I think a possibility is a series of open source anvil or nixos scripts that you can run on most hardware with minimal changes, in an extendable architecture of some kind to add or remove functionality and they perhaps get maintained by the community or some structure of the kind of Linux distributions.

This could enable people with minimal skills set up and maintain a reasonably useful but secure environment just by changing a few variables.

Perhaps this was written much earlier than v5.

The combination of clean UI with long promised updates seems like a winning combination. I don’t really play games on my phone. I just want it to go through the basic tasks quickly (photos, voice dictation, app switching etc, I currently have a OnePlus 7 Pro and it has kept up admirably - but being stuck in android 12 with some quirky behaviour is a bit annoying).

So I guess I’m not looking for a powerhouse - but I do want something that does the basic stuff right - however if it doesn’t bring table stakes (ie if modem or voice quality or other connectivity is subpar) then the rest is not important.

Thanks for the heads up, I hadn’t considered that as a criterion and was thinking of pulling the trigger. Do you have any recommendations?

Maybe this is useful https://tunnelbroker.net/

All business models are aimed at company profitability. Customer satisfaction is an expensive early necessity which you can largely do away with as you become entrenched.

I’m assuming it’s aimed at people trying to avoid tying the hosting IP to the publicly consumable service.

Sounds more like a problem with their intended usage pipeline, like an image viewer or word processing app problem.

I was scanning it for the “we’ve been played for ABSOLUTE FOOLS” part.

…the itch wasn’t scratched. :(

Triple funny that this can be a “then let them eat cake” joke where they’re giving worse than useless advice from an irrelevant perspective.

No probably about it.

Mechanical watches lose 10-15 secs per day which declines as they get older or aren’t serviced, a $40 Casio might miss 30 secs per month, never needs servicing other than a battery change.

Mechanical watches are no longer utility items, they are fashion items that happen to tell time.

From someone with a passing interest, Krita seems on a similar trajectory to Blender - gathering momentum and going from strength to strength, whereas Gimp seems rather stuck.

Ideally you need a double-blind checking mechanism definitionally impervious to social engineering.

That may be possible in larger projects but I doubt you can do much in where you have very few maintainers.

I bet the lesson here for future attackers is: do not affect start-up time.

From what I read it was this observation that led him to investigate the cause. But this is the first time I read that he’s employed by Microsoft.

No, there are plenty of independent private game developers (Stardew Valley, Baldur’s gate etc come to mind) I was just taking Phil Spencer’s perspective, which I imagine is a platform level one.

Yes, but can you roll a platform of the distribution, breadth, depth and persistence over good and bad cycles of the scale of Xbox or PlayStation while being a private company? A few have tried.

No worries.

For those who were wondering:

On the security updates:

Yes they’ll provide some security updates for some time even out of contract. No time frame given, only in relative release numbers:

Our naming convention for releases is: <major>.<minor>.<patch>.

Version -2 of currently released minor version goes EOL. The cadence is not explicitly provided

On not renewing or renewing later:

Yes, jump in any time.

Can I update every second or third year? Will the previous versions receive security updates?

Sorry, I must have been too tired, got nearly all details wrong: 32GB RAM 1TB M.2, USB3.2, BT4.2,WiFi 5,4k HDMI, Gigabit Port, and not a Beelink but a DreamQuest. There’s just the M2 interface disk connected, no SSD.

It’s literally one of those little known brand nuc, tiny box - beelink I think. Total cost $200 or so - it’s been running non stop for the last 3 months without an issue. I don’t think it even has a fan in there.