Why would you bring up C# in a thread about kernel programming?

You go ahead and write an OS kernel in C# then.

Because Rust lets you choose when something is unsafe vs writing all unsafe in code all the time:

Note the other 159 kernel CVEs issued today for fixes in the C portion of the codebase

I’m not saying there’s no people trying it, or that the actual number is negligible. I’m just saying I highly fucking doubt that 780,000 people have actually installed Zorin OS in the last month.

That “780,000 Windows users” number is just made up for the title as clickbait.

That number is never mentioned in the original blog post.

All they said is they have a million downloads and “over 78% of these downloads came from Windows”. At no fucking point did they imply that means 780k unique users. There’s no reason to assume that everyone who downloaded the ISO actually went on to install it.

They also want $48 for their Pro version which comes with a “professional-grade creative suite” consisting of… GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, Kdenlive, and… Audacity (?), going off the screenshots they show:

They’re shamelessly reselling free software as some sort of comprehensive package, and it’s not even their own distro. They’re just piggybacking on Ubuntu.

And their premium support only covers… installation?

But hey, they support this edition with updates until 2029!

Of course, pay no attention to the coincidence that the Ubuntu LTS version it’s based on also hits end-of-life around then:

So I’m not really sure what you’re actually getting out of this purchase besides some extra themes and some really formulaic desktop wallpapers, and a couple proprietary apps. They say they “contribute to upstream Open Source projects” but offer zero evidence; their site doesn’t even have any Github/Gitlab links.

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I’m a senior dev and I want nothing to do with AI. By the time I understand what I want well enough to describe it in a complete sentence or paragraph, I can just write the fucking code myself. I figure it out as I go.

The whole point of having devs under you that is to be able to trust them to get the job done and do it right. You want to be able to delegate tasks to them and not have to peek over their shoulder every five fucking minutes to be certain they’re not making a mess of things.

I seriously doubt AI will ever be able to replace that. Not until they figure out how to make it afraid of fucking up.

Even as an American with everything going on here, this bullshit makes me feel bad for the Brits. How fucked up is that?

Yeah, but the malware can just wait for a system upgrade where you sign a new boot image and slip itself in then.

It works for Windows because theoretically only Microsoft would have the signing key and it’s not just sitting on disk somewhere. But then you’re just trusting Microsoft, and also subject to vendor lock-in.

Actually, I would love for you to explain to me how Secure Boot alone would protect someone from any of that. If you want to protect files, you need full disk encryption, not Secure Boot.

Or are you seriously expecting a government-level threat actor to bother to:

1. Sneak into your home while you’re away or asleep;
2. Overwrite your bootloader or UEFI with a rootkitted image of the same version so it’s impossible to tell;
3. Wait for you to boot your computer and enter your disk encryption password, then:
4. Use the rootkit to read the decrypted files off your disk?

That’s the great thing about fascist governments, is they have no need to be that sneaky. They can just change the laws to make whatever you’re doing illegal and jail you until you agree to give up your documents, or simply hit you with a $5 wrench until you tell them the password.

For a home desktop that’s never left unattended with anyone untrustworthy, I don’t see that Secure Boot is worth the effort in setting up.

Given that you have to re-sign the boot image every time you upgrade, any malware already running with root privileges on the machine could easily slip itself into the new signed image.

The best security is not running untrusted software to begin with.

The article is full of typos, too.

Who let this dreck out the door? Did Forbes lay off all their editors or what?

That’s what I figured after thinking about it, that there had to be some procedural reason for it.

Which, funnily enough, would also qualify the murders as first-degree under Minnesota state law: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.185

The suspect faces several charges of second-degree murder.

This baffles me. Looking up your fucking victim’s addresses isn’t enough evidence of premeditation to qualify for first-degree charges?

As someone with a lot of web backend engineering experience, this had me yelling at the screen at a few points, but really cool nonetheless.

It’s clear they did not walk out.

By the time I placed my order - paying a 1% fee to the app makers in the process - I would have happily paid double for the experience of simply flipping through a menu and talking to another human being.

(Emphasis mine.) This is from the very next paragraph after what I quoted.

You also clearly missed the point of my comment, which is that unless consumers start refusing to take this bullshit lying down, this stuff will be unavoidable in the future because there will be no other choices left.

That’s assuming the employees give enough of a shit to pass the feedback on to the owners, and that the owners give enough of a shit to listen.

Yeah, it’s better if you make it known why you’re not giving them your business, but if it doesn’t appreciably impact their revenue then most owners won’t care either way.

My phone struggled to load the site to order a single cold brew, pop-ups to install the custom App kept obscuring the options, and I had to register with my phone number, email address, and first and last name to buy a $5 cup of coffee.

Then walk out. Don’t reward the bullshit with your money. The coffee shop ain’t gonna give a shit if you keep buying coffee just to go home and complain on your blog.

Fortunately, most of my family is so tech illiterate that even if a real video got out, I could just tell them it’s a deepfake and they’d probably believe me.