341–350 of 526 posts
I would not be surprised if it was some sort of AI driven mistake. Some guy somewhere deciding to delegate threat assessment to Copilot or some other automated tool.
conspiracy theories are fun and all, but 99.99% of the time it is just incompetence, miscommunication, etc.
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I know it's not what people want to hear but my response to a lot of the comments here is just a general, I agree, it's time to stop using Windows. They won't let you secure your drive the way you want. They won't let you secure your network the way you want (per the top-level comment about Wireguard). In so doing they are demonstrating not just that they can stop you from running these particular programs but that t…
Stop supporting Windows as well. Open source developers are doing Microsoft a big favor when they support Windows and publish Windows builds and installers. It's a substantial effort, and apparently that effort isn't appreciated. If all open source software dropped support for Windows, it wouldn't really affect the open source community that much. It would definitely cause headaches for Microsoft however.
I agree that supporting Windows helps its ecosystem.
But also open source software on Windows is an important gateway to the free world. When you are already used to Firefox, LibreOffice and VLC, you might as well switch to Linux painlessly, but if those didn't run on Windows, switching to Linux would require relearning everything.
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Perhaps not legally, but technically, you have an option: don't use the Microsoft Store. This isn't as wild a suggestion as it may seem to non-Windows users: the store is barely used by Windows users. You can get your own code signing certificate from a public CA, sign your own installer, and post it on your website. This is still the primary way that Windows software is distributed. Microsoft does not have a hand in…
It’s become neigh impossible to get your own code signing cert these days. The 2025 update from the CA forum required code signing certs to be short lived (no more three or five year certs) and stored exclusively on an HSM. As a result, most companies cross-signing these certs have moved to a subscription PaaS model where you are issued a cert but never receive custody of it, and perform signing via their APIs, and a…
The Microsoft Store account was painful to set up, I'll note. My developer account had also been cancelled by Microsoft for unknown reasons, and I ultimately had to set up a brand new one. New email, new name. My new account has my middle initial because I couldn't clash with the existing, closed account. My first and last name alone are banished forever from the store.
The "same thing", as you concede, isn't the same thing. Quantity has a quality of its own: one happens all the time and we're reading an article about it happening right now. In the comments there's another prominent maintainer who it happened to, and it happened to me personally! That's three right here! The other happens so infrequently that people in this same HN thread are complaining that it isn't happening enough. Can you find an example that's like Veracrypt and WireGuard? In practice, it seems they rarely do this, even when they should. You can actually view the list under "Manage computer certificates" > "Untrusted Certificates." On my computer the entire list is 20 certificates.
I'm standing by my suggestion, 100%. These aren't equivalent risks at all.
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Don't worry, US states are working on making Linux illegal through age verification requirements in the OS.
Isn't linux complaint because of the systemd change?
Everything else about complying with the wacko age verification law is up to distro builders.
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Simple attestation is very useful for the case where a parent gives a child access to a computer and wants that computer to block porn. That's the use case everyone is clamoring for, and asking the root user "how old is this user?" solves it in a simple, open, privacy-preserving way. Everybody wins, except the teenager who wants to watch porn. If this were not legally mandated, everyone would support it as a useful f…
This has got very little to do with children - that is just the excuse that sounds good. "Think of the children" is a rhetorical tactic that anyone who wants to get unfettered access to your data rolls out whenever they can. It is a tactic that unreasonable people use to influence reasonable people, because it is so difficult for a reasonable person to argue against without coming across as uncaring and/or bigoted.
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This is worrying on many levels. So Microsoft force you to create an account to use Windows and then they reserve the right to block you from your own account, thereby potentially making you lose access to all your OWN data. This is crazy and yet another reason to stop using Windows as soon as possible.
I know it's not what people want to hear but my response to a lot of the comments here is just a general, I agree, it's time to stop using Windows. They won't let you secure your drive the way you want. They won't let you secure your network the way you want (per the top-level comment about Wireguard). In so doing they are demonstrating not just that they can stop you from running these particular programs but that t…
I've been thinking, and said before, 90s Microsoft was far from perfect, but they at least seemed to care a lot about the quality of Windows. 2020s Microsoft seems to see Windows users as a captive audience they can exploit for whatever the corporate executives fancy at the moment. It seems more like a gradual transition.
In any case, it seems to be getting more clear that Linux is destined to be the best OS for power-users.
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It's more or less commonly accepted that its creator got jailed for being an arms dealer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux
I knew the speculation on him being involved in some capacity, but as the wiki page states, this was never confirmed in any substantial way. More importantly, if development seized with no public comment, that would be one thing and may strengthen the "he got arrested" theory. However, there was some final communication, specific recommendations to rely on Bitlocker of all things, a new version of Truecrypt was relea…
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I went on a Wikipedia dive and discovered this funny bit regarding the court process surrounding Lavabit and FBI's desire of the TLS private keys. > The contempt of court was caused by Levison providing the keys printed in a tiny (4 point) font, which was deemed "largely illegible" by an FBI motion, which went on to complain that "To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2560 characters, an…
> The court ordered Levison to be fined $5,000 a day beginning 6 August until he handed over electronic copies of the keys. Two days later Levison handed over the keys hours after he shuttered Lavabit.
Honest question, did we ever get an answer what was the cause for the sudden change from the original Truecrypt developer? Even if one doesn't want to maintain that project for purely private reasons, recommending Bitlocker as the drop-in-replacement always made it smell fishy to me.
It's more or less commonly accepted that its creator got jailed for being an arms dealer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux
Yikes
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I guess it means that even when something is (arguably) objectively more simple, people still won't bdge just because they don't want change. They don't want to learn new things. I myself am quite different. I have thoroughly had it with my current iPhone and am eyeballing /e/OS, before that I really started to find Android boring, before that Windows mobile (the nice one with the cards). I switch Gnome, KDE, some ot…
No, it means that people have requirements that Linux does not fulfill. I need the Office suite, and would rather not gamble with the various compatibility promises made by alternatives.