I'm a fan of UEFI. I don't use any PCs with UEFI that run Windows. Being a fan of UEFI doesn't make you a Microsoft troll.

I'm a fan of RSA too, even though it is used to enable all kinds of lousy anti-consumer nonsense.

The problem isn't UEFI. The problem is vendors who lock down the keys or don't give users a way to turn it off. I'd actually go a step further and ban pre-loading computers with keys at all - just let the user generate their own, and make all the OS/firmware/whatever vendors come up with easy ways to let users install their OSes and firmware updates and all that while still having keys that only the user can sign with.

Yup.

Sometimes I think that there ought to be a law that if an OS comes pre-installed with any asymmetric keys, the owner of the PC must be provided with a copy of any related keys. So, if you put a key that verifies firmware updates, then the owner gets the private key needed to sign firmware updates.

By all means tailor each key to each install so that knowledge of it doesn't compromise other PCs. By all means provide those keys on separate media so that malware can't use them to bypass security.

This would solve a lot of problems though. In addition to giving people control over their own hardware and defeating stuff like trusted computing / DRM, it would also force a huge change in how CAs operate, since they couldn't have their keys pre-installed. A CA would actually have to compete to demonstrate its trustworthiness to anybody it wants to get to install its key, and users wouldn't have laundry lists of keys from companies they've never heard of installed on their systems.

There is no reason that a Chromebook needs Google to run. If there were an FOSS alternative to the services google provides (including authentications/etc) you could just as easily build chromiumos to use those, and self-host those services. I'd certainly being doing that if it were available.

It isn't like I profit from Google having my personal data. They just provide a better level of service than the alternatives. That is more an indictment of the state of FOSS than anything else - the level of service Google provides is not actually all that high. If somebody managed to hack into my Google account I'd be stuck re-creating everything from backups/etc which are a pain to maintain, because it is almost impossible to get customer service from Google.

Oh, and as far as being tracked goes - they'll be doing that whether you use the cloud or not. :)

I already own one and am thinking about buying another. Given a standard laptop I could build my own, but it would be a royal PITA and missing most of the features I care about (secure boot, transparent encryption, trivial re-provisioning, automated updates, etc). I'll probably run a distro in a chroot on the side as well, though I try not to use them too much since those are a pain to re-provision and the whole point of something like a chromebook is to not need to be running backups/etc.

It is a bit arrogant to say that anybody who buys one must be ignorant. They simply have different values than you do.

I never claimed that you didn't. You've found something that apparently meets your own requirements. Unfortunately, it doesn't meet mine. Most of your post has basically suggested that I must be an idiot for having the requirements that I do. You're entitled to your opinion, but you'd be amazed about how little I care about what it is in this case. :)

Thanks. It looks a bit better than some of the options out there, but it is still missing email and documents (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations). So, it is hardly a google apps replacement, but certainly it is going in the right direction.

Yup. MAYBE there is a law somewhere that would help with that, but it isn't like you can just make murder illegal and solve the problem. I'd also say that the US is not unique in having problems like this. Sure, the EU doesn't have so many guns floating around, but look at all the issues France was having with conflict between various religious communities lately.

These sorts of issues are cultural in nature. For starters, people need to not have a laundry list of issues they're willing to kill anybody for disagreeing with them on.

So, obviously you've never looked for them. I have. The best options right now are Roundcube and Squirrelmail, or the less-FOSS Zimbra. None of them let you archive/delete/spam email with a single keystroke, and I don't think any of them support tag-based email either. That function in Gmail lets me blast through an inbox in about a minute or two, has an offline cached client for Android, and works in a browser.

And it won't work on a Chromebook or a mobile device with only a browser.

If you're doing it on a client, then it is useless when you're not using that particular client. That's the whole point of the cloud - you're not tied to one client. MAYBE I could get by with a curses-based email client over a terminal, but giving up a GUI seems like a poor move anytime after around 1990.

My email is all sorted as well, typically in more than one way since I'm using tags. Stuff I follow goes in the inbox, stuff I browse more by group doesn't go into the inbox.

There is no reason that ADS-B has to cost more than $30. Just have the government bless a reference platform instead of having everybody invent their own.

ADS-B is a GPS and a modem. Guess what you'll find on every SoC in every cellphone sold today?

There is a lot more to the cloud than a page full of links behind .htaccess or whatever.

I'd love to self-host, but I don't see any FOSS options that are equivalent to the likes of Gmail or Google Docs or Google Music. There are some web-based email applications, but they're pretty weak. I've yet to find one that lets me archive/delete/spam an email with a single keystroke.

If only. It is lacking most of the features of Gmail/Google Docs/Google Play/Google Music.

I'd really love to have open-source alternatives to the cloud. The problem is that the best anybody seems to come up with are X11 apps plus some kind of dropbox synchronizer or something. If it doesn't work entirely from a browser, then it is a non-starter.

The rules of the air are useless 400' above the earth - they're only designed to allow pilots to operate around other aircraft, and these drones won't operate there, at least not for now. Frankly, if they ever do operate autonomously at altitude the rules of the air that exist today will be worthless anyway.

A pilot's license is also not easy to get. For starters, you generally need to not be terrified of flying in a small plane, which by itself is something probably half the US population would fail to satisfy. Mostly it is about stick and rudder skills that are useless in a drone, and which also not everybody has. It is also very expensive - at a minimum you need about 40 hours of flight time, much of it accompanied by an instructor. Planes rent for about $120/hr in most places, if you want something from the 70s.

These drones aren't being allowed "on the road" - they're being restricted to below 400' and in fairly uninhabited areas. You're legally allowed to operate a fully-autonomous vehicle in your back yard without any human inside as long as it doesn't go out onto the roads. Otherwise you'd need a license to buy a Roomba.

If Amazon wanted to test landing a drone at KSFO then certainly requiring an instrument-rated pilot at the helm would make a lot more sense - they're going to be in controlled airspace talking to ATC and essentially operating under IFR in an environment where a mistake might kill hundreds of people. This isn't that.

Meh, they're keeping "see and avoid."

This really strikes me as the wrong way to go about this. Sure, changing this principle would require completely rewriting the rules for ALL forms of air travel. However, I think that see and avoid already works poorly in practice and will become even more untenable once drone technology really takes off. There are far better ways for aircraft to avoid each other, and sooner or later we'll need to come to grips with the fact that you can build a device capable of broadcasting its position to nearby aircraft for the cost of a smartphone (you need a GPS and a radio, which virtually every phone in the US has had for over a decade due to 911 compliance rules - they had them long before they had touchscreens). There is no reason that clearances shouldn't be communicated via modems talking to computers and followed by computers to ensure that airways remain free of conflicts. Humans just mess things up. If you want to have them so that when they get disoriented they can override the computer and crash the plane to give the investigators more work, just find someplace else to fly. :)

They're testing the drones in a low-density area. They could have just said "avoid flying over people" and left it at that.

Which of those rules of the air are relevant to flying a drone flying under 500'? About the only rule I can think of is the one that tells pilots not to fly below 500', which they're intentionally violating. Knowing which way to turn if you spot a crop-duster heading towards you isn't going to be a big help when you're not displaying navigation lights and the crop-duster has no way to know which way you're headed and won't see you anyway.

The problem is that this kind of thing stifles innovation, which means that all the R&D ends up moving overseas and the US will end up being perpetually behind in what is eventually likely to be a technology that completely replaces all aviation today (civil or military). Is that in the US interest? I'm not saying that Amazon should be flying two-ton drones over major cities without any oversight, but this is about testing concepts in the middle of nowhere.

It probably makes more sense to ensure that the people programming the drones understand the rules of flying, and then only if they're actually going to fly in conflict with other aircraft. In that situation the rules would probably need to be changed anyway, since "see and avoid" isn't going to work when you can't see the drone.

They could have different requirements like "just keep it under 400 feet and away from populated areas and do whatever you want as long as OSHA doesn't have a problem with it." I don't see how that would cost taxpayers money, or be any less safe.

The FAA didn't give Amazon permission to operate drones in cities. It gave them permission to operate drones in the middle of nowhere, where there probably are more bunnies than people walking around.