Stallman slams Uber! Microsoft joins the Linux Foundation, Fedora supports MP3, and Firefox counts to 50.0.
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Colour key – Venn Pedro Mathieu Jordan
News
Snowball fight!
https://twitter.com/spotrh/status/796783023471656961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
- There’s a huge difference between Free Software and non patent patent encumbered software.
- This is one of the reasons I’ve stuck with Ubuntu in the past years, they have a strong position against software patents.
- Distros like Fedora and OpenSUSE are chickens, they’re afraid to be sued and therefore they will make you go through hell just to play music or videos (even when the codecs are full GPL)
- So this saves you a whole 30 seconds from installing the extras-nonfree?
- Not really, you still need it to get the rest of the codecs.
- And it still does not provide encoding support.
- Maybe, if Fedora also started providing the rest of those codecs the world wouldn’t implode.
- This has always been one of my biggest gripes with Fedora. If you’re gonna go full GPL/Open Licenses only, you better provide the deblobbed kernel as well.
- Because if you’re just giving people a kernel full of proprietary blobs, arbitrarily blocking certain packages from the repos just makes you look like hypocrites.
Make that a cold Season in Hell
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/16/microsoft-joins-the-linux-foundation/
- Part of me wants to laugh maniacally
- Part of me wants to question what their endgame here is.
- John Gossman from the Azure tems gets to join the board.
- And another part of me wonders what I’m doing doing with my life that I actually care about… Just kidding! I care about this show and LGCW.
- $500,000 is the annual cost for platinum membership.
- I wonder if they’re going to get rid of Windows Server next?
When pigs fly…
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-partner-claims-munich-should-switch-from-linux-to-windows-10/
- …ZDNet will be regarded as the voice of reason.
- It’s an article from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols which *is* the voice of reason.
- Hot on the heels of that previous story, Microsoft is still scummy.
- Media outlet punditry aside, is anyone really surprised a partner to a big company is spreading FUD and misinformation which benefits said big corporation?
- It’s not about the units but MS and their partners do not want Linux to be seen as a viable desktop replacement.
FireFox 50
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/50.0/releasenotes/
- What I remember from this is the emoji font part and how I will probably have to install the Google font because they have the best emojis.
- Also, the Widevine DRM is available everywhere but not on Linux? I’m not a fan of DRM but if this is going to be a thing, make it cross platform at least.
- grep -w is cool
- Increased availability of WebGL to more than 98 percent of users on Windows 7 and newer
- So you’re still purposefully serving a gimped browser to 2% of your userbase?
- I didn’t know / care that Linux did not have an official emoji set but #TIL ┬──┬ ¯\_(ツ)
Bad idea
http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-linux-can-save-small-businesses-and-old-hardware
- “told him a little about Chrome OS” wait, what‽
- “For end users, Steven recommends Mint.” wait, what‽ (this has nothing to do with ChromeOS)
- The rest is legit, if you know someone that is still running XP make sure not to answer their calls right away so they can cry on your voicemail.
- Also, there’s nothing that XP can do that Linux can’t do, even if it involves Wine (Windows XP can’t run DirectX11 which is pretty much the only thing Wine can’t do currently)
- In other shocking news, sky reportedly still blue.
- Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there still who don’t know this and that’s why, redundant as they are, articles like these still have their usefulness.
- Please don’t go slapping Linux on older hardware (still in production) unless your kung fu is A+.
- I used to be the guy sorting your hot mess.
Yes, yes you can
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/11/move-window-controls-to-the-right-ubuntu
- Is this clickbait or being stupid on purpose, I can’t decide.
- Last time I checked, this was still possible
- But I’ve been running Gnome Shell for the past months and the first thing I do is move the controls to the left.
- Remember kids, when someone tells you “this is by design”, what it really means is “we don’t want to maintain the code for that feature”. If you want that feature, go maintain it yourself, you can’t just go demanding stuff in a free software world.
- Apparently they actually sacked the option a while back.
- Remember kids, if you run Unity it’s not your desktop it’s Canonical’s and they do with it what they will.
- I’ve had my controls on the left since the 90s.
- Remember kids, you can only use Unity with Ubuntu.
Uber Beard
https://stallman.org/uber.html
- Welcome to the gig economy, Brad.
- I know that Uber isn’t right and yet I wouldn’t want to live somewhere Uber isn’t available.
- I know that someday I will own a car again, and this is far worse than anything Uber can do.
- When I read this, the first thing that jumped to my mind was that it’s totally possible to build an open platform for drivers. One where drivers would pay a small fee to support the development cost of the platform but where they would get 100% of their revenues.
- I’m already busy with several projects so I’ll give this out as a free idea, go and build an Open Source Uber! If I could clone myself at will, I know that I would start that project!
- And you just know this all came about because some Uber driver somewhere offended Herr Stallman on a trip.
- Uber is not a job, it’s supplementary income.
- I like how he talks about “real taxis”
- Pssst! A real taxi is just a motoring vehicle blessed by the local government overlord.
Bypassed in seventy seconds
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/you-can-bypass-linux-disk-encryption-authentication-by-pressing-the-enter-key-for-70-seconds/
- Makes you wonder just how long this has been around.
- They’ve actually gone back and fixed the title.
- This doesn’t magically decrypt the file system, it just has the nasty side effect of dropping you into an initrd shell with root privileges.
- So, while an ill intended person couldn’t get access to your files they could still nope everything from orbit!
- You still need physical access to a machine, or remote access to a server running the VMs.
- By the time you heard this, it has probably been patched everywhere
- But you can use this own a Linux box of someone who has full disk encryption and doesn’t maintain their system (if that exists)
- I don’t encrypt mah filesystems #comeatmebro
- In the age of Raspberry Pis and all its clones, and with everyone and their cat being able to indulge their Hackerman skills, t’was but a matter of time.
- If you’re thinking that NES Classic looks weird, that’s because that’s the Japanese exclusive Famicom Classic.
- Just to be clear, the NES classic comes with Linux installed on it so running Linux isn’t exactly a hack.
- Yes it is.
- What is a hack is being able to run a regular desktop distro.
- If you were lucky enough to get one of these little critters why are you not busy selling it on the EBay like a normal person?
Like a mouse
https://forum.salixos.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7149
http://www.salixos.org/
- Oh hey! It’s not a Ubuntu based XFCE distro for once.
- Today, in useless distro of the week… just provide a shell script to transform a basic Slackware into whatever you want.
- Someone explain to me why 32-bit builds are still a thing.
- I like how “nice artwork” is one of the features… oh, that’s ritch.
Slice of Pi
Diabeetus
http://www.popsci.com/diy-diabetes#page-6
- People are using the Pi to create a closed loop system.
- Also several types of monitors.
PICO83D (from mir)
https://getchip.com/pages/chip
- Remember that PocketCHIP thing we keep bringing up?
- Well, this is the titular CHIP or brains of the whole thing.
- You may also remember it having come out with a bit of controversy, since they claimed it would be a $9 SoC but the hardware necessary to produce a single unit was more than $9. Thankfully that’s not the case anymore, all of the parts now come together for less than that and they actually have a chance at making a profit.
- But the actual news here aren’t actual news, last week we mentioned how the PocketCHIP now has 3D acceleration so it stands to reason the SoC behind it also has it.
