I read that some scams involve linking to a url which exploits bugs in Steam to install a trojan (e.g. a malformed png). Otherwise I don't see what the scam is.

$80 billion is a lot of almonds.

Ah yes, the "fallacious argument" that has happened countless times in open source already. Numerous, large projects and dists have forked before now.

All it takes is the motivation, a group of likeminded individuals and the willpower to deliver a dist that does not use systemd. I expect most packages in the debian universe have no deps on systemd and therefore no work required to support those packages. So we're talking system packages, some daemons and maybe a few shims for edge cases.

As for why there are only 2 dists left not to have gone to systemd, perhaps that should serve as a clue in itself.

I've never had an invite from a scammer, and don't trade anything with some random person. So what are the scams that these free accounts are working on?

Your justification is incoherent. If you want to administer "old school" Linux, you just use the old commands. If you want to administer a dist with systemd you use the new commands, or the old commands which are symlinked into their new equivalents.

I'm not sure what the fuck "old-school" even means since it has constantly changed from its inception. Except by saying "old-school" you demonstrate that Amish mentality - drawing a line in the sand and saying things shouldn't possibly progress beyond that point, even if its for the better.

All the whining over systemd could apply equally to procfs, devfs, pci, usb, btrfs, acls, etc. A barrage of changes that (competent) admins are expected to incorporate into their knowledge.

The debate about micro or monolithic kernels was just a backdrop. The real reason HURD failed had more to do with the mindset of the people involved.

Linus (impatient with the pace of HURD) developed a quick and dirty kernel that a Unix user land could be built on top of. He took a lot of shortcuts, he didn't think too much about portability and basically just made a beeline for the end line - to get a shell and hence other stuff running over a kernel. The kernel filled out and became portable as the project gained momentum and volunteers.

Whereas HURD got stuck up its own ass for correctness and politics. And that's even before Linux existed as a thing. It's hardly a surprise that when Linux did appear that people jumped ship.

It's true there was a debate about micro kernel designs but that alone doesn't explain HURD's failure.

It'd be a lot easier if HURD attracted developers to work on it. The reason it is stuck in the mud is because looked up what pragmatism meant in a dictionary and decided it would be having none of that.

This is where the exercise of free will kicks in. If you cannot contemplate learning something new, stick with what you have or choose a dist that chooses to do stuff the old way.

Some Linux users are a bit like the Amish.

The problem with total rewrites is they almost always involve a huge amount of effort, introduce new bugs and when they "work", users barely notice the difference. So the company soldiers on, applying patch upon patch to some bullshit codebase and suffering from it but in a incremental way.

Worst of all is when they embark on a rewrite and give up half way through. I was involved in a project to port a C++/ActiveX based system to .NET forms. They ported most of the major views but left a lot of the minor stuff from the old codebase lying around and wrote bridges to host it in the new framework. So they doubled the code, half of it became bitrotten and hidden by the new code and bloated out the runtime. Great project.

All those pretentious hipsters who created the heightened demand for almonds in the first place because dairy / wheat is oh-so bad (it isn't).

Agriculture is an industry. If that wasn't clear enough, I gave almond growers as a specific example.

Start whacking industries who use the most water with a levy to pay for the plants. e.g. almond growers. If they are suddenly motivated to develop ways to save water then fine, if then don't then it's still a new plant.

Which is of course why the exchange rate tanks every time one of these supposedly secure exchanges collapses or disappears with your money. It doesn't matter how fastidious with your own bitcoins, their effective purchase power is still fucked over by all the cons, scams and general incompetence. People lose confidence in the system and bailout.

Opt-out is a pathetic concession. Most people don't even know they're being tracked and of those only a small fraction would bother to opt out. I would not be surprised that even with the option 99% of people are still tracked. It's probably why Verizon did it - a sop to those complaining without materially affecting their bottom line.

This is the sort of thing that should be covered by privacy law. This would be the case in Europe where data protection laws would require explicit consent and services would have to be opt-in, not opt-out.