Do you imply ill intent upon the program? Because I read this as a violation of tone.
I interact with the program because I want/need to. It's in my interest to follow through the *instructions* to interact with it correctly and efficiently. I can follow instructions and view it as a helpful hint.
How about entering, say, a printer configuration. These fields accept only SSIDs, IP addresses etc?
People who speak English and frequent this website will inevitably follow US culture or news coverage and have been tainted by it in some way. At the same time cultures are growing closer together, in part this is visible in poor internationalization of programs. It's becoming hard to draw the line.
> get access to data free from the priestly interpretations
I believe nowhere. I almost never see news media hotlink the source when we're talking about online events. In other cases that's copywriting or regurgitating news agencies' feeds... which you don't have access to, though they could be clusterized based on the ripple effect they cause (used by many outlets).
As for "talking to witnesses" there currently isn't a p2p social network for news. Where one could talk to any local on the planet about an event. There's a disconnect between those who produce news for a living and the witnesses. The latter have no interest in posting or talking about it online. Sometimes it is disincentivized (punishment and persecution like whistleblowing[1]).
Firstly, it's there because the copyright on his works has long expired in Russia. Secondly, there happened to be an individual who was passionate about a topic. Notice how it's "web 1.0". I don't know if people create such single-use libraries/sites nowadays.
> given what Orwell had to say about Russia
... who has never visited Russia and his best effort was to extrapolate his experiences in Spain.
The problem in the US is that the local sales tax is the sum of sales taxes created by several independent authorities. These authorities have varying geographic and subject matter scope, and can modify their sales tax on their own schedule. There are effectively thousands of independent sales tax jurisdictions in the US and the details of the computation in those jurisdictions churn regularly. By “late binding” the sales tax, they avoid having to churn the printed/published prices.
I think there is also a policy view that taxes should not be hidden, that there is a public interest in making the public aware of precisely how much they are paying in taxes. Taxes that are baked into the price tend to be forgotten about by the public.
> By “late binding” the sales tax, they avoid having to churn the printed/published prices.
Strictly speaking, you don't have to change the total price if the tax rate changes, you can change the base price so that the total comes out the same. This is how prices are typically set in Europe, though vendors can of course change prices in response to tax rate changes, but it doesn't normally happen automatically.
Now, you might argue this hides the tax even more, if the customer doesn't even notice a price change when the rate changes, but one could also argue the latter is a good thing for the customer (if the business decides to eat the cost, at least for a while).
It's a solved thing, for the cash round down, for the credit/plastic/online pay as is.
If you remove $0.01 then round down to the nearest .05, if you remove $0.10 then round down to nearest 0.10; so both $9.99 and $9.95 would be $9.90. Simple.
So the issue is not the SecureBoot itself, but the ways it can and has been and will be leveraged against the user. If a desktop computer example is not enough, look at how Android phones have increasingly tightened down everything. You can't just take any model and install a custom OS (aka ROM in Android community). It was universally easy 10 years ago, that's why Cyanogenmod became so popular. Now your choices are very limited.
> > But that is besides the fact that these acts of aggression
Microsoft has the defacto monopoly over the signature process, because nobody embeds any CAs in UEFI except for Microsoft's. What would be a user-friendly way? To preload UEFI with major Linux distros' keys, disabled by default, with an easy first-time setup menu to select what to do.
My laptop came with SecureBoot enabled by default although being "OS: FreeDOS" on paper. I had to figure out to disable it to boot into a live distro else it fell into an EFI shell.
> Vote with your wallet, don't buy the hardware.
> ... I am much more concerned about Intel ME and AMD PSP, where's the outrage about that?
With this I just want to say the wallet argument doesn't work when something slowly becomes the status quo and it takes experts/activists to fight back (a minority by numbers).
> I still can't easily utilise a TPM [...] and nobody bothered to integrate the functionality?
I agree, I'd have liked to enforce SecureBoot post-installation but it is too much hassle for me, I think only RedHat made good improvements in this area where it's actually easily usable (auto signing the kernel image etc.)
> Security isn't about what's unlikely, it's about the entire chain.
... But if I followed through, then still the weakest point is/becomes the keyboard. It would be trivial for an evil maid to add a keylogging device between your desktop and the physical keyboard. Do you check the rear IO on each boot? The considerations differ for laptops where you can't just plug something inbetween and need to disassemble it (time required: over night or airport luggage).
> If a desktop computer example is not enough, look at how Android phones have increasingly tightened down everything. You can't just take any model and install a custom OS (aka ROM in Android community). It was universally easy 10 years ago, that's why Cyanogenmod became so popular. Now your choices are very limited.
This is exactly the area where I would double down on the "vote with your wallet" argument. There is enough variety and choice in the Android ecosystem, and if you do really care about running LineageOS / GrapheneOS / PostmarketOS / etc, you probably already know what your options are.
> With this I just want to say the wallet argument doesn't work when something slowly becomes the status quo and it takes experts/activists to fight back (a minority by numbers).
You will always be able to buy hardware and support vendors that are explicitly non-hostile. System76, Frame.work, MNT... More maintstream options also exist, Dell was shipping laptops with Ubuntu as far as in 2006 (I remember it was big news at the time, I don't know how is it like nowadays). Even Apple seems committed to allowing (quietly encouraging?) third-party OS's, so I'm watching the progress on Asahi as well.
> A great thread and arguments provided here, how Microsoft [...] will not sign anything GPLv3 for SecureBoot
Complex licenses result in complex issues. I understand why FSF chose to design that license the way they did, but it's my personal opinion that they've caused more harm to the users of their software with it than they've done good. Software has value when it can be used. If I can't use it (e.g. because my vendor won't ship it), it has no value to me.
I don't understand why Free Software advocates want their users on non-free platforms to suffer. Just a couple days ago someone on HN suggested that GIMP shouldn't have been ported to M1 Macs[0]. Emacs disables already-working features, because support exists only on macOS[1]. The BSDs had to ship with years, almost decades old forks of GCC[2]. I think these moves are an underhanded attack on the users' four software freedoms. I might have no choice of operating system (e.g. because this is what my employer mandates, this is the hardware that I was able to afford, there is other non-free software I must run to earn my living, etc), and FSF/RMS think I should be punished for that.
From my (user's) point of view, neither FSF nor MS care at all about what benefits me - the user, and instead just want to play out some petty political conflict.
> But if I followed through, then still the weakest point is/becomes the keyboard.
Nope, keyboard has no more importance than any other part of the device. Once an adversary has physical access, all bets are off. Nuke it from the orbit, restore from backups, and rotate all credentials.
About choosing phones: I agree, but for newbies the realization may come after the purchase. And the custom ROM experiment may be postponed until the next purchase... and then forever.
I have had a good example of a late realization where choosing the right iirc car/phone in advance would have been needed to avoid incompatibility, but I forgot what it was.
About the laptops: I looked at Tuxedo first, I liked the big battery but disliked the rest. As I continued reading, I found out they are reusing OEM laptop chassis, so their only contribution is branding an a distro customization (probably to integrate it better with hardware). I suppose it's what most others do too. After this realization I began looking at mainstream manufacturers and "compromised" on a good model without an OS pre-installed or proprietary plugs.
Would I want to compromise on price or features to set a clear signal? At least MS didn't get paid for the license :)
About FSF: oh that Emacs story is terrible. Outside of this idiotic disablement, I can understand both sides. "I cater to users, but at the same time I don't want to spend my time enriching an Apple/MS ecosystem for free". Ranted about by wm4 of mpv[1]. This doesn't apply to willing maintainers :)
Another point about GPL licensing was brought up in no pretty words by digdeeper[2]. Someplaces twisting words and the intended logic, but it is an argument close to OpenBSDs:
> GPLv3 is (in our opinion) not actually free, and we are not able import anything encumbered by it. GCC 2.4.1 and Binutils 2.17 are the last GPLv2 releases.
My own conclusion: if you want a revolution, an opposition to the closed source (enterprise world) then you show it with a GPL license. To make sure the fruits of your labor are not exploited and only the FOSS part of the software world grows richer. You see where the rhetoric is going. The good examples are coreutils and GNU libc. The bad examples: only few giant companies care to follow the license terms. Many avoid GPL, many exploit it ignoring the terms.
TLDR: If you want improve some part of computing in the world, BSD or MIT. If you want to have a FOSS project, a variant of GPL (imho).
About politics: I wonder how many are actually still developers and not some... non-developing profession? Although FSFE (Europe; with no affiliation to FSF) exists, I was surprised to learn they only have lawyer and related positions to offer. No development happening apparently.
> About choosing phones: I agree, but for newbies the realization may come after the purchase. And the custom ROM experiment may be postponed until the next purchase... and then forever.
Well it means it's not an important factor for those people. 99.99% of the market is served by a device that runs WhatsApp, TikTok, Google Maps, and the local banking app. For most people, "freedom" is the freedom to have the free time to talk to their parents who are half a world away from them; NOT the freedom to mess up their bootloader.
I stand by my claim: if you care about these issues, you know what to buy.
> My own conclusion: if you want a revolution, an opposition to the closed source (enterprise world) then you show it with a GPL license.
I don't want any revolution, I want Free Software to be objectively better - because using bad software just sucks. Free Software should be able to go toe-to-toe with proprietary software, heck even be just better - it has the clear advantage of accumulating volunteer contributions and so on. And yet rather than building a better product that can win with the alternatives by its own merit, we're caught up in bullshit political games.
That's exactly the problem with FSF, they're long done actually improving their software, and are just using their position to leverage themselves politically, while making choices that actively hurt their user base. Their technology is stagnating and becoming more and more irrelevant as alternatives are catching up or surpassing them (clang/llvm), most remaining value is in broad (in)compatibility (glibc, bash, coreutils), which hurts other FS projects too (*BSD, Alpine). I've been using Emacs for 20 years and feel more and more trapped with it - no other editor/IDE comes close, despite FSF's efforts to undermine the project. As a potential contributor, I'm scared away by their practices of turning down improvements on political grounds. As a user, I feel trapped in their staged shitshow.
> As a potential contributor, I'm scared away by their practices of turning down improvements on political grounds.
As a potential contributor I suggest you to be present on their mailing list (filter for OSX and other keywords if you wish) to have a voice when needed.
> Their technology is stagnating and becoming more and more irrelevant as alternatives are catching up or surpassing them (clang/llvm)
I would say clang+LLVM is a poor example, because for C/C++ they're directly comparable in final performance (state of the art). The Clang suite is newer and I'd argue benefits from this and the lack of legacy. Then Apple has it as their compiler of choice and this entails a lot of dedicated work force.
Instead I'd say GNU/FSF have stagnated in their methods of collaboration. I've looked at their GCC website. It probably looked not too different in 1999. That's not a bad thing but mailing lists... I understand the love for e-mail but not the mailing lists. I think if the wonder called Rust didn't embrace the new ways of thinking, communication and tooling, it would not have developed into what it is today and as fast as it has.
Finally GNU/FSF may have served their purpose. They spawned the idea of radically free and open source software. A decade later (1990s-2000s) the thousands of neat programs were being made for Win32 and very few developers chose to open source their creations even when the software was perpetually free. "I dont want others to see my code" sometimes out of fear of being judged, remember those arguments? Think of the developer effort wasted in discontinued programs that are no longer available/working and either have no successors or their successors had to be remade from scratch. Thankfully nowadays the mentality has changed and it's rare to see a free/shareware program that still remains closed to the public.
As a user I think I've put your website on my mental "avoid it" list for its design. I've opened a page now and I feel like I'm instantly in a tunnel vision mode. For UX: it's not a pleasure to scroll up & down; maybe there's also a psychological element about the main content area being so slim in width.
The other comment made me remember there was captcha too, right? I had been using my own rented server as a VPN for all my internet access. But I'd have never blocked it for a public list - I've read the 'about me' page.
Do you imply ill intent upon the program? Because I read this as a violation of tone.
I interact with the program because I want/need to. It's in my interest to follow through the *instructions* to interact with it correctly and efficiently. I can follow instructions and view it as a helpful hint.
How about entering, say, a printer configuration. These fields accept only SSIDs, IP addresses etc?