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Cake day: March 19th, 2024

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  • Worth considering that there’s less of a need for backwards-compatibility with Linux binaries because most Linux software is open-source, so they can be recompiled or updated for modern Linux by the end user if the maintainer is gone. A lot of legacy Windows software is still in use and the source is unavailable, so Windows has to support it for the businesses that use the legacy software. In other words, it’s a cultural difference too. Linux seems pretty good at supporting things users actually use, like old hardware.

    Not disagreeing with you btw, just my thoughts on why that difference exists.



  • Signal is fine for normal/social chatting. It is centralised which makes it much harder to obscure identifying conversation metadata, and I wouldn’t recommend it for comms with a state threat model. I like SimpleX for addressing those issues.

    If you just want to chat to friends and nothing else, I probably would recommend Signal for the most polished experience and most widely adopted open-source private messenger.







  • I’ve scanned a book with my phone and uploaded to Z-Library before when it was a book I couldn’t find online at all. Not a great quality pdf, but as someone who wanted to read the book for research and ended up having to buy a paper copy, I would’ve still preferred that pdf to nothing; it was still perfectly readable.

    Like another commenter said, to get a good-quality pdf you’d have to take the spine off. Also note that it is really time-consuming and tedious to scan a book by hand (I assume there are machines that can automate it, but normal people don’t have those). Big respect to people who do it regularly, but you may not want to be one of those people.




  • The point schnurrito was making is that even if you know what an IP address is and what are valid or invalid IP addresses, a lot of people won’t read the IP address. They’ll just see numbers and skim over them. Even if you’re keeping eyes peeled for scams, most people don’t have their IP address memorised off the top of their heads so they wouldn’t be looking to check if the IP address looks right or not.






  • Most people who build software from source do it for reasons other than trust. Could be for fun (I imagine the main reason why people do Linux From Scratch), could be for the same reason that compels some people to use Gentoo lol. OP didn’t say what their motivation was.

    edit: nvm, in other comments OP has said they’re concerned about an xz style of backdoor. In any case, I would still be interested to read about someone trying what OP is suggesting.