SteveGoob

Fair enough, but there’s a reason no one runs almost any of the systemd services in isolation. There’s a big difference between “takes a bit of tinkering” and “need to maintain massive patch files to make journald independent of systemd”

Yeah, I noticed that too. At the end of the day, it’s not particularly important, but it is a bit of an embarassing mistake.

Except that the author does not end the discussion at “it doesn’t follow the Unix philosophy.” Granted, they do spend a number of words refuting the argument that systemd is modular; whether or not it’s a strawman, it sounds like you already agree with the author on that point. While they do pay some lip service to the value of the Unix Philosophy, their arguement hardly ends there.

From the article, (bold emphasis mine):

This lack of modularity – where “modularity” means free choice in interchanging components for other, unrelated projects – is where most of the criticism of systemd stems. It’s the purest, and most important, criticism of systemd, but my personal grievances against systemd go further. Because, in my experience, systemd isn’t good software.

The author provides evidence for that claim with examples regarding journald, networkd, and session keyrings. None of those criticisms are specific to the Unix Philosophy. Their whole point appears to be “yes, I value software that follows the Unix Philosophy, and systemd does not, but I believe there are many other valid reasons that systemd isn’t good.”

Of course these concerns play into each other, but the nuance there is kinda the whole point. The author points out that it would be a lot easier to use only the good parts if systemd had a more genuinely modular architecture, but it’s simply not built for that. And it’s a real and material example of a negative consequence of not following the Unix Philosophy. Rather than say “it’s not developed with the UP in mind, it must therefore be bad,” the author gives a tangible example representative of why they believe that to be important.

Just as the Unix Philosophy is a thought-terminating cliché (because of course it is), it is similarly unhelpful to claim that consolidation brings performance and cross-cutting capabilities. The proof is in the pudding, and as critical readers we should not overlook valuable perspectives like the one the author has brought.

(Not that it’s critical to your point, but we’re you trying to argue that Wayland is monolithic? I have to assume you didn’t mean it like that, since it’s a protocol that decouples clients and compositors, and it’s certainly not monolithic in that sense)

That argument is addressed in the article. With few practical exceptions, systemd components expect you to be running the other systemd services. E.g. running systemd without journald is not a supported usecase.

Pretty much. AI won’t kill all of of us because it’s smart, but because it concentrates too much power into systems that are not aligned with humanity’s best interest, and we dont have the means to resist it. Matthew Butterick argues it particularly well. Of course though, his argument is a challenge to the authority of these companies to develop these AIs, not a calling for the enlightened tech bros to guide humanity on the fragile path utopia. The folks developing AI could probably learn a thing or two from history.

Drew has posted a response in defense of these allegations.

Having read it as well the “report” on him you linked, I personally find the report lacks credibility. I take much more stock in Drew’s accounting of things, including his mature ownership of the bad decisions he’s made in the past.

As for the Stallman Report: it’s not a smear piece in my view. It’s a whistleblow that outlines an argument why RMS is unfit to lead the FSF with accompanying evidence. You may disagree with some of it, but it’s hardly malicious; I can sympathize with anyone who wishes to see better from the leaders of the major social movements of our day.

And as for why Drew initially denied his involvement, I found his response reasonable:

Myself and the other authors asserted our moral rights to publish anonymously, motivated by our wish to reduce our exposure to the exact sort of harassment I’ve been subjected to over the years.

No. It would be vastly preferable if this were nipped in the bud. Need I remind you how many people died in WWII, not to mention the human cost of fascism elsewhere?

While I do agree with the general trend that many of these populist fascists are incomponent at leading, it’s better to not roll those dice in the first place. We should never accept it as inevitable.

I’m not gonna do the maths

Let me help you out there, since I need something to help me procrastinate anyways lol

being 1.43:1 ratio would leave about half the screen blanked out on the sides.

I was curious to find out what this came out to as well. Turns out though, on a 16:9 screen, scaling a full 1.43:1 frame to fit only results in side bars that each take up less than 10% of the image, (less than what I was suspecting to be honest).

While a ~20% size reduction isn’t ideal, so is watching a movie that was composed for a different aspect ratio. IMHO, people should have the choice to watch in whatever way best appeals to their needs. We used to do this on DVDs where you could opt for either the widescreen or fullscreen version of the movie, so there’s definitely precedent for it.

Unfortunately, the option for the 1.43 version of many of these movies can’t be found outside of their IMAX run in theaters. (At least not officially…)

Maybe cause its a separate issue? Look, yes it is costly to extract the resources for a battery, but once we have it, we have it for good. Batteries are incredibly recyclable at this point (90%+ recoverable, conservatively), and a new battery can be almost entirely created using previous batteries.

This is in comparison to fossil fuels, which you get to burn exactly once, after which point you have to go extract more. The environmental costs of extracting oil (not even burning it) are well documented.

Where a ICE car requires ongoing environmental devastation, an electric one does not inherently require it. As more of the materials for batteries enters circulation, there’s less need to go extract more, and as grids transition from fossil fuels to renewables the climate impact of charging can be lessened as well.

Of course this isn’t to say that an electric car is the climate endgame. More walkable places, better public transit, better regulation of corporate polluters, etc. are the real meat and potatoes. But saying that EVs are just as bad as ICE cars is just not true.

Smart choice. Lethal injection has a terrible history in reliably killing someone without issues. A firing squad is significantly more humane, and people on death row will generally opt for it if given the choice.

However, it’s far less common today because society doesn’t like firing squads; everything about them feels too barbaric.

Hmmm I wonder why that is… Surely it couldn’t be because capital punishment itself has no place in civilized society, right?