I meant more as an active use-term for software licensing that kiki uses (and in the sense of the OP's question), not in its historical sense that it is used by writers now.
One interesting idea, never realized that I know of, was for Hurd. The idea was that 'login' would be a simple utility program. One started a session with no user credentials, and ran 'login' as a command to add credentials to already running processes.
This was not at all how Unices worked, of course, which is likely why it never happened. On Unices it would have needed some sort of shared process credentials structure that could be augmented in place by a privileged process. On the Hurd, it would have required an extra method implemented by the auth server.
On my machines, login is not run any more. It's just a PAM client that provides a very dumb paper-compatible cooked mode terminal user interface, after all. I thought for a long time about writing a PAM client that had a better full screen TUI interface that assumed (gasp!) video terminals. So eventually I did just that.
And what would the effective permissions be? The access to any file would be done according to the "other" permissions bits or?.. Because if yes, then that'd be an interesting way to escape user-based quotas, you know.
I don't know. This was a very early description of how it would work that I read, a long time ago.
Thinking it through as a thought experiment, the way that I'd do it, a process with no credentials would not be able to open anything for write access and only a limited number of things for execute access, and be limited to a minimal amount of read access. One does not have to follow the POSIX model when one is introducing something so definitely outside of it as a process with no user/group IDs (perfectly fine as far as raw Hurd is concerned).
There was precedent for such ideas. On Novell Netware, MS/PC/DR-DOS clients could access only one server directory, containing the LOGIN program, until they had logged their machine on.
Okay, so basically something like Windows's "Anonymous Logon" SID, which doesn't belong to the Authenticated Users group: it's the group that's normally associated with the default Write permissions; the Users group has only read-only access.
It would be very interesting if you could accumulate privileges by stacking logins. So `login a; login b` gave you both a and b privileges. `logout a` would drop a's privileges but keep b's.
It's the decades-old problem of blue on black, which has led to interminable discussions of which exact tint of blue should be ECMA-45 blue on a terminal. Pick one, it has poor contrast with a black background. Pick another, it has poor contrast with a white background.
It's an interesting fact. I have been surprised at how often The Guardian sneaks in to stuff that is otherwise overwhelmingly North American sources only. The Legal Eagle channel on YouTube has cited The Guardian a few times that I have seen, for example. And they even present it seemingly on the assumption that they don't have to explain to their viewership what The Guardian is. They just slap it on screen the same as they do the Washington Post or Politico or some such.
Don't know if it's just my settings (spoiler: I read the Guardian) or it's by tracking IP addresses, but at least for me, when I go to the Guardian, it defaults me to a US-specific home page. I assume British people see a different page, with more coverage of their government.
It is interesting to look at the details and see who the (news) 'media' are in this case. Going through the details, I find 1 instance (under Kemp) of the BBC, and everyone else is the 'usual suspects', the Telegraph, the Mail, GB News, the Sun, the Times, and so forth.
The Guardian is only mentioned in context of exposing these conflicts of interests; and whilst I am surprised to find LBC and Nation Cymru as not being transparent about their experts and commentariat, I don't see The National mentioned at all, nor The Herald, The Scotsman, the Metro, the Financial Times, and The i.
This may tell us that these experts only appear in the 'usual suspect' news media. Or it may tell us that this report didn't look at a wide range of U.K. news media. The latter seems unlikely given the inclusion of some niche publications (I've never even heard of London Loves Business until today.) and things like Nation Cymru, so I am more inclined to suppose the former.
The report doesn't say the media mentioned is an exhaustive list of the media that failed to disclose ties to the arms industry, which is what you're assuming.
You mention the Guardian. I took one of the names listed in the report, Richard Barrons, and quickly found an article in the Guardian where he's quoted but his ties to the arms industry are not disclosed: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/20/britain-def...
Not quoted as saying that there should be some sort of budget or spending increase, which is the sort of evidence being presented in this report, but merely some historical context statement about how the armed forces had been 'right-sized for the era'; and with his political ties also mentioned.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if AOAV had a blind spot with respect to The Guardian. However, that doesn't show one; and they did do lists of news media for several of the 19 (e.g. Richards) indicating that they aren't just picking 1 example publication for each person. Which is why I'm still inclined towards this telling us that there is a certain subset of U.K. publications in which this occurs.
If they hadn't mentioned Nation Cymru I'd be inclined towards this telling us that the report is highly London-centric and not reflective of 'U.K. media'. But they did.
I'm sorry, that's a real stretch. It's apparent to anyone reading what his comment implies.
And this is far from an isolated case, if you think the Guardian is an exception. We're all technical here, easy to use Google search and look up the names in the report and see how often the Guardian and the other "better" papers disclose the arms industry links. (Oh and the political party he's affiliated to isn't what's under discussion here.)
No, You're the one stretching things. If you want to provide an example from The Guardian that actually works, and it is as easy to do so as you say, go ahead. As I said, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a blind spot, given who is on the staff and the byline of this very piece. But you haven't here.
Rather, you've showed an article where the primary complaint of the headlined report, that the potential biases of a commentator or a source are not made apparent, does not apply because the bias of the person quoted, that xe is politically connected to the government whose actions are being scrutinized in the piece, is very much given as context.
As the person suggesting that the Guardian is somehow an exception in the UK media, I think the onus should be on you to prove it. I merely pointed out that the report did not say any such thing, and gave you an example from the Guardian showing them doing exactly the same thing.
I'll give you more examples, but here's a challenge for you: Can you find examples of the named people in the Guardian where their arms industry links are clearly disclosed?
Nick Houghton
From the report:
> In an article in the Daily Mail dated 2 April 2024, Baron Houghton backed the Mail’s campaign to increase defence spending. There was no mention made of his various vested interests.
The Guardian, also with no mention of his vested interests[1]:
- "Ukraine is being asked to fight a proxy war against Russia on behalf of Nato without being given the means to win it, Nick Houghton, a former head of the armed forces, told the Lords today."
- "Houghton also called for higher spending on defence."
Nick Carter
From the report:
> "Sir Nick has been quoted across various publications re-increasing defence spending, with only reference to his military status.”
The Guardian[2]:
- "The promises to bolster the defence of the Arctic came as British former head of the armed forces General Sir Nick Carter called for greater European cooperation to deter Russia and support Ukraine."
> the Telegraph, the Mail, GB News, the Sun, the Times
Indeed. These are pay-to-play propaganda and should not be accorded the dignity of "newspaper". Peter Oborne's resignation from the Telegraph is still worth reading: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31510152
GB News has emerged out of the Reform movement, which in turn is the child of UKIP. And there are good grounds to think UKIP was bankrolled in part by Russia. It's covered in part by Carol Cadwallader in the excellent "Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring". Alexander Udod (A Russian diplomat) seemed to be the handler for senior UKIP figures.
It's just statistically more likely. The UK has a lot of Russians and somehow even those who were notionally sanctioned as Putin's puppets found it easy to obtain special case exemptions or conveniently happened to have transferred key assets to somebody who wasn't sanctioned coincidentally as it happened. Russia being "broke" is a macro-economic idea, the Russians involved are wealthy.
As with the drug trade lawyers are happy to take £££ of your obviously stolen Russian cash to help you argue that you and that money are legitimate. And if you lose? Oops, the payment to the lawyers is magically exempt so they keep that. The incentives to work for people who you know are crooks are very strong, just need to get cash up front because when anything goes wrong they're suddenly penniless and have never met you.
That's the stupidest thing about Trump's lawyers. These guys must have represented crooks before, so he's not different on that score, but why did so many of them not demand cash up front?
Yes, and I was slightly disappointed, from a statistical point of view, that they didn't tell us how many people they excluded from the original sample for this reason. That could have told us things.
If (say) they threw out 967 to leave those 33, then one possible explanation that that leaves the door open for is that journalists are so used to there being no conflict of interest, it being the case the majority of the time, that they don't check in the minority of cases where there is.
I suspect that they didn't throw out anywhere near as many as that, though. But, still, I would have liked to have been told the figure.
How much of that is down to the Guardian being disinclined to air views seen as pro military? Or not asking the sorts of questions where such views would naturally be called upon. For example a left publication is less likely to be concerned about a(n alleged) lack of military readiness.
Why? From afar my vague impression of LBC is that it's talk radio opinion slop, even if it puts in some effort to avoid the cartoonishly-far-right conservatism endemic to that genre.
Not wrong, that format requires a regular parade of guests with some kind of subject matter expertise, and if it's a military or national security topic, most of those subject matter experts are inevitably from a military or at least military policy background.
In 17 of the 19 detailed instances, it is stated that they are promoting increases in budgets and spending. The two others are reported as speaking with different conflicts of interest.
It's not the message spoken that is at issue here, it is the lack of disclosure of the connection of "the expert" to those that benefit (or suffer) from the message.
A correct analogue would be 'The expert stating that more should be spent on treatment X was employed in the NHS five years ago and currently runs/directs/consults for a business selling supplies for treatment X.'
> "The expert claiming that cancer is bad was employed by the NHS five years ago"
from any media outlet quoting that "expert", yes. I'd also like the circumstances of their departure to be mentioned, should that be relevant to the claims.
I expect it as such things are also expected by the press council of the country I'm in, even though it can be an uphill battle getting such compliance.
It absolutely is sinister. Everything about the military is, when you decouple the rhetoric from the actions and consider what it is that those organisations actually do.
Much less than 5-10 years ago, and orders of magnitude less than the Russian military.
The pressures of fighting an existential war plus the demands of the public in a democracy have closed off most typical avenues for corruption, forcing a focus on battlefield results and effective supply to the front-line.
Nobody in the Ukrainian military is advocating for military spending for corrupt reasons, but for the country to remain independent in the face of a Russian military invasion.
What compelled you to write this? It's just a random point having no relationship to what you're replying to. Why have you typed this and pressed "reply"?
To skip the currently political sensitive topics of who is helping who with what, who feels the consequences, what prices are affected because of that, let's go a bit further in the past... for example, UK taxpayers money went for bombing Iraq for the "weapons of mass destruction" when Tony Blair already knew those didn't exist.
At some point you have to ask, is it really for defense, if you're bombing someone a quarter of a planet away? Are you really protecting your people at home by doing that, and are they happy their money is being spent for that instead of eg. healthcare, education, etc.?
And the same UK taxpayer money is now being spent to ferociously defend Ukraine, and in turn European interests. That same UK taxpayer money is spent to promote freedom of the seas for global trade, whether it be the Hormuz, the Malacca Strait, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic, the Baltic or the Horn of Africa.
Defence spending is only as good as the government that controls it, but you can't be serious if you're discounting the importance of military readiness at all times, given the world we live in.
The UK's military spending has always been much more justifiable, especially given that the country actually spends a lot on education and healthcare too (and I will argue that both of them are some of the SOTA systems in the world currently, in spite of their challenges).
I mean... UK airforce is literally protecting the skies of the agressor in that war, the genocidal one. Didn't do anything to stop the genocide though.
As someone not from US nor UK, but from a small country that always seems to send a van of soldier a year after the war has started, i'd be much happier if both the brits and the yankees stayed back home on their "islands" and within their borders, I don't want to pay for our soldiers to go to another afghanistan-style expedition again too; it doesn't help us at all to be a part of the agressive occupier, the locals there hate us, and somehow we even leave their local traitors behind (eg. in afghanistan).
You can't just skip the currently present and urgent defence requirements because they're "politically sensitive" and then go twenty years back to support your point.
But even if you want to do that, why don't you go just a couple more years further and argue that Bosnians should've been left to be genocided?
I mean... if you want to go to current times and politicaly sensitive topics, UK is defending the genocide of gazans and the attacks on iran right now by protecting israeli airspace. So yeah, genocide seems to not be a problem for the UK.
Again, nothing to do with defending the british people.
In a democracy, any military action (except fighting pack when directly attacked) should start with a referendum to see if people actually want to pay for that. (it also makes it less problematic for the other side to destroy the infrastructure when fighting back, since it's not just some smiling Tony choosing to attack then, but the people too).
Yes, the military is fed by the one thing all cultures have in common - their susceptibility to warrior narcissism - and indeed in the modern age any military is little more than a criminal murder-class protected by a thin line of paper.
However, murder is meat. Wars feed people. Not often the 'right' people, but the moment one starts drawing another such thin line about who and who doesn't deserve to be fed, the narcissist demon draws closer and so then, is the warrior devil justified.
Anti-war rhetoric is unpopular, it is true - but there is more of it out there than most people realize, or else we'd all be ash already. Warrior narcissists are only given the space for such identity by quiet, humble peace-makers. Get louder about making peace and stay proud about it.
Well, lets see .. the invasion and destruction of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, Afghanistan, Syria .. the violence in Somalia .. the genocide of Gaza, and now ethnic cleansing in Lebanon.
You can say as many stupid things as you want, until the war crimes are prosecuted, the war criminals will continue to get away with war.
Amusingly for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/325776830 , the last place to use /usr/dict (Debian, which changed it in 1998; Berkeley having changed it in Net/2 in 1991) stopped doing so years before Wikipedia was invented.
My computers ignore USB HIDs other than the ones that I have explicitly permitted. Unfortunately, this is a major architectural revamp for many operating systems. The idea that every HID is automatically added to a keyboard/mouse 'multiplexer', that provides a single combined input stream, is a pervasive one.
No. The multiplexers are all turned off, and I have devd/udev rules that spawn my own userspace driver processes (as services, via service management) to attach to the individual USB devices. The driver services in turn use an autoconfiguration system to determine whether they should actually attach to the device whose name they are passed, and where they should pass input onwards to.
This is for a virtual terminal system. For X11 or Wayland, one would have to replicate the same idea in an appropriate form, and stop using the multiplexed devices.
Indeed. This is one of the differences between the Unix and the MS/PC/DR-DOS command-line world. In the latter, recognizing empty final pathname components actually did become a way of differentiating such situations. I wrote a set of DOS and OS/2 tools in the 1990s, including COPY and MOVE commands, that had this very behaviour. I wasn't alone.
Used several times within the last month alone.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375691
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