occupy the trad wife role and not been seen outside the home and church again.

Or, just maybe, they could adequately staff their stores instead of constantly running skeleton crews. If they were actually sincere with their cries of high theft, more employees on the floor could deter would-be thieves, while also giving them time to help customers when needed and pack out product so the place doesn’t always look like an obstacle course left in the wake of a hurricane, with piles of stuff on the floor blocking half the aisles.

Any place that requires an app for me to shop at is a hard no for me, much less all the other nonsense they want to include.

Basically, as soon as other reliable methods became widely adopted. No, I don’t have any phone call related anxiety or whatever, I’ll call someone if I really need to, I would just rather not. I’d much rather get a text that says, “Hey, we’re meeting up at 7pm to go out and do, XYZ, do you want to come?” than a phone call that starts with that and turns to “So anyway, did I tell you my mom blah, blah, blah… And I don’t know what to say, because I kind of want to go, but it would be a lot blah, blah, blah.”

Phone calls with friends and family have a way of spiraling off into tangents when I don’t necessarily have the time to entertain them, but don’t want to be a dick all the time telling people I don’t have time at the moment to listen to them. If there’s a self-service section to a company’s website or app, I can usually do whatever I need faster than it would take me to get through the automated menus and hold music to call and have them do it. Like my pharmacy, if I want to refill a prescription online, I log in, check a box and hit submit. Done. If I call them, I need to go through three menus to get patched through to the pharmacy, tell them what I want, hold for a moment while they help someone in the store, give them my info and wait for them to look it up, etc.

When I plan to meet up with people, I make plenty of time to talk to them and listen to whatever. When I get what I think is going to be a short phone call that devolves into tangents, I don’t necessarily have the time to entertain whether the fact that my friend’s cousin had his toe amputated due to gangrene means he should get the spot on his nipple tested for leprosy, or if he should just improve his personal hygiene and see if it washes off in the shower.

If something really is going to be a pain to communicate via text, schedule that conversation and we can have a call to discuss it, but I’m not answering phone calls whenever somebody calls out of the blue unless I’m interviewing for jobs or expecting a call about some sort of emergency.

Harris was no more of a crap candidate than Biden was in 2020.

Biden was able to get away with it in 2020 coming off Trump’s first term and the shitshow that was COVID’s handling under his leadership. Harris didn’t have this benefit, being second in command in the incumbent regime, was unable to capitalize on any of the points the Biden administration could claim as wins, while stubbornly refusing to put any distance between him and herself on his unpopular stances. Add in that this was occurring while popular sentiment was clamoring for an inspiring campaign that wasn’t the usual DNC paint-by-numbers, march to the right campaign of, “Well, actually, while I can appreciate Hitler’s passion for the arts, animal welfare and the health risks of smoking, you’ll find that we, uh… disagree about the best way to deal with the Jewish question. Thank you, you’re seen and heard, even you Jews out there. Vote for me, 'cause the other guy’s Hitler, and I’m not entirely Hitler.”

The entire Democrat effort (or lack thereof) was a massive unforced error on their part. Instead, they keep sidelining any candidate who seems to actually excite people and inspire them with hope for the sort of systemic change they want, unless they find they can eventually drag them into their usual shenanigans.

Personally, I think they’d also do best to drop their tokenism with candidates that trot out the same means-tested policy drivel. Rather than go harder on the adjectives next time and hope people show up to vote for, “The candidate who would be the country’s first female, Chinese, Navajo, amputee, Leprauchan president in history,” have policies that don’t include the means-testing and would broadly lift up the working class and poor voters, while also addressing historic inequalities for the many groups that have been disadvantaged and/or excluded from US society for its history. You can tick all the diversity boxes you want with the candidates, but it’s patronizing to think people will blindly fall in line for such a candidate assuming they’ll represent them, when we’ve seen that it’s mere lip-service paid to very real issues impacting the lives of millions of Americans, which will be promptly forgotten upon taking office, if it lasts that long.

I always had my day brightened at an old job by emails from this guy in Master Data. His email signature was just MC Hammer lyrics disguised as Bible verses, something like Hammerlonious, 4:16-24. Nobody ever asked him to change it or gave him grief about it, since rather than implement something normal like SAP, the company had decided to roll their own in-house ERP system, and he was the only one who actually knew how a good chunk of it worked.