I still can’t fathom why electron needs to exist when PWA is a thing. Like, almost every app is just plain better running in a normal web browser instead of electron. Webapps never need to be updated manually, electron apps do (e.g. discord). Webapps are sandboxed inside the browser, electron has you running some rando developer’s code natively. With electron, you have to trust the developers of every app to keep the electron version up-to-date to avoid critical bugs (e.g. libwebp). With webapps, if your browser is patched, then every webapp is safe. Electron also suffers from random bugs and regressions that aren’t an issue in most web browsers.

Isn’t debloated windows just a regular windows install after running https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater ? Is there more to it?

If you’re interested in another approach to containerizing GUI applications, also checkout out x11docker. It’s a small independent project maintained by one guy, nothing big like flatpak, but also pretty cool. The name is actually a bit limiting – it supports both docker and podman, and can run wayland apps as well. One of the coolest features, in my opinion, is the ability to run a separate X server inside every sandbox and forward individual windows to the “host” X server. That way you can prevent apps from spying on your keyboard or other apps’ windows.

The thing with appimages is that they expect the developer to have full knowledge of what libraries need to be bundled with their app, which makes it difficult to make truly universal appimages. In flatpak you just select one of a set list of runtimes and add any additional dependencies on top of it. Flatpak also re-uses the files for each runtime in between the different apps that use it, which saves a lot of disk space.

Why not containerise everything? You need libreoffice? No problem, here is a docker or podman container.

Flatpak is basically GUI-optimized containers. It uses the same technology (namespaces) as docker and podman, just with some extra tools to make GUI-related things work properly. That’s why flatpak apps don’t use the system’s gtk version – they’re running in a sandbox with a different rootfs. You can spawn a shell into the sandbox of a specific app with flatpak run --command=sh com.yourapp.YourApp and poke around it if you want to.

Oh, what the fuck!?

TBH I wouldn’t mind it that much. The whole point of flatpak is that the developer can do whatever demented satanic rituals they want inside of the sandbox, and it won’t contaminate the rest of the system.

Sorry, but in my book, actions speak louder than words. And the actions here are very clear: they made a useful service that benefited people. They paid for it out of their pocket and suffered major inconveniences in their personal lives to keep the service operational and to uphold their ideals of transparency. It’s a net positive contribution to the world, even if you account for the offensive/hurtful jokes they made along the way.

You can spend hours talking about what people should or should not have done. Critiquing others from your high horse is easy, but it gets you nowhere. As another example, take Lemmy’s developers. You could go on for hours denouncing their tankie/authoritarian views, but it won’t change the fact that they created an anti-authoritarian and censorship-resistant platform that benefits many people.

What I value personally is a consistent moral framework. What someone thinks on isolated issues or what kind of offensive humor they like is a lot less relevant to me. Do I disapprove of it? Yes. But do I condemn them for it? No. Because actions speak louder than words.

based

are also used by fringe organisations to push their ideologies and discuss wild conspiracy theories and plots.

Might Discord be, potentially, in some way related to the notorious hacker known as 4chan 🤣

It’s probably good that a free and private email service might shut down because… they registered a few edgy domains that they no longer use? Wow

Thanks for sharing this. Never really used cockli that much, but still appreciate their service. Nothing makes the glowies seethe harder than a privacy-friendly email service, I hope it stays afloat. Donated!

A lot of “hardware raid” is just a separate controller doing software raid. I thought I lost access to a bunch of data when my raid controller died, before I realized that I could just plug the disks directly into the computer and mount them with mdadm. But yes, hardware raid seems a bit pointless nowadays.

It’s going to confuse everyday users

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe this is the intention. I think big companies deliberately put in confusing and bad design to “test the waters” and see if people will still buy their products. It’s the same with the apple mouse charging on the bottom, or why companies keep making their logos uglier with each iteration. It’s a psy-op to condition the masses into accepting worse products without complaining.

This is correct, but still, fuck apple. What if I just prefer to turn my computer off instead of putting it into sleep mode? And how exactly am I supposed to wake up my computer from sleep if the power button is inaccessible? I know macs can be configured to wake up on keyboard/mouse activity, but that makes them too easy to wake up on accident.

It’s true what you say, the golden days of rooting are over. I rooted my phone just so I could set a battery charge limit, but a recent update for the ROM I’m using (/e/ os) added that feature natively lol. Pretty much the only thing you can do nowadays with root is install tweaks that hide the fact that you have root from other apps lol.

“This is why I <lukewarm take> in <current year>”

Didn’t read the article, but I hate this style of headlines with a passion. Using custom ROMs isn’t even something controversial, yet they go out of their way to make it sound like they’re breaking some social taboo or something. Why not a simple and concise title like “Advantages of custom ROMs” or “Consider installing a custom ROM”. It sounds like a meme speech pattern straight out of 4chan, except they’re using it with zero self awareness or irony. How about an actual hot take: journos who write like this are pretentious pricks that deserve to get replaced by chatgpt.

What on earth are you talking about?? Of course they don’t have to compete. It’s a meme. It’s meant to be funny, not accurate. What does my ego have to do with anything?

I really wish email had a built-in aliases feature. Like, so you can create unlimited new addresses that just point to your normal inbox. That would help so much with spam, since you could just block individual aliases. I know some email providers have this feature, but usually it’s paid. Plus Addressing is also nice, but it does nothing to hide your “real” address. Also I’m disappointed that end-to-end encrypted email is basically never used by normal people.

Fediverse will never EVER hit critical mass unless the users and mods stop calling everyone they don’t agree with a Nazi.

TBH this is to be expected from a demographic made up largely of ex-reddit users

I’ve watched the whole video through, and honestly that felt like an underbaked take. People will have difficulty understanding federation? Seriously!? Surprise surprise, but if you know what email is, you already understand federation.