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> In what ways has the pursuit of perfection harmed the good in their development?

Their lack of device support means I am still running Google's Android and will continue to be until a GraphineOS-supported device that meets my needs becomes available. This means I'm not just lacking in security, but I'm also stuck with Google and all of their anti-consumer practices.

Running GraphineOS without all the security features they want would be better for me than what I currently have.


This is a perfectly reasonable solution if the problem really is child safety. But we all know it's not. There's money in surveilance and profiling.

I'm sure many law professionals felt the same way when we started getting bombarded with EULAs.

It'd be really cool (and probably useful) if someone could figure out a way to generate diagrams like this for any software project.

You'd first need to figure out a way to generate a complete dependency tree. For each box, I interpret its height as a measure of its complexity and its width as a measure of the support it receives. The hardest part would probably be figuring out a way to quantitatively measure those values.


One naiive solution could be to cloc the dependency and use the size as the height, and fetch number of github contributors as width

Ask and you shall receive: https://stacktower.io/

Oh cool. That's a promising start.

I don't know if the "The Nebraska Guy Ranking" this project uses is very useful, though. In particular the "depth" criteria doesn't make much sense to me, since it assumes the more foundational a dependency is, the more robust it must be. This seems to run counter to the point of the original comic where the "Nebraska Guy" piece was the fragile block holding up the entire tower.

This project also doesn't attempt to measure or visualize the complexity of a project. Theoretically a more complex project would require more support than a simple one, so I think that's an important metric to capture.


bro. it asks for the ability for some random github user to literally take over your private repositories.

You’re 100% right to call that out. The current GitHub OAuth scope is too broad

I’m changing this ASAP to least-privilege and I’ll publish a clear explanation of scopes + data handling. In the meantime: please run the local/CLI path if you want zero-trust.


Damn dude. That’s awesome! I saw the permissions it wanted out of every org I’m a part of (including some big open source orgs) — I’d probably find myself booted out of those orgs if I accepted that. They def get a notification on every authentication like that and take potential impersonation seriously.

Yeah, if it weren't for that, I think this would blow up. Plus, even if you get past that, if you try a larger project, it times out after 1 minute and gives up. But it's a pretty awesome idea!

hey! I built this, I know its really scrappy, I just don't have enough time currently to make right by users. I'm on it though... stay tuned

The only games I've encountered that don't work on Linux are ones where the developer has intentially designed it that way. Some developers are paranoid about cheaters and one of their solitions is to tell all Linux users to kick rocks.

Aside from that I've encountered a handfull of games with performance issues on Linux (especially with Intel/Nvidea hardware), but most run just fine. Some technically run better on Linux, but I haven't encountered any where the difference was perceptable to me.


I used to bother with things like registry edits, until I eventually realized the technical difficulty of operating Windows has surpassed that of Linux.

Of course I still have to use Windows for work and even a few edge cases at home. But otherwise I've been quite happy since I swiched to Linux as my primary driver.


Win11debloat solves 99% of annoyances with Windows 11 in <5 minutes. I’ve used in as the first step on every Win 11 install for years. It’s mostly just a bunch of Powershell commands disabling/configuring features.

https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

Nothing has ever reverted after an update for me, so it’s a one-and-done thing. Ironically, afterwards Windows 11 has fewer noticeable ads than my MacBook which still continually pushes Apple services/shows/etc in settings/push notifications.

The only setting that I’ve ever seen sneakily disabled in recent years is the Edge default search engine but that's out-of-scope for Win11debloat.


It's better to get rid of Windows completely. You should try Arch if you enjoy tinkering.

This is excellent news. Hopefully Motorola will soon produce a GraphineOS-compatible device that meets my needs.

Although I seem to curse whatever company I buy a smartphone from. My last three devices were from HTC, LG, and Sony. Hopefully Motorola doesn't share the same fate.


Imagine if the Linux project had this same mentality. Thank goodness they don't.

Which leads to things like laptop sleep working inconsistently. Instead of having a good reputation, Linux's reputation gets hurt by all the random devices it allegedly supports.

But at least your laptop can run Linux. You get to decide as the user whether the problems that come with it are worth it.

And while some machines have problems like that, there are plenty of manufacturers who will sell you Linux devices with better support.

Also I don't think Linux's reputation is as problamatic as you make it seem. It is astoundingly popular and continues to grow - owing in no small part to its accessibility.


Devices designed for Linux work flawlessly, just like it happens with Mac and Windows.

Imagine if Apple had this same mentality, they would never be where they are.

(/s in case it is needed.)

As a smaller project, choosing a small set of hardware and supporting it really well (aside from security reasons) seems like a much better strategy than supporting tens of devices badly (go to e.g. the /e/OS forums to see what regressions people are dealing with after monthly updates).


Indeed. Apple is financially successful, but they're ultimately a minority player in pretty much every market they engage with - including desktop/laptop computers and even mobile devices globally. And for me they are just as inaccessible as GraphineOS.

But for Apple that is not necessarily a bad thing. They're a company. Their goal is to make money and they are highly successful at it. GraphineOS is not a company. They don't make money. Which begs the question of what is GraphineOS's real goal and is it valuable? Creating a maximally secure mobile OS seems valuable on its face, but that value is undercut by its inaccessibility.


that value is undercut by its inaccessibility

You are saying this like GrapheneOS only runs on some unobtanium hardware. I can literally hop on my bike and pick up a phone that runs GrapheneOS in 5 minutes, every day of the week. Also, it's available in pretty much all price classes except maybe a 100-200 Euro phone that runs on a Unisoc CPU. Pixel 9a regularly goes for 350 Euro here and you can go all the way up to an expensive flagship with a Pixel Fold (or anything in between). Even in the 100-200 bracket you can probably pick up a refurbished 8a that should still be supported until 2031.

I know that they are not sold in every country, but worst case it should be possible to get your hands on one second hand or refurbished.


The Pixel hardware does not have the capabilities I consider to be essential for my personal phone.

Is the value add for Notepad not that it is litterally the most bare bones graphical text editor available in Windows?

Microsoft has already positioned VS Code as its code editor and OneNote as its notetaking app. Why should Notepad compete with these offerings?


In a Copilot world, Notepad is now meant to render Copilot output, which LLMs do a good job of spitting out Markdown.

Why not remove the human trying to use Windows from the loop and have a server at Redmond feeding Copilot slop to a Copilot agent on the next server forever?

Anyone's got the CEO's number?

Tell him I don't charge for my genius management advice most of the time.


Why not? Microsoft's approach seems to be "the more the merrier" even if they have the same intended audiences. Not sure how it makes sense, but considering the company is still around, maybe in some twisted way it does make sense?

I'd think the answer to "why not?" would be because in being a bare bones, dead simple text editor is Notepad's core feature. And by adding these redundant featues, they are effectively removing Notepad's core feature without even providing a replacement.

The goal is and always was to make as much money as possible. Any consideration for how it affects actual people was marketing to get ahead of bad PR and regulation.

Safety was never a genuine concern. They simply don't benefit from marketing themselves that way anymore so they've stopped pretending.


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