powershell, in concept, is pretty powerful since it’s integrated with C# and allows dealing with complex data structures as objects too, similar to nushell (though it does not “pretty-print” everything the way nushell does, at least by default).

But in practice, since I don’t use it as much I never really get used to it and I’m constantly checking how to do things… I’m too used to posix tools and I often end up bringing over a portable subset of msys2, cygwin or similar whenever possible, just so I can use grep, sed, sort, uniq, curl, etc in Windows ^^U …however, for scripts where you have to deal with structured data it’s superior since it has builtin methods for that.

I prefer getting comfortable with bash, because it’s everywhere and I need it for work anyway (no fancy shells in remote VMs). But you can customize bash a lot to give more colored feedback or even customize the shortcuts with readline. Another one is pwsh (powershell) because it’s by default in Windows machines that (sadly) I sometimes have to use as VMs too. But you can also install it in linux since it’s now open source.

But if I wanted to experiment personally I’d go for xonsh, it’s a python-based one. So you have all the tools and power of python with terminal convenience.

Oh, the way I understood “exclusive deal” was that the deal is exclusively with Google alone, not that Google is the only option for the user (which has never been the case, you were always able to change the default).

This would mean the new non-exclusive deal for revenue sharing implies Mozilla can have deals with other search engines or services (eg. Bing, ddg, etc) and get paid for featuring their search in the selection, joining the group of “recommended” options alongside Google. Google cant contractually tie Mozilla to exclusively recommend/prefer/set-as-default Google alone.

but again, depending on what is interpreted by “prefer” and whether the browsers are actually forced to not set a default (even when they are not getting paid for it) this can be an important change or no change at all.

Wait… that contradicts other parts of the article…

They are actually saying Google can’t pay to be the default, but they can strike deals to share revenue.

What does “prefer its services” mean? is Mozilla still able to set them as default even if they are not being paid for it?

If they use a selection window like you imply: would they be allowed to set a pre-selected “default” there? would it just affect the order/placement of the available options? a “preferred/recommended” underline? would Google be willing to pay the same amount for that kind of deal?

I feel this is very unclear, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s actually a perfectly valid punitive approach that effectively would fix the issue or just a slap in the wrist.

Similarly, it’s unclear whether this is really something that won’t affect Mozilla or not. “Revenue sharing” implies that they will get less money than they would otherwise when users don’t choose Google (which I bet would be a higher percentage than those who go with a chrome based browser, like say… Opera)

It seems it comes with 9 different themes.

Personally, I find the UI decent, specially considering it runs even on ie6, and that it’s ok for mobile devices too.

So paying in order to prevent search engine competition is ok as long as you are rich enough that your payments become essential for those receiving them.

This.

I haven’t tried Cosmic yet, but for me it’s the opposite: I feel GNOME (and KDE) is needlessly complex / bloated. Give me a simple tiling window manager that’s efficient, quick and always reliable. No real need for menus or fancy animated toolbar widgets, just snappy instant response to my keypresses.

UX is as varied as people’s tastes, and they also might evolve with the times.

Mint does it best

I guess you mean Cinnamon, Linux Mint is the distro (and it also comes with MATE and XFCE variants).

Cinnamon started as a fork of GNOME 3, for a while Linux Mint was shipping GNOME 3 + MGSE (Mint GNOME Shell Extensions)… GNOME is configurable through extensions, but due to frictions with the GNOME team it made more sense to fork.

I see it has Tor as a dependency. Does it make use of onion routing? in which way?

The desktop has been losing market for a while. I feel Windows is already under serious threat (if not already in the minority) when you think about all the devices that mainstream audiences orbit around (phones, tablets, portable consoles, etc), often using the Linux kernel. Only about a third of most website traffic comes from desktops.

Many of the people who frequently use Windows desktop do so because of their job, and often avoid using it outside of work as much as possible, since it feels like… well, work.

Microsoft has been desperately trying to appeal to those other bigger sectors of the pie and has failed every time.

PC Gaming was one sector they had advantage on, yet that has already started to crumble thanks to Valve. I feel that MS will just try to push for integrating their xbox with Windows OS more and more…

I feel it’s a battle with many fronts, since PCs have many uses… so MS is likely to run their typical spiel: copy what the competition are doing and try to centralize/integrate it with their OS in a way that gives them an advantage, as they are famous for doing.

Another sector they can do this is with the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)… they could turn Windows into a frontend for running Linux apps… so if Linux apps became popular, they could try to advertise Windows as the “best” way to run Linux software without losing the full first party support of legacy Windows software.

That can be true… but it depends on the change… emptying your bank account is a change that would make you poorer, and having all those who love you die would be a change that is likely to make you bitter (or at least, sad).

Also, a lot of ancient software introduces change with relatively frequency… the Linux kernel itself is in constant change, introducing new features, despite it having very strict rules concerning backwards compatibility.

The reason there was disagreement wasn’t about whether the new thing is good/bad just because it’s “New! Different!”… but about whether it was actually a good change or not.

In the same way, just because nitro is the new init system in town (a change from the current status Quo) does not mean it necessarily is better/worse, right?

Also, I remember that before systemd there was a lot of innovation when it comes to init systems… most distros had their own spin. And more diversity in components that now are part of systemd. I’d argue that ever since systemd became the de-facto standard, innovation in those areas has become niche. One could argue that there’s less change now, distros are becoming more homogeneous and more change-adverse in that sense.

You could equally mischaracterize it the other way around:

1. Hey, this works worse for my workflow than before. I don’t want to use it.
2. New! Different! Change! Good! Put everywhere!

From their FAQ:

How did Keybee Keyboard integrate the swipe gesture ?

The swipe is the primary user interaction gesture on touchscreen devices, for this reason in Keybee Keyboard the structure, the arrangement and the linking of common word groups are designed to make the swipe easy and fast. Some syllables and some words can be inserted through a simple combination of tap & swipe (we call it twipe) greatly reducing the number of touches for typing a text. For now the twipe is limited to the adjacent keys. Keybee Keyboard is swipe friendly.

“For now the twipe is limited to the adjacent keys” … I’m not sure what that means, but my guess is that all keys are pressed along the swipe and you can’t skip keys in-between without raising your finger… so I guess the style of swiping might be different, something in between swipe and tapping.

I feel the opposite… I can see how a honeycomb structure might make it actually easier for swipers, since you have more keys connected around each key… in fact, it seems (from what they say in the website) that they have mathematically arranged the keys to minimize the average distance traveled from one key to the next. So I feel this is actually meant for swipers (they even say in the video that the connections are more “swipe friendly”).

But as someone who is comfortable using 2 thumbs (holding the phone with 2 hands when typing), travel distance between letters is not as big a deal, I can type 2 keys from opposite ends of the keyboard easily and in an instant. This does not look like a more efficient design for me, specially considering that the most used keys appear to be in the center, which would require stretching further the thumbs.

Considering that one of your requirements is already using .md files, which is a format pretty common… maybe a combination of different apps on different platforms would work? Specially considering that mobile UIs are likely gonna have different requirements than desktop UIs.

One approach I was considering was using neutrinote on Android (which is a relatively simple but functional no-bullshit markdown editor supporting cross-linking between markdown files) and VSCode / VSCodium on the desktop (which also supports cross-linking, and I think has some note-taking related extensions), or maybe zed, or whichever editor you might already be using that can support markdown. Then use syncthing for the sync.

However, I have not yet really gotten into it, primarily because second brain/zettelkasten note-taking in general has never really fully clicked with me, most of the time when I take notes I just use them as a scratchpad / temporary storage… without much of a proper organization … just a note meant to be scrapped as soon as it’s acted on. Often I just use tabs in my notepad app, without really saving them to a file.

This is grounded in the assertion that a website’s HTML/CSS is a protected computer program that an ad blocker intervenes in the in-memory execution structures (DOM, CSSOM, rendering tree), this constituting unlawful reproduction and modification.

This is ridiculous… the in-memory structures are highly browser dependent, the browser is the one controlling how the DOM is represented in memory… it would imply that opening the website AT ALL in a different version of the exact specific one they target or with a different set of specific features/settings would also be a violation, since the memory structure would likely be different too.

At that point, they might as well just ask for their website to not be visited at all.

The thing is that this would mean you also need to list the non-free projects that you are looking an alternative for (otherwise you wouldn’t be able to map them to their free software equivalents). And in order to not repeat the same lists, you will end up also having to list equivalents between closed source software (since the alternatives to Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop are likely gonna be the same).

This essentially would make it a subset of existing places like https://alternativeto.net/ where you can find alternatives to a software and filter to only show the alternatives that are open source.

Like many things, unfortunately, much of computing is run on feelings, tradition, and group loyalties, when it should use facts, evidence, and hard numbers.

So true…

Though I’d say “feelings” is ultimately what always determines the objective… but the means to reach that objective should always be based on facts, evidence and hard numbers. Not tradition nor group loyalties (nor whether any particular group “betrays” any particular preconception we might have had of them).

I honestly couldn’t care less what the management of Mozilla thinks… I only care about the actions they take that affect the software I use. I agree that we’re still better off with Firefox. The alternatives at the moment are either worse, lacking or counterproductive to the development of their common base.

I’m keeping my eye on the likes of qutebrowser and ladybird (I would have added netsurf too, but I’ve been waiting on that one to catch up to the level that I’d need for far too long to have any hopes).

Is the data and public keys being replicated in the communication between instances? it’s not made clear how the federation actually works, because “enabling users on different servers to share data with end-to-end encryption” (from https://foks.pub/) is something all services with TLS / HTTPS support already do…

Also… one big plus for the OpenPGP HKP protocol is that technically you can self-host your own key in a static HTTPS server with predefined responses and be able to have it interact with other servers and clients without issue. I’m expecting the more complex nature of FOKS might make self-hosting in this way difficult. I’d rather minimize the dynamic services I expose to the outside publicly if I’m self hosting.

Or not buying any new Ubisoft game that requires online. I don’t want to buy something that isn’t gonna last.