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2013-09-18.log
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*mark_weaver plans to start using Tor soon. <civodul>for web browsing it's more noticeable than for IRC <mark_weaver>I take deep offense at what the NSA is doing, and I plan to make things as difficult as I can for them. <civodul>that's what we should have been doing for years actually <Steap> "/quit" makes things quite hard for them :) <youlysses>Steap: Then it'd be a good-time to support projects like "GNUnet" then. :^) <mark_weaver>Indeed. I feel like I fool. I worked closely with Phil Zimmermann at PGP Inc (second full-time programmer hired there; produced the nicely OCR'able source code books). I should have known better. <Steap>As one of my friends told me earlier, even if you were to throw away your computer, your name would still appear in a gazillion places, as long as you use healthcare, pay bills etc. <civodul>the question is how can users control their "digital footprint" <mark_weaver>Apart from my internet use, I'm closer to off-the-grid than many people. No credit card, no utility bills, no permanent address, ride my bike everywhere. I need to ditch my phone though. <jxself>No utility bill? Solar power then? <jxself>A stationary bike that you ride to generate power? :) *jxself uses a ThinkPad X60s with coreboot & without AMT <mark_weaver>jxself: a lot of the time I live with friends (at the moment, helping my best friends raise their young child), but when needed I sleep out in the woods. <mark_weaver>which actually I find quite enjoyable. I can work at public libraries, or at MIT's all-volunteer radio station where I work. <mark_weaver>jxself: ah, I was wondering about that. so using coreboot is able to defeat AMT? <jxself>I'm not sure of that. The X60s never had AMT to begin with. That was one of the reasons to get it. Plus being supported by coreboot. <jxself>I've also replaced the Intel WiFi card with one with Atheros. In general I think it's comparable to the Yeeloong from a freedom perspective. <jxself>There is still the proprietary hard disk firmware but that's also a problem on the Yeeloong too and no one is working on that, AFAIK. <mark_weaver>I previously had a Thinkpad X20, and tried to replace the internal card to support USB 2, only to find that it had a whitelist, and rejected my card :-( but I guess that's implemented in the BIOS, and thus avoided by coreboot. <jxself>Yes, that anti-feature isn't present in coreboot. :) <mark_weaver>jxself: regarding YeeLoong vs Thinkpad X60s from a freedom perspective: the thing is, you're stuck in a dead end, whereas the YeeLoong holds some promise for the future. <jxself>How so? I understand that the Yeeloong is discontinued, just like my X60s. <mark_weaver>though really what I'm looking forward to is Milkymilt. <civodul>Steap: can you check the news items to be approved on sv.gnu.org/p/guix? <jxself>Around. I understand it created certain challenges in getting replacements for RMS. Surely new ones will continue to be available for some time. <Steap>civodul: where shall I look ? <jxself>I suspect that, given how many X60s were made by Lenovo, I should be able to buy used ones for parts if necessary to keep me going for at least several years. <mark_weaver>jxself: given that I just ordered a new one (the same model as RMS) a few days ago from the factory, I guess that was bad information. <jxself>Ah, yes - Tekmote. They do sell them but AFAIK don't make them. <mark_weaver>yes, it ships direct from Lemote. they're just a european front, essentially. <jxself>They used to sell them as well and now now out of stock. <mark_weaver>jxself: yes, freedomincluded is where I got my first YeeLoong. <mark_weaver>I tried to contact Danny to get a replacement, but alas he seems to be unreachable ATM. <jxself>Yes. I suspect that will continue into the forseeable future. <Steap>mark_weaver: isn't that a problem not to have a "fixed" address ? Where I live, if you don't have one, life is hell. <mark_weaver>Steap: how does it make life hell where you live? (where's that?) <jxself>And couldn't you get a mailbox somewhere if needed? <youlysses>I plan on getting a Yeelong Leemote in like ~7 months time... would it still be "worth it" and too "obtainable" y'all think by-then? <mark_weaver>I have my mail sent to a friend, but there's almost no mail to begin with. <jxself>youlysses: Freedom is always worth it. :) <mark_weaver>but another option is "General Delivery", where someone writes as the destination address "general delivery" of a particular post office, and they hold it there for a certain length of time. I could pick it up using an ID. <youlysses>jxself: Well yeah, but I'm asking if it'd be cheaper/easier at that point to buy something relatively comparable and then replace needed hardware with their equivalent. :^P <mark_weaver>jxself: the thing is, there's work to be done to make the Loongson viable. work needs to be done on the toolchain, on distro support, on writing optimized code where needed. by using the YeeLoong, I'm confronted with those issues and am motivated to work on fixing them. <Steap>mark_weaver: in France. Well, without an address, you can't get your mail from Healthcare, from your job, etc. So I'd say life is a bit harder :) Even poor people need one to receive financial aid from the government (which is obviously an issue for those who can't afford a place to live) <jxself>youlysses: Well, a ThinkPad supported by coreboot might be something to consider. <jxself>Plus like $10 for a new WiFi card. <youlysses>jxself: The thing is, that preferably I'd be looking for something at about that "netbook" to "small laptop" size, which I'm not sure how/if their smaller models support coreboot or-not. I suppose it's worth the time to invest for research. :^P <jxself>But you can't start adding too many qualifications, though, because the choices are rather limited to begin with... <mark_weaver>jxself: trust me, I know what it's like to invest in a dying platform. I spent a lot of time on the OLPC XO-1, and on the Psion 5- <mark_weaver>Psion 5-MX (the only computer I've owned that's sufficiently power efficient for me to use away from the power grid for long periods of time) <mark_weaver>and you may be able to go for a few more years, but sooner or later it will be unusable. <jxself>I met someone in Boston with an OLPC. I played with a bit. It seemed nice although the keys seemed kinda small. I used that program with espeek I think it was & made it say "I am a happy green computer." ;) <mark_weaver>there's little hope for free software in the future Intel/Lenovo world. <mark_weaver>at least not without things like AMT and probably NSA back doors. <mark_weaver>Lemote claims to be working on a free GPU solution, and there's at least some hope there. a lot more hope than I have in the Intel world. <mark_weaver>and iirc, even the new YeeLoong 8133 can be used without the non-free blobs apparently, if you're willing to give up GPU acceleration. <mark_weaver>jxself: thanks for pointing that out! was that at LibrePlanet 2012? <jxself>I have most of the whole talk saved. <jxself>You're probably right in the long term. Making an FSF-endorsable may very well mean avoiding x86 but for now I can compute in freedom and expect to be able to make this last for at least a number of years. <mark_weaver>in the long term, Milkymist is my best hope. but in the shorter term, I have a lot more confidence in Lemote than Intel. <jxself>There is a gap between 1 & 2. I'm not sure how long. <jxself>I don't have the entire talk. I think the FSF does but they've not published it. <jxself>Ah, that LibrePlanet page links to the Trisquel forums where I originally shared the links. <davexunit>I almost feel bad for buying a thinkpad x220 now. <mark_weaver>davexunit: I can sympathize. I'm using a X200 right now, and now I regret buying it too. <mark_weaver>though admittedly, if you need good graphics acceleration, I know of no better solution at present than an Intel-based GPU and CPU. <davexunit>yeah I've been sticking with intel for graphics. <davexunit>I learned that I can hack the x220 to use an atheros wireless chip, so I decided to buy it since I found one for cheap. <jxself>Another option is certain Nvidia video cards with the latest versions of nouveau, latest kernel, etc. <jxself>And AMD, since there are more AMD motherboards with coreboot that there are Intel boards. <davexunit>jxself: I use nouveau on my desktop computer. <mark_weaver>jxself: I experimented with Nouveau on my friend's Mac Book Pro (trying to liberate it), and it hung up fairly frequently, requiring restarts of the desktop much of the time. <jxself>I can't speak to the Mac Book Pro's hardware but I understand that hardware accelerated 3D graphics is possible in freedom on certain video cards. <davexunit>I actually had *less* problems with nouveau than with the proprietary nvidia drivers. <jxself>But you need those specific cards and the latest Novuea, kernel, etc. etc. etc. as it's all very new. <davexunit>the nonfree drivers did not work with my obscure korean monitor out-of-the-box <mark_weaver>on the Mac Book Pro I was trying to liberate, nouveau definitely worked better than the proprietary driver in almost every respect.. except for the GPU lockups. <davexunit>I really wish nouveau had video decoding working <davexunit>I built an htpc a few years ago before knowing about the dangers of nonfree drivers <jxself>Your CPU isn't powerful enough to do the work itself? <davexunit>perhaps now I could replace the motherboard with a newer, but still low power, intel chip and use the built-in graphics/ <jxself>The Atom might be workable if you avoid HD video and depending on the video codec in question. <mark_weaver>jxself: I see that rms1.ogv and rms2.ogv have a large overlap <davexunit>I have a good amount of 720p and 1080p media that I would like to continue to watch. I think I just need to research what my options are now that a few years have passed. <jxself>Oh? I had thought there was a gap. If not that's perfect. <jxself>Try 720p using Theora & see how it goes? I recall Theora being very easy to decode. <jxself>mark_weaver: Ah, OK. I feel more sane now. :) <mark_weaver>on the YeeLoong 8101B, I had much better luck decoding Theora than WebM. The WebM decoder was *much* slower. <jxself>I've noticed it's much slower on the encoding side too. <jxself>But beyond that it does seem technically superior to Theora, as long as you have the CPU power to spare for the work. <mark_weaver>To my eyes, modern Theora looks very nice (since Thusnelda) <jxself>Yes, and those RMS videos were made using the latest version of libetheora pulled from subversion to get their latest work. <jxself>er; I guess I can't type correctly... <mark_weaver>the hardware side of things is looking quite grim these days :-( I need to put more effort into this. <mark_weaver>I have the skills needed to work on that. I should probably focus on that more. <mark_weaver>well, there's lots of work to be done: (1) reverse engineering, (2) improving support for more-freedom-respecting platforms (e.g. Lemote), (3) working on Milkymist. <jxself>For #1, did hearing RMS talk help with that? :) <mark_weaver>I've already done some important work on (2), but more needs to be done. <mark_weaver>I think I'm more inclined to work on 2 and 3 though. <jxself>The Milkmist can be used as a general purpose computer? <mark_weaver>jxself: yes, though it's only running at about 100 MHz now. <jxself>Money's not a problem. For me anyway. 100MHz brings back memories. <mark_weaver>and it requires using a non-free FPGA compiler to convert the free VHDL code into a bitstream to be sent to the FPGA, which is a drag. <mark_weaver>if I work on (3), that's probably what I should work on. reverse engineering the bitstream format of some FPGA chip and writing a free VHDL compiler for it. <jxself>That would certainly be helpful, yes. <jxself>I should probably get working. I've been here for almost two hours and have not accomplished much. <mark_weaver>I suppose I should apologize for all the off-topic discussion here :-/ <civodul>Steap: on the web interface, under "News" *civodul started rms1.ogv <mark_weaver>civodul: the Lemote computers are available at a significant discount for the next 2 months or so. <Steap>Just when I thought I had found the perfect laptop. <Steap>Honestly, this looks great, but well, 900Mhz and 1GB of RAM <Steap>what do you people do on such computers ? :p <Steap>I really do not miss the computers of my youth. <Steap>how free are you with a 10 year old computer ? :p <civodul>that's also because i use computers to do programming (mostly), email, and reading <civodul>surely i'd have an incentive to help make Guile faster ;-) <Steap>Yeah, try compiling Firefox with less than 8GB of RAM :) <civodul>sometimes software builds upon, or contributes to hardware obsolescence <civodul>unfortunately free software is no exception <mark_weaver>the YeeLoong 8101B can take up to 2GB of RAM. The newer 8133 can take 4GB. <mark_weaver>but I successfully compiled the entire OS from scratch (using Cross Linux From Scratch) including GNU IceCat on my YeeLoong 8101B with only 1GB of RAM. Granted, it took a long time to do it. <mark_weaver>it included a fairly complete GNOME 2.32 install as well. that was a pain. so many dependencies that are hard to build and install. <mark_weaver>I did CLFS instead of plain LFS because I wanted an N32 ABI, but I was bootstrapping from gNewSense which used O32. <mark_weaver>when I get my new YeeLoong, I'd like to get Guix working on it. I see that Nikita has been trying, but not getting very far. <Basstard`>Why xxx-package-version and not package-version-xxx? <mark_weaver>I've wondered that also. Using package-version-xxx would make it easier to look for duplicates, etc. That design decision is inherited from Nix. <civodul>Basstard`: yeah, not necessarily a good idea ;-) <Basstard`>And I'd also prefer something like how Gobo sorts things, mixed with hashes like Nix, such as: /Programs/Bash/4.2/fzcdfwyyin5dr7finlaq2kph396nrlli/bin/bash <civodul>well i think this really has to be considered like a pointer <civodul>you wouldn't want to complain because a pointer's digits don't match the phone number of your best friend ;-) <mark_weaver>it would be easy enough to write something that lists the contents of /nix/store with the hashes put at the end.