Preach it! 🙌⛪

In regard to Linux users being left out in the cold… how so? Do you think that distros are going to start enforcing attestation? I doubt that it will be a hard requirement for most, even in the next decade or two. It’s an option, yes, but mandatory?

It does not matter if Linux supports attestation or not, because ultimately the application (or website) will determine if it wants to run on Linux. It’s up to the company developing it’s application or website to determine if they want to support more than windows/Mac.

Graphene has its own variation of attestation (they cryptographically sign requests with their own key - and not googles), but it requires additional hoops for each application - few companies are willing to do this.

Attestation is a wet dream for companies. You don’t need DRM (as the OS will enforce it) and you can be certain your competitors/hackers cannot reverse engineer/pirate your code or run the application in an emulator. And the implementation effort to support it, is as simple as “make function call and check the response”.

Linux will still exist (especially on the server side) and developers will still use it as a desktop machine. However, (as I implied) non-Linux games will stop working, accessing you banks website from linux will be rejected, emulation will cease - it’ll be a corporate paradise… the stocks will go up.

FWIW, all of my banking apps work just fine with compatibility mode enabled on Graphene.

Revolut explicitly goes out of their way to not work on Graphene.

I’ve complained, they don’t care. The bean counters have done their risk calculations and decided that the personal data they collect/mine (and the integrity of that data) is worth more than losing a few graphene users.

Also, I’m not sure saying it’s inevitable is the right way to go, it certainly won’t make others care about their privacy and security.

You do have a valid point: giving up after trying nothing won’t help. However, I fear there will need to be “government intervention” to allow hardware and software to be “open for everyone”. I’ll admit my bias in wonder how well governments (of late) are representing the best interests of the people. But, these topics are complicated for even technically inclined people - let alone politicians. And the strawman argument against intervention is always going to be “in the name of security”.

From my perspective, the writing is on the wall. This apocalyptic future won’t happen over night, but it will be a slow boil over the next 10 years (or so).

If you’ve got ideas for how to avoid this, I’m all ears.

Nothing I can do to resist?

I admire your optimism, but we are pissing in the wind.

Microsoft is shoving this copilot in all its products? Alright, Linux and open source it is.

Windows 11 is forcing people to throw away functional computers that Microsoft seems “not secure enough” (it’s lacking TMP 2.0)

This means you can get a great deal on one of these “inscure pc”… but in the long run your pc now and tomorrow will have TPM. As time progresses, the use of TPM/attestation will become more and more entrenched in application, web pages, everything. … and Linux, with its 4% user base, will be left out in cold.

Google is bugging with its spyware? Well, I only use a Pixel phone, and ironically, its the best phone to put GrapheneOS on it.

Currently, many banking apps won’t run on Graphene (or any custom firmware) due to attestation.

Graphene issued calls for help, because Google is restricting public access to the latest android source code (I cannot find the links atm).

Gmail? I don’t remember when I opened mine the last time…

Today things like “email reputation” make it difficult to host your own mail server, so your stuck paying someone who has a better “reputation”.

My point is: today, you and I can resist with some (minor) success, but our days are numbered.

I suspect they may not try to pull the entire trap closed all at once and that Windows 11 may continue to more or less function as we’ve seen past iterations

Microsoft will be taking a page from Google playbook. Google has be gradually reducing the “openness” of their android platform. They now have these “security checks” enforced on android. Meaning that it’s trivial for an application to determine if the phone a “genuine android” or not.

This’ll trickle into webbrowser too (if it’s not already in browsers like chrome). It’s only a matter of time before web pages will be able to determine if they’re running on a “secure OS” and fail to run. It’ll start out with your banking website, then expand to shopping websites, ultimately every page will enforce it (“oh, I see you have an unauthorized browser plug in installed. We care about your security, therefore we won’t run. Please restore your device to it’s secure defaults.”)

This future is so horrible and Linux with its 4% market share won’t change anything.

Well, unless this is an offer to buy me a replacement Quest or Pico (all of which, work on Linux) “yes, I’m going to stay with Windows 10” (and/or maybe dual boot).

… because I have a Samsung Odyssey+ VR headsets, which needs “Windows Mixed Reality” (Windows VR) and was gutted/removed from Windows 11 (and doesn’t work on Linux).

I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, I agree with the technical merits. Having an automated process to renew short lived tls certs is “a good thing” and I think services like Let’s Encrypt have demonstrated such automation is viable (at large scale).

But, there are reasons why people pay money for tls Certs rather than use free (short lived) Certs. For example, there’s a mom-and-pop webhosting company that allows you to upload your tls Certs (they cost < $25 / year) or you can pay them $95 / year to use their Certs (and they just use Let’s Encrypt - lol)

The nearly 4x markup is their “convenience fee” or “dumb tax”. Regardless, once the 45 day tls Certs are enforced, I’ll have no choice in either paying their 4x markup or migrating to another platform.

… Having a choice is not always a bad thing…

I don’t know if you tried it or not, but I’d suggest that you install the latest release from their Download Page, as opposed to other sources.

I’ve noticed on Android, that the F-Droid Version is not “quickly” updated and frequently breaks due to breaking changes from Google.

(I’ve also just upgraded to v4.0 on my android phone and it’s working - good luck!)

Spotube: It’s not the greatest UX, but will read your Spotify Playlists and supports offline mode.

I just laughed and said oh well that’s what you get when you moved from on prem to cloud.

Our Techs said that you couldn’t buy on-perm exchange anymore. You needed to go with the cloud subscription, which “includes” all the crap you don’t want: like Teams.

Atleast, they said didn’t make financial sense to pay for Google Workspace + Slack + Cloud Exchange, when MS offered their (lesser) services as a bundle (but the human suffering is real) :(

What?!? Actually, read the article? What is this, Reddit? /s

Seriously, though - let me spin the question around: what, in your mind, overlaps with what Greg said?

(plus, OP was just interested in people opinions - not whether they align/contradict with Greg, Linus, etc)

Oh absolutely, but you could argue the same for learning lisp or mastering any functional programming language (list comprehensions, etc). It will improve your design patterns when you go back to an object oriented language with some elements of functional programming.

In my mind, introducing Rust would only make sense if:

1. There was a serious lack of current kernel developers (which I don’t think there is)
2. New hardware and tech was evolving at a rate that the Linux Kernel could not keep up (again, I don’t think this is am issue)
3. The end goal is to migrate the entire Kernel to Rust.

Regarding point 3, having both C and Rust really only makes sense as a transition phase (measured in years) - as it would require kernel developers to be savvy in both C and Rust, or would force developers to stay within whatever domains were implemented in C or Rust.

+1 for this.

Just be transparent and honest with your Team.

Explain to them how the actual budget is out of your direct control. However, also explain what knobs you and your IC can influence (for example being more visible with your Team/IC’s accomplishments at an organizational level).

Also many companies have a “flight risk” box, when calculating raises. Explain to your IC’s that you can hit this checkbox (if the IC wants), but it’s pretty much a onetime use button.

Don’t be afraid to rock the organizational boat. They won’t hold it against you, as you’re just doing your job. Your goal, first and foremost, is to get the most you can out of your Team and money is a good motivator.

If you need other “cheap” motivators:

• have the Team take some time off (paid or unpaid) and watch/stream a movie, with the mic on. Encourage people to trash talk the movie. If you’re in I.T. Office Space is a classic.
• for ~$40 / year, you can get a subscription to Boardgame Arena. Only one person needs a paid account (so they can create games and invite people). It’s all online and they have quiet a selection of games to choose from. King of Tokyo is one of our favorites.
• Introduce “Fantastic Friday”: this is a bit controversial with upper management, but works great with my Teams in the past. Basically, reserve a Friday (bi-weekly/monthly) where your Team can explore whatever topics they want as long as they’ve already finished their current workload. Usually, that disclaimer isn’t necessary, as people will usually want to get their normal work done. The pitch for upper management (if they ask) is that Fantastic Friday is a tool (ie: a canary in the coalmine) to help the Team create accurate estimates and deliver with more reliability. If they over commit, then that Fantastic Friday can be repurposed as a day to “catch-up” (while the Team can understand/refocus on why they didn’t get a Fantastic Friday and pivot accordingly). Furthermore, Fantastic Friday was often used to explore more “outside the box” ideas that actually boosted the Team/companies productivity, but we would not have normally persuded because it was outside our current task’s scope.

edit: added more about Fantastic Friday and fix grammar.

It’s more than needing a reminder: Let’s Encrypt Certs are valid for a maximum of 90 days before they need to be reissued. Doing this 4 times (or more) a year, for years on end will be tedious and error prone.

Most tools that request and install Let’s Encrypt Certs automatically do this without the need for human interaction (30 days prior to the expiration) . Actually, they work so well you don’t notice the “behind the scenes work” that’s happening.

The problem is when this renewal process “stop working”. I’d been using Let’s Encrypt for years w/o problems, but eventually the client I was using wasn’t updating and it was using a deprecated Let’s Encrypt API. Ultimately, the cert stopped updating, but I got the email reminder from Let’s Encrypt and I was able to fix it w/o a disruption.

Now, this was just a server for personal use. So if the SSL cert expired, it would not be the end of the world. Plus, I would have gotten a bunch of SSL errors the next time my client was trying to sync data, and I probably would have dropped everything to fix it. But the email reminder was a convenient feature, which allowed me to fix it whenever I had time.

That said, if Let’s Encrypt wants to save some money for their free service, I’m certainly not going to complain (although I will miss it).

Fantastic! Thank you for sharing this.

I have it installed, I’m curious how effective it will be.

Lately, I’ve been reporting AI generated cruft as “spam” to duckduckgo. In fact, it’s not really spam - as there are some nuggets of useful information, but so sparse, I’d rather of skipped the article/website entirely. I hope these kind of Blocklists will evolve to include this kind of quasi-spam.

Wow, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

Original, I thought “hey, everything will work”… but then I started to look into the details. For example, Revolut, it works, then it doesn’t work (due to attestation), then works (after people complain).

I really need to ask myself, if this is the kind of experience I want with my daily driver. On the other hand, I know this is just Google strong arming me into their walled garden. Man, I really hate this dystopian future.

If you do opt for OpenVPN, I believe UDP is generally better for performance. TCP support is mainly there for scenarios where UDP is blocked, or on dodgy connections where TCP’s more proactive handling of dropped packets can reduce the time before a lost packet gets retransmitted.

It’s great that you brought up TCP vs UDP. And you are totally right about TCP being a bit slower, higher overhead, but it’s there for situations where UDP is blocked.

I’ve used my VPN at all sorts of hotels, coffeeshops, etc. I’d say 1 in 10 places block UDP (or more likely don’t properly route UDP). If you’re using a SIM card, you won’t have any issues.

However, it’s worth mentioning that WireGuard is UDP only. There are some hacks/workarounds to have it work over TCP, but then you’re going to need to find WireGuard clients that also supports these hacks (which is possible on computers, but harder on cellphones/tablets).

If you want something that “just works” under all conditions, then you’re looking at OpenVPN. Bonus, if you want to marginally improve the chance that everything just works, even in the most restrictive places (like hotel wifi), have your VPN used port 443 for TCP and 53 for UDP. These are the most heavily used ports for web and DNS. Meaning you VPN traffic will just “blend in” with normal internet noise (disclaimer: yes, deep packet inspection exists, but rustic hotel wifi’s aren’t going to be using it ;)

Can I install my bank app on it yet? I remember having problems with attestation in the past.

What about full application backups? I’ve got a few offline apps, I’d like to transfer the data to/from. However, I thought grapheneOS needed the application developer to “approved” this backup/restore method - or you needed root (which invalidated attestation)… I don’t recall which it was (but I really miss titanium backup).

Shit, and here I thought spending my day unblocking people somehow boosted productivity.