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Exploring the future of computing
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======Server specifications======
Fedora Linux
2x Intel Xeon E5-2640 v3
32 GB of RAM
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Since we started our more visible push for donations to ensure we can keep OSNews running as an independent technology news website without having to resort to SEO spam, ad overload, and worse, a number of people have expressed interest in donating to specific goals instead of donating generically. A possible goal for this has recently come up, so I’m stepping out of my comfort zone (this whole thing terrifies me): you can now donate specifically towards a much, much-needed upgrade for my PC[1] – and troll me along the way. Read on!
kofiwidget2.init('Troll me on Ko-Fi!', '#29abe0', 'C0C1MOGKM');kofiwidget2.draw();
After almost 8 years of loyal service, my PC, with a 7700K and GTX 1070, is starting to show some serious signs of old-age and constant use. This machine is the main computer I have, used for both my work on OSNews as well as gaming, and it’s getting long in the tooth. As such, I’m planning a relatively conservative, mid-tier upgrade for the machine, retaining as many parts as possible to keep costs down. I will retain the case, power supply, CPU cooler, and the various SSDs and hard drives.
My intention is to purchase the following parts:
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X (or equivalent Intel processor, see below)
ASUS TUF Gaming A620M-Plus Wi-Fi motherboard (or whatever other cheap-ish board)
Corsair 32 GB (2Ă—16 GB) DDR5 5200 MHz
Radeon XT 6700 XT 12 GB (whatever halfway decent brand is cheapest)
In Sweden, this would add up to SEK 10900[2] (incl. all applicable taxes), or €921/$978, so I set the goal at an even €1000. With the state of the world as it is, as well as having a family with two young children, investments like this simply aren’t something I can do out of pocket, and that’s why people have been suggesting for months to take this step.
However, I want to make things a bit more interesting, and provide you lovely nerds with some ways to troll me. As such, I will give the two largest combined donations (as in, you can donate multiple times and it’ll count) some extra perks, designed to give you the opportunity to mess with me:
The person who makes the largest combined donation gets to name the computer (hostname, etc.), and gets to choose the name of our Wi-Fi SSID (my wife needed some coaxing to be on board with this). Go nuts – anything goes (within reason, see below), and the names will be permanent! On top of that, you get the choose whether the machine will have an AMD or Intel processor (the GPU has to be AMD because its Linux support is vastly superior).
The person who makes the second largest combined donation gets to have fun decorating the poor computer with stickers. Want to troll me with a giant Windows sticker, an Apple logo, or worse, the flag of Belgium? This is your chance!
Obviously, there are some ground rules here – no pornography, no hateful stuff like racism, no gore, stuff like that. We’re all adults here, and I’m pretty sure we all instinctively know what I mean. Other than that – anything goes! Any required stickers I’ll buy myself, as long as you can provide me a link.
Any donation made through our Ko-Fi[3] will count towards this goal, and you can keep track of the progress there as well. Since I have absolutely no idea how this will go (like I said, I’m terrified), I haven’t set a time limit on the goal. So, hop on over to our Ko-Fi page and donate away[4]!
In the meantime, I’m going to curl up in a corner because I have no clue how anyone is going to respond to this.
[1] https://ko-fi.com/thomholwerda/goal?g=0
[2] https://www.osnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/df397a4adb52d46e.png
[3] https://ko-fi.com/thomholwerda/goal?g=0
[4] https://ko-fi.com/thomholwerda/goal?g=0
Bruce Lawson writes[1]:
This week, I’ve had the pleasure to read the post-modernist triumph that is CASES DMA.100013 Apple – online intermediation services – app stores, DMA.100025 Apple – operating systems and DMA.100027 Apple – web browsers (PDF)[2], which details some of Apple’s attempts to avoid being regulated. I call it a “post-modernist triumph” because its prose is almost as incomprehensible as James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and it is so full of preposterous lies and contradictions that it can only be sanely read as a metatextual joke like the Illuminatus! Trilogy. In order to avoid having Safari being deemed a Core Platform Service (and thus falling under the remit of DMA), Apple argues “Look, those Safaris on iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, TvOS, WatchOS are TOTALLY DIFFERENT PRODUCTS and none of them have enough users in the EU for you to even think about regulating us, alright? We’re a tiny start-up! Will nobody think of the children?!?”. (I paraphrase somewhat).
Entirely unsurprisingly, Apple’s legal contortions did not work – the EU basically tossed this nonsense out right away[3], using Apple’s own marketing claims about Safari against them.
[1] https://brucelawson.co.uk/2023/apples-eu-legal-shenanigans/
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/202344/DMA_100027_197.pdf
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/apple_safari_browser/
The Pixel 8 hardware (Tensor G3[1]) supports the ARM Memory Tagging Extension (MTE)[2], and software support is available both in Android userspace and the Linux kernel. This feature is a powerful defense against linear buffer overflows and many types of use-after-free flaws. I’m extremely happy to see this hardware finally available in the real world.
You can enable this feature in both Android and the kernel, as the post explains[3]. Sadly, the post does not explain if there’s any downsides to enabling this extension, and I’m certainly not the right person to investigate that. Does anyone in our audience know?
[1] https://www.androidpolice.com/google-tensor-g3/
[2] https://source.android.com/docs/security/test/memory-safety/arm-mte
[3] https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2023/10/26/enable-mte-on-pixel-8/
I was yet again spectacularly wrong in speculating that we had another eight months to wait before Apple would release the first Macs with M3 chips. Another few days and the first will be upon us, and the fortunate few will start bragging or moaning about their performance. That has suddenly grown more complex: the number of each CPU core type has diversified with the M3 Pro in particular. This article looks at some of the factors involved in comparing CPU performance across Apple’s expanded range of M-series chips[1].
As Apple’s line-up of processors grows, it’s becoming harder to keep track of all the details. This article does a good job of highlighting some of the changes coming inside M3-based Macs.
[1] https://eclecticlight.co/2023/11/03/m3-macs-theres-more-to-performance-than-counting-cores/
Google has announced it’s going to drop the Web Environment Integrity proposal – the controversial proposal that set the internet on fire[1] a few months ago. Instead, the company intends to offer a much more limited version of the proposal that only targets Android WebViews embedded in applications, targeting only media streams running inside Android applications.
We’ve heard your feedback, and the Web Environment Integrity proposal is no longer being considered by the Chrome team. In contrast, the Android WebView Media Integrity API is narrowly scoped, and only targets WebViews embedded in apps. It simply extends existing functionality on Android devices that have Google Mobile Services (GMS) and there are no plans to offer it beyond embedded media, such as streaming video and audio, or beyond Android WebViews.
I might be ye of little faith, but this feels a lot like a case of proposing something overtly horrible first, to pave the way for something that now seems benign in comparison. On top of that, that scope might be limited now, but does anyone have any faith left that Google won’t just… Widen the scope later, once we’re all not looking?
Facebook has unveiled the prices[1] it’s going to charge European users who want to have an ad-free experience on Facebook and Instagram.
People in these countries will be able to subscribe for a fee to use our products without ads. Depending on where you purchase it will cost €9.99/month on the web or €12.99/month on iOS and Android. Regardless of where you purchase, the subscription will apply to all linked Facebook and Instagram accounts in a user’s Accounts Center. As is the case for many online subscriptions, the iOS and Android pricing take into account the fees that Apple and Google charge through respective purchasing policies. Until March 1, 2024, the initial subscription covers all linked accounts in a user’s Accounts Center. However, beginning March 1, 2024, an additional fee of €6/month on the web and €8/month on iOS and Android will apply for each additional account listed in a user’s Account Center.
That’s a high price to pay to read your racist uncle’s rants and see the heavily photoshopped photos of some random influencer peddling vitamin pills.
This week, Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker rose as a key figure in Google’s defense against the Justice Department’s monopoly claims. Providing a video deposition for the landmark trial, Baker testified that Mozilla’s popular browser Firefox tried to switch from using Google as a default search engine but reverted back after a “failed” bet on Yahoo[1] made it clear that Google was Firefox users’ preferred search engine.
That fits in a long string of similar claims – namely, that defaulting to anything but Google is impossible, because nothing else is even remotely as good as Google Search, because none of the others are the default, meaning they don’t get the amount of queries needed to improve search quality, and on the spiral goes.
What’s spicy here is that this trial could potentially turn out to be Mozilla’s downfall, since Google’s search deals with, among others, Mozilla, are up for debate. Desktop Linux’ Firefox problem[2] could explode sooner than we might think.
[2] https://www.osnews.com/story/136653/desktop-linux-has-a-firefox-problem/
In recent years the Itanium support in the Linux kernel has went downhill[1] with not many users left testing new kernels on aging Itanium servers. There also hasn’t been any major active contributors to the Itanium code for keeping it maintained and making any serious improvements to the architecture code. On and off for months there’s been talk of retiring Itanium from the Linux kernel[2] and now it’s finally happened.With Linux 6.6 expected to be this year’s Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel version, there was the proposal recently to drop Itanium in Linux 6.7 and indeed it’s successfully happened[3].
This is a complete outrage, and a sign Torvalds has completely lost the plot. Itanium is the future, and dropping it from the Linux kernel will be its death knell.
I’m going back to DOS.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Itanium-IA64-Linux-5.11-Broken
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Retire-Itanium-IA64-Patch
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IA-64-Removed-Linux-6.7
The European data regulator has agreed to extend a ban imposed by non-EU member Norway on “behavioural advertising” on Facebook and Instagram to cover all 30 countries in the European Union and the European Economic Area[1], it said on Wednesday. Meta runs the risk of getting fined up to 4% of its global turnover, the Norwegian data regulator said.
Sure, the European Union isn’t perfect – no government is – but the Union’s fight against the utter dominance of tech giants, as well as standing up for citizen privacy, is commendable.
There’s an alternative universe where we decided to teach the kernel about every piece of hardware it should run on. Fortunately (or, well, unfortunately) we’ve seen that in the ARM world. Most device-specific simply never reaches mainline, and most users are stuck running ancient kernels as a result. Imagine every x86 device vendor shipping their own kernel optimised for their hardware, and now imagine how well that works out given the quality of their firmware. Does that really seem better to you? It’s understandable why ACPI has a poor reputation. But it’s also hard to figure out what would work better in the real world. We could have built something similar on top of Open Firmware[1] instead but the distinction wouldn’t be terribly meaningful – we’d just have Forth instead of the ACPI bytecode language. Longing for a non-ACPI world without presenting something that’s better and actually stands a reasonable chance of adoption doesn’t make the world a better place[2].
Matthew Garrett with the usual paragraphs of wisdom.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware
[2] https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/68350.html
This project[1] allows old x86 computers using a classic BIOS to boot from modern NVMe storage attached via PCI(e). It’s a heavily modified version of iPXE[2] (which usually allows for booting from the network), but instead of the network, this code uses a port of the SeaBIOS[3] NVMe implementation[4] to talk to a local NVMe drive.
What a useful idea.
[1] https://github.com/Manawyrm/nvme-int13h-optionrom
[3] https://github.com/coreboot/seabios/tree/master
[4] https://github.com/coreboot/seabios/blob/master/src/hw/nvme.c
In short, after a Linux kernel update (6.5.8-200.fc.x86_64 on Fedora KDE), I can’t use the top button of my pen on my tablet[1]. This is really affecting my digital painting workflow! Right-clicking on the pen is an essential part of my workflow. Right-click on a layer in Krita to get the menu, right-click while using the Transform tool to get the transformation options, right-click on the canvas to get the pop-up palette! …And I’m not even talking about how difficult it is to handle files and the D.E. without right-clicking. And if that makes you smile, imagine someone hardcoding the behaviour of your main device like the right-click on your mouse or touchpad (or anything else you have been using for more than 20 years) to something completely useless, and pushing it through kernel updates. And the icing on the cake, they left you with no user tool to change it back.
I now have that same feeling or rage mixed with hopelessness that you feel when dealing with pointless government bureaucracy.
[1] https://www.davidrevoy.com/article995/how-a-kernel-update-broke-my-stylus-need-help
During his testimony, Pichai revealed a tidbit on how Google operates that gives a better look behind the curtain and could help explain users’ frustration with Android phones not seeing security updates. According to Pichai, Google financially incentivizes OEMs to update their phones[1]. Companies that keep phones current with the latest security patches see a higher revenue share from Google services than those that don’t. In other words, the amount of money an OEM makes from you using Google products on its device is correlated to how often it keeps that device up to date with security patches. This means Google intentionally strongarms OEMs to be better about updating phones, which is something we didn’t know before. We knew that Google mandates two years of updates for any Android phone and strongly encourages more extended support than that, but we didn’t realize there were financial incentives involved.
I’m honestly not entirely sure if this wasn’t known before, but this is an interesting approach for Google to take. If it’s not financially interesting for OEMs to update their Android devices, why not give them a bigger slice of the Google revenue pie to incentivise them? I’d prefer proper update windows be legally mandated – I wouldn’t be surprised if the EU is working on that somewhere – but in the meantime, I’ll take this rare case of Google’s interests lining up with consumers’ interests.
[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/sundar-pichai-android-oem-updates-3380870/
Tom’s Hardware reports[1]:
MyDrivers has published a review[2] of Loongson’s 3A6000 quad-core CPU, confirming that the chip’s IPC improvements are real. Benchmarks reveal that the 3A6000 enjoys an impressive 60% performance uplift in single-core performance and an even more impressive 2x performance multiplier in multi-core performance over its 3A5000[3] predecessor. With these improvements, the 3A6000 features performance comparable to a Core i3-10100F, with the IPC performance of a Zen 3 chip. Of course, both Intel’s Comet Lake 10th Gen architecture and AMD’s Zen 3 architecture are now coming up on three years old. They’re nowhere near the top of our list of the best CPUs for gaming or other purposes. But it still represents a step in the right direction.
Chinese chipmakers are improving quite fast, but unless they can somehow get access to the latest machinery from the Dutch company ASML, which makes virtually all of the machines capable of producing the chips with the smallest nanometers and is the linchpin in the entire semiconductor industry, they won’t be able to overtake or even match what TSMC and Intel are doing.
That being said, I love weird processors, and I’d love to get my hands on one of these to play around with.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/loongson-3a6000-beats-i3-10100f
[2] https://news.mydrivers.com/1/942/942484_5.htm
[3] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/loongson-launches-3A5000-cpus
I’ve recently been working on putting together a CI system for postmarketOS that will allow us to do proper automated integration testing. That is to say – when someone opens a merge request that modifies our initramfs (for example), we should be able to click a button and some minutes later know that this change doesn’t break any of our important usecases. QEMU absolutely can (and will) get us most of the way there, but at some point we need to just run the same software that we’re running on end user devices. Furthermore, QEMU can’t tell us anything about changes in the kernel that might affect our devices, and manually testing during kernel upgrades, frankly, sucks. So we need a fancy board farm[1], this is one of those things where folks with the right technical background could build something over the course of a week. But for someone like me it’s full of trial and error and hidden complexity… It’s easy enough to do this with one device – just hack something together, but to be successful we need something reliable and adaptable, that we can adjust to fit our needs in the future, and the wide range of devices we support.
Now this is an article you won’t come across very often, as the number of people setting up something like this who can actually talk openly about it – someone doing this for a closed company probably can’t – is probably quite small. A great read.
[1] https://connolly.tech/posts/2023_10_28-all-control/
Lennart Poettering has been working on a new systemd feature called systemd-storagetm that is inspired by the Apple macOS “Target Disk Mode” feature[1]. This is similar to Apple’s Target Disk Mode as a boot option on Macs that allows other systems to then easily access it as an external device. The systemd intent with this Storage Target Mode is to make it easier to debug a broken system with very few dependencies while being able to access the raw block device of the broken system via the network. This may also make it easier to migrate from one system to the next. By having access to the raw block device via NVMe-TCP, it can be easy to use the “dd” command or similar for copying the drive.
Target Disk Mode has long been one of those amazing Mac features that should’ve come to PCs decades ago, so I’m incredibly glad Poettering is working on it. This will make it so much easier to troubleshoot, get files off a broken system, and so on, without having to move hard drives around or boot into live CDs.
![[2] https://www.osnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/df397a4adb52d46e.png](https://www.osnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/df397a4adb52d46e.png){kind=link}