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Ignas Kiela (ignaloidas@not.acu.lt)'s status on Friday, 13-Dec-2024 20:55:00 JST

in reply to

@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com @wolf480pl@mstdn.io Stop your word vomitFirmware is microprocessor instructions stored on socketed ROM chips - you can't electronically reprogram it, but you can just swap the chip - hence the firmnessThis hasn't been the common accepted meaning for agesIf you (or the manufacturer) can electronically change it, it's software, if you (and the manufacturer) cannot change it, it's hardware.What do we define as "electronically change it"? If you connect an extra cable to the device and use an external device to change it, is it "electronically change it" or no?

There is a spectrum between hardware and software, and this completely ignores it. RYF says FPGA bytecode is "hardware", so then is Analogue Pocket (almost completely built on FPGAs) RYF? Everything on there is "hardware", so RYF doesn't care about it, even if really, the main purpose of the device is the damn ability to change what's on the FPGA.The RYF doesn't require implementing digital handcuffs - it requires you not attack the user with proprietary software.It quite literally gives an exception to "software delivered inside auxiliary and low-level processors and FPGAs, within which software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product". The simplest way to fulfill the "software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product" is to add blockers.

When the easiest way to satisfy all of the objective qualifications for a certification is making shit worse, the certification isn't good.

And the "Cooperation with FSF and GNU public relations" section is full of shitty FSF ideological bullshit that as usual does absolutely nothing to actually help free software. You absolutely can have free software Linux without GNU or shit, but nooooooooo, you must mention GNU or the FSF will say that your hardware is shit. This is bullshit, and you know it's bullshit.It is very possible to make a modern computer that complies with RYF that has proprietary hardware, you just need to avoid garbage chipsets.Find a single SDD or HDD that has no ability to update it's firmware. I'm absolutely certain that there is none that are still manufactured.

I'm kinda tempted to get one of the only full computers that are RYF certified - those shit-ass decades old thinkpads - just to prove that the drives they're using in them are not RYF compliant because they allow firmware updates. They don't put their model numbers online, because they're just getting whatever random ones they can get cheap, and I can guarantee that their firmware can be updated.A lot of so called "open hardware" doesn't work without lots of proprietary software.OSHWA certification requires that all software for using the hardware is open source. https://certification.oshwa.org/In demonstrated practice a developer skilled enough to replace proprietary software is skilled enough to reprogram an EEPROM, thus such "modification restriction" doesn't occur in practice.Why I, as a user, should need to get new hardware if I want to start using free software with it? The cost can be zero, but only if the hardware wasn't designed for RYF to start with.The pinephone is not RYF compliant because of how the Wifi+Bluetooth chipset doesn't work without hotloaded proprietary software, that is recommended to the user, same as nonfree autofocus software and I believe there are further issues.So you'd rather have all of that stuff in EEPROMs? Making the product worse and burying any chances for simple updates to any free software rewrites of them.would pass RYF if it wasn't for how that modem software is malicious.Malicious? How?

And still, it wouldn't have passed, because even though it's stored on NAND Flash (not EEPROM) on the modem module, you can update it from the main CPU, hence failing the "within which software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product" clause.RYF doesn't do anything to restrict anyone from building hardware that runs 100% free software - it rather encourages doing so.It may, but the last fully certified computer is ~15 years old, and only became such after 9 years of the actual release of the hardware. Nobody seems to be encouraged to build computers because of RYF. It's a shitty ass program that displays how inept the FSF has been when talking about the software-hardware interface.h

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tadpole slurper (aleums@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 13-Dec-2024 00:59:57 JST

tadpole slurper

The standard of the Compact Disc, established in 1982, is rigorously defined. If you want to make a CD player, you read a book, you implement its design specifications, and you can perfectly reproduce the audio on every existing CD. The standard was designed to perfectly encode all the audio signals within the range of human hearing. The discs themselves are portable, stand up well to use, and last a very long time without degrading. Being a digital format, they can easily be transferred to more modern digital storage and reproduced again on the other side of the world.

Compared to vinyl records, they are a little worse for long-term archival, but considerably cheaper to produce and store and are not subject to the infinite gradation of analog reproduction fidelity. Compared to audio files on flash memory, they are more expensive to produce and store, but significantly better for long-term storage with no difference in reproduction fidelity, and benefit from implementing an actual standard that obviates the need for interpretation by software.

It is possible that we could develop a physical audio standard to render the compact disc obsolete obsolete using the technology of flash memory, but we don't have one right now and it's unlikely that we'll see it within our lifetime. We have firmly left the era where companies are willing to invest the time and money to work together to develop a standard like that for physical media - the demand for it has dried up, so we are left with the last best format.

Before someone mentions it, I know that there is an argument to be made for the humble and oft-forgotten minidisc. But I, like many others, have never held a minidisc in my life and so cannot speak to it, and so it is beyond the scope of my writing.

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jonny (good kind) (jonny@neuromatch.social)'s status on Saturday, 23-Nov-2024 23:45:06 JST

jonny (good kind)

The dangers of the situation are obvious and real, but it matters that we remember that the world’s big platforms are steered not by shadowy forces, but by teams of gold-rush-addled dorks whose sometimes-well-meaning employees are stuck frantically LARPing world government on internal forum software.

It’s equally important to remember that the patterns we’ve experienced on mega-platforms are not the only way to do networks but the result of specific combinations of under-thinking and malign commercial pressures—and that the currently ascendant systems are not inevitably annihilating forces, but legal and financial constructs that can be brought to heel, forcibly reconfigured, or just replaced. Keeping these basic facts in mind is oddly difficult, because there’s so much money involved, and money is a spell for blurring the truth.

I think our failure to remember that the mega-platforms are just intentionally extractive constructs run by brainmelted but very human weirdos is a failure of accountability, but our failure to remember that it doesn’t have to be this way is a failure not only of imagination, but of nerve.

Great piece from @kissane
https://www.wrecka.ge/against-the-dark-forest/

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Aroop Roelofs :verified: (finlaydag33k@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Sep-2024 17:38:59 JST

Aroop Roelofs :verified:

in reply to

@SuperDicq Topics about say, how we should adapt laws/policies to be more favourable towards FOSS (or less favourable towards restrictive, proprietary software) or solving issues that affects the common person (like making software more accessible, interoperability etc.) could be interesting...
But it's highly likely it'll go towards things like gender politics, anti-government politics and alike instead, things that only affect people with a very specific view on things.
Just the "typical politics" as main course with a side of software.

It's honestly why I personally prefer to keep software and politics separate for the most part (unless, it affects the common person).

@drewdevault

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Walt :ani_clubtwit:🚀 (astralcomputing@twit.social)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Sep-2024 11:37:03 JST

Walt :ani_clubtwit:🚀

@futzle

Yes, that explains why I am the only one to ever find the "bug" that got by all the Alpha and Beta testing, and the release of the software.

It never fails. I touch it and I get a new "never seen before" error/crash.

🤖

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BeAware :fediverse: (beaware@social.beaware.live)'s status on Friday, 23-Aug-2024 09:40:41 JST

BeAware :fediverse:

A normal user would be quite shocked at the absolute lack of admin/moderation tools in the Mastodon software.

It's wild, it's basically "if you don't see it, it doesn't exist". As someone who's constantly worried about liability, this just does not work for a single user instance. I have nightmares about how bad it might be for a much bigger instance.😳

I hear Akkoma has decent tools, anyone can concur?

#Fedi #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastoAdmin #Akkoma

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