Deutsche Telekom, Web.de and GMX launch "E-mail made in Germany" initiative - <AUTHOR> http://www.telekom.com/media/company/192834 <comment><USER2> Don't use any of these email providers. First up, they are not trustworthy, especially Deutsche Telekom. DT is the privatised former state-owned telco monopolist, with a gigantic share of userbase and partial ownership by the German federal state. Most likely, every intelligence agency, domestic or foreign, that is operating in Germany with sanction of the government will have access to anything on their servers.

Also there is Quellen-TKÜ, which means that every single one of the three gives access to their servers to German law enforcement. If I remember correctly, the Quellen-TKÜ law says that any online service provider that has more than X users (10k?) has to provide access to law enforcement in such a way that the provider operators themselves don't know about the individuall access operations.

<comment><AUTHOR> That isn't the point is it? The step forward here is that the comumunications between these providers is now encrypted by default and foreign entities such as the NSA will now have a harder job to do traffic and content analysis on German emails being sent to and from German nationals.

I don't have a problem with a German judge in a German court, granting a search warrant with reasonable grounds where all checks and balances are in place. I do have a problem with secret courts with secret laws and gag orders hiding this kind of thing from the public.

If foreign intelligence agencies are allegedly granted unhindered access to their servers then I see that as a scandal. Have you got any evidence to back up that claim?

<comment><USER2> In principle I agree with you and I think you are right considering what the police is allowed to do and what not. As far as I know, a judge still needs to sign a warrant for the police to do anything.

However...

[https://netzpolitik.org/2013/500-millionen- verbindungsdaten-...](https://netzpolitik.org/2013/500-millionen- verbindungsdaten-im-monat-bnd-betreibt-vorratsdatenspeicherung-durch-die- hintertur/)

I would be really surprised if the BND wasn't using that same access infrastructure (admittedly as supposition on my part). Combined with the story on how the BND protects our data by removing email addresses that end on .de, this again becomes worst case-ish. Now this is only metadata, but at least in the case of email, processing the metadata means having parsed the message. Since the infrastructure is supposed to be set up in such a way that they get it from the server of the provider, encrypting the communication with said provider is kind of useless, at least in regard to the NSA.

I'd also like to add that your comment makes an important point. Most people, including me, are quite OK with law enforcement operating under the rule of law within clear boundaries in this realm. But how do we get the intelligence community from hitchhiking on the law enforcement infrastructure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What they claim to do is basically what everybody is already doing. SSL between email servers can be considered standard, as well as SSL or at least StartTLS between client and server.

De-Mail is another thing which was introduced some years ago now. In short: Messages are encrypted on the client side, then decrypted on the server, then again encrypted and sent to the recipient where it is decrypted again...Imagine your post-office opening you mail before forwarding it to the recipient. Along with some other things no sane person would ever suggest to do with email, De-Mail is a complete farce...

TL;DR: I'm from Germany, and my opinion is that this is the most brutal kind of PR bullshit you can get...

<comment><USER4> Still better than having all your data traffic piped to the NSA. Don't forget that this pipe is _behind_ the SSL-Wall of Google. Being from Germany too, I'm seriously considering to move my mail account from GMail to Web.de. Already started moving my private Docs away from Google.

I like Google services and even before Snowden I was aware of the fact that international communication is watched by Secret agency. But really, why do they keep track of _everything_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Der Spiegel reported that Germany collaborated with the US very, very closely and even use XKeyScore. [1]

"The Americans provided the BfV with one of their most productive spying tools, a system called "XKeyscore." It's the same surveillance program that the NSA uses to capture a large share of the up to 500 million data sets from Germany, to which it has access each month, according to internal documents seen and reported on by SPIEGEL on the first of this month."

How is this anything but propaganda?

[1] [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german- intelligenc...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-intelligence- worked-closely-with-nsa-on-data-surveillance-a-912355.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Snake oil. Election day is coming, the conservative idiots in charge want some good press. The german interpretation of e-Mail (de-Mail) is utter bullshit. Encrypted e-Mail that is decrypted multiple times on its way, of course that will prevent the Government from reading my mail. NOT.

It seems that there are enough idiots in the world who are willing to reelect that treacherous pile of smelly shit impersonating a federal government at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see what a bunch of corporate entities have to do within election campaign. This is a response the the German publics concern that a foreign government is doing content analysis on emails within Germany. This makes it harder for the spooks down in Ramstein to analyse the traffic flowing between German consumers and German corporations, which is a damn good thing. This spying might also be (mis)used for corporate espionage as well.

It isn't going to stop a German police warrant or BND investigation requiring these companies to hand over your emails, and the EU data retention polices are still in place, but it does stop the foreign spooks sticking their noses in where it isn't wanted. DE-MAIL, is as you say, bullshit, but that isn't why this is really about.

I know that from my GMX account I can email someone on a Web.de account, and even if the Internet decides to route my email over the Atlantic first or through Frankfurt where I hazard a guess the NSA will be doing they optical splitting, it doesn't matter.

If they want to read my emails they have to brute force that or have a copy of the keys.

This is a small, but great step forward in my opinion.

<comment><USER7> Maybe I'm missing something, but .. what do you think is _new_ about this 'made in Germany' mails here?

Using TLS for smtp (which seems to be what you're referring to for the 'route over the Atlantic' thing)?

Using TLS for submission/the client? Every respectable site and certainly every web mail client that isn't utterly broken offers https / TLS already.

I see nothing but a stupid media campaign and fishing for scared and clueless end users that read about this in their favorite tabloid. A.k.a. the BILD/Computer BILD target crowd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > " For security reasons, from the beginning of 2014 the initiative partners > will only transport SSL-encrypted e-mails to ensure that data traffic over > all of their transmission paths is secure."

That's the most significant part of this announcement-- it means there's finally a push to phase out plaintext email transport, which allows passive surveillance to intercept mail.

<comment><USER9> Yes, because there is no reason to believe that the german government has any interest in the active surveillance of digital communications.

/* sarcasm */

<comment><USER8> I am not saying that this specific service is good for the privacy of their users. I am saying that this move, phasing out non-SSL email, will _force_ the rest of the world to add SSL to outgoing email connections, thereby protecting all email worldwide from passive interception.

Right now, I think about 75% of email traffic is encrypted between sender and recipient, so this would protect that remaining 25%. (Percentages _greatly_ dependent on who and where you measure.)

<comment><USER10> I agree with that view. I think this is largely a bit of opportunist advertising, but also that this specific measure is actually useful. Like with more companies moving towards HTTPS-by-default, it's useful in cutting down the number of places where things can be easily intercepted. Even cutting down the number of places where _non-government_ parties can intercept something is useful, because: 1) that's in itself good for privacy; and 2) non-government parties are a major source of government information, because some of them voluntarily turn over or sell the information to governments, and others end up being forced to hand it over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If this was implemented correctly, it would keep non-German governments from being able to snoop on German emails. If Germany does not snoop on Germans without a warrant, this would actually be a good thing for Germans. If European has data protection laws that prohibit snooping on foreign people without a warrant, this would actually be a good thing for everyone.

A lot of ifs that need to be answered. But this could be a good thing.

<comment><USER12> Until the recent revelations about the NSA, we also believed (perhaps naively) that the U.S. had data protection laws that prohibited spying on citizens without a warrant. It may be just a matter of time before we find out that Germany has murky laws and secret courts that disregard fundamental legal principles just like the U.S. does, or that the German intelligence agencies work closely with the NSA. So if I really wanted secure e-mail, the only thing I could really trust at this point would be to encrypt my message on my own machine using a transparent, open source program like PGP. Once you rely on a third party to encrypt your e-mail for you (or even to provide you with encryption software), you're vulnerable to their being strong-armed by a government to give up your data.

<comment><USER13> > Until the recent revelations about the NSA, we also believed (perhaps > naively) that the U.S. had data protection laws that prohibited spying on > citizens without a warrant.

If people believed that email that a person didn't host themselves was protected, it was only because they were lazy and didn't so much as Google the laws in question.

The reason we keep telling you that the NSA behavior is probably legal isn't because we _want_ it to be legal, it's because we want you to stop living in a fantasyland ;). Look at ECPA for instance, it's been around since 1986. CALEA has been around since 1994.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are they seriously talking about enforcing TLS on all SMTP? That would break deliverability to a lot of servers, but would be pretty awesome. I assume it wouldn't actually check certs in any meaningful way, though, so only protecting from passive eavesdropping, but it's a big positive step.

I'm increasingly tempted to throw that switch myself, or at least start filtering all my non-TLS'd mail into a special mailbox of "figure out if I actually care if these people become unreachable in 6mo when I actually enforce TLS." Arguably it would be worse to accept the message and then bounce it, since you'd have received the text in the clear, but maybe log and send an informative-to-end-user rejection notice based on envelope, and to me?

<comment><USER15> You would configure your email server to reject the two following cases:

Case 1: SMTP client that knows nothing about TLS

      S: 220 server.example ESMTP Greetings!
      C: HELO host.example
      S: 550 TLS only, thanks!

Case 2: ESMTP client that knows nothing about TLS

      S: 220 server.example ESMTP Greetings!
      C: EHLO host.example
      S: 250-STARTTLS
      C: MAIL FROM: firstname.lastname@example.com
      S: 550 TLS only, thanks!

Sadly, a client that refuses to attempt TLS negotiation will always leak the sender address of the message it wants to send you. This happens in many protocols when TLS is bolted on as an afterthought. We're actually worse off using the standardized TLS extension to SMTP here than we are with the non- standardized SSL: a connection to port 465, followed by immediate SSL negotiation won't leak anything to a passive eavesdropper.

This only gets you so far however. An active attacker can MITM the connection with ease, since there is no convention for how to verify an SMTP peer's certificate. I don't see this changing until DNSSEC is deployed in every domain you correspond with, and the peer's certificate is somehow authenticated with information from their DNS zone.

Aside: for a protocol that is designed even worse than SMTP with regards to leaking information over insecure channels, look at IMAP:

      S: * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE IDLE STARTTLS LOGINDISABLED] Dovecot ready.
      C: 0 login user@example hunter12
      S: BAD [ALERT] Plaintext authentication not allowed without SSL/TLS, but your client did it anyway. If anyone was listening, the password was exposed.
      S: 0 NO [PRIVACYREQUIRED] Plaintext authentication disallowed on non-secure (SSL/TLS) connections.

The stupid protocol design results in the client transmitting the user's credentials in plain text as soon as it connects to the server.

<comment><USER14> There was the IMAPS (separate port, ssl negotiation first) vs. IMAP + STARTTLS.

I'm also relatively ok with "only run imap (with tls) over a vpn, with the vpn having an endpoint on a network very close to the imap server, or on the imap server". Not really viable for SMTP inter-domain.

I wish Free S/WAN and the idea opportunistic encryption for IPSec hadn't failed to get OE widely deployed at the IP layer. Seeing who connects where, sizes of data flows back and forth, etc. would _also_ leak information to a global passive observer, of course, but a lot less, and padding/cover traffic would be viable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Privacy-Shrivacy Bollocks. Many here do not get the point. US having intimate information of a foreign populace is akin to having an extra weapon in their arsenal. In today's world data is the new gunpowder. If you have insight(I mean really really know) into what a foreign country would buy/sell you can have an upper hand in trade negotiations. This is not some prudish step to prevent Uncle Sam to look into your private details. This is all out cold war. Diplomats across the world are talking about one thing today: Nullifying the U.S advantage. I guess China foresaw it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Foreign leaders woke up one day to find that the US now has deep spy penetration into their local populace.

Oops. Huge national security fail.

They haven't said much publicly, but behind closed doors they're scrambling to figure out how to get their pants back up.

This is only the very beginning of a huge shift that most of the US is blind to or in denial about.

All around the world, in government offices and in business board rooms, leaders are trying to figure out how to get off the US cloud.

The US cloud has been compromised and that trust just isn't coming back.

The barrier now is not political will, but a lack of local tech talent that can build viable alternatives to the US cloud services.

Many countries are kicking themselves now for not growing/poaching tech talent more aggressively.

Interesting times when having good web developers is a big national security asset.

You'll see the more tech rich countries move first. It's no surprise Germany's a first mover here.

Of course, with any big disruption there will be winners and losers.

Who the losers will be is obvious - US cloud companies.

Sure, they'll still have the US market (which is huge), but international markets will start drying up.

Skeptical? Google is hearing a huge sucking sound of money evaporating from Germany right now. Google's so big, they may not notice a few million yet, but I assure you, they will notice eventually. Karmic justice for short- sightedness in not out-lobbying the big defense contractors in Congress.

What's comical is how cheap it would be to out-lobby the defense contractors: [http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=D](http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=D)

The top contributing defense contractor (Northrop Grumman) only gave about $3 million last year. I'm sure they paid more than that for actual lobbyists, etc, but it's still not even petty cash at Google.

Of course, I don't mean to pick only on Google. There are many multi-multi- billion dollar cloud companies in the US that have been easily out-lobbied by the defense industry.

It would have been pennies compared to what they'll ultimately lose in the drying-up international markets.

So, who will be the winners? While security companies will see a boon, it's the open source companies that I think will see the biggest win.

With open, auditable code, countries can set up their own services. Of course, they'll need support and training and that's where the open source companies really shine.

It's important to remember that the goal for these countries will rarely be fool-proof privacy for each individual citizen. Instead, the goal is to prevent a foreign power from having deep intimate access to every detail of your populace.

Granted, many of these countries will use this transition to just spy on their own citizens. However, other countries will have a good functioning democracy and a citizenry that values privacy and will avoid those abuses.

For those countries that have robust protections and engender international trust, they'll have a big business advantage when it comes to foreign consumers.

<comment><USER18> _Sure, they 'll still have the US market_

Why? Do US citizens not like privacy?

<comment><USER19> US Citizens have some (reasonable) expectation they won't be spied on without some cause. They may even get back to that situation eventually through legal challenges against the supra-legal shit going on.

The rest of us, well, we were always subject to this oversight and it won't change. We just didn't have our noses rubbed in it very often and US media don't give a damn. I expect Chinese companies are just as paranoid about data flowing through the US as the US are about their data being in China.

It's a timely reminder for us all. Remember that putting your data elsewhere doesn't mean anything if (a) it transits the US unencrypted or (b) the parent company is US owned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm having trouble seeing how this will work. They say:

      > Data are encrypted directly by the provider, ...

and they also say:

      > automatically encrypt data over all transmission paths

If it's done by the provider, how does the data get from my machine to their machine to be encrypted?

<comment><USER21> In their eyes your machine is their webmail interface which runs of course in the "cloud".

<comment><USER20> No matter how I try to parse that it doesn't seem to make sense, neither as a straight reply, nor as satire/joke/irony.

Can you elaborate? Sorry if I'm being thick ...

<comment><USER22> They assume that you write your email on their web interface, to which you connect over https. and when they send your mail to anotjer server, they do so over a ssl encryption.

of course, if you use an email application, you can enable/disble ssl/tls if you wish to do so.

<comment><USER20> Ah, so I'd have to use webmail. I guess that makes sense, but it makes it impossible for my use cases.

Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As many commenters here say, it isn't inherently more secure than a US-based service. It _may_ be more socially secure, if the warrant system in Germany is more specific than our general system of warrants to spy on everyone foreign or domestic.

However, there's a good reason for German citizens to prefer German services: it takes _money_ away from American service. _Money_ is the only voice that will ever fix this.

So I ask every non-US citizen: please, take your money elsewhere. Please.

</comment><comment><USER24> It seems like a noble move but as a german i know these companies pretty well and i am very sure they only do this to stop german users wandering off to non-german email providers like gmail. Its still a good thing of course, but dont think they do this because they feel its the right thing todo.

Heck, if they could they would even charge extra for it.

</comment><comment><USER25> All you need to know about this. Aka: response of the German Chaos Computer Club (in German): [http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2013/sommermaerchen](http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2013/sommermaerchen)

</comment><comment><USER26> Next France telecom will announce minitel v2.0 for french "courriel"

and the uk will revert to OSI based email using dialcom software - "just don't tell anyone about the Level 7 accounts"

</comment><comment><USER27> I have both gmail and GMX and to be honest if "the email made in Germany" will be the same as GMX I will gladly offer my data to NSA and stay with gmail.

In other words this whole debate about security will pass and 95% of people will forget or become ignorant so unless they create a service people actually want to use this is just a waste of money.

From my experience gmx totally don't get it and if you become their user they will eventually piss you off to the point when you will run towards NSA just to use something like gmail.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Data are encrypted directly by the provider, which means customers need no > specific technical know-how and incur no extra costs. All data are stored in > secure data centers located in Germany.

Not sure how this is the solution. People need to learn how to do encryption themselves. For the average John Doe (or Hans Wurst :-)) there need to be tools to accomplish that without a degree in Math or CS.

I don't think provider-side encryption is a solution at all. Collecting vast amounts of meta data would still be possible.

</comment><comment><USER29> Telekom has actually been selling their own cloud services with "German privacy laws/not hosted in the US" before the NSA stuff. It was a very noteable point of emphasis for them when selling to small/midsized corporations so I'm not surprised they are all over this.

They are a pretty crappy company in general (imo) but they got this right very early. And by got this right I mean that they are using it for marketing/sales. I mean yay SSL but German mail providers tend to be...meh

</comment><comment><USER30> That is why you would use such an E-Mail service:

"I don't have a problem with a German judge in a German court, granting a search warrant with reasonable grounds where all checks and balances are in place. I do have a problem with secret courts with secret laws and gag orders hiding this kind of thing from the public."

Take it with a little salt anyways, there is always the possibility for American services to get Access on your Data for example if they had an Employee in any of the German companys.

<comment><USER31> ... or if they just ask the BND.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> They use us-based "cloud" anti virus scanner in this system. They decrypt it for scanning them. It's ridiculous stupid. No end-to-end encryption. Thats all marketing bullshit.

Think about it. In the "De-Mail" system are all sender verified. Thats means that i can kick spammer easily out. Why would they decrypt it for scanning? Bingo! Surveillance.

But this is just that what i think. I have written an comment on there blog and i'm exited what they say.

</comment><comment><USER33> One very interesting tidbit - regardless that this is simply some PR stunt at exactly the right time - according to a renowned german news magazine Die Zeit, two of the founders of Narus, which helped develop the PRISM technology, are now working for the Deutsche Telekom. Go figure!

Source: [http://www.zeit.de/2013/33/nsa-spionage-industrie- profiteure](http://www.zeit.de/2013/33/nsa-spionage-industrie-profiteure)

</comment><comment><USER34> It's a trap! [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_Complex](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_Complex)

<comment><USER12> Translated from German (via Google Translate), the first paragraph reads:

 _The so-called Dagger Complex ... is a base of military intelligence services of the United States in Darmstadt at the district border to the town of Griesheim. It is located at the south of the former way Eberstädter August Euler airfield. It is believed that the secret services operate in the United States spy here._

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> \- Automatic encryption of data over all transmission paths

\- Secure data storage in Germany as a reputable location

\- Designation of secure e-mail addresses

<comment><USER35> reputable location - whatever reputable means...

It´s funny that web.de is also on board. If you have a look at the business model of web.de, they are always trying to get they users automatically locked into an overpriced subscription model after the free trial period ends.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that better than worse than the Google model?

<comment><USER35> what do you mean by the google model?

<comment><AUTHOR> You 'pay' through your private emails being scanned, analysed and the advertised to. With Web.de you pay a subscription fee.

<comment><USER35> yes, you pay a subscription fee, but this does not automatically mean that you are getting scanned.

I am hove no problem with subscription fees. I have a problem within companies who try to push they clients into subscription through some kind of free trials which then get automatically converted into yearly contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think the best we can hope for the future of the web is that there will be reliable service providers in many different legal jurisdictions so that users can make a political calculation as to which government they can trust with their information. And that transport encryption remains trustable.

</comment><comment><USER37> "secure" means secure from the US, not from Germany...

Doesn't actually mean "secure".

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, if Telekom is on the case, the US has nothing to fear.

</comment><comment><USER38> It seems to me that NSA is working directly against the interests of American technology companies. Ironic. I think this is going to be remembered as the high-water mark of American Social Media.

I grew up in Michigan and well remember the demise of the auto-industry. They had a good thing going, and thought it could never end. People grew complacent.

There is no guarantee that American technology business will continue to dominate. Eric Schmidt's "you have no privacy" attitude was both arrogant and short-sighted. We've needlessly shot ourselves in the foot.

<comment><USER39> There's a big gap between the philosophies of "Everything is public by default" and "Secretly giving all of your private communications to the NSA". The former is utopian, though naive. The latter is just old school tyranny.

<comment><USER13> And what if the actual truth really _is_ somewhere in that big gap you mentioned? Even PRISM doesn't give _all_ @gmail.com to NSA after all.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the end goal is exactly that. Sigint is about getting everything.

<comment><USER13> Certainly it would be easier, but even NSA doesn't have enough hard drives to store all of GMail, Outlook.com, Skype, etc.

Some selectivity is required for them to do analysis, for the same reason we would run "grep foo <star>.cpp" instead of "find / -name '<star>.cpp' -exec grep foo {} \;"

<comment><USER40> > Certainly it would be easier, but even NSA doesn't have enough hard drives > to store all of GMail, Outlook.com, Skype, etc.

Actually, that's an interesting point. I don't bother keeping copies of television series I've downloaded and watched laying about on my disk, because I know I can just go and retrieve them from the internet again if-and-when I want to watch them. In effect, I'm using the internet as a large, slow (but reliable!) disk.

The parallel being, I don't see why the NSA would bother to build its own datacenters for storing data. Google's, Apple's, Microsoft's, whoever's datacenters, _are_ the NSA's datacenters. They don't have to retain information themselves; they just have to send a FISA notice to these companies telling _them_ to retain the information, indefinitely, until the NSA has need of it.

<comment><USER13> > The parallel being, I don't see why the NSA would bother to build its own > datacenters for storing data. Google's, Apple's, Microsoft's, whoever's > datacenters, are the NSA's datacenters. They don't have to retain > information themselves; they just have to send a FISA notice to these > companies telling them to retain the information, indefinitely, until the > NSA has need of it.

That's something I noted when this all blew up, was that simply keeping the NSA from getting the data was not good enough, as they could simply compel the phone company (or whoever) to hold onto it, and that we needed to be ready for something like this to be close to the "new normal".

However it could still be better to go this route, in that even though the NSA can get metadata on everyone that's 3 hops or thereabouts away from the phone company, that's still not a huge mass of data. And the phone company could notice if there was a large number of requests being made, do random audits to verify that NSA's Compliance office approved that given search, etc.

But then you would have to ensure those in the phone company with access to the logs for that program _themselves_ have security clearances since they would in a very real sense be monitoring the progress of national security investigations (imagine if you had a sysadmin that was an AQ sympathizer noticing the NSA has penetrated a terror cell and he manages to tip off the cell in time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Call it Stasi-Email</comment>


Breaking "128-bit Secure" Supersingular Binary Curves [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.3668v2

<comment><AUTHOR> Press release from the university:

[http://actu.epfl.ch/news/epfl-researchers-crack- unassailable...](http://actu.epfl.ch/news/epfl-researchers-crack-unassailable- encryption-alg/)

Paper abstract:

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.3668](http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.3668)</comment>


Out-of-band SSH fingerprint verification - <AUTHOR> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4255

<comment><USER2> I use it and I think all servers should have this entry. It's security must.</comment>


FreeCAD on Raspberry Pi 4 - <AUTHOR> https://scruss.com/blog/2020/02/16/freecad-on-raspberry-pi-4/ <comment><USER2> Hi all, I'm the FreeCAD Debian package maintainer. I just wanted to touch on the "complex technical reasons" portion. Broadly speaking, it's an interaction with our scenegraph library Coin [1] and Qt 4/Qt 5--things work with Qt 4 on ARM, but crash with Qt 5, which is now the default build configuration in Debian due to Qt 4 removal. The full troubleshooting thread is on the FreeCAD forums. [2] That bug is an outstanding issue and blocks Qt 5 support on ARM, so if anyone wants to be heroic feel free to go digging there and look for a fix. The above post presents the instructions for a Python 2, Qt 4 build, but it's also possible, with the most recent versions of several packages plus a rebuild, to have a Python 3, Qt 4 build.

Since it seems like there's a good demand for FreeCAD on ARM between Raspberry Pis and even the new Pinebook Pro, and there's now opportunity with our recent DigitalOcean infrastructure sponsorship [3], I think I'm going to start up an apt repository soon for ARM packages, at, say, apt.freecad.io. That way I can provide the dependencies for Python 3 builds, plus FreeCAD itself in Python 2 & 3 flavors of 0.18.4 stable, and eventually daily builds as well. This is in addition to the PPA [4] which could provide ARM packages for Ubuntu on the Pi/PBP, but I mostly have those architectures disabled currently.

[1] [https://github.com/coin3d/coin/](https://github.com/coin3d/coin/)

[2] [https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=37458](https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=37458)

[3] [https://www.kwk.systems/blog/posts/november-and-december- upd...](https://www.kwk.systems/blog/posts/november-and-december-update-for- freecad-debian-science/#freecad-sysadmin-woes-begone-digitalocean-sponsorship)

[4] [https://launchpad.net/~freecad- maintainers](https://launchpad.net/~freecad-maintainers)

<comment><USER3> FWIW, I've been using Freecad 0.18 on a Nano Pi M4 (64-bit ARM) installed from the standard Debian 10 repository of Armbian for the past several weeks with zero problems.

<comment><USER2> Oh, that's interesting! Do you happen to know if you're using OpenGL ES? (You can e.g. `dpkg -l | grep gles`.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey - I wrote this article. Kind of surprised how popular it is; think I've had more hits today than I had all of last year.

To me, the 4 GB Raspberry Pi 4 is quite an acceptable desktop. Yes, I could have a Pinebook, but they don't have the support community.

I wrote about FreeCAD because the charity I work for — Makers Making Change [1] — makes open source 3d printed assistive tech to empower people with disabilities. We're always looking for free CAD solutions, and to get FreeCAD running well on a Raspberry Pi 4 was too good to miss.

I'm trying to get as many of our designs usable in free software as possible. Up to now, I've been a pretty solid OpenSCAD user. It's good, but not perfect: it's possible to generate non-manifold volumes even if you do the right thing all the way through.

[1] [https://www.makersmakingchange.com/](https://www.makersmakingchange.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's amusing to see people trying to make the Raspberry PI into a desktop computer. It's basically a tablet chip on a breakout board. You can buy a Pinebook ARM laptop for $100. By the time you've added a case, a keyboard, a screen, a battery, and a power supply to a Raspberry Pi, you're over $100 anyway.

<comment><USER6> Don't assume everything you see is financially motivated. Some people extract greater value in tinkering than the extra pennies they save by having someone do the tinkering for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use FreeCAD with the ship design/testing module and it makes my (beefy) desktop warm up the room a bit. I suspect that you could use the Pi 4 for drawing (to some limit) just fine but if you're calculating a lot of splines and then displacement, I really doubt you'd want to wait for the results (if there was enough memory to finish).

<comment><USER8> Been trying out FreeCAD recently (0.19 development), but there seems to be a lack of coherent story about "how to put more than 1 part into an assembly".

eg the Part and PartDesign workbenches seem ok, but there seems to be no stable way of assembling multiple parts together.

Instead, there seem to be several _competing_ assembly modules, all incompatible with each other. And none of which are stable.

So, when I create a part intended to be a reference design, I can't use it in _any_ assembly as it'll then be incompatible with every other one.

How do you do things with FreeCAD, as the above assembly problem seems like a complete blocker for any real world use? :(

<comment><USER9> I tend to just manually position the bodies to see if parts look like they will fit together properly. You can reduce opacity (right click a body in the tree view, appearance..., drag the slider) to see how things fit internally. Obviously this is impractical for larger projects with more parts.

I believe "Assembly4" is the most advanced assembly workbench but I've never tried it, I'd be interested in hearing from someone who has.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. :)

Yeah, I've tried both A2+ (A2plus) and Assembly4. Both seem to work ok for at least basic things.

However Assembly4 _requires_ attachment points to be defined in the source parts instead of just storing the attachment info in an Assembly file.

That means source parts will have Assembly4 stuff added to them, ruining their re-use (eg with external people) unless they're also using Assembly4 exclusively.

It's really unfortunate, as I wanted FreeCAD to be useful for publishing reference designs people could use even (say) 10+ years in the future. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've tried to learn FreeCAD on a few occasions, but I just don't get it. I guess I'm spoiled with OpenSCAD, which actually makes sense to my programmer brain.

<comment><USER11> FreeCAD generally feels more like a traditional CAD program to me. I'd use OpenSCAD, but can't for my application: OpenSCAD fundamentally uses imprecise shape approximations. You draw a sphere but get a high-poly ball, sorta like raster vs vector in 2D imagery. This is fine for a lot of applications, but I want to CNC large, smooth undulating surfaces. The best way to get into my CNC (Shopbot PRS alpha) is via Fusion 360, and Fusion 360 barfs tremendously quickly with those high-poly shapes unless you get the actual (mathematical, "vector") shapes in with a format like IGES or STEP.

OpenSCAD is _awesome_ for targeting 3D printers, though.

<comment><USER12> OpenSCAD will barf quickly on high poly shapes too. Try asking it to render a 1000x1000 point surface some time. That's not even a particularly crazy level of detail if your 3D printer is reasonably large.

Hint: 32GB of memory is not enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know the RPi4 is more powerful than previous iterations but don't CAD programs generally require pretty beefy CPU/GPU hardware?

I was sort of hoping this post would at least mention in passing the complexity of assembly that is possible on this hardware.

<comment><USER14> The original release of FreeCAD was in 2002. The RPi4 will handily outclass anything anybody was running it on at the time.

You have to stay in the limitations you have, but that's true on any system and always has been.

<comment><USER15> Still wondering what the use case is...I just can't see what advantage the pi would have over using FreeCAD on any typical desktop or any laptop...

I guess education? Especially given the pi is very cheap and can be used for all sorts of other things?

<comment><USER14> I think that would be it, yes. There's a lot of people for whom giving them a ~$50-100 "computer" that blows away anything I had in 2010 is still a good thing. The more real tools and programs you can get running on that, the better off they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And here is _@scruss_ ' tweet[0]

[0] [https://twitter.com/scruss/status/1229070234990108676](https://twitter.com/scruss/status/1229070234990108676)</comment>


You're a criminal - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111118/15154416820/aaron-de-oliveiras-favorite-techdirt-posts-week.shtml

<comment><USER2> Well, at least if this passes, I'll be able to jokingly tell friends and coworkers "Congrats, you just committed a felony!" whenever they enter something inaccurate in a profile. And when they chuckle, I can take the smile off my face, and tell them, dead-pan, "I'm not kidding. You're a felon. Here's why."

</comment><comment><USER3> I was under the impression that doing something against the terms of service was a breach of contract. This article now implies that term of service are more than that. Anyone can clarify?

<comment><USER4> From an earlier article, someone at DOJ called for a law to be passed to make it a crime to do something against the terms of service. It hasn't happened yet. [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111117/02375716801/doj- tw...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111117/02375716801/doj-two-step-it- should-be-criminal-offense-to-lie-about-your-age-facebook-we-probably-wont-go- after-you-it.shtml)</comment></comment>


On Hiding our Underwear with Annotations in the Recess Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.recessframework.org/page/on-hiding-our-dick-tracy-underwear-under-annotations <comment><USER2> Annotations are one of the more ridiculous language syntax styles to emerge. The Java version is particularly ugly. Scala's version is weird too. In general they are mixing a different language syntax in for attributes of methods (or even more ridiculously, classes). I suppose that adding attributes to methods was a missing feature, but I see no reason not to solve it by mixing another syntax into a language. The addition of the <i>throws</i> clause to a method definition is a good example of adding metadata without adding another language into the language.

The article has a nice description of changes to PHP binding in 5.3...</comment>


Graph Visualization for Apache log files - <AUTHOR> http://www.burlaca.com/2009/01/graph-visualization-apache-logs/

<comment><USER2> this is awesome. fun, and at first glance reveals interesting data (though not more than analytics, which is actually a good way to check validity).</comment>


Microsoft Windows 7 tool rips off open source code, says blogger - <AUTHOR> http://news.techworld.com/operating-systems/3206091/microsoft-windows-7-tool-rips-off-open-source-code-says-blogger/ <comment><USER2> Also reported here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=934645></comment>


Justin Kan victim of hate crime - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2015/08/16/justin-kan-founder-of-justin-tv-and-twitch-victim-of-hate-crime/

<comment><USER2> I was visiting with some friends there, and when I left I stopped to have a cigarette, turned around and saw that on the garage. I was shocked.. It's so awful. I took a picture and sent it to my friend, who forwarded it to Justin. I was relieved to see that he has a sense of humor about this, but it's completely unacceptable and I really hope they catch the guy.</comment>


Google Chrome 2.0 - Fast but lacking features - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=4404 <comment><USER2> _"For Mac and Linux users, there's still no Google Chrome for you."_

You can grab the latest nighly build for OS X here: <http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/sub-rel-mac/>

It works pretty well and the UI is great. However, there are still some features missing, like the ability to delete bookmarks.

<comment><USER3> I follow the development of Mac Chrome Pretty Closely. Here is a list of what works and what doesn't as of build 16630. Keeping track of this at [http://www.manu-j.com/blog/download-updated-native-google- ch...](http://www.manu-j.com/blog/download-updated-native-google-chrome-for- mac-os-x/230/)

What Works

        * Almost all websites
        * Bookmark pages
        * Most visited sites
        * Open link in new tab
        * Open new tabs
        * Omnibox
        * Back, Forward, Reload
        * Open link in new window
        * Drag a tab to make a window
        * Launch new tab
        * Cut, Copy, Paste
        * Keyboard shortcuts
        * about:version, about:dns, about:crash, about:histograms
        * Find in page
        * History with search
        * Form Fill
        * Delete Thumbnail in New Tab Page
        * Window Positions Remembered
        * View Source  with synatx highlighting and clickable links

What Doesn't Work

        * Open link in new tab Rev 13759
        * Plugins (No flash -> No youtube)
        * History Rev 16050
        * Omnibox Rev 13759
        * Bookmarks Bar
        * Find Rev 16050
        * Print
        * about:network, about:memory
        * Web Inspector
        * Input methods such as Kotoeri (Japanese)
        * Preferences (Partial implementation)
        * Full Screen Browsin

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been using Google Chrome on Linux since about a month ago. I installed it so I could test JavaScript programming with it as well. As Google Chrome was still a very work-in-progress (it still is though has improved a lot) at the time I also built a WebKit nightly to test JavaScript with a WebKit process. Since about two weeks ago I have stopped using the WebKit standalone process to test things as Google Chrome is not crashing and considering its roughness it is working well enough for testing JavaScript at least. ;-)

It is super important to have Google Chrome supported on Linux as well as it is going to make it all the more cross-platform and help with getting WebKit quality installs everywhere so we all can share some common ground.

That said, when I am on Windows, Google Chrome is my preferred browser. Despite being unfinished, the Linux version is coming along nicely and it's always open right beside Firefox for me. Opera never enjoyed that status for me however many features it came with. As a matter of fact, programming JavaScript with Opera has been a little awkward when comparing the same code that works OK with Firefox and WebKit and does not quite work with Opera.

I appreciate the Linux version, Google! Thanks! :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been using Chrome almost exclusively for about 3 months now. I do miss the rich selection of Firefox extensions, but the upside is that the core functionality feels so fast and reliable that my overall browsing experience is much better. And I'm using the Dev track, so 'fast and reliable' _includes_ the expected hiccups you encounter with a weekly development build.

Yes, it's imperfect (#1 annoyance: too few configuration options), and yes I think they need to do more to speed up the extension development. But I do love the fact that a page can blow up or die without taking the whole browser down, and that load/new incidence times are close to zero.

</comment><comment><USER6> How is comparing Google Chrome 2, Safari 4 beta, and Firefox 3.0.10 fair? Firefox 3.5 or 3.6 should have been tested instead.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can not use Chrome as my browser until they get with the times and include mouse gestures.

</comment><comment><USER8> >"For Mac and Linux users, there's still no Google Chrome for you."

And this is when I stopped reading. If Google was truly committed to opensource they'd make a Linux version.

<comment><USER9> A quick look-around and I find that they're working on it.

[http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel- li...](http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-linux/)

I'm sure you could help out. I mean, if you are truly committed to open source.</comment></comment>


Fresszeit: Rock-paper-scissors in single play? - <AUTHOR> http://mordred.dir.bg/fresszeit/

<comment><USER2> cool game, makes me hungry!</comment>


BitTorrent Everything? - <AUTHOR>

Q: Could/should the internet be converted into a P2P network model? By this I mean individual web pages are seeded/"leeched" as needed, instead of downloaded from a single source for every individual browser. How would this be accomplished? Would this have any advantages or disadvantages?
A: I can't answer the question, but I'd like your help with it.
Firstly, forgive my lack of knowledge on this question. I'm a mechanical engineer by trade, but have recently seen the tides shifting more and more to the tech end of the spectrum in my career opportunities. While I'm not too worried about my job right now, I'd be appalled if I became obsolete, which is why I'm currently trying to put myself through the pain of acquiring computing skills. Just in case. So imagine this as a teaching exercise: I'm just looking for knowledge, and hopefully someone here can enlighten me and perhaps point me in the right direction for more information. This seems like one of the more intelligent/mature places I've come across on the web, so I hope this question is as "deeply interesting" for you as it is for myself.
In my line of work, if we have an excellent solution to a problem (in this case the problem is data transfer, and the solution -at least for large clumps of data- is p2p file sharing) we go to that solution first, and see if it is applicable to the task at hand. It seems to me like these torrents are the fastest/best way to handle large files, so why couldn't they handle websites themselves?
Again, I'm quite ignorant on the actual inner workings of the protocols which actually run the web and organize the traffic inside it, so you'll have to forgive me if my questions betray this ignorance. So links to articles, research, textbooks, etc, related to my question would be greatly appreciated. And if you believe this is a question worthy of discussion, please add to that as well. Thank you. <comment><USER2> I think bittorrents work well for big chunks of static data. Web pages are made out of lots of tiny bits of data that change for a lot of users.

Most sites these days use some sort of CDN which gets the data to you probably more efficiently than a P2P network.

</comment><comment><USER3> About two years ago before I started programming I posted this on the what-wg mailing group about a real use case that is financially useful in reducing costs:

[http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg- whatwg.org/2010-Jan...](http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg- whatwg.org/2010-January/024809.html)

Back then it wasn't really technically possible, but technologies like WebRTC may change things since they make browser-to-browser communication possible.

Check out btapp.js for an implementation of bit torrent in the browser:

<http://pwmckenna.github.com/btapp/docs/btapp.html>

Besides that you may want to look at this html5-filesystem api polyfill: [http://ericbidelman.tumblr.com/post/21649963613/idb- filesyst...](http://ericbidelman.tumblr.com/post/21649963613/idb-filesystem- js-bringing-the-html5-filesystem-api)

At the end of the day, something like this is only really going to be useful for file types that likely can't be modified to be malicious. e.g. css and images.

I know of a few people looking into stuff like this. Personally I think it is only a matter of time before we see it applied to more things. I don't really think it's a matter of the technology being available at this point. It's more a matter of someone building it. After all it took almost 5 years from the time the Mosaic web browser was introduced to the market for blogging to make an appearance in 1999.

</comment><comment><USER4> I imagine there are many technical reasons why this is a bad idea. A few from the top of my head:

• Very few sites could allow their database to be distributed.

• Pages could be altered by nodes in the network for nefarious reasons.

• Anything with a session would probably be very hard work.

Shame really, as it'd make it harder of ISPs to shape traffic.

<comment><USER5> • Pages could be altered by nodes in the network for nefarious reasons.

Not if you use a BitTorrent model. You'd get checksums from a known source and discard any chunks you receive from nodes that don't match the expected checksum. Not _impossible_ to spoof/alter, but exceedingly unlikely.

<comment><USER6> Similar to our trust on the 13 root servers then.

I guess this all depends on who to trust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <https://freenetproject.org/>

<comment><USER8> There's also

<https://gnunet.org/>

I gather one difference is that GNUnet uses an economic model (like bittorrent) to allocate resources, whereas freenet does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It could, it should, and it's a really hard problem.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z685OF-PS8>

<http://www.ccnx.org/></comment>


The US manufacturing base is surprisingly strong - <AUTHOR> http://www.voxeu.org/article/us-manufacturing-base-surprisingly-strong <comment><USER2> The only surprising thing is that anyone is surprised. It only takes a glance at any relevant statistics to see that manufacturing in the USA is extremely robust.

Propaganda about American weakness is typically dealt out by politicians looking to get support from people who were laid off at the local Oldsmobile plant. As a campaign tactic it works, but it's counterfactual.

<comment><USER3> A lot of the propaganda comes from the substantial reduction in jobs in manufacturing. The propaganda point is that all of those jobs were "lost" to China, when in fact most were eliminated by massive productivity gains.

Until about a year +/\- ago, the US was still the world's largest manufacturer (not the largest exporter of course). A point few seem to realize, but shouldn't be surprising in a $17 trillion economy.

<comment><USER4> Some is from productivity gains, but some is significant shift in sectors, towards less labor-intensive sectors where competition with low-wage countries is less of a problem. For example the U.S. used to be a net exporter of steel, but is now a large net importer. It's not that the U.S. steel mills got more efficient through productivity gains and are still producing at high levels but with fewer employees. Rather, they did indeed largely close and move overseas. The U.S. now imports much of the steel it once produced domestically, and U.S. manufacturing has moved into other sectors instead.

I suppose you can consider realignment of a country's industry mix towards areas of competitive advantage to be a kind of productivity gain (at the macro level it improves the ratio of output to labor inputs), but it isn't precisely the same as productivity gains within a sector, caused by e.g. improved processes or automation.

<comment><USER5> See my sister comment. U.S. steel production in 2011 and 2012 compares reasonably to most of the 1980s.

Not all that much new capacity was created in the U.S. though, and the population did grow almost 50%.

<comment><USER6> My reading of those figures is that the US never recovered its steel production after the steel collapse of 1982: [http://www.post- gazette.com/business/businessnews/2012/12/23...](http://www.post- gazette.com/business/businessnews/2012/12/23/In-desperate-1983-there-was- nowhere-for-Pittsburgh-s-economy-to-go-but-up/stories/201212230258)

<comment><USER5> That's true. I was pointing more at the rise of China not disrupting the industry.

I guess the rise of Japan and such had already done that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> US manufacturing is propped up by military manufacturing: [http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/cschart1.png](http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/cschart1.png)

<comment><USER3> No it's not. Your data goes conveniently to 2009. Gee, what happened in 2009 that would skew that chart, that wouldn't correlate properly to the last three years or so?

In fact, with among the world's cheapest energy (thanks to vast supplies of inexpensive natural gas), and with the cost to manufacture in China skyrocketing due to very high wage inflation, American manufacturing is poised to do extremely well in the coming decades. Most studies have indicated lately it's now as cost effective for US companies to manufacture in the US as China, and that will see the manufacturing ecosystem return gradually.

<comment><USER8> I doubt it. China may become more expensive in the same way Japan did, but there's always another source of low cost labor. Half the world is still poking the ground with sharp sticks.

If it isn't China it'll be Vietnam, or Indonesia, or the Philippines, or Brazil. When those sources of cheap labor become too expensive we'll always have Africa.

I can envision a time when higher transportation costs coupled with growth- induced global labor demand coupled with unacceptable infrastructure in the last pockets of grinding poverty make low-tech manufacturing attractive in the US, but I don't think any of us are going to live to see that time unless the US economy collapses as catastrophically as the Soviet economy collapsed.

<comment><USER9> Wages are far from the only cost in manufacturing. Indeed, they are becoming less important as automation comes in more and more.

Infrastructure, in particular energy and transport are critical, as is secure legal rights and access to markets. Also you need a population that has decent high school level education.

There really isn't another China. Nothing of the size and with the infrastructure is around.

Costs have reached a point where the US is competitive again for things that 15 years ago would have been made in China. Here are some articles discussing it:

[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-25/china-vs- dot...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-25/china-vs-dot-the-u- dot-s-dot-its-just-as-cheap-to-make-goods-in-the-u-dot-s-dot-a)

[http://www.economist.com/node/21549956](http://www.economist.com/node/21549956)

This is really a great thing for the world. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people are now much wealthier than they were 20 years ago.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Extinction Rebellion Blockade Google HQ - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/extinction-rebellion-protests-london-latest-today-police-tube-underground-xr-news-a9158011.html <comment><USER2> The continuing inaction of all governments leads to increasing radicalization in the climate movement. I wonder how long before the protests stop being peaceful.

<comment><USER3> That would be unfortunate as it would make it easy to discredit the entire movement regardless of the underlying science.

<comment><USER2> I agree, but it only takes only one really desperate person to start bombing refineries. If peaceful protests continue to have no effect, I fear that there will be someone willing to do something like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do they have a manifesto, demands or plan somewhere?

It's a bit sad to see the youth so pessimistic. Growing up with Star Trek myself I always believed science would grow faster than human damage.

<comment><USER5> [https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/demands/](https://rebellion.earth/the- truth/demands/)

I see an incredible optimism in believing that power lies with the people and mass movements, instead of indulging fantasies that some solution will be handed down from on high, counter to the interest of wealthy and elite. Not to mention that scientists have already endorsed what they're doing:

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/extinction- rebell...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/extinction-rebellion- protests-scientists-climate-change-london-amsterdam-a9154336.html)

If you actually want a Star Trek future, this is how you get it.

<comment><USER4> I could equally argue it's a fantasy to believe that you will curb human greed, and/or bring a player like china to follow your rules.

In other words, I am pessimistic about humankind's ability to curb its wants, but optimistic about scientific advancement, inventors of the future, and unknown unknowns.

I hope we are both right though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This appears to refer to one of Google's London offices, not the Googleplex in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER7> To blockade that, all you need to do is schedule a concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have ER considered teaming with an organization dedicated to digital freedom (like the EFF) for cases like this? Because just coming into a new space, pressing your own demands and ignoring pre-existing efforts looks very unprofessional (IMO at least).

<comment><USER9> Hopefully not, the EFF has a clear set of goals and principles

<comment><USER10> This. Extinction Rebellion is already being co-opted for unrelated issues.

> We demand a just transition that prioritizes the most vulnerable people and > indigenous sovereignty; establishes reparations and remediation led by and > for Black people, Indigenous people, people of color and poor communities

Their demands are somewhat nonsensical IMO: [https://extinctionrebellion.us/](https://extinctionrebellion.us/)

> We do not trust our Government to make the bold, swift and long-term changes > necessary to achieve these changes and we do not intend to hand further > power to our politicians. Instead we demand a Citizens' Assembly to oversee > the changes, as we rise from the wreckage, creating a democracy fit for > purpose.

They don't trust the nebulous "government" and demand a group be placed into power by citizens. So...a representative democracy? Like the one they've failed to gain support within (to the extent they demand anyways)?

<comment><USER11> Those are absolutely not unrelated, in issues from Amazon logging to the Dakota pipeline to Nigerian oil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yeah this isn't fun.

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember when the way to get people to "wake up" on creationism was to unite sub-groups and pump out loads of content that rationally went over all the scientific evidence against it and trusted people to make up their own minds, including all of the debates between atheists/anti-creationism and pro- creationism speakers.

Despite there being very little hope in rattling an entrenched belief like that, many people began to think outside scope of their religion and creationism is not as widely accepted as it once was.

I hope that in the future the new generation of rational believers on climate change can adopt a similar non-violent mindset instead of letting their passion get the best of them.

<comment><USER14> Ah, yes - we wouldn't want the web devs to feel bad on their way to work.

<comment><USER15> I think the point is that conflict and arguing doesnt change minds, it can be used as a blocker to stop something but it doesnt affect the underlying opinion of those on the other side.

So its really only ever of limited value

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The protesters are rightly being arrested. Sorry but you don't get to blockade people from getting to where they want to go (work in this case) just because you personally think your opinions/issues are a higher priority than others' priorities. And climbing onto the roofs of private property is not a "peaceful protest", it is vigilantism. Furthermore some of the demands outlined in the article (asking google to censor videos) are not reasonable.

<comment><USER16> Environmental activists would do much better if they weren't so hell-bent on being a pain in the ass and inconveniencing everyone else. All it accomplishes is breeding distaste.

Maybe it's just me, but this kind of childish behavior doesn't make me sympathetic, it engenders the complete opposite effect.

<comment><USER17> Maybe they should write a petition or something. That ought to work right?

<comment><USER18> What gives them a right to do anything that "work[s]"? If they can't get their way through rational persuasion, they don't get to have their way at all. That's how democracy works.

<comment><USER19> > What gives them a right to do anything that "work[s]"?

Nothing. At least not the legal rights. They accept the arrest and corresponding consequences. That's what civil disobedience is about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just a reminder that climate change is not an existential threat. A problem, yes. An existential threat, no. Greta Thunberg and these activists are hysterical and engaging in alarmism. But why take it from me? Here's the Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, an expert on the topic, saying as much: [https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/08/is- global-warming-exi...](https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-global- warming-existential-threat.html)

<comment><USER20> It's almost as if they're having to use emotionally charged language to get their point across after decades of no one paying any attention...</comment></comment>


HTML 5 is another guess at the future - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigcontrarian.com/2009/09/04/tagged/

<comment><USER2> I understand his argument that what we've got works now, so who cares, but it doesn't work for _everyone_. I'm sure people with screen readers (it's the header because it's darker and that's the nav bar because it's got that box around it, duh!) would really appreciate some standard way to know what's what on the page.

</comment><comment><USER3> See Douglas Crockford's suggestion for HTML5 at <http://www.crockford.com/html/>

<comment><USER4> That's actually similar to what I was thinking. Making HTML5 support generic tags and attributes that could be defined as first-class elements would completely eliminate the need to create a huge pile of new tags. This would allow for much more innovation while not limiting the design to some arbitrary set of new elements. Instead of thinking of HTML as a "document format", it should be thought of as a display interface with a low-level protocol for interaction.

<comment><USER5> so you're going to implement <video> in javascript?

<comment><USER4> No, but browser implementors could implement <video> and define it within the high-level HTML markup language. There is no need for the HTML spec to define elements that can be determined to be necessary by the market. If it provides a framework for creating new elements, the market can come up with the necessary elements. Obviously, every page would not have to define every element in existence before being viewable, there would develop -- organically -- a stock of pre-existing elements in browsers.

<comment><USER6> The market does a really shitty job at interoperability, one of the main goals of the internet.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't panic and keep forking Debian - <AUTHOR> https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20141127.212941.f55acc3a.en.html <comment><USER2> The same freedom that leads to all the many, many flavors of linux gives a great diversity of ideas. The downside is it fragments the finite development efforts of the contributors to the point where it becomes difficult to compete with the wider marketplace. I wonder sometimes if it were possible for everyone to contribute to one linux desktop if the situation would be different today.

As it stands, after nearly three years using ubuntu desktop, I came to the conclusion that a windows license is very cheap by comparison. The amount of time and effort I spent wasted on package incompatibilities, instabilities, and debugging strange hardware/driver related issues isn't worth it. I keep linux in a VM where it's very easy and cheap to backup and rollback without affecting my data or ability to work. I really gave it a good try, and I liked a lot of things about the freedom to configure things like I want, without metro crapware infesting the place, but the downsides were just too much for me.

Again I wonder how things could have been if everyone was pulling as a coherent team instead of in different directions.

<comment><USER3> Exactly why Linux will never dominate the Desktop environment by the average user.

You basically can't use Linux without at some time going to the cmd line to fix some dam configuration or driver problem.

<comment><USER4> I can't remember the last time I had to fix a driver problem on Linux.

My GF, who is not very computer savvy, has been using Mint for years at home and at work. Unfortunately, there were no command line configurations needed even once to set it up. What a disappointment. Ah well, I personally use Slackware so I'll get my jollies there I suppose....

Granted, I did have to go by GF's work at one point and install a printer but you know what? I've spent a lot less time there than I used to as her Windows systems (she and an assistant now both use Mint) regularly got virus or gunked up and slowed to a crawl...

Linux on the desktop has actually been much easier and reduced my honeydo workload considerably. Fact.

That aside, I have to scratch my head and wonder about people who claim to have so many of these types of problems. Tech people too. People who should be eager to embrace and learn powerful command line invocations and the control this learning brings....

<comment><USER5> I remember, ten years ago I had to compile the kernel module for my sound card manually, because it was not part of the mainline kernel. _shrug_

Since then, my experience with Linux' driver support has been very smooth, as well, any a lot smoother than stuff I've seen on Windows. Getting a printer to work on Windows is incredibly convoluted compared to CUPS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No, no, no. Stupid name.

In the name of tradition, you want a name which is an acronym that says "is not that other thing" or something like that and is perhaps infinitely recursive.

How about _WildOS_?

       "WildOS is like Debian, omitting systemd"

Or some other "-ild" word besides "wild". Gild? Mild?

Definitely not DildOS though. :)

 _Debrogas_ :

       "Debian rid of gnome and systemd"

Retains the Latin flavor of Devuan, in any case.

Rejected bloopers, from my personal cutting room floor:

 _BSDOS_ :

       "Because systemd, of course, sucks"

_Windows_ :

       "What-I-need Debian: out with systemd"

# # #

However, in the end, I think a really good name for this fork would be:

       Defiant!

But: not pronounced like the word "defiant" but with emphasis on the first syllable, so it sounds like debian: 'DE-fih-ənt.

"What are you running on that server?"

"Defiant six dot three!"

"What? Debian?"

"No, Defiant! D-E-F-I-A-N-T, spelled like the word defiant."

I _love_ this one. It captures defiance (getting upset and making a fork), sounds indistinguishable from Debian when uttered by a drunk hacker through a G.711 ULAW speech codec, and has an unusual pronunciation so we can endlessly correct people who just say "de-FIE-unt", who instantly identify themselves as not-in-the-know outsiders. Remember all the fun with Lie-nucks versus Lee- nucks versus Li-nucks.

Lastly:

      Deviant

(Also pronounced differently to sound like Debian.) PRO: changes only one letter in Devuan, and deletes one. CON: less abrasive than Defiant. It's deviant because it's forked; it deviates from some originally intended path.

</comment><comment><USER7> On the one hand, this seems wildly misguided; the Debian distribution for people who don't want to run systemd is still just Debian, and that'll remain the case through at least jessie, and for as long as people continue putting effort into keeping it working. So it's sad that the effort going into this fork doesn't instead go into maintaining the necessary infrastructure in Debian. I'm sure the maintainers of systemd-shim and cgmanager would welcome additional contributors.

On the other hand, perhaps this will provide a more useful outlet for the set of people who keep claiming they'd use a fork if available, so that they can actually go use one and stop griping on Debian mailing lists.

Nope, sorry, couldn't keep a straight face while saying that.

<comment><USER8> There are several arguments I can see in favor of a fork.

1\. Ensure that there _will_ be a systemd-free variant of debian even beyond jessie.

2\. Provide a tangible metric of the interest in such a variant.

3\. Provide a platform on which alternatives to systemd can be developed and promoted. After all, systemd it must be said, addresses some legitimate concerns, largely concerned with service tracking and a generally far more dynamic computing environment. The recent Future of FreeBSD presentation by Jordan Hubbard is actually one of the more eloquent arguments in this light (noting that FreeBSD is both Not Linux and Doesn't Have Systemd).

The primary argument against forking is that it divides efforts. My counterargument is that forking _makes the existing divide between views on a given approach tangible and explicitly visible_. Free Software, particularly under the GNU GPL or equivalent copyleft, also explicitly preserves the right to _merge_ projects which have forked, as has in fact been the case in several notable instances -- GCC/EGCS, the long-running TK

For a specific study of the topic, see "A Comprehensive Study of Software Forks: Dates, Reasons and Outcomes" by Gregorio Robles and Jesuus M. Gonzalez- Barahona

[http://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/paper_0.pdf](http://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/paper_0.pdf)

It cites: GCC/EGCS, xpdf/poppler, GNU Emac/Xemacs, the numerous OpenOffice forks, X.org/XFree, NetBSD/OpenBSD, Wireshark/Ethereal, Gerequi/Amarok, MySQL/Miriadb. In total the paper explores some 220 forks, analyzing them by software area (e.g., networking, web apps, development, etc.), year of initiation, and reason. "Technical" accounts for the most at 27%, "differences among technical team" is sixth at 7.3%.

Resolution of forks is of particular interest:

Successful branching: 43.6%

Discontinuation of original: 29.8%

Discontinuation of fork: 13.8%

Discontinuation of _both_ original and fork: 8.7%

Re-merging of fork: 3.2%

Other: 0.9%

As a critic of systemd and proponent of the concepts of Free Software, including the Freedom to Fork, I'm in support of this and similar efforts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assuming this actually going somewhere, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it might allow us to get over those intense - and usually pointless - arguments (to put it politely) about systemd. (Personally, I don't have very strong feelings about systemd, but I get the impression it could use some time to mature before becoming the centerpiece of a GNU/Linux system.)

If the fork gave people the choice between "Debian with systemd" and "Debian without systemd", and if that was all there was to it, that would be _really_ sweet. But given the circumstances of the fork, it is not exactly clear how the two distros would coordinate their development, possibly resulting in eventual divergence.

Also, if the project catches on, this might lead to a kind of brain drain on Debian, replacing one - up until now - great distribution with two less impressive ones. (This is of course a worst-case scenario. There might be, three years from now, a lot of sharing of code and people between the two distros. I sure hope so.)

It is surely a very interesting development, but it remains to be seen whether this is good or bad news or even news at all.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm for sure not feeling the love for systemd, it seems un-UNIX and a solution looking for a problem, and change for the sake of change. That said, not so big on the idea about a fork, I'd rather see debian do the normal debian thing, and support both things, maximizing freedom. That said, if that can't happen, a fork is inevitable - for the love of god pick a better name.

<comment><USER10> You seem like someone who's used a variety of init systems, so I have some questions:

1\. Why is systemd considered "un-unix"?

2\. Why is sysv considered to "follow unix"?

3\. Can you provide or point to some explanations on the ideologies that motivate the difference of opinions regarding sysv/systemd?

4\. Really, can someone provide some context and history for all this?

<comment><USER11> Those are good questions, but answering them won't fit in a comment. It takes more like a book.

One of the best books on the Unix philosophy is "The Art of Unix Programming", which is available for free. (I recommend getting a hard copy and reading the whole thing.)

[http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/)

Other books include The Unix Programming Environment by Pike et. al., though it's less explicit about the philosophy.

Here's one part of the argument: systemd breaks the Unix design style because it's monolithic: [http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2...](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2877537)

But then systemd developers claim it's not monolithic because it's actually composed of multiple processes. They say there is a misconception that all code is contained in PID 1. There are many executables and many processes, so they would say systemd is modular.

But the problem is that all the binaries are released together, without well- defined interfaces. Moreover they are also tightly coupled to kernel features.

If you have 2 binaries A and B, but the interfaces between them is not documented or stable, then it's not really modular, because you can't write your own B' to work with A or A' to work with B.

The recent thread here about dbus is a good example. Traditional Unix is simple text protocols. dbus is this weird text/binary RPC-ish mix which is not documented.

There are lots of other issues with systemd and the Unix philosophy, but that should give you a flavor.

<comment><USER12> Eric Raymond is not worth taking seriously except as a bad example.

That aside, poking around I found this: [http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/InterfacePo...](http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/InterfacePortabilityAndStabilityChart/) which looks like reasonably well-defined interfaces?

Also not really seeing the problem with a binary protocol, works fine for tcp/ip.

<comment><USER11> If you don't think the content of that book is relevant to the systemd debate, then you haven't read it. I'd like to see you point to a better book about the Unix philosophy.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)

<comment><USER12> I've been using unices for over 20 years now (first was ultrix, then truos, sunos, solaris, hpux, aix, linux, netbsd, freebsd, osx) and I don't believe there is such a thing as a unix philosophy.

<comment><USER11> Give the Art of Unix Programming and honest read, and I'm sure you will come around.

If you have ONLY used Unices, then I could understand why the philosophy is invisible.

If, like me, you had used Windows exclusively for a decade, and then Unix for a decade, then the Unix philosophy would knock you up side the head. The systems could not be more different. (Despite the fact that they run mostly the same applications. [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Biculturalism.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Biculturalism.html) is the review that got me to read it).

<comment><USER12> Of course I haven't only used unices, how is that even possible in this world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> there was a lot of discussion on /r/linux about this yesterday.

concessions seemed to be that Devuan seems fishy, but I'll let you read for yourself. [http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2nm2u9/theyre_going_t...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2nm2u9/theyre_going_to_fork_debian/)

<comment><USER14> consensus?

<comment><USER13> thanks, dunno how I missed that typo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also: [https://devuan.org/](https://devuan.org/) as well as #debianfork and #devuan on IRC/freenode

<comment><USER15> That site does seem to show an odd disconnect, it seems to mention "init- freedom" alongside "...the first goal of removing systemd...". Surely true "init-freedom" would be to give the end user a choice between sysvinit, bsd init, sysmtemd, launchd, android's init, and so on.

Of course such true init-freedom would be near impossible. IMO people should just pick one, forking appropriately, and stop having such huge arguments over something the average user neither knows nor cares about. Just call Devuan the sysvinit fork of Debian and see how it goes...

<comment><USER16> Removing coupling which effectively mandates the use of systemd is a prerequisite for "init-freedom".

You can't offer a choice when everything requires systemd.

<comment><USER17> Compare to Gentoo. Gentoo defaults to their homegrown OpenRC. But Gentoo is all about choice and so systemd is an option and works perfectly well. That's "init-freedom". If someone doesn't like systemd and removes it from their distro, that's OK with me. But calling that "init-freedom" seems weird. Maybe they should call it something like "sysv-freedom", if that's what they mean.

<comment><USER18> Sadly the one thing that dissapears in this debate is that systemd has long since gone beyond being a init.

For me the whole thing came to a head when i learned that consolekit (a bothersome thing on its own) was depreciated in favor of logind. And logind is tied to the hip of systemd.

There are also issues like journald that you need to have running even if your primary logging facility is syslogd etc.

At this point in time, systemd as init is just a minor part of the issue in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone TL;DR the problem with systemd?

<comment><USER20> systemd replaces a large number of startup and utility programs (specifically: sysvinit, pm-utils, inetd, acpid, syslog, watchdog, cron and atd). It also adds new daemons for logs, logins, locales, hostnames and a few other services.

Most of this is a good thing. Faster. Newer code that is easier to maintain. Less reliance on shell scripts favoring declarative config files instead.

But change has lots of difficulties.

The biggest resistance though is coming from people who are simply accustomed to the old approaches and don't see a problem with them.

But there are other objections from people who think systemd is too big in scope or too controlling or focussed on one technology or another or... some kind of conspiratorial trap or something ([http://boycottsystemd.org](http://boycottsystemd.org)). I think these arguments are a little hyperbolic since systemd isn't actually a single monolithic system and is really an overarching project to update a lot of major system utilities.

I'm personally more of a Mac user than Linux user. On the Mac, 10 years ago, launchd replaced many of the processes that systemd is now replacing in Linux. Particularly for things like cron and inetd (which were horrible to configure and work with) it was a huge improvement. However, the Mac never replaced as much all at once. It was a much gentler transition. In fact, discoveryd (which does a lot of what systemd's hostname daemon's are trying to do) was only introduced in the current Yosemite.

<comment><USER21> _But there are other objections from people who think systemd is too big in scope or too controlling or focussed on one technology or another or... some kind of conspiratorial trap or something ([http://boycottsystemd.org](http://boycottsystemd.org)). I think these arguments are a little hyperbolic since systemd isn't actually a single monolithic system and is really an overarching project to update a lot of major system utilities._

Well, with roadmaps like this[1], one wonders if some of the criticism is really that hyperbolic or unjustified...

[1] [http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf](http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf)

<comment><USER18> Sadly it drags the whole debate into an argument over semantics. Yes, it is not monolithic in the sense of one binary running everything. But at the same time everything ties back to systemd running as init.

This in effect makes everything under the systemd umbrella tightly coupled. Can i run journald on its own, or logind, or resolved, networkd? As long as the answer is no, they mays well be one big blob.

And it is presented as such as well from a source point of view.

[http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/](http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/)

There is no separate tarball for udev, journald, logind, or any of the other *d's that make up the systemd project.

<comment><USER22> > As long as the answer is no, they mays well be one big blob.

So to you there is no difference between sendmail and postfix, they are both equally monolithic?

<comment><USER18> If i just need a small portion but has to download and run more, then yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been waiting for this fork. It means I can install a .deb-based distribution again. Here's hoping this is as successful as Libreoffice or X.org has been.

<comment><USER24> huh? this is the first release to really require systemd. how could you have been waiting for a fork when one wasn't even necessary until a release that isn't even marked stable yet.

<comment><USER23> I've been waiting approximately 180 days for this fork. it's been over a year since the General Resolution where systemd got voted on.

the fork, for some of us, has been necessary since we saw how toxic the debian constitution was in practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I laughed heartily at the linked Fedora site:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20141020161905/http://forkfedora...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141020161905/http://forkfedora.org/)

I am not sure anything will come of this, but I hope it doesn't fail.

</comment><comment><USER26> Awful name aside, I'm glad this fork went ahead.

<comment><USER9> I agree about the name, I'm indifferent on the fork, but not really feeling it for systemd either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Earlier submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8669913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8669913)

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a single name associated with this? A single developer's name? And they are requesting donations?

<comment><AUTHOR> well, one single name can be got via "whois devuan.org":

       Franco Lanza
       Unixmedia s.r.l.
       Via Cosimo Del Fante 4
       Milano, Italy

hence the Italian pronunciation of Devuan to 'dev-one'

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> From their manifesto: _Dear Init-Freedom lovers, The Veteran Unix Admin collective salutes you._ Does this group expect to be taken seriously? Read Cory Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" and get over it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Hey, I know that domain! I used to use the Dyne:Bolic live Linux CD to edit video.

</comment><comment><USER31> How is it pronounced?

DEV-on?

de-VWAN? (like Juan)

dev-oo-ahn?

<comment><AUTHOR> The originators direct english speakers to pronounce the name as "dev-one". but, hey, i've heard a lot of different pronunciations of 'linux' and even 'debian' over the years, so what ever floats yer penguin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Good, interesting times.

</comment><comment><USER33> Isn't this the largest fork ?</comment>