Ah cool! Didn’t know that!

Interesting post. Thanks for sharing.

I hadn’t heard of this W thing. And this does not inspire confidence.

600’000 times hundred would be 60 million dollars, you’re off by a decimal. But still, agreed on your point

KdF = Kraft durch Freude = power through joy

They also used that branding for holiday camps etc. For example here’s the arial view of the Koloss von Rügen holiday complex in Prora, which also never saw any visitors because they didn’t finish it before they started the war:

I’ve only had middling luck with KDE apps on macOS. Kate didn’t run, Okular was fine.

It’s no wonder since they are only provided as nightlies. But that’s understandable, if I was a KDE dev I’d also be loathe to buy into Apples ecosystem.

Unfortunately they won’t let me have Linux at work.

At least kiddies can eventually learn, the biggest fans of these things are worse, they are MBAies

Yeah dragging Don Ho through the mud with his LLM remake, that’s the offensive part.

It is 240 W actually. Seems Techpowerup was wrong. See my first comment: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/59511400/25528592

The source of law here is Directive 2022/2380 (which amends Directive 2014/53), in Article 2 a grace period until 2026-04-28 is defined for the category of laptops. This has now expired, which explains the renewed wave of articles being published.

The directive itself is not that interesting to read, as a lot of it is just empowering the Commission to make a decision on the specifics. The result is in the Commission Delegated Regulation 2023/1717. Although it seems to me like something is missing. I can’t find more though.

A very interesting Q&A from their Commission Notice – Guidance document:

16. Are laptops and other radio equipment that require more than 240 W of charging power exempted from the ‘common charger’ rules?

No. They are not exempted. Radio equipment which is subject to the ‘common charger’ rules must incorporate the harmonised charging solution.

The Commission has updated (in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1717), the references to the standards cited in Annex Ia to the latest version of the European standards. Therefore, due to the amendments introduced by this delegated regulation, radio equipment subject to the ‘common charger’ rules must incorporate the harmonised charging solution up to their maximum charging power or up to 240W if their maximum charging power is above 240W (as opposed to 100W in the previous versions of the standards concerned).

The Commission will continue to update the technical specifications set out in Annex Ia, in order to reflect scientific and technological progress or market developments provided that such developments meet the objectives of the common charging solution.

But then also

20. Are proprietary charging receptacles allowed in addition to a USB-C receptacle?

Yes. The RED only requires radio equipment subject to the ‘common charger’ rules to be equipped with the USB-C receptacle. The use of other receptacles is therefore not prohibited as long as the covered radio equipment is also equipped with a harmonised charging (USB-C) receptacle.

That means those hefty laptops going up to 350 W or whatever, now need to accept 240 W over USB PD, but they may still include additional proprietary charging solutions that are rated higher.

Also I don’t think the 100 W limit that some outlets report is actually in force since 2023/1717 has replaced the references to ‘EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021’ by those to ‘EN IEC 62680-1-3:2022’

Reading on, yes they make that explicit further down:

27. Is a radio equipment allowed to charge above 240 W when using an additional charging protocol?

Yes. If the radio equipment proprietary charging solution requires more than 240 W (e.g. 300 W), the concerned radio equipment must also support USB PD up to 240W.

The Commission has updated, via Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1717, the references to the standards cited in Annex Ia to the latest version of the European standards. The updated version of the standards will apply as of the date of applicability of the relevant rules introduced to the RED by the Common Charger Directive, i.e. for handheld mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, handheld videogame consoles, portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems and earbuds, as of 28 December 2024 and, for laptops, as of 28 April 2026. This means that as from those dates a radio equipment, if it listed in Annex Ia and is capable to be recharged by means of wired charging at power above 240 W, must incorporate the harmonised charging solution up to 240 W.

The Commission will continue to update the technical specifications set out in Annex Ia, in order to reflect scientific and technological progress or market developments provided that they meet the objectives of the common charging solution.

There is the Mint version that is based directly on Debian, instead of Ubuntu: LMDE

I haven’t used it myself, maybe someone with actual experience can comment on it.

DNS blocking, like with a Pihole, famously does not remove Youtube ads. So no, the mechanism is totally different.

That’s not what I read unfortunately. When booted in secureboot, the kernel enters lockdown mode which disables all hibernation, regardless of the swap being encrypted or plain text.

It seems there are two kernel patches available to enable hibernation in lockdown mode, but not in mainline.

This one is more of an admin override, where you take the risk of root replacing the swap contents

https://gist.github.com/kelvie/917d456cb572325aae8e3bd94a9c1350

And this one is complicated but uses the TPM to ensure only the kernel, not root, can write the hibernation image in a way that causes it to be trusted on waking, so there is no reduction in assurance compared to clean booting a signed kernel with secureboot:

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/55845.html

But that’s all too much for me, I intend to turn it off again.

I recently learned that the option to hibernate goes away when Fedora is booted with SecureBoot. It was surprising to me, and might be good to know for you, that’s why I’m mentioning it.

True most motherboards, even the normal ones, now come with 2.5G included. But upgrading to 2.5 G feels like a wasted middle step if the next tier of external connectivity is at 10G, so I’ve not done that either haha

It’s only more profitable if there isn’t competition. He lays it out quite well in his blog post. It’s not like the Swiss ISPs are all publicly owned.

Just for reference Init7 offers 25 Gbit/s for 65 CHF a month. Thats about 83 USD.

They have the same monthly price for 1 Gbit/s 10 Gbit/s and 25 Gbit/s. Only the initial install for the higher speed optics costs 77 CHF or 222 CHF more respectively.

I’m still on their 1Gbit/s service because I’m too lazy and cheap to replace my router and LAN with 10 Gbit/s equipment.

I believe the error was in the AV1 license NOT having a “if you enforce patent-license-fees on this codec, THEN you can’t use this codec” type of coercion…

I thought those provisions were usually enforced among the members of a patent pool, to ensure that any licensing customer can trust in the pools word to not be shaken down a second time by an individual pool member later.

So since AM1 isn’t forming a patent pool to sell licenses, and Dolby isn’t part of the Alliance for Open Media, it wouldn’t really apply either way, no?

Oh wait, actually there is something like this, see point 1.3 here: https://aomedia.org/license/patent-license/

webm can contain VP8, VP9 or AV1 video streams. I guess if you mean webm with VP9 inside it could be one solution, though less efficient. Also Google donated VP9 and what they had for VP10 to the development efforts of of AV1, so if AV1 is found to be infringing it’s a negative signal for VP9 too…

Edit: Sorry I was a bit off-topic. I was thinking of the action that Dolby is currently taking against Snapchat for their AV1 use.

Holy shit that’s low. So to get even just 8 weeks you need to have worked there for 5 years. And this from a rich company.

I work for a small company of 150 people. I’ve got 3 months of notice period in my contract, though it’s going both ways. This protection started immediately after my trial period ended, which was also 3 months long. That’s considered normal here in Switzerland for office jobs. The minimum by law after your first year of employment would be 2 months.

Just for reference, in the European context the Swiss labour laws are considered quite weak. Market liberalism is comparatively strong here.

That’s not what they said in the quote in the article.

“Per the Plan, you are eligible for Enhanced severance pay benefits of: four weeks of base salary for your first year of employment, plus one week’s salary for each additional year of employment, based on your most recent hire date, up to a combined maximum of 26 weeks of base salary.”