Yes, I’m aware of how this works.

The important point is that zip and compressed tarballs have overlapping but not identical purposes.

It’s just a different layer of compression. Better than gzip generally, but the tradeoffs are exactly the same.

See my reply here: https://midwest.social/comment/10257041

The two aren’t really equivalent. They make different tradeoffs. The scheme of “compress individual files, then archive” from GP is what zip does. Tar does “archive first, then compress the whole thing”.

Zip makes different tradeoffs. Its compression is basically the same as gz, but you wouldn’t know it from the file sizes.

Tar archives everything together, then compresses. The advantage is that there are more patterns available across all the files, so it can be compressed a lot more.

Zip compresses individual files, then archives. The individual files aren’t going to be compressed as much because they aren’t handling patterns between files. The advantages are that an error early in the file won’t propagate to all the other files after it, and you can read a file in the middle without decompressing everything before it.

You reinvented zip and didn’t even know it.

Yeah, that’s kinda what my GP post was getting at. But it’s all managed by corporations, not individuals.

Setting up a web of trust could cut out almost all spam. Of course, getting most people to manage their trust in a network is difficult, to say the least. The only other solution has been walled gardens like Facebook or Discord, and I don’t have to tell anyone around here about the problems with those.

Not really, I just have trust issues with my ISP, and I’m willing to spend three bucks a month to work around them.

I’m hoping my makerspace will be able to do something like that in the future. We’d need funding for a much bigger internet connection, at least three full time systems people paid market wages and benefits (three because they deserve to go on vacation while we maintain a reasonable level of reliability), and also space for a couple of server racks. Equipment itself is pretty cheap–tons of used servers on eBay are out there–but monthly costs are not.

It’s a lot, but I think we could pull it off a few years from now if we can find the right funding sources. Hopefully can be self-funding in the long run with reasonable monthly fees.

IIRC, it’s nearly impossible to self-host email anymore, unless you have a long established domain already. Gmail will tend to mark you as spam if you’re sending from a new domain. Since they dominate email, you’re stuck with their rules. The only way to get on the good boy list is to host on Google Workspace or another established service like Protonmail.

That’s on top of the fact that correctly configuring an email server has always been a PITA. More so if you want to avoid being a spam gateway.

We need something better than email.

I agree, and I think there’s some reliability arguments for certain services, too.

I’ve been using self-hosted Bitwarden. That’s something I really want to be reliable anywhere I happen to be. I don’t want to rely on my home Internet connection always being up and dyn DNS always matching. An AWS instance or something like that which can handle Bitwarden would be around $20/month (it’s kinda heavy on RAM). Bitwarden’s own hosting is only $3.33/month for a family plan.

Yes, Bitwarden can work with its local cache only, but I don’t like not being able to sync everything. It’s potentially too important to leave to a residential-level Internet connection.

KiCAD has also improved greatly over the last few years. It still has an opinion on how the work flow should be, but that work flow moves pretty well. It’s gotten easier to find pre-made footprints, too.

If only library management didn’t suck.

It’s been two years away for the last 30 years.

Usually have to go up higher in the market, but take a look at any review site that focuses on printers. Different sites will have slightly different methods, so you can’t compare across different sites. That said, if you check between lasers and the better inkjets on the same site, the inkjets tend up being cheaper per page.

But again, you have to run through the entire ink before it dries. If you don’t do that, then get a laser.

A Gentoo upgrade package list with over 100 packages and conflicts all over the place. Then do it again when the list grows to the same size in a few months.

This is why I don’t use Gentoo anymore.

Most of those old HP lasers were also office behemoths that, inflation adjusted, cost over $5000. They caused all sorts of problems in an office environment–the printer in Office Space was basically about those–but they work great for small family use.

I only ditched my 5si because Windows stopped shipping drivers. Could have hacked it, but I figured if there weren’t drivers, people would slowly get rid of them, and the replacement toner market would disappear.

And high volume. Believe it or not, inkjets have lower cost per page than lasers. Especially with the newer tank-based printers, but they were already cheaper before those.

The trick is that you have to use up all the ink before it dries. Printing out a few odd documents per year won’t do that. That’s most people’s use case, and lasers are superior for that because toner doesn’t dry out.

There are a few odd niches for inkjets, but he sub-$100 printer market should die in a fire. If you can’t afford a somewhat more expensive printer, then you’re not going to be able to afford the ink.

Their sewing machines are crap, too, from what I’ve heard. Shouldn’t assume their whole product line is worthwhile.

AR15 is just the base design that comes in several varients. There are slight changes to the receiver to make a full auto control group fit, and it needs a machine shop to do it, but it’s not much.

Most guns are patented, and most of those patents have long since expired. There are some newer designs out there, but they tend to be the exception. Everything from the AR15 to the Remington 870 shotgun to the Glock 19 is all public domain. Go to any shooting range or skeet field, and a huge chunk of the firearms you’ll see have patents that expired decades ago.

This is how patents are supposed to work.