Yet considering, that many people here are also often unhappy with wasteful and user hostile software, like windows, i think a look at this kind of thinking can be really beneficial. Especially, since at least the actual programmers reading this site can easily have small impacts on these kind of problems, by just making sure, they craft their software with more care on such issues.

https://adventofcomputing.com/

Though frankly, that page needs some love, Sean!

But thanks for the submission, and thanks, Sean, for a great podcast!

I think the better analogy here would be to tidy the public park for free. It's about doing something for other people, being generous, making the world better with your genrousity. I think that in itself is something worthwile to try.

While I find speculating about different models besides capitalism a good exercise, I also don't think these things are wholy incompatible with our current societal structure.

So, national messengers, controlled by experts, that archive communication and run on trusted hardware, would be the best solution for the work of democratic goverments I would think.

Of course, the possibility of software quality and security experts in service of the goverment is probably just wishful thinking.

As so often, the biggest GDPR problem is missing enforcement.

She thinks she was "hacked" on signal, and now wants to switch to something which is clearly better! Let's wait where she will want to go once she gets "hacked" there too...

While there are valid reasons for germans not to want their politicians to use private messenger apps on their private phones for official business, and american ones at that, this switch would of course change nothing about all of these problems. But at least they can claim they did something, right?

[1] https://email.faircode.eu/

I do remember him wearing brightly colored patchwork clothing in the stories, but I could not say if that was an integral part of the original fable or just added in retellings to make the character stand out more as a mysterious stranger.

Too many people have the "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" quote internalized to a degree they won't even think about any criticisms or suggestions.

And while they might be right concerning small stuff, this often piles up and in the end, because you choose several times not to optimize, your technology choices and architecture decisions add up to a bloated mess anyway that can't be salvaged.

Like, when you choose a web framework for a desktop app, install size, memory footprint, slower performance etc. might not matter looked at individually, but in the end it all might easily add up and your solution might just suck without much benefit to you. Pragmatism seems to be the hardest to learn for most developers and so many solutions get blown out of proportion instantly.

Now, at the moment, I don't have a good english language source, but I am sure someone else could provide one?

Here is a german language one[0], from netzpolitik.org, who follow chat control for years now an have many articles going in depth about this. I am sure you could use translation software to read it until someone provides a better source. (And if you have not heard of this, you should!)

And while someone already linked to patrick breyers website[1] which has a good overview, I do so again so maybe more people will see it. This thing is not new, but it is also not easily ignored and everyone should be informed whats going on here. They will try to pass this again and again since they have done for years now and it's mostly been close calls until now.

[0] https://netzpolitik.org/2023/anlasslose-massenueberwachung-r...

[1] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/

That they removed even the formatted feed view a few years back was just an insult!

But they could also never manage to cash in on microformats. So much potential there.

I think I understood for quite some time what it wants to do (Though when checking the website there always creeps in doubt, because it is so incomprehensible) and every year when I download the application again, it looks a bit more cleaner, a bit easier to just use. But still, basic things always elude me. Do I really have to read the handbook to figure out how to format text in the knowledge base? Half the windows and symbols just make no sense, etc. Try pressing a button to see what it does and now everything looks different and what even happened?

It seems to glacially improve on that front and I know to really use it, I have to learn to program it, but I am also of the mind basic functionality should be self explanatory. And pharo itself as the basis of this seems so convoluted and complex, I wonder if I even want to get into this.

And then, the community seems to solely be on discord still, and that is then always the point were I bow out and wonder if cuis smalltalk or other systems with simplicity as core tenant are not much nicer to use and I should look there. Of course, in the end, I never get more than surface deep into smalltalk, because while I want the tools to build my own environment, if I need to build them first, there is always more pressing work...

But honestly, a great knowledge base and data visualization I can intuitively just use and then expand later on with my own programs sounds like a dream workspace. It's just, that it is really hard to get into at the moment. I don't know any python, but I could just use jupyter know and learn as I go, but sadly, I never get that feeling here.

When progressive enhancement was the thing, nobody wanted to "disable 1/3 to 2/3 of their browser's technology", browsers mostly lacked many of modern CSS and JS enhancements across the board and having them fail graciously while still using modern features for the few who would support it was just the professional thing to do.

It sill is today of course, but it is obvious there are not many professionals left in webdev.