cant they just compile the program and statically link it. then when you want to run the program you can download it and run it. thats what i do on windows. you can make Program.exe, you can just make the program. if someone wants to edit the program you can give them Program_src.zip and that could contain, perhaps, all the source code needed to build the program, since text isn't very large on a computer, and a script called "compile.bat" or perhaps even "compile.sh" to compile it

one of the things i still don't understand about like, the linux ecosystem or whatever. that kind of culture. why is it set up so that everybody's time is all spent packaging and repackaging duplicate versions of software that isn't even their software, not actually writing software, but package-managing the packages that were packaged by their package maintainers, who are arguing about what software they're packaging and how and why they're packaging it. it just seems really tedious and boring

in theory the new ones ought to have Grain Synthesis, but its either not very good, or is some kind of optional thing. some other nice things about Actual Original JPEG are that it's completely fine and completely adequate, and normal, and will exist forever, and also that you can decode it on a computer with about the same amount of processing power as a shoe

in my experience JPEG XL (and all of the other "more or less a still frame from a modern video codec" image formats) have this thing where they denoise the image like one of those "get rid of the pores on my face" selfie filters from the early 2010s. original actual JPEG ("JPEG Classic") instead just whacks some random DCT coefficients in there to make a nice fizzling surface texture which is mathematically erroneous but gels the whole image together in a way that's somehow true to the original

when you download an image from the web these days, instead of a PNG or a JPEG, you get one of these new formats which is 8% more efficient, not compatible with any "pre-covid software" and has a name which sounds like

JEG
WebUP
High Information Format Format
webLICC
AppleLuppy
j-eggings Layer 6
ProRes ProxyGold (Grain Profile)
PrBufEncapDCT
h.26vorbis
h.26NeRFscene
Radiance XML
EXIFnoimage
rayJSON
WebX 2000
base64staticBlogSVG.meta
bitplaneConwayAnim

personally i don't understand the arguments because my main heuristic is that if a corporation is putting effort into making you do something, it's probably for their benefit and not yours. they can make the thing extremely technically complicated, and then explain it to you in a way that makes it sound like a good thing, and you can choose to believe their explanation, and they MIGHT not be lying to you. it's a risk i'm not willing to take, though. it depends on your tolerance for being a mark

re this: seeing it with the "passkeys are bad" discourse. one segment of people wants to argue about the technical theory of whether and how the technology is supposed to work, and another segment wants to argue about whether the corporations pushing them should be trusted to not use the technology to control and abuse users

@jk this is what getting a medical bill is like here in the US

what is this numberwang-ass interface

completely normal e-commerce UI design

tired: CVT gearbox

wired: fretless car

i miss when they actually named computers, and the names were just "the name of the CPU in the computer but changed slightly" or "the name of the company followed by how much memory the computer has"

i used to be scared of logic bugs, but now im terrified of Numbers. there are just so many numbers. i now view the job of mathematician as a kind of Van Helsing figure

tech-adjacent creepypasta stuff does nothing for me, but one exception is the concept of weird edge-case floating point bugs. there's something very disquieting about (real examples) "exactly one tiny Cursed Triangle in one of the levels which you get stuck to forever and cannot escape" or "at any time, anywhere, while turning the camera, there's a 1-in-200-million chance that you will momentarily hit a Cursed Direction that rounds to produce a NaN in some other code and crashes the game"

man charged after ostrich egg thrown during protest
Police said that an "unusually fast-growing" ostrich had emerged unharmed, attaining a size slightly above adult size within a matter of seconds. Several members of the public were attacked by the ratite, who according to a zoological expert, was "likely suffering from a sense of malaise and aggravation due to having already reached middle age, mere seconds after coming into existence". The bird was last seen attempting to register domain names

the youngsters these days will call a nintendo gameboy analog. or a CD. they think a Z80 or 16-bit PCM is analog, perhaps? you can say that this is incorrect. but i'm not a prescriptivist. the details aren't the point. the point is that the word analog is bouba and the word digital is kiki. saying "digital" sounds uptight and specific and fragile and chattery and annoying. "analog" sounds round, peaceful, robust, earthy even. even has the word 'anal' in it

i dont have a toaster, i dont need a toaster, it's unnecessary, youve been able to get them on computers since the early 90s

@jk if you say someone is evil and incompetent people will say "oh how convenient that you think they're both, you just pretend they're incompetent because you hate them!"

for example. if i say "the owner of a major social network website, among many other actions and qualities i consider morally reprehensible, uses immense power and wealth to attempt to control and harm others, and is capable of understanding and communicating, at a broad level, the operation and characteristics of rocket engines" it will *always* sound like i'm saying the guy is actually smart and cool and epic. the only way you can convey your lack of respect for the guy is to call him a dunce

it's interesting how it's rhetorically impossible to convey a difference between something being bad (1: evil, harmful, wrong, problem) with something being bad (2: crappy, stupid, poor-quality, non-functional, useless). if you say something is bad2 but not bad1, it looks like you're trying to play down its real flaws by emphasising harmlessness. if you say a person is bad1 but not bad2, it looks like you respect their aptitude, and are thus defending a toxic person. so you have to conflate them