Posts by GNU Enjoyer

International Criminal Court kicks Microsoft Office to the curb

>open source >Digital Sovereignty

>Look inside.

>Proprietary restrictions schemes, SaaSS and microsoft github.

Smile! Uncle Sam wants to scan your face on the way in – and out

Re: Face for Radio

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze

Those were of terrible effectiveness and cost thousands of lives and planes for a limited amount of damage (armored British carriers usually just needed to sweep the deck and concrete+metal plate up the hole the single shell+plane had made - although poorly armored US boats could be put out of action for 6 months).

There were also suicide boats used less often, which also has terrible effectiveness, but did achieve similar amount of damage; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinyo_(suicide_motorboat)?useskin=monobook

Therefore, planes are not that different to boats when it comes to attacks on ships.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust#Moscow_flight

I don't see the relevance of that occurrence - someone merely decided to fly a light plane to Moscow without any planned attack and managed to fly past missile battalions as those weren't given permission to fire missiles (as a slow-moving light plane wasn't regarded as enough of a threat to risk downing a "friend" aircraft).

You could also drive a car or motorbike to Moscow in an unauthorized manner if you managed to get past, or drive around the border crossing.

A relevant article would be; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack?useskin=monobook which demonstrates how ineffective a light plane is compared to a truck; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing?useskin=monobook

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

If the previous truck attack didn't fail to bring the towers down (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing?useskin=monobook), due to the attacker not parking the truck close enough to the foundations, a similar amount of deaths and destruction could have been caused.

Which is another example as to how planes are not that different to other vehicles.

Yes, like any vehicle, in the wrong hands, a plane can cause death and destruction - but a mostly actually effective solution to that problem is locking and hardening the cockpit door - not attacking the passengers (i.e. submit to this facial scan and you have the option of being groped or having naked pictures taken and stored forever, as we feel that will stop attackers somehow).

Re: Face for Radio

Cars, trucks and sometimes buses have been used many times as ground "missiles" to inflict more deaths in total than the 3-4 times a plane has been used as a missile - although such a common occurrence is mostly ignored.

The twin towers years prior to 2001 came close to being collapsed by a truck bomb, but the attacker didn't park the truck close enough to the foundations; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing?useskin=monobook

With a plane, preventing hijacking is a simple matter of putting a lock and hardening the cockpit door (too bad that same door can be used by a first officer that wants to commit suicide (via flying the plane into a mountain), to deny the captain access to the cockpit).

>waste bin full of Semtex

I don't believe that has ever happened (although that is simply to do with the cost of the explosive - cheaper explosives are preferred even for the extremely rare occasion of a waste bin bomb).

>A car, or a bus, could be a mobile bomb >But I don't think it has happened yet.

Cars, buses and trucks have been used as a mobile bomb many times; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_bomb?useskin=monobook

Re: Why not simply.

Nuclear waste dumps?

The last time I checked, the place the USA dumps slightly used fuel, is in decent packaging that will handle occasional flooding, that is in a desert that is at no risk of flooding from sea level rise.

If flooding is a concern - just grind everything up until a fine powder and spread it it into the sea - unlike a river, the sea is so big that it'll dilute whatever radioactive materials that ends up in it so much to be harmless.

Re: Face for Radio

Why is the picture matched inaccurately with a computer? Why isn't it matched accurately by a human?

If that takes too long, maybe it should be considered that handling passports appears to have resulted in far more costs and harm and time wasted than any harm ever prevented by such.

Remember that before the 1990s, passports were generally optional even for international travel and seemingly less bad things happened?

To ride any vehicle, even a plane to anywhere, especially to within the same country, there is no legitimate reason why the 99.999% of innocent people should be abused and have to show ID just because there is a minuscule chance of catching the 0.001% guilty - showing ID should be entirely optional, with the only consequence of choosing not to show ID that makes any sense, would be a more careful search of that individuals bag for bombs (if any), if the baggage handlers are feeling extra paranoid as a result.

Re: Face for Radio

It's not about ID'ing "bad people" - that's the excuse - they really don't care about criminals.

What's so special about a plane? It's not that different to other vehicles.

Attackers that have any chance of "success" aren't completely incompetent and aren't going to be stopped completely inaccurate scanners - as obviously the first thing such mythical attackers are going to do is a dry run to test who attracts attention and who doesn't.

Wait, if I remember correctly, no attacker has *ever* been stopped by ID'ing, even if they didn't even bother to do a dry run (although most attackers have been so hopeless that their attack had no chance of succeeding regardless).

It's solely about being able to arrest and punish innocent people at random to make the quota of arrests, because "scanner says evil" happens extremely regularly at random.

Re: Unfortunately

In almost all countries, you will soon not be able to avoid biometric scans unless you never go outside and never allow spying devices inside.

Yet more reasons

to not visit the land of the nonfree.

The only thing that is going to make them stop is for everyone to refuse to visit.

Suspected Chinese snoops weaponize unpatched Windows flaw to spy on European diplomats

Re: Windows. Like an abusive spouse. Can't stand it, and apparently can't live without it.

Your CAD software? Windows?

Something is only yours if you control it and the only CAD software that the user can control is really FreeCAD and OpenSCAD etc, which run natively on GNU/Linux.

If you have a windows partition and keep booting into it, you in fact have failed to escape your abuser.

Many people go and install GNU/Linux, but fail to escape their abusers, as the first thing they do is install proprietary software from microsoft and every other proprietary program (shaded from) under the sun.

Re: Windows. Like an abusive spouse. Can't stand it, and apparently can't live without it.

>Unix (pre Linux) had soft links

What?

GNU's Not Unix implemented support for symbolic links long before Linux even existed; https://usenet.trashworldnews.com/?thread=779127

(If anyone has a copy of fileutils-1.0.tar.Z please send me one).

Meanwhile reviewing the source code of the proprietary Linux 0.01, it didn't implement symbolic links (only hard links it seems).

It seems that the kernel, Linux originally did not support symbolic links and those were only supported by a filesystem driver with the introduction of the ext2 filesystem in January 1993.

So correctly, that would be; I think they were implemented because Unix (pre GNU) had soft links

Australian police building AI to translate emoji used by ‘crimefluencers’

How an alleged criminal allegedly has a crypto wallet

that is allegedly full of cryptocurrency from the profits of organized crime isn't a legitimate reason to demand self incrimination.

"an image on his device displaying random numbers and words. The numbers were divided into groups of six and there were more than 50 variations of the number groups" is odd, but such image alone is not evidence of the existence of a cryptocurrency wallet unless the numbers can be decoded into a valid wallet format for a specific cryptocurrency (many people do have images of random numbers and those people should not be jailed for 10 years because they can't provide a password for a nonexistent cryptocurrency wallet).

>“Our digital forensics team determined it could be related to a crypto wallet

- Could is not enough - it is entirely possible that that image is not related to a cryptocurrency wallet.

- The "accused allegedly refused to hand over his passwords for his crypto wallet" doesn't state what he said - stating truthfully that the image is unrelated to cryptocurrency or truthfully that you forgot the password (this happens a lot), or even handing over the single password for the wallet (but not multiple as demanded), are all things that could be taken as a refusal to hand over "the passwords".

Even assuming there is in fact a cryptocurrency wallet full of a large amount of profits from organised crime, there are 2 ways to deal with that that won't risk the conviction of innocents;

- Destroy all copies of the wallet, thus denying any profit from such organised crime (but if you do that, you don't get the money) - although that wouldn't be fair to innocents (but at least such innocents life won't be screwed with a conviction).

- Wait for him to be released and cash out and buy an expensive house and car etc and then get him with tax evasion and dealing in the proceeds of crime.

But, could it be that immediate profit (need to cover that budget and go on those training courses that definitely aren't holidays) is regarded as far more important than avoiding convicting innocent people?

>If the concern was about police planting stuff then he could check what was there before getting access, maybe get a lawyer to witness that

The police gained access to his computers and could have done anything - a lawyer witnessing what's on the device afterwards wouldn't help much.

>allegedly refused to hand over his passwords for his crypto wallet, which is a Commonwealth offence that carries a penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment

Why is it a commonwealth offense to decline to self incriminate or make it possible for the police to plant things (but they of course would never do anything like that)?

'Keep Android Open' movement fights back against Google sideloading restrictions

Re: And this is why I keep my old cell phone

iPhone's are not a walled garden - those are a prison - alas "people" see how shiny the bars are and see the shiny chrome-hue plant drawings and figure it must be a really nice garden.

Android was only slightly less of a prison than iOS, as although "generously" google previously made the locked gate open with any key (it doesn't open without a key and working out how to resign an apk is a real pain in the neck that takes hours) - but soon the gate is only going to open with their key, resulting in Android being more or less the same prison as Android.

As it seems that LineageOS uses their own SDK's, google can't legally stop them from continuing to support installing, but google will soon come up with many technical methods of doing so.

The real solution is to stop being conned by demon rectangles and get a GNUbooted GNU/Phone.

No, F-droid is not "open source"

F-droid's build system entirely depends on the proprietary google SDK, which is under a proprietary license; https://f-droid.org/docs/Installing_the_Server_and_Repo_Tools/#proprietary-non-free-libraries

There are rebuilds that take the alleged source code and compile a free SDK, but F-droid doesn't use those, as inconveniently applications programmed against the proprietary SDK don't compile without modifications - so f-droid uses the proprietary google SDK instead - unfortunately the result is that all software available for download on f-droid is most likely proprietary.

https://developer.android.com/studio/terms

"3.2 You may not use this SDK to develop applications for other platforms (including non-compatible implementations of Android) or to develop another SDK."

"3.4 You may not use the SDK for any purpose not expressly permitted by the License Agreement. Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK."

https://opensource.org/osd

"3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software."

"6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."

As always, it seems that tolerating proprietary is going to kill another project yet again - as the proprietary licenses forbids F-droid from developing or possibly even working with modified versions of Android that are "incompatibility" modified to allow unshackled installing (sideloading is propaganda - there is nothing sideways about the user installing software that want to install).

Microsoft gives Windows 11 a fresh Start – here's how to get it

Wow, that's a terrible interface

It doesn't compare to just pressing the program execution shortcut (can be the super key) and typing in the name of the program you want to run, or even xfce4's applications menu (no settings change is required to group the applications - those are automatically grouped).

Microsoft Azure challenges AWS for downtime crown

Re: Homogeneous Hybrid+Multicloud is the answer

Someone else's computer is always more expensive than hosting yourself if you are hosting something for more than 3 months.

If a workload is non-critical, I'm sure it can run fine on your computer(s) as well.

Clown hosting is only ever useful for temporary testing if you don't have a suitable computer available at the moment.

This security hole can crash billions of Chromium browsers, and Google hasn't patched it yet

All these consequences

and yet people don't realize the vulnerabilities can only happen due to arbitrary remote code execution - with the only effective mitigation being to not run JavaScript or at least not running it by default.

Sole trader dispatched almost 1M spam texts to hard-up Brits, says watchdog

That would be quite a cruel and unusual punishment

If the government was also going to later require that you can't work or receive welfare without a up to date demon rectangle.

Starlink tells the world it has over 150 sextillion IPv6 addresses

Re: sense made = none

Since there are over 6 million users now, 350,000 addresses aren't enough to provide IPv4 connectivity without nasty hacks like CGNAT.

Starlink is likely collecting address allocations while it's still possible (there are no IPv4 addresses left for allocation, thus those need to be purchased from those no longer using certain ranges for a fortune), so at least 340,000 users can be offered non-broken IPv4 connectivity - which might eventually be reached (although the limits of radio communication severely limits the connection speed for any area with more than a small number of users might be an issue before that stage).

9 in 10 Exchange servers in Germany still running out-of-support software

Re: How do you get through to business leaders?

It's cute you think a firewall can stop them.

Firewalls and VPNs are so complex now, they can actually make you less secure

>strongly consider transitioning to modern cloud-based, remote access solutions."

Well, there it is.

Other people's computers running proprietary software always increases complexity and has no security (as proprietary software will never be secure).

Australia sues Microsoft for misleading M365 users about Copilot subscription options

Re: A special offer for deceived Office 365 customers

LibreOffice is free software, thus the developers cannot stop you from using a preferred version or stop any business or individual from offering continued support for that version.

If the developers do something that is unacceptable, there also the option to fork the project and continue support.

LibreOffice does have guaranteed long term support for the ODF format and so far updates have only improved the Microsoft Office XML (MOX) support (ironically that is not what microsoft office offers).

Despite the fortune it costs to access microsoft office, it doesn't come with any guarantees or any stability at all - documents are not guaranteed to render the same on different computers even with the same version (even on the same computer the page layout can change depending on what printer is set).

Re: A special offer for deceived Office 365 customers

LibreOffice is not merely gratis - it is free software; https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

Introducing NTFSplus – because just one NTFS driver for Linux is never enough

Re: Oh god, there's ANOTHER grep bug

Now that I've had time to investigate the alleged bugs - those aren't bugs, as grep is designed to work on characters and data lines after all - not binary values.

As for the 128 byte issue, that is because you have LANG set to a UTF-8 or ASCII locale - which means characters that are not valid ASCII or UTF-8 are not matched.

If you want to match non-UTF8 characters above 0x7F, LC_ALL=C must be set (my previous comment demonstrates a correct usage of grep for binary search).

Also, in the default mode, the newline character will not match as it is the line terminator;

...

\x09 1

\x0a 0

\x0b 1

...

With -z, the null character is the line terminator;

\x00 0

\x01 1

...

See https://termbin.com/blva for the testing script without mangled indentation that demonstrates all this and also below for mangled indentation;

#/bin/bash

#so grep matches more than bytes that match ASCII or UTF-8

export LC_ALL=C

# - 255 bytes, holding byte-value 0 to 0xff

printf `for (( x=0; x<$((0xff+1)); x++ )); do

printf "\x5cx%02x" $x;

done` > test

printf "Single byte binary search does not match newline as it is a terminating character, otherwise it matches:\n...\n"

# - pattern = {byte}

#zeroth region

for (( x=$((0x09)); x<$((0x0c)); x++ )); do

p=$(printf "\x5cx%02x" $x)

echo -n "$p "

if [ $(grep -caobP $p test) == 1 ];

then

echo -e "\e[1;32m1\e[0m"

else

echo -e "\e[1;31m0\e[0m"

fi

done

echo "..."

for (( x=$((0xf0)); x<$((0xff)); x++ )); do

p=$(printf "\x5cx%02x" $x)

echo -n "$p "

if [ $(grep -caobP $p test) == 1 ];

then

echo -e "\e[1;32m1\e[0m"

else

echo -e "\e[1;31m0\e[0m"

fi

done

printf "\nWith -z, null is the terminator, which means all but 0x00 will match:\n"

# - pattern = {byte}

#zeroth region

for (( x=$((0x00)); x<$((0x02)); x++ )); do

p=$(printf "\x5cx%02x" $x)

echo -n "$p "

if [ $(grep -zcaobP $p test) == 1 ];

then

echo -e "\e[1;32m1\e[0m"

else

echo -e "\e[1;31m0\e[0m"

fi

done

echo "..."

for (( x=$((0xf0)); x<$((0xff)); x++ )); do

p=$(printf "\x5cx%02x" $x)

echo -n "$p "

if [ $(grep -zcaobP $p test) == 1 ];

then

echo -e "\e[1;32m1\e[0m"

else

echo -e "\e[1;31m0\e[0m"

fi

done

printf "\nSame for newline terminated multiple bytes:\n"

for (( x=$((0x00)); x<$((0x0e)); x++ )); do

p=$(printf "\x5cx%02x\x5cx%02x" $x $((x+1)))

echo -n "$p "

if [ $(grep -caobP $p test) == 1 ];

then

echo -e "\e[1;32m1\e[0m"

else

echo -e "\e[1;31m0\e[0m"

fi

done

echo "..."

for (( x=$((0xf0)); x<$((0xff)); x++ )); do

p=$(printf "\x5cx%02x\x5cx%02x" $x $((x+1)))

echo -n "$p "

if [ $(grep -caobP $p test) == 1 ];

then

echo -e "\e[1;32m1\e[0m"

else

echo -e "\e[1;31m0\e[0m"

fi

done

printf "\nSame for NULL terminated multiple bytes:\n"

for (( x=$((0x00)); x<$((0x04)); x++ )); do

p=$(printf "\x5cx%02x\x5cx%02x" $x $((x+1)))

echo -n "$p "

if [ $(grep -zcaobP $p test) == 1 ];

then

echo -e "\e[1;32m1\e[0m"

else

echo -e "\e[1;31m0\e[0m"

fi

done

echo "..."

for (( x=$((0xf0)); x<$((0xff)); x++ )); do

p=$(printf "\x5cx%02x\x5cx%02x" $x $((x+1)))

echo -n "$p "

if [ $(grep -zcaobP $p test) == 1 ];

then

echo -e "\e[1;32m1\e[0m"

else

echo -e "\e[1;31m0\e[0m"

fi

done

If you want to do a binary search, I recommend memmem() in GNU C - beg and I'll write a GNU C program that does "proper" binary searching, that you don't need to recompile each time you want to change what is searched.

Re: NTFS Tip #2

>Its binary search appears to rely on linux's built-ins, which are stunningly broken: grep's only correct for the first 128 bytes IIRC.

Reviewing the source code of wxHexEditor, it does not use grep for binary search - the search logic appears to be in src/HexDialogs.cpp which for `//Search as HEX, TEXT with MATCHCASE FORWARD Search.` with SSE2 it seems to search in 128 bit (16 byte) chunks, but there doesn't seem to be an limitation on search size - but it's such a mess that I would expect many bugs.

Generally the best function to use for binary search is memmem() from glibc - but wxHexEditor doesn't use that.

GNU grep is GNU;

grep --version

grep (GNU grep) 3.12

Copyright (C) 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Mike Haertel and others; see

<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>.

Although GNU grep is designed primarily for text strings and therefore is slow at binary searching, it does match on more than 128 bytes correctly;

LC_ALL=C grep -obUaP "\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01\x00\x01" a | cat --show-nonprinting

0:^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A^@^A

(The file is 256 bytes of 0 then 1 - if you modify any character before or after 128 bytes, it correctly fails to match).

I suspect that 128-byte limit only applies to ancient proprietary Unix grep implementations - as arbitrary limitations were extremely common in Unix software after all.

Re: Interesting, I guess

NTFS is quite a slow filesystem (after all, it fragments to hell), thus the overhead of FUSE doesn't make it that much slower.

If you compare the speed of different implementations of a decent filesystem of ext4 (for example CONFIG_EXT4_FS to ext4fuse), you'll find that Linux ext4 is a lot faster during heavy operations.

FUSE on GNU/Linux is in fact partially implemented by Linux (CONFIG_FUSE_FS) and therefore is built into Linux, but there are other FUSE implementations for other kernels and also for other OS's.

Re: Interesting, I guess

There's quite a high chance it just won't work or causes a bluescreen, as the NT kernel is flaming garbage.

Years ago I tried added ext support to windows server, but it just bluescreened as soon as the driver was loaded.

Meanwhile, GNU GRUB reads ext4 just fine.

Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround

Re: Of course we all know the permanent fix

I do free software, not "open source".

That is an anti-free software movement that is dedicated to serving corporations - therefore I do not support "open source".

Re: Of course we all know the permanent fix

>that by adding "GNU" to the name- but nothing else- those same ignorant people would suddenly, magically understand that you implied credit to everything else too.

There is no magic - GNU Enjoyers don't hesitate to give credit by naming the software, rather than calling everything "Linux Linux Linux".

>GNU isn't the core though, which is likely why most distros are called "Linux", rightly or wrongly.

Linux isn't the core - if you delete all of GNU and leave Linux and non-GNU on a GNU/Linux distro, everything will stop working.

You can delete all of proprietary Linux and most non-GNU packages and put more GNU in (GNU Linux-libre or Hurd) and it'll still work fine.

Linux has really bloated up over the years, but it is still is a smaller fraction of the system than GNU.

Let me guess, on my GNUbooted ThinkPads, where GNUboot and then the GNU GRUB payload executes first, before loading GNU Linux-libre (or Hurd), Linux is still the core?

>Of course you could replace the core with (e.g.) GNU Hurd.

You wouldn't really notice any difference on launching the church of Emacs.

>You could replace it with a parsnip too, but most people don't, so it's not a parsnip(!)

A parsnip wouldn't execute.

>WTF? I never said they were

Yes, I misread that one single part.

>Whether or not you use Wayland is academic. It's a part of many distros and should (by your logic) be credited where that's the case.

Many distros include it as they just love breakage - it mostly breaks accessibility features and it does not run at all unless you have fully working 3D acceleration - which may not be the cause on some computers that aren't running proprietary software and therefore it should be removed to get things working.

I'm not going to commend wayland for the breakage it causes and its possible requirement of proprietary software.

If you don't use wayland, you shouldn't say that you use it.

I don't really like adding the "/Linux", as Linux is proprietary software and proprietary software should not be commended - but I do give credit where credit is due.

If you run Android without GNU installed, you shouldn't say you run GNU/Linux.

>You seem weirdly paranoid that there's a conspiracy to deprive GNU of credit when, rightly or wrongly, it's just a matter of convenience and laziness.

It's not paranoia if you're correct - there is a relentless drive to remove any and all mentions of GNU, although there is no conspiracy - as it doesn't take a conspiracy to delete "GNU" and the f word (freedom).

If you actually care above convenience above all else and are lazy, you would just write "GNU" - after all "Linux" takes a few characters longer to type and results in confusion that is a pain in the ass to deal with after all (but it seems people are happy for major inconvenience and confusion that takes a lot of work to handle, just as long as people don't learn that freedom even exists).

>You're also a partisan hypocrite, happy longwindedly rationalise why your favoured project deserves credit too, but no-one else does.

I give credit to Linux as well by writing; GNU/Linux and I give credit to any and all programs when feasible by calling them their names (not "Linux") - but damn you have typed out a long-winded rationalization as to why only Linux deserves credit but no-one else does and I'm the hypocrite.

Re: Of course we all know the permanent fix

>Does it? With respect, this smacks of rationalisation to me.

Yes, people do assume that it's "just Linux", as nobody else tells them otherwise.

>I doubt anyone is referring to a full distro as "Linux" in order to hide the existence of GNU software or to dismiss its importance. They're doing so purely for convenience.

If it's purely about convenience, people would refer to the distro as just "GNU", as well it's shorter to write and say.

There is many such cases - people go remove the GNU from Debian GNU/Linux to make "Debian Linux", specifically to hide the existence of GNU software and/or dismiss its importance (if convenience was a concern, they would write "Debian", or "Debian GNU", as those are shorter to write).

I've seen countless cases of people going and removing GNU and replacing it with "Linux" for those exact reasons, even when Linux is completely irrelevant (for example, the software doesn't contain a byte of Linux as in Cygwin and MSYS2 and "Windows Subsystem Linux[sic] v1"), but it has GNU.

>You don't consider the likes of (e.g.) X.Org or Wayland, which are a significant part of most distributions- but neither a part of Linux nor the GNU project itself- sufficiently worthy of credit

I like things to work, thus I don't use wayland on any of my computers.

It is a totally false claim that X.Org is "a part of Linux" - the The X Window System long predates Linux (like GNU, it was initially released in 1984) and the X.Org Foundation (founded 2004) doesn't develop X.Org Server just for LiGNUx - there is similar support for the BSDs and Solaris.

I don't use X.Org on all of my computers and X.Org is not really a core part of the OS - although I will refer to X.Org when it is relevant to the topic.

>I don't. You were the one who wanted to acknowledge contributions beyond the core Linux kernel and...

Linux certainly isn't the core - you can replace it with another kernel like Hurd, or even the kernel of windows and not notice a functional difference when running the church of Emacs for example.

It's amazing the complexity and confusion cased by the pushing of the falsehood that Linux is much more than a kernel - people can't even write Linux to mean Linux - they need to write "Linux kernel" to mean Linux!

>I've always sympathised with the basic *principle* of the "GNU/Linux" argument- that GNU and other contributors get lumped together with "Linux" itself, which as a result probably gets too much credit for support tools et al, credit that should probably be directed elsewhere.

Linux in fact supplies only a kernel and some support tools (util-linux) and that's pretty much it - but it's amazing what they get credited for.

>Basically GNU and its supporters- like yourself- making the fair point that they're not being given sufficient credit for their contribution, yet drawing the line where it suits them and not caring about seeing that principle extended equally fairly to others.

GNU and GNU Enjoyers do in fact give credit to contributions when credit is due - the relevant software is always named when at all feasible - very much unlike "Linux pushers" who go around calling things "the Linux shell", or "a Linux bootloader" (and many other cases when it's not GNU software, although I can't recall such cases right now), rather than naming the software by it's name.

When it comes to fairness, it can't be fair to give all the credit to one secondary contribution (Linux), while omitting the principal contribution (GNU).

>Sounds like you're picking and choosing where to give credit- and calling it "GNU" on its own is as misleading and accurate as calling it just "Linux", probably moreso.

When it is the GNU system, it is accurate and it is not misleading, as if people get confused, they can enter "gnu" into a search engine and get an accurate idea (with only slight confusion possible if they browse certain results like the persistently vandalized GNU article on wikipedia), while if you enter "linux", almost every result is false and misleading.

Re: Of course we all know the permanent fix

Naming 2 components does give the implication that there could be more (but name only 1 and there's probably only one) and there is no attempt made to hide the existence of non-GNU software or dismiss their importance (by referring to software that is far more than tools as mere tools for example).

At the core, the systems are basically the GNU system with Linux added, although different distributions of the system add differing amounts of different software.

If you want to more strongly give credit where it is due, you might feel that some secondary contributors also deserve credit in the systems name.

If you feel that X11 deserves credit in the system's name, and you want to call the system GNU/X11/Linux, please do.

But that can only go so far - since a system name as long as GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv becomes absurd and at some point the names of many other secondary contributions need to be excluded.

I personally call the system GNU or GNU/Linux and name the other software when relevant (i.e. edit the config file of nginx with GNU nano), rather than referring to every single program on the system as "Linux".

Blinded by the light: Tesla fixes glaringly bright Cybertruck headlights

Re: FFS...

If the idiot is close enough and your vehicle is light enough, "abruptly ceasing to accelerate" without brake lights might result in them hitting you - rather it might be a better idea to press the brake just enough to light up the brake lights, but not enough to actually brake, after lifting your foot off the accelerator.

Re: Are they waterproof yet?

The cybertrucks are unpainted - those use a proprietary alloy of 301 stainless steel that seems less corrosion resistant than 304 stainless (the press would only work with a special formulation of 301 it seems).

If you want unpainted steel that is subjected to salt spray etc (like a vehicle) to not rust though after 10-20 years, you want 316 stainless steel, but that is very difficult to cold work and is slightly heavier than (already heavy) 304 and 301 stainless.

Cybertrucks have been found to start rusting after only a bit more than a year if a signage magnet is applied (accelerates rusting in stainless steel), or if any iron dust (i.e. from railways) ends up on the body.

Telsa now seems to be offering a wrap as a bundled option, which will likely reduce corrosion to an acceptable rate (painting isn't offered and it's rather difficult to get paint to adhere to stainless after all).

Microsoft suggests temporary registry hack for stricken smart card users

The whole idea

is that no matter what microsoft does, no matter what breaks, no matter that many things have never worked, no matter how many serfs are "pissed off", the serf's simply don't leave the abusive relationship.

Linux isn't even an OS

I run GNU/GNU Linux-libre as my OS and don't watch youtube and it does everything I want it to do - it even does endless things proprietary OS's cannot do.

This includes CAD - as it executes the free software FreeCAD, that respects my freedom just fine (I don't have skill issues, so I can get things done even if doing so is harder - although in most cases it's easier).

All users of windows are suckers and it is factual that many of them are stupid, as many of them mostly run a web browser and maybe need to do a few office tasks that are easier in libreoffice.

It's odd to allow work to infringe upon most of your life, by only having a WC.

windows users certainly aren't lazy, as getting even basic things done on windows takes a serious amount of work.

Other than "business software" handcuffed to windows, the main convenience reason to run windows anymore would be proprietary games (bluray playback support is being removed and I suspect "online streaming" support at decent resolutions will eventually be curtailed for 10 and require certain hardware with certain handcuffs for 11) - but it seems that GNU/Linux now runs most proprietary games more conveniently and better now? (despite how doing so soils what should be a free OS with more proprietary software),

Huawei's latest notebook shows China is still generations behind in chipmaking

Re: HarmonyOS?

>"POSIX compliant APIs" mean Unix and Linux.

The kernel, Linux doesn't any implement POSIX APIs - as it's SYSCALL and /sys interfaces are not POSIX.

GNU is not POSIX-compliant either - only some GNU packages go into partial POSIX mode if the POSIXLY_CORRECT environmental value is set (but really who wants something as stupid as 512B blocks in df output?).

>New systems die almost immediately, especially open source software.

New systems die almost immediately if they end up as proprietary as the typical "open source" project.

Re: HarmonyOS?

The reason why nobody has come up with a "better OS", as the fully free GNU OS exists.

If any improvement is wanted, that's simply a matter of adding it to GNU, or the software that works with GNU - the result is that GNU just keeps getting better.

Every time someone tries to write a new OS, it ends up inferior to GNU and also usually the licensing is not in order, which eventually kills the project.

NordVPN open sources its Linux GUI client under GPLv3

Ah yes,

The typical "open sourcing".

There is a claim that it's licensed under GPLv3-only - but there's proprietary restriction schemes (see CONTRIBUTE.md) and nord VPN holds all copyright and therefore the license is not GPLv3-only and in fact the software is proprietary (a copyright holder cannot violate their own license).

Maybe a fork could exercise; "If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term." and add the missing copyright headers, but really just use wireguard normally - you copy the wireguard config file to the right place.

Librephone battles the proprietary binary blob

Re: In 35 years,

My GNUBooted GNU/Phone, running 100% free software makes calls just fine.

Re: Really???

Every user deserves the freedom to inspect, alter, and share the source code of all the software they use, even in the nonexistent situation where none of the user doesn't have any plans to do so at the moment.

"The user won't use the freedom anyway" is a terrible proprietary justification.

>what kind of user will come out of the experience with a working phone?

All users will always have a working phone after inspecting and/or sharing the source code.

Any user who knows the basics of using a computer and how to alter software will only keep using modifications that work - the user will obviously revert changes that don't work.

A modification could be a simple as a typo fix in a text string, which won't break decent software.

>Maybe perhaps possibly some users modify their emacs macros.

That is an example of the users altering the source code.

Most users consider themselves being unable to modify source code, but after being provided instructions how to modify source code that don't say that doing so is programming, many users learn how to program and make changes - for example many secretaries learned to program after following an Emacs manual that had instructions on how to write editing macros, but didn't say that it was programming.

>Google's Android operating system and Apple's iOS both limit that freedom through contractual rules and intellectual property rights.

Imaginary property does not exist; https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

While freedom is denied with copyright law, the primary tool used to deny freedom is via bad programming (resulting in incredible obfuscation) and digital handcuffs.

>While alternative mobile operating systems exist, often distributions based on the Android Open Source Project (e.g., LineageOS), they may contain proprietary blobs related to specific vendors

Every single LineageOS image contains proprietary software for each supported devices, same as almost every other Android distribution - the only exception is Replicant.

>The aim of the Librephone initiative is to reverse-engineer various proprietary blobs so FOSS versions of the code can be created

It's the *Free Software Foundation* - free software replacements is what the initiative intends to develop, not proprietary "FOSS".

>GrapheneOS – which the FSF has declined to endorse – have argued that GNU/FSF approval is not a goal because the FSF's stance on firmware updates is fundamentally insecure.

GrapheneOS fails to understand that proprietary software is fundamentally insecure and the only way to have security is to first remove any and all proprietary software and only then it's possible to work on eliminating each and every security bug in all the software.

>They even require removing security warnings about insecure out-of-date firmware/microcode because they consider it promoting non-free software. That's scammer behavior. We want nothing to do with it."

If the FSF was to go against its very goal and started to recommend proprietary software, that would be scammer behavior.

For example, the intel microcode updates have a software license that clearly points out that the updates are software and are proprietary;

"3. No reverse engineering, decompilation, or disassembly of this software is permitted."

As the microcode updates are proprietary software without source code and you aren't even allowed to go check what the updates even do, there is no evidence that the updates improve security - there is the possibility that security is rather made worse with the introduction of more vulnerabilities.

There is no problem with free software microcode updates and the FSF would be glad to endorse those.

Mobian makes Debian's latest 'Trixie' release pocket-sized

So much GNU erasure

>Halium provides a shortcut. It lets an otherwise standard Linux distro to run on top of an Android kernel and use Android's drivers, bootloader, and so on.

Reviewing the Halium website - it's a GNU/Linux distro that takes the non-standard version of Linux used for Android for the device, along with the proprietary Android services and adds GNU, systemd, some Libhybris compatibility layer(?) and a display server to allow the execution of programs that are programmed for GNU; https://halium.org/

>There's a surprisingly short list of GNU-approved Linux distributions

It specifically says "Free GNU/Linux distributions" on the top of the page and really those are GNU-approved GNU distributions.

With the exception of PureOS, the current GNU/Linux distros happen to use GNU Linux-libre.

(PureOS uses Debian's custom version of Linux that only removes the embedded proprietary software - although chances are Debian won't bother to do even that in the future).

Windows 11 tiptoes further into dark mode with new dialogs

Re: Command lines

Those aren't Linux either.

Those are shells, but are inferior and lack the GNU/Freedom - the Bourne Shell is even proprietary software (and still is - although there is a different version that is not the Bourne shell apparently available under the CDDL-1.0).

Bash contains no code from the Bourne Shell.

Re: Command lines

The kernel, Linux has only a command line for passing bootup options; see GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX in /etc/default/grub in decent GNU distro's.

GNU bash is GNU.

Windows 11 update knocks out USB mice, keyboards in recovery mode

Re: The question is...

They only apply the update on the machine assigned to the developer(s) and if it seems to work, they ship it.

Therefore, it's possible for each update to only actually work on that specific hardware and the specific configuration.

The proper solution is to install GNU instead of funding microsoft and their buddies.

Major AWS outage across US-East region breaks half the internet

Re: Time for a Coffee....

Those are clearly not yours, as those are refusing to operate for no reason.

Should have used FreeCAD and other free replacement software - as that won't ever refuse to stop operating (if you need some certain functionality, you might need to pay a programmer to add it, but it seems that such costs will be less than what AutoDesk charges in the end).

I didn't even notice personally

Enough written.

Lloyds Banking Group claims Microsoft Copilot saves staff 46 minutes a day

Re: Those saved

The solution would be to install GNU and get a decent Wi-Fi card (i.e. plug in via usb).

I've never seen a AR9271 fail to connect.

Re: The golden rule is don't use it

Or you can use decent mail software that allows you to search past emails without issues instead.

Turns out the end of Windows 10 is good for something: The PC refresh cycle

Re: Time to move on

Please do not attack the human race by recommending proprietary software to people.

If you can't help but to hurt yourself and run proprietary software, please at least use an unauthorized copy so you don't give the enemies of humanity more money.

Regardless, you should just get the real thing and install libreoffice instead.

Looking, my proprietary senses are telling me that both nonfree office and the softmaker-nx version are proprietary versions of libreoffice or openoffice with a heavily modified GUI - but maybe this is the first time they're wrong.

The dependencies seems to be almost identical (hard to tell when libreoffice shoves everything into one binary now), plugins from libreoffice and openoffice are utilized (like hunspell) and similar functionality appears to be offered;

ldd presentations |grep -oE '.*.so.* =' |tr -d '=' |tr -d '\t' |tr -d ' '|tr '\n' ' '

libdl.so.2 libX11.so.6 libXmu.so.6 libXext.so.6 libm.so.6 libXrender.so.1 libXrandr.so.2 libstdc++.so.6 libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1 libgobject-2.0.so.0 libgstreamer-1.0.so.0 libgstaudio-1.0.so.0 libgstvideo-1.0.so.0 libgstapp-1.0.so.0 libgcc_s.so.1 libc.so.6 libxcb.so.1 libXt.so.6 libGLdispatch.so.0 libGLX.so.0 libglib-2.0.so.0 libffi.so.8 libgmodule-2.0.so.0 libgsttag-1.0.so.0 libgstbase-1.0.so.0 liborc-0.4.so.0 libXau.so.6 libXdmcp.so.6 libSM.so.6 libICE.so.6 libpcre2-8.so.0 libz.so.1 libuuid.so.1

Also, every time I've looked into programs that have good support for microsoft formats that are not from microsoft, I've found that such programs reuse libreoffice's MOX support.

Much of libreoffice is available under certain versions of the MPL, which unfortunately are weak licenses, meaning that proprietary versions might be allowed provided that the license notice is retained and a few other conditions - but I can't find a relevant license notice?

Regardless, it's the case that nonfreeoffice infringes copyright, as it's a derivative work of several LGPLv2.1+ libraries and the LGPLv2.1 (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.en.html) quite clearly states;

"6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, ***provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications***.", while nonfreeoffice has the following license;

...

YOU MAY NOT:

...

Reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify, translate, make any attempt to discover the source code of the Software, or create derivative works of the Software.

...

Think about why that would be there.