If you want to disable Intel Management Engine, the always-on backdoor built into every Intel CPU and/or want as much software as possible on your machine to be FOSS
Not that I know of, AMD is also soon going to make their own FOSS bios with OpenSIL so they’re generally the better option if you’re a privacy/libre software junkie.
As far as I know, OpenSIL stands for Open Silicon Initialization Library, and handles only the hardware initialisation part of the boot process. It may still require loading binary blobs like the Platform Security Processor (PSP), which is AMD’s version of Intel Management Engine
PSP is not the same thing as IME. Not even close. PSP doesn’t even have network access, much less remote computer control like the IME. Still proprietary, but if OpenSIL allows you to turn it off then we might actually be able to run a fully 100% libre modern desktop computer which is honestly pretty awesome.
Things like these and the overall general improvements to linux on a daily basis get me excited for a time when I could buy a Framework laptop with coreboot running linux without issues. Also no backdoors for big brother.
Coreboot doesn’t disable the IME by the way. It just gets rid of some of it’s functionality blobs and sends a signal to it telling it to please disable itself. No one knows if that signal actually works. Only Intel themselves can actually fully remove it from a processor, like they did with the processors they sold to the NSA.
Okay I did some research and I was wrong. There is no confirmation Intel specifically removed the IME from NSA’s PCs. It’s just that some reverse engineers found a flag that supposedly disables it, and their theory is that it was meant for the NSA.
I believe this is the switch System76 and Purism turn off, but as I said, since the blob is still there, we can’t be sure that switch actually works or if it’s just a trap.
Bestie Brave is literally just Chromium again. Not to mention the fact that their CEO is someone who got ousted from Firefox for being a tremendous bigot. It’s not a better alternative to Chrome, it’s just the same thing again. It you must use a chromium browser, use ungoogled.
I tried it but didn’t care to find out if there was a way to stop it from deleting all my tabs and logins, and I’m not relogging into everything just because I needed to close my browser.
You can set exceptions to the cookie deletion in the security settings. I personally have everything I use frequently (invidious and stuff) to keep the login cookies. Or you can just completely disable that feature.
An important note to your last one is for some of us we don’t get an option. Work does everything with Office 365? Welp, guess you gotta use Microsoft products now 🤷
Grats on Arch Linux install, S-tier distro for what it attempts to accomplish.
It feels like there needs to be a category in between conservative and paranoid. I’m probably 90% of the way over to tech paranoid but using Tor Browser and Tails is a little much.
Grats on Arch Linux install, S-tier distro for what it attempts to accomplish.
For some reason, the best word to describe it in my mind is “fun”. Just fun to learn and play with, fun to install, fun to configure and customize, and fun to daily drive. Definitely not fun when a random package update breaks your system (looking at you grub), but that hardly ever happens anymore provided you don’t enable the testing repo.
Also pacman is the fastest package manager I’ve ever used.
Apt is very quick as well (with the nala frontend), no complaints there. I’ve been running Arch for the past 5 years and recently switched to Debian Stable. The “grub event” was certainly notable, but otherwise I don’t think Arch is really that unstable or gimmicky. Arch itself is a very solid and dependable platform - the reason I decided to move is because I really don’t need the bleeding edge packages from other projects anymore. With Flatpaks and all the rest of the /home-based package managers that are around now, I can keep a stable base system and install a couple bleeding edge packages that I want, instead of being forced to run my entire system as bleeding edge (do my printer drivers really need to make me bleed?).
Overall, I’d say the Arch experience is as high quality as the Debian experience, they just target different usecases. Neither of them is better, it’s just up to the user how bloody they want their system to be.
I just lost a raid 0 array for what seems like no reason, all I even had to do was reformat and both drives are working again. It’s fortunate I only use them for my steam library.
That being said I have an Ubuntu machine that’s been running 4 drives in RAID 5 for like 5 years so… Your mileage may vary?
Somehow mkinitcpio broke my initramfs the other day when I installed the latest microcode updates. Took me like an hour to debug the issue and boot from the fallback 😑. That’s the first time I’ve had an issue like that though. I’ve been using arch for a few years now.
Also the middle should be called Tech Centrist or Tech Social Democrat, daring to use the projects from philosophical minorities is not conservative at all.
Not extreme is rather moderate. Conservative estimate means there’s a tendency to not change what was estimated in the past. Moderate would mean that a small change would be accepted.
Conservatives are always trying to make themselves seem “cool and different” like the middle guy in the meme. Being anticonsumerist, pro-privacy and pro individual liberty is far from actual conservative policy goals but they obviously have to pretend otherwise.
And he mostly talks about phones anyway… hardly relevant to the avg pc enthusiast as he only covers macbooks and not their competition, which is silly.
He’s the kind of guy that looks at a Fairphone and says “if you compare this to a Pixel, the Pixel is faster”, talks about how important repairability and sustainability is, vows to mention it in future phone reviews and then proceeds to never mention it ever again but instead keeps on saying how great the new iPhone is.
Mullvad browser is a fairly new Firefox fork which aims to reduce fingerprinting potential while also having sane (paranoid) defaults. Developed with the Tor project. Basically the Tor browser but without connecting to the Tor network. Passes coveryourtracks.eff.org.
SimpleX Chat is a fairly new privacy oriented IM platform which seems to address many issues current ones have. Development is very active. E2E, video and voice calls, decentralized, doesn’t have user ID of any kind.
Tor/Mullvad are better for anonymity use cases, but when you go tweaking it (settings, add-ons) you are no longer blending in with the pack. LibreWolf suits a more privacy-oriented use case I think since it’s not aiming to mimic Tor, but just have privacy settings mostly maxed out & you opt into everything you are comfortable with, such as cookies—whereas base Fx you have to opt into more privacy.
Honestly, I can’t remember specifics but I read some bad stuff about Librewolf a few months ago (nothing nefarious, just seems the developers didn’t necessarily really know what they were doing and made some weird design choices).
I trust the Tor project somewhat, so I tend to trust Mullvad browser more.
Honestly, I can’t remember specifics but I read some bad stuff about Librewolf a few months ago (nothing nefarious, just seems the developers didn’t necessarily really know what they were doing and made some weird design choices).
I trust the Tor project somewhat, so I tend to trust Mullvad browser more.
Not really. People who use the apps are trying to preserve (conserve) the time when privacy wasn’t an afterthought. It’s not working, but they’re sure trying.
What I mean is that privacy is no longer mainstream. The software shown does work but the majority of people don’t use it or don’t even know what it is.
It’s using the word conservative in its literal definition, rather than the definition it’s been given by some that incorrectly use it to describe their beliefs.
Tech paranoid all the way, although not the same type of tech paranoid as Luke Smith. The only good computer is one you have the hardware schematics to (i.e. virtually none of them). Thinkpads are just another brand of overpriced laptop. Besides the occasional steam game, I heavily prefer FOSS only and will flat out refuse almost anything that has drm. My unlocked bootloader android phone is so heavily locked down with privacy stuff that I cause Google to lose money merely by existing.
This is only for laptops by the way. System76 desktop BIOSes are still closed source. It’s such a shame that there’s no FOSS BIOS for desktop PCs, hopefully AMD OpenSIL changes that.
Assuming the schematic is for repairability, not security. Seems unlikely that enthusiasts would have the equipment to non-destructivly identify malicious deviations from spec, introduced by competent actors.
Wish I could just ditch Windows and Whatsapp for something else… I’ve tried Linux but every time I quickly wanted to do something it first took me 30/40 minutes to get it working :’( was driving me insane after the cool factor of daily driving Linux went away
Probably 1,5 months ago. I used Fedora 38 - to be fair I was really impressed with how far gaming has gotten. Basically anything I trew at it just worked (big F for Rust). However my audio kept breaking when switching application’s which I could only fix by restarting. Besides that I was really annoyed by Fedora somehow not picking up my second display from time to time. No idea what happened but every like 20 restarts my second display wouldn’t work, or games suddenly started to display on my second display instead of my main. These where probably the biggest things for me, besides some applications I use for debugging not being supported on Linux. Anyhow I’ll probably try Linux again in a couple of months, maybe another distro, since I do really enjoy programming on Linux.
My now-husband thought a good first date was to compile gentoo on my computer with KDE 4.0 (so raw that folders/desktop/drag and drop didn’t work). 13 years later, I finally decided to use Arch on one of my computers… the other two are still Ubuntu, though that’s likely to change.
I still can’t quite figure out why I kept dating him and eventually married him. Maybe it’s the free tech support?
What do you think about Zorin? It’s Ubuntu in a Windows Skin if I remember correctly, so target audience are Windows and Mac OS users who want to switch.
Been daily driving Zorin a few months now. Once I got past three very large hardware-related hurdles (that unfortunlatey would be impossible for normal users), it has been much better than Windows. I do recommend it if you’re like the middle guy in the meme (but not conservative lol)
Well my mother , who is in her 50s was studying for a course two years back , so i booted my old PC with linux mint and gave it to her , for libre office , some browser stuff and pdf etc, the thing it is just worked , and as a programmer I love how i get things done easily via terminal !
A lot of linux platforms are pretty plug and play now unless you’re trying to get a programming running that wasn’t built for Linux. That’s why I think both Linux and proprietary operating systems have their place. Its just too bad not everyone makes their stuff for linux. It’s definitely getting better though.
I have all my windows programs added as non-steam games and havent had a problem with it. Some games with anticheat dont work, but I dont play those anyways. My entire steam library just works with at most an added launch option in terms of tinkering.
Unfortunately i think steam removed support for team fortress 2 on Linux a long time ago. I didn’t stay long on Linux. I mean i use headless ubuntu and debian for a bunch of projects but not on my desktop.
What do you mean? I played TF2 yesterday, proton has been a massive game changer for gaming on Linux. Most games without official support still work and run perfectly, the main things that hinder it now is anti cheat since some anti cheat is built around monitoring the entire system and intentionally only works on windows
Also one of the only people I’ve seen who routinely attempts to ensure people don’t insult each other (like you have) on the mailing lists he frequents, so he gets another point in my book.
Mmm, people only get so many bites at the “vociferously defending pedorasty’” apple before you’re written off in my eyes. He is far beyond that point, even after decades of having to listen to people make appeals to authority.
Did you actually read the what he wrote, or did you read what others wrote about him?
Consider the fact that he promotes an ideology that is extremely dangerous to various powerful people; it would be naive to assume none have tried to weaken his message by presenting him in various ways.
As to his latest controversy, if you actually read what he wrote, and understand that he chooses his words very carefully, you will see that he did not say anything controversial at all.
I fit somewhere between normie and conservative. Philosophically, I agree with the tech conservative, but I also have shit to do and when FOSS gets in my way, it’s hard to justify it.
I use Firefox because it was an easy switch.
I used Signal until they killed sms support. Sorry, most of the people I know use a default messages app. And the day I force everyone I know to use Signal is the day they stop talking to me.
I dabble in Linux, but I main Windows because I’m not a programmer or IT admin. I know how to use it, for better or worse, and I don’t have to memorize terminal commands to perform even basic tasks. Sure, gaming is getting better on linux, but it’s still a compromised experience and I still, to this day, have to look up tutorials and terminal command every time I try to do anything on my Linux box.
But…wherever possible, I use FOSS software.
I like to call it the tech pragmatist. I agree with the conservative, but I’m not that smart and I got shit to do.
A lot of us are in this boat. I do daily drive Linux but I am very fortunate in that I’m my own boss so I can use whichever computer I want.
And yeah, there is no way to force people to use Signal. It is what it is. Fortunately here in Europe WhatsApp is the default messaging app. It is at least better than SMS for UA non-iPhone people.
Ion potentials are electricity… That’s the same thing as a voltage measurement: a difference in ion charge between two areas. Open the gate and the charge diffuses. That’s a wire.
And in nerves it’s ion pumps first shoving ions outside and if a trigger occurs, the gate opening, ions flooding in, opening the next gate and so fort. It’s not the same.
The nervous system of humans has been corrupted by being fed data from the internet, alcohol, toxic people, society in general etc. A lot of people, understandably so, want to escape this and take control of their own brains, and by extension their nervous systems.
It is illegal to slice up humans and analyze the source code of our brains unless you have a licence. And we as consumers are not provided with all the data the professionals gather. Think about it. We aren’t even allowed to know what is in our own brains. This goes completely against the philosophy of Free and Open Source.
You can find monkeys in the wild. They are not an endangered species by any means, which means that people will only report you to the police because of disgust, not because you are breaking laws. [Note: I am not a lawyer and haven’t read the laws relating to animals deeply, I do not take responsibility for legal troubles you get in if any]. Rip apart the monkeys and you can see the brain and nerves in their full glory.
Now you may ask, why monkeys of all animals? That is because they are one of the animals closest to humans that an individual can realistically capture. You do not want to fight a Chimpanzee unless you don’t care a lot about your life.
You may realize that you don’t understand the brain even though you have it. No worries there. You can’t understand the code of any FOSS application you use either. The important thing is that the source is available to you without restrictions.
Another question you may ask is that “This is too primitive”. This is a misunderstanding. People(non-developers only) think the command line is primitive and outdated now that graphical interfaces exist. This is simply not true. We are simply going back to our roots.
To self host it, you can simply install its docker image. Now this is the tricky part, since we don’t have a traditional OS. Basically, primitive brains, all they do it eat, sleep, reproduce, and do dopamine releasing activities. All you need to achieve this is follow the following two steps. They are very simple and everyone can achieve it without any technical knowledge or difficulty.
Reject modern humanity
Return to monkey
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