Two reasons I can think of it being age related, though I think it’s pretty common at any age:
The “what about second breakfast” meme comes to mind. Thanks for clearing that up!
My guess is that it changed from open source to a proprietary license. From Wikipedia:
Initially, Paint.NET was released under a modified version of the MIT License, with the exclusion of the installer, text, and graphics.[9] However, citing issues with the open source code being plagiarized by others that had rebranded the software as their own and bundled user content without their permission, the availability of the source code was restricted, in December 2007 Brewster announced his intent to restrict access to components of the program (including its installer, resources, and user interface).[10] In November 2009, the software was made proprietary, restricting the sale or creation of derivative works of the software.[10][11]
I had not heard that one. That’s horrible.
Avoid sugared gum. I also used to chew a lot of gum and was trying to stick with sorbitol because xylitol gave me stomach pains. That limited me to Wrigley’s. Anyway, due to my confusion after it went out of stock, I was buying sugared gum instead, and finally ended up having to fill 6 cavities before I checked the label and made the connection. All that sugar sitting on my teeth all day was not good, to say the least. I quit cold turkey after that (and also gum).
Which one, and why?
My guess is not just traditional developers, but anyone doing any amount of coding, like data scientists, business analysts, etc.
Especially if they’re using AI, those tools work better on Linux, or as is the case most places, wsl2 inside Windows.
I believe Windows is kept because of the Office tools. However, Windows needs 12 layers of security tools that constantly get in your way, so the path of least resistance is to just stay in your wsl2 sandbox.
The knee jerk reaction to this from enterprise IT is often to restrict access to WSL. This solves the problem, but creates disgruntled users who will continue to try and work around it.
What they should consider, in my opinion, is giving these people real Linux workstations that can be enrolled in group policies, SSO, and all that good stuff. Commercial vendors of Linux will support these use cases.
Some places roll out Macs, which work almost as well, but the hardware is more expensive. Hardware and commercial software support may be better, though, I don’t know.
I think either is a superior alternative to Windows.
You make some good points, but you’re making the same mistake you’re accusing your audience of making: you don’t understand why people are on the platform they are on.
I can’t speak for everyone, so I’ll just speak for myself: I’m not on Lemmy and Mastodon because I want them to become the next Facebook–even if it were some kind of libre utopia free of commercial interests.
I’m here because these weirdos are my weirdos and they like the same weird things I like. It’s a small enough sandbox that I can still recognize people here and there. These people have similar interests to me, and they post long, insightful rants about stuff that my family and other friends would not care about. The network effect is working in my favor.
The fediverse community feels more like home to me than the big social platforms. This feels more like it’s my community. If Lemmy gets as big as Reddit, I’ll probably go somewhere else.
I don’t use Linux because I want it to dominate the world. I don’t care if others use Linux or not. I use Linux because my computer finally feels like it’s mine again. I do what I want with it and I don’t have to worry about AI running or spying happening on it without my knowledge. As a bonus, it runs smoother.
The tradeoff is there are a few rough edges, and I have to learn some new things. But I enjoy learning. Lots of people don’t enjoy having to learn new things to just veg out with IG or YouTube. I get that. So, then don’t. Veg out with Windows, if that’s your thing. We can all do our own thing at the same time.
Choice is a good thing. Small communites are good. Decentralized is good because then big bullies can’t come in and take your community away. Small size and fragmentation are features, not bugs.
If Taylor Swift wants to set up her own Mastodon instance, she can. If she wants to cross-post between that and X, she can. I won’t be seeking out her content and it will be trivial for me to stay in my bubble without Taylor algorithmically popping up inside of it like she is on IG, FB, and X.
This already happens with TVs and streaming sticks.
Personally I’m less worried about them than me getting deported for my speeding ticket from 1999.
But yeah, the laws apply differently. The cruelty and injustice is the point.
The phrase “disqualifying crimes” did a lot of heavy lifting here. While some obvious ones will get you disqualified, e.g., murder, there are a number of less obvious ones, including minor drug offences and resisting arrest.
I wondered the same, and I was thinking maybe it was influence from outside English, maybe by way of AI. However, I found this Reddit thread that pointed to dictionary.com citing it from 1940-1945 and The New York Times using it in headlines. So, it looks like it’s a legit synonym, in particular in headlines.
There is a theory in UX that says that it is a bad design when it violates the users expectations of how they think it should work. In this case, the interface may not be clear enough about what you’re actually typing. You’re not typing WYSIWYG text, as you stated in your edit, you are in fact typing source code, or more specifically: markup, in a language punningly called Markdown.
Some of the confusion in the other replies come from your use of the term Carriage Return (CR) which has a very specific meaning to programmers and does not refer to the Return/Enter key. I won’t go into that more here, since that’s another tangent.
Anyway, Markdown is designed to be a lightweight markup language, so you can focus mostly on content and apply light formatting where needed for emphasis or bolding. As such, it’s a good fit for online comments, provided the users are familiar with it, or enough contextual help is available.
Part of Markdown is that it needs two line breaks or two spaces at the end of a line to introduce a forced line break. This is just a choice the creators made of how things should work in Markdown (more on that below). In HTML, for example, you would use <br> instead.
To your question as to why go through that trouble and not just use the newline characters as-is, the most likely reason people prefer it is text editors. By allowing you to break up long passages of text with single line breaks, you don’t need to rely on the editor’s word-wrap function to keep the full lines visible in your editor.
Markdown is mostly authored more like source code than prose. Moreover, as it is “code”, it may be subject to automated reformatting that could impose its own line-length rules, etc. and that would ruin the formatting. This often results in long lines being wrapped twice: at the intended point and the forced breakpoint and it looks terrible.
The original Markdown spec by John Gruber explains it like this:
Paragraphs and Line Breaks
A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated by one or more blank lines. (A blank line is any line that looks like a blank line — a line containing nothing but spaces or tabs is considered blank.) Normal paragraphs should not be indented with spaces or tabs.
The implication of the “one or more consecutive lines of text” rule is that Markdown supports “hard-wrapped” text paragraphs. This differs significantly from most other text-to-HTML formatters (including Movable Type’s “Convert Line Breaks” option) which translate every line break character in a paragraph into a <br /> tag.
When you do want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown, you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
Yes, this takes a tad more effort to create a <br />, but a simplistic “every line break is a <br />” rule wouldn’t work for Markdown. Markdown’s email-style blockquoting and multi-paragraph list items work best — and look better — when you format them with hard breaks.
You can argue that that makes it not a good fit for online comment editing, and I would say you have a great point, but it’s also very popular and works well for the most common cases. (Especially with programmers because it has many nice features for us.)
Many web apps do allow you to switch between HTML content editing mode (WYSIWYG) and Markdown. I imagine the reason why not more apps do it is just because it’s more code to write, test, and maintain.
I usually recommend people learn more about Markdown to avoid being frustrated by the quirks, and maybe even find some handy tricks they didn’t already know. On the other side of the screen, as developers, we need to keep in mind that not everyone knows Markdown, and we need to make sure it’s obvious to users what it is they are editing and where to find information about it.
On your first question: the current law is that DST is optional, but if a state opts out, they have to be on standard time. The new bill allows them to stay on DST permanently and removes the ability for states to opt-out unless they are already on year-round standard time. So, if this passes, every state in the union will be on either standard time or DST, depending on their status before, with no option to either go back to standard time nor to go back to changing twice a year.
Yeah I’m not holding my breath. It will be around for a long time.
A couple of things I could see changing that would be a) Microsoft in financial trouble, b) AI both making it harder to keep up with security bugs, and making it easier to migrate away from legacy systems.
The chances of .net framework being among the first to go is slim though.
Good call. I’m getting mired in the k8s side right now and we have dozens of small web apps that need upgraded and a couple beefier framework apps that need essentially rewritten. Unfortunately I can’t escape lol.
We an ecosystem I overall like .net core and I agree it will stick around. I just can’t wait to get off IIS and into Linux even if that means complicating things with kubernetes.
Modern. Net is portable and fast, yes. But .NET framework is (mostly) not portable and it’s tied to the version of Windows is on. We’ll see when Microsoft decides to EOL it but so far it has not been announced. It’s not getting more than security updates now, as far as I know.
We’re converting everything we can (mostly web apps) to modern .Net (formerly core) so it can run on Linux. I may be stuck on Windows at work for the office apps, but my code runs on Linux.
No problem. I just spent a few minutes prompting Gemini and requested that it provided sources. I think it’s about right, because it matches what I remember (LTT had a YT privilege to replace videos in situ, where as GN did not), but the usual AI caveats apply. Sorry if that seems low-effort, but I don’t see a rule against quoting AI, and I’m not that invested in this either. (Mods: please take this down if it’s against any rules).
The response it gave me at first was a bit too long for this post so I asked it to summarize, and I’ve added the other sources it gave me to the bottom.
Here is a condensed summary of the controversy:
- The Core Issue: In August 2023, the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus (GN) published a massive 44-minute exposé criticizing Linus Tech Tips (LTT) for rushing content, which led to significant data and testing errors in their hardware reviews.
- The “VIP” Privilege: GN revealed that instead of taking down flawed videos and losing their algorithmic momentum, LTT was using a backdoor YouTube privilege—available only to massive creators through a partner manager—to silently replace the source video file on the backend after publication.
- The Proof: GN proved this by comparing the YouTube versions of LTT’s videos to versions syndicated on the Chinese platform Bilibili. Because LTT didn’t have the same VIP privilege on Bilibili, the original uncorrected videos containing glaring data errors were still live there, while the YouTube versions had been magically fixed.
- The Fallout: GN argued this was an unfair advantage that allowed LTT to prioritize quantity over quality without facing the massive financial and algorithmic penalties that regular creators face when forced to re-upload. Following the intense community backlash, LTT paused their entire production schedule to overhaul their quality control labs and promised full transparency regarding future video corrections.
Why GamersNexus Hates LinusTechTips
This video essay provides a comprehensive retrospective and breakdown of the entire Gamers Nexus and Linus > Tech Tips controversy, providing further context on the claims and the resulting fallout.
Sources:
Immediately made me think of Betteridge’s law of headlines.
I will remain cautiously optimistic but until it makes it through Supreme Court it’s not a done deal.