You might be being a tad uncharitable to the GP. Competition isn't an inherently bad thing. Many engineering endeavours (and engineers) have been made better by the crucible of competition. The first space race, Formula 1, even the competition between the different experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, for example.
Easy answer to your last point: Work machine and Non-work machine. If I'm working for a company and the company needs MS Office, they will give me a machine with MS Office. I will treat that machine like a radioactive zone. Full Hazmat suit. Not a shred of personal interaction with that machine. It exists only to do work on and that's that. The company can take care of keeping it up to date, and the company's IT department can do the bending over the table on my behest as MS approaches with dildos marked "Copilot" or "Recall" or "Cortana" or "React Native Start Menu" or "OneDrive" or whatever.
Meanwhile, my personal machine continues to be Linux.
This is what I'm doing at my work now. I'm lucky enough to have two computers, a desktop PC that runs Linux, and a laptop with Windows 11. I do not use that laptop unless I have to deal with xlsx, pptx or docx files. Life is so much better.
A variation I've done occasionally is to run the Microsoft Windows software in a VM on my Linux laptop.
When I last had the MS office suite inflicted upon me, a couple years ago, I was able to run it in a Web browser on Linux.
It's important to remember, though, that these measures probably won't work long-term.
Historically, MS will tend to shamelessly do whatever underhanded things they can get away with at that point in time. The only exception being when they are playing a long con, in which case they will pretend to play nice, until some threshold of lock-in (or re-lock-in) is achieved, and only then mask-off, with no sense of shame. (It's usually not originating bottom-up from the ICs, and I know some nice people from there, but upper corporate is totally like that, demonstrating it again and again, for decades.)
Also, a company requiring to run Microsoft software is probably also a bad place to work in other regards.
> Also, a company requiring to run Microsoft software is probably also a bad place to work in other regards.
My current employer is so great that I have casually mentioned that I might stay until I retire a bunch of times since joining. I've never said that about any other job. We have Word because there are industry requirements that it meets in terms of formatting legal documents. Can other apps supplant it? Possibly, but no one is spending the time and money to find out and it's not my decision to make.
I understand the motivation of the statement, but it's a fallacy.
You just described an exceptionally good place to work (because, how many places would an employee casually mention a bunch of times that they might stay until retirement).
Congrats on findind that situation, but I don't think it's evidence of fallacy of my statement.
> Historically, MS will tend to shamelessly do whatever underhanded things they can get away with at that point in time. The only exception being when they are playing a long con, in which case they will pretend to play nice, until some threshold of lock-in (or re-lock-in) is achieved, and only then mask-off, with no sense of shame.
The Windows 10 bait n switch to Windows 11.
Hundreds of millions of PC users worldwide on old hardware using old Windows OSes were offered Win10 as free upgrade, with the promise that Win10 is the final Windows edition.
Later though, M$ announced Win11 and it would work only on new hardware (BIOS TPM 2.0 constraint), and Win10 is no longer being supported for personal use (except via some complicated ways to get an extension for the Win10 updates). And not only is Win11 buggy and full of ads, its performance is also bad.
Well, the good thing is that such shenanigans are pushing PC users to migrate to Linux.
Valve saw the writing on the wall when Windows 8 was released. Their investment made Linux more feasible for the average user.
This makes me wonder how much better the world would be if corporations didn't have to answer to shareholders. Valve isn't publicly traded, Microsoft is.
> Also, a company requiring to run Microsoft software is probably also a bad place to work in other regards.
Microsoft being shitty notwithstanding…I think you don’t really grasp just how prevalent Microsoft is in the business world - it is not the indicator you think it is.
Too true... even then, there are some MS things I actually like... VS Code and C# at the top of the list. I also like a lot of the things in MS office over alternatives in practice. LibreOffice is just annoying to me every time I use it, and I use it regularly, OnlyOffice has been less reliable still. I still don't equate any of the alternatives to Visio as close to equal despite regularly using them as well.
That said, I emphatically despise a lot of the decision making behind Windows and a lot of MS products... I really wish it was managed/governed more by technical influences than business/fincancial ones in practice. You can see where a lot of the lines are drawn and it's a bit fascinating.
Have a new laptop arriving shortly with enough RAM and storage, that - me being a historically "Windows as primary OS" kind-of-person, with the enshitification of their adding CoPilot to everything and turning Windows 11 into an "agentic" OS, my installation will be Linux-first, and then run Windows via LKVM (hopefully with proper pass-through for TPM + GPU).
Yes - I have "noodled" with Linux in VM's and Raspberry Pi's - but it has never been my primary OS.
> Also, a company requiring to run Microsoft software is probably also a bad place to work in other regards.
This seems like an over generalization, though I agree with your other points. Microsoft is not a good company, but are any of the big tech behemoths?
I could buy an argument that requiring Windows for devs might be a red flag, unless said company is making Windows software or games, but there are plenty of valid reasons to standardize on Windows & Microsoft 365 across the office, especially in very large companies. Even if a company issues macs, they are still probably on M365 unless they are in silicon valley or a startup using Google Workspace.
Consumers aren't Microsoft's customer, and to be honest, I get the vibe that Microsoft would just prefer to stop selling to and catering to consumers/personal users entirely for Windows. Windows in an enterprise, properly reined in by a competent IT department, isn't too bad. Windows gives a lot of tools to IT and the business that you would otherwise have to build yourself, which for non-tech company or a company where software isn't their revenue generating product, has a lot of appeal.
The distaste everyone feels for it is because Windows isn't built for the end user anymore, it's built for the person signing the checks at the company, who usually has different needs. Doesn't mean it's a bad product (although, it's not great), just that you, the user, isn't who its designed for.
Despite Microsoft's behavior and all of Windows' flaws, when properly managed and controlled in an enterprise, it's not so bad, and there's still a ton of software out there that is Windows only.
Where I work now is pretty much like that. Windows on end-user endpoints, Linux everywhere else.
I like this in theory but as someone who travels often with my work laptop, it's nice to be able to use the same hardware for personal use as carrying a second computer is impractical regarding carry weight and packing.
Apple used to allow installing a second copy of MacOS without it being subject to the work profile - completely isolated from the work partition (because you could ignore the "set up work profile" prompts after installation).
I would simply restart my MacBook into the personal install after work & on weekends.
Apple have recently updated the MacOS installer to be always online so I can no longer install a seperate MacOS partition without a work profile.
I ended up buying an ROG Ally but it's honestly not that portable. The power brick is almost the same size as the handheld and it occupies about as much space as a laptop in my carry on.
When I travel for work, I take my work laptop and an iPad in a keyboard case. It’s under 2lbs (0.9kg), it can charge off the same brick as my phone or even pass through charge off my work laptop itself, and keeps me connected to my personal digital life without having to put anything personal on the work machine. It also never raises an eye with security if you have a laptop + iPad.
Usually, the iPad apps are "good enough" (in some ways, they are actually better for travel, as they are designed with features like offline downloads), but if they are not a "real" computer is only a tailscale connection to my home network away over VNC.
Edit: specifically, the iPad + Laptop combo never raises an eye at customs houses. Inside the USA, I've taken as many as 3 laptops for a work trip before, and I can not express how much the TSA does not care. On the other hand, when you go through customs in another country, they can be bit ornery (i.e. suspect you of trying to avoid import tax), so I never want to take more than one laptop through a customs barrier.
p.s. if you want to game in your downtime, such trips are an awesome time to break out the emulator and retro game, an iPad has more than enough power for this, and SNES / d-pad type games work great with a keyboard case as a controller (or, you can just bring a real controller).
All of these gaming laptops really do suck. I feel like these days your better off having a small form factor pc or just remote into your machine from far away.
I never understood the point/market for gaming laptops. They seem popular enough for OEMs to still keep them around, but in almost every way you are much better off with a desktop if you need that much compute.
They can't be used on battery; the discrete GPU will chew through your battery in minutes. They are heavy, loud, hot.
Tried one for a while a long time ago, hated it. I never wanted to bring it anywhere it was so heavy and bulky, so I figured what's the point in having a laptop if I never want to take it with me.
Got a powerful desktop for gaming now, and my portal device is either my iPad or a Macbook air, and I can just remote into my desktop anytime I need.
When I was younger these type of machines were great for me. I usually used them at home but sometimes in my bedroom (aka office) and sometimes in the living room (group games, playing music, just watching TV with the roommates). I would also occasionally take them to school or other people's house (projects, LAN parties).
So it was used primarily like a desktop, and as my only system having power was useful. But the fact that I could put it in my backpack and transport it was super valuable.
Now I do have a more portable laptop and a full desktop setup. But at the time that wasn't the best option.
I actually ended up buying a travel router and 60% of my gaming was done by remoting into my ROG Ally from my work laptop (they didn't block Steam). The remaining 40% of gaming was done plugged into a TV + controller.
For normal browsing I would use RDP - though it would be amazing if Apple supported some kind of displayport in on the MacBook so it could be used as a screen for an external device.
I've been considering selling my Ally and buying a mini PC with a half decent APU as I seldom use it as a handheld.
I'm still using my M1 air for personal use... though I opted for 16gb and 1tb storage, I will wireguard+ssh to my desktop as needed... remote editing in VS Code is nice AF.
Two laptops is easier than you’d think if you have the right bag.
My work lap is so locked down I cannot do anything personal on it, so when I go into the office I always carry two laptops, and the personal one is an old thick heavy dinosaur; it’s got to be at least five pounds. However, with a good bag that has a (non-padded) belt and sternum strap, it is not difficult. The belt carries most of the load and my shoulders don’t hurt; they hardly feel anything.
I deliberately park in the farthest spot at the other side of campus (about a half mile, and up four flights in the garage) to get in exercise steps with the heavy pack.
It’s good exercise but I absolutely need a belt and sternum pack to do it. Wouldn’t dream of trying that with only shoulder straps.
Heh - going on 20+ years, my "running joke" is if the only exercise I truly get is lugging my laptop(s) around (sometimes as many as 3, depending on client-load) + "kit" (Kobo eReader, cables, powerbricks (although if it is an ongoing thing, I leave those onsite or rely on docks), powerbank, and various other gear (occasionally an active "gimbal", occasionally an HT radio + it's gear) - then at least one of them might as well be extremely heavy...
Haven't seen many "laptop-focused" backpacks that have both belts and sternum straps, would love any recommendations.
Tell that to airport check-in staff haha. A laptop and charger are around 3kg and there's only so much clothing I can take out of my suitcase and wear to make it passed check-in.
But I hear you. It's annoying that I can't reuse perfectly good hardware, but it's fine - we make do.
The added scrutiny at some border crossings can be problematic too. Explaining to the inspectors at the Turkey/Bulgaria border why I had two phones and two laptops (and dissuading them of the suspicion that I was smuggling electronics to friends/family) through language barriers was a pain.
I do tell that to airport check-in staff :-) I just take both laptops out. I only do carry-ons and no checked bags and am able to stuff everything needed into one mid-sized tac pack.
> I deliberately park in the farthest spot at the other side of campus (about a half mile, and up four flights in the garage) to get in exercise steps with the heavy pack.
As a side note, this is an excellent habit, sadly I noticed people discover that avoiding effort is not always the best strategy when their muscle mass decreases, and adding elements of strength exercise to their daily routine can be more effective than going to the gym, for various reasons.
If you aren't into gaming at all, you might consider a smaller Macbook Air for personal use... mine is mostly relegated to occasional use unless I'm traveling, where it's mostly email/web use. Small, light, fits my needs and can charge via the same USB adapter I carry for my phone anyway. I have a rather heavy laptop bag so the difference between 1 or two laptops and the portable display isn't that big a difference.
I can do work on the computer running BSD/Linux, save it in a text-only format, transfer it to the work computer then import into Excel, PowerPoint or Word
It's been over 20 years since I had a home computer running Windows (and well over 30 since I've used a mouse)
I think the GP comment is evidence that Microsoft can get away with what it is doing. Even people who can use Linux or BSD will not stop using Windows at home no matter how obnoxious it becomes
There is a substantial difference between complaining and actually taking action and the company seems to recognise that
Same. Work provides the idiot box. I give it its own segmented network too, cause work spyware and all... then run a personal workstation with linux next door to it.
The problem with Linux is that there is no legitimate place to direct your rage at. It is free, nobody owes you anything and every installation is different. When Windows is awful, virtually everyone is being sympathetic. When Linux is awful, there is a genre of people that made using Linux an integral part of their identity, that will explain to you how your frustrations are really your own personal failures.
I'm slowly moving away from the Apple ecosystem, and this is what I rather like about Linux. I find it obviates the anger — there's no specific entity making decisions that make my user experience worse. If something's annoying me, it's quite likely to be my own fault.
You could argue that, with Windows there is a legitimate place to direct your rage at, but the action of directing your rage does not actually have any effect on improving your experience. With Win and Mac, no one cares, because they already have their customers locked in and tight, they will accept any experience degradation. With Linux, you are not a customer so no customer complaints, but still arguably much better support.
If you come at it like a sinner asking for penance, the englightened may come to guide, but that's not what I'm talking about. If you to rage, these same people will become inquistors. Rage isn't all about solving a problem, it's about catharsis. It's not so much about technical support, it's about emotional support. A bad design decision (like the GNOME desktop redesign) is not a technical problem. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Agreed. And also, if there's something you don't like or a project going in a direction you don't agree with, there is virtually guaranteed to be other people out there that feel the same that are building something different
> When Linux is awful, there is a genre of people that made using Linux an integral part of their identity, that will explain to you how your frustrations are really your own personal failures.
There are also people who often claim that their installation of Linux always crashes after every single update, their favourite commodity hardware that's a decade old still doesnt work out of the box on Linux etc etc.
The truth is somewhere in between and its a lot closer to the positive experience these days compared to the old days.
> When Linux is awful, there is a genre of people that made using Linux an integral part of their identity, that will explain to you how your frustrations are really your own personal failures.
On the one hand, yes, this is not a nice thing to have happen. The frustrations shouldn't happen to begin with, and then people shouldn't be using the reverse Uno card on you just for that.
On the other hand, Linux has a lot fewer of these frustrations (in my experience), and a lot of frustrations are being fixed with time, since you're likely not the only one who is frustrated by it.
On the third hand, the situation being shit for obvious human reasons, not enough dev time, disagreements about the way forward, as is the case with Linux development, is a much, much nicer thing to have your problems caused by, rather than the source of Windows being shit, that is, someone wasn't happy with their dashboard this morning and decided to make that your problem today.
You can always buy someone to direct your rage at if you are a business and wanting to deploy Linux though. Red Hat, Suse, Canonical will all happily sell you support contracts and guarantees.
Idk. My main frustration with Linux has nothing to do with the OS itself. Linux is pretty good actually. My main frustration has to do with software that doesn't run on Linux that I have to use occasionally. So things that force me not to use Linux. But that has gotten much better over the years.
And meanwhile my Windows and MacOS experience has gotten much worse. So I feel pretty good with using Linux as my daily driver for the past 6 years.
I raged a lot when my Arch machine would break after an update and I'd have to do config file surgery on a machine that no longer wanted to boot into a graphical desktop. I've never had that sort of thing happen on Mac or Windows.
Well, that's definitely on you. Arch do warn people to actually read the changelogs if you're going to update/upgrade everything. Whenever I've hit a problem with an Arch machine (I think it's only twice), it was written quite clearly in the update notes along with the fix.
It's actually surprising just how stable Arch Linux can be considering that it's typically using the newest code for everything. If you really want Arch and stability, maybe using something like SteamOS would be better - Arch, but designed to be stable.
> Well, that's definitely on you. Arch do warn people to actually read the changelogs if you're going to update/upgrade everything.
"There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now."
It's a while since I used Arch (apart from my Steam Deck, but that's a bit different as it's curated and has a read only root filesystem by default), so I've had a look around and I think I meant reading the "Latest News" at https://archlinux.org/
e.g.
> NVIDIA 590 driver drops Pascal and lower support; main packages switch to Open Kernel Modules
> 2025-12-20
> With the update to driver version 590, the NVIDIA driver no longer supports Pascal (GTX 10xx) GPUs or older. We will replace the nvidia package with nvidia-open, nvidia-dkms with nvidia-open-dkms, and nvidia-lts with nvidia-lts-open.
> Impact: Updating the NVIDIA packages on systems with Pascal, Maxwell, or older cards will fail to load the driver, which may result in a broken graphical environment.
> Intervention required for Pascal/older users: Users with GTX 10xx series and older cards must switch to the legacy proprietary branch to maintain support:
> Uninstall the official nvidia, nvidia-lts, or nvidia-dkms packages.
> Install nvidia-580xx-dkms from the AUR
> Users with Turing (20xx and GTX 1650 series) and newer GPUs will automatically transition to the open kernel modules on upgrade and require no manual intervention.
Personally, I used to just run an upgrade and then go look for known problems if pacman threw an error. Of course, the recommendation is to have a good backup before running the upgrade and just roll it back if it has issues (then read the notes).
> Before upgrading, users are expected to visit the Arch Linux home page to check the latest news, or alternatively subscribe to the RSS feed or the arch-announce mailing list. When updates require out-of-the-ordinary user intervention (more than what can be handled simply by following the instructions given by pacman), an appropriate news post will be made.
Yeah, I stopped using it myself as I didn't really need a bleeding edge system. It's actually surprising just how reliable Arch is - I think if you want to run it in production system, you don't bother doing a system upgrade without testing it first.
I do like the Arch wiki though - probably the best source of information on Linux tools etc.
sudo pacman -Syu. -> Secure boot config broken, OS won't boot (Manjaro this summer with some Intel firmware update).
No HDMI sound on nvidia for some distros until recently.
Getting the Wifi to work ootb on Mint is not always easy..
That's your problem right there. EndeavourOS is also a beginner-friendly Arch derivative but less breaky.
> Wifi to work ootb
I definitely feel you on that one, it's just the luck of the draw sometimes... If you haven't considered it, in some laptops the wifi module is a replacable mPCIe or m2 module and if that's the case, more compatible replacements shouldn't be hard to find for cheap or salvaged from broken laptops.
I'm using Debian an when working for a client that requires Windows, I'm working in a VirtualBox with Windows Server 2022 as my desktop OS.
It works really well (running mainly Visual Studio) and licenses are pretty cheap. But the best part is, that there are no ads and other Windows 11 Copilot nonsense.
I've recently had to migrate over to Python from Matlab. Pandas has been doing my head in. The syntax is so unintuitive. In Matlab, everything begins with a `for` loop. Inelegant and slow, yes, but easy to reason about. Easy to see the scope and domain of the problem, to visualise the data wrangling.
Pandas insist you never use a for loop. So, I feel guilty if I ever need a throwaway variable on the way to creating a new column. Sometimes methods are attached to objects, other times they aren't. And if you need to use a function that isn't vectorised, you've got to do df.apply anyway. You have to remember to change the 'axis' too. Plotting is another thing that I can't get my head around. Am I supposed to use Pandas' helpers like df.plot() all the time? Or ditch it and use the low level matplotlib directly? What is idiomatic? I cannot find answers to much of it, even with ChatGPT. Worse, I can't seem to create a mental model of what Pandas expects me to do in a given situation.
Pandas has disabused me of the notion that Python syntax is self-explanatory and executable-pseudocode. I find it terrible to look at. Matlab was infinitely more enjoyable.
Yeah, pandas is truly awful. After working with things like R, ggplot, data.table, you soon realize pandas is the worst dataframe analysis and plotting library out there.
I pretty much consider anyone who likes it to have Stockholm syndrome.
There are children and there are adults. Children have more free time. Children watch more YouTube than adults. So LTT's audience is probably more children too.
Children are attracted to soy-boy suprised pikachu face on clickbait thumbnails. CHLIDREN are ATTRACTED to EVERY second WORD being IN all CAPS!!! They like the three exclamation marks. They like flashy text on MrWhoseTheBoss videos which repeat the same thing the fucking guy is talking but just with flashy text on screen. They like the whizz-bang animations and ADHD addled three-second shots. They like the Mr. Beastification of Youtube.
I'm not a child. I'm too old and weary for that. LTT wants to do it, he can. Godspeed, and may his next twenty million subscribers fill the hole in his pocket and his soul that the first twenty million couldn't. I just ain't gonna be watching.
> repeat the same thing the fucking guy is talking but just with flashy text on screen
This have been a thing on Japanese TV since long ago, doubling down on the punchlines with subtitles or adding a comment or comeback (conveniently, Japanese text takes less space that Western text, so the characters can be relatively large). So I think they just copied it.
Youtube's system is adversarial. There's more content than eyeballs, so if your brand new video is placed in front of like three people who do not click on it, it stops getting shown to people entirely including subscribers!
Clickbait thumbnails and titles are what Google wants, and they provide tooling to encourage it, and punish you if you do not use it.
You want to get rid of clickbait titles and thumbnails? Kill google. Then also legislate it away because it will naturally arise in any such adversarial system.
>They like the Mr. Beastification of Youtube.
Google likes the Mr. Beastification of Youtube. Google would rather every LTT go away and be replaced with another Mr. Beast. It's more profitable that way.
I don't care, simple as that. I'm also in an adversarial relationship with LTT, and with Google.
I realised over the last years that my weariness with the internet was born mostly out of Youtube and Reddit. Reddit I've successfully cut out of my life, Youtube is more difficult to do because much of modern culture happens there. But I've drawn the line at the worst offenders. In tech, people like Dave2D and Marques Brownlee have managed to avoid having stupid thumbnails, so I'd rather watch them. Thereafter, I have a CalmYoutubers.md file that has the (few) channels that I find are not idiotic, so I stick to them.
I switched myself to Arch about 4 years ago now, with Sway. So fucking amazing. Everything is at my fingertips. Config files are easy to understand. AUR is a massive productivity boost.
As I got more comfortable with Linux, I decided to change things up even at the office. I switched to RHEL on my work PC. Consequently, moved from Matlab to Python. I even got my girlfriend to switch to Linux Mint and Graphene OS. The other day, she said it was joyous to be able to hit the start menu, type "Print" and have "Printer" show up. No drama. She has also discovered a love for the command line, being able to type "pdfunite blah blah" and have her PDFs combined into one etc.
Linux in 2025 is world-class, I have zero regrets.
You'd be surprised. I have to run RHEL at work, with Gnome. No Albert, no Wofi, no Rofi. Fuck all in the repositories. For months I missed typing Alt + Space, typing filename, hitting enter and having it open.
One evening with Claude. Done. Obviously it's not perfect, but man what an amazing thing to be able to do. I'm not even a software developer. LLMs are the new Excel.
Yes. I'm over the hatred for Electron too. Programmers have few options if they want cross-platform compatibility without Electron. What else are they going to use? QT? Please, give me a break. Some angelic developers like the KeepassXC guys still use QT, but that is a tough road to go down on. For the rest of them, Electron Or Bust I'm afraid.
I would unironically rather have nothing than an Electron app in most cases. They are that bad. And in this case the app doesn't even add anything of value. Literally any email application will let you do the same thing.
> I would unironically rather have nothing than an Electron app in most cases.
So let me understand something: you obviously have a free will to not use something, but you would prefer something TO NOT exist and NOT solve problems for users, because you hate the technology so much?
In order to abide by QT's license, you have to follow the appropriate set of rules, depending on how you use it. You can use it LGPL, at which point you need to release the QT source you used and dynamically link it in your program. You can use it GPL but you have to release the source to your app. Finally, you can give QT money, and use it closed source. Okay, that wasn't that complex, but those are the rules if you want to use and distribute QT legally.
> You can use it LGPL, at which point you need to release the QT source you used and dynamically link it in your program.
This is wrong. There's a misconception that you can't statically link your app when using the open-source LGPL version of Qt. From my reading of the LGPL license this doesn't appear to be the case[1]. The LGPL allows you to statically link your app as long as you provide the object files and allow users to relink your app with a different version of Qt.
I've observed many people spreading this misinformation about only being able to dynamically link with the LGPL version of Qt. Please stop this.
> In case of dynamic linking, it is possible, but not mandatory, to keep application source code proprietary as long as it is “work that uses the library” – typically achieved via dynamic linking of the library. In case of static linking of the library, the application itself may no longer be “work that uses the library” and thus become subject to LGPL. It is recommended to either link dynamically, or provide the application source code to the user under LGPL.
That last sentence is key. It is a recommendation to dynamically link OR provide application source code. We don't want to be forced to provide application source code, so according to QT.io, dynamically linking is the way to go.
On top of that, there are GPL-only licensed QT modules that aren't suitable for use by closed source applications. Programs using QT on locked down OSes aka iOS and Android are subject to LGPL version 3's anti Tivo-ization clause. I'll revert to my original claim: Using QT is complex for commerical products.
Specific questions about dynamic linking and derivative works re: LGPLv3 have never been tested in a court of law, in any jurisdiction, so all we have to go on are tea leaves and armchair Internet lawyer-ing. The FSF and GNU are certainly entitled to their own opinion about their own license, but they also have a vested interest in casting as wide a net as possible. There are plenty of dissenting opinions out there,
by actual lawyers. The important point is that GNU/FSF wouldn't be one deciding what's what in a court of law, a judge is. That judge gets to decide if the specific technical differences between static linking vs dynamic linking are even relevant in the first place. They might decide there isn't one!
Since it hasn't been tested in a court of law, different people are going to have different opinions on what's actually right. QT.io gives a specific recommendation on how to use their library, so I'll defer to what they have to say, but everyone's free to make their own decisions.
Whoa. This looks very interesting. Does it support maths? Are the images stored locally? Can fonts and typography be changed? How does it differ from your open-source version which looks similar?
- Not yet, but adding support for Math blocks is planned.
- Yes, images are stored locally in the ~/user/.config/Awesomeness/attachments folder
- Yes, but only for pre-defined fonts. This is by design - I wanted the app to be opinionatingly simple. But since I got many requests for that, I'm gonna add an option in the settings for that.
- My FOSS version uses a simple plaintext editor (QTextEdit) with some Markdown highlighting. Daino Notes uses a block editor (a la Notion) I wrote from scratch[1] - this allows me to add complex blocks *in the middle of the documents* - so things like Kanban, Images - any custom component that I wish basically - so also math blocks, tables, etc in the future. It's also allows me to do nifty things like cool drag & drop[2] and the editor is even more performant than QTextEdit (especially on large texts).
I've used similar webview solutions before and they can break even on Windows (example: needing edge webview2 but not available on the user install). I get why people are pissed off by Electron but I also get why it's the de facto standard in its field.
Highly recommended. What you will find is that the title does the book justice. The top executives at Facebook aren't so much cartoonishly evil but rather hopelessly inept for the job at hand. They have no idea what they are doing, and little concern by way of the consequences of their actions, or their outsized impacts on individuals and the world in general.
Thank you ever so much for this recommendation. I'm already through half of his upskilling document. It is as if he wrote the book exactly for me. I've been studying first thing in the morning off and on for a while now, and I'm happy to find that he advocates for that. Other than that, his focus on a) maths, b) coding and, c) domain expertise fit in line with where I want to head. I'm also happy to see that he has written much on his blog that I could dig into later.
This article is visibly, annoyingly, distractingly in threes.
> It promises clarity. Control. Mental leverage.
> but to keep it alive, replayed, and reworked.
> A dusty collection of old selves, old interests, old compulsions...
> A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it...
> There is a guilt that accompanies unread books, articles and blog posts
> The belief that by naming a goal, you are closer to achieving it. That by storing a thought, you have understood it. That by filing a fact, you have earned the right to deploy it.
> ...the fear of losing track, of forgetting, of not being caught up.
> Nietzsche burned early drafts. Michelangelo destroyed sketches. Leonardo left thousands of pages unfinished.
I'm starting to notice this style a lot. Apparently there's a formal term for it, but I didn't begin to notice it until I started using ChatGPT regularly.
Granted, there are people who didn't notice the utility of the em dash until it became apparent in ChatGPT's responses, but aside from either device there is a certain vibe I'm starting to pick up from a lot of writing online that mirrors AI writing although you can't just call it that, especially if people enjoy it.
A kind of abstract solipsism that only resonates unless you consent to a platonic relationship with the author through their writing. About as close as you can get to reading something written with the aid of AI, I'd imagine.
I choose to think optimistically, in the same way as I did when smartphones put a camera in everyone’s pocket: suddenly, “bokeh” is a term with purchase in the mainstream! “Portrait mode” for every adorable baby pic! A ring light in every makeshift bedroom-dresser studio!
Everybody’s participating now, and taking pride in using more of the visual language of photography for themselves. That makes us all richer!
Now, then, that the language-bots have sensitized our collective ear to the hypnotic rhythm of a parallel-constructed triplet, the drama of a “—“, and the muscular power of a strong active voice (…that’s three, right?)—aren’t we all richer for it?
I think you raise a valid point, but I would argue that in your photography example, the content is very much still human - portrait mode and ring lights are tools that improve the output but a human framed the picture, and pressed the button.
LLM generated writing doesn't quite feel the same for me, the words are the content but they lack human touch, context, intention. The equivalent would be the photographer uploading their photo to ChatGPT and asking it to regenerate the image. The output wouldn't feel right, it is more like losing something than gaining.
I feel that your optimism is great but that the example you provided is not the same.
Everyone had the ability to write before chatgpt, they had the ability to get their thoughts across if they so wished, whereas with photography it lessened the burden of having to buy an entirely seperate device.
if I move myself into the shoes of a photographer or someone with an affinity towards photographing I kind of get that when taking pictures is a big part of your life the camera starts to get ingrained with that but for others it wasnt just a step from camera to more frictionless camera it was a step from nothing to camera.
Whereas everyone has a brain to think things and to try to communicate what they are thinking and feeling, large language models did not enable that, they did however enable lazy people to swap out the work with a robots response or malicious people to spam the internet
> Now, then, that the language-bots have sensitized our collective ear to the hypnotic rhythm of a parallel-constructed triplet, the drama of a “—“, and the muscular power of a strong active voice (…that’s three, right?)—aren’t we all richer for it?
> Every note in Obsidian. Every half-baked atomic thought, every Zettelkasten slip, every carefully linked concept map. (4, though I suppose you could argue it's 1 + 3)
> But over time, my second brain became a mausoleum. A dusty collection of old selves, old interests, old compulsions, piled on top of each other like geological strata. (2, albeit with a 3 inside)
> Instead of accelerating my thinking, it began to replace it. Instead of aiding memory, it froze my curiosity into static categories. (2)
> The inhabitants of the library, cursed to wander it forever, descend into despair, madness, and nihilism. (2 with a 3 inside again)
> It is associative, embodied, contextual, emotional. We do not think in folders. We do not retrieve meaning through backlinks. Our minds are improvisational. They forget on purpose. (4, 2, 2)
I think the author (either in person, or via some LLM that did much of the actual writing) is just fond of this sort of rhetorical repetition, and it happens that if you're doing that then 3 is often the best number. (Because 2 may not be enough to establish the rhythm, and 4 may be enough to feel overdone.)
I do think there's too much of it here, and specifically too many threes, but I think the underlying fault is "too much parallelism" and the too-many-threes are a symptom.
I'm fascinated by all these comments I see on HN and elsewhere where people will deny that a blatantly LLM-written article was not LLM-written, including cases where people praise it for not being LLM-written (eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44384138 ). Like, leave aside the issue of whether it's a good or bad thing (I've been doing generative text NNs since 2015, so I'm mostly for it, when done well), I'm just interested in the inability to notice.
Skimming your comments, you, for example, do not seem to be illiterate or a bad writer at all despite being ESL (although you overuse the double-sentence structure in your comments), but you describe this as being 'stream of consciousness' (it is not even close to that, look at an actual example like Joyce) and seem to think it is fine.
So I'm puzzled how. Why isn't it obvious to you that the style is so mode-collapsed ( https://gwern.net/doc/reinforcement-learning/preference-lear... )? Do you also not notice how all the ChatGPT images are cat-urine yellow? (I've been asking people in person whether they have noticed this in the Bay Area and I'd say <20% of enthusiastic generative AI users have noticed.) What are you thinking when you read OP? Does it all just round off to 'content', and you don't notice the repetition because you treat it all as a single author? Are you just skimming and not reading it?
That quote doesn’t apply at all. Verbose writing doesn’t immediately indicate a lack of skill, otherwise every fiction book would’ve been reduced to a pamphlet of a summary.
If you are writing to explain, being concise is a useful asset. If you are writing to entertain, or for pleasure, verbosity and flair can be better.
I don’t get the feeling the author is trying to convince anyone of doing anything. They are sharing their experience, probably writing for themselves above everyone else. They should do it however they prefer.
I was replying specifically to the statement that writing verbosely is a form of "skilled writing", which I don't agree with. Simply being verbose does not make your writing any better.
