No, C++ never really gained the acceptance that C had - but it shares many of C's problems.

The scripts+tools I've written:

1. Something using afio that I no longer have, afio being similar to cpio -c.
2. A variety of small scripts, including tar wrappers and an rsync --link-dest wrapper: https://stromberg.dnsalias.org...
3. But today I use backshift: https://stromberg.dnsalias.org...

Backshift is not screaming fast - for raw speed you probably want rsync. But backshift is much less freewheeling about how much storage it uses, since it compresses everything with xz and can deduplicate across machines -- EG if /bin/ls is the same on all your machines, only one (xz'd) copy is stored for all of them. Like rsync, it can expire old data, really helping with storage requirements.

With backshift even most metadata is compressed with xz, but each directory is compressed separately, making small restores fast.

To get a feel for how fast/slow backshift is, last night it did about 3.9 Terabytes of data (incrementals) in a bit over 9 hours. That's using pypy3 on a pretty fast server.

Here's a comparison of many backups tools, some of which I wrote, most of which I did not: https://stromberg.dnsalias.org...

And here's how backshift works: https://stromberg.dnsalias.org...

Here's how to get started with backshift: https://stromberg.dnsalias.org...

As a reminder: I wrote all of these. But today I trust my personal digital media collection and other filesystems to backshift.

I've never done encrypted backups. They're probably important to some people, but they're somewhat at odds with the goal of preserving data. And you have the option of using an encrypted filesystem with about any disk-to-disk backup tool. Compression has this issue too, to a lesser extent, but backshift limits how much data it puts in a single file, even for huge input files, limiting how much you could actually lose to a bad block on a magnetic hard disk or SSD. This also allows things like backing up to s3fs.

It's quite possible that a much older civilization could get here, or at least observe us.

But why would they want to get here? We'd probably just kill them for sport (there's no law against it), try to convert them to one or more of our many religions (how annoying),call them immoral (even though they'd probably be much more ethically advanced if they haven't destroyed themselves for millennia) or dissect one of them (because that's what biologists "do").

For them to try to help us would be like us trying to help an angry tasmanian devil - too many of us are too dumb to accept the help.

Mint's software is OK.

They appear to be tending toward shutting off useful functionality, EG: hibernation and screensaver hacks.

More importantly, they almost seem to be actively discouraging developing a community around Mint. EG: I got flamed on a Mint forum for asking a simple question about installing Mint on a new laptop. They insisted my hardware was dead, and essentially told me to go away. However, when I installed Debian, the laptop worked (and is still working) great.

I've decided to go back to Debian on all my computers, as a result. I'm not rushing the change, but my new installs are all Debian, except a few virtualbox VM's.

For sheer speed, it's hard to beat a good rsync wrapper:
https://stromberg.dnsalias.org...
It doesn't deduplicate that well, and it doesn't compress, but it's fast and somewhat space-efficient. There are other backup programs at that link too, for a variety of ways of doing backups.

For being frugal, you can use something that deduplicates well and compresses too, but that's substantially slower:
https://stromberg.dnsalias.org...

Python:

• Does run in a browser. In fact, there are too many ways of doing it: https://stromberg.dnsalias.org...
• Does run on a phone:
  • https://wiki.python.org/moin/Android
  • http://omz-software.com/pythonista/
• Comes with a GUI toolkit, but few people use it. C doesn't come with a GUI toolkit at all, but no one would say you have to "resort" to adding third-party frameworks to C. If Python bundled GTK, the Qt people would howl, and if Python bundled Qt, the GTK people would howl.

JavaScript+the DOM is ugly. I'm really hoping that WASM is going to replace it soon, and Micropython's WASM target is a strong candidate, especially after WASM gets better support for dynamic languages.

Last I heard, these also lived in South Dakota. I wonder if they could be reintroduced to China from said population.

Actually, check yanking doesn't necessarily help matters. Remember Solaris? There was much screaming and switching over that, but Sun doubled and tripled down.

With opensource software, you can pay someone other than the original authors to maintain software you don't want to give up on. The same is frequently not true of closed source software.

I've only been using Docker about a week, so take this with a grain of salt.

Docker itself may go away, but something similar to it is likely here to stay. When I say "something similar to it", I mean something with its own pids, files and IP ports.

I think that because trying out the next release of your dependencies becomes as (theoretically) simple as changing a version # in your docker-compose docker file. It may not go smoothly, but at least you know exactly what was required to get things working "last time". And if it does go smoothly, great!

Also, the fact that you tend to have less of an OS inside a container has security implications. Good ones.

And yes, you can do that with a system build tool, but it's just not as clean or quick as spinning up a replacement container.

I like Etymotic or Shur in-ear, passively noise isolating earbuds.

I remember my Etymotic ER6i's fondly, but I currently use Shur SE215-K-UNI's because they have a straight headphone jack that works with my phone's battery case.

Both Etymotics and Shurs block a lot of sound, more than some active noise canceling headphones, and as added bonuses, they don't eat as much battery and cost less.

Just make sure you get appropriate flange tips that make a good seal in your outer ear canal. This both helps isolation and gives better sound reproduction. This can feel weird to some people, but I don't mind it a bit.

I tried a bunch of cheaper earbuds with good flange tips, but none of them worked out. One was OK after the flanges had some time to warm up from my ear's body temperature. So I went back to Shur's after giving up on Etymotic's L-shaped connector. Yes, you can use a 3 or 4 inch extension cable with the Etymotics, but it's another thing to lose.

I used to work with a guy who didn't want to listen to music while he worked, but he did want quiet, so he would use earplugs under active noise-canceling headphones. Me, I like to listen to music - it's my brain's carrier wave.

This is why I eschew streaming, and instead buy used dvd's.

Python is typed.