> all else being equal, most C software would indeed benefit from being written in Rust instead
I don't even think this is true.
You can certainly say "the security of computer systems would be a little bit better if most software was written in memory safe languages" (even more so if you went a bit further and said "with automatic memory management").
However, a lot of software exists and is useful, and the only reason it exists is because the author(s) found a way they liked to express that software.
So, for example, there are millions of companies out there, especially small ones, running all their finances on Excel. Not even accounting software. Excel. I am totally OK with this. I do not need all these companies to rewrite their Excel workflows into frontend applications backed by a relational database, even though that would be "better" in a lot of ways (more robust, easier to backup, easier to bring someone else onto...). Those little business owners understand Excel and build models and count numbers and they're happy with that. If some kind of edict compelled them to use something "proper" instead, they might not even go into business, and the world would lose whatever it is their business does.
The same thing goes for software and languages. Each language, whether it's F#, Haskell, Common Lisp, PHP, ... brings with it its own kinds of expressiveness and usefulness, and ecosystems of programmers and libraries/modules form around it. Some languages are a better "fit", sometimes for the problem domain, sometimes for the programmer's mind, sometimes for community building. It's difficult to compare any two languages because of this, and if you were to say "language X should not exist, all software written in X should've been written in language Y", you have to accept in your thought experiment that were that the case, their is likely a huge amount of software which would not exist just out of the people who made it not being happy about language Y and, if it were the only choice, would choose not to create the software they created in language X at all.
So you need the solo developer not to contract out or buy in existing music, graphics, 3D assets, animations, marketing, or you won't call them a solo developer.
Right, so do you also need them to create the 3D engine or are they allowed that off the shelf? Oh, they need to make it themselves. You're strict!
Ok, so they're allowed to write for a platform? Oh, no they're not, that's relying on other people's code.
And writing in an existing language? Tsk tsk tsk. Got to invent the programming language yourself, otherwise you need to list the entire GCC/LLVM team as your collaborators on the game.
They have to create their own silicon too, it's cheating to rely other people's chips, how can you call yourself "solo"?
Are they allowed to sell it on Steam or do they need to build their own store and payment networks? Heck, should they get themselves accredited as a payment network. Oh, and as a bank.
And presumably, if the game needs to be translated to any language other than the developer's own, they have to do that translation themselves, right? Not rely on experts in that language. Can't really be a "solo" dev that way, can you?
And so on.
Building a game involves effort, and millions of decisions. Is the gameplay right? Is the story right? Are the graphics right? Design the characters, the levels, the world. Make the game run. Make the game available?
I can accept that solo developers will sometimes make the graphics/music/"assets" themselves, sometimes buy off the shelf, sometimes pay others. But unless they hire that person full time to collaborate on the game... they're still the solo developer.
They will definitely lean on existing 3D engines, libraries, plugins, font engines... and that reminds me, I've almost never seen a game developer design their own fonts. These reusable components can be used in games, and some are even intended to (e.g. engine plugins). But do they define the game experience? Generally, no. That's on the game developer.
> Unfortunately this sputtered out during the SSD transition
I advise people to backup their data (emails, writings, pictures, photos, home videos, phone contents, etc.) and worry about their music/TV/film/game collection later.
Most people's personal data collection doesn't run into dozens of terabytes, while most people's media collection does.
You can get portable 5TB HDDs, one or two of them is usually more than enough for most people's own files. Plug them in and backup regularly, e.g. monthly, they last a lot longer that way than if you backup once and throw them in the cupboard.
The stock A1200 floppy drive cannot read/write HD disks, though you can format most HD disks as DD and physically use them as DD (depending on the brand of floppy disk; back in the late 1990s I used to buy HD floppies because they were the only ones I could easily get, and they were cheaply made and weren't all that reliable on the Amiga, but became more reliable when formatted as HD in an HD floppy drive)
This remains true for the A1200s sold by Escom, which used deliberately downgraded PC HD floppy drives. Still can't read/write HD, and can't easily modify these rare models downgraded drives to support HD.
The easiest and best way to read/write HD floppies is to either buy an external HD floppy drive, available for any Amiga though I believe you'll need Workbench 2.0 or later for it to work, or buy an A4000 or A4000T, the only models of Amiga with a native HD floppy drive.
OpenBSD wouldn't say anything like that. They're well aware of the 40+ year old codebase's limitations, but accept it because they're not so stupid as to "rewrite it in <other language>" which will bring a million bugs.
They've innovated again and again in the security space and aggressively bring in new security features like pf, OpenSSH, W^X enforcement, pledge(), arc4random(), ASLR, so many other things.
Unlike, say, NPM, which can't even replicate existing packaging systems like yum or apt, and has been plagued with security flaws despite being built entirely out of a memory-safe language. Quite an achievement.
So you can understand why the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_crisis had Swiss watchmakers fearing for their industry. Mechanical watches couldn't hope to compete with electronics on accuracy. Hence their pivot to understanding that watches are jewellery. Fancy, complicated jewellery with moving parts, but jewellery, and priced based on style and cachet, rather than on function.
That's a fair use for the data, but it would be hilarious if StreetComplete asked users to get a trundle wheel and measure the width of roads around embassies or seats of government...
I would probably accept a report from a reputable news agency confirming that someone was admitted to hospital after having some accident that the subject themselves referred to as "bonesmashing"... even if others might try to no-true-scotsman it.
In Wikipedialand, this is the requirement for independent sources; it's not enough for X to say X did Y, even if X or X's friends film X doing Y and affirm they didn't doctor the footage. It needs an independent source (not X, X's friends and family, X's fellow forum posters, but instead a neutral third party) to confirm X did Y.
The gate is reliable secondary sources. These sources, for the most part, don't check their facts using Wikipedia. These sources also tend to have feedback mechanisms, so if they have make a mistake, their response is to correct it in a timely fashion.
This is what makes them reliable in Wikipedians' judgement. A publication that regularly made errors, or published claims regardless of veracity, or left errors in place even after being notified of them, would quickly lose its "reliable" badge. Wikipedians even track the downfall of a reliable source becoming an unreliable one, and say you can only cite articles from the time period the source was reliable.
And Wikipedia itself is ready and waiting to remove citogenesis and prevent it coming back, the moment it's no longer in a reliable source. So while citogenesis can happen, it's detected and resolved over time, it's not some "gotcha".
- interview on BBC Morning Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAXT5xf9ot4
- interview on The Today Programme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGOmzQbRT_E
- interview with Andrew Marr on LBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRBh7uGwxmU