Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one

This week’s news about the Audacity project adding telemetry and the public outcry is a perfect test case to explore why free software means better privacy. I do just that in this post: https://puri.sm/posts/audacity-telemetry-and-why-free-software-means-better-privacy/

This is the key point and the reason FOSS means better #privacy: "The joy of open source means that users can, if they wish, verify Audacity's claims for themselves before deciding that the time has come for a fork." https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/07/audacity_telemetry/

Office culture skipped in this piece: poor managers can only tell if you're working by seeing you at a desk. They also rely on "dropping in" at a desk to force an employee to prioritize their immediate needs. WfH requires them to be level up as managers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/06/ceo-i-want-my-employees-understand-risks-not-returning-work-office/

In honor of #WorldPasswordDay2021 here's my favorite talk I've given on password policy: Sex, Secret and God: A Brief History of Bad Passwords in a 10-minute Ignite-style talk: https://opensource.com/article/18/5/brief-history-bad-passwords and the full-length talk I gave at BSidesLV 2017: https://infocondb.org/con/security-bsides/bsideslv-2017/sex-secret-and-god-a-brief-history-of-bad-passwords

Given that classic story of Target knowing a teen was pregnant before her father did, which Big Tech companies would you trust with smart underpants that could track a woman's cycle?

While I'm sure this clothing will be more expensive (to start) than non-smart alternatives, I wonder who will be the first to follow the "smart TV" route and subsidize the cost by selling your data.

Apparently the future of clothing is "smart fabric": shirts that act like computer displays, microphones stitched into single strands of fabric, clothing full of sensors and semiconductors. All I can think of is how this will be abused. #privacy https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/03/smart-fabric-future-of-clothing/

I take fiction breaks between volumes of Durant. During my last break I re-read the Iliad (different translation), and read Oresteia, Moby Dick, Old Man and the Sea, Madame Bovary, 170 pgs of Ulysses, and Pale Fire.

It was a nice break, but now let's get back into it!

That devs in FOSS projects are 1st-class citizens and doc writers are 2nd/3rd has been so pervasive for so long, that I *still* I dismiss my almost 20yrs of writing and only treat my relatively small code as my "real" contribution. Glad to see some communities trying to fix this.

Why yes, I did just improvise a parody of Lionel Ritchie's Easy like a Sunday Morning about free software Embedded Controller (EC) firmware in my company chat. Why do you ask?

The thing I'm most excited about now that the Librem 14 is shipping, is running Qubes on it. In this post I talk about why I think it's the best Qubes laptop you can buy: https://puri.sm/posts/best-qubes-laptop-is-the-secure-librem-14/

Their two-factor implementation is a face palm.

You have to hand it to them... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/21/amazon-palm-print-whole-foods/

This whole write-up is great, but the Hackers-inspired video demoing the exploit just clinches it. Gold. #hacktheplanet https://signal.org/blog/cellebrite-vulnerabilities/