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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Probably nothing. This is more steamdeck related stuff since the SteamOS is based on ArchLinux. And even then, it does not mean much for SteamDeck users. They wont notice much at all really. This might help with development a bit on valves end. The big news is really for ArchLinux users and maintainers which will see more effort in the development of that distro.

    There is some wild speculation that maybe this makes arm for Arch Linux more official in the future. Which is based of the other recent news that Valve are creating an ARM emulation layer for running games on ARM devices. Which means maybe they are working on an ARM device and maybe need to start working on getting ARM support for Arch. Though again this is all wild speculation.


  • Arch normally immediately updates to the latest version of every program

    This is not true though. Arch packages new program versions as soon as they can - for popular stuff this happens quickly but not everything updates quickly. And when they do publish a new package it goes to the testing repo for a short time before being promoted to the stable repos. If there is a problem with the package that they notice it will be held back until it can be solved. There is not a huge amount of testing that is done here as that is very time consuming and Arch do not have enough man power for this. But they also do not release much broken things at all. I have seen other distros like ubuntu cause far more havoc with a broken update then Arch ever has.




  • The known unknowns and especially the unknown unknowns never get factored into an estimate. People only ever think about the happy path, if everything goes right. But that rarely every happens so estimates are always widely off.

    The book How Big Things Get Done describes a much better way to factor in everything without knowing all the unknowns though - Just look a previous similar projects and look how long they took, take the average and bounds then adjust up or down if you have good reason to do so. Your project will very likely take a similar amount of time if your samples are similar in nature to your current task. And the actual time already factors in all the issues and problems encountered and even if you don’t hit all the same issues your problems will likely take a similar amount of time. And the more previous examples you have the better these estimates get.

    But instead of that we just pluck numbers out of the air and wonder why we never hit them.






  • I don’t think it does anything with cookies directly. It just blocks connections to domains and removes elements from pages that match patterns you give it. Removing the cookies/privacy banners does just that - removes the banner. This SHOULD opt you out of tracking as the laws generally require explicit permission, so not clicking the accept button should be enough. But if the sites follow those laws or not is a completely different matter.

    Third party tracking cookies are normally blocked by their domain - when a tracking pixel is on the screen it reaches out to a known tracking domain which logs this visit and drops a cookie for that domain on the page. By blocking that domain the tracking request is never made and thus no cookie is dropped and so there is nothing to track you. Most tracking is done like this so it is quite effective. But it wont stop a first party cookie from being dropped or tracking done through that or any other data you send.

    Note that the laws don’t require permission for all cookies. Ones that are essential to the sites function (like a cookie that carries login info) are typically allowed and cannot be opted out of (you can always delete cookies locally though, the laws just cover what sites can use). And not all sites will respect these laws or try to skirt around them so none of this is 100% perfect by any means.


  • This is an absolute terrible post :/ I cannot believe he thinks that is a good argument at all. It basically boils down to:

    Here is a new feature modern languages are starting to adopt.

    You might thing that is a good thing. Lists various reasonable reasons it might be a good thing.

    The question is: Whose job is it to manage that risk? Is it the language’s job? Or is it the programmer’s job?

    And then moves on to the next thing in the same pattern. He lists loads of reasonable reasons you might want the feature gives no reasons you would not want it and but says everything in a way to lead you into thinking you are wrong to think you want these new features while his only true arguments are why you do want them…

    It makes no sense.