not all change is progress
April 18, 2016
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00:01:19 News
00:47:58 Syncthing
01:06:45 Feedback
01:22:11 Maru OS
Convergence comes in different forms, but it seems that Maru OS hit the sweet spot for Joe. And had we been been unfairly dismissive of Syncthing in the past? There was only one way to find out. We also brought you all the news from around the FOSS world, and rummaged through our bulging sack of feedback.
00:01:19 News
The linux-stable
security tree project
LXD 2.0 has been released!
Open-Source
Processor Core Ready For IoT
The time that Tony Fadell sold me a container of hummus
Remix OS 2.0 now available for Nexus 9 and 10, brings multi-window & other features from PC version
WhatsApp’s
Signal Protocol integration is now complete
WhatsApp Rolls Out End-To-End Encryption to its Over One
Billion Users
Signal
Desktop beta now publicly available
The future of Firefox is … Chrome
U.S. newspapers threaten to sue Brave browser maker over
ad-blocking scheme
IAB Primer on Ad Blocking for Publishers Leans Toward Carrots
Over Sticks
Interpreting,
enforcing and changing the GNU GPL, as applied to combining
Linux and ZFS
Free
Software Foundation Issues Statement in Support of
Community’s ZFS Concerns
How
Should the Free Software Movement View the Linux
Foundation?
00:47:58 Syncthing
After a gentle nudge from several listeners, we took the latest version of Syncthing for a spin. It’s certainly come on in leaps and bounds functionality-wise since your Luddites last looked at it, but is that enough to make it a consumer-friendly piece of software?
01:06:45 Feedback
A huge thank you to David Laczko and an anonymous donor for joining our band of Monthly Supporters — we really do appreciate your support.
It would appear that talking about Microsoft still raises questions for some, and the hackles of others. Thanks to Floyd Wallace, Florian, Richard Walker and Bruce for your observations and comments.
And thanks to Dameon Carolls for again raising the issue of whether it is sufficient for parents to parent, or if we need a nanny state to protect the minds of our offspring. No prizes for guessing that we sided with Dameon, and thought that government should keep well out of it.
01:22:11 Maru OS
Still in beta, Maru OS is an Android ROM with a difference — it also gives you a fully functional and standard Linux desktop when you connect your phone to an external display. Joe and Jesse caught up with Preetam D’Souza, the lead developer of the project, to find out more.
Hey guys. I can’t believe you defended Brave so much, well maybe not defended but you didn’t have a go at them as I anticipated. The advertising companies are hardly the white knights here are they? But Brave seems like a parasitic company that adds very little to the whole deal. Removing adverts that make the content creators money, only to inject their (Brave’s) own ads… seems like extra scummy behaviour to me.
I enjoyed Paddy’s comments about Linux/ZFS/Canonical and the FSF/Software Conservancy. I hadn’t considered the social angle – if the SC were to fight Canonical and win, then ultimately FSF/SC would lose “developer mind share” since nobody outside the FSF really considers what Ubuntu is shipping to be a particularly bad thing. All this for ZFS too, which will probably turn out to require too much faffing and not be worth it anyway! ;-)
Yes there is a possibility that the zfs issue is entirely arrogance (re:Canonical). At the same time I appreciate your trying to see the other side, once the dust settles there will be some kind of resolution (or as stated, everyone will move on which is a resolution in itself). Either we can use two free, open, important,
Re: syncthing and awkwardness. Fair enough, but think about what you are doing. Allowing only the combinations of any number of devices anywhere in the world to constantly communicate and remain synchronized. I fall into the patient category, it seems to work quickly enough and present enough automatically for me. Another thing I Iike is that even though it still feels like early days, the development is really active and on 7 different devices inside multiple networks it already seems very smooth and powerful. It is not for your grandma, but well done with the reminder of what the original point was! Maybe it shows you too much (why would you not trust it because it is too open) because it is still a 0.1whatever version. I’m typing as I’m listening and I am coming to realize how well you guys are doing covering as many different sides of this as you possibly could, well done.
It’s nice that WhatsApp is providing secure messaging to such a large population, but what WhatsApp is not really comparable to GPG encrypted email. WhatsApp is a centralized, proprietary service with all users communicating with its servers. Email is a standardized protocol with many different implementations. For encrypted email to become widely used the relevant parties would need to agree to add it to the standard, and the problem of key exchange would need to be addressed. WhatsApp can change its protocol without anyone else’s approval and can host all users’ public keys on its servers. GPG tries to bolt encryption onto the side of the current email protocol, and that works okay if both parties take the time to set it up but is unlikely to see wide adoption on its own (Moxie Marlinspike also has other criticisms of it: https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/).
I agree with Joe that that Firefox story is clickbait. Probably the most noteworthy thing about it is that the changes to Firefox over the last couple of years make it plausible enough that Mozilla could drop Gecko for Electron that that headline could gain traction. It’s also a sign of where Firefox technology is relative to Google — behind. Even Mozilla does not want to use Gecko as a platform for prototyping a browser right now. If Mozilla’s roadmap is followed successfully, this situation should improve because they plan to modularize the browser UI from the components underneath. That’s why they’re deprecating XUL. It’s also necessary if they want to be able to swap Gecko for Servo at some point in the future.
Gentlemen,
A couple of comments:
First, as to the spelling of Demon as Daemon. The reason
seemed always apparent but to clarify I suggest you think
in the context of Socrates, Jaynes, and the bicameral
mind. After all, one metaphor of an OS is a multicameral
mind.
Second, Chrome over Firefox. If the IT gestapo came in
and made me dispose of one, I would dispose of Chrome
since die. It is not that Chrome isn’t a reasonable
browser but that it is unsuitable for serious “browsing”.
Overall it is rather too fragile and to9o easily broken
when compared to Firefox. Despite vigorous attempts by
Mozilla to cripple Firefox it is still a robust tool –
relatively – and not just a shiny utility. The popularity
of Chrome speaks more to the computer usage of the
multitudes rather than any rational movement. at least in
my analysis.
Film at Eleven.
Someone (*ahem*) posted a link on Slashdot to this episode:
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9221129&cid=52282305
Hope it’s accurate in its summary of the interview – was posted from memory of the episode.
Paddy really makes me laugh out loud pretty dang hard. His slipping into politics is so stinking funny. Thanks guys for your banter!
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