Except for little, unimportant things like the BIOS, HDD/SSD firmware, and probably tons of other internal devices. They'd probably be much better off taking an existing laptop and replacing proprietary firmwares than putting out a completely new laptop with terrible value that isn't even free. Their biggest accomplishment isn't the freedom, it's that they managed to make Macs look cheap.

Every time some industrial networking vulnerability gets posted, people ask: "why are these connected to the internet to begin with?", so I'll get it out of the way: Why are these connected to the internet again? If you do need some sort of external access to them, it should be through some sort of application-level gateway so that access can be carefully controlled.

The problem is that if a system is hosed to the point of needed to SysRq it, I can't edit that file to enable it.

You know, there was a time when there was no such thing as Facebook. Believe it or not, people still managed to have social lives.

Well, the practical differences are small but they do still exist. All free software is open source but not all open source software is free.

They're niche but still used, apart from scroll lock which I really can't seem to think of a use case for. Sometimes you need Pause/Break to stop BIOS output because a lot of BIOSes (especially newfangled UEFI ones) blow past important things faster than your monitor can wake up. SysRq still has a use as the magic SysRq key.

At its left extreme, it's much closer to home row than the ISO enter and thus more efficient to hit. Same thing with the left shift key.

If I recall correctly, at some point when talking about GPU firmwares, you implied that it is more "free" to have a proprietary firmware burned into a ROM than it is to have a proprietary firmware that can be re-flashed. But having a firmware that can be flashed provides the user with the freedom to flash a truly free firmware, either built from the ground up or reverse-engineered from the original. How is having firmware in a ROM any better from a practical or freedom standpoint?

Shhh...stop giving them ideas

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SysRq is useful for getting Linux systems unstuck with Magic SysRq key combos. Well, that was until most distros decided to lock it down by default (because if someone wanted to mess with a machine that they have physical access to, that's definitely the worst thing they could come up with).

On top of opening the start menu, there's tons of Win-letter combinations. Win-R is Run, Win-E is explorer, Win-D shows the desktop, Win-M minimizes all windows. Win-1,2,n launches the 1st, 2nd, nth program pinned to your taskbar. Win-arrows move windows around on the screen and Win-shift-arrows move windows between different monitors. There's plenty of others that I don't remember. It's actually pretty inconvenient to not have a windows key once you're used to it.

And then most early computer and terminal keyboards put something more useful there (usually Ctrl). Somehow it later got reverted. If only this study had been done somewhere around 1985.

Before the G+ integration, there was the option to sign in with a normal Google account. Presumably that will still work.

Maybe if it's some casual shooter with no depth. Most competitive games also test strategy, tactics, or knowledge. You could pump someone full of whatever drugs you want and it wouldn't suddenly make them good.

Some of the questions she chose to answer she weaseled her way around anyway. She'd make a great politician.