Oh no, there is no victory. Your summary is pretty good here. But the idea that Linux is provably less secure because old bugs were found is flatly wrong. They were found late, but they were indeed found. How many ancient bugs are lurking in proprietary software that nobody has found for positive reasons and made full disclosures of so affected parties know they need to mitigate? Nobody knows!

Server OSes are more likely to have older versions of software and then backport fixes. Desktop OSes are more likely to default to doing automatic updates, or at least hassling the user to do them.

The only difference is that servers are more likely to have more outdated software.

Love of convenience, I guess. I often find it astonishing myself. The software might do 100 times more but it takes 1000 times as much memory...

I can't tell if this is parody or not.

Are they?

This century Russia has engaged in a offensive wars against Ukraine and Georgia, put down a couple of internal rebellions and fucked around intervening in five or six conflicts in their neighbourhood and Africa.

Iran has maintained a few proxy militia groups to counter Israel.

China has... done nothing. Specifically refused to engage in any international military action. Not since Vietnam, actually.

Wikipedia's list of wars involving the US is split into multiple pages, despite the US only existing for a few hundred years. The one for 2001 to present is long, I'm not going to count them. Some of them are anti-pirate operations, mostly legal anti-terrorist actions and a UN sanctioned international actions. There are also some illegal offensive wars, a couple of them massive. Betrayal of allies, torture, lots of war crimes.

Domestically, yeah, the US is a better place to live than Iran, especially if you're a woman, although the US is working hard to change that. Probably better than China or Russia too depending on what you value. Internationally none of them hold a candle to the US of A.

To be fair, this is an example of the CIA on good behaviour. No ACTUAL assassinations, probably, not a whiff of torture, not a single government overthrown.

Linux underpins the internet. It's the primary server OS on the planet. High-value data is held on Linux systems. The idea that it's not profitable to attack those targets is silly. They're harder to attack. People still do it. That's why there are still ssh port scans for example.

Sure. I was offered a position around DC, as a "Beltway Bandit". Would have made a significant increase in pay. But doing the research showed CoL was way higher, and fighting with traffic, horrifying, less access to the natural world, and in the end, I would be making less money after all expenses. Plus my wife was a VP at her place of work. So it really wasn't all that hard a decision to say "No thanks" - turned out to be the right decision in the end as well.

When I was invited to sign up, They actually asked for my email password. That was some years ago, but that only violated every ToS I ever heard of.

I was never asked about how much I used to make. It was always pretty simple. I'd ask them to make an offer, if interested in me, then respond as needed. If someone mad an insulting offer, I'd just say no thank you. If it was in the ballpark I'd then ask for what I believe would be acceptable. Places would usually accommodate to what I wanted.

Know your worth, people. And if someone tries to lowball you, just thank them for their time, and scoot.

Yup, I was not allowed to ask female candidates anything about family or children. I could get fired if I did.

There were a number of women I interviewed who were aware of this issue, and at some point, they would say something like "I know you aren't allowed to ask, or even react, but I am not having any more children, and will not have my family interfere with my work."

And for a lot of positions, like Team Lead, it is really important to have some idea about family matters, like are we going to have multiple team leads so that the woman can have children and take leave?

Point is, not being allowed to ask questions like that, while on the surface is protecting some sort of privacy, it also makes for a decision process that might favor male candidates in more critical positions.

I've never been in a position where I could take large swaths of time off. Some positions are like that. Even for accidents. Day after I got out of the Hospital for a broken ankle I got calls to come in. I told them I could come in the next day, but they had to understand I was quite drugged up, that I had on a bloody cast that I had to keep elevated.

Hell, the wife intercepted a call from them trying to get me to come in the day of my ankle operation. She's a professional too, but wouldn't tell me until a couple weeks later. She wasn't at all happy. note, that ended up being quite a kerfuffle. Wife was so pissed she was swearing at me, people at work were pissed, mostly at who asked me to come into work - but a little at me as well. One of our photographers grabbed a picture of me in shorts and T-shirt with my cast propped up. I think it might have been for evidence.

But even in more normal times, I'd get phone calls for some emergency while I was at the beach, or across the country. Just part of the territory.

Shit needs to get done, and team leads are often a pinch point.

Final note: I'm sure people in here will chime in calling me a psychopath, maybe a people pleaser. I know right?

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

It is, but IME a lot of software needs architectural changes to work on it, similar to when you're trying to build software for Windows in cygwin. That's one reason I decided it wasn't worth the hassle back when I was running it.

When it comes to being allowed to do what you want with your computer, it's a lot more like Windows than it is like Linux. And it's been getting worse.

And I got a 50 percent raise after 1 year in my present position, and on occasion, 100 percent more on the new rate. (I'm paid per project)

This whole looking at your social media to somehow find out how little money you will accept is just weird.

Employers do check on social media to see if you are disparaging them, like the woman who was fired from GameStop for posting a video ridiculing GameStop, their customers, and their products, finally showing the location of the store safe.

Or the Chili's employee who made a video about how stupid the customers were, for expecting good food and a clean rest room.

Or the Psychologist who made a twerking video while complaining about patients.

Or the nurse who took a dick pic of a well hung patient, then shared it with other nurses, and it made it onto the web (I think it was 4 nurses fired)

Or the woman who was posting her "Office Siren" journey on TikTok - an Office Siren is a woman who wears provocative party dress Club like clothing to work, and to get reactions from men, whether validation or getting men fired. She recorded her interactions with HR after men complained about her trying to provoke and probably get the men fired. Turned out HR and the company didn't like the clothing choice, the recordings with HR, or the unsafe workplace environment.

It isn't just women - I've seen men posting about getting fired for social posting, but it is never as outlandish or memorable.