Posts by Eric 9001

South Korea introduces universal basic mobile data access

400 Kbps with high packet loss (a common occurrence on congested mobile bands) is quite slow.

Governmental services seem to now require more bandwidth than 360p videos.

Re: Universal basic mobile data access?

>How does this differ from landlines which also have a cost?

Landlines are actually mostly optional - businesses and governments don't seem to have strictly required a landline number and generally if you stop paying for the landline number, all that happens is people can't bother you by calling call you (I haven't heard of a bank you can't login to, or a government form you can't submit, unless you can receive a call on a specific landline number on a 24/7 basis).

Landline's are also significantly cheaper than mobile plans as long as you don't get scammed too hard.

For example, this SIP trunk offers UK landline numbers at scam rates; https://web.archive.org/web/20260220153330if_/https://www.twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/gb

A number costs $1.15 USD/month, receiving calls costing $0.01 USD/minute and making calls costs $0.0158 USD/minute.

Assuming you receive 2 hours of calls a month and make 2 hours of calls/month, that would cost ~$5 USD/month.

Even bumping that up to 6 hours make/receive a month, that would be ~$10.50 USD /month - still cheaper than South Korea mobile plans.

>Way less data is needed if you are using a bank application.

"Bank applications" are typically actually a web browser, rather than something native, thus there is a similar data requirement during usage.

The "bank application" also needs to be downloaded and kept updated, which is typically several hundred megabytes in size for each update.

>Yes, that would be dandy. Who would pay for it? I'm all in for free lunches as well!

All offered lunches I've seen have been proprietary.

As far as I can tell, the current taxation policy for things related to telecommunications (such as https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/uk_digital_services_tax/) collects enough money to cover the actual costs of installation and providing a connection.

The TV loicence is apparently £174.50 per year to watch TV and I'm sure most households or people wouldn't mind paying say £200 once, or even £200/year to be able to access the internet with a 1000BASE-T connection for 100+ years, instead of paying £395.88/year for a 50Mbit/9.5Mbit connection; https://www.broadband.co.uk/providers/bt/broadband

After all, once the fibre rollout is complete, the fibre will last 100+ years and the ongoing costs would be hosting and maintenance, upgrading transceivers to ones that use less power as those fail after 10+ years.

But for that to be successful, that would require the government to do their job and serve their citizens by throwing rent seekers in prison, rather than giving rent seekers billions, so that's not going to happen.

You are getting rinsed on call plans in the UK - just not as hard as other countries.

Consider that it costs next to $0 to handshake even a proprietary SIP+RTP session and then hold a <1Mbps RTP session open for a few minutes or hours (although rent-seekers are there to charge by the minute).

Universal basic mobile data access?

It's only for those who have the money and access to the accepted payment methods and necessary ID, that are currently paying a ludicrous monthly sum for a plan.

It does not cost a big provider $13.50 USD/month to provide slow service - with business agreements made to pay the actual costs, each account seems to works out to cost at most ~$4 USD/month, which could easily be reduced with real competition?

I've realized that mobile plans are now extortion - as you can't choose to stop paying for a mobile plan (and stop being spied on via that method), without being punished by getting cut off from "your" bank account, same as any business or government disservices that require a phone number.

It seems there are disgusting plans to make even more things rely on proprietary software and SaaSS, if it was conceded that mobile companies couldn't be permitted to cut off the internet connection from each Stalin's dream device.

400Kbps is a very slow connection nowadays, considering that typical banking website is 10+MiB (although 50+MiB is becoming more common for websites);

You have: 400kbps

You want: minutes/10MiB

reciprocal conversion

* 3.4952533

What would be real universal basic data access would be a requirement that each home and library etc needs to have fibre run to it with a slow 1000BASE-T connection (it's a 25+ year old technology), with no account required to connect to the internet.

Months-old Adobe Reader zero-day uses PDFs to size up targets

Re: JavaScript in PDFs?

That will probably work, but there is no guarantee - JavaScript encoded in a certain way would bypass NoScript in the past.

It's safest to disable JavaScript execution entirely (it would really be much better security wise if the browser didn't support JavaScript at all).

Re: What about non Adobe PDF readers ?

The type of vulnerability is exclusive to pdf viewers that support JavaScript (as unsurprisingly, that allows arbitrary remote code execution).

Evince is not vulnerable as it does not support JavaScript; https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/Roadmap#Unresourced

I hope they don't implement such anti-feature.

Okular appears to be the free replacement for PDF-XChange that existed before, as it does pdf annotations - you can add text, draw lines and insert pdf stamps.

Okular unfortunately supports JavaScript, but it seems it's click-to-run and possible to disable.

Re: JavaScript in PDFs?

Why not use a real pdf viewer that obeys you and displays pdf's correctly like Okular or mupdf?

Okular also does pdf forms, text insertion and pdf stamps.

Re: JavaScript in PDFs?

You can validate form inputs without requiring arbitrary code execution by using regex validation.

It is also possible to add fixed-function rules as to disable or enable certain forms depending on the state of other forms.

But Adobe hasn't implemented pdf forms in a sane way and instead had added arbitrary remote code execution.

javascript.enabled=false for firefox is a smart idea if you want to avoid getting exploited and also avoid slop websites.

Microsoft cuts cloudy desktop prices by 20 percent, warns they’ll wake up slowly

Yes, someone else's computer is always a horrible deal.

DARPA looking for battery that could power a laptop for months

Re: This is easy to do

I am well aware - clearly I meant a heatsink with oversized fins.

An appropriately designed and sized heatsink will passively dissipate 100W - or if you're okay with a heatsink that reaches >100°C, you can design a small heatsink with a chimney hole that exploits the chimney effect for silent forced convection.

Re: This is easy to do

If you add a big enough heatsink, 100W of heat could be dissipated without needing fans - it would need to built tough enough to not need a laptop bag and would have a handle instead.

Although, heating the room constantly with 100W of heat would be an annoyance outside of freezing cold climates.

Sounds like a great idea for a free software laptop really - it doesn't need an off switch - the freedom keeps flowing.

Hundreds of orgs compromised daily in Microsoft device code phishing attacks

Microsoft will not be held liable for things they designed to ensure happen yet again.

It is total insanity to have an email account use the same login to thing unrelated to email and then train the used to need to login to that account 5 times a day, with login regularly failing too.

The result is that when the used receives an email about a "secure document" from a trusted customer (that is used by Microsoft and thus had their email hijacked a day or so before) and they see another microsoft login prompt, they automatically enter the stupid account details and then "document access" proceeds to "fail", as it regularly does, they don't think twice about it beyond sending an email back about not being able to access the file and carry on.

The process continues with all the customers of that business - many of the customers that are businesses that are used by Microsoft then have their email hijacked as well.

The only hope such businesses have is that the attackers are mostly incompetent and are doing everything via LLM prompt and seem to only have the goal of continued hijacking and sending out invoices with their bank details for profit - thus revoking all the login tokens and setting a new password ends the attack (although much worse things can be done if a prompt to save all the emails to disk is worked out, as a lot of passwords to bank accounts etc do get sent via email).

Businesses that aren't totally incompetent and don't use outlook or other Microsoft software and instead have normal email and have a SMTP+IMAP username/password that is inserted into the email client by the admin (which will never be logged out or reset unless the device is compromised, as there is no reason to reset the password otherwise), will never have that problem by design.

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

Re: "Unprotected" content

You need to be careful with the usage of the "DRM" term, making sure to point out it is Digital Restrictions Management every time (as there is corporate propaganda which claims it's about "Rights").

Content refers to merely the state of being satisfied, or the inside of something (i.e. the contents of this vase) - it's clearly very insulting to the author of a good book to refer to its quality story or quality information as merely being readable.

You can't actually buy copies of books from amazon - if you look at the sale terms, all that can be purchased is a; "license to read the book" (sometimes it's a license to only read the book once).

On old devices, it is rather possible to copy the books off in the proprietary format and then convert the books to a free format that is free from restrictions.

Virtual SG-41 project brings Nazi cipher machine to life in the browser

Don't see anything wrong with .blend - it's good enough for the use case.

Maybe the FCStd format from FreeCAD would be more accurate?

AMD's AI director slams Claude Code for becoming dumber and lazier since last update

Re: Not exactly unexpected.

It is impossible to copy something that hasn't been done before with a LLM, as the LLM can only copy the training input and combinations therefore as well as the prompt input.

A lot of engineering solutions happen to be putting 2 or more existing programs together, which a LLM can do badly.

But for the LLM addled, using software libraries via the API or even those difficult Unix pipes is far too much for them (LLM's seriously still output forbidden words, as the developers are too stupid to filter the output with; `I sed -E 's/(word1|word2)//g'`).

Artemis II astronaut: 'I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working'

Re: Linux,

He smokes pure unadulterated freedom, not proprietary drugs.

Re: Linux,

Linux could not have even existed if Stallman didn't have gotten GNU together piece by piece, getting along with others (being a very good developer requires having a strong mind).

Linux only came into existence because of Stallman and GNU.

It is impossible to write a working kernel without at least a compiler, a toolchain and a buildsystem.

Before Stallman decided to sit down and write a C compiler and release it as free software (something that had *not* been done before), there was no free software C compiler - C compilers had restrictions on usage and cost a fortune.

GNU developed and released GCC, GNU binutils, GNU make, GNU diff, GNU patch and much more, making it possible to start developing Linux.

At the start, Linux got nowhere, as Linus's choice to use a proprietary license meant that GNU was not willing to support a new proprietary kernel and due to how GNU and other software didn't run, few were interested (Linus went and did a dirty port of Bash etc, but it didn't run very well).

After Linus attended a speech by Stallman, he decided to relicense to the GNU Public License version 2 ambiguous, which he admits was the best choice he ever made (but he didn't say why).

The reason why it was the best choice he made, as Linux then being free software convinced the GNU developers to port every last GNU program to work with Linux - resulting in GNU/Linux.

While GNU/Linux distributions did boot, those had functionality issues due to deficiencies in Linux - which attracted thousands of developers to go and fix up Linux - resulting in a very successful development model that has made Linux very popular.

After Linus has seen many years of success, he of course processed to pay back GNU by betraying it, by allowing Linux to become proprietary software again, by allowing the first of many proprietary programs to be added in 1996 and then later in 2000 after more development success, betrayed GNU again, by specifying that the license was GPLv2-only(+proprietary).

Linus's kernel is called Linux because of some weird cult of personality formed that saw that you could get Linus and add x on the end to make "Linux", which sounds like "Linus's Unix", which is a convenient mental shortcut, even though that's totally incorrect - Linus's kernel he wanted to call Freax is generally used with GNU's Not Unix.

Linux is still an acceptable name for Linus's kernel, but that just wasn't enough for the cult of personality - they continue to this day obsessively giving credit to Linus, for GNU and software completely unrelated to Linux, that happens to also run on GNU/Linux.

The only thing that Linus doesn't seem to get much credit for is Android, as even though that use the same Linux, that isn't I quote "proper Linux" (it lacks GNU).

Actually, when I think about the "getting along" part, Linus is much worse at that than Richard, as he has many times on the Linux mailing list carried out personal attacks, such as I quote; "Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE FUCKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the fuck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?".

Meanwhile, I don't remember seeing a case where Richard has directed a personal attack at anyone - while he has made many socially awkward comments about things not adequately explained to him and he also often wished for his own death out of despair, that is not a personal attack.

Now I think about it, Richard tries to pull freedom together as best he can, while Linus tries to rip freedom apart and replace it with more and more proprietary software, seeking more popularity.

Re: Linux,

It's not close to defamation - it is intentional defamation.

There is endless defamation online about Stallman, because people always believe the claims without checking the facts.

Yes, his extreme personality makes weak minds uncomfortable.

He didn't just provide the start and leave - he carefully maintained it on the way, tactically making the right calls - although he doesn't go around calling it Stallmanx - he gives credit when credit is due.

Re: Linux,

Ideally people would be put off that proprietary kernel and go with the free replacement instead - GNU Linux-libre.

Re: Linux,

I have no interest in such pointless trifles.

I don't have windows.

The entire idea is that free replacements are to be developed - not proprietary alternatives.

You don't get the best OS and the best software by having a common, weak mind.

It's a feature, not a bug if those who can't help but to ruin things further with more proprietary software, choose not to do so.

Re: Linux,

>designed to run Unix applications without having to pay for the licenses, so Stallman could spend those money for himself

It's incredible what slander people make up.

The goal of GNU is eliminating proprietary software, thus you couldn't make a wronger claim than to claim it was about being able to run proprietary software for Unix without extra costs.

Prior to deciding to develop GNU, rms never even used Unix, not for a minute (he used the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) until the PDP-10 hardware it ran on stopped working).

The reason he decided to develop a free as in freedom replacement for Unix had nothing to do with money - it was for practical reasons alone - all OS's available for current computers at the time were proprietary, but Unix had a modular design that allowed developing a free replacement, one piece at a time.

While Unix rent cost a fortune, the university had already rented a copy of Unix and while it was the case that the eventual result of the GNU project, was the university no longer needing to pay such rent to have an OS, he never received any of such saved money (he quit his job at MIT prior to starting GNU).

He has never been greedy for money - eventually the Free Software Foundation could pay him a salary for his work, but he determined he didn't need it, so he didn't take a salary.

>Sure, today Linux has diverged somehow, and there aren't only POSIX APIs, but still a lot of APIs are there to run Unix applications.

Linux doesn't implement POSIX API's - what Linux implements is similar but incompatible /proc & /dev interfaces, a custom /sys interface and has a bunch of SYSCALLs that can do tasks POSIX kernel's are meant to do, as well as tasks no POSIX kernel can do.

If there is a proprietary libc that works with a proprietary Unix kernel, it won't work with Linux without it being ported to Linux's incompatible interfaces (such was tactically avoided by the compromise of licensing glibc LGPLv2.1-or-later).

While GNU has implemented the good parts of POSIX, it has not implemented the bad parts and also many GNU extensions are implemented too - GNU's Not posUx - programs for GNU need to support GNU.

Re: Who says this is for anything critical?

It is devastating that on a mission is meant to be the peak of humanities achievements, the astronauts unthinkingly brought along the deepest trench of humanity - windows computers and iphones!

It's too bad I'll get arrested for "missile offenses" for showing them how it's done.

Re: Not space ready

I looked into it and it's a typically used GNU OS, containing software part of the GNU system like grub, wget, perl, ncurses, parted etc, although unlike many GNU OS distributions from microsoft, it actually contains Linux.

If you look at the Acknowledgements; https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux/blob/3.0/README.md you'll see it credits GNU in first place for a reason and also the list of used software here; https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux/blob/3.0/LICENSES-AND-NOTICES/SPECS/LICENSES-MAP.md

Yes, a big chunk of microsoft's revenue is now from Azure - it was reported as making $75 billion a year in 2025; https://fortune.com/2025/07/30/microsoft-earnings-azure-cloud-computing-artificial-intelligence/

Most of the VM's that Azure runs is GNU/Linux, as unlike microsoft's software, that software actually works (although how well it works degrades with each microsoft program added).

I'm not sure about the long term future of Azure, as for businesses that run Azure VM's, it costs a fortune and keeps getting more expensive every year - I figure eventually the forcing effect of natural selection will take place - with businesses either going bankrupt, or changing to self hosting to make the business viable again - severely reducing the Azure revenue stream.

Re: Linux,

Very few care about the facts, but it's incredible that I struck a nerve in someone who seriously cares that someone could read a comment that contains the facts.

Re: Not space ready

microsoft will be gone eventually, but due to the massive glut of businesses and governments they have chained, I doubt they'll have issue acquiring needed funds to keep the corpse alive even into the 2050's.

Of course they could be gone much earlier if enough businesses and governments had basic financial competence and ended such massive financial and operations liability by changing from microsoft software to GNU/Linux without microsoft software, but I really doubt that's going to happen.

Re: Linux,

It befuddles me that you unflinchingly carried out the insanity of referring to GNU as "proper Linux" (you could even save everyone from the confusion and save yourself the typing too and just write GNU to mean GNU - but you won't).

Android uses more or less the same versions of Linux as GNU/Linux with a few patches - the difference is that Android lacks GNU.

The year of GNU/Linux on the desktop was in 1995 or so - as you could use a recent computer practically in freedom again, alas that freedom was savagely ripped away with the inclusion of the first proprietary program of many into Linux starting in 1996.

Re: Linux,

Linux is not a clone of Unix or even of a Unix kernel - the only similarities it has with Unix kernel's is that it's proprietary software and it uses a monolithic design.

GNU's Not Unix originally started as a free clone of Unix, but now it's almost completely different to Unix.

Ex-Microsoft engineer believes Azure problems stem from talent exodus

Re: Letter from MS to former MS Senior Technical Leaders

You're welcome.

Re: Letter from MS to former MS Senior Technical Leaders

I advise you don't go out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Instead you should install a real OS - GNU/Linux-libre.

You don't even need to purchase new hardware - Trisquel will work fine on the latest proprietary intel with integrated graphics and wired networking.

If your hardware is defective, I guess windows to the (less) proprietary Debian GNU/Linux wouldn't be too bad.

It's even a practical thing - macos supports much less software than GNU/Linux-libre.

But you won't follow my advice and you won't even partially save yourself.

Re: Letter from MS to former MS Senior Technical Leaders

In reality, both the base of Unix and NT were garbage, although NT is far worse.

If you want a decent OS design, the only OS that has one is GNU's Not Unix.

Re: It's clear that the quality of M$ products has nosedived over the last decade

It hasn't - quality can't nosedive if none of the software was ever quality.

Patch to end i486 support hits Linux kernel merge queue

Re: Buggritt

The Intel Atom N270 is a i686 CPU, which was very common in other netbooks too.

Despite being 32bit, it's not a bad CPU, considering that it does have constant_tsc and ssse3 - it's only really missing AES-ni, which would be nice to have.

It has low power consumption (only 2.5 W at full load - too bad the chipset is much worse) and as it doesn't have speculative execution and stupid performance shortcuts, it is immune to all Spectre attacks and meltdown too.

The only issue I've identified with the latest GNU Linux-libre is that modesetting no longer works as Intel has broken i915 for the GPU - but in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX you just add nomodeset, as you're only using it for ssh anyway.

The issue you have is how most up-to-date GNU distros have removed support for 32 bit and well the only sane choices remaining are Guix or Gentoo - too bad you need to be careful to not install proprietary software on either OS, as there's proprietary software in the packages tree.

Gentoo with decent software works fine with the N270 - GCC, ocaml, perl, python, asterisk, ls-sensors, glibc and openssh etc compiles fine with 1GB of RAM and 2GB of SWAP - only garbage software like LLVM won't compile.

AI agents found vulns in this popular Linux and Unix print server

How much time was spent prompting exactly?

I suspect that it took twice as long as looking at CUPS without proprietary software and SaaSS and finding some more of the remaining bugs.

How Nvidia learned to embrace the light in its quest for scale

Re: Copper is cheap

Thin wires of copper is cheap, but CCA and steel is cheaper.

Aluminum will "solder" in a through hole or on a pad if you try hard enough.

Forking frenzy ensues after Euro-Office launch sparks OnlyOffice backlash

Re: Pretty sure that

Part of the reason why things are so bad is because people don't refuse to be used by microsoft's formatting.

Even if a big baby will melt down and have a tantrum - everyone needs to man up for mankind and rise over the tantrum.

Such sort once tried me to submit a report in .docx format, I firmly said NO and told them that I would be submitting in pdf format and that's what I did.

Re: Forking Hell...

Every single major release of office has used a different file format - with the same document in different versions of office programs, you end up with differences in formatting and certain things being broken.

The whole business idea is to make sending documents between businesses painful unless each business pays the rent every time for the latest version of office (on wait, it's still common for documents to format differently on different WC's with the exact same version of office, as printer setting change the page formatting and probably a bunch of other things too).

Too bad many can't comprehend such a twisted evil scheme and deny it, despite with their own eyes seeing countless documents broken in office.

The US government rather twists itself into knots to serve microsoft.

Re: Pretty sure that

microsoft's ODF support is intentionally broken to ensure failures happen, while also technically meeting a requirement that ODF is "supported".

As ODF is fully specified and the standards document is of reasonable length, there is no excuse as to why microsoft doesn't implement it to the standard.

As for "OOXML", that is thousands and thousands of pages of incomplete specifications (it seems microsoft decided to pretend to make a standard, by going and publishing a redacted version of their internal documentation they don't follow anyway - what Office implements is Microsoft Office XML (MOX)).

There's parts like; https://c-rex.net/samples/ooxml/e1/part4/OOXML_P4_DOCX_autoSpaceLikeWord95_topic_ID0EWPBZ.html where Word 95 auto-spacing needs to be emulated - but of course the documentation intentionally lacks the critical information as the relevant auto-spacing rules.

m$ Office also does things like dumping a C-struct from memory, XML ENCODING IT and then shoving that into the XML mess - which is not documented in "OOXML".

For LibreOffice to be able to process such XML struct required quite a bit of reverse engineering.

m$ Office still doesn't follow "OOXML" either, thus if LibreOffice saves a "OOXML" documentation to what the specification says, Office won't read it correctly.

LibreOffice's reverse engineered MOX support is not complete and MOX cannot encode certain complicated data like dates correctly, thus I wouldn't be surprised to see formatting go missing and things to go wrong (which won't happen with ODF and standards compliant software) and the warning is therefore correct.

But every since the start, m$ office has been known for screwing up formatting - while it seems MOX formatting is less screwed up with LibreOffice!

But that's to be expected of a formatting only every produced for reasons of sabotage - after all, free software and also proprietary document software eventually added pretty good support for .doc and .ppt, thus .docx & .pptx etc were developed in incomprehensible XML (good luck parsing this one), to end such support and also to force the rent of newer m$ office software (sometimes available as an expensive plugin for the "old office version"), in order to be able to view the new format even on windows.

Re: Pretty sure that

Why do people just make things up?

If you open a docx file, LibreOffice will save to a docx file.

The user is only warned about MOX once.

Re: Spreadsheets????

In most cases the reports are solely for pleasing the suits and therefore the corporation couldn't be brought down by that - as if nothing is actually done in response to the report, it doesn't matter if the results are completely incorrect - just that the report is plausible.

One of the prerequisites for a corporation to become huge is for nothing actually critical to the business to use Excel or other microsoft software.

Re: Pretty sure that

You don't need to state the obvious to me.

I state the obvious at length, because I get the feeling that certain commenters need it to understand.

Having a pop-up box that warns about an unfortunate reality is not preaching.

Proprietary software does far more than a single pop-up box, but that doesn't seem to put many off - for some reason many just take it.

If you would like me to preach about proprietary software and its consequences, explaining all the scheming around OOXML and MOX, with links, just give the word.

Re: Pretty sure that

>it's just considered bad to be trying to pitch ideology at someone

Wow, wanting people to not lose their work and also not wanting humanity to continue losing is extreme ideology?

I must exceed extremist! (Oh yeah!).

>someone who neither knows nor cares about file formats beyond just wanting to get their work done

If you want to get work done and for it to stay done, you need to know and care what file formats you are using.

If you use proprietary faux-formats, that are intentionally broken every few years, there is a 100% guarantee after the change, you will at least waste time handling the changes and in the worst case, lose work due to the change and need to start again.

XML is a terrible format, considering that even if the file actually follows a format, it is hard to parse by both humans and computers, but if you save an ODF file with libreoffice today, you can expect it to be perfectly readable for decades.

>except now their software is stopping them until they declare that they truly are a heretic who can't be saved?

Wow, a pop-up box that gives the user good advice to not make a common mistake (for personal files saved to your computer for later use with libreoffice, saving to a microsoft faux-format is always a mistake), but allows the user in only one more action, once, the option to confirm that saving in such faux-formats was not a mistake, is treating the user as a heretic?

What is your opinion on the typical multiple choice dark-patterns to do things the user wants to do, but the master doesn't really want them to do, that are common in proprietary software?

>Telling the user they're wrong is a bad way to do it.

That is not what the pop-up box says.

> Just ask neutrally on first run

Why ask something on the first run that may not be applicable?

It makes more sense to ask neutrally when a mistake is about to be made.

>default to what most users are likely to want (whether you agree with their choice or not), and respect their choice, maybe even just put in a small message in the save window that unobtrusively explains why MS formats are bad whenever saving in that format, giving them a littlenudge, just without getting in the user's way.

Most users seems to want to save files to their computer for later personal usage and thus the default to ODF is correct.

If that is not the case, the user's choice is respected - they can choose whether to confirm saving to the faux-format in one operation, once and the pop-up box also unobtrustively links to why m$'s faux-formats are bad (I'm not sure if it's technically possible to portably add a link to the save window (which is OS-specific in GtK), or at least it takes a lot of work to do so, while a link in a pop-up box is portable and doesn't take too long to implement (is it OS-generic in GtK?)).

>Of course, LO doesn't really want the users who'd pick MS Office format and move on, and that's the real rub here. They don't want to replace MS, they want to cater to a tiny pool of people who care about 'Libre' principles.

They obviously wish to provide a free replacement to microsoft, considering that it has windows and macos builds.

If they only cared about catering to those who care about freedom, there would only be source code available for download that you can go and compile on GNU/Linux-libre.

The users can pick proprietary and move on.

>I send documents to others in the standard MS formats

Anything from m$ is intentionally NOT a format and also NOT in any way standardized.

You cannot reliably send documents from 2 WC's without a chance of the formatting changing, even on the same windows version and the same version of office (printer settings can change how documents render after all).

If I want to send documents to people, I use pdf, as that is standardized and has a specification (that everyone but Adobe mostly follows), thus I can expect it to display correctly no matter the computer or OS as long as the receiver is not using "Adobe Reader" (which most people are smart enough not to use).

I do not send people m$ documents unprompted, as that would obviously be the immoral act of supporting the usage of office (which a lot of people are dumb enough to use).

OnlyOffice quite clearly is intended to be proprietary software

But it does pretend to be AGPLv3-only, as a program that uses a strong free GNU license gives a reason to use that program over other similar programs that use less strong or weak licenses.

OnlyOffice renders software proprietary by wielding trademarks to prevent both conveying and modifications, as it adds these contradictory further restrictions; "Pursuant to Section 7(b) of the License you must retain the original Product logo when distributing the program. Pursuant to Section 7(e) we decline to grant you any rights under trademark law for use of our trademarks.".

Contradictory, retaining the "original product logo" would be considered "use of their trademarks", so you are forbidden from conveying the software with the logo and you are also forbidden from removing the logo - thus you are forbidden from conveying or making available the software for use over a computer network unmodified or modified - thus it is proprietary software.

Selection 7(b) states; "b) Requiring preservation of specified ****reasonable legal notices**** or author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it; or" - a logo arguably isn't a legal notice, but if it is, a contradictory legal notice is not reasonable, thus section 7b is not applicable.

Section 7(e) states; "e) Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade names, trademarks, or service marks; or" - but it could be argued that is not a valid usage of section 7e, as the marks are not defined (the AGPLv3 doesn't grant any trademark permissions anyway).

Therefore, the developers of Euro-Office had their hands forced, they had no choice but to utilize the following freedom defense; `All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. 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 remove the further restrictions to make it free software.

If the OnlyOffice developers didn't intend for the software to be proprietary, they would have written something similar to; "Pursuant to Section 7(b) of the License, when distributing the program unmodified, you must retain the original; `OnlyOffice logo`. Pursuant to Section 7(e), modified versions of the program must use a different logo, as for modified versions, we decline to grant you any permissions under trademark law for use of the following trademark; `the OnlyOffice logo`."

Provided changing the logo is a reasonable task (i.e. swapping out a png), those additional terms would be reasonable;

- If you aren't modifying the program, why change the logo? Requiring that someone include a logo of course gives them trademark permission to do so.

- If you are modifying the program, a minor additional change doesn't stop you from exercising the 4 freedoms.

Re: Pretty sure that

It's not even a matter of having to go into a menu to go and change default - on first trying to save to a microsoft "format", it merely pops up a box advising you to use a real format instead and that box also contains the option to save anyway and you are not reminded again.

That is a "problem", as it's considered bad for there even to be a possibility for the user to learn that there's a problem with microsoft's proprietary "formats".

When a billboard survives the wind, but not the boot

Re: GNU GRUB is GNU and has nothing to do with Linux

How could I forget - if you use Linux with or without an initramfs (initial GNU/Linux or BusyBox/Linux fs in RAM that does things Linux can't, like ask for the root password or mount root=UUID=), if Linux or the initrd fails early during the boot process (for example, Linux failing to find the root partition, as it doesn't support root=UUID=, only root=PARTUUID= or root=/dev/sda1), if the graphics haven't been already inited to a mode handled by Linux, you won't see the panic() message - only the boot screen GRUB left - making it look like GRUB hung, when it was Linux that hung.

What probably happened if there wasn't hardware failure, is GRUB went and successfully executed Linux, which failed to boot and also failed to set the video mode needed to print the kernel panic().

GNU GRUB is GNU and has nothing to do with Linux

It can execute Linux, but it supports executing many kernels; https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/Supported-kernels.html

The endgame is for GNU GRUB to exclusively execute GNU Hurd and progress so far is good; https://www.gentoo.org/news/2026/04/01/gentoo-hurd.html

Looks like the hardware has failed to me - as generally otherwise GRUB doesn't get stuck like that (I've only ever seen GRUB get stuck otherwise with broken, unfinished coreboot ports that GNUboot provides for testing for certain boards).

Claude Code source leak reveals how much info Anthropic can hoover up about you and your system

Re: Important news :

That is unbelievable - considering the sources available under "linux.git" at kernel.org are not complete source code and contain proprietary software in object code form disguised as arrays of numbers and almost all of the object code available at "linux-firmware.git" (the other half of Linux) is proprietary software without source code.

If any hackers can supply the complete corresponding source code and installation information of Linux (which will require a lot of cracking to get), with the correct license attached (some hacking with Emacs-fu), please also send a copy to me for my sharing.

Country that put backdoors into Cisco routers to spy on world bans foreign routers

>Alternatively, one can argue that SFC are ambulance chasers who generate fees for their lawyers, a lesser amount for maintainers, and nothing for developers who contribute to the codebase.

The SFC's goal is not profit - most of the funds raised seem to go towards paying the lawyers; https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html

I don't think maintainers receive any money.

The developers, maintainers and even the lawyers get the far more valuable benefit of less cases of the software being used to attack humanity as proprietary software.

>Which is just one of those things with 'open source' land and can end up with forks and other messes.

That's an unrelated proprietary land.

>It doesn't support your claim that BT has to provide you with full instructions to compile, or cross-compile their licenced version of BusyBox to any SoC of your choice..

I didn't make that claim - you are not reading what I write.

As per the license conditions, BT has to provide the user with full scripts and/or instructions to compile and and install from the complete corresponding source code of all the GPLv2 software onto the device(s) that they distribute the object code of such software on.

BT is not required to assist you with compiling it for other computers, but you don't need their help to do that anyway.

>Evidence? Fill your boots here- >https://support.linksys.com/kb/article/316-en/ >All the source you can eat. Code provided as-is, use at your own risk. Picking on the WT54GL tar ball, it'll tells you how to compile a src, but not how to install it..

You failed to actually read again - it does tell you how to install it.

I was correct - Cisco provided complete corresponding source code and installation information, as the FSF wouldn't settle for anything less.

If you download WRT54GL-ETSI_v4.30.18.006.tar.gz for example and extract the tarball and look at the root, you'll see make_all.sh and also README.TXT.

The README contains the instructions how to compile the software and also how to install it;

" c. Will generate the code.bin under the image folder.

You can upgrade the file from GUI."

As that is the complete corresponding source code and installation information for the software for the router, linksys was therefore mostly compliant with the GPLv2 (the only issue I see is that Linux contains a huge amount of proprietary software disguised as arrays of numbers, which is GPLv2 infringement, but that's the Linux developers fault - the WRT54GL doesn't use any of such proprietary software in Linux).

As the user was able to actually compile the source code and install it, "Open"WRT then became possible.

>But you're vaguely right about OpenWrt being developed as a result. Except OpenWrt isn't a monolithic method to hack just Linksys routers any more, but a smorgasbord of libraries that can be used to herd botnets.

It is totally irrelevant that generic router software can also be used to control botnets.

>Err.. quite. But then stuff like this happens-

Yes, old routers that run vulnerable proprietary software that have not been updated can easily get hijacked.

>One targetted and compromised Linksys routers, possibly as a result of the source being available and vulnerabilities found. The other bricked ActionTec and you can get the code here-

The source code of the WRT610N, WRT310N, WRT320N, E1550, E3200, E300, E1500, E4200, E1000, or Valet M10 is not available here; https://support.linksys.com/kb/article/316-en/

Only the source code of the free software in the E2500, E1200 is available.

As it does not mention anything about devices with "Open"WRT installed being attacked, as far as I can tell, what happened was that attackers reversed engineered Cisco's proprietary software, found a vulnerability and used that to exploit the routers.

Attackers do not need source code to find vulnerabilities, as they can afford to spend days or weeks reverse engineering object code to find vulnerabilities (as there's lots of profit to be made once they hijack thousands of routers), while the good guys generally cannot afford to reverse engineer much object code - thus if you care about vulnerabilities being fixed, you give the good guys the source code and get them to tell you all the vulnerabilities.

The source code of the free software of the T3200 and T3260 may be available, but as fast as I can tell, that does not contain the source code of the proprietary remote update backdoor that the attackers exploited.

>Although that probably wouldn't have helped you (or the ISP that was targetted) because the Internet is down, so you couldn't download, compile and then attempt to install a clean image to your bricked router.

You can replace the router by plugging in a real GNU computer directly into the upstream 1000BASE-T port to access the internet.

It's usually possible to use an alternative internet connection too.

The cool have all the free software already saved, so they can fix the router without an internet connection.

>And replacing 600K routers is rather expensive.

Shouldn't have implemented a proprietary remote backdoor then.

>And there's the potential liability, if your routers are used in DDoS attacks because your network 'wasn't secure'.

Don't implement proprietary backdoors then.

>So sorry, you're not getting any keys.. Those stay firmly (we hope) in the domain of the provider's C&C servers.

You just linked to an example whether either the attacker got the key and exploited 600k routers with them, or exploited the proprietary remote backdoor without the key.

If the businesses aren't going to comply with the license, they can stop using GPLv2 software - it's simple, you either comply with the license conditions, or you don't distribute the software.

>Ah, got it. Are you a sovereign citizen by any chance? They also rely on novel interpretations of the law.

No, but I regard sovereign citizens and governments as having the same legitimacy (none).

>On which point, can you cite any case law where this has been successfully argued in courts?

While not distributing and encouraging proprietary software, the "Software Freedom Conservancy" does in fact enforce the GPLv2 for Linux and BusyBox and also requires that the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are followed for other packages on such system; https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/

Most companies are not stupid enough to lose a lose-lose lawsuit, or let a default judgement happen and instead choose to settle by complying with the license, therefore lawsuits that set precedents are extremely rare.

Precedents have been set in several countries that confirm the GPLv2 is a valid license (and therefore the conditions are valid) and at least once case where a court ruled specifically that installation information is required;

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2010/aug/03/busybox-gpl/ default judgement that confirmed the GPLv2 is a valid license

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/german_router_maker_avm_lgpl/ LGPLv2.1 was confirmed to require installation information (the LGPLv2.1 is the GPLv2 with a few exceptions).

https://fsfe.org/news/2022/news-20221212-01.en.html GPLv3, but confirmed that derivative works must follow license requirements

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigation?useskin=monobook (wrong article name - as far as I'm aware, no license that says "open source" or "open" has ever been litigated over).

(Non)Free/Illiad in the past tried to claim that they owned the routers and therefore they didn't need to comply with the GPLv2, but they decided to settle the case and provide source code and installation information, rather than lose the case; https://gpl-violations.org/news/20071120-freebox/

The SFC is now suing Vizio over source code and installation information as a user with the goal of achieving the precedent that there's no excuse to not comply with the GPLv2 even if a non-copyright holder asks.

Despite how error-happy courts are, I expect them to win the case, even though Vizio is really trying to drag it out; https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

>I'd love to see this because then it'd mean I could demand the the complete source code & compilation instructions for any sofware that included any GPL code. This could save me, and many other people many billions..

As I pointed out, the GPLv2 only applies to GPLv2 software and derivative works of such.

Typically you don't even want the source code of proprietary garbage, as it's so poorly written it's useless - what you want is installation information, so you can install free replacements instead.

>Settlement then came 6 months after the FSF fired their sueball. No precedent set, the remedy agreed was to publish the offending source code, not the entire package..

The FSF only settled for complete source code, including installation information, which allowed "Open"WRT to be developed.

If you have evidence that Cisco only published partial sources of the GPLv2 software, please link it.

>So many individuals might contribute to a project, but the maintainers (and lawyers) get the cash from any successful litigation. Which might not be much, eg the Westinghouse default judgement where triple damages netted only $90k. Kinda hard to claim losses or damages when the product is given away for free.

$90k is quite a substantial amount of money and the goal of enforcement is not profit - it's license compliance.

It's not hard at all to claim losses and damages when a non-product is given away for freedom - how the users freedom is taken is a huge loss that is far larger than any monetary value (which can only really be compensated with the full source code and not money).

>Or because there's no control plane security and anyone can attempt to load anything on any router, more devices get compromised.

If a single key being published could mean millions of devices being compromised via a backdoor, there was never any security.

To achieve any security benefit, each device would need to use an unique key, or the ability for the user to set an unique key.

There cannot possibly be any security if the user has no control over what can get installed.

If the user has control over what can be installed and the 4 freedoms, that could prevent most cases of device compromise and also allow a device to be cleaned post-compromise.

>Especially as there have been a litany of bugs discovered and exploited in free software. But luckily for the world outside Moroccan travellers, regulators and legislators are typically taking the opposite approach and demanding more security, not less..

Yes, there have been bugs discovered and exploited, but there's no attempt to cover up such bugs and cases of exploitation - the bugs actually get fixed and then can no longer be exploited.

Proprietary software has exponentially more bugs and gets exploited far more often - you just hear about a tiny fraction of them, as businesses focus on covering up such bugs and exploitation as much as possible, while usually never actually fixing the bugs (CVE's were developed for the purpose of embarrassing proprietary software developers about severe vulnerabilities, so many of them would actually fix the bugs).

The reason why there are exponentially more bugs, is for almost all functionally decent proprietary software program, much of the functionality is in fact implemented by libraries that used to be free (typically software released under MIT expat or a BSD license) and such proprietary software developers usually avoid ever updating such libraries - which ensures that any bugs that was in old versions of such free software exist in the proprietary software and then there's also all the bugs in the terribly programmed part that the developer wrote.

Unfortunately for the world, Legislators are demanding more security, by demanding things that degrade security further (achieving the opposite of the goal).

>But there's absolutely nothing stopping you from getting your own SoC dev kit and developing your own 100% free software router.

How many SoC's have only proprietary raminit and a proprietary bootloader available and contain digital handcuffs for the bootloader, are many things that prevent you from developing a 100% free software router.

Although, you can get yourself a 100% free software GNUbooted computer, with a fast AMD64 CPU instead of a CPU and turn that into a router just fine.

>Which I think touches on aspects that have never been tested fully in courts, ie rights to create derivative works and the issues around linking.

Derivative works have been tested in courts a handful of times - but few are dumb enough to go to court and end up with a precedent set.

But that was not what I was discussing - I was discussing the requirements that need to be met to have copyright permission to distribute the unmodified software.

>Plus the exception in that clause. So if you have a dev kit for the SoC used, can a reasonably competent person compile the BusyBox code provided?

The exception only applies to software that already was part of an existing proprietary OS, to allow for GPLv2 software to be used with such OS's, but it is careful not to except rendering the software proprietary by accompanying it with proprietary components.

You can additionally supply sources for a dev kit too, but you still need to comply with the source requirements for the original object code distribution.

>If you want to compile for an AMD64 or any other target, that's up to you and the GPL doesn't place any obligation on helping users create their own derivative work.

The GPLv2 places an obligation on the distributor to provide build scripts that compile for the target architecture for the device.

My point was that the provided "sources" are clearly not corresponding source code, as such in their original state target AMD64.

>Plus there's probable legal ambiguity around complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains. Which some seem to interpret as all code, including anything that might be proprietary or under seperate copyright. It also doesn't extend to hardware designs, unless they're also open-sourced.

There is no legal ambiguity - it was written to mean all parts of the program - including all derivative works.

Microsoft software has conditions on producing derivatives works - you do not have permission to go and write a proprietary derivative work of say excel without meeting microsoft's requirements (as you do not hold microsoft's copyright) and you also do not have permission to write a proprietary derivative work of GPLv2 software (as you do not hold the copyright of the author(s)).

Unrelated hardware designs aren't relevant to the license and "open source" is even less relevant (considering that the GPLv2 was released in 1991 as a free software license, while the concept of "open source software" and "open sourcing" did not exist until 1998).

>Cisco settled the case six months later by agreeing to several actions:

>"appoint a Free Software Director for Linksys" to ensure compliance

>"notify previous recipients of Linksys products containing FSF programs of their rights under the GPL"

>make source code of FSF programs freely available on its website

>make a monetary contribution to the FSF

Yes, the FSF out of good faith tried to work with them to get license compliance sorted for 6 months, but eventually they got fed up and told them they would sue if they didn't comply.

Suddenly, they complied with the license by supplying a written offer to all customers, additionally supplied the source code for download from the website and paid the FSF for some of their costs.

>BT has a General Counsel and an army of lawyers.

Cisco was a massive company at the time and had an army of lawyers, who were glad to be paid to go on tangents for 6 months, but when there was the threat of getting sued, those lawyers made it very clear to the suits that they would lose and set unwanted precedents if they went to court, thus Cisco complied with the GPLv2 for GNU software and also complied for Linux and the FSF reinstated their license.

>Per Cisco, it has the source for GPL elements freely available on its website.

Cisco only previously complied with the GPLv2 for the Linksys WRT54G (which ran GNU/Linux) - providing the complete corresponding source code - which allowed the "Open"WRT project to be launched, which replaced all the aggregated proprietary programs with free software replacements.

The FSF doesn't hold any copyrights on Linux and the FSF has only a limited copyright claim for BusyBox, thus taking companies to court over BusyBox/Linux without additional GNU programs being distributed, or assistance from copyright holders of Linux and/or BusyBox, is much more difficult.

The FSF prefers to focus on license enforcement on GNU programs, which are mostly distributed under the GPLv3-or-later - but would assist if any substantial BusyBox or Linux copyright holder came forward - but such copyright holders tend to not enforce their license.

Cisco has now mostly changed to BusyBox/Linux and as there is a lack of enforcement, no longer complies with the GPLv2.

>BT seems to be doing the same as Cisco with their FSF-agreed remedy.

The FSF certainly wouldn't have agreed to what BT is doing - BT decided themselves to publish useless non-corresponding sources of BusyBox and Linux, as most people would then assume that they must be complying with the GPLv2 and give up, or even if they tried to compile the sources, give up when it doesn't compile, assuming they must be bad at compiling.

>You assume Cisco would have lost, but there is also the possibility that Cisco may have won and established precedent that the GLP attempts to assert rights that it can't legally enforce.

If Cisco had won on their claims that the GPLv2 was invalid, then they could have still be pursued for damages for distributing FSF copyrighted software without a license.

>Plus BusyBox has been involved in a fair bit of litigatiion, so mitigations are pretty well understood and tested.

Not really - some copyright holders did some litigation over BusyBox only (but not of the other GPLv2 programs), but soon gave up.

>many articles on devices being compromised, botnet C&C servers being taken down etc etc. That can happen when the official C&C servers get compromised.

That applies equally to persistent and non-persistent botnets - the C&C servers being taken down merely means that the botnet no longer receives commands - but not that the vulnerabilities are fixed or the botnet software stops infections (unless the botnet was configured to not infect unless it can reach the C&C servers).

>Those are generaly designed so a new subscriber can plug a router into their NID, and the first thing that will do is download a copy of the latest software, reboot, then grab a standard config, possibly with some subscriber-specific stuff generated by provisioning & BSS.

That is a backdoor that shouldn't be implemented.

>And that has to be secure, otherwise some bot-herder can come along, re-key any signing & cryptographic functions that could lock the provider out of their (and your) routers and potentially brick a few million devices.

As typical with roll-your-own crypto, such backdoors are *never* secure - there has indeed been a case of a few million devices bricked and I figure there was cryptographic signing.

>So asking your provider for their keys is likely to get a polite 'NO!', followed by a 'Hell NO!', then a more strongly worded response that might include a visit from TPTB asking why you want the ability to break a large public network.

If there is some alternative way to install software, the provider can comply with the GPLv2 by providing installation information for that alternative mechanism - which can include an alternative signing key.

The only case the provider would legally need to have to supply the signing keys for such backdoor, is if that's the only way to install software.

>the input from engineering, legal, operations and finance is going to be 'NO!'. Especially when there are externalities like reputational risks, massive costs of replacing millions of routers..

Clearly the world needs heavy litigation over BusyBox/Linux, with court orders with payment of damages and orders to replace millions of routers with routers that do not use BusyBox or Linux, or any GPLv2 or GPLv3 software, if the GPLv2 is not complied with.

>And the prospect of some very large fines when people die. Having no Internet for a few weeks would be inconvenient. Having no phone because the PSTN has been migrated to a VoIP service means that people with a bricked router might not be able to make a 999/112/911 call, and people have died as a resuly of badly designed VoIP services. So then there'd be a large fine from the regulator, plus civil claims for wrongful death from families

I really wouldn't want to rely on a router that runs proprietary software for emergency calls - only routers that run free software tend to be reliable (there's a reason why manufacturers use BusyBox/Linux - there is only a limited amount of proprietary cancer added, so it's that much less reliable than GNU/Linux-libre).

If other router OS's were as reliable, clearly companies would go with those instead, as there's no GPLv2 obligations for the routing parts of BSD's for example.

Therefore, the regulator should be serving the citizens and pursing cases of backdoors and GPLv2 infringement for routers hard and handing out large fines and executing businesses for non-compliance - with the goal of ensuring that all routers end up running 100% free software, which then can have all the bugs worked out and thus can be relied on for emergency calls.

Lloyds app glitch turned transactions into shared experience for 447k users

Re: Cookies

Being able to login to an account with the username and the secure password, without braindead additional login steps, like an additional weak password, is not a indication of a security problem.

It should be irrelevant what OS you're using to access a website.

The indication of security problems is rather ??? 3rd party JavaScript and also 1st party JavaScript that implements functionality, that is worse than what HTML5+CSS natively offers.