I think part of it is something else - ease of use and ease of access.
The “world that makes sense” product exists already:
https://www.elementvape.com/box-mod-kits

While I was vaping I mixed my own liquids though, as the cost savings was immense and I could easily lower the nicotine mg/ml on my own until I quit it altogether.

Yeah, if there’s a full system failure without any backups and no option to get the system operational again then I would land in clone the drives before trying to restore data from them.

1. RAID is never a replacement for backups.
2. Never work directly with a surviving disk, clone it and work with the cloned drive.
3. Are you sure you can’t rebuild the RAID? That really is the best solution in many cases.
4. If a RAID failure is within tolerance (1 drive in a RAID5 array) then it should still be operational. Make a backup before rebuilding if you don’t have one already.
5. If more disks are gone than that then don’t count on recovering all data even with data recovery tools.

Here’s another one putting the blame on them not investing in OpenAI:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/how-chip-giant-intel-spurned-openai-fell-behind-times-2024-08-07/

At the same time Intel is definitely entering the race, and more competition is always nice:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also appeared at the Intel event, where he announced that his company will use Intel’s relaunched foundry to make future chips.
In 2022, the US government passed the CHIPS Act promising $52 billion to reinvigorate domestic chipmaking and secure silicon supply lines.
According to a Bloomberg report, Intel is in line to receive $10 billion of that money.

• https://www.wired.com/story/intel-ai-reboot-future-us-chipmaking/

Or this piece about creating an open-source software competitor for Nvidia, among other things:

Also importantly, Intel is spearheading a consortium of heavy hitters that are developing open-source software which can interface with all AI chips.
Such software would eliminate Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) biggest competitive advantage: its software, which enables its chips to be easily managed simultaneously.
Intel’s consortium also includes Arm (NASDAQ:ARM), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, GOOGL), and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO).
It expects to unveil a finished product by the end of this year.

• https://investorplace.com/2024/06/the-sleeping-giant-awakens-intels-ai-push-signals-a-comeback/

Corporate / Enterprise AI solution with quite a customer/partner list:

[…]customers and partners, including Bharti Airtel, Bosch, CtrlS, IBM, IFF, Landing AI, Ola, NAVER, NielsenIQ, Roboflow and Seekr.

• https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1689/intel-unleashes-enterprise-ai-with-gaudi-3-ai-open-systems

They’re starting to release tools to use Intel ARC for AI tasks, such as AI Playground and IPEX LLM:
https://game.intel.com/us/stories/introducing-ai-playground/
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discrete-gpus/arc/software/ai-playground.html

https://game.intel.com/us/stories/wield-the-power-of-llms-on-intel-arc-gpus/
https://github.com/intel-analytics/ipex-llm

Personally I wouldn’t count Intel out of the game just yet, gonna be interesting to see what happens during 2025-2026.

So it’s a lightweight laptop but lacks the battery time to work on the go. (6 hours)

I imagine the youtube link is about the following:
Discord is firing back against MapleStory devs over copyright infringement and users are caught in the crossfire.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/social-media/discord-is-firing-back-against-maplestory-devs-over-copyright-infringement-and-users-are-caught-in-the-crossfire

In some cases they look for generic virtual hw devices, in other cases things like available cpu flags or BIOS version.
There are ways to hide it though:
https://github.com/zhaodice/qemu-anti-detection
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/how-do-i-hide-the-fact-to-windows-that-it-runs-in-a-vm.115627/

No idea to be honest, been a long time since I ran Windows at home.

Can always use the Windows 10 LTSC 2021 iso to create the Windows To Go. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/download-windows-10-enterprise
Getting a proper license is gonna be impossible as a private consumer though, or well you can probably find someone selling the product keys online for cheap but that isn’t a real sales channel and it could suddenly become deactivated by Microsoft. I can find sites illegally selling them for as low as $14 when doing a quick search.

The real way to get the license is to sign up for their Volume Licensing Program.
Windows Enterprise LTSC is available in the per-user and per-device model, depending on the Volume Licensing program through which it’s acquired.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/windows-licensing#windows-desktop-offerings-available-through-commercial-licensing
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/vlsc-faqs-home-page

Using Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) and a fast USB thumbdrive, such as Kingston DataTraveler Max - https://www.storagereview.com/review/kingston-datatraveler-max-review, you can make a “Windows To Go” installation.

Now you have a Windows install that you can boot directly from the thumbdrive when the need arise.
Perfect for booting up if your bios can’t updated directly from the usb drive and forces you into Windows, or to run that one software you can’t replace just yet and that refuses your attempts to run with wine.

Just make sure that it’s an ssd usb thumbdrive or it’s gonna be too slow to be any use.

Personally I’ve upvoted the replies as they keep a relevant and interesting discussion going.

Keepass2Android doesn’t have it yet, but seems to be working on it
https://github.com/PhilippC/keepass2android/issues/2099

Strongbox seem to have their implementation done for iPhone
https://strongboxsafe.com/updates/passkeys/

Vaultwarden is a nice self hosted bitwarden alternative
https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

Some prefer using KeepassXC and sync the database between devices
https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/keepass-vs-bitwarden-server.html

I believe that both proprietary non-free systems and fully free systems can exist and that having licensing alternatives like GPL, LGPL and MIT gives the developer options for specifying how their software is to be used.

The movement towards using MIT or LGPL instead of the full GPL for libraries thus allowing the developers using the libraries the freedom to choose what license their software should use is one I can stand behind.

If someone builds a FLOSS turbotax competitor and don’t want anyone to use their hard work and fork it into a commercial and proprietary product then I believe there should be a license for that.
If they rather earn money from it and copyrights their code instead that is also their prerogative.
The middle-ground where they create a free turbotax competitor with a license that allows others to fork it into a proprietary software should also be possible - although I personally don’t see the allure.

That question is kind a rabbit hole and not one I feel confident in going down.

Free as in freedom, not as in free beer.
The real world implications of non-free software is that other’s can’t run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

I like having computing alternatives that are free from corporate control and believe that the hardliners like FSF helps us keep those alternatives alive. I realise that those alternatives are in many ways worse and that a lot of hardware today requires the vendor blobs to work. When/If corporations push their control even further I want those alternatives to be around.

And you really should pay for winrar. ;-)

Not in this case, the tests they’re running doesn’t need the vendor blobs in those testing folders.

Generally I agree with Debians changes to include nonfree firmware in the default images and making the “completely free” images the non-default version. I do think maintaining and having completely free distro versions to be a good thing though.

The whole situation is really unnecessary because none of the things that we’re testing really requires those vendor blobs.
We’re just testing the basic vboot and CBFS structures in those images, the file contents are not really relevant as long as they match the signatures.
So I think the easiest option here is to just remove the offending CBFS files from those images / overwrite the offending FMAP sections with zeroes.

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/374385985

In this case the binaries with the nonfree software seem be completely unnecessary, so why not keep it free?

https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/coreboot@coreboot.org/thread/6JI7KTJ3QVK6Q5BLNWREX2IBVZP7GCLP/

They were put there for some testing and from their mailing list it sounds like it will be removed as it’s unnecessary.

Apologies that this has caused problems for you.
This is just some old test data used to confirm that the parser in the command line utility works, and I don’t think anyone thought about the redistribution legality implications of putting those images into the repo.
I agree that it’s not a good situation and we should try to fix it.

There is no real reason for these binaries to be in those test fixtures — the point of the tests is just to verify parsing for vboot data structures, the actual contents of the file are not really relevant.

• Julius Werner, member of the Advisory Group

https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/coreboot@coreboot.org/thread/6JI7KTJ3QVK6Q5BLNWREX2IBVZP7GCLP/

edit: “there is a general advisory committee made up of any individuals who wish to help out and discuss their thoughts with the leadership board. This is done at bi-weekly meetings, which all members of the project are invited to attend and contribute.”
https://coreboot.org/leadership.html

The profits gained from sales of .io domains has come under increasing scrutiny given that the UK’s control over the archipelago itself is under threat.
Chagossian refugee groups (former inhabitants forcibly removed in the 1960s and 1970s) petitioning the UK government for the right of return have recently extended their grievances to the return of the .io domain as well (Chagos Refugees Group United Kingdom et al. vs. Internet Computer Bureau Limited Citation 2021).
Additionally, Mauritius is also attempting to gain control over .io by petitioning IANA for redelegation (Bowcott Citation 2022).
However, while these groups fight for control over the .io domain, a recent UN ruling challenging British sovereignty over the island threatens the existence of the ccTLD itself.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23738871.2023.2238723

While I agree with you in that ICANN will probably save .io through some policy change it isn’t as easy as just saying “screw all our policies, this ccTLD is now a gTLD.” considering the fighting going on regarding it.

2.12 Can a New gTLD name be 2 letters?

Applied-for gTLD strings in ASCII must be composed of three or more visually distinct characters. Two-character ASCII strings are not permitted, to avoid conflicting with current and future country-codes based on the ISO 3166-1 standard.

• https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/global-support/faqs/faqs-en

Either way a policy change is needed.