Flicsmo

I dunno, it makes sense to me. New information or music releases can come out after someone's death, and you asked what he's been up to recently, not if/when he had died

I don't get it, is something wrong with that response? I looked it up and that is when he died.

It's not unreasonable to answer yes to that first question; that's why it's not the most sound argument. I was pretty firmly in the 'nothing to hide' camp for a long time because that was the only reason I heard. I really don't care if some random government office worker knows about all the intimate details about my life. I don't mind if you know I've been having prostate problems, but that's not something I would tell to someone I know personally.

I feel like the people in this thread saying you should ask for personal details are kind of missing the point of the 'nothing to hide' argument. It's not that they feel they have nothing to hide from everyone, it's that they feel they have nothing to hide from those with access to their data (governments/corporations). Knowing intimate life details of someone you know personally is very different from knowing intimate life details of some random person you'll never meet. I would argue something like this instead:

Unless you're a newborn, everyone in the US has broken thousands of laws in their life. It's unavoidable. If corporations/the government have records of all that, if people don't have privacy, the powers that be have the power to put anyone and everyone in prison for the rest of their lives at their discretion.

Even if you're not worried now, once your data is out there it's not coming back. You may agree with the policy of government and corporations now, but can you be sure that'll be the case in ten years? Twenty? Thirty? Who knows how laws and regimes will change, and through all that, they'll always have power over you.

That's terrible of course, but the story alone doesn't really counter the 'nothing to hide' argument when they did have something to hide.

It's the actions that Reddit took that were the problem, not admins taking action in general. But as long as there are alternatives from federation I don't see an issue with admins doing something about this, whether or not I agree with it.

US politics only is in the community rules.

The latter. Rule 2 of the community is "Must be articles relevant to US political news."

I tried to give this video a real chance, but it's just... really bad.

Their first main point, as best as I can tell through the fluff, is that choice is actually bad because choices have pros and cons - their example being desktop environments. I don't think I need to explain why this is a bizarre take; that's the point of choice. It's like saying the whole concept of choosing an ice cream flavor is a joke because you don't like chocolate ice cream.

Then they start talking about using outdated packages in Linux. Which, as should be clear to everyone after a few seconds of thought, isn't an inherently bad thing in all situations, despite their anecdote about having to use an outdated version of software with a memory leak. Amusingly they say you should keep everything 100% updated all the time because breakage basically never happens (and that updates breaking things is a myth perpetuated by Microsoft) then say Arch Linux is prone to breakage. The real kicker is that this whole point of theirs not only has nothing to do with 'choice on Linux being a joke', choice is actually the solution to this problem - being able to choose stability vs cutting edge is a core part of Linux. They actually say if you want stability you should choose a distro focused on stability.

Then they talk about how proprietary software often doesn't support Linux. Which sucks and is a valid reason not to use Linux, but has little to do with the central thesis of the video (as much as it has one) and is just a pointless snipe at low-hanging fruit.

The video is generic pop clickbait composed from a mix of tired criticisms and complete nonsense. It's a meaningless collection of ideas and gripes that neither contribute to the larger conversation nor serve to educate people.

I definitely don't think you could go back 500 years and talk with people as easily as you could someone today; but, in terms of being able to have basic communication, you don't really need nuance. I've spoken through text with people on the other side of the world whose English is more difficult to understand than early modern English and communicated just fine, even made some real friends. While there would certainly be complexity lost trying to communicate with someone 500 years away, outside of things like complicated conceptual conversations and skilled writing like Shakespeare I really think the majority of communication would be understood well enough by both parties to talk freelyish.

Of course that's not really including cultural stuff; I'm sure there are plenty of things they could talk about that would go completely over my head and vise versa, particularly younger people with varied slang and trends. But with how a conversation between two young people today can be absolutely baffling, yet I can communicate with them just fine in a different context, I don't see it being much different for talking with people 500 years ago.

(also, to be clear, I'm talking mainly in regards to text since that's the only English from 500 years ago I have experience with; I have absolutely no idea how much has changed verbally. if you happen to have any recommendations for resources on pronunciation please let me know, this conversation has me interested!)

Honestly I like this better

Well it's possible to read Shakespeare without translating - I don't know how much pronunciation has changed over time but modern English speakers could probably communicate (with varying degrees of difficulty) with any English speaker from US history that could read and write, probably even back to the first colonies. So around 500 years, give or take. I'm curious what it's like for other countries.