FreeBSD, GhostBSD, OpenBSD, Dragonfly BSD, Firefox Hardening - FOSS - git clone
Interesting timing, myself having spotlighted Corporate greed in my screed. The internet is afire, bringing the website offline at times, with the supremely influential updated tonight https://usdebtclock.org/ covering up all it's valuable financial data in a foreboding hint with the following quotations:
“You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out. If Congress has the right under the constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.”
“The mischief springs from the power which the monied interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges...which they have employed for their benefit"
- Andrew Jackson.
Bringing the big brain out on me! This is off the cuff.
- I was not aware of Universal Design principles but a quick look suggests Principle 5: Tolerance for Error is most applicable to Software Engineering. Why not 1-5 bedrock? Because, in my opinion the general state of software is that it is more functional yet just as unreliable in decades past. What is the first thing a little experienced user to do when an error occurs? Yeah, they quit. No access. The micro-service paradigm has made the situation emminently worse as even finding the blame/responsibility for "no access" is fruitless.
2a. With anything of this type, the most obvious risk is to my own reputation. Security is a field burdened with responsiblity, people come to rely on it, what if they get hacked using my repo? I only took on things I spent months understanding and testing absolutely everything by hand. I limited myself to only distributions I could juggle, use daily, so I could be responsive to needs.
2b. Risk is competing objectives. FreeBSD and thus it's reliants, Ghost and Dragonfly, are in a strange position right now. FreeBSD is Linuxifying itself and adding more Corporates Sponsorships than ever in a path away from traditional BSD security. This presents itself a potentially competiing ethos situation for me, but not yet.
2c. OpenBSD is used by world security intelligence agencies and I hear the DoJ. Am I without my knowledge picking sides here and favoring some entities over others? Famously DARPA and FBI backdoor right? I researched the OpenBSD Sponsorship list carefully and asked around. The OpenBSD availability (at least of the version we use!) is equitable and I purposely put out an OpenBSD honeypot to see which entities would try to compromise it! Results: Fair.
- This is a can of worms because what we are really talking about is the Linux-Effect. Started out community home-grown to now be a Corporate Globally Mega-Corp sponsorship vehicle estimated to be worth $100 Billion. Even Apple is now a Silver Linux sponsor. What am I saying is Corporate dominance is think-tanking and policy making. Data selection is inherently profit focused instead of Humanity Progression focused. Bodies like the UN, EFF, et al. are wholly ineffective.
The paths forward on that are gruesome to be honest as what would be best would be something like a randomly selected group of High School Science Fair finalists and Waitresses to form a Governance body with teeth to dissolve Corporations completely for profiteering off populace private data, genetic data, financial data, and the engineering decisions that are ubiqutously driven by them when determined that a Corporation or other Government body is acting against out future.
I was thinking the exact same thing, thanks for the awareness! Tangentially, problem with Wiki is it's excellent for Who, What, Where, but is nearly totally bereft of how to do anything.
Yes, I'm serious about my mission statement in the beginning and I have some more ideas. First there is a Linux OS that installs all kinds of Educational Software, like Encyclopedia, Maps, Learning Tools that is all available offline in the full 17GB Full Version. It's called Endless OS (no affilitions) and here is the excerpt.
Multi-language system, pre-loaded with apps in English including games, productivity software, reference materials like Cooking, Farming, Health, Travel, and educational materials like a robust Encyclopedia.
It would be great if all of us could have some of the civilization important databases on this BSD installation of yours. Please contribute a downloadable database file or file set you know of. I'll start.
Downloadable Wikipedia Database Encyclopedia Britannica All Volumes
Spyware is a bit of a stretch. However, let's talk about Firefox. Mozilla Corporation is a Billion Dollar Corporation that is tied at the hip to Google and uses 115+ servers to track every single thing you do.
Chromium explicitly uses shared memory and is technically able to write and execute not only shared data from private/incognito to regular windows or tabs but adjacent processes. You can search for mmap in the Chromium repo or try to use Chromium with FreeBSD or GhostBSD sysctl.conf set with kern.elf64.allow_wx = 0 - it won't run.
The Precise Geolcation Timeout for Firefox is 68 years.
I'm now a sponsor of NetBSD! Wallpaper added!
I have something fantastic for you and any techies reading this that have not seen "The Mother of All Demos". It is like a Stanley Kubrick Movie on the Invention of Computers! Like the Moon landing footage of Silicon Valley. You are in for a real treat! After that I would recommend for any students thinking CSC in High School and definitely University to read Charles Petzold's, "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, 2nd Edition.
Sure, feel free. I'm getting quite good at helping College students make the right decisions.
The Internet can be a really mean place, thank you for the kind words.