"Cybertruck Man" by Zee Vaz

https://sopuli.xyz/post/22684249

if you're responsible for a FOSS project, it's now time to consider how you can run your project without relying on the US.

like, using GitHub is fine. Continue using it - I do, too, and there's a lot of value of having projects centralized in one place.

but you **need** to make sure you have a contingency plan. is your repo with all branches and metadata backed up somewhere else? do you own your project's website, discussion forums, or something else that allows you to point your users and contributors to a new place if you need to?

can you continue work on your project if US-big-tech decides your very existence is no longer allowed?

now is the time to take inventory and build backups.

Netflix can now serve 100Gbit/s of video (so something like 12,500 individual 4K streams) with an appliance using 100 watts of power. That’s 8 milliwatts for each 4K stream.

Remember that number the next time someone tells you that watching a Netflix show is as bad as driving an SUV or some shit.

https://people.freebsd.org/~gallatin/talks/OpenFest2023.pdf

Larry Finger, Linux wireless hero, was a persistent, patient coder and mentor

Remembering Finger, 84, who learned as he went and left his mark on many.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/larry-finger-linux-wireless-hero-was-a-persistent-patient-coder-and-mentor/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

it's utterly ridiculous to me that we can't include firmware for phones (like wifi, Bluetooth, gpu firmware) in the linux-firmware git repository without the OEM providing consent.

in the case of Qualcomm phones:

• The firmware is locked to the device via a signature, it can't be replaced.
• It is already obtainable easily via the vendors website or on GitHub
• It usually barely differs from the development board firmware which is already in the linux-firmware repo

Vendors generally aren't confident enough to explicitly distribute firmware with a suitable license because Qualcomm haven't given the go ahead (and they either can't, or won't ask permission).

The few examples we do have are for the Lenovo ThinkPad x13s, where the legal side was a non-trivial exercise as i understand it.

Even if Qualcomm greenlit OEMs invoicing redistributable licenses with their firmware builds (which is something i think they should do), we'd still need OEMs to actually do it... And they might have their own value add and silly lawyers who think NOT doing it gives them some kind of advantages.

The whole situation is so ridiculously stupid. And to top it all off it's not like anyone actually cares. There are many people redistricting firmware for Android phones and ofc it's totally fine - because there's literally nothing to gain by preventing access to these blobs.

I wonder what would happen if someone just submitted blobs for a phone to linux-firmware...

I can’t think of anything funny to say about this, so I’ll just post it as is… 😢

#Pollution