I just the other day edited a Steam config file with some wacky file extension by cracking it open in notepad. Bless plain text.

The BDFL model, as it’s called, is what allows large projects to continue to have focused vision rather than devolving into design-by-committee. The kernel is actually already well beyond pure BDFL, but my point is having a single point of overall leadership can be a huge boon for the organization of large and complex projects. FOSS philosophy has literally nothing to do with management structure; it’s entirely about the rights of the end user.

BDFL is not without its own risks. WordPress is a good counterexample these days. But, when someone originates a project and sticks around to steer it, it would be silly to reject their proven successful leadership for such a vague reason as you have presented.

When things do go sideways, people are free to fork the project. That is what FOSS is.

It’s redundant but it still works; doing it that way does not imply they haven’t actually used it.

You fell into the asymptote; even the mighty beanie can’t divide by zero. Try wearing a single thread from a beanie instead.

How do you mean in terms of Unreal?

Captures from an Internet Archive sweep of the web. There are so many captures since the domain has been active since the 90s and was part of a great many scans.

Browse the captures for yourself if you like

Binary speed is really the least reason to do it. Whether it’s worth it or not is up to the individual, but there are a lot of little reasons Gentoo is uniquely powerful.

Benefits specific to compiling:

• fine-grained control of features and dependencies with USE flags
• very easy package maintenance (writing ebuilds)
  • much simpler to add your own custom local packages when you need them
  • less workload on the gentoo team which is good for repository health and breadth
• control of compile flags (yes speed, but more practically hardening for secure systems)
• the same gentoo is available on way more platforms and architectures than any binary distro

Who said anything about capitalism? I’m talking about centralization. Expecting countless individuals to be able to do something as well as specialists can do it just doesn’t make sense to me.

“Personal responsibility” is a red herring used by those in power to try and shift the blame off of institutions with real power. We need institutional change first and foremost.

Off-gridders are primarily dilettantes who have the money to pretend they’re disconnected from the system.

I see what you’re saying. I find it hard to believe vanlifers and offgridders are the vanguard of a more sustainable future though.

I don’t see how all the world’s people individually handling waste can work better than centralized expert processing, especially in more dense areas.

Off-grid living more environmental than proper municipal water treatment? How do you figure?

Ugh and that happens a lot if your email domain has an even slightly unusual TLD too.

RIP xtranormal

C is a little older than namespacing and object orientation. C++ wasn’t even a glimmer in Bjarne’s eye when these conventions were laid down.

And yes, having to google it is part of the design. Originally C programmers would have had to read actual manuals about this stuff. Once you learn the names you don’t really forget so it works well enough even now for ubiquitous standard library functions.

And yet, C was an ergonomic revelation to programmers of the time. Now it’s the arcane grandpa that most youngsters don’t put up with.

Gentoo or Manjaro are to Arch? What do you mean? Those two are very different from each other especially in their relationships to Arch.

Turns out massively parallel computation has applications beyond video rendering.

That’s essentially it, but Gentoo has never required systemd.

There’s no mention of anything like zero-days in that article. They only mention that it can target all major OSes, with no mention of cutting edge versions also being vulnerable.

Hilariously, the article directly supports my position as well:

The good news for some, at least: it likely poses a minimal threat to most people, considering the multi-million-dollar price tag and other requirements for developing a surveillance campaign using Sherlock

That’s a big part of my whole point. People who don’t do even a modicum of actual thought about a practical threat model for themselves love pretending that ad blocking isn’t primarily just about not wanting to see ads.

If Israel or some other highly capable attacker is coming after you, then fine, you really do need ad blocking. In that case malware in ads is going to be the least of your concerns.

Attacks that cast such a wide net as to be the concern of all web users are necessarily less dangerous because exploits need to be kept secret to avoid being patched.

There’s nothing wrong with taking extra precautions; I’m certainly not saying blocking ads is a bad idea. It’s the apparent confusion that an informed, tech-savvy person might choose not to block ads that makes me laugh.

Huh? The point of this discussion is that I don’t need to block them to keep myself safe in sketchy corners of the web.

You say with such confidence. Is it so hard to imagine people can defend themselves with means other than ad blocking?

Drive-by malware tends not to be zero-days though. I’ve stayed safe for decades just by keeping my software up to date.