"Sorry, lefties" is lazy journalism. There is a preference setting to choose left- or right-hand mode.

I've been a mac user since 1984. My current laptop is a 2010 MacBook Air, which still feels like a solid machine. Of course, I can't upgrade to the latest macOS, and my MacBook is past the 5 year lifespan I originally expected. So what is next?

I use macOS and Ubuntu Linux on a daily basis. I never liked Windows, for reasons, and for years, all of the new software I've installed on my MacBook has been open source. And I'm increasingly using software that depends on OpenGL, which has been deprecated by macOS.

Up to now, I have been super happy with my MacBook -- the hardware is brilliant, and open source software mostly just works (I use homebrew). But that's no longer the case for what Apple currently offers. Although I consider the MacBook pro trackpad to be best in class, the keyboard issues are troubling, and the loss of OpenGL will be a show stopper. The MacBook Pro is no longer the premium, best in class laptop that it used to be, and is still priced as. Although I don't feel the need to run the very latest hardware, the lack of hardware updates on Mac computers is a signal that Apple doesn't give a shit, and you would be buying in to a dying ecosystem.

Suppose Windows 10 linux emulation supported graphics out of the box, so I could run X11 apps, Wayland apps, any of the desktop environments like KDE or Gnome, and OpenGL apps. And suppose I could disable all the Windows spyware. Then I'd seriously consider a Windows laptop. Microsoft just bought Github, so we can hope that they will eventually get a clue and fix these problems. But that's still years away, I would guess.

So I'm going to replace my old MacBook with a Linux ultrabook. Right now, the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition looks like the overall best replacement for a 13" mac laptop. Other options I've looked at: System 76 Galago Pro and Purism Librem 13.

No problem, they can replace the audience with robots.

The story hasn't been picked up by Canadian media at all, and by hardly anybody in the US. However, in England, the BBC and the Guardian are running this story.

The situation might be different if this was taking place in China; then it would be reported by N.A. media as a human rights story.

Bitstream Cyberbit was closed source, and had a license incompatible with GPL. Noto is free and open source. The source files for the fonts, and the build tools, are all open.

Noto is an ongoing open source project that will continue to track the Unicode standard, while Cyberbit implemented Unicode 1.0.1 and then just stopped.

Noto has Sans and Serif variants in a range of weights and styles, unlike Cyberbit, which had only a single style and weight (serif).

So that's more than just "the same thing all over again".

Ion thrusters aren't the best for Mars colonization, because then it takes too long to get to Mars. The trip to Mars is very dangerous, due to space radiation and the effects of microgravity on human health. For actual colonization, as opposed to just an Apollo-like exploration mission, you want to minimize the transit time. In Andy Weir's "The Martian" (he worked out a realistic plan for a Mars mission and did all the math), ion engines are used, but the travel time is 250 days. In Musk's plan, powerful rockets are used, and the travel time is 90 days.

I agree that nuclear rockets would be even better, if the political problems could be overcome. (Maybe we'll have to mine uranium from the asteroid belts before we have manned, nuclear interplanetary travel. Or maybe China will do it.)

If you are an advanced alien race that needs more living space, it's much more practical to construct a partial dyson sphere in your own back yard, than to colonize other star systems. Our galaxy is big enough that there should be multiple inhabited star systems out there, and possibly multiple partial dyson spheres. But the laws of physics make visits from flesh and blood aliens highly unlikely.

Nah. Your machine will still be forced to upgrade, but after reboot, the machine won't operate until you enter a valid credit card number.

"What kind of software removes files from a local disk without even asking for user confirmation?"

Malware.

ZFS on Linux consists of two parts. The ZFS part is independent of Linux (not a "derivative work"), and uses the Solaris kernel API. The other part is SPL (Solaris porting layer), which implements the Solaris API using Linux. The SPL is Linux dependent, but it has a GPL licence.

An AC said: "Which could get Canonical into hot water with the GPL."

Whether or not this is a licence violation depends on Linus Torvalds and The Linux Foundation. They are the ones that set the terms for how Linux is licensed. Under U.S. law at least, it's the copyright owner's intent that matters, and not some third party interpretation interpretation of the licence text.

Torvalds has previously stated that a kernel module can't violate the kernel licence agreement unless it is a derivative work of the kernel (and the module licence violates the GPL). At the very least, it needs to have been designed with knowledge of the Linux internals. Since ZFS was developed independent of Linux, it seems unlikely that The Linux Foundation will be suing Canonical.

If you want to thoroughly understand the issues, you could read Eben Moglen's opinion (he's the lawyer behind the GPL 3): https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2016/linux-kernel-cddl.html

It includes ZFS as a standard supported file system. That's the most interesting new feature from my perspective.

There is a difference between tough and hard. There is usually a tradeoff between the two qualities.

Super hard materials resist drilling and sawing, like this phone. But they break rather than flex, so they are brittle.

Tough materials are not brittle. They withstand flexing forces without breaking.

For a cell phone, I want the phone to not break if I drop it, which requires toughness.

Seriously, if you google "GNU Guix", you'll see that system startup scripts will be written in Lisp, the package manager will use Lisp to describe packages. Also, I note that the microkernel architecture will allow code that is traditionally part of the kernel to run in user mode and be written in Lisp.

It looks to me that they are building a new system that combines the best aspects of Unix and the legendary Lisp Machine. Which would be kind of cool.