JuxtaposedJaguar

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Giving permission by saying yes to a "would you mind" question is the hill I die on. Usually I say "I would not mind" but if I'm feeling frisky I'll say no and watch their brain melt.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Not all FOSS projects need to be profitable to survive. IOW if a project cannot survive without being profitable and it cannot be profitable long-term, then it cannot survive long-term.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

How is that different from mutual TLS authentication?

Edit: It seems like OPAQUE just initiates mutual TLS authentication after the TLS session has already been negotiated with PKI. So it basically just allows websites to design their own login page instead of the one designed by the web browser.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I just replied to the other person's comment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I don't. Could you elaborate?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

While Linux itself isn't proprietary, it supports loading proprietary firmware/microcode blobs and running on proprietary hardware. Thus, part of the Linux hardware/software stack is proprietary.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (8 children)

I'm surprised that other people are surprised that for-profit companies constantly try to increase their profits; such companies only contribute to FOSS when that's more profitable than the alternative. The Linux kernel, AMDGPU, Steam, etc only exist because some part of the software/hardware stack is proprietary (which becomes a more attractive product as the FOSS portion of the stack improves).

I'm definitely not justifying the "rug-pulling", but people need to stop supporting projects with no potential for long-term profitability unless those projects can survive without any support from for-profit companies. Anything else is destined to fail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Maybe I'm Jia Tan 😉

[–] [email protected] 54 points 8 months ago (4 children)

It's a nightmare to search for anything about GUID Partition Tables (GPT) now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I'd love yearly Debian releases instead of just every 2 years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

My biggest concern is that everyone will eventually be forced by societal and institutional expectations; for now people can easily choose not to wear them, but if/when your employer requires it for work or if/when the only way to talk to your friends is by using it, then you won't have much of a choice.

For example, Zoom has very shady ties with the Chinese government (and several reports say that they've used it to surveil and censor people), yet many schools and workplaces required it (and many still do now). You could refuse to install/use it, but then you'd lose your job or fail your classes. It's a similar story for TikTok, Discord, and Facebook before that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Thank you for interjecting.

 

I need to transport multiple very large files over an unstable and untrusted network, and the file contents are outputted as a data stream. I wanted to use OpenSSL for streaming authenticated encryption, but they purposefully don't support that and are preachy about it.

Well, it turns out that XZ has checksumming built-in! It even has different algorithms (CRC32, CRC64, and SHA256). It's part of the same file, within/before the encryption, and automatically verified by the decompression tool. I'm already using XZ for compression before encryption, so this is just super convenient and useful. Also, it seems like XZ supports threaded decompression now, when it didn't before. Thanks XZ devs!

 

I'm not complaining, but I didn't realize how much work it was. It makes me really respect the people who do it on a regular basis.

For example:

  • You know how to use your software, but other people don't. So you need to write documentation.
  • You can just modify the source files, but it's impractical for everyone to do that. So you need to add a config file.
  • You can just drag the output files into place, but that's impractical for everyone to do. So you need to package it.
  • You trust yourself, but distro maintainers rightfully don't. So you need to package your source code and configure the package to compile it.
  • You will abide by your idea of how the software should be used, but other people might not. So you need to pick a license.

Sometimes I think there must be an easier way, but I can't think of any. I guess it probably gets easier with experience.

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