Sam Trenholme’s blog
Grab bag
August 10, 2026
I discuss ideas for a universal cross-platform filesystem, and how the manosphere/A universal file system
What is the best filesystem to use for an external hard drive? For a while, I have been using FAT32 for fairly small filesystems which anything can mount (FAT32 can support a filesystem up to two terabytes in size; I use FAT32 for my car stereo which doesn’t support exFAT), and NTFS for anything bigger.
FAT32 doesn’t support journalling and has a four gigabyte filesize limitation. exFAT has issues with patents (but, yes, Microsoft gave open source software a free license to use exFAT) and doesn’t have journalling. NTFS has only readonly support on MacOS unless one buys a third party program.
Probably the best universal read-write filesystem which all mainstream operating systems support (including some BSDs) is UDF, the filesystem DVDs used. It’s a read-write filesystem, it’s a log-structured filesystem which means the entire filesystem is a journal, it’s supported for both reading and writing in Windows, Linux, and MacOS, among other operating systems, and filesystems can be up to 16 terabytes in size.
There is some hacking to make a UDF drive cross-platfom, but there is a utility which handles the corner cases and documents all of the UDF compatibility wrinkles.
The manosphere greed machine
Wired has an article about the manosphere movement, i.e. the kinds of guys who believe the lie that 80% of the women sleep with only 20% of the men. It argues that this movement is fueled by greedy men who spread lies online to hook men in to the movement and sell them things.
Getting men to believe 80% of the women only sleep with 20% of men is a great way to make money: Convince men they can become part of that imaginary 20% if they buy your $20 dating guide which supposedly teaches you to become a “real man” (whatever that is) who attracts all the girls.