Yeah and this still wouldn’t cover something like xz-utils because I would only be aware of end user projects and not the libraries behind them. I’d have to draw up entire dependency graphs.

If you don’t already, use version control (git or otherwise) and try to write useful messages for yourself. 99% of the time, you won’t need them, but you’ll be thankful that 1% of the time. I’ve seen database engineers hack something together without version control and, honestly, they’d have looked far more professional if we could see recent changes when something goes wrong. It’s also great to be able to revert back to a known good state.

Also, consider writing unit tests to prove your code does what you think it does. This is sometimes more useful for code you’ll use over and over, but you might find it helpful in complicated sections where your understanding isn’t great. Does the function output what it should or not? Start from some trivial cases and go from there.

Lastly, what’s the nature of the code? As a developer, I have to live with my decisions for years (unless I switch jobs.) I need it to be maintainable and reusable. I also need to demonstrate this consideration to colleagues. That makes classes and modules extremely useful. If you’re frequently writing throwaway code for one-off analyses, those concepts might not be useful for you at all. I’d then focus more on correctness (tests) and efficiency. You might find your analyses can be performed far quicker if you have good knowledge about data structures and algorithms and apply them well. I’ve personally reworked code written by coworkers to be 10x more efficient with clever usage of data structures. It might be a better use of your time than learning abstractions we use for large, long-term applications.

I’ve used it for the exact same purpose, great minds think alike. It’s perfect for that scenario given there’s no internet.

I just don’t use it much otherwise because apps like Signal are far easier to move my friends and family on to and they’re more than good enough. The metadata privacy Tor would provide would give me a lot of peace of mind but I know it’ll never happen.

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I really liked how coupling is described as “knowing.” I find we talk about “does x need to know about y?” more than we do “is x overly coupled to y?” because the former is a relatable indicator of the latter.

I was going to say that Cloudflare uses nginx but I found that’s no longer true.

I use a UK keyboard, | is pretty easy to access and $ is Shift+4.

I’m guessing you mean more exotic keyboards. I’ve used a Swedish keyboard while helping a friend and I had to ask where every key was. You probably just learn the combinations eventually.

https://www.cloudynights.com/ is probably the best astronomy community about, the subreddit never compared.

I think you’re asking if it’s possible for your government to be a man-in-the-middle? Depending on which government you live under, the answer is likely no but more importantly the answer will always be; it’s not worth their effort to find out what you’re watching.

YouTube’s public key is signed by a certificate authority whose public key (root) is likely installed on your device from the factory. When you connect to YouTube, they send you a certificate chain which your browser will verify against that known root. In effect, it’s information both you and YouTube already share and can’t be tampered with over the wire.

Technically, those signatures can be forged by a well resourced adversary (i.e. a government) with access to the certificate authority through subversion, coercion, etc. At the same time, it’s probably easier to subvert or coerce you or YouTube to reveal what you watch.

obscure corporate jargon like KPIs (key performance indicators), KRIs (key risk indicators) which, after having thrown them at me during an interview for a college intern position, made the interviewer wonder why i got so flustered. i would hesitate to throw any acronyms around in any interview, let alone for a college student.

by the way, i got the internship. the acronyms weren’t even used in my position.

Yeah, it’s pretty understandable to associate telemetry with wrongdoing. There’s been so much of it that it’s easier to switch it off.

There’s a lot of useful, non-personal data they have legitimate reason to collect. Namely, app profiling data for profile-guided optimization which can improve the performance of the browser by analyzing how it runs on actual devices.

Ah, it might be a regional thing. In the UK, the cheapest Vitamix is almost £400 where the Magimix was about £200 at the time. They might be pretty comparable but the prices don’t quite work out the same here.

Totally agree though, I was getting through a £50-75 blender each year for really silly breakages with no spares available.

A decent blender. Not anything industrial like a Vitamix, it’s a Magimix which was about half as much but still durable and has replaceable parts. It’s fine for what I need and is lasting much longer than the pile of crap I had before.

Vacuum pack bags for clothes is another one. I like to keep my wardrobe seasonal but I don’t have much space, so packing it down helps.

Also anything reusable: PTFE/silicone baking sheets, rechargeable batteries, reloadable floss handles. All of these have saved recurring purchases, money over time and reduced waste (which made me feel good.)

Have you seen the Star64?

Nice try, boss.

Yeah, I think that comes from the developer having high standards for hardware security. The effort put in is a waste if the hardware fails. I would have thought Samsung would have been suitable too, though.

What about /e/OS or plain old degoogled Lineage? I like it as a phone OS, it’s just a shame the app ecosystem is so dependent on Google’s services.

Nice to know, I was pretty sure my experience was purely anecdotal.

I can anecdotally say that the more right-leaning people I know are the most anti-FOSS but I’m not sure that applies generally.

Even that comes with a caveat: the people I know disagree with it philosophically, i.e. they can’t see how it can work for the maintainer and won’t donate, yet are as happy as anyone to use something for free.

Just wanted to add a bit about Proton since you mentioned it and I use it quite heavily.

Pros:

• All-in-one platform for storage, mail, VPN, password manager and calendar. Usually works out cheaper than multiple providers.
• E-mail aliases built-in to the password manager makes it a breeze to manage. (Tutanota also supports aliases.)
• Personally, I think the UI is more polished. Not important for privacy but it’s a plus for the non tech-savvy.

Cons:

• All-in-one platform. I’m acutely aware that I’m going to have a headache if Proton is enshittified.
• If you’re not looking for all of the products they offer, it’s just expensive. Tutanota is cheaper for e-mail alone.
• The Drive app needs improvement. Migrating my files was painful and I want automatic Camera uploads. You might be okay with the Windows desktop app.
• The Calendar app has issues when not connected to the internet.
• The password manager doesn’t have a desktop application and managing it through the browser extension or app isn’t great.
• No subject-line encryption support (and other PGP interoperability issues on the free version) but… unfortunately, I don’t get many PGP encrypted e-mails anyway.

Otherwise these two are largely like-for-like for e-mail. There’s no benefit to Proton being hosted in Switzerland and I didn’t move to be warrant-proof or anything silly. The idea is really just moving emails away from an advertising company and paying for a quality service.

I need to get into NixOS but I have a similar variation on servers: ansible for state of systems, Borg + Borgbase for data (kept in /srv) and code (including ansible) are in Git.

The separation between data and state is really great. You want to be able to go from a base install and only bring in everything which makes your setup different.