Not descending into a dystopian police surveillance state is also an alternative. We could just keep that option on the table. It’s a thought.

For economic reasons, home soda makers have mostly standardized on a very concentrated range of 20:1-25:1 syrups where most of the water comes from the tap and as much as 24/25ths of the bottle is carbonated tap water, the syrup is strong enough that only a small amount is needed for flavor. Commercial syrups are typically 5:1, meaning you only fill the bottle 4/5ths of the way with water because the rest will be syrup. That’s an awful lot of syrup used for each drink.

The problem is it’s very hard to concentrate sugar-only syrups to that level without triggering crystallization of the sugar. So they mix artificial sweeteners to make it sweet enough without using so much sugar. Commercial sugar-only syrups like Coca-Cola are far more diluted (ie, they contain significantly more water) which means they are larger and heavier for shipping and stocking and get used up much faster since they require more syrup mixed into each drink.

There’s nothing technically preventing you from using a commercial 5:1 syrup, other than that it’s less convenient. The main problem is it’s very difficult to find since there’s relatively little demand and the commercial soda companies keep it pretty tightly controlled through their distributors.

Functionality-wise, it seems very similar to just “git cloning” another copy of the repo in a different directory (you can even use the “main” local repo as its source, and “pull” from that), which at least to me seems more intuitive to reason about and doesn’t require me to learn any new commands or worry about any limitations like the issues with submodules or not being able to have the same branch checked out twice (clones don’t mind).

It’s a nice idea, and I’m going to try to remember them as an option for future scenarios where they might be useful, but I think the reason they never caught on generally is just that they’re not bringing anything to the table that can’t already be easily accomplished by other means.

I mean, if there are in fact many “people who contributed” then they should have no trouble forking the project at this point and continuing open source development of it. Their code and everything they contributed to is still open source. Nothing is being held hostage, no one is obligated to use the new proprietary closed-source version and the license they contributed under the terms of implies that it doesn’t bother them that somebody else is using their contributions for their own internal purposes to create a proprietary version of it. That’s explicitly allowed by the kinds of licenses they were using.

If there aren’t many people who contributed then the problem is not the licenses, it’s the fact that we depend way too much on people and companies donating development and maintenance effort to keep these projects afloat. The problem with donations is that they’re not mandatory and if you try to make them mandatory then they’re not a donation anymore. If it’s no longer in the company’s interest or economically justifiable to keep donating effort to the project then they won’t. If the project can’t survive that, then the license isn’t the problem.

It is crazy. And maybe it could be distilled down, but maybe because of what it’s become and how it’s used, that’s just not an option anymore. The context is that the “web” that browsers are browsing has grown from mere rich text and links into basically a fully networked and distributed operating system. There are entire software suites that exist only through web protocols now. Literally anything you used to be able to do on a Desktop OS you can now do directly on the web, often at very close to bare metal performance levels. And over the years and decades the standards have evolved to not just enable that anymore but to actually require that level of functionality. It has become completely expected to have javascript APIs allowing extensive and instantaneous DOM manipulation, HTML5 canvas and storage, WebSocket and WebGL available, they’re not just “optional addons” you can pull in with an extension or that a text based browser might not bother to implement, they’re a core part of the web and very little will be functional without them.

So when you’re building a “modern” web browser what you’re effectively really doing is implementing an entire cross-platform OS, sandboxed and virtualized for security within any host OS you choose to support.

Of course technically “the web” is still backwards compatible with the old pure HTML, no javascript, no CSS, web 1.0. There’s nothing stopping anyone from writing such a simple site today, and those websites are still out there. And that’s still sort of where you have to start with projects like Servo, because that’s just the basic level of absolute minimum functionality. But it’s taken a long time to build all the features of the modern web and so of course it’s going to take a long time for a new browser engine to implement all of them or even enough of them to actually start supporting the most commonly used websites.

While there are definitely a lot of quirks related to handling old sites and the various inconsistencies and incompatibilities that developed over the years, I don’t think that’s the real sticking point on developing a new web engine at this point. I think the issue is simply the fact that the web does so much and is such a comprehensive technology platform, and if you tried to simplify it, to make it easier to develop browsers, you would lose a lot of actually important functionality for developing websites that allow them to do the things they are doing today. Granted some of those things I wouldn’t mind losing either, but a lot of them are legitimately required for what we do with the web now and what we expect it to be able to do.

Guh, someday I am going to have to learn that bracket-based syntax (lisp?) that keeps popping up on particularly interesting projects but I can never be bothered to learn.

And of course they will get it, because many fools and their money are easily separated.

We let tech and advertising companies whose ultimate goal and generator of revenue is to sell things to users by convincing them of things, and they created LLMs that they are using to sell LLMs to users by convincing them that the LLMs are great, something they are in fact uncannily good at. Finally, we have closed the loop. The sales pitch is the product. The product is the sales pitch. Everyone will just fall down the AI rabbithole and never come out again, all productive work will cease, all dollars will be consumed. ???, profit.

You know what, as much as I love space and believe it is a critically and strategically important technology, you’re right. It’s all a lost cause if we turn it over to billionaires like Musk. Fix the root of the problem first before we build a foundation on top of it.

It’s much different because you can fire your salespeople for failing to consult with the engineering team, promising shit that is impossible, going to damage your brand and reputation, and provide little-to-no return on investment.

The biggest difference is that you can’t fire ChatGPT (as much as I desperately wish we could)

I’ve only got one Windows 10 PC still running and I basically never use it anymore. It’s really just my safety blanket in case I happen to someday run into a game where I really, absolutely, cannot possibly play it on Linux. I haven’t found one yet. RIP Windows. You won’t be missed.

The Party says 1984 has always been our guiding principle, just like we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. I certainly don’t remember a time when it wasn’t so.

Yeah as a North American I always look sadly at so many of those European nations, not making any progress because they’re so busy providing healthcare and education for their people, wasting what’s left of their economic power expanding human knowledge while creating beautiful art and food and culture and protecting thousands of years of heritage and natural spaces. Socialist hellholes /s

Maybe it’s time to banish the myth of infinite growth once and for all? Maybe? Nah?

The fact that ESA doesn’t seem to have any interest or motivation to pursue (now commercially-proven and human-rated) rapidly reusable rockets is a big red flag for their entire attitude. Literally every other space program of any substantial size or credibility is pursuing them heavily if not exclusively as you’d have to be blind not to see the writing on the wall. The days of disposable rockets are numbered and rapidly dwindling. The Ariane 6 is an impressive machine, in the same way a supercar is… as a bold status symbol in an incredibly narrow niche with almost zero growth potential. I hope Macron’s challenge is a first step to changing that because they are in danger of falling very far behind if they don’t start to move very quickly to get back into the leader’s pack, who are going to be the group that decides who really “owns” space. And you’d better believe that despite any treaties to the contrary, someday, and maybe soon, people are going to start making rules, staking claims, and creating the weapons needed to defend such claims in space, from Low Earth Orbit to the rest of the solar system, it’s coming and only a fool would pretend it’s not after seeing the state of the art in launch technology and the geopolitics going on in the world right now. If you can’t innovate, you’d better start copying, because being stationary is a death sentence when things are evolving this rapidly.

There was literally a commit only a few hours ago and there doesn’t seem to be any announcement about it being archived or abandoned. I feel like this has to be either a mistake or some disgruntled ownership drama but I think it’s pretty fair to assume it’s not abandoned, however this shakes out there will still be people working on it or some fork of it.

We’ll help as much as we can, but despite all appearances we’re still just one little guy here, and you guys apparently have a lot of work that needs to get done. We aren’t gonna be able to do it all by ourselves. Start helping your own neighbors figure their shit out and don’t wait for us to come to your rescue. We’ll try, but can’t make any promises when shit starts getting real like this.

Your offer has been considered, and it has been found… wanting. Do not force us to consider it further, or we may find even more things we dislike about it.

It’s a common perception for sure, although I have to admit when I do find things that are actually “made in USA” I also find I am often disappointed by their quality. Tools for example, Made in USA often seems to reflect a lot of shitty cut corners and weak crappy materials. There’s some good stuff too of course but it’s certainly not a guarantee and I wouldn’t even say it’s the majority.

Made in Japan or Made In Germany is usually a good bet but you’ll pay a steep premium, meanwhile there are honestly some exceptionally well made and affordable tools coming out of China, you just have to know what specifically you’re buying because of course there is also a lot of absolute crap.

I would poke around BASF for awhile as at least they’re an EU company, but obviously like any global company they’re going to have global production chains so it’s hard to guarantee they’ll actually make anything in particular or any particular component of anything in the EU. And I don’t think there’s too much smaller competition over filter material, especially on the high quality side of the market, with 3M dominating so much of the space. COVID-19s mask rush briefly diversified the industry but not really in a sustainable way so I’m not sure if any of that stuck.