if you can't connect to a vpn using only open source software, that's a crappy vpn

importantly it's (hopefully) an ISP that operates from a less copyright-happy country and isn't tied down to tons of expensive infrastructure and long-term contracts

libertarians: "the increase in global quality of life is all because of capitalism!"

communists: "the increase in global quality of life is all because of communism!"

to be even more pedantic, if we follow the relevant official RFCs for http (formerly 2616, but now 7230-7235 which have relevant changes), a 403 can substitute for a 401, but a 401 has specific requirements:

The server generating a 401 response MUST send a WWW-Authenticate header field (Section 4.1) containing at least one challenge applicable to the target resource.

(the old 2616 said 403 must not respond with a request for authentication but the new versions don't seem to mention that)

but sometimes "👍🏽".reverse() == "🏽👍"

the thing where it actually helps is if you're "one word speed reading" (eg. http://onewordreader.com/). Then it's easier to rapidly focus your eyes on each word, without having to follow a rigid timer. But if you're reading normally it probably doesn't help

A key part of visual design is knowing that the users don't know what's best for themselves. They usually stop complaining after 3 months which is proof that you are correct and they are wrong!

(sarcasm rate: 1 - ε)

with another OS nix is not going to be "in control" so it's probably more limited. I'm not sure how common using nix is outside of nixos.

also I'll point out that many other linux distros I think recommend doing a full system backup even immediately after installation, the "grep history" thing is not very stable as eg. apt installing a package today will default to the newest version, which didn't exist 1 year ago when you last executed that same command.

with nixos, the states of all the config files are collected into the nix configuration which you can modify manually. And if there's something that can't be handled through that, I think the common solution is to isolate the "dirty" environment into a vm or some other sort of container that I think comes with nixos

(and there's always going to be "data" which isn't part of the "configuration" .. which can just be used as a configuration for individual applications)

assuming you have never used anything except apt commands to change the state of your system. (and are fine with doings superfluous changes eg. apt install foo && apt remove foo)

90% of them were so bored

the remaining 10% however

it's replicable and "atomic", which for a well-designed modern package manager shouldn't be that noticable of a difference, but when it's applied to an operating system a la nixos, you can (at least in theory) copy your centralized exact configuration to another computer and get an OS that behaves exactly the same and has all the same packages. And backup the system state with only a few dozen kilobytes of config files instead of having to backup the entire hard drive (well, assuming the online infrastructure needed to build it in the first place continues to work as expected), and probably rollback a bad change much easier