A very abrupt ending to what could have been a very educative text aimed at people who want to know 'what to choose', how to reason, and where we are currently at. I'd love to read more.
What a magnificent writeup. Much thanks, very useful, I always got a bit stuck on knowing about string types, their pitfalls and which to end up choosing, so I'm very happy with this useful document!
Good article, but visually representing data differently from how it's stored in the database can be a huge PITA. A pet peeve of mine is real names as an example, Dutch family names may have an infix (van, van der, den, van den) which is always in lowercase, and usually is not even an option on non-Dutch websites. You can't leave how to display these things up to the designer: the user has to know (imho) how these are stored. For example, sorting on last name should not happen on the infix, but only by lastname. E.g., "Dijk, van" comes before "Meulen, van der".
For completeness sake, the full names here may be "Bert van Dijk" and "Anne Jan van der Meulen". Also, "Anne Jan" is a single first name, despite the space.
It argues the topic pretty well: xz is unsuitable for long-term archival. The arguments are in-depth and well worded. Do you have any argument to the contrary beyond "sour grapes"?
Neat! Very handy for looking up issues remotely. It has a dependency on firefox, but on systems that have Nix, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Terry Davis was clearly the mad scientist we didn't know we needed. He brought many useful insights to OS development. Maybe one day the seeds he planted will grow out to become a wonderful tree. On days when he wasn't hampered by his medical issues some people remember him to be an extremely skilled teacher, patient with people who asked genuine questions. There was that side to him too.
The question I've latently had for decades: "what's the difference between .COM and .EXE", is answered by this article. Great reading too, brings back some good memories about MS-DOS tinkering. customizing the prompt (prompt $p$g), fdisk /mbr, sys command that sets up boot files (msdos.sys io.sys and command.com).
And oh the time I have spent to write menu entries in autoexec.bat and config.sys, figuring everything out from floppy disks containing things like cdrom drivers. I wasn't much older than 10 years old back then and was so happy when someone gave me an update: MS-DOS 6.22.
I love this. Can you earn their trust, as in, become pals with them? Or is this more of a human desire. It's probably mostly food based priorities to them.
I can fully relate to the criticism expressed, but does the article have to be that filled with expletives? I would argue that it could appeal to a far wider audience if the writer would be able to find a way around this crude use of a language. Less is more.
Not sure about the readership,though. But I think you're right with regards to the discussion - you only hear one side a lot which makes it appear that there is only one side which is the majority. But it's really not the case, however: opposing views are being bashed or brigaded to the point where expressing such views has become unsafe or too much effort. So instead of real discussion, people who are not left-leaning/pro-state/pro-fiat increasingly just use only karma buttons.