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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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As an aside remark, it's really funny how everyone has to elaborate what the fuck they're talking about when they talk about Twitter.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Ubuntu explains the situation
could have just been written as
In a tweet, Ubuntu explains the situation
but the epic genius elon decided to destroy all brand recognition. Truly incredible thing to witness. Twitter literally got its own branded terms into common lexicon and he just set it all on fire.
He didnt just set the brand recognition on fire, elon basically did everything someone would do if they wanted to intentionally run twitter into the ground.
Now spez needs to rename Reddit and make his idol proud.
In a Y (formerly known as post) on Y (formerly known as reddit) a Y (formerly known as user) "vaporeonpissdrinker69" has said that...
Maybe that was his plan for creating true free speech, by driving everyone away from twitter to mastodon...
A very 200iq plan, only cost him $44B
It cost him a lot more than that. He lost about 200 billion in stock value that he owned and among the companies he "runs" about a trillion was lost in total due to investers dumping stock after seeing his ineptitude on full display.
Or we all could just still call it twitter and tweets, and be done with it
I propose we just stop talking about it altogether.
No, It's called X now. Elon willed it so, and I'm happy to oblige. Posts are called X-cretions (or X-crement, if they are shitposts).
No no, it's not 'a tweet ' anymore, it's 'an X(, formerly known as a tweet)'
"In an X(formerly known as a tweet) on X(formerly known as Twitter) ..."
It just rolls off the tongue!
I hope this practice never dies.
(Also has "the artist formerly known as Prince vibes".)
The current branding gives more a placeholder asset feeling than a memorable identity. Sorry the twitter logo isn't loading so we'll show you an "X" in the meantime
Why read X posts when you can watch X videos
I thought it was xeets
xcretes
SMH what is wrong with people.
Some people just need a punch in the face to understand why they shouldn't use hate speech.
Redneck, or pirate, or leet speak language options are there to let developers test the translations without them having to be bilingual.
OK what's the deal with those m's and w's?? It looks like a standard seriffed BIOS/ROM font except for those.
That is weird. Didn’t even notice til I read this.
Nobody is even slightly concerned that this made it to release? if they can shove in hate speech without anyone noticing, cant be much harder to slowly introduce a backdoor over several commits.
Minecraft got in trouble when the Afrikaans translation had the n-word (in English) due to a malicious translator. CDPR had an issue with the Ukrainian translation making references to the ongoing war.
This sort of thing happens somewhat frequently. It's the same reason how fake sign language interpreters can hold positions. It's hard to verify the accuracy of a translation in a language you don't speak. They have to trust that the translator did their job right.
Translations are usually just text strings. No reasonable project would allow translators to write code.
I mean honestly though, if there are code reviews, how hard would it be to just make a quick "translation review", putting the stuff through a translator program, and verifying it's not obvious bullshit? Especially for new/unknown contributors. Of course it's additional work, again, but a sanity check should easily be possible.
Quite hard. We had Open Source'ish LLMs for only around six months, if they are even up to the task of verifying a translation is another issue and if they are up to Debian's Open Source guidelines yet another. This is obviously going to be the long term solution, but the tech for that has simply not been around for very long.
And of course once you have translation tools good enough for the task, you might just skip the human translator altogether and just use machine translations.
I more meant that if something contains "fucking kill all ukrainians and trans people", which it sounds like this was something like that, that should be possible to see even with bad translation tools.
I would assume since it was a block of raw text in Ukrainian in a translation file, it would have passed more under the radar than something like a backdoor. I do not know how things are reviewed before being pushed to release though.
Not really, not only because of the language but also because the same scrutiny between code and content wouldn't have to be the same. I also don't expect core aspects of the distribution, e.g kernel, package manager, cryptography libraries, to be verified the same way than a random software, e.g Kdenlive. So... is it bad, absolutely. Does it mean everything should be questioned again? Probably not.
I'm sure more people know C or Python than Ukrainian at Canonical. It looks like this particular change has been authorized by a third-party localization project, though I'm not sure the whole process works.
Translations are not going to be analyzed as thoroughly as code, and this was still found quite quickly. Submitted code is analyzed much more thoroughly, often by multiple members or the project.
This is just messed up and sad. Why do people do this stuff? Why do they have to act like assholes?
If you're genuinely confused, it's because a lot of people live broken lives and it brings them joy to bring others down.
I read the changes, and it seems to me it was a stupid child. Not even someone malicious, but just a stupid love being edgy.
Someone has been defacing OpenStreetMap with stuff like this for months as well. It's pretty sad.
I contribute to OSM a lot and thankfully I haven’t ran into vandalism yet. I’ve always been kind of surprised it isn’t way more common. I guess maybe it is, just not around me.
Im amazed by peoples creativity.
I havent thought until now that such things like translations can be misused for hate speech.
The commit in question if anyone's interested: https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-desktop-provision/commit/6f4028057e55cebfc53cc45cb39831f7e6a176cb
I'm not sure why the author's account is not clickable - has he deleted it?
submitted as part of a third party tool outside of the Ubuntu Archive
Not every git user is guaranteed to have an account. In this case, most translators probably don’t as it was automatically translated with weblate, which Ubuntu appears to have since removed.
But why not release 23.10 but without the affected language pack? The Ukrainian translation can be released once the vandalism is fixed.