I've been running Linux for a very long time.

Ubuntu has never ever been the most stable or useful distro. What it did have was apt and more up to date stuff than debian.

I would never willingly choose Ubuntu if allowed other options (Fedora, Debian, maybe CoreOS, etc)

I have a lot of respect for Canonical for driving a distro that was very "noob friendly" in an ecosystem where that's genuinely hard.

But I mostly agree with you. Once you get out of that phase, I don't really see much value in Ubuntu. I'd pick pretty much anything else for everything I do these days. Debian/Fedora/Alpine on the server. Arch on the desktop.

> Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher?

Easy.

In the West at least, having more kids is no longer advantageous. In the past this could reduce the need for labor.

Now there isn't a "farm labor" problem to solve.

> Also there like 20 competing ways to install packages now. Used to just be apt

This is very incorrect. There's been far more for 35+ years

* apt/.deb

* yum(dnf)/.rpm

* Tarballs

* Ports trees

* Flatpak

* Snap

* Etc, etc, etc

Flatpak and Snap are new to me, and that's the annoyance. Like I get if there's some technical advantage to a snap, but apt can install snaps too. Also idk what .appimage is.

rpm was a thing that existed but wasn't a Mint way of installing. Tar, yes. I can see why you'd consider a tar a package, but I was thinking of things actually designed for packages, and tar isn't really an extra thing to learn and deal with. Port tree, idk never heard of that.

> Flatpak and Snap are new to me and that's the annoyance.

These were designed to solve different problems.

PS - Just avoid snap. Fuck snap. All my homies hate snap.

Flatpak otoh is software basically delivered in a container with some security restrictions. It works great, but you may want a GUI problem called "flatseal" to enable access to certain parts of the host filesystem, device access, etc depending on specifics of what the particular application is supposed to do. That's a bit of a security boundary (good).

Flatpak does solve several big issues with the minor and only occasional need to use flatseal to enable access to say something in /proc /dev etc

Snap happened in 2014

Flatpak in 2015

So you've got about 10 years of catch-up ;)

Are you sure that's okay? It has App Store, .pkg, drag-to-install, homebrew, MacPorts, and who knows what else!

MacPorts vs Homebrew is actually my biggest gripe with Mac dev, but at least it doesn't get in the way of installing basic software. Regular stuff is always intuitive and ends up with a .app. Even lots of dev stuff is just a .pkg you download, macports/homebrew is for niches.

> I'll try Linux again if they ever sort these things out

You don't understand. This won't be "sorted out", this is a feature.

Maybe it's just not for you, and that's ok.

You said it yourself, "fuck snap." But Snap is the default for a bunch of things. There's probably someone else saying "fuck flatpak." The user doesn't win this way, it's not a feature.

Snaps are a Canonical thing and is only used by default on Ubuntu and distro's based on Ubuntu. No other distro uses or recommends them.

Those are the popular distros though. Switch to something else and you trade 1 problem for 10.

If you want to base it on popularity then you should use Debian. Debian and its child distros (of which Ubuntu is one) make up the majority of Linux distros and the child distros are still 99% Debian.

Flatpak is available on every distro.

Snap is Ubuntu and derivatives only which is a respectable but smaller segment of the options.

It's also a fucking system daemon that runs in the background. Avoid.

Flatpak is available on every distro.

> but it's not possible for the developer of an App Store or Play Store app to allow its users to point it at a different push-notification server, because the public key has to be hardcoded in the app binary

Setting up stoat.chat right now, I'll let you know if I have any notification issues with it ...

They had several days in advance of training together. It was all planned in advanced.

https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4384084/air-...

Then you're fucked, and stuck on big tech and hostile governments. If you can't convince friends to move, that is.

> Ferraris from the '90s and before

That was potentially 36 years ago. 36 years from 1990 would have been 1954.

What changed in technology from 1954->1990, vs change in technology from 1990-2026? Quite a lot.

Today's cars are a lot more similar in technology to those of the 1990s than they were to those of the 1950s.

I can fix a 90s car with 2026 car tools, but I can't fix a 2026 car with 90s car tools.

Because of the electronics. They're vastly different, there's tons more, and they're proprietary.

That's not what happened with the X nonsense, a lot of people went to mastadon/bluesky.

It's interesting how long we're been using web search, and the total lack of user education on the features.

"Gemini protocol" with quotes should help.

+Gemini +protocol for more fuzzy, less accurate results

these operators straight up do not work anymore in any mainstream search engine.

I use them daily with Google. Works great.

You can open several incignito browser tabs to try it out side by side. It's easy to compare!

Note: In the US, doing English searches, using a chrome-based browser. Coming in with Firefox WILL give you different search results. Sometimes I do that intentionally (can be useful).

Have you considered that this tool is also useful to attackers?

Yes. Ultimately nearly any tool can be used for good can also be used nefariously.

Internet infrastructure data is inherently open. I'm just presenting it in a more useful way. So any motivated actor can access it regradless.

In any case, exposing your IP during these lookups is bad operational security for them. So I would assume they'd prefer not to use Wirewiki.

All that to say: I don't feel conflicted about making these tools.