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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Like most things, it’s about balance. All changes to open source software must be approved by the community managing it, and if that community is lazy or poorly managed or simply too busy then there’s an opportunity for new vulnerabilities to be created, either accidentally or maliciously.

    But for well managed software, as other people have said you can get more changes more frequently, more security as many people are evaluating the code base, and greater attention to what users want rather than what’s profitable. Whereas with closed source software there is a greater focus on profitability, and sometimes that leaves vulnerabilities open when development is rushed and/or vulnerabilities are not seen as important enough to justify the cost to fix, but sometimes that tendancy towards profitability can also ensure the product stays a market leader. Steam may be a good example of a good closed source product.



  • Is it not? I was under the belief that official political debates have a large influence on the format and rules of these debate clubs.

    If not, it shouldn’t be that difficult to verify whether competitor’s statements are backed by evidence, or if they’re made up, or if they’re really opinions disguised as facts.



  • I don’t know if I’d go that far. If you’re talking about a quick script then sure, whatever gets the job done. But for any actual project the use of good, consistent typing does a lot for readability and future-proofing. And in strongly-typed languages it can have a notable affect on the overall functionality too.

    If you can’t tell from context whether something is a float or if it’ll overflow the int max then you probably need to re-think the entire method.


  • But it’s definitely only part of the solution, that alone is not enough, but nothing else will have a strong effect while so many guns are on the streets and easily accessible.

    No I didn’t, I think I was pretty clear. We need to reduce the number of guns available, nothing else will be effective until we do. I do believe any solution that does not involve removing guns at some point is incomplete. But removing guns on its own is not enough.




  • Calling a gun a tool is intentionally misleading. A gun’s sole purpose is as a weapon, using it any other way is a misuse of that “tool”. Whereas knives have various practical purposes. Which was obviously the purpose of my initial reply.

    In some cases, yes, having a gun is entirely legitimate (assuming used safely) such as protection from dangerous wildlife. But the number of legitimate cases does not even come close to justifying the number of guns, or the gun culture, in America. Violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum, the presence of guns, the acceptance of gun culture, and the normalization of gun violence are things that contribute to the frequency of gun crime.

    The removal of guns, and restricting of them to legitimate use cases IS dealing with the underlying social issues. But it’s definitely only part of the solution, that alone is not enough, but nothing else will have a strong effect while so many guns are on the streets and easily accessible.