Yeah, Mojang’s conservative development style is arguably the reason for Minecraft’s success, while also being a source of frustration and friction for the community, IMO.

MS is another story altogether, though. While Mojang is a very thoughtful company, MS is driven by profit. I’m honestly surprised there aren’t more collisions between the two cultures.

Thanks - I added all of those to my feed reader.

Yeah, I had already seen their YouTube channel (watched a series of videos of a couple of employees trying to identify different ballpoint / rollerball pens – not as entertaining as I’d hoped for, but still good).

I did manage to add their blog to my feed reader – but I will be taking it with a grain of salt since they are a retailer trying to sell products that they carry.

Okay - I am a bit of a dreamer, but I hope that Mojang dropping the obfuscation side of things is a sign that they are interested in working more closely with the community.

Of course, if I were to put on my pessimistic hat, I might think this is a move for Mojang to distance themselves from the Java edition as it’s likely that Microsoft thinks from a business perspective focusing on Bedrock is a better deal.

Get Mojang to pull in large optimizations. Thus far, they have been uninterested in this (though some controversy over Optifine may have left a bad taste).

I remember that. I think the issue there was it mostly handled badly… It seemed like Mojang was trying to go behind the communities back (which I thought sounded a lot like the way Microsoft does things…so I blamed them instead of Mojang). IMO - if this is an era of more open-collaboration it may be possible for Mojang to benefit from working with the community. (There is an excellent example of this in the way AMD has worked with the Open Source community…)

Pull the changes into a modding framework. Understandably, Fabric/Forge aren’t willing to pull in a huge overhaul they’d have to maintain. Mojang may have similar feelings.

I can see that too… That’s why I am thinking that it might be possible for there to be a more collaborative effort… Like a repository set up where community devs can submit PR’s for changes, and Mojang can either approve or deny them. If that started working well, I could see a situation where there are specifically Mojang employed community devs, the role of working on changes that will help both the main Minecraft tree and the modding community.

(Okay, I am probably more optimistic than I should be – after all Microsoft is in the mix here…)

Worse, there’s an outright un-democratic coup in our government right now. It’s corruption knows no bounds now… Accountability is just another word that has no meaning.

Right, but this means these efforts can be undertaken on the current release, and done without having to work around Mohjang’s obfuscation.

Removing this kind of barrier is a major change. Less time will be spent on trying to understand code that has been obscured from view. It will be easier to ensure “correctness” in code that is optimizing the server (ie, that new code will not break internal dependencies). It will be easier to ensure compatibility between the official release and community based extensions.

I understand that the modding community has been able to do a lot up to this point…(I play on an optimized modpack). But, I’m betting this will actually produce a larger jump in terms of the efficiency of all codebases - including Mohjangs. Just the reports that document issues (not CVE level issues) for Mohjang will lead to them improving the base code.

Not only do I think this will generate a fair number of CVE’s, I think there will be a lot of optimization of the code going on.

Look at what happened with OpenOffice a few years back – the Oracle buyout of Sun Microsystems forced the forking of OpenOffice to LibreOffice – during which the new Dev team took the time cleanup and refactor the code. This resulted in a suite that was about 10 percent smaller, and removed a bunch of redundant things (like multiple copies of icons).

I bet we see something similar with Minecraft – even if it can’t be an “authorized” version.

Yeah, benefits of age. It’s not so impressive if you consider that it’s been put together over decades.

Doesn’t make a difference. IMO, pens aren’t something that should be a race to build a big collection. Afterall, these are tools that we use on a daily basis. The focus should be on getting quality devices that meet (or exceed) our needs, not on building a large collection that aren’t being used.

Pelikan is a choice. Great writers, and beautiful pens.

I can only say that I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen of them in videos. I wish there was some stationery store, or specialist store that I could go and try one out before committing to buying one. But, that’s just not in the cards right now. (Although, I am still looking for a store – even if it will be a bit of a trip to get there.)

Wow - that’s quite the nice collection… So far I only have a few low end / entry level pens (TWSBI Eco, Asvine P36, Monteverde Ritma, Lamy AL-Star). I’m waiting on my Keweco Student. So far the surprise to me is that I like the Asvine the most of all of them… But I hope I will love the Keweco enough for it to become my EDC (I have the Rollerball version already - and really like the feel of the body).

I believe a Pelikan is going to be the top of the pens that I will buy… I went into this thinking there were plenty of sub $100 pens that would suit me. While I know there are other, more expensive, pens I hear people raving about, but I never thought I would consider a pen over $200 - much less one in the $400 range.

I have heard the same thing in a number of the videos I’ve watched.

I don’t know if it’s the quantity, the purity, the hardening process, or age that makes the difference. There are quite a few things that could account for the differences…but all seem to agree that the older nibs have different qualities compared to the modern nibs.

This actually has brought up something I’ve been thinking about: is anyone investigating using different materials for nibs? Certainly we have different metals, formulations, and production processes that can be explored. But, beyond that there are different, non-metallic materials that could be explored…off the top of my head I’m wondering about carbon fiber.

Anyway, I take your comment as another reason to be interested in vintage pens – definitely something that is a factor to consider when thinking about purchasing a vintage pen over a modern version of the same pen.

Fair points. I don’t think sourcing parts is going to be a problem (I’m considering a vintage Pelikan - which seems to be well supported). I think it was @backtoanalog@mastodon.social who mentioned finding a pen that has already been restored – which is a good idea, IMO. Better to pay a bit extra for a pen that is in good working condition, rather than wading into the deep-end and trying to a restore a pen without experience.

(One thought I have in that area: if I want to get into restoration, it’d probably be worth looking at second hand stores locally for pens that I won’t have to invest a lot in… That way a failure won’t be a financial disaster.)

Irony: I’m thinking about an M400. The thing that is attractive about the vintage version of the pen is the ink window. But, as @backtoanalog@mastodon.social points out, understanding the differences in materials, and the associated maintenance is probably where the decision should be made.

I do t really see a problem with what the Chinese brands are doing, except the ones that are trying to fool someone they’re the real deal.

Yes, if they are using the logo or specific copyrighted / trademarked elements of a brand then they are committing a crime. And that’s not just a problem in pens, it’s a problem across all products.

However, once there is no copyright, patent, trademark or service mark applying to a brand, a technology, etc. then there is nothing that is stopping anyone from using it. And that’s not just China.

We’ve seen this time and again. Just recently, a certain scammer started buying up brands that everyone used to know, like Radio Shack, Pier 1, and a bunch more. Once purchased, he started running a bunch of garbage under them. There was another company that bought up Victrola and started selling cheap Chinese record players. All of these were Americans, and all of it perfectly legit. (Where things weren’t legit was when he scammed his investors.)

Of course, there are some people that buy up old brands that no longer have copyrights / patents / etc. and try to do right with them. Like the guys that bought up the Commodore or Amiga (I forgot which one already…). Or in something a little more on target for this community: Conklin.

I largely think that these are the categories that people should look at:

• Companies that try to pass off their products as someone else’s products. Especially when they are infringing on another companies existing copyrights, patents, trademarks, or service marks.
• Companies that buy the rights to old / existing brands and produce garbage under those brands.
• Companies that buy the rights to old brands, and try to bring them back to market in an honorable, or at least reasonable, manner.

I’m of a split-mind on this one – especially having been through a bunch of these debates in custom keyboards, and watches…

Here’s the thing: many of the design elements of these objects (pens, watches, etc.) have existed far longer than a copyright or patent was ever intended to provide protection for. So, claiming that things are a “knock off” or “clone” is somewhat disingenuous.

However, there is a different side to this: there is a design language that these companies are putting into their products. They are making specific choices about dimensions, materials used, proportions, etc. that are explicitly part of their brand. So when another company makes a product that (nearly) completely replicates all of these design elements – it’s easy to see where they are copies, and not just an “inspired by” product.

What’s insane about this is the reporter literally just asked reasonable questions given historical context. Leavitt is a fucking joke.

I think it’s something that you have to get used to… While it’s compiling stuff, you can actually be doing other things on your system. The trick was to make sure your configuration balanced your systems resources so you didn’t get bottlenecks. (For example: putting your home drive on a separate physical drive to reduce issues with writes.)

Hmm - my Gentoo install was usable, but I did get tired of all the compiling for updates. Still kind of get annoyed with it now when I have to install source packages from the AUR.

I read a lot of the LFS manual, that’s what made me decide to give Gentoo a go. Seemed like an slightly easier route while still working through a lot of the build process.

Yeah - Slackware back in the late 90s early 2K’s wasn’t as niche… Remember the Infomagic CD sets?

Gentoo got traction for a while when they made it easier to install, instead of having to go from Stage 0. Of course, I installed it from Stage 0 since I wanted to know more about the tool chain and how these systems were built – but I wasn’t masochistic enough to try to install LFS.

Even niche distros like Slackware, Gentoo,

Ooof - I’m feeling old when these are considered “niche” distros…