account42

That's downplaying how LLMs discourage humans from thinking themselves by providing an easier "good enough" path.

Good on EA not that this is going to redeem them.

And I also remember that even in that case resistance was in fact not futile in the end.

LibX11 is still alive and kicking. It is however possible to bundle libX11 and/or libxcb (libX11 today sits on top of libxcb) because the wire protocol between them and the X server is also backwards compatible.

And of course Wayland has XWayland to continue compatibility. This doesn't give you access to new toys but neither does restricting yourself to a 30-year old Win32 API.

And beyond libc/libX11/libxcb, libasound has also provided good backwards compatibility with newer systems implementing shims to make it work. You can also use libpulse directly if you don't care about old/opinionated systems though.

Yes, why even put the slop on Wikipedia when you can get it directly from the source.

Unfortunately, as we can see here isn't not just the corporate projects that are susceptible to people ignoring morals in the name of pRoDuCtIvIty. It's really sad to see Debian of all distros, who where one of the major sources of what it means for software to be free, to go down this road and so quickly.

You don't need to go full static linking. Just bundle every library that doesn't have string backwards guarantees or rather bundle everything except base system libraires. The same is also how things work on Windows (and thus Wine really). Wine won't be able to run a binary that links to some random libpng or whatever that the compiler found in your System32. The only difference is that Microsoft makes an SDK that gives your some idea of whats a system library you can rely on as well as the ability to target older versions than the system you are building on. The latter can be done on Linux as well but there is no-pre made SDK so the easiest solution ends up being a VM or chroot with older libraries.

Of course it can. It would mean not including some software or hard-forking it from pre-AI versions which would be difficult. But it can be done and I would seriously consider using such a distro if it was available.

Oh god they have invented useless hero images for tooltips. The images being slop is just the cherry on top.

I don't think it "just so happens". AI enables that behavior at great scale and arguably even encourages it.

I'm constantly searching for the scroll bar position on mobile FF because its barely visible. And that's at least on a device where you can make the argument that horizontal screen real estate is limited, unlike a desktop PC where hiding scoll bars to save space makes zero sense at all.

> even implementing dark mode is a pain in the rear

You don't need to implement dark mode when all the controls already follow the users system color scheme. Dark mode is a signficiant regression compared to user-adjustable color schemes and another example of designers wanting to enforce their vision over the desires of the user.

That's really the big problem with the telemetry-driven designs today - the same raw data can be interpreted in whatever way you want so designers still end up doing what they feel like but can shut down any counter arguments (including complaints from real users) with "the data says otherwise".

Breaking news: Scientists discover night owls and how modern society enforces destructive day/night cycles on them.

Yes its sad to see how so many are giving up any pretense of having principles at the altar of instant gratification.