I can’t imagine that’s any more free than bitwarden?

The big downside is that, for backwards compatibility, the default must still be unsafe code. Ideally this could be toggled with a compiler flag, rather than having to wrap most code in “safe” blocks (like rust, but backwards).

One potential upside that people don’t seem to be discussing is that the safe subset could also be the place to finally start cutting down the bloat of C++. We could encourage most developers to write exclusively in the safe subset, and aim to make that the “much smaller and cleaner language” trying to get out of C++.

Please somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I really don’t find the “chip makers don’t have to pay licence fees” a compelling argument that RISC-V is good for the consumer. Theres only a few foundries capable of making CPUs, and the desktop market seems incredibly hard to break into.

I imagine it’s likely that the cost of ISA licencing isn’t what’s holding back competition in the CPU space, but rather its a good old fashioned duopoly combined with a generally high cost of entry.

Of course, more options is better IMO, and the Linux community’s focus on FOSS should make hopping architectures much easier than on Windows or MacOS. But I’d be surprised if we see a laptop/desktop CPU based on RISC-V competing with current options anytime soon.

In my experience it Just Works ™️. I spin up a distro/toolbox, compile some software (e.g. Emacs) then run the executable inside the container, and up pops the GUI window.

If you use distrobox, you can even distrobox-export desktop files, at which point a containerised gui application is practically indistinguishable from one installed on the host system

Machine learning is just gradient descent through a subset of algorithm-space

There’s a former apple designer on the team I think, which they’ve been leaning into hard to get the hype train rolling.

How bloody dare you!

Isn’t production JavaScript usually minified/obfuscated to make it hard to read?

Also wasm is actually bytecode, which I believe has a 1:1 conversion into a text-based format called wat.

I agree with your main point though, it’s kinda creepy when you realise just how much we are expected to allow other people’s code to run on our machines.

By default, XWayland apps are now allowed to listen for non-alphanumeric keypresses, and shortcuts using modifier keys. This lets any global shortcut features they may have work with no user intervention required, while still not allowing arbitrary listening for alphanumeric keypresses which could potentially be used maliciously

This is… very smart actually. Any reason this is limited to Xwayland? (Is that XDG portal a thing yet?)

The point of Linux on phones isn’t to have a phone that requires you to constantly fix it with CLI tools. The point is to have a free and open software platform for a device that is increasingly necessary for daily life.

As a side effect, developing Linux for phones would probably help us eliminate the need to reach for the terminal on desktop Linux as well. I believe snaps (which laid the groundwork for flatpaks) were originally developed for Linux on “smart” devices. The whole ecosystem improves when we try to bring Linux into a new domain.

P.S. I use termux (a terminal for android complete with its own tiny Linux environment) from time to time when I need to access my server over SSH. It’s a bit clumsy, but super handy!

Best I’ve ever had was like 60mbps down. Might be a budget thing though, I refuse to pay more than £30/month for internet

I wish there was an option for an android style system where, when an application wants to use a permission for the first time, you get a pop up asking you to grant that permission.

Or, more generally, just some way to ensure that (a) a flatpak isn’t granted the permissions it wants automatically and (b) I can then manually grant those permissions as conveniently as possible

permission denied: /dev/display/3/349/1045

At the end there’s a little jab towards Wayland:

Today, the Wayland enthusiasts like to talk about how they are modernizing the Linux graphics stack. But Linux is a Unix, and in Unix, everything is meant to be a file. So any Wayland evangelists out there, tell us: where in the file system can I find the files describing a window on the screen under the Wayland protocol? What file holds the coordinates of the window, its place in the Z-order, its colour depth, its contents?

As far as I’m aware nobody has even considered extending the file metaphor to the graphics stack, and it sounds a bit ridiculous to me.

It also reminds me of this talk that suggests maybe trying to express everything as a file might not be the best idea…

I’d argue that ML is the more general term (that could even apply to computing a line of best fit, if you’re an extremist). But yeah, it’s just semantics at this point

I’ve been having a lot of fun with scheme lately (specifically guile, but I don’t think it matters much). It’s a very stripped down language compared to common lisp, so I felt it was easier to get started with.

Functional bros rise up!

It’s a bit repetitive, but it’s not too bad.

Eventually valve will probably push a SteamOS update out with plasma 6. But it’ll be up to then when to do it.

Whilst I agree that that’s a nice option to have (more options are usually better!) I’ve come to love the linux way of distribution via repositories. These days I barely use the cli too: GNOME software and KDE’s Discover are great. Perhaps an official nightly flatpak would be best?