Homosexual activity is illegal in Uganda. If they pass a law saying your OS should track that, is it moral for developers to enable compliance with it? Or do developers have a moral duty to at least not go out of their way to enable that bullshit, even if they risk a gajillion dollar fine?
By implementing a mechanism that enables this law, it becomes exponentially easier for lawmakers to then make it mandatory (as many already have/are openly planning to).
Yeah, the problem is the lawmakers. But I don’t have enough money to control the lawmakers. The creators of free software should not actively helping oppressive measures.
The PR is explicitly for the purpose of complying with age verification laws. Damn fuckin’ right I’m angry about it.
Is it cool if we start implementing tools to track users’ race and sexual orientation for the explicit purpose of complying with some country’s laws about those too? Or is it maybe the job of free software to defy oppressive systems?
Don’t forget my shitty country in the process of trying to implement this too 
Is this comment a joke? That or you’re very naive about the problems these things did cause.
As someone who deals on rare occasion with Linux PCs, both TPMs and Secure Boot have been a fucking PITA that have done nothing but help solidify the Microsoft/Apple/Google grip.
I know nobody asked for this - I live in the UK. Feels like we basically agree, but your solution is “why don’t the countries making stupid-ass laws implement it in a way that doesn’t bother me”, which like yeah sure, but just isn’t going to happen in any universe. Nobody will bother to fork stuff, countries will just continue to try overreach and make peoples’ lives hell until they comply.
Region-blocking is the lowest-effort, but actually achievable response, that protects devs from legal attacks, while giving the offending regions a strong incentive to undo these laws. As soon as it starts hitting profits, the capitalist class will get it reversed, no question.
MariaDB is already cooler, obviously.
Very weird though that both it and MySQL are owned by private equity.
In my mind, region-blocking is actually probably the best solution for this in every case.
Cut off every legitimate operation in these regions (including my own) from using your genuinely useful software. Software isn’t compromised, saves on unnecessary work and law compliance. Then everyone with a VPN flourishes anyway. And then maybe it hurts profits so much that lawmakers actually decide to reverse course. Wins all around.
Fair enough about persistence, I can see why one might want it, but I genuinely haven’t even thought about it in 10 years of use, and the overhead of one-click on occasion is pretty small. I probably click it less than once a month. So I can see why it’s not implemented.
Interestingly it does persist other things like list sort order, so you’d have thought they’d offer the option. One wonders if they wouldn’t happily accept a PR to add such a thing?
What is an android-style application launcher. You mean like as a default ‘Open With’ dialog? That feels like a niche want, but I mean fair enough to want it. Something like Junction not do it for you? Then just have file types you want to do that open via that instead.
Either way, it would be cool if Nautilus was extensible like GNOME shell. I don’t deny this. I’m largely just confused by OPs claims.
Very true, and this is a good argument for the importance of diversity in everything Linux.
The fact that there are distros not using it at least means there’s room to fuck off to those if this gets out of hand.
I’m a bit confused. I use Nautilus/GNOME Files, and I quite honestly can’t think of anything it’s missing that I want. Can you be more specific about this missing basic functionality? Or is it just non-Nautilus file managers?
If anything, I’m frustrated that Windows File Manager doesn’t have all the features I use on Nautilus. Here’s eight that just come to mind off the top of my head.
I’d done it, I’d smuggled in one of those RISC-whatever boxes. The hardware that doesn’t require a live-scan of your irises and your digital ID to interface. This baby can visit websites without even scanning your brainwaves. I don’t know what country it came from - You’re not allowed to know about foreign countries before you’re 40, the computer blocks them, it’s something about preventing “unauthorised gooning”.
Just as I sat down, I heard it - the info-chopper, they knew. I grabbed my illegal CPU just as the door was bust open, “INFORMATION PROTECTION OFFICER, CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TELL ME YOUR BIRTHDATE!” You see you’re only allowed to hear certain parts of our rights depending on your details, it’s to protect you from dangerous information. Even seeing his face might evoke corrupted thoughts, but I didn’t care anymore.
I quickly, but pointedly, looked over, and saw him, cool leather jacket, gun, one of those brain-interceptor helmet things, like a hockey helmet made of cushions and diodes. “NO” I cried, “I WANT TO PLAY SNAKE WITHOUT PROVIDING MY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER!”.
With that war cry, I cheesed it, spurred on by the sky-high promise of reading a ‘potentially offensive’ Wikipedia article, in private.
Why would anyone on Linux, having free choice of all Linux OSes, choose one that actively compromises your privacy?
This is why Linux should never be a corporate, paid-for ecosystem. The nerds that keep all this shit running for free will not be interested in maintaining spyware OS.
Not a popular opinion for Linux shillers, but I love GNOME. It’s quite simplified but does most what a normal person could want. I think its main criticisms largely stem from saying it’s not very "Windows"y.
Well… then what did I lose in its creation?
Yeah, I’d be willing to do that to write a trillion pieces of ultra-advanced software that fulfils every possible need.
Then I’d monetise enough of it to live comfortably, and then do projects in my own time and actually enjoy them.
Then I have no idea what you’re referring to by ‘what google is doing to android and tried to do to web’ because as far as I know, that isn’t relevant.
What I’m describing is definitively not antivirus. Antiviruses use heuristics (and known checksums of bad things) to scan processes/files/network traffic/system calls for dangerous patterns. They’re not doing real-time checksuming to detect system corruption or malfunction, they’re not comparing known system files because that’s complex and hard to do, and seems to be what the company is claiming here.
I have no idea what Google checksuming you’re referring to but as far as I’m aware that’s a not thing they’re doing to android and trying to do web. Everything Linux (including Android) does some amount of checksums at certain points because they’re useful, but not real-time process checksums. I assumed you were surely referring to them requiring that apps get signed by their certificates, making everything subject to their approval. Which is different from realtime checksumming for integrity.
I don’t think this is accurate. What Google is doing is making the whole ecosystem depend on Google’s approval to be allowed to work.
In this case, they seem to be claiming they’re just doing real-time checking of processes as they run (presumably stuff like checksuming loaded libraries, looking for memory overruns, etc.), and so detecting certain signs of malware or system corruption.
To be honest, based on the announcement it sounds completely unnecessary, but I don’t think they’re at all doing what Google is doing.
I mean, that presentation is far from universal to ADHD. It’s not called “Trouble Sitting Still Disorder”, it’s got a name that succinctly references the most common symptoms, like… deficit in attention, and hyperactivity. Is that universal to and a full description of all presentations? No, but this is true of basically all complex disorders.
These are very subjective arguments, and even the objective points are completely subjective depending on your distro.
I mean one of his arguments is that C++ is just inherently insecure. He just takes Microsoft’s claims at face-value that all their pointless shit is the magical security wall that it claims to be. He buys into the same lie that ACE on a Windows, Mac or Android is somehow much much safer than on Linux. Most of his claims that other OSes are more secure are rooted in “well yeah they do exactly the same but at least they knooow they do”.
I’m not even acknowledging ChromeOS - it is Linux, except it only runs a browser.
99% of this stuff also applies to Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS, except moreso and far more universally. And 90% of this stuff is only relevant if you’re being targeted by some state-funded intelligence like the CIA (cold reading your RAM?? minimum 16-character password?? Keystroke fingerprinting???)
So whatever, I think the hardening guide looks fairly accurate, but unless you’re being spied on by world powers, I wouldn’t consider it worth peoples’ time to read, never mind implement. 90% of people are still going to be more secure by cluelessly using Linux instead of cluelessly using the others.
I’m at the last stage, and unapologetically so. I very frequently buy games and media, and/or donate to creators, IF it’s actually good, the developer/publisher isn’t a pos, and the price is vaguely fair.
I won’t pay for subscription services. I’m basically at the point where I won’t buy a game or piece of media if I can’t pirate it first.