Notices by Leah Rowe is not a Rowebot (libreleah@mas.to)

I also have something very special planned for Canoeboot 25.06 RC1, that will make a lot of people very happy.

https://libreboot.org/news/revisions.html

This is the new Libreboot 2025 release schedule.

Libreboot 25.04 shall hereby be thought of as "RC0", retroactively, to the Libreboot 25.06 release.

I originally planned four releases each year from now on, at regular intervals: two testing releases and two stable releases.

This left testing releases lingering on rsync, which is silly.

To make the project more efficient, we will have RC releases, which later become stable releases.

*Libreboot 25.06 RC1 coming soon!*

my government says it's illegal for me to own a firearm, and illegal to carry a knife. so i don't own a gun and i don't own a knife.

murder is also illegal.

so far so good. i would never do any of these things.

maybe instead of the hypocrisy of then saying it's my duty to fight for my country - which it isn't - well

take switzerland for example. their people have guns. citizen militia. and a national policy of armed neutrality. and nobody messes with switzerland.

but i'd still say no to war

the only time you should ever use violence is if *your* life is at risk otherwise.

don't find someone elses fight. especially not the sanctimonious cowards that run your government.

i live in the uk, which is currently peaceful. if i were ever drafted into a war, i would refuse to fight. if necessary and if possible, i'd flee the country.

fighting a war and/or dying would be a serious distraction to my work. i would do everything in my power to make sure i get away, and live the life i want.

once you get past politics, you realise that anyone, from any country, is just normal. completely normal in every way, and usually rational.

it's governments that suck. not people.

apparently india and pakistan are at war.

why can't the world just fucking relax. we're all just human beings who want to go about our daily lives.

war only happens because people don't realise they have the power to put down their guns. any time. or turn it on their leaders, after theyy get sick of their leaders for making all their friends die.

war is bad. especially if the two countries at war have nukes.

war is selfish. when your government tells you to murder, it is your duty to say no.

Help needed on #libreboot IRC. If you have a *ThinkPad T480*, see:
https://libreboot.org/docs/build/

Build latest lbmk.git with it BUT BEFORE YOU BUILD, make this config change:

./mk -m coreboot t480_vfsp_16mb

Debug -> Compile debug code in Ada sources

Build:

./mk -b coreboot t480_vfsp_16mb

Flash, and boot with linux option: iomem=relaxed

Now, in lbmk:

make -C src/coreboot/default/util/cbmem

as root:

src/coreboot/default/util/cbmem/cbmem -1 1>cbmem.log 2>cbmem.err.log

give nic-Pi the .log files

Here is yet more example of the power of fe_ and fx_ functions in lbmk:

https://browse.libreboot.org/lbmk.git/commit/?id=5686f35e0f1522d45361f042adc135b5782eae32

Using them, I was able to reduce the size of the extract_intel_me_bruteforce() function in half. Reducing the sloccount by 18.

Doing this kind of programming in sh isn't all that common but lbmk does all kinds of weird hacks like this.

@blainsmith @r1w1s1 I sell Libreboot, and Libreboot accessories.

I've been on and off auditing lbmk (Libreboot's build system), greatly cleaning up the code.

I'm not really doing it today, but I devised this change while caffeinated, and after consuming cheese and crackers:

https://browse.libreboot.org/lbmk.git/commit/include/git.sh?id=e8be3fd1d41c3c0a81c2cfecb3fa68271ad794ca

This is how you write in sh.

fe_ and fx_ work around -exec limitations in find, for my use-case.

See fe_ and fx_ functions:

https://browse.libreboot.org/lbmk.git/tree/include/lib.sh?id=e8be3fd1d41c3c0a81c2cfecb3fa68271ad794ca#n146

With fx/fe, I recursively git-am many git patches into upstream sources while cloning the repo. *1 line of sh.*

(3/2) - because the numbers are never enough.

Only merge non-breaking changes into a new testing release branch after creation, right up to the release - but the testing branch can also contain a lot more feature changes and such, including board ports.

A stable release branch would *only* have bug fixes and security fixes in it, no new boards or features; the latter goes in master and in the next testing/release cycle.

Many projects use this release model, and it'l what I'll use from now on.

(2/2)

Stable releases will branch off of testing branches; 25.04_branch is testing.

25.06_branch therefore will branch off of 25.04_branch when ready, and 25.06 "rev0" (initial release) would be the first tagged commit in 25.06_branch.

However, the next testing branch will not branch off of stable; the "master" branch will always be a branchless development model as usual.

So. Master branch, and each testing release branches off of that, in turn later branching into a stable release branch.

https://libreboot.org/news/schedule.html

I published this a while ago and so far have adhered to it; Libreboot 25.04 came out in April as planned.

However, I've been thinking further how to implement it. I'll think more about it and issue an update on Libreboot later but basically the plan is this:

Every release gets a branch. 25.04 has the branch "25.04_branch"

Any "revision" update releases get tagged in that branch too, and build and uploaded.

(1/2)

And the weaker countries that have dictators heavily rely on friendship with China. A lot of them anyway. E.g. Vietnam and North Korea.

Destroy the Chinese Communist Party and the rest of the dominoes will fall.

And like, as soon as China gets democracy, the rest of the world can help it grow further. That promise is what Chinese must be told.

Chinagov would probably shut down the internet in panic. If our leaders had any guts they would have done this in the 1990s before China got any worse.

I say scrap all tariffs with all the democratic nations, the friendly ones, and just slap it on all the dictatorships. 300% tax.

But do this only if those countries also tariff China heavily. Use tax as a means to destabilise dictatorships, so that their economies shut down.

Tell all their citizens that if they overthrow their government and install democracy, the tariffs will be lifted.

Use tax to unseat dictators. That's how dictatorships fall; people have nothing left to lose so they coup.

Do we really want to help China get rich off of slave Labour, by not taxing imports of e.g. Temu products? Tariffs could be a force for good.

And I hate Trump in general. But perhaps he's doing the right thing, for the wrong reason, when it comes to China.

To my mind, taxing most Chinese products by 100 or even 200% seems like a good and noble thing to do. China is already politically unstable; making it poor really fast might encourage its people to overthrow the dictatorship that rules them.

You know, I've been thinking recently about the Trump tariffs. I think they're stupid, in general. The US would be better off scrapping all sales taxes and tariffs and replacing it with a federal VAT of, say, 8%, matching current average sales tax rates in the US. This would include import VAT.

VAT is better because everyone pays it, but businesses re-claim it. This removes a lot of overhead for auditors, narrowing the tax gap, raising more revenue.

But I'm morally torn, and I'll say why next:

@maxleibman No, I also don't want your in-store discount card. You don't need to know what I eat, thanks.

@lexbailey isn't that what microsoft got done for in antitrust cases when they didn't let you uninstall internet explorer on windows?

also, postmarketos ftw https://postmarketos.org/

@tuxlife probably change that -drive option. i just pasted you the command i use when i'm doing a quick u-boot test in libreboot. i check stuff in qemu first before checking hardware. it speeds up most testing.