659: Full traffic send

This week on BSD Now, hosts Tom Jones and Jason Tubner dive into a critical examination of Wayland's 17-year development cycle, arguing that despite its theoretical advantages, Wayland has failed to deliver on its promises and has instead caused fragmentation, usability issues, and user frustration. The hosts highlight Wayland's poor performance on non-NVIDIA hardware, broken features like screen sharing and clipboard functionality, and a lack of backward compatibility, all while criticizing the dismissive attitude of some developers toward user concerns. They contrast this with the rapid adoption of PipeWire and predict that Wayland may eventually be abandoned in favor of a new, better protocol. The episode also features a deeply personal blog post from Dr. Brian Callahan, who announces his semi-retirement from OpenBSD after a research project failed to replicate the claimed security benefits of certain compiler mitigations, raising questions about open-source credibility and developer bias. Finally, the hosts warn of a looming 'RAM apocalypse' driven by AI data center demand, urging listeners to hold onto their hardware as consumer affordability and ownership may soon be eroded by corporate and geopolitical forces. Despite the grim outlook, the show ends on a hopeful note with positive updates on OpenBSD's PF packet filter now supporting 64-bit bandwidth shaping and a reflective celebration of Unix's enduring pipe model.