Probably because carriers don't want a bunch of poorly secured devices on their networks.

They don't seem to put much effort in proactively blocking residential VPNs though?

Can't you get USB modems and cram a SIM inside? Are carrier networks really more scary than the internet at large?

If that was the reason then Windows laptops with WWAN wouldn't exist.

Counter-evidence: the Google Play Store, which is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

And also malware.

>Repos such as AUR

AUR isn't a traditional repository but more functions like a paste bin for package build scripts you have to go out of your way to enable and use at your own risk. It is not how actual Linux repositories work which are way more safe than google or even apple app store.

> way more safe than google or even apple app store.

Probably because of how people submit directly to the commercial app stores and the app store staff are expected to accept them as long as no malware or other problems are detected. Such problems are generally explicitly listed on Terms of Service and app submitters may be able to dispute rejections. Meaning problems generally need to be concrete and justifiable. Also, because of the sheer number, problems are likely scanned for, rather than each app being personally considered by a developer.

FOSS distro package repo maintainers generally don't have any such pressures. They get their absolute pick of what to include from the wild, only taking as much as they're able to handle.

Also, distro repo maintainers handle the building from the source code themselves, while app store apps are closed source to the app stores. Their ability to inspect apps is very limited.

Arch is fine, just don't use the AUR unless you are prepared to validate the PKGBUILD.

Personally, I only use AUR packages that just wrap binaries from well known sources, the only thing that should change in the diff is the sha256 and the version string which makes re-validating them after an update only take a few seconds.

If we're going to do analysis on no information, I would guess you have a lot more "inner turmoil" than the subject.

I think you mean "They're not deterministic, like a meat grinder"

Basically 100% of my interaction with AI is some form of question.

But there are people that treat it like a therapist or a friend.

In my opinion, the 2nd group should be discouraged from using these agents in this way, as it cannot be healthy. But if places like Reddit etc. turn into bot towns where do the AI companies get insight into the general population? Through the eyes of their most mentally unstable users?

So I don't really see things changing, and they'll probably get worse.

It really is not hard to install a Linux operating system manually. "Linux power users" should easily be able to handle bespoke installations.

I've recovered some systems I b0rked by dding from a healthy system or a livedisk to a machine I updated incorrectly, I could have tried just copying from the disk fine and figured it out I'm sure, but I didn't want to open another rabbit hole with the SteamOS update and config. SteamOS has duplicate /, /var, and /boot partitions, and I assume there's some part of the install configuration that sets the active and inactive sets.

Really I was just after testing/listing included bt drivers on some specific hardware for some wonky controllers I have, installation was a secondary thought.

Becoming a "Linux power user" is a harder task than one might suspect, though. More so nowadays, where distros like Ubuntu just work, and you can use it as a daily driver without debugging issues.

It's not anymore. Any issues you run into you just paste into your LLM of choice and it will give you the fix in a couple of back and forths 99% of the time.

A couple of days ago I told Claude to just go ahead and install the android development stack on my arch Linux laptop, and it went though and installed all the packages needed through pacman, download a few packages from Google and extracted them the right spots and added all aliases to my configs files as needed. Took about 10 minutes total and I had a basic android app going in about an hour with its help.

paru presents all pkgbuild diffs to you before installing, that's what I use to read them.

I usually only use AUR to install trusted pre-compiled binary packages, the scripts are very simple and the only thing that should ever change is the url and the sha256

Yea, paru makes it really easy, i noticed the diffs are a little easier/different versus yay. Not sure though if it's a config setting, haven't figured out the details yet.

Also paru shows you coloured code syntax if you have `bat` installed, i think.

Disarmament failed though? Global zero initiatives for nuclear weapons stalled out exactly because the risk of someone else cheating is too great. If everyone gets rid of their nuclear weapons and then someone cheats and creates them in secret they can use their nuclear weapons to prevent anyone else from catching up.

Also Ukraine is not a great advert for giving up your nukes.

I grew up in a suburb like yours. I'm raising my kids in a suburb that's by and large the same.

The biggest difference, imo, is the number of families.

I lived on a small street with a cul-de-sac. Maybe 35 houses or so. At least half had kids aged 0-15.

I now live on a street about the same size with my kids. There is one house with ~7-10 year olds, two houses with 3-5, one house with a couple of teens, one house with a baby.

Nothing else really matters, you can't expect kid communities to self generate at these densities.

This is my current experience, too. There are a lot of "empty nest" houses on my street. Wouldn't it figure that those people are all upset about the apartments that are being built in the neighborhood which are all being scooped up by young families ...

How old were the homes when you were a kid?

They were all new-ish builds at the time, built a couple years before I was born.

Asking because I’ve seen the same dynamic in multiple subdivisions over several decades. I have very little love for subdivisions and the suburban built environment, but I wonder how many vocal urbanists’ opinions are colored because they experienced the aging of a neighborhood’s inaugural population. If you look at the neighborhood again in 50 years maybe it will have a healthier age variance.