Oh man you missed the pinacle of Nokias phones. The possibilities of the N900 where endless back then. Emulators, IR Blaster, High Quality Camera (for back then), all the Linux software, free Wifi everywhere (Because everybody still used WEP and the N900 would crack the password in like 20 seconds) and so much more. The transreflective screen 800x480 worked incredibly well. Low power and still very good visibility, only in bright sunlight the colors were washed out. I always wondered why they never used this technology in modern devices.

Then the N9 which lacked some features, but was so handsome and user friendly. It had an OLED but also the Clear Black technology which prevented the screen from reflecting to much sunlight, making it readable in the sun even though it had much lower brightness than todays OLEDs.

Sadly all this was killed by Elop who came from Microsoft and tried to push Windows phone, slowly downgrading the amazing hardware till Nokias phone branch was dead.

Or the N900 which even had fluid animations and scrolling which this company still seems to struggle with

Kubuntu 8.04.

It was the last release with KDE 3 and very polished for its time. Many applications from back then have vanished by now. Kopete was Magic, supporting all IM protocols (Including Yahoo video calls!), Amarok was so reliable and sleek.

Of course most things have improved since then, but I remember it fondly.

With the German Pirate Party loosing its seat a strong voice against surveilance is lost.

They also supplied NGOs with information directly from the legislative process, allowing them to act faster (and sometimes you have to be very fast to comment on minor changes with great effect) I hope somebody else at least partly takes on this role.

Well there is the Stop Killing Games initiative started by Ross Scott and supported by the Pirate Parties. If they succeed, companies selling games in recent years will be required to either keep supporting their game or to make it available in a way so that others can ensure its continued support.

When this is achieved the step to free older games is small.

If you live in Europe you have the chance to support the movement by vote in the upcoming elections.

Soon there are European elections. Voting for the Pirate parties and getting other people to vote for them is a good way to stop this. They are fighting hard against this law. Especially Patrick Patrick Breyer of the German one. Anja Hirschel, who will follow him, will likely continue with the same vigor.

Donations are also a great way to support. Donate to the Pirates, EDRI, or local groups opposing this.

I use it on a Pixel 5 and even there it is fluid while browsing. Only on Youtube there is the slightest stutter for HD Videos. Heavy sites like Discourse fora or Cryptpad or such work flawlessly.

Maybe Kolibri OS?

Its an amazing project, booting from a single floppy disk into a full graphical OS with multiple tools. And that on PCs with almost no RAM.

I sometimes use it to backup ancient PCs.

Example from Networking Hardware:

Cisco has had multiple cases where they likely built exploits for Government spyware into their devices. And they have far to many vulnerabilities which are found. This leaves two options: Either their security is so bad that intelligence always has backdoors ready and governments shouldn’t use them, or at least some are backdoors built in accordance to NSA demands and goverments shouldn’t use them. https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/nsa-hack-exploit.html?m=1

On the other hand Huawei, far less security issues, even offered to open their code for checking of backdoors and to let goverments check all updates. They are shunned by western governments and partially even banned.

And where do maintainers for the new parts of systemd come from? The larger systemd grows the more parts of it will be neglected. Also in regard to people checking commits, opening up doors for exploits like the one in xz.

This is handled in the modem Firmware. Linux just has to supply “User has dialed number x, go into emergency mode” and then route the audio.

This is solved for all Linux phones as far as I know. From Openmoko over N900 till Librem 5.

In honesty I didn’t hear all his statements back then. Now from a quick search I can only find his Twitter:

„Natürlich kann es so gewesen sein, wie es @derspiegel annimmt. Es kann aber auch anders gewesen sein. Ich habe als Rechtsanwalt häufig erlebt, dass alles gegen A sprach, es war dann aber doch B.“

Which just says there should be more investigation before accusations are made. Asking for evidence. If you have a link to an interview or talk where he does as you said I would be interested to hear how he phrased it.

I want to point out one thing I have seen far to often in recent times: If a person or group of the left make a wrong statement others which previously followed them are quick to change their view and declare them as persona non grata. On the other hand we have the far right which spills out lies after lies and their followers are so used to it that even disproving them in multiple points does not touch their loyality in any way. I think we should focus more on welcoming people who try to do good thing. If they make a wrong step we should not shun them but try to show them why they did wrong. At least hey try to better themselves and you/we have a good chance to convince them of the better way.

See for example Snowden. He made the mistake to believe Russia would never invade Ukraine. An easy mistake if you have to live inside Russia propaganda machine. Upon realizing his error he was so struck by it, because he uses his social media reach to better the world and now trough a mistake he abused it for spreading propaganda, that he apologized and stopped tweeting for many months.

This is generally true, but there are also many notable exceptions. Here in Germany I could name:

• Gregor Gysi
  • Of the left Party
  • Always does what he thinks is best for the people
  • Many political opponents tried really hard to stick dirt on him and failed
• Nico Semsrott
  • Arguably not that long in politics
  • Took a stance against Martin Sonnenborn (who is the very popular leader of a satirical party) in an affair and is now without a party (Yes this makes it likely he will not be in the next parliament)
  • As far as I have seen votes always in favor of the people
• Patrick Breyer -Pirate Party
  • fights for digital freedom and privacy since decades
  • Always follows the pirate paradigm: transparency. He publishes all his meeting with lobbyists.
  • Helps to educate the public and discovered quite a few hidden legislative attempts to undermine privacy

Ivanti Connect Secure VPN

So its spreading via a closed source VPN software. Why should you even use that when there is great VPN software available on Linux which works reliable for decades?

Well of course you miss zero trust connections, multi-cloud readiness, award‑winning security and proven secure corporate access …

The point is, they already did. 99% of webservers run Linux. They are all out in the open and hackers love to get their hand on them as they are likely to have mailservers on them and they have a public IP so they can always be reached.

And most of them do not get hacked. And those that do mostly get hacked due to bad passwords or bad website code. I administer one and see the thousands of attacks running up against it daily (most are just attempts to log in with basic credentials). And of course I see the daily influx of updates from Linux.

If a new security flaw is seen, its often quite difficult to use. And with Linux somebody makes a patch before simple tool for hackers are out. With Microsoft products you wait till the next patch day, in the best case critical exploited bugs are patched in days. Also security flaws in closed source products are often easier to exploit and tools to use them are available fast. (Such flaws are often already discovered in open source products by third eyes and testers before they make it to production systems.)

Of course there are exceptions to the rule, like heartbleed. This was an easy to exploit flaw in an often used Linux service and it caused a big turmoil because many where to slow to patch their systems.

Also of course if Linux gets more popular on the desktop more software will be an attractive target for malicious actors and some software may get popular before many people take a look at the source code. But the situation will still be much better compared to closed source systems.

(Also of course more closed source software will be made for Linux then)

In this case shit software. For a secure conference software there should be no possibility for the user to accept invalid certificates.

The developer always has to plan with what we call a DAU in germany (Dümmster anzunehmender User = dumbest user possible), and even that user should have no possibility to accidentally share a secure conference. So as a developer I would: Lock the user to certificates and encryption keys I deem secure and hook into the low level OS functions to grab the screen and disable them to prevent accidental sharing via software like Anydesk and the like which the user forgot to close. This would even interrupt the functions of a simple trojan on the PC.

Of course a dedicated attacker with physical or admin access to the device could always break these. But then you have another big security breach.

An SSD really is the solution. You believe it just speeds up boot time, but it does speed up nearly everything else too.

Your Webpage? Your Browser loads it, stores new data into the cache and stalls while waiting for the HDD. Or it knows elements are in the cache and stalls waiting for them.

You click on the application menu? You PC tries to load 20 icons, tiny amounts of data an SSD has ready in a microsecond. Your HDD takes a full second because the seek between the 20 places where the icons are on the HDD takes so long.

I have some very old PCs I manage (mainly for relatives) and one couple uses a Core 2 Duo E6400 which should be quite similar to your PC. This PC is very usable for daily browsing with Ubuntu 22.04, boot time is about 25 seconds, then about 10 seconds to load up ebay. (I admit I optimized boot time quite a bit) The other PC they have is even slower than that, I just do not remember the exact CPU right now. That one is even used for old browser games similar to candy crush.

Of course it is not what I would use given the choice. I want to compile code in seconds, watch videos in glorious 4k and play a 3D game from time to time. But for them it works perfectly well, so well that they deny my offers to upgrade them

That’s the “neat” thing about the party and their voters: They are used to not base things on facts. So they write one thing into their party program and do the other thing or not, just like they want and they promise a third thing in conflict with the first two. E.g. according to their program oft 2023 the reforms they want would help the rich, but all their voters (which are poor on average) believe that their polices would help them.

Btw some crazy points from their program:

• Abolish any inheritance tax
• Set a total max for the amount of money you have to pay taxes for, so if you are rich earn more and don’t pay a cent!
• They went from “there is no climate change” to “climate change always happened, we have nothing to do with it, CO2 is a essential part of live, we should make more!”
• Stop all wind energy projects
• “Landwirtschaft: Mehr Wettbewerb. Weniger Subventionen” Which translates to “More competition and less subsidies for agriculture” and still they manage to claim the farmer protests for them.
• Kids born in Germany should not have a chance to German citizenship if the parents do not have it. Regardless if they live their whole live here.
• Ignore EU policies when convenient, reimplement border controls (or in other words, leave the EU)
• Strive for assimilation of migrants (Yes the use the word “Assimilation”)
• Only grant asylum to people which can fill job roles where there is a provable gap in demand and local workforce.
• Do not mention homosexuality in school
• Do not grant any abortion rights, force any consultant to persuade a pregnant women to keep the child.

And I could go on. I think its pretty obvious what kind of political party they are, even from their program. Sure they have some good points in there too, but so do other parties which are not far-right and science deniers.