Khrys3d ago

The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/

The lasting damage was knowing it could happen at all: that a single contributor with no stated organizational backing could submit compliance infrastructure for surveillance law directly into the software that boots your computer, get it merged by two Microsoft employees, and have the creator of systemd personally block the removal.

The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

Dylan, useful idiot with commit access, pushed age verification PRs to systemd, Ubuntu & Arch, got 2 Microslop employees to merge it, called it 'hilariously pointless' in the PR itself, then watched Lennart personally block the revert. Unpaid compliance simp.

Sam Bent
Show thread⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe3d ago

@Khrys we like to think of FOSS as some sort of anarchist collective°. it never has been.

it's run by a series of people with absolute power, for the most part. the benefit is that it's a lot of tiny dictators rather than a few big ones; that in theory anyone can become one, you don't need to be rich; and that these dictators tend to have technical knowledge.

but they can still be arseholes.

° i mean, we might not CALL it that.

Show threadLorraine Lee
@Khrys @fishidwardrobe I've long been saying that, instead of debating the relative merits of open source software and free software, we should have been demanding noncommercial software. Now it may be too late. FOSS is no anarchist collective, but arguably hacking is. Unfortunately too many of the hacker era hackers were ancaps and could be hired to do the dirty work of the powerful. But now that computing freedom is by definition illegal, maybe a new generation of hackers will arise. One can only hope.
Mar 21 at 2:09pmWeb
Show thread⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe2d ago

@lori @Khrys i've recently been thinking about — and this is beyond my skills, so i should really say "fantasising about" — some sort of common retrocomputing platform, maybe based on an esp32 or something, which is completely incompatible with commercial computers and so can't be used commercially.

but it would also be missing all the spy-firmware (minix in the cpu, tiny computers in usb plugs etc). maybe we could start our own replacement for the internet!

… yeah, right. sorry.

Show thread0x02d ago

@fishidwardrobe

Open hardware would be incompatible with modern day commercial aspirations.
Coupled with FOSS of course.

#ESP32 is more for IoT than regular computing – but you can use it for #meshcore (and other #LoRa-based projects), wish is an interesting, albeight very basic, alternative to common (controlled) networks.

@lori @Khrys

Show thread⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe2d ago

@0x0 @lori @Khrys folks are, amazingly, building tiny computers that run python or basic around esp32. surprised me too!

you need another chip to handle vga, and some external static RAM, it appears.

here is a project emulating i386 that runs windows 98! on an esp32!! https://hackaday.com/2021/07/28/emulating-the-ibm-pc-on-an-esp32/

Emulating The IBM PC On An ESP32

The IBM PC spawned the basic architecture that grew into the dominant Wintel platform we know today. Once heavy, cumbersome and power thirsty, it’s a machine that you can now emulate on a sin…

Hackaday
Show thread0x02d ago

@fishidwardrobe

It really says a lot when we can use low end hardware (for today's standards) to run simpler software that suffices for most tasks.
Maybe RAM prices will bring that ingenuity back.

@lori @Khrys

Show thread⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe2d ago

@0x0 @lori @Khrys i'm old enough to be certain that i, for one, do not need the power of a modern computer – given the right software.

something between a BBC Model B / Acorn Electron and a 386 would be just fine.

Show threadLorraine Lee1d ago

@Khrys @fishidwardrobe @0x0 Everything I do other than surfing the web I could retrocompute. Both of the two (2) viable web layout engines are bloatware because the web standard is bloatware.

astoundingteam.com/2020/04/21/…

Standards Bloat is a thing – In Defense of Anagorism

Show thread⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe1d ago

@lori @Khrys @0x0 maybe we should start a thing where we bring back "this site best viewed in Netscape Navigator"…

edit: for some reason caniuse.com does not list this browser.

Show thread0x01d ago
@fishidwardrobe
Or switch to #gemini or #gopher.
@lori @Khrys
Show thread⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe1d ago
@0x0 @lori @Khrys no objection here…
Show threadBrad Macpherson1d ago

@fishidwardrobe @0x0 @lori @Khrys The Motorola 68000 powered a generation of pretty awesome machines, I'd happily fall back to my STe as a daily driver for most tasks if I won the Lotto.

(Of course I would have to be paying the idiot tax for that scenario to have any possibility of happening 😂)