SoylentNews

So I just got this message from Aaron Hoag at the DOJ.

It looks like we're fucked.

My original letter to the FTC, which was then forwarded to the DOJ, is here.

Mr. Hopson,

Thank you for your e-mail regarding changes to Microsoft's Secure Boot policies in Windows 10, which was forwarded to the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice by the FTC given our history with our cases against Microsoft.

I spent many years working on enforcement of the Division's judgment against Microsoft. As a result, this is an issue that I personally have followed since it initially arose, as you note, in Windows 8. While I appreciate your concerns and those raised by the open source community at large, from an antitrust point of view it is difficult to build a viable case in light of, amongst other factors, Microsoft's willingness to work with the largest Linux vendors to ensure their operating systems will be able to load when Secure Boot is enabled. Without disputing or diminishing the fact that in your own case this solution has not been sufficient to allow you to install your preferred variety of Linux, I can only note that to build an antitrust case, we would be required to show a market-wide effect, which would be exceptionally difficult given the ease with which a user can install Fedora or Ubuntu, to take two of the largest Linux flavors, on a machine even where the OEM has chosen to prevent users from disabling Secure Boot.

We will of course continue to watch this market and will take appropriate action if Microsoft engages in anticompetitive behavior in violation of the antitrust laws.

Thank you again for taking the time to ensure that we were aware of this issue, and do not hesitate to contact us again should future events warrant it.

Yours truly,
Aaron Hoag

-------
Aaron Hoag
Assistant Chief
Networks & Technology Enforcement Section
U.S. Dept. of Justice, Antitrust Division
450 5th St, NW, 7th Floor
Washington, DC 20530
Phone: (202) 307-6153
E-mail: aaron.hoag@usdoj.gov

If you have something to say to him, be civil, rational, and kind. No good will come to our cause by being a dick.

So I converted my /home to btrfs, because I'm quite tight on space and thought the compression would be a benefit.

I had to compile btrfs-progs myself, which also included compiling libext2fs from e2fsprogs. Once I started the conversion, it took 3 hours to convert.

It was successful. I rebooted, logged in, and all my data was intact. The transparent compression I had asked for in my fstab was working.
There was a noticable performance penalty, but that's to be expected with compression.

I use compressed btrfs on my portable SubLinux thumbdrive I keep on my keychain. I've had no problems there,
However, once I started copying data to and from the newly converted filesystem in any size, I noticed a padlock had appeared on everything in Thunar file manager. I suspected a problem, so I went to dmesg. There was a backtrace from btrfs. The kernel's driver had crashed, and it had remounted my new filesystem read-only.

I panicked, fearing the worst. I quickly went to a tty, killed Xorg, unmounted /home, and ran btrfs-convert -r on the partition to undo the conversion.

Thankfully, the un-conversion was successful. I remounted /home and restarted my login manager, logged in, and everything was normal again, running from ext4. No data loss I can see. I ran md5sum on files I suspected might be damaged, they match. No harm done it appears.

Lesson for today: While the filesystem's disk format is indeed stable, the drivers and utilities for managing the filesystem are NOT. Use btrfs at your own peril.

I still like ext4. It's so hard to kill an ext4 filesystem.

So one of the ACs on the other site decided to do a WHOIS on the addresses the Czech traffic analysis I linked to posted and what did he find? he find the telemetry data goes to MarkMonitor the anti piracy group. If this data proves factual we now know who the REAL customer of Windows 10 is, its the *.A.A who are gonna be able to find out every single song played and video watched by windows 10 users.

I don't know about the rest of you guys but I've seen enough to tell my customers Windows 10 is toxic and to be avoided.

One year in as of today and still averaging over ~10K hits of the hashtag on slow days. Dead? The gaming press and SJWs should be so lucky. Gamers, we just don't quit until we win.

sic semper umbilicus

So, it's Women's Equality Day. Lot of you probably think about this time I'd be busting out with a sexist rant. Hate to disappoint but I'm all about equality. Actual equality though not this bullshit third-gen feminist version of equality where they think equality means special treatment for their tragic victimhood.

No, equality always has and always will mean equal treatment. Every single time. No exceptions for past mistreatment. No white-knighting up if someone with tits comes crying on your shoulder that people are mean to her just because she calls them misogynists, shitlords, tools of the patriarchy, etc...

In fact, no calling yourself a feminist period. If you do it as a woman it's saying you feel your entire gender has been victimized and should be given special treatment because it is incapable of taking care of itself. If you do it as a man you're saying an entire gender is in need of your protection.

You either treat a woman as if she's an adult and as capable of taking care of her own shit as you are, or you don't. There is no "yes, but" to it. Equal treatment or sexism, there are no other choices.

https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=8941

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/metamesh/meta-mesh-community-wireless-networks-for-all

Funding Canceled

Funding for this project was canceled by the project creator 1 day ago.

http://www.metamesh.org/blog/2015/08/14/ks-closure

Today we decided to halt our Kickstarter campaign. In the past few weeks, Meta Mesh and its volunteers have had to face a lot of challenges, both in the business and personal realms. We received wide support from many of those we directly asked. For that, we are terrifically grateful.

We have decided to change the direction our company is headed. In no way are we finished. In fact, this Kickstarter experience revealed a lot to us about who we want to be and how to be it.

In the upcoming months we will be expanding PittMesh, launching a webstore where pre-configured routers can be purchased, and will be building a dedicated PittMesh Working Group where people who want to contribute to building a Community Wireless Network can learn about new technology, can gain new skills, and can network with inspired people.

Definitely stay tuned to our website and our social media feeds. In fact, mere moments after closing our Kickstarter campaign something occurred which we will announce shortly that has been months in the making and we are incredibly excited about.

We’re not done. No way. As they say, it’s hard to keep a good man down. We’ll be in touch with you all again shortly.

I've gotten tired of the Secure Boot madness, especially lately with Microsoft's memo to OEMs that they are no longer required to provide an opt-out.

I've written the FTC. Here is the letter I sent to the antitrust division as per their instructions:

Hello, I'm writing to report a possible violation by Microsoft Corporation, who has been abusing their standing with PC manufacturers (who need to comply to get the "Designed for Windows" sticker) to bully them into making it increasingly difficult to install a competitor's operating system on a standard PC.

Around 2011, Microsoft mandated that machines that ship with Windows 8 come with a feature called "Secure Boot" enabled. What this does, is on boot, it checks to see if the operating system was digitally "signed" by a trusted authority, in most cases Microsoft alone, and if not, the system completely refuses to boot. While until Windows 10, Microsoft mandated a feature to disable secure boot in the BIOS, with Windows 10 they have told manufacturers that this is no longer required.

What's important to understand is, that Microsoft has literally positioned themselves as virtually the only trusted 'signer' of all competitors' operating systems. All competitors must either hope that the PC will provide a method to disable this 'secure boot', or *pay* Microsoft, a competitor, to graciously allow them to run on standard PCs.

Prior to the secure boot feature, it was extremely easy to load any competitor's operating system on a standard PC. It took no workarounds or 'hacking' or fiddling with settings. It would simply install.

There are many different operating systems available for the PC, including but not by any means limited to:
Linux (which comes in literally thousands of variations, each requiring to be signed by Microsoft for secure boot), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Haiku OS, Solaris, and even Android.

These systems have no technical limitation preventing them from being installed on these PCs, but rather
are now artificially forced to pay Microsoft to run on any PC with Secure Boot 'locked' on.
I have already encountered a Toshiba laptop that did not have an option to disable secure boot, and it was impossible to boot my preferred homemade Linux operating system on it as a result, since I cannot and will not pay Microsoft to sign it.

Microsoft has made unusually high requirements for them signing an operating system. It even goes as far to state that components they sign must not be of particular free software licenses.
In addition, it contains a threat to revoke certificates for OSes that have known security holes in the boot sequence code, an action Microsoft would surely never do to their own OS. (Windows)

Here is a link to their policies regarding UEFI/Secure Boot "signing":
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_certification/archive/2013/12/03/microsoft-uefi-ca-signing-policy-updates.aspx

I await a response and hope that we can continue to keep the operating system running on a PC as the choice of the consumer, not one particular operating system vendor.

You may call me at censored if you wish or need further information.

-Daniel Hopson

I think this song goes well with this entry.

When in 2011 when the OCD hit me for the first time, I had no hope at all. I expected to die soon, because life was such a hell, I couldn't imagine any other scenario. Otherwise, why so much pain? Multiple obsessions hitting me at once, sucking the joy from my soul. This isn't normal OCD. This is stuff that had me screaming for someone to kill me at one point, but I won't get into that. Here's a link that describes it.

I found a spark of light in this pitch black from a youtuber whose whimsical little videos made me feel the first bit of joy in several months. I subscribed to her, HiHiAkafa, then subscribed to her new account HeavenSoulTrance, and finally AkafaXD. She suffers from what appears to be depression, and seems to be a furry. I don't mind of course (how can I, I sometimes think of myself as "the white rat"), and I always found her videos quite adorable. Point is, she posted a video not long ago explaining that depression was preventing her from working on her art. I was one of those who gave her encouraging comments, which she appreciated. It appears that hasn't done any good.

She's erased everything on her last youtube account AkafaXD. The profile picture is glass shattering in a black void.
All that glorious art, lost. All her adorable animations, gone. A piece of me, a piece I integrated into my fondest memories, gone.

I managed to save some of her videos luckily, because I loved her work so much I had downloaded them from YouTube prior to her account wipeout.

I've made an archive of the handful of videos I had on hand, on my secondary server. http://gieba.universe2.us/rememberakafa

I just hope she stays safe.

This storify page hits on a number of internal issues at Mozilla. I left the Mozilla fold a few years (when the "let's be Chrome!" bullshit started), but I do know people that currently work there...and this make me feel kind of bad for them.

The first Republican primary debates will be "legally" available online only to Fox News cable subscribers. Assuming you don't have TV access to the debate and are bored/interested/depraved enough to want to watch live, look for and post streams in the comments. They are sure to be clamping down on livestreaming services like Periscope, but others might escape notice. Twitter real time search is a great way to find these kinds of links and generally a good source of entertainment during these sorts of live events. Here's the Fox News schedule:

• 5pm ET: First (kiddy pool candidates) Debate
• 6pm ET: Online Pre-Show
• 9pm ET: Primetime Debate
• 11pm ET: Online Post-Debate Show

Jon Stewart's last episode of the Daily Show will start at 11pm ET and will last 52 minutes.

The candidates making the cut for the main debate were Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, and John Kasich. Seven candidates who did not qualify were invited to participate in the 5:00 PM forum; these were Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore. Because of a rule-change announced by FOX one week before the debate-invitations went out, Graham, Pataki, and Gilmore will participate at 5pm despite averaging below 1% in the five selected polls. (Former IRS Commissioner Mark Everson was excluded from the 5pm tier, along with other relatively-unknown candidates who did not meet the updated invitation-criteria of "consistently being offered to respondents in major national polls as recognized by Fox News.") The five selected polls were conducted by Fox News, Bloomberg, CBS News, Monmouth University, and Quinnipiac University.

I made this as a journal because I didn't want to subject all of Soylent to it, especially since Fox News is not making it easy to watch the debates.

Keep in mind: Republican debate drinking games are dangerous.