There are certainly some governments around the world that have considered requiring age verification for chatbots. Not sure any such laws are already in effect.

I don’t even want to express an opinion whether I find that worse or less bad than doing so for social media.

Pretty sure that compared to NetBSD, Linux still runs on relatively few architectures. 😝

I do use it, but you are quite right I don’t tend to mention it unless asked.

Yes. If vendors in those states want to then preinstall Linux on a device they would have to find a compliant distro…

Doesn’t matter much. At least those of us who aren’t engaged in the business of selling computers are unaffected.

Considering SteamOS includes Valve’s proprietary bits for the Steam client, this likely still applies to Valve and any hardware shipping with SteamOS

Where is the line? Most Linux distros have some nonfree software too, does it apply to them?

IMHO the correct legal and constitutional analysis ought to be: distributing software, in either source or binary form, is free speech protected under the US constitution as well as state constitutions. Therefore the government cannot pass laws requiring that operating systems, in general, implement certain features, doesn’t matter which.

What the government can do is engage in product regulation. It can require that operating systems preinstalled on devices sold in their jurisdiction have certain features. The correct thing to do wouldn’t have been to distinguish FOSS from nonfree operating systems, but operating systems preinstalled on devices from those distributed on the Internet which the user needs to install. That would have covered Android, iOS, macOS and Windows, which is obviously what the legislators were thinking of.

IRC prank from the 2000s: if you type /quit playing games with my heart you’ll hear a cool pop song.

2020s: if you type quit into Google it will understand this as an AI prompt.

It just has more of the web in its index than competitors do, so there are good practical reasons on occasion.

On the terminal yes.

On GUIs I generally use an IDE or VSCodium with vim keybindings.

Windows becoming a Linux distribution.

not what I want, I want Windows (as in, the existing Windows codebase) to become FOSS, if that happened, we would no longer need to care about anyone switching to Linux, in fact I might then install a FOSS Windows myself

I remember already playing it through Wine in like 2009 or so, so all that is new is that it’s now a decompiled version.

die Grammatik ist nicht wirklich besser

OK, if it is intended mainly as a description of investors and other “business” enthusiasts, then I agree with fighting against what they want.

If I don’t know what that means I’m fighting against, I won’t be fighting against “techbros”, not even using that term. I might still fight against specific things they are doing…

I wonder if I’ll ever read a coherent definition of the term “techbro”. Aren’t most KDE (and other FOSS) developers also men interested in technology? If that isn’t the definition of “techbro”, then what is?

If we’re going to wildly speculate, hey, isn’t this what we have AI for nowadays?

I asked ChatGPT: “give me ideas what the abbreviation WLBR might stand for if that is the name of a piece of image editing software”. Here’s the result:

🧠 Professional / technical-sounding

• Wide Layer Blending & Rendering
• Workflow Layer-Based Retoucher
• Weighted Light Balance Renderer
• Wavelet-Based Light & Blur Reconstruction
• White-Level Balance & Retouch

🎨 Creative / artistic branding

• We Love Better Retouching
• Wild Light & Bold Retouch
• Wavelength Brush
• Wonder Lens: Blur & Refine
• Whitelight Brush

⚡ Modern / software-product style

• WizLayer Build & Render
• WarpLab: Blend & Refine
• Web-Level Bitmap Renderer
• Workflow Lens & Brush Renderer
• WLB Renderer (treat WLBR as a stylized acronym)

🧩 Slightly abstract (like many real apps)

• Wavelength-Based Rasterizer
• Layered Bitmask Refinement
• Light Balance Reconstruction Engine
• Wideband Luminosity Brush & Retouch

🧠 If you want it to feel like real software naming

Most image tools (like Photoshop, GIMP, etc.) don’t strictly spell out acronyms anymore—they use:

• suggestive tech words (Layer, Light, Render, Brush)
• or abstract brand terms

So something like:

WLBR = “WaveLight Brush & Render”

feels believable without being overly literal.

(end of ChatGPT response)

Out of these, I think “Workflow Layer-Based Retoucher” works best. But interesting that ChatGPT thinks “GIMP” doesn’t “strictly spell out” an acronym anymore, or that “Photoshop” ever did?!

Is WLBR supposed to be an abbreviation for something? I realize it is a reference to the mascot Wilber, but apart from that?

Compiled code ought to be too then tbh.

As long as Google is doing a better job maintaining AOSP than a nonprofit would, what’s the point?

If they ever stop doing so, then this might be an option.

It’s a fairly widespread Internet meme, I think in order to make fun of France, though I’m not sure exactly where it originated.

The main problem is that nowadays a lot of software is JavaScript downloaded when web browsing. And that might just be too demanding for ancient hardware if it was never tested on it.