From his website stallman.org:

Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.

Recent video of him speaking at GNU 40 Hacker Meeting. Screenshots of video stream.

    • 520@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I have a hard time deciding what to do with this.

      On the one hand… Dude, even as someone who loves dark humour, I couldn’t bring myself to make a cancer joke upon news of a diagnosis unless the person was a true shitstain on the earth, like Trump.

      On the other hand…that was fucking brilliant and works on so many levels.

      • [email protected]A
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        1 year ago

        I had pretty much the same thought process.
        It’s dark, but brilliant.
        Yet I can’t imagine RMS being offended by this, so I shouldn’t either.
        That’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear from the guy himself.

        The world is a better place because of him and I wish him well.

    • galoisghost@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      That’s a terrible joke that deserves the downvotes, because cancer is shit and I only wish the best to anyone who is diagnosed with it, but I laughed.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I don’t get the joke :c

        Cancer is absolute shit, but I do also love dark humour (when I get it lawl)

        • Almamu@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Comes from the copy pasta of “I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux” and. And a bit more memeing with the fact that Linux itself is not as “free/libre” as GNU AFAIK (or the famous quote of Linux is cancer from Ballmer)

        • z500@startrek.website
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          1 year ago

          It’s a reference to a copypasta.

          I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux,” and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.

          Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

    • chuck@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Well it’s dark humor and I can see how some are deeply offended. The post even says it’s a slow growing treatable form, so personally I’ll laugh at the joke. It’s not like he’s end stage untreatable form of cancer. Like you know arch linux running on WSL level cancer.

    • Gamey@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      My humor is fucking dark so I had to laugh but that one dose go a little far, it’s a good joke but with that timing I certainly wouldn’t make it!

        • darcy
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          1 year ago

          what how is this racist

          • 520@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Do you really need an explanation as to how telling someone to kill themselves, then calling them the N-word, is racist?

            • darcy
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              1 year ago

              did i miss a comment here, or was it edited? because i cannot find that

              • 520@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                What are you seeing? Because I’m still seeing their comment of “Kill yourself [N-word]” plain as day.

                • darcy
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                  1 year ago

                  pictured: a comment, a reply ‘retard’, and then you replying to that. im on jerboa+sh.itjust.works, it may be showing the wrong comment on my end, idk.

                  (as described above)

                  • 520@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    Ohhh! This is what I’m seeing (TW: racism) . I’m on Kbin.social.

                    I did have a reply on the r-word comment but it was very different to this. Might be a bug in one or both of our software.

      • 520@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Dunno why you of all people are insulting their intelligence.

        While they made a clever double reference to the GNU/Linux meme and tying it in with the Ballmer ‘Linux is cancer’ rant, you not only come out with a one word response, but that one word makes you look infinitely worse than the person who literally made a cancer joke upon news of a diagnosis.

        Maybe ableist slurs weren’t the best idea?

        • losewon157
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          1 year ago

          While they made a clever double reference to the GNU/Linux meme and tying it in with the Ballmer ‘Linux is cancer’ rant

          No. It’s an unfunny and retarded “meme” that is overused by redditors. And this obviously isn’t related to the steve ballmer rant. They just use the same template with any subject.

          • 520@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Just because you ain’t got the braincells to make the connection doesn’t mean others can’t.

            Speaking of overuse, you sure are using the r-word liberally for someone who couldn’t get the joke. Or is it one of those “I’m black therefore I can use the N-word” kind of things?

            • losewon157
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              1 year ago

              Fucking retard. The subject of this post is cancer. That is all. You think you’re smart for overthinking the connection.

              • 520@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                Why yes, that slur does apply to me! You see, I have autism and don’t take particularly kindly to that slur.

                Unlike you though, I actually have to tell people before they know there’s something wrong with me. Because, again unlike you, I can act like a normal human being. As opposed to acting like a 5 year old that just learned the r-word. Sorry, I can tell you need an explanation for these things!

                  • Gamey@feddit.de
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                    1 year ago

                    They are certainly cooler than you and I can tell that from three really stupid messages, you aren’t on Reddit anymore pal!

                  • YaBoyMax@programming.dev
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                    1 year ago

                    What do you have to gain from being this rude to strangers and using slurs against them? This behavior is legitimately antisocial, and unless you’re literally 13 years old it’s inexcusable.

        • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          You know, serious question from someone relatively new to the fediverse: how do you make sure that people won’t just create many accounts across instances if they want to evade bans or create one-time throwaways for posting abusive comments? One instance has no idea about users on other instances after all.

          • 520@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            You can’t, not effectively. This ain’t necessarily a federation problem though, centralised social media has the same problem. You can do the same on Reddit.

            That’s not to say there aren’t things that can be done. Instances can agree to implement shared banlists that include known-abusive IPs or, if an abusive user has a habit of using a pattern in their evasion usernames, you can use a Regex to hunt them out.

            • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 year ago

              On reddit the entire user database is in the hands of one company, so they might be able to tell whether two people are (likely) the same person. So I think that might actually be a problem made worse by federation.

              • 520@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                You’d be surprised how hard the task is. Any given identifier can be trivially changed. IP addresses aren’t permanent and change frequently for home users. Multiple people genuinely use the same IP. People are likely to have very similar writing styles to someone else by complete coincidence. Browser fingerprinting can be thrown off by simply using another browser or fucking with the User Agent.

                That about puts paid to any identifiers either Reddit or an instance owner may have.