Mr Penguin

https://social.freetalklive.com/@mr_penguin

CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc and co-host of syndicated radio show Free Talk Live.

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Last Notes

2026-09-22 04:10:02 UTC

SOPA's back and 10 times worse!
For those who don't remember The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was a proposed U.S. congressional bill from 2011 that would have brought censorship and site blocking to the United States. It was defeated, but since then the entertainment cartels have gotten similar bills passed in other countries. These bills undermine free speech and democracy.
Now the cartels are at it again with a number of new bills in the United States with even more rigor.
One of these new U.S. site blocking bills adds VPNs to the list of blocking intermediaries.
Now it appears the bill is very specific to virtual private networks and does not explicitly include SOCKS proxies, Tor, or other generic proxy services. That does then beg the question though of why bother? If it's not all inclusive it won't work. It also won't work against non-US jurisdiction based VPN operators. That also means it undermines the VPN operators which are based out of the United States.
How effective can this VPN specific section be? Not very, but there ends up being real harm.
It also still has serious implications for democracy in America if censorship and site blocks are permitted.
I will be the first to argue we've already headed down that dangerous path with the US "justice department" seizing domain names. There is this concept in law known as prior restraint. They're not support to censor speech before it occurs and they certainly shouldn't be taking away someone's ability to speak even if they seize the servers themselves.
Have you written your congress critter yet? I have and I'll write the evil **** again and again and hope for independence for New Hampshire and a collapse of the US. Governments that censor should collapse.
https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-site-blocking-bill-adds-vpns-to-the-list-of-blocking/

2026-09-14 19:55:08 UTC

Ok, I thought I'd seen it all.
A bloated AI generated rust implementation of emacs for the sake of being written in rust:
https://neomacs.org/

2026-09-03 19:12:51 UTC

- reply

That's just making excuses up for poorly thought up and made law.

2026-08-31 22:47:29 UTC

California Ban Leaves Open Questions Despite Supposed "Industry Consensus"
"For Linux users and distributions, the bill’s most important part remains unchanged. Its definition of an 'operating system provider' explicitly excludes an entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms allowing recipients to copy, redistribute, and modify the software."
Not all parts of the Linux kernel are "open source", and some have restrictive licensing or are 'closed'.
If the state enforces the law strictly no mainstream consumer distribution is truly in compliance.
The law doesn't say "primarily open source" or primarily under FOSS terms. And there isn't a single license. You'll find the numerous different licenses under which different components of the "operating system" ship in /usr/share/doc/.
But it's worthy of pointing out that even something like ath9k-htc which supports USB wifi adapters consists of firmware released under three separate licenses. All three in this case are "FOSS", but that's unusual, not the norm.
It's also questionable what constitutes an operating system. Is it just the kernel? Is it the kernel plus the core applications like GNU? Is it the kernel, the graphics stack, printing stack, audio stack, GNU utilities, X server, and package manager?
SteamOS is based on Arch yet it's unclear if SeamOS is included or excluded.
How about Android? Android is a set of software, but most of the apps merely run on top of what is actually an "open source" operating system that is itself a fork of the Linux kernel.
Is Mac OS X exempt because the VERY core of the kernel is released even if nothing else?

2026-08-19 20:19:21 UTC

My mom once asked me "who told you life was fair?" in response to a statement @ 3-4 years old that something wasn't fair and it seems particularly applicable here...
"Independent music publisher Round Hill is suing Suno and Anthropic for allegedly using hundreds of copyrighted songs without permission to train their AI systems. The company says potential damages could exceed $1 billion, arguing there is 'nothing fair' about building multibillion-dollar AI businesses on copyrighted material while rights holders receive nothing."
There is nothing fair about copyright. It's dependent on theft, violence, and coercion of the masses.
Copyright only exists under the false auspices of the common good. In reality it's mostly a tool to funnel wealth to an elite.
If you don't believe me just watch Shark Tank or take a 101 business class some time.
While I was never a fan of Shark Tank the key things that the billionaire investor who hosts the show is looking for and says it allowed are things like copyrights, patents, and similar IP that can give him exclusivity.
This is the same sort of thing that is taught in business at every university on the planet.

2026-08-19 06:23:17 UTC

I'm fully convinced we need a new distribution built from the ground up to be more secure. I just ran into a stupid fucking ?mistake? for a distribution geared at security and being hardened against attack and catering to the most vulnerable and now creating insurmountable hurdles for authenticating.
As a technical user I SHOULD NOT have difficulties confirming your distribution has been properly signed by you.
In another 10 minutes I'll probably be able to confirm this was in error and everything is sort of alright.... but... again... if I can't do it easily jumping through dozens of steps to verify then how the fuck is anyone else suppose to?
Yea, we need a new distribution assembled by competent developers and security minded folks.

2026-07-21 18:04:31 UTC

You thought flock was bad? You haven't seen nothing yet. There is a reason RMS doesn't own a cell phone (and I stopped using one too, if you need a device get a Pine Phone, throw Mobian on it, disable the modem via dip switch, and get a USB wifi adapter for internet):
"US Police Now Armed With Israeli Spy Vans Simulating Mobile Phone Towers"
"If you thought Flock was bad check out Falconet. Falconet from Israeli company Cognyte serves as a cell tower simulator that intercepts cell phone data from all devices within range. Police mount these systems in Tahoes so the vehicles can collect information while driving through areas without any direct interaction with targets. This mobile approach generates ongoing records of phone locations and communications for everyone nearby rather than only suspects, which creates comprehensive movement profiles and bypasses traditional warrant requirements under the Fourth Amendment. "

2026-07-13 22:29:27 UTC

Telegram just had its domain suspended. I warned people of the dangers of Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, and similar platforms, but did anyone listen? Nope.
Telegram was not the worst solution even, but the problem with it is it's a centralized network that demands critical meta data that can and is undoubtedly being used like an ID. Before the government and nutjobs wanted to start demanding everyone ID to 'protect the children' on social media Telegram was already doing it (as was siganl)!
BUT Telegram like Signal has always been at risk of being shutdown or otherwise targeted through other avenues by the authorities. Telegram's founder was pressured to do things like suspend 'terrorist' channels, and did. They shut down libertarian channels too. And if you think your safe your not. They can do the same for 'right wing' and 'left wing' channels just as easily.
I don't know what is behind the suspension ... but I imagine we'll find out soon enough.
For a bit of background France (?maybe on behalf of the US not that it matters much?) kidnapped the founder of Telegram in order to 'gain control' of the platform. The french government claimed Telegram didn't respond when it was in fact that Telegram actually did. They accepted inquires from law enforcement through official channels defined in treaties and international law. The french simply weren't obeying the law and thus not getting a response. Thus their excuse for the kidnapping of the founder was unjustified and actually an attack on free expression as a whole. They didn't want the platform to exist and created a problem to justify demanding it be shutdown or otherwise come under the control of France or whichever power that be wanted it in that country.

2026-07-04 21:08:26 UTC

Notification sent to me:
"mastodon.online reported "
.. some Russian propaganda shit...
Seriously- the hypocrisy of reporting people is getting old. It's like you insist on bringing the negatives of Twitter and other platforms to Mastodon. I get 'reporting' content to one degree or another when it comes to content that could get an instance shut down (maybe even spam), but even that is often only for those hosting in extremist regions like Europe, China, and the Middle East. Better solution: Stop hosting your shit there.
We believe in freedom of speech here and don't censor minority opinions on this instance including ones we don't like or agree with nor propaganda from political adversaries including the "left", the "right", and others except possibly where it may be something that is illegal and would threaten the instance's existence.
I realize 98% of the population can't think for themselves, but come on. This is just getting old. If you can't be an adult ... I don't know what to tell you. Go back to your echo chamber and just block our instance I guess.

2026-06-22 04:17:46 UTC

"Someone Forked systemd Over Its New Birth Date Field"
It's about time... now we just need to integrate all these fork(s) into a working functional stable distribution.
I'm not really sure this particular fork will have any impact what-so-ever, but I 100% agree we shouldn't be rewarding or cooperating with totalitarian states or politicians that want to or otherwise are taking away our freedoms and liberty.
Like other things evil doers want this should never have made it into GNU/Linux-land or free software more generally.
The fact someone had to folk systemd is more telling about what GNU/Linux has become. It's no longer a system built around, for, and by freedom-minded folks.
If we want freedom we need to continue work for and push for it.
There are numerous distributions it's NOT cool to be using because of distro maintainers widespread enablement of bad shit (and yea, I am giving some amount of slack, maybe even too much, to distros that are mostly doing what is in the users best interest, even if far from perfect, ie including some non-free firmwares for hardware, but not including snaps).
From systemd to snaps to the inclusion of Widevine (needed for things like Netflix or so I'd presume, and other commercial streaming services, though not your standard YouTube, but YouTube 'premium' content)- to mainline Linux kernels.
There are some things that if removed won't have that dramatic of an impact on most users.
The trick is figuring out the right balance.
There is a solution to every non-free problem just about for instance hardware wise- most folks don't need any of the non-free stuff if redirected. Other non-hardware stuff we *could* solve even if it requires some risk and breaking certain immoral laws.
https://linuxiac.com/someone-forked-systemd-over-its-new-birth-date-field/

2026-05-20 22:03:47 UTC

It's interesting how propaganda works. Interests often attempt to get others to use particular choice words that in themselves don't match the meaning of the word.
Take the following Slashdot summary of an article on a lawsuit that was 'won' by default as the parties sued were not in the jurisdiction of the lawsuit or obliged to follow the law of the land in the jurisdiction sued and thus did not respond to a lawsuit out of New York:
"However, as with the $322 million judgment won by the music industry against Anna's Archive in the related Spotify case, it's highly unlikely that this money will be recouped."
Neither did the perpetrator of the law win in any real sense, but the choice word recoup is just wrong:
Definition of the word recoup:
"Recoup means to get back money that you have spent, invested, or lost; or to be reimbursed for a loss."
No money was spent, so no money could be "gotten back". No money was invested in annas archive by the parties in the lawsuit so again nothing could be "returned" since nothing was given in the first place. No money was lost either. If we're to believe those bringing the lawsuit they'd claim they "lost" more than the entire world economy produces. Obviously that's an impossibility.
Propaganda ... it's certainly interesting.
Next up: Free Software Propaganda
ie Propaganda is really just another word for publicity and getting others to see things as you do... it's neither good nor bad... necessarily. Though it can be deceptive, misleading, and even immoral at times.
"In addition to domain name services, the order also extends to international hosting providers, who are also ordered to stop working with the site."
New York (even federal) courts do NOT have jurisdiction over those outside the US.

2026-04-29 03:10:48 UTC

"Sony Rolls Out 30-Day Online DRM Check-In For PlayStation Digital Games"
"No matter what, any game you download from now on will feature this new requirement, effectively eliminating the concept of offline play for even single-player titles. "
And yet... people will continue putting up with this crap. If only there was this thing called the free market and people voted with their fiat (dirty money, ie government money). Then companies wouldn't pull this shit.
I long ago refused to lay my hands on any game console. However my sole voice alone does not impact change. Only people spending their money on products from companies that refuse to pull this bullshit will have any genuine positive impact.
Unfortunately there is no free market with copyright. Copyright is a literal monopoly on distribution. There was for a while some level of limited reprieve with VHS, DVD, blu-ray, and at one time game rentals.
Back in the day the court ruled that companies could rent out the tapes they *BOUGHT*. This created some resemblance of a free market as you could obtain entertainment for some years without there being a single source. However that didn't apply to broadcast and so later when the internet era came to be no one other than major major major tech and entertainment companies (think Netflix and Disney) could enter the online rental (or streaming) market. As a consequence we went from 10s of thousands of rental shops across just the United States to a ~handful. It is also well known these handful will eventually consolidate and we'll be left with ~1-2 options in the coming years.

2026-04-18 21:54:47 UTC

If there was ever a reason to avoid purchasing a newer car this article/research blog post breaks it down very well. So this researcher extracted the data that all modern cars collect and for which is mandated by law. Every time you take a trip your car is logging your GPS coordinates and ratting you out to the "authorities" and potentially others.
Privacy wise the best cars pre-date 1996, but a car from 2005 is still way better than a car from 2015. For the past decade now cars have been getting equipped (and more recently mandated by law) with GPS tracking systems. The most modern cars include cellular connections on top of GPS that can report back your every move.
Governments don't need to plant a GPS tracking device on your car or even get a subpoena necessarily. They can buy it or just ask a manufacturer for it.
You can thank "safety" advocates, politicians, the advertising industry, and manufacturers for these privacy invasive technologies. All have colluded to erode your privacy.
My current vehicle(s) are from the early 2000s and my next vehicle will also be from the early 2000s. The humorous part is I'd like to get an electric vehicle, but I'm not willing to surrender any further information to unscrupulous law enforcement or other parties.
You may not even be aware that you've been targeted over your political activities. The FBI tailed my partner despite having no connections to crime, just political activities. The FBI used a seized vehicle with a memorable vanity plate to tail my partner and was aggressive on this one occasion about two weeks before a raid of another major political activist. We happened to film that raid and a fully uniformed agent stepped out of this vehicle that day (TheCrypto6.com).
https://blog.quarkslab.com/tearing-down-a-car-telematic-unit-and-finding-an-accident-on-facebook.html

2025-08-29 19:20:49 UTC

Love this video promoting the free state, other than the conservative stance on ID checks at the polls at least. Don't get pulled in by stupid republican politics. As a whole libertarians want freedom including open boarders, free trade, and if your physically here on voting day you should be able to vote. It doesn't matter if your 5 years old or 105, white, black, or mixed, gay, straight, bi, or something else entirely. My "legalize gay marijuana" t-shirt sums it up perfectly.
https://x.com/FreeStateNH/status/1961183320865374236

2025-07-29 08:36:52 UTC

It's about time someone stood up against these right-wing religious nut jobs that have pushed censorship and other laws that have primarily benefited politicians in the name of 'protecting' LGBTQ, women, and others and can't comprehend the difference between fantasy and reality. While I'm against the use of violence there is a HUGE difference between 'violent' video games, or in this case creepy sexual fantasies and people committing actual violence. When you pass a law criminalizing thoughts your committing a VIOLENT act that isn't justifiable. Banning actual violence (without consent) is justified, but not some sickos fantasy. Just like it's not justified to ban violent video games just because some small percentage of people will commit actual violence.
https://www.polygon.com/news/616835/visa-mastercard-steam-itchio-campaign-adult-games

2025-06-12 08:30:58 UTC

Heros defend the victims AND the victimless through any means available at their disposal. This includes use of violence when necessary against other violent actors. This includes those using violence as a defense against the gang calling itself law enforcement. The difference between most gangs and law enforcement is most gangs don't target the victimless masses by way of 'civil asset forfeiture', take a paycheck by way of 'fining' people who have no victims, or kidnap folks usually under false and manipulated pretenses in the name of some false greater good.
Police may be above the law, but they should NOT be beyond the justice of the masses and it is only the masses who can enforce justice when it comes to law enforcement, prosecutors, and other bureaucrats that place themselves beyond the reach of public accountability.
Support the protesters and those defending the public against the violent abusers calling themselves law enforcement, national guard, marines, and ICE. The real heros aren't the politicians either (except for maybe ~100 migrants for the FSP who moved to NH). The real heros in Los Angeles aren't the ones getting getting paid. They are the ones being persecuted for using whatever means were at their disposal to defend your freedoms. Be it their words, their rocks, or their cocktails.

2025-04-16 17:58:41 UTC

Trump's trying to take out the internet again: And the congress critters are getting on board. Stop SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is basically back. This new provision would make people take down content others object to.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/congress-takes-another-step-toward-enabling-broad-internet-censorship#effector

2025-01-15 20:05:55 UTC

I support Canada's proposed acquisition of Washington, Oregon, and California, how about you? New Hampshire is willing to give up these states for independence of its own too. While we are at it maybe Mexico can take some of the mid western states and we can finally declaw the tentacles of what remain of the "United States".
https://www.newsweek.com/canada-lawmaker-suggests-letting-three-us-states-join-get-free-healthcare-2011658

2025-01-03 08:21:11 UTC

The war on porn has started up again. For those old enough to remember and those concerned about the attacks on freedom of the past hundred plus years (and not just porn, but right to travel, financial freedom, speech, youths right to work/independence, etc) there is a new case to be decided at the US Supreme Court that could end up restricting your access to porn on the internet (yes again, several supreme court cases of the 90s ruled repeatedly you can't burden adults access to porn for the sake of 'protecting' youth). This law would effectively require sites to ID users as adults if primarily distributing porn. It would not apply to sites like Reddit however and of course you can't enforced anti-porn laws outside your legal jurisdiction anyway making it effectively a mute and stupid law that doesn't 'protect' kids assuming we take the 'think of the children' psycos at their word porn somehow harms kids who are if we are honest with ourselves don't care cause they haven't hit puberty and those that have are NOT children! Not to mention what this law actually does is punish the US operators of porn sites by pushing them to move porn sites to jurisdictions outside the United States or in this case at least Texas:
https://www.vox.com/scotus/391248/porn-supreme-court-free-speech-coalition-paxton-first-amendment

2024-12-22 22:16:35 UTC

- reply

You thought HP was the way to go, really? It always blows me away people you'd think should know better don't. Apple, HP, Lenovo, IBM, Dell, and Toshiba branded products are defective by design. They include digital restrictions that are hostile to proper support under Linux. WiFi card doesn't work? You can't even replace it. This is why we don't have better support in Linux. People keep giving their money to shitty companies working against our interests. I can understand historically going with one of a select number of HP printers because of the proper support on some models over the competition, but an HP laptop? Hell no.

2024-12-04 11:07:58 UTC

I don't get people's obsession with containerization. I understand there are some advantages here and there, but dang. Just give me some basic documentation so I don't have to trust some random persons shit on the internet. I don't want to dig through more than need be. And if you aren't going to do that at least provide enough basic instruction on how to use docker. If you try and look into it there is a ton of shit tutorials that direct you to jump through hoops. It isn't super complicated ... so just say apt install docker-compose ; systemctl start docker; and stop making something simple into a shit show for normal non-container obsessed folks. It should not require a degree in computer science and 45 minutes to detangle it. Containers are dangerous and it doesn't matter if it is flatpak, snaps, or docker. Just give me the source code not some proprietary dependent crap. Yes, working on jumping through hoops to detangle an otherwise good solution in a situation that at least here did make sense yo use docker. My criticism is a little more reserved .. but including some basic docker info for non docker experienced users would still have helped massively even if not so much me directly.

2024-10-24 02:35:49 UTC

Yea, I'm no fan of Putin, BUT I call bullshit on Linus's explanation and stance. This is hypocrisy at its best too. There have been talks of sanctions, but no sanctions to the best of my knowledge in the software development category have actually gone through in the United States that would force free software developers to exclude Russians. Claiming all folks who think you're wrong Russian trolls is just intellectually dishonest. While I am critical of socialism, I'll defend RMS when he's right, and when Linus is wrong I'm going to say it. RMS was right when he crafted the GNU GPL in such a way that it EXCLUDED politics outside of free software development. This has been the reason "open source" folks, "free software" folks, serial killers (governments), and activists of all kinds have all been able to work together to benefit mankind. To now come in and say "what did you expect", in response to excluding Russians I say, I expected you to object to Putin's invasion of another country- but not to undermine the very foundations of FOSS software development. No one is saying you should accept every patch from every Russian developer, but you should have a technical reason for doing so. It doesn't even take a genius to come up with a technical explanation for removing Russian developers en mass, but some silly hypocritical act like this is below pathetic. What's next, inserting backdoors because you want to help Ukraine spy on some subset of Linux users?
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2035248/linus-torvalds-comments-on-the-russian-linux-maintainers-being-delisted