I think the deal here is that the author, Aral Balkan, frequently sees these kind of topics as amenable to solution through activism: raising the issue in a pub

I think the deal here is that the author, Aral Balkan, frequently sees these kind of topics as amenable to solution through activism: raising the issue in a public statement, garnering widespread attention, and then using that to put pressure on those best-placed to fix the issue. You can seem more of this approach in his earlier blog posts, and on his Mastodon feed: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral I don't entirely disagree with this as an approach in some circumstances, but you definitely need to have a clear idea of your target, and what incentives they have. I'm not sure what the target here is, though it's possible that he will change enough minds among distribution builders to shift things so that the default for privileged ports will be dropped to 80. The fact that Macs don't have this limit any more was certainly new to me.