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by joemi 1871 days ago
For better or worse, it doesn't really need to be smaller.
1 comments

Of course it does. It's really a giant waste of bandwidth for a program that is probably 50% 'dd if of bs'.
Sure, and your house might look a smidgen better if it were painted a slightly different shade of the same color. It's a lot of work for very little gain.

Bandwidth is cheap. Human time is not. There are better ways to spend development time than shaving 2 seconds off the download of a utility app.

And yet loads of people still use it, and loads of people still recommend it... That’s what I mean by it doesn’t need to be smaller. It’s already hugely popular at the size it is, even though it’s a waste of bandwidth.