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And by extension, all users of FOSS must be the product, right?

I see it more like a question than a rule.

"The service is free. Am I the product?"

That is a valid thing to ask. Even with FOSS sometimes.

Some FOSS projects are backed by companies, then yes, plausible to ask.

Otherwise, I would answer with a clear no.

(Projects can still collect telemetry and other data and sell that, though the sell part should be very rare, imo...)

Edit: Was that a bad faith argument or a honest question?

Sometimes I can't tell, maybe because of old or ESL...


When you use a FOSS product more, the person that wrote the code doesn't end up spending more money. When you use a free service more, someone is paying for that usage and resources.

And by extension, all users of FOSS must be the product, right?

Crowd sourced Development and Quality Assurance for something multiple companies, governments and the military are using.


> all users of FOSS must be the product, right?

i would default to this being the truth, until demonstrated otherwise. Call it cynical, but it's the cynical that survive.


It’s not correct. ‘You are the product’ implies some aspect of you -your activity or data is being sold.

In this case, you stent being sold. They are providing a limited free version and hoping you upgrade.


Just facts:

- June 2024. Mozilla acquires Anonym, an ad metrics firm.

- July 2024. Mozilla adds Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA), feature is enabled by default. Developed in cooperation with Meta (Facebook).

- Feb 2025. Mozilla updates its Privacy FAQ and TOS. "does not sell data about you." becomes "... in the way that most people think about it".

- Oct 2025. Sponsored “Privacy-Focused Direct Results” added to address bar. Not yet exposed in Settings UI.

- Dec 2025. Privacy Notice updated to formalize on-device ad processing and content personalization on New Tab. New Tab is actively marketed to advertisers as a native ad surface.


I bought them because I like meat but want to reduce my carbon footprint a bit and am not that impressed with animal husbandry standards

The did that in Tesco (uk supermarket) for a couple of years - sold fresh mince that contained 30% carrot and other veg. I used it quite a lot and it was good. But they stopped. I guess it wasn’t popular

oh, what a shame! Also interesting that they stopped that after a couple of years... You'd think that it would either flop from the beginning or just work

Still pretty happy with my Homepods in Stereo

> light years ahead of anything any government IT project has ever,

But specifically in terms of what?


When Digg restarted, you had to pay $5 to create an accoun

As a slightly different tack, I’ve been using Copilot to generate flowcharts from some of the fiendishly complex (and badly written) standard operating procedures we have at work.

People find them quite easy to check - easier than the raw document. My angle with teams is use these to check your processes. If the flow is wrong it’s either because the LLM has screwed up, or because the policy is wrong/badly written. It’s usually the latter. It’s a good way to fix SOPs


It’s interesting you mentioned that. One of the things I’ve started doing recently is throwing a large LLM such as codex-5.3 (highest level of reasoning) at some of the more complex systems we have to produce nicely formatted ASCII diagrams.

I still review each diagram afterward, but the great thing is that, unlike image-based diagrams, they remain fully text-readable and searchable. And you can even expose them as part of the knowledge base for the LLM to reference when needed going forward.


Copilot outputs Mermaid diagram markup for me - so the graphs are editable and importable into diagraming packages

Yeah I'm a big fan of mermaid as well. Extended ASCII works a bit better for me because depending on the text editor because I don't need a custom visualization tool.

Still taught in uk primary schools as the fastest way to get words down in paper

Makes me wonder whether there are diction tests (I feared/hated those with a passion) in the USA?

Never even heard that term before. So: no.

Too late to edit, 'dictation' was meant. Seems I still suck at spelling ;-/

Still no :)

I suspect contemporary usage is most relevant here, no?

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