Yeah, that was my question. Why the hell would they develop new silicon when 99% of their fab space is dedicated to feeding the AI bubble?

I honestly don’t get what people were so up in arms about, besides just not wanting to change what already worked for them.

Yeah, I realized that as soon as I posted it.

You know what this is launching just in time for?

Tax season.

Cue* 10 million people getting audited because they let their browser file their taxes for them.

I’ve maintained for a while that LLMs don’t make you a more productive programmer, they just let you write bad code faster.

90% of the job isn’t writing code anyway. Once I know what code I wanna write, banging it out is just pure catharsis.

Glad to see there’s other programmers out there who actually take pride in their work.

That “780,000 Windows users” number is just made up for the title as clickbait.

That number is never mentioned in the original blog post.

All they said is they have a million downloads and “over 78% of these downloads came from Windows”. At no fucking point did they imply that means 780k unique users. There’s no reason to assume that everyone who downloaded the ISO actually went on to install it.

They also want $48 for their Pro version which comes with a “professional-grade creative suite” consisting of… GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, Kdenlive, and… Audacity (?), going off the screenshots they show:

They’re shamelessly reselling free software as some sort of comprehensive package, and it’s not even their own distro. They’re just piggybacking on Ubuntu.

And their premium support only covers… installation?

But hey, they support this edition with updates until 2029!

Of course, pay no attention to the coincidence that the Ubuntu LTS version it’s based on also hits end-of-life around then:

So I’m not really sure what you’re actually getting out of this purchase besides some extra themes and some really formulaic desktop wallpapers, and a couple proprietary apps. They say they “contribute to upstream Open Source projects” but offer zero evidence; their site doesn’t even have any Github/Gitlab links.

Even as an American with everything going on here, this bullshit makes me feel bad for the Brits. How fucked up is that?

Normalize not naming new languages with a single letter.

Yeah, but the malware can just wait for a system upgrade where you sign a new boot image and slip itself in then.

It works for Windows because theoretically only Microsoft would have the signing key and it’s not just sitting on disk somewhere. But then you’re just trusting Microsoft, and also subject to vendor lock-in.

Actually, I would love for you to explain to me how Secure Boot alone would protect someone from any of that. If you want to protect files, you need full disk encryption, not Secure Boot.

Or are you seriously expecting a government-level threat actor to bother to:

1. Sneak into your home while you’re away or asleep;
2. Overwrite your bootloader or UEFI with a rootkitted image of the same version so it’s impossible to tell;
3. Wait for you to boot your computer and enter your disk encryption password, then:
4. Use the rootkit to read the decrypted files off your disk?

That’s the great thing about fascist governments, is they have no need to be that sneaky. They can just change the laws to make whatever you’re doing illegal and jail you until you agree to give up your documents, or simply hit you with a $5 wrench until you tell them the password.

For a home desktop that’s never left unattended with anyone untrustworthy, I don’t see that Secure Boot is worth the effort in setting up.

Given that you have to re-sign the boot image every time you upgrade, any malware already running with root privileges on the machine could easily slip itself into the new signed image.

The best security is not running untrusted software to begin with.

The article is full of typos, too.

Who let this dreck out the door? Did Forbes lay off all their editors or what?

That’s what I figured after thinking about it, that there had to be some procedural reason for it.

Which, funnily enough, would also qualify the murders as first-degree under Minnesota state law: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.185

The suspect faces several charges of second-degree murder.

This baffles me. Looking up your fucking victim’s addresses isn’t enough evidence of premeditation to qualify for first-degree charges?

As someone with a lot of web backend engineering experience, this had me yelling at the screen at a few points, but really cool nonetheless.

+Real Engineering +Technology Connections +EngineerGuy +Explosions&Fire +NurdRage +NileRed (more entertainment than education nowadays but his old videos are pretty information dense) +Chris Boden +MinutePhysics/MinuteEarth/MinuteFood +LegalEagle +Engineering Explained +Wendover Productions / Half as Interesting

I got tons more but my legs are starting to fall asleep.

This is my biggest pet peeve. There’s tons of businesses around me that leave their Open signs on all night.

It’s like, what’s the point then? It’s not like there’s anyone out there shopping for a fucking mattress at 1 in the morning.

Provision forgejo on k8s with c4k

This title belongs in a “statements made up by the deranged” meme