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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • In honesty I didn’t hear all his statements back then. Now from a quick search I can only find his Twitter:

    „Natürlich kann es so gewesen sein, wie es @derspiegel annimmt. Es kann aber auch anders gewesen sein. Ich habe als Rechtsanwalt häufig erlebt, dass alles gegen A sprach, es war dann aber doch B.“

    Which just says there should be more investigation before accusations are made. Asking for evidence. If you have a link to an interview or talk where he does as you said I would be interested to hear how he phrased it.

    I want to point out one thing I have seen far to often in recent times: If a person or group of the left make a wrong statement others which previously followed them are quick to change their view and declare them as persona non grata. On the other hand we have the far right which spills out lies after lies and their followers are so used to it that even disproving them in multiple points does not touch their loyality in any way. I think we should focus more on welcoming people who try to do good thing. If they make a wrong step we should not shun them but try to show them why they did wrong. At least hey try to better themselves and you/we have a good chance to convince them of the better way.

    See for example Snowden. He made the mistake to believe Russia would never invade Ukraine. An easy mistake if you have to live inside Russia propaganda machine. Upon realizing his error he was so struck by it, because he uses his social media reach to better the world and now trough a mistake he abused it for spreading propaganda, that he apologized and stopped tweeting for many months.


  • This is generally true, but there are also many notable exceptions. Here in Germany I could name:

    • Gregor Gysi
      • Of the left Party
      • Always does what he thinks is best for the people
      • Many political opponents tried really hard to stick dirt on him and failed
    • Nico Semsrott
      • Arguably not that long in politics
      • Took a stance against Martin Sonnenborn (who is the very popular leader of a satirical party) in an affair and is now without a party (Yes this makes it likely he will not be in the next parliament)
      • As far as I have seen votes always in favor of the people
    • Patrick Breyer -Pirate Party
      • fights for digital freedom and privacy since decades
      • Always follows the pirate paradigm: transparency. He publishes all his meeting with lobbyists.
      • Helps to educate the public and discovered quite a few hidden legislative attempts to undermine privacy


  • Interesting. For the Nokia N900 there is Maemo Leste which also uses mainline Linux (+ a few patches they are working to mainline) and there everything works. Mind that works means in this case: Does what I want if I issue a number of console commands. However most of it by now even works via the GUI.

    Keep in mind that Leste is a project by a few enthusiasts and writing drivers for undocumented hardware is a monumental task, writing GUI for a whole mobile OS is also complicated. So it is utterly astonishing, how far they got!


  • The point is, they already did. 99% of webservers run Linux. They are all out in the open and hackers love to get their hand on them as they are likely to have mailservers on them and they have a public IP so they can always be reached.

    And most of them do not get hacked. And those that do mostly get hacked due to bad passwords or bad website code. I administer one and see the thousands of attacks running up against it daily (most are just attempts to log in with basic credentials). And of course I see the daily influx of updates from Linux.

    If a new security flaw is seen, its often quite difficult to use. And with Linux somebody makes a patch before simple tool for hackers are out. With Microsoft products you wait till the next patch day, in the best case critical exploited bugs are patched in days. Also security flaws in closed source products are often easier to exploit and tools to use them are available fast. (Such flaws are often already discovered in open source products by third eyes and testers before they make it to production systems.)

    Of course there are exceptions to the rule, like heartbleed. This was an easy to exploit flaw in an often used Linux service and it caused a big turmoil because many where to slow to patch their systems.

    Also of course if Linux gets more popular on the desktop more software will be an attractive target for malicious actors and some software may get popular before many people take a look at the source code. But the situation will still be much better compared to closed source systems.

    (Also of course more closed source software will be made for Linux then)


  • Sure because Error Code 0x8007057 tells you immediately how to solve the problem.

    Linux error messages like error: kex_exchange_identification: client sent invalid protocol identifier "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" are completely arcane tough.

    I support both systems. And Linux support is so much easier. Mostly in runs out of the box. If it runs I continues to do so and If you have an error you get a specific message like above.

    With such a message you either:

    • See right away how to solve the problem
    • Search it online and get a specific solution for exactly you problem
    • Or you can ask Experts for a solution for your specific problem.

    With Windows: No systems runs out of the box, I always have to install additional software (7zip, sane browser, …) and also for anybody remotely privacy concerned have to adjust many settings (for which tools exist thankfully)

    If an error occurs under Windows and I get a code like above:

    • I can sometimes guess by my experience what the reason is and solve it.
    • If not I search the error code and circumstances which lead to it online, then apply the 20 solutions presented one by one in hope one works
    • Ask experts which ask me to run a bunch of diagnostic utilities because the error message does not tell you anything. (Yes by now I can also guess which utility could provide relevant information, but not because Windows told me)
    • In a noticeable amount of cases the solution is: We can not determine the reason for the error, please reset everything (First a restart, then run this cleanup tool and if this doesn’t help just reinstall!)

  • In this case shit software. For a secure conference software there should be no possibility for the user to accept invalid certificates.

    The developer always has to plan with what we call a DAU in germany (Dümmster anzunehmender User = dumbest user possible), and even that user should have no possibility to accidentally share a secure conference. So as a developer I would: Lock the user to certificates and encryption keys I deem secure and hook into the low level OS functions to grab the screen and disable them to prevent accidental sharing via software like Anydesk and the like which the user forgot to close. This would even interrupt the functions of a simple trojan on the PC.

    Of course a dedicated attacker with physical or admin access to the device could always break these. But then you have another big security breach.