⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

Here's the document release you were waiting for today!

The UNIX V4 tape!

https://archive.org/details/utah_unix_v4_raw

Credits:

* Jay Lepreau for holding on to this tape
* Aleksander Maricq for finding it
* Jon Duerig for driving it to the Computer History Museum
* Thalia Archibald for doing a huge amount of research into the tape, its history, and file formats, and the upload
* Al Kossow for the tape-reading equipment and doing the actual read
* Len Shustek for the lab where the read was done and the software used to decode it

#retrocomputing

We have the binary image of the tape, link going up soon

Someone living here:

New Providence Wharf,
London, E14 9PB

Has started to place orders and is using my gmail for their contact, so I'm getting all their order confirmation.

I don't live in the UK and my bank cards aren't being accessed and I see anyone accessing my gmail account either.

It makes no sense.

The attempt to read the UNIX V4 tape is underway!

The German state of Schleswig-Holstein reported the results of switching:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german-state-gov-ditching-windows-for-linux-30k-workers-migrating/

and:
https://cybernews.com/news/schleswig-holstein-germany-microsoft-open-source/

and a statement from Schleswig-Holstein:
https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/ministerien-behoerden/I/_startseite/Artikel2025/IV/251204_cds_digitale_souveraenitaet

--> They invested 9 million Euro to save 15 million Euro per year.

This week:
The Danish Road Traffic Authority is the first agency to pilot SIA Open, a government-wide project by the Danish Gov. IT Agency designed to replace Microsoft services with open source.
https://itsfoss.com/news/denmark-road-traffic-authority-ditches-microsoft/
4/5
#OpenSource

This week's net.wars, "Slop", marks iRobot's bankruptcy and sale; wonders why, if generative AI is so great it has to be forced on us; and deplores the CBP plan to demand an unrealistic amount of "high-value data" as part of the price of visiting the US: https://netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/12/19/slop/ #NetWars #privacy #robots

"The Expanse" turns 10 this week. Find out what other shows are celebrating milestone anniversaries in Hotchka's TV by the Decade!

https://hotchka.com/tv-by-the-decade-380

#Hotchka #TVByTheDecade #TheExpanse #Entertainment #Television #TV #Streaming

noyb WIN: The Austrian Supreme Court has ruled that Meta must give users full access to their data. All of Meta's claims of trade secrets or other limitations were rejected, leading to unprecedented access to the inner workings of Meta.

https://noyb.eu/en/austrian-supreme-court-meta-must-give-users-full-access-their-data

Something that hasn't been made clear: Firefox will have an option to completely disable all AI features.

We've been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I'm sure it'll ship with a less murderous name, but that's how seriously and absolutely we're taking this.

…

TIL why Sun Microsystems (Bill Joy and all) bought an office suite company in 1999. 🤨

"In August 1999, Star Division was acquired by Sun Microsystems[81][82] for US$59.5 million (equivalent to US$112 million in 2024), reportedly because the acquisition was less expensive than licensing Microsoft Office for Sun's 42,000 employees.[83][84]"

😄

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History

And that's how eventually LibreOffice became available for many. 😇

#SunMicrosystems #staroffice #openoffice #libreoffice

"What Mozilla leadership has continually demonstrated for the last several years is that they not only fail to understand the values of those who believe in and use the product, but they also have no intention of figuring out a non-parasitic financial basis for the organization to operate."
https://blog.kingcons.io/posts/make-me-ceo-of-mozilla.html

Danish head of government IT (left) hands over the first "microsoft-free" computer to the head of Danish Traffic control, December 2025. They are testing Linux as the primary OS, with open source alternatives for stuff like office, on peoples work computers in government agencies. Traffic control gets to be our first test subject. This is gonna be put in the hands of somewhat tech-illiterate people.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1pohupu/danish_head_of_government_it_left_hands_over_the/

The EU is slowly becoming tech independent from *big tech* :)

@GossiTheDog "don't make me open mspaint" is a threat I plan on using in catastrophically dumb meetings.

Wowzers, another perfect 10 from Cisco on Secure Email Gateway, Secure Mail, and Web Manager. This one has:

RCE
No patch
No workaround
No public IoCs

This attack campaign affects Cisco Secure Email Gateway, both physical and virtual, and Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager appliances, both physical and virtual, when both of the following conditions are met:

The appliance is configured with the Spam Quarantine feature.
The Spam Quarantine feature is exposed to and reachable from the internet.

Recommendation is to reimage to a known-good config. Whatever that is, without indicators.

Good luck I guess??

https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-sma-attack-N9bf4

Using downstream forks of Firefox is fine for personal liberation in the short term, but these necessarily rely on the upstream continued development of Firefox and will be impacted when Mozilla implodes.

@falken no need; we're in agreement. LLMs are a war crime and should be prosecuted as such.

@codinghorror @jhooper I'd like to add that Aaron was the victim of a ratfucking campaign by a huge corporate near-monopoly because he was trying to unlock access to scientific research that Elsevier et al were effectively squatting on. *I* am an individual author who wants to publish as widely as possible and the LLM vendors are stealing and repurposing my work for their own profits. I'm an artist: I want to be paid so I can create more art, and those fuckers are trying to devalue ALL art.