The diagram really bothers me. Generative AI or not, it’s really poorly done. The trapeziums are not lined up, they are ever so slightly off centre from each other. Why??? The green arrow points at seemingly nothing of interest. The big blue quotes does not end, the divider splits the quote in two for no reason. Not to mention the descriptions of the three “stages” sound like a horoscope. (also, my pet peeve are those images that highlight random words in colour for no reason whatsoever, it’s everywhere, particularly on sourceless news posts that are usually by bots)

As for the Level 4 comment, yay humanity is redeemable!

Oop ok!

I just think this meme has the vibe coder part tacked on, and the message is pretty much “xenophobic racists hate minorities and should be ridiculed”. It is very true that we live in a dangerous time, the far right and their hatred should not be normalised, more people should be aware, but part of the reason why I follow silly communities like programmer humour is to enjoy nerdy jokes and laughs.

There’s lots of other comms where this message could be better received I feel. Not only the politics ones, mind you, screw the whole “apolitical = accepting the far-right as equals” schtick, this should be in non-political communities should it be on-topic (Criticising Palantir being used as an apparatus for surveillance and fascism shouldn’t be blocked for being “political”, criticising companies that donate to far-right politicians shouldn’t be blocked for being “political”, etc.)

edit: I also believe that it’s not really that good of a joke, you know? It would have been better to not mention “buff Aryan Germans” at all (the joke would have made sense without it) and to not list as many attributes as one can to highlight this person is very different (and implicitly separating them from “normal” people, even if it was not the intention).

There are plenty of jokes about autistic, trans, furry, etc. people in the tech sphere, and it’s fine to joke about the hypocrisy of xenophobic AI bros, but having all the minorities lumped in and put as the opposite to a “buff Aryan German” as a joke leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Blender is already open-source, no?

I just think it isn’t super on-topic, being a nerdy programmer jokes community, and if the programmer joke requires referencing bigotry to work, then maybe it isn’t that great of a joke.

Again, just my own thoughts on the matter. Feel free to disagree with me.

Fair enough, I haven’t used one of their devices before, this is just what I’ve seen on the internet. I know that some of their devices are supported by LineageOS too (the Skyline and one other one), so that might fix the poor software problem?

But yeah, they’re not fantastic for sure. I’ve only ranked them higher for repairability (albeit maybe Shiftphone should also be higher if that’s the case, I’ve edited the comment now) and the price compared to the other European brands

My point was that it doesn’t really fit programmer humour, you know? I’m here for nerdy jokes and the occasional jab at Github downtime. Aside from the mention of vibe coders, it’s not really on topic, and the joke isn’t all that good in my opinion. I also don’t like autistic, trans, etc. people are positioned as the “opposite” of “shredded Aryan Germans”, even as a joke, “haha these people are so silly/crazy” doesn’t feel right, as an autistic person myself. Just my thoughts though.

“The bigots hate minorities” might make sense as a meme in another community, but not programmer humour, where the current trend is about “4” being used as a private security key of a root CA. Jabs at vibe coders are totally fine too (see massive maintenance burden, ethical and legal problems of LLMs, etc., there are real reasons to not like those folk)

If you need to bring up eugenics and bigotry in a programmer meme, maybe it isn’t very funny? (And the standards are very low, “4” is literally the current trend)

It just doesn’t fit with everything else in the community, in my opinion. I’m here for nerdy jokes, harmless laughs, and occasionally poking fun at vibe coders too.

But again, I don’t like how autistic, trans, etc. people are positioned as the “opposite” of a “shredded Aryan German”, particularly as an autistic person myself. Maybe don’t have that in a programming humour community, you know? Just my thoughts though

I did not say it was an affirmation. I did not accuse anybody of being a Nazi, it is obvious that the idea of “shredded Aryan Germans” is ridiculous from the image. I said they mentioned eugenics, not advocate it. My point is that, in my opinion, it isn’t a good joke and pretty off-topic in a programming humour community bar the mention of vibe coders.

I also don’t like how people who are autistic, trans, etc. are positioned as the “opposite” to shredded “Aryan” Germans, it doesn’t sit right as somebody who is autistic.

Sorry? I’m not a Nazi, I am against all forms of discrimination and segregation. I do not support eugenics or the idea that some people are genetically “superior” to others.

Personally, I would rank them:

• Fairphone (repairable and supports fair materials + working conditions, mobile Linux support is growing too!)
• Jolla (affordable, SailfishOS)
• Shiftphone (repairable, privacy kill switches, not as available or as good value as Fairphone)
• HMD (affordable, repairable, Android)
• Volla (Ubuntu Touch)
• Punkt (closed bootloader, expensive)

edit: Shiftphone moved up. Personally, I think Fairphone is ideal (can run degoogled Android and mobile Linux, repairable, fair production, etc.), Jolla Phone is cheaper than Fairphone and ships with SailfishOS OOTB so is also nice for most people. Those two are probably the easiest recommendation to most people, the others have their own caveats.

Shiftphone is also repairable and has privacy kill switches (unlike Fairphone) but not as good value spec wise, HMD produces cheaper Android devices of questionable quality, and only a few support custom ROMs, Volla is cool if you like Ubuntu Touch but their devices are a bit expensive + not repairable (latter is the main reason why I rank it lower), and Punkt uses a locked bootloader, so custom ROMs are not an option.

Most of the other bits about “shredded Aryan Germans” and all that isn’t though, and is the main topic of the “joke”.

I don’t find this very funny. This is barely about programming, and it isn’t very humorous to position autistic, trans, etc. people as the opposite to shredded “Aryan” Germans.

You shouldn’t bring up racism and bigotry in goddamn programming humour, even if it is in jest

The association of “Aryan” Germans with being shredded and people who are trans, autistic, etc. being positioned as the opposite. Eugenics is the idea that some people are genetically “superior” to others, making “Aryan” babies was a big part of it, but that’s the main idea being referenced.

As somebody who is autistic myself, it doesn’t feel right as a “joke”. Yes, it paints people who believe in that sort of thing like idiots, because they are, but this is programmer humour, jokes should be about programming things! Off-topic and generally unfunny in my opinion.

Logitech is alright for some stuff, but it’s random chance whether you get e-waste that breaks in the next couple years or something that lasts a decade.

Actually, just thought of one, if you want wired mice, End Game Gear (EGG for short) is good, they are based in Germany 🇩🇪, they do wireless mice too but dunno about the quality of those. Like most electronics, not made in Europe I think.

Custom keyboards are your best bet if you want to support local business.

As for monitors, no European brands I think (Phillips has been Chinese owned for a while, and they never produced outstanding monitors anyways), plus all the panels usually come from the likes of Samsung or LG anyways.

Desktop cases, you have be quiet! 🇩🇪, Fractal Design 🇸🇪, and a few others too (not made in Europe as far as I understand)

Power supply, you have be quiet! and Fractal (again, not made in Europe I think)

Dunno about motherboard

Arctic 🇩🇪 produces thermal paste, as well as liquid coolers and fans, but not made in Eurppe. Noctua 🇦🇹 is higher quality for coolers, but don’t think they make stuff in Europe either

Dunno about monitors, keyboards (build a custom one and support local suppliers maybe?), and mice.

Sennheiser 🇩🇪 makes awesome wired headphones, the HD 550 are pretty good value I think. They also produce lots of great microphones (the Profile is a USB one). Fairphone 🇳🇱 are the gold standard for wireless audio, replaceable battery and easily repairable parts! The Fairbuds 2 look awesome and the (second gen) Fairbuds XL are also very good. Rode is Aussie 🇦🇺 but they also produce good mics.

edit: EGG (End Game Gear) is based in Germany 🇩🇪 and they make esport-centric mice.

From my understanding, there is not much freedom of speech + lots of censorship in Vietnam, at least compared to the EU and that sort, but not as bad as the PRC (you can still see foreign news sites, criticising the government results in less severe punishment, etc.). They have stable governance and their economy has improved a lot since unification.

Vietnam is a pretty awesome country, they beat both the French and the American empires to secure their independence!

Nobody finds this to be very funny. Next time, maybe don’t bring up eugenics in programmer humour?

In the past, the things that Apple has done well has generally been good build quality and long support. There are exceptions, yes, but they’re usually better than their competitors in that field. Performance was always similar (or worse) for the price until Apple Silicon came around.

In modern times, all manufacturers produce laptops with excellent build quality (even smaller ones like Framework, Tuxedo, System76, etc.), all devices are generally supported for a while (+ can be extended with things like Linux), and performance is nowadays a race between the Mac and PC. You can do all the things on PC on Mac and vice versa.

What has always been the case and never gone away is Apple’s locked down ecosystem. They don’t support standard protocols, USB file transfer with iPhones is a nightmare on non-Macs (though it works fine for me on Linux right now, I imagine it depends on your distro and kernel, and it didn’t work for me a few years ago), all the iServices being closed and not interoperable with non-iDevices, poor repairability, setting the standard / trend for the worse, etc.

In terms of the operating system, it’s pretty different. For Windows, 2000 and XP were the golden age and it’s (mostly) been downhill from there, Windows 10 / 11 being the most egregious requiring an online account. CoPilot and broken updates certainly don’t help. MacOS is very closed and everything needs to be done the “Apple way”, and you need Apple hardware to run it (for the most part, see Hackintoshes).

Linux has always been an awesome alternative, though it doesn’t ship on many devices, it had excellent support on lots of hardware (unlike MacOS) and didn’t require any online crap (unlike Windows), app development is much more open than MacOS while being as convenient as the App Store (unlike Windows), and FOSS software are the GOATs. There are so many options for distros, desktop environments, depending on your hardware or preferences, and you can have full control over your system, or it can “just work” for grandma. It’s awesome! There’s recently been lots of development with Valve on the gaming side and there has been a drive towards Linux due to Microsoft breaking Win11 constantly and pushing CoPilot spyware (more users, more developers, more apps, more drivers, etc.!)

The Linux desktop has never been better, and there is no reason not to switch! You can even get Linux on a Mac if you wanted too, thanks to the team at Asahi Linux!

I’m running EndeavourOS (the easy mode Arch-based distro before CachyOS) with Niri (scrolling tiling WMs are neat!), but if you want to get started with Linux, I would not recommend either if you aren’t interested in config files and making something exactly how you want it to. Mint is awesome if you like Cinnamon, and Fedora is also good (though owned by Red Hat/IBM). The -buntus are also fine, but snaps, aside from using a proprietary and centralised repo, are often broken and not very user-friendly to fix. Debian is excellent if you have an older device and want stability, it’s been there since the beginning. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is fun if you want to try rolling release, and of course Arch-based distros like CachyOS (or standard Arch with archinstall) are also good if you are fine with the “scary” black text box (that’s all it is really).

If you want to experiment with an ARM device (laptop, tablet, or even phone), Nura is awesome! It’s not fully there on everything, but it’s fun to mess around in and try out apps that those devices were never intended to run!

Oops yeah that is a good point! Amended the comment.