Agreed - the end of the article does state compiling untrusted repos is effectively the same as running an untrusted executable, and you should treat it with the same caution (especially if its malware or gaming cheat adjacent)

Well that’s certainly no light read - I’ll admit that I’ve only read the first six sections of the document for now

The crux of it that I could see was the initial repo that was backdoored contained a malicious Windows command in the PreBuildCommand field of .vbproj file

My initial thoughts would be that it might be advisable for build tools to confirm any defined build commands with the user when it detects a command not seen before?

I suppose otherwise the argument could be made that if you’re downloading and compiling code that is backdoored, if you’re not checking .vbproj or equivalents, you’re probably also not auditing any source code either and you’re being pwned either way.

I wouldn’t think so - it depends on your priorities.

The open source and offline nature of this without the pretenses of “Hey, we’re gonna use every query you give as a data point to shove more products down your face” seems very appealing over Gemini. There’s also that Gemini is constantly being shoved in our faces and preinstalled, whereas this is a completely optional download.

I thought from the headline that it was just a downgrade to Business Standard, no this is to Business Basic! That’s a huge yikes, it’s so much harder to be productive in those web versions.

I honestly would not be surprised if users work out installing LibreOffice et al. so they can still have a desktop app experience because of this move.

I’m not seeing it either. I found an article about this that explains this was due to the USA sanctioning the ICC https://www.lbc.co.uk/world-news/british-icc-chief-prosecutor-lost-email-bank-accounts-frozen-trump-sanctions/

It’s a fair bit older than yours, but I’ve been so pleased with my X260. I originally got it as a side to my T480 but I find myself just taking the X260 when studying and leaving my T480 as a docked laptop because of the smaller form factor, battery life is way better (6 hours for my use) and for what I do (attending online classes, programming, and other studies) the performance is good enough (on LMDE, it probably wouldn’t take Windows well anymore)

The later X series like the X280 have options for quad core processors I believe if you wanted more performance. Given I only paid $120AUD for my X260 and I like the slight chunkiness of it (feels more rugged for on the go) that the X280 lost, I’m not upgrading anytime soon.

I will also buy into a setting to get past “Hey guys, welcome to my video!” and “Please like and subscribe” automatically, but I doubt Google is into that.

They did the exact opposite to this. If the person in the video tells you to subscribe, the subscribe button will play an animation to get your attention.

That’s about as ‘judging a book by it’s cover’ as it gets.

Ultimately OP isn’t trying to sell it to you, they’re just saying that for them, they’ve been happy with it.

And hey, if you choose your distros based on their name, I’d like to see you sell that idea.

This happens on the Google side of the fence as well - this article immediately came to mind.

I’m glad I started self hosting so I still have a “cloud” convenience while still owning all my data and being the sole person responsible for it.

I really want to see what the bullshit looks like - shame the article doesn’t actually show a sample, guess I’d have to make my browser look like an AI crawler

Kind of. They’re actually trying to avoid this according to the article:

“The company says the content served to bots is deliberately irrelevant to the website being crawled, but it is carefully sourced or generated using real scientific facts—such as neutral information about biology, physics, or mathematics—to avoid spreading misinformation (whether this approach effectively prevents misinformation, however, remains unproven).”