You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense. And it didn’t make any sense at the time either. After setting up the router with a laptop, I moved the connection to the firewall but it refused to connect. When I finally got ahold of tech support they said the connection locks into the first machine that logs in and they had to release it so I could connect the new machine. And just like that the firewall was given a routable IP address and connected to the internet. Stupidest thing I ever heard of, but that’s how they were set up. Now this was around 15+ years ago and I would certainly hope nobody is doing that crap today, but apparently that was their brilliant method of limiting how many devices could get online at once.

What are you talking about? You’re assuming that every residential router is going to have some kind of firewall enabled by default (they don’t). Sure, if OP has a router that provides a basic firewall type service then it will likely block all incoming unauthorized traffic. However OP is specifically talking about a linux-based firewall and hasn’t specified if they have a router-based firewall service in place as well so we can only provide info on the firewall they specified. And if you look at UFW, the default configuration is to allow outgoing traffic and block all but a very few defined incoming ports.

You’re also making the assumption that OP is using NAT, when that is not always the case for all ISPs. Some are really annoying with their setup in that they give a routable IP to the first computer that connects and don’t allow any other connections (I had that setup once with Comcast). In this case, you wouldn’t even need to define port-forwarding to get directly to OP’s computer – and any services they might be running. This particular scenario is especially dangerous for home computers and I really hope no legitimate ISP is still following a practice like this, however I don’t take anything for granted.

Regardless of what other equipment OP has, UFW is going to provide FAR better defaults and configurability when compared to a residential router that is simply set up to create the fewest support calls to their ISP.

Possibly? The way I read it, it sounded like OP wasn’t really even sure what a firewall does.

You’ve got it backwards. A firewall blocks everything, then you open up the ports you want to use. A standard config would allow everything going out, and block everything coming in (unless you initiated that connection, then it is allowed).

So the question you should be asking, is what services do you think you’re going to be running on your desktop that you plan to allow anyone on the internet to get to?

I’ve also read about the John Deere issue as a leading instigator of right-to-repair laws. They weren’t able to provide authorized local repair techs when a tractor breaks down, so farmers were stuck waiting 1-2 weeks for someone to show up while crops were rotting in the fields (think of how fast your fresh fruit rots in your kitchen and then imagine dozens of fields of that crop going to waste). And the biggest insult was when the repair tech drove into town for a $5 part that the farmer had already identified but couldn’t replace because of manufacturer lockouts.

From my own experience it was more about being a solution in search of a problem. I see some comments about how the old init system was so horribly broken, and yet the reality was it worked perfectly fine for all but some very niche situations. The only advantage I have ever seen with systemd is that it’s very good at multitasking the startup/shutdown processes, but that certainly wasn’t the case when it first arrived. For example I had a raspberry pi that booted in 15 seconds, and when I loaded a new image with systemd it took close to two minutes to boot. And there were quite a lot of problems like that, which is why people were so aggravated when distro admins asked the community for their thoughts on switching to systemd and then changed the distros anyway. This also touches on the perception that the “community” accepted it and moved on – no, systemd was pushed on the community despite numerous problems and critical feedback.

But we’re here now, systemd has improved, and we can only hope that some day all the broken bits get fixed. Personally I’m still annoyed that it took me almost a week to get static IPs set up on all the NICs for a new firewall because despite the whole “predictable names” thing they still kept moving around depending on if I did a soft or hard reset. Configuring the cards under udev took less than a minute and worked consistently but someone decided it was time to break that I guess.

What’s your fear of editing config files? They’re just text files, and manual edits certainly allow a degree of customization that you’ll never find in a GUI interface. My own config is set up with domain name folders under /home/ to contain the many domains I run, that’s something I’ve never seen handled by a GUI and yet it makes so much more sense for keeping files organized.

sudo apt install apache2

Did you really need a GUI for that? The web folders are under /var/www/ and you can browse to it from another computer by typing the IP into the address bar. As long as you’re not using Chrome you might even be able to type the computer name into the address bar.

I still have my original ZX81 with the 16k RAM pack. Taught myself programming on that machine. Would be interesting to try and recover some of my tapes, except it’s been years since I’ve seen any tape recorders kicking around.

Further, the bill prohibits the use of any funds made available to the Department of State or to U.S. Customs and Border Protection to rescind or change this policy.

Let’s just limit who can fight this bill while we’re at it…

So Sony wants to punish ISPs for continuing to “allow” illegal things to happen? Hmm remind me again which company it is that has had so many data breaches that users have come to just expect it? Sounds to me like if they are allowed to pursue attacking internet providers then they themselves should start seeing lawsuits for continuing damages until such time as Sony is able to successfully recover all stolen personal data and other parties can no longer use it for profit.

“He doesn’t think that elections are a real thing. He doesn’t think that elections are legitimate, and he doesn’t want an American form of government in which elections decide whether or not he’s in power because he doesn’t believe election results should be binding.”

– Rachel Maddow

Green felt top hat with a size tag stuck in the band. Oof that’s been about 20 years ago now.

My point is that Trump lies so often that it’s easy to forget to actually check on what you’re reporting. Like the first piece reported in that article… Yeah if someone sent you just that clip and you see him referring to the wrong State, you might just accept that and post it without looking at the rest of the rally and realizing he was referring to something else. It’s easy to forget that Trump isn’t always full of shit.

Cool, now do Trump. I want to see a comparison of how many times Trump has lied or misled followers to the number of times the Harris campaign has done this. I think if the numbers are 1:1 we can all agree it’s intentional. What if the numbers are 5:1? 10:1? At what ratio do we agree that mistakes were made by overzealous campaign staff? Without comparison numbers, this article is meaningless.

So creating stronger border security to stop drug trafficking is a bad thing? There are still ways for people to cross legally, and what you quoted acknowledges the need to fix immigration policy for allowing citizenship. Whataboutism is when you are comparing two identical issues. What you are doing is ignoring the extreme approach of one party and trying to make it sound like the other party is doing the same thing… In the US, Trump wants to deport or straight up kill immigrants, Harris is acknowledging that we need to stop the drug traffic while helping supporting immigration. In Palestine … yeah Biden is sending bombs and he’s an ass for that but Harris has at least stated that things need to change. Meanwhile Trump’s only statement on the matter is that they need to bomb the Gaza strip and make the problem go away. Do you really thing allowing Trump to get into office will help anyone except rich white people? Stein might have a different approach but under our current voting system there is no possible way she will get elected, so your only honest choice in the matter is voting for someone who has a stated policy of death, or someone who has at least admitted that we can do better.

The one where Democrats made deep concessions to Republican demands? The one where Republicans set most of the tone in the bill and then backed out because daddy Trump wanted immigration to still be an issue for the election?

You’re saying the Democrats, who are welcoming immigrants into sanctuary cities and fighting to protect the rights of legal immigration, are somehow also responsible for fear-mongering about immigrants? That’s an interesting take. What do you call it when Republicans are threatening to deport all legal and naturalized immigrants without any concern for the number of generational US citizens they will also deport because they had the wrong skin color?

According to Buttigieg they are waking up thinking “Oh shit I don’t want people talking about that… what other fucked-up shit can I spew to distract the rubes?”

Nice, I’ll have to remember that.