blightbow

Honestly, no. People are pretty bad at filtering for Unicode alternative characters. It can be worked around when the site admins understand what’s going on, but…have fun skimming all of the Unicode code pages for every possible lookalike character.

The headline undersells the outcome by a lot.

As part of the judgment by the US District Court of Rhode Island, Tropic Haze was issued with a permanent injunction preventing it from offering or marketing Yuzu or any of its source code in the future.

Its members are also prevented from creating any future software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection, and Tropic Haze must surrender all website domains and information related to its emulator.

Ownership of all related websites and domains must be turned over, and the developers are barred from further participation in “creating any future software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection”.

The wording of the actual settlement will be key here, which we are unlikely to ever see. At a minimum it puts significant controls on how the individual developers can interact with the Nintendo emulation community, if not outright prevents them from contributing code to most Nintendo based emulators. It almost certainly increases their individual liabilities if they are caught assisting such a project again, as they will be forced defend how their contributions don’t violate the settlement. And that’s just to avoid stiffer penalties being thrown at them.

The title of that article does not support its conclusion. Lazy pasting what I commented the last time I saw this.

Nothing has changed for LTS at all. Scroll down to the pretty graphs on https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle, and pay particular attention to how the ratio of orange to purple on the LTS graphs has changed over time. (it hasn’t) The base LTS support window has always been 5 years, and the extended window has always been another 5 years.

What they did add was additional security updates for Universe packages, which are represented by the black line. Note that this black line is independent of the LTS coverage. From https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-pro-faq/34042:

Your Ubuntu LTS is still secured in exactly the same way it has always been, with five years of free security updates for the ‘main’ packages in the distribution, and best-effort security coverage for everything else. This has been the promise of Ubuntu since our first LTS in 2006, and remains exactly the same. In fact, thanks to our expanded security team, your LTS is better secured today than ever before, even without Ubuntu Pro.

Ubuntu Pro is an additional stream of security updates and packages that meet compliance requirements such as FIPS or HIPAA, on top of an Ubuntu LTS. Ubuntu Pro was launched in public beta on 5 October, 2022, and moved to general availability on 26 January, 2023. Ubuntu Pro provides an SLA for security fixes for the entire distribution (‘main and universe’ packages) for ten years, with extensions for industrial use cases.

You can also dig into this AskUbuntu answer for even more details, but the long and short of it is this has no impact on Ubuntu LTS whatsoever. Keep using it if that is your thing. Keep using something else if it is not.

This old news will become newsworthy if Canonical starts shifting packages out of the main repo and into universe, which would in fact reduce the security update coverage of LTS releases. That said, the article has not asserted any evidence of this. Nothing to see here…for now.

It is not. The headline is completely inaccurate.

Nothing has changed for LTS at all. Scroll down to the pretty graphs on https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle, and pay particular attention to how the ratio of orange to purple on the LTS graphs has changed over time. (it hasn’t) The base LTS support window has always been 5 years, and the extended window has always been another 5 years.

What they did add was additional security updates for Universe packages, which are represented by the black line. Note that this black line is independent of the LTS coverage. From https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-pro-faq/34042:

Your Ubuntu LTS is still secured in exactly the same way it has always been, with five years of free security updates for the ‘main’ packages in the distribution, and best-effort security coverage for everything else. This has been the promise of Ubuntu since our first LTS in 2006, and remains exactly the same. In fact, thanks to our expanded security team, your LTS is better secured today than ever before, even without Ubuntu Pro.

Ubuntu Pro is an additional stream of security updates and packages that meet compliance requirements such as FIPS or HIPAA, on top of an Ubuntu LTS. Ubuntu Pro was launched in public beta on 5 October, 2022, and moved to general availability on 26 January, 2023. Ubuntu Pro provides an SLA for security fixes for the entire distribution (‘main and universe’ packages) for ten years, with extensions for industrial use cases.

You can also dig into this AskUbuntu answer for even more details, but the long and short of it is this has no impact on Ubuntu LTS whatsoever. Keep using it if that is your thing. Keep using something else if it is not.

Edit: This old news will become newsworthy if Canonical starts shifting packages out of the main repo and into universe, which would in fact reduce the security update coverage of LTS releases. That said, the article has not asserted any evidence of this. Nothing to see here…for now.

“buh buh buh the government deserves to die and everyone living in the country must suffer because my feelings are hurt”

Yeah, I know you have a lot more to say than that, but the caustic and reductionist debating angle cuts in both directions. A very merry fuck you as well, sir.

Realistically, the US Government is going to continue supporting Israel no matter what happens until the US has meaningful voting reform. Israel is an entrenched interest due to the amount of money changing hands in Washington. (defense contracts, etc.) This is not helped by the social stigma of the average American not differentiating between Israel as a political entity and Jewish people as a demographic. It’s one of those “broken by design” social constructs.

The logical fallacy that I largely see in play is the assumption that the Republicans would have handled this any differently. While I agree that Biden’s stance is noteworthy, as a reminder that the parties are more alike than they are different on certain topics, it doesn’t change the landscape of the two leading presidential candidates. One of them is in bed with Putin and appears to have a vested interest in entrenching himself as a leader who can never lose an election. (i.e. an aspiring president for life) The other candidate is still flawed, but doesn’t represent an existential threat to the political institution itself.

I’d much rather have an option other than Trump or Biden, but until more states enact voting reform at a local level we’re stuck with a choice of which decrepit old man is least likely to be disruptive to the entire system of government. The Republican party needs to continue its losing streak until it decides the populist authoritarian movement is a failed strategy.

Vote for useful things and voting reform at the local level.

Vote for whatever keeps the system itself functioning at the federal level. If one party’s leaders are in bed with “presidents for life” or the authoritarian governments that were ratfucked to make them presidents for life, you are going to end up with a president for life.

Important to note: If enough states enact voting reform at the local level, you no longer need a constitutional amendment to have voting reform that influences the federal level. If you are looking for real change, this is where it is. It is slow and unsexy, but don’t bitch about your federal vote meaning nothing if you’re not doing anything with your local elections.

Supervillain is giving him too much credit. I’ll grant you that he’s a cartoon character, but cartoon supervillains have more complexity than him.

Kanye and Musk embody a nearly identical archetype and we’d have the exact same problem if they ran for president and succeeded. The cult of personality that follows shitty celebrities is a self-perpetuating one. It’s rooted in nasty people admiring how important people can be nasty like them but without tangible social consequences. They form a mob around their cult heroes for that exact reason, strength in numbers. A safe space for the trash of humanity.

People in politics and business find Trump useful because he’ll open doors for them in exchange for attention. They get cozy with leading him around by the nose with that attention until they forget that he will backstab them when they stop giving him that attention or there is more value in betraying them. Musk does the exact same shit, so again, I don’t think that Trump himself is worthy of being viewed in the light you’re giving him. Similarly shitty celebrities are drop in replacements for him, and worse, they might be more intelligent in their cruelty.

Irony: I clicked on this post because an unemployed friend of mine recently had their mechanical turk account suspended for no clear reason. They’re still waiting on the appeal process two months later…

For anyone considering this work, you should also be prepared for your “employers” to randomly reject your submitted work and deny you pay. Good times.

Ability to force anyone to objectively confront their own cognitive dissonance by maintaining eye contact.

Possibly too powerful. Some heads may spontaneously combust from a lifetime of preferring their own reality.