I'm a native speaker and I agree. "Ought" can connote an obligation or responsibility of some sort. "Should" is used more often when the outcome is out of any control. It might only be the speaker's belief.
> SHOULD — This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course.
You'll also need RFC 6919[1] for "OUGHT TO":
> The phrase "OUGHT TO" conveys an optimistic assertion of an implementation behavior that is clearly morally right, and thus does not require substantiation.
And the up-threads gut feel that "ought to" is slightly stronger comes across there, I think: ought to conveys that moral stance, where as "should" is more "there's a decision here, possibly".
[1]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6919.html; n.b., this is an April 1st RFC. I like it, though, and it isn't uncommon to see a stray "ought to" lacking a citation in a non-April-1st RFC.
My understanding is that they’re generally treated as homonyms in most cases but some philosophers like to use OUGHT in a moral sense and SHOULD as practical advice to achieve an OUGHT.
Hence OUGHT leads to SHOULD and the latter is meaningless without the former.
E.g.: You OUGHT to secure systems that handle sensitive customer data, so you SHOULD regularly patch your software.
Just telling someone they should do something without an initial moral motivation to do the “right thing” can fall on deaf ears.
I’ve seen an official patch management strategy in a government organisation that was simply: “Don’t”.
Their moral argument was that they OUGHT to save taxpayer money and so they SHOULD save time, money, and effort by not applying updates (which they felt weren’t necessary for security).
In other words: OUGHTs are like axioms that you can choose, and then the SHOULDs derive from them automatically.
The amendment add verbiage which is irrelevant when the purpose for which it is being referenced is almost any purpose other than interpreting an RFC in which one or more of the specified words appear in lowercase in a place relevant to the interpretation.
Someone who is incredibly pedantic and also specific about their word use, who doesn't have a problem with four different descriptions because they all elide to the same thing. ie someone who should have more sympathy AND empathy even if they can disambiguate the terms (for their audience.)
Current article title: Authorization terminology is a mess: Let's fix it
That being said, GP mentions OIDC Connect, which is indeed a standard using jargon, just like the IETF uses jargon, and when a standard uses or invents jargon, it makes an effort to define that terminology, and also delineate when it's being used.
If someone believes that standards and specifications are written by pedantic people who are precious about the definitions of words, they may also be likely to fire their attorney during a court case, because that attorney just refuses to use plain English in the courtroom.
Would always install some variant, think it was "pretty cool" for a few days, then revert back to "whatever MacOS was offering" (for my daily driver).
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2026: I just finished building my third Ubuntu Linux machine, this year (gave the first one to my brother). An Ubuntu running a 5070Ti is now my main operating system.
> If you want English to be more like Hungarian, start inserting Hungarian words into sentences otherwise written in English
I've been doing something like this with Finnish (which is in the same language family as Hungary) - I use Finnish colloquialism but directly translated into English. Things like "going ass first up a tree" (meaning doing something in a sub-optimal way) or "better on the ground than in the devil's mouth" (when you spill something). I find it amusing.
The author is right though, the English language is dreadful; In Finnish the words are written and pronounced the same way. Try that with some names of cities or towns in England.
Going ass first up a tree is funny enough to catch on if you keep using it. It fills a real semantic gap in the idea space of taking great pains to do something the wrong way. I'll never forget reading it just now.
Come on now though, dreadful. There's something beautiful about a language that's a fusion reactor for all other languages on Earth.
I do have that as well. I've noticed that sometimes all network connections out of the country gets blocked. With syncthing, there are relays within China that can be used which may be in less restrictive provinces.
Kind of a best case, worst case scenario thing such that I can switch between as necessary. WireGuard best case, Xray-core fallback, syncthing worst case
Do any of these forks have the ability to sync, either with Firefox or something self hosted? Or are they all just basically reskins with a single toggle added or such?
Yes you can actually self-host both Firefox sync server [1] and use Firefox accounts (which also can be self-hosted [2] and someone put something simpler in docker image [3]). And those can be used even with Firefox itself not only the forks.
Good point. I'd actually be happy to pay a couple of bucks a month for a good syncing solution based on an open source protocol, to make it easier for me to use the same history and preferences across browsers, IDEs and other such tools. It's actually a similar need and setup to that of a password manager, so I wonder if this is something Bitwarden could take on.
> Rather than having flow and concentration interrupted by incoming message notifications, with email I can easily decide when to fetch and process messages.
But emails also notify and therefore interrupt. If you want to turn notifications off in your email or only poll new mails when you choose you can also mute notifications (or turn on dnd) or close the chat app.
Email sucks for chat like communication. It is great for long detailed messages. Having both is the best of both worlds.
I have work email and personal email. I have work chat (Slack) and personal chat (WhatsApp with friends, Keybase with my partner). Choosing which chat app is also a great tool for making sure I am dealing with the right audience. I don't want to accidentally message my boss about stuff I send to my partner.
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