In any demonstration, you have to make some unproven statement, taken as true. It could be “1+1 = 2” or “God exists”. So sciences are methodologies based on believes. Lot of religions use logic and reasons, based on science and philosophy, to deduce things from their core believes. This is theology.

So if both science and religions are based on believes, and could have the same methods, how to distinguish one of the other ? We could argue that science try to reduce believes as possible. Personally I’m not good enough in sciences to argue with religious people, and demonstrate that point. In trying to challenge my believes in scientific models, I have to stay tolerant with religious people (I’m not sure I would otherwise); which is a most productive approach. Furthermore, it helps to have a critical point on view on science (as you’ve said, and to taking it as a blind faith)

How do you know that science is not a believe like the other ? My answer is in challenge it with other believe systems to explain reality. Of course some things make a lot more sense with science methodology, but to be faire, te main point of religions is not to explain gravity.

I consider other believes as opportunities, no to explain to others, or to be taught by others, but making both and strengthen us all.

However, we shall to care do not confuse religions and believes. A lot of people took part in religions and do not believes, and others believes and do not took part in a dedicated community. This is a different topic. Communities are generally a good thing, but hierarchy lead to abuses. This true in every organization, religions include

I am not sure this is a wide spread behavior among the IT. Reading the “Debian Free Software Guidelines”, we could have some doubts. My point is not that free software are good or bad, but that is not enough. If we want te be responsible as producers, we have to organize as such to stop production that killing us (with climat change or military for example) and promote the one that emancipate us. Free software are a way to achieve the last one, unions the fist one

I said such things too, but one day I ask myself, could I said it in front of people bombed by my tools ? Our tools are not neutral things, but produce and distribute by social relationship that we could fight. Sorry but we the rise of fascism and ecological disaster we could not afford to give up our power as producer to mass murderer

Sadly yes, Linux kill

I read the text, and didn’t find anything on centralize or decentralize messenger. Are you talking about the technical solution they want to use ? The text is very confusing about it.

Why people still promoting proton ? Private company will not defending your private data against States. There not Unions or independent organization, there are running for profits. If you don’t see it as a safety issue, think again. Proton sold IP addresses used by XR using their services to the french intelligence.

Pretty good stuff.

However I read many reactions : “don’t take your phone with you” This is a common issue in a lot of activist place to don’t ask ourselves why people are acting like this ? before telling them to stop. They may have good reasons, and in a case of protests, there is.

• Filming the cops : I don’t know in the US, but in a lot of countries, cops are less violent when they know someone is filming them. This may help people harmed by the police, in giving them evidence, or helping mobilization in the futur. After mass arrestation, it could be hard to know how as been arrested or not; some legal support hotline ask this kind of evidence for this reasons. Of course this some sensitive material, and need to be secured too. For example, the cops may target you if you are filming them.

• Calling the legal support hotline : Some of them ask to be called just after arrestation or cops actions, to make a precise report. You could call them when someone you know have been attacked or kidnapped by the police.

• Call medial support : I don’t know how the emergency number is linked with the repressive force in the US, but in a lot of country, it’s not. Even if it’s rare, it could be a vital issue.

All this actions are important and individuals should compare the risks they take in taking them and what we lost in not acting like that. Of course this risks have to be documented; with flyers at the start of a protests for example.

I would recommend to mutualise actions to decentralize risks. Make a team with one or two people with burned phone and dedicated camera (paid by everyone); let your other phones at home. Stay (at least) by pair, and keep in eye someone with a phone.

They may be better plan of actions, but we couldn’t just let down cop watch ant street medic just for the illusion of individual safety. Such thing simply do not exist

There sure is new comers thanks to the enhancement of graphic environment and gaming. But this is still very marginal, and there is some good reasons.

If we want to promote linux and FOSS we couldn’t only rely on use-cases and good-will of people, we need to find structures that make people use mac and windows. FOSS movement make some interesting stuff about the education system, and the institution use of windows, which are a lot more impact on the OS we are using than the qualities of such systems. But the so-called “politically neutral” forbade us to prevent this situation to repeat itself. Microsoft works on daily bases with tremendous resources (not only monetary). People who are making this decisions have some carrer interests that is not align on those of the masses.

Free-software without anti-capitalism is only open-source, sry

That not a moral state; some capitalist on corporation help us a lot. The main reason for the linux promotion is the choice of Valve, but because that choice is not profitable (in a capitalist way), we should consider it as the exception.

I’m not saying that it’s helpless. It’s quite the opposite : I’m saying that if we want to have a massive action, we have to take the power were it is.

Pretty bad experience with matrix here. Many users have issues with decrypting messages or having some conversations unable to open. Sometimes we have to disable the encryption, and in some case it don’t work either. In all cases, we couldn’t find too old messages. Usually you have to balance between safety and archives; both are unreliable. Migrating a community to a specific protocol is not something you could repeat a lot.

I don’t know if it’s related with the servers, or with the protocol itself. I suspect that things get ugly when your conversations are too big, but it could be the latency between servers, or lack of ressources from server side. If so, you have consider to selfhost a matrix server, or to consider it as not federated, and use the server matrix.org like everyone (which seems to work fine).

Unfortunately very instable on my machine (Mint, 16 Go RAM, i7). I would not recommend on Linux