* Posts by thx1111

29 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Oct 2020

Fedora 41's GNOME to go Wayland-only, says goodbye to X.org

thx1111

> In our testing, we found that the version 390 legacy drivers refuse to compile and install on kernel 6.5 or newer.

390 legacy drivers are still working for me, running X11 on Arch Linux with kernel 6.7.8. Did you, instead, mean nvidia-390xx drivers were not working with Wayland?

Guess the company: Takes your DNA, blames you when criminals steal it, can’t spot a cyberattack for 5 months

thx1111

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, all of these righteous people, horrified by this 23andMe data breach, also appear to be sadly clueless about just how much "family history and relationship" data can always be assembled through reference to *public* data sources, including census, marriage, birth, death, church, and court records. And, why, exactly, should anyone care? Alternatively, *all* public records could, instead, be "sealed", and everyone could join into a cult of ignorance and pretense.

Not that 23andMe could not have been more pro-active with security. But there's a lesson there for everyone.

FFmpeg 6.1 drops a Heaviside dose of codec magic

thx1111

Re: Heaviside brought back memories

And those would properly be called the "Heaviside Equations", since "Maxwell's Equations" are expressed in Quaternions.

GNOME developer proposes removing the X11 session

thx1111

Re: Wayland is fully ready under Linux? I don't think so

I'm still waiting for some grownup to fork Wayland and finally build-in all the missing bits. Is that GNOME Project? Will Red Hat want some say about it? I'm not holding my breath, though.

How a dispute over IP addresses led to a challenge to internet governance

thx1111

Simply turn-off IPv4

These issues with IPv4 will be resolved quickly when the first major Internet backbone provider simply disables IPv4 routing. Too many ISPs continuing to support IPv4 is the only reason IPv4 is still around.

Have we learned anything from SolarWinds supply chain attacks?

thx1111

Is it soup yet?

Without "repeatable builds", it may be difficult to reliably validate the supply chain.

NASA selects 'full force' for probe into UFOs

thx1111

Re: Is it neccesary?

Uhm - you did see the video, yes?

https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/documents

https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/sites/g/files/jejdrs566/files/2020-04/1%20-%20FLIR.mp4

https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/sites/g/files/jejdrs566/files/2020-04/3%20-%20GOFAST.wmv

https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/sites/g/files/jejdrs566/files/2020-04/2%20-%20GIMBAL.wmv

Or, you just wanted to emphasize an ironic point?

thx1111

Re: a panel of 15 to 17 experts

And then, what might be appropriate to "discover" or "conclude", concerning "UFOs", if these "experts" actually want to *keep* their day jobs?

Version 251 of systemd coming soon to a Linux distro near you

thx1111

Re: Software Junk

Sorry - You missed the point. Not "laptop", but instead, "Locked-down Goggle Chrome Book".

Until you've had to first compile and install a custom boot loader onto your Chrome Book boot ROM, before you are able to install your preferred Linux distribution, you may not really appreciate the difference.

US-APAC trade deal leaves out Taiwan, military defense not ruled out

thx1111

Taiwan and Ukraine

Taiwan, a significant source in the world's semiconductor market, and Ukraine, a significant source in the world's grain market...

NASA's InSight doomed as Mars dust coats solar panels

thx1111

Insight?

So, it just never occurred to anyone on the development team that dust accumulation on the solar panels could be a problem?

Or, they just could not wrap their heads around the challenge of designing "windshield wipers" for solar panels on another planet?

What am I missing here?

Nvidia open-sources Linux kernel GPU modules. Repeat, open-source GPU modules

thx1111

Nothing to See Here - Move Along, Move Along

Elsewhere, this "open-source GPU module" has been described as "an open source nvidia driver with a giant userspace blob". So no, that is *not* software that can be called "Open Source", let alone "Free/Libre Software". Nothing to see here...

Fedora starts to simplify Linux graphics handling

thx1111

Coreboot...

For a few people, Coreboot will be a response to UEFI. Not everyone likes UEFI running who-knows-what on their system.

Arch Linux turns 20: Small, simple, great documentation

thx1111

Installation

An important point, installing Arch, perhaps not immediately obvious - unlike distributions available on CD, Arch pretty much presupposes an Internet connection, for installation and for updates.

Imagination GPU cleared for RISC-V CPU compatibility, licensed to chip designers

thx1111

Re: I'm curious

So, now you are proposing a way to financially compensate the Free Software developers who actually write and maintain the drivers for this GPU?

APNIC: Big Tech's use of carrier-grade NAT is holding back internet innovation

thx1111

Re: Is that still a thing?

$ host -6 -t A theregister.com

theregister.com has address 104.18.4.22

theregister.com has address 104.18.5.22

$ host -6 -t AAAA theregister.com

theregister.com has no AAAA record

thx1111

Is that still a thing?

IPv4? Is that still a thing? Is anyone still using IPv4?

Hmm - let me think - yes, there are some old websites that I can only reach through IPv4.

There is one called "theregister.com" that comes to mind. That one only has those old IPv4 addresses. I still run some IPv4 stack for that stuff.

No day in court: US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rulings will stay a secret

thx1111

accounting adjustments

QUOTE: Since the USA Freedom Act was passed in 2015 – as a response to the backlash from the Snowden revelations – FISC has been forced to publish statistical information annually, but the ACLU has pointed out that any review of FISC behind-closed-doors decisions is solely "conducted ... by executive branch officials, not a court."

Rather than worry about "what they know about you", a person might be more concerned with "what you DO NOT know about them".

In the US, the Constitution requires that "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." But then, the above mentioned Executive Branch, in the "Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56", October 4, 2018, addressing federal financial reporting, with measured words, provides that: "omitting or misstating information about the item makes it probable that the judgment of a reasonable person relying on the information would have been changed or influenced by the omission or the misstatement.", even though these very same acts of fraudulent financial reporting are also criminal acts under 18 U.S. Code § 1001.

To put this intentional US government fraudulent financial reporting into context, consider that, between 1998 and 2016, DOD and HUD balance statements included $21 Trillion in Unsupported Journal Voucher Adjustments. Over the following 3 years, 2017, 2018, and 2019, Bloomberg reports an additional $94 Trillion in DOD accounting adjustments. So, roughly, $115 *Trillion* in "accounting adjustments" over two decades. For perspective, the entire US National Debt is less than $30 Trillion. And this is only the amount actually reported in their own financial statements.

The analysis of this Missing Money by "debunkers" is amusing, where they argue that there is no "missing money" but only some misleading instances of replicated accounting transactions, due to an antiquated government accounting system - I suppose, in the same way that Bank Robbery is not really a criminal activity, but is merely a mischaracterization of an "unauthorized withdrawal".

All the while, in the midst of over $100 Trillion in "fuzzy accounting", publicly, the US Congress bickers over the cost of Child Care and a national Health Care system. Follow these links to see the DOD Financial Statements and read the entertaining disclaimers by the auditors:

https://missingmoney.solari.com/missing-money-2021-update/

https://missingmoney.solari.com/dod-and-hud-missing-money-supporting-documentation/

Ex-org? Not at all! Three and a half years after X.Org Server 1.20, 1.21 is released

thx1111

Re: The Real Question

On the upside, there are some XFree86 drivers from ancient times that were never moved to X.org in working condition, in which case, when you want to run some really old hardware, you can still find working XFree86 drivers.

Software Freedom Conservancy sues TV maker Vizio for 'GPL infringement'

thx1111

Re: It's a trap !

Our "smart TV" does not even have a remote with a numeric keypad! We are now forced to access every single channel *sequentially*! A person might suppose that this "oversight" was not by accident, and that the customer simply misunderstood what was meant by "smart" - "smart for whom?". Is someone making money every time a channel is accessed?

thx1111

Re: Signed binaries

Google sponsored "Chromebook" products are also of this nature. The boot software will not boot an owner installed OS kernel. The device manufacturer, using the "Chromebook" branding, refuses to provide any kind of software support, other than referring to Google's generic "Chromium" project. And, the Chromium project does not provide any straightforward process for installing an owner provided kernel. Perhaps Vizio is just a "first step" in guaranteeing the right of users to control their own GPL'ed software.

More than three years after last release, X.Org Server 21.1.0 RC1 appears

thx1111

Re: A nit but not a nit...

People still seem to misunderstand what "Wayland" claims to be, that it is *just* "a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a C library implementation of that protocol.", and *not* actually any kind of functional "implementation", as is, in contrast, X11, "an open source implementation of the X Window System".

Any "want'a be" X11 replacement would seem to initially have only one simple requirement, to "copy existing X11 functionality". That's all, a Wayland Client providing full X11 Server functionality to existing X11 applications. Instead, now, after 13 years of Wayland "development", that has totally failed to happen. Basic hardware configuration, with xrandr, does not work. X11 client-server networking, does not work. Often, copy-paste does not even work.

In practice, the term "Wayland Server", means something quite different from the common meaning of "X11 Server". It is claimed that "Wayland is intended as a simpler replacement for X", insinuating that it necessarily provides all of: Networking, Compositing, Display Management, Window Management, Color Management, and Security. So far, in actuality, "Wayland" is nothing more than a new compositor hack with a better security model. There is no networking, no display management, no color management, and I think people still argue over how to perform window decorations in the window management.

I can only hope that, some day, some talented young developer, ambitious enough to "rush in where angels fear to tread", might swap-out the "compositor" part of X11 with some Wayland innards, to provide a satisfactory X11 evolution.

Get a load of fancypants no-enemies AMD-Xilinx: 'Large majority' of third parties 'had no concerns' about pair's hookup

thx1111

Nice to Hear

It's actually nice to hear a story about a regulatory process that "worked", and where everyone seems to have been treated with respect.

US Patent Office to take only DOCX in future – or PDFs if you pay extra

thx1111

PDFs a pain for machines to grok

> PDFs, meanwhile, are more of a pain for machines to grok ...

PDFs, meanwhile, are more of a pain for machines and humans to grok ...

Space is hard: Rocket Lab's 20th Electron launch fails

thx1111

What one has to remember is.......

Or, to be more precise, Rocket Engineering.

Back to the Fuchsia, part IV: Google's in-development OS now open to community contributions

thx1111

Not "Free", as in "Freedom"

Interesting that the article's author utterly fails to take note of the most fundamental characteristic of this new OS, that, while the OS is "Open Source", it is *not* "Free Software". Just as Google's Chromebooks ship with "broken" Coreboot, advertised as a form of "security", there is only "security" for the business model, the "walled garden", the "golden handcuffs", of "eyeballs" and "user data". Google's new OS appears to be little more than a path to a future without "Freedom" - all about politics, not technology.

Microsoft brings Trusted Platform Module functionality directly to CPUs under securo-silicon architecture Pluton

thx1111

Re: What Choice Do You Have?

Oh! Thanks for that. PowerPC is still a thing!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_computing_hardware

https://www.raptorcs.com

https://www.raptorcs.com/BB/

Hmm - OpenBMC -

https://developer.ibm.com/technologies/linux/articles/openbmc-overview/

Your own Linux running in the Board Management Controller! That's better than proprietary - but maybe not better than nothing.

Of all the - how many? - office and ordinary home PCs, whether branded as "Pluton" - is that meant to be a pun on "Putin"? - or Intel Management Engines or AMD Secure Platform Processors or just generic Baseboard Management Controllers, what number of these system's users have actually ever gone and remotely re-installed their system software? And really, how many of those users actually even know that such a thing is possible to do from the internet? This management controller doesn't come across as a "must-have checklist feature".

More interestingly perhaps, what happens when some systemic side-channel hardware security flaw is discovered in all these built-in management controllers, and every internet connected PC in the world suddenly has its system software and user files unexpectedly rewritten? Cryptoviral extortion will seem like "old news". I suppose that someone could make the movie first, before we try it out in the real world.

thx1111

What Choice Do You Have?

Hmm - sounds like a full entrenchment of the proprietary "back door", provided by the likes of Intel's "Management Engine", but now covering every main stream processor architecture and vendor. For anyone unfamiliar with how secret and embedded this hardware has become, see for instance at https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel . As it is, the only people who will know how the "security" actually works will be the same people whom you do *not* want rummaging around your files or your network. As far as I can tell, the only available generic hardware *without* a built-in "back door" processor would be something like the "HiFive Unmatched" system board from SiFive, based upon the open standard RISC-V Instruction Set. See for instance https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched . Perhaps RISC-V is the only thing left that will allow trusting the hardware, instead of "trusting big-brother".

X.Org is now pretty much an ex-org: Maintainer declares the open-source windowing system largely abandoned

thx1111

Re: Network transparency

My impression has been that the Wayland development culture is quite juvenile in character. They have rejected contributions which provide missing features, as for instance equivalent xrandr functionality, and they seem more interested in exactly who does and does not get to share the secret decoder rings or have access to their private tree fort. After over 12 years of development, and *still* not a replacement for X, expect another maybe 10 years for the missing functionality to become available.