Recent submissions

Comment · 9 months ago
I have seen few cases where UEFI was not actually usable on non-OEM configurations.

In fact, my current ASUS laptop did not allow me to install Windows until I have performed a sophisticated dance to update/flash some sort of low-level disk-related Intel bloatware. The laptop was sold without OS and was accompanied by a small paper referencing a website with instruction how to flash the firmware to actually make the laptop usable.

Comment · 10 months ago
They are fully supported almost everywhere. XFS, ext4, tmpfs, f2fs and a bunch of misc filesystems all support them.

Ext4 support dates as early as Linux 3.15, released in 2014. It is ancient at this point!

Comment · 11 months ago
What an absolute boatload of lies.

I am currently in process of "verifying" my identity with Android Developer console.

In addition to proof of identity (e.g. passport/driver license) Google is demanding a proof of address, government registration, this month's rental agreement, foreign passport... The process is stuck in limbo because months-old documents are deemed "outdated", and I am constantly threatened that my verification request (!) will be denied because of "exceeding allowed number of attempts" (!!)

It shares the same principle as silent Discord account bans and other "verification" harassment schemes, such as Upwork account verification. The excess developers — Google's potential competitors — need to be banished from platform as quickly and cheaply as possible, so that Google can peddle their own spyware unimpeded.

Comment · 11 months ago
Android has entire API for handling driver failures:

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/Wif...

Hardware can have issues, but firmware and drivers usually work around those issues. When firmware and drivers crash, you get "masterpieces" like the one above.

Comment · 11 months ago
> intentionally hostile kernel interface

If open-sourcing your entire kernel is being "hostile", I don't think that there is or ever was a "friendly" OS.

Comment · 11 months ago
You mean "Google has to perform final action after user petitions it to install"

(not really final, Google can uninstall your apps anytime if they are deemed undesirable)

Comment · 11 months ago
Cloudflare will disconnect you from their free plan just as quickly.

Especially when you are facing "infected machines by the millions".

Comment · 1 year ago
Given that Google owns Web, it can be argued that any web tech killed by Google is a part of Google Graveyard
Comment · 1 year ago
You can always render blink and marquee with Canvas.

Just kidding, Canvas is obsolete technology, this should obviously be done with WebGPU

Comment · 1 year ago
Approval is tied to individual apps. From https://developer.android.com/developer-verification:

> You'll need to prove you own your apps by providing your app package name and app signing keys

Needless to say, Google will throw out NewPipe, ad-blockers and anything else that might endanger their profits. For example, Google does not allow F-Droid to be published in Google Play (distributing competing app stores is against their ToS). This policy was in action as long as Google Play/Android Market existed.

Comment · 1 year ago
Android used to have lighting-fast builds even when accounting for Google's quirky tooling, R.java generation and binary XML processing. After introduction of Gradle build system and Kotlin Android build times have become laughingstock of entire programming world.

This however has nothing to do with Java — Kotlin compiler is written Kotlin, and Gradle is written in unholy mix of Kotlin, Java and Groovy (with later being especially notorious for being slow).

Comment · 1 year ago
Arch (and most FOSS Linux distributions) are highly resistant to ddos attacks.

Good luck trying to ddos their mirrors and mailing lists.

Comment · 1 year ago
> this is where most of the speed up comes from

I might be mistaken, but the brief look at code shows that the speed up appears to come from combination of async architecture (the selling point of Mold) and intelligent usage of PUNCH_HOLE/INSERT_RANGE fallocate() operations.

Surprisingly enough PUNCH_HOLE and friends have already matured to be production ready, with viable support from ext4 and xfs filesystem. The possibilities!

Comment · 1 year ago
You already can not install applications from Google Play without Google account. Google accounts are registered with personal phone number (the one you obtained from your carrier, presumably using your ID). All Google Play users are already "verified" one way or another.

This change means that people who do not use Google Play or other sources, fully controlled by Google, will no longer be able to install applications on Android.

Comment · 1 year ago
While this did funnel countless FOSS and commercial developers to pay MS for certificates, it didn't close even 50% of loopholes. You can still execute third party software from your own (e.g. Steam launching games you install with it). You can also use interpreters, JVM and other ways to disregard the requirement.

If fact, the reason why MS can charge for "nearly mandatory" executable signing is because it is not mandatory at all. If they really were forced to close loopholes, they would have made it free for everyone, — just like Let's Encrypt was made free of charge to establish mandatory encryption across the Web.

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