Tux in Brussels @tux@mastodon.multimob.be

The first version of #Ubuntu was released 16 years ago, on October 20.

The other day I was teaching algorithms to a group of 12 years old children.

Namely how to calculate leap years, why 2100 will not be a leap year while the year 2400 will, and so on.

Suddenly, several kids exclaimed: "Why bother? After all, by 2100 there will be mass extinctions because of #climate change, none of us will be left to see that."

It always looks good in a console.
You can add it to your motd if you want.

echo "My name is "`pwgen -s 128 1`", how are you?"

#Android on a #Samsung device. 🙄
I still haven’t found a legitimate reason why Galaxy Store needs those permissions.

Of course, coronaviruses existed long before SARS-CoV-2. 😃

The point here is to say they have been really forward-looking by reserving a domain name for such a generic term.

notovirus.com, rotavirus.com, adenovirus.com… have also been existing for more than 10 years. Maybe one of them will become a familiar term one day.

coronavirus.com redirects to a page by the WHO. Fine!

According to WHOIS, the domain name was created… back in 2002.

Domain Name: CORONAVIRUS.COM
Registrar URL: uniregistry.com
Creation Date: 2002-08-13-T02:31:44Z

#coronavirus

Got this on one of my domains:

From: <complicated address with @gwart.xyz>
To: postmaster@<mydomain>

This email is a harmless security check to your email system. It does not attempt to penetrate or circumvent your security measures.
To opt-out of these security checks please visit the opt-out link.
<link with a token ID containing my domain>

I suspect they want to see whether the mailbox is monitored, in case I would open their link.
What is the trick here exactly?
#hack

I’ve seen this often.

User sends a screenshot of her screen.

On the screenshot, you see a tab with a google search result page for "How do I take a screenshot?" 😃

Oh, it is Ubuntu 20.04 LTS day today, right?

There are great initiatives over here.

A local NGO named DigitalForYouth collects and refurbishes laptops and phones for low-income groups and schools.

Sadly, they seem to be completely adverse to the idea of using free software and will impose Windows 10 on every machine. 😞

The mobile app for #Jitsi Meet has been updated to 20.1 this week.

They fixed an annoying bug in the settings dialog. Entering a custom URL for the server was a real pain. Now it’s quite easy.

This is very good news. There are lots of Jitsi Meet instances around, and this setting is really useful. (And I had some friends about to give up only because of that poor usability problem.)

I learned something about NS, the Dutch railways: they use GNU/Linux for their info screens.

Slight misconfiguration here, though. 😉

#Instagram has gone too big, it should become independant from #Facebook.

That way, instead of #GAFAM we could start saying G-MAFIA. 😄

Matthias Kirschner (from #FSF Europe) raised an interesting concern during his #FOSDEM talk.

Some people might say: "I want a restrictive #licence to the software I’m writing, to prevent 'bad guys'—e.g. the military, the Mafia—from using it."

Bad idea: if people are killing other people, software licences are probably not something they would really care about.

Better stick with licences that do not impose personal views about who and what purposes. (Copyleft is important, though.)