Mr Penguin

CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc and co-host of syndicated radio show Free Talk Live.

Last Notes

2026-04-29 03:10:48 UTC

"Sony Rolls Out 30-Day Online DRM Check-In For PlayStation Digital Games"
"No matter what, any game you download from now on will feature this new requirement, effectively eliminating the concept of offline play for even single-player titles. "
And yet... people will continue putting up with this crap. If only there was this thing called the free market and people voted with their fiat (dirty money, ie government money). Then companies wouldn't pull this shit.
I long ago refused to lay my hands on any game console. However my sole voice alone does not impact change. Only people spending their money on products from companies that refuse to pull this bullshit will have any genuine positive impact.
Unfortunately there is no free market with copyright. Copyright is a literal monopoly on distribution. There was for a while some level of limited reprieve with VHS, DVD, blu-ray, and at one time game rentals.
Back in the day the court ruled that companies could rent out the tapes they *BOUGHT*. This created some resemblance of a free market as you could obtain entertainment for some years without there being a single source. However that didn't apply to broadcast and so later when the internet era came to be no one other than major major major tech and entertainment companies (think Netflix and Disney) could enter the online rental (or streaming) market. As a consequence we went from 10s of thousands of rental shops across just the United States to a ~handful. It is also well known these handful will eventually consolidate and we'll be left with ~1-2 options in the coming years.

2026-04-18 21:54:47 UTC

If there was ever a reason to avoid purchasing a newer car this article/research blog post breaks it down very well. So this researcher extracted the data that all modern cars collect and for which is mandated by law. Every time you take a trip your car is logging your GPS coordinates and ratting you out to the "authorities" and potentially others.
Privacy wise the best cars pre-date 1996, but a car from 2005 is still way better than a car from 2015. For the past decade now cars have been getting equipped (and more recently mandated by law) with GPS tracking systems. The most modern cars include cellular connections on top of GPS that can report back your every move.
Governments don't need to plant a GPS tracking device on your car or even get a subpoena necessarily. They can buy it or just ask a manufacturer for it.
You can thank "safety" advocates, politicians, the advertising industry, and manufacturers for these privacy invasive technologies. All have colluded to erode your privacy.
My current vehicle(s) are from the early 2000s and my next vehicle will also be from the early 2000s. The humorous part is I'd like to get an electric vehicle, but I'm not willing to surrender any further information to unscrupulous law enforcement or other parties.
You may not even be aware that you've been targeted over your political activities. The FBI tailed my partner despite having no connections to crime, just political activities. The FBI used a seized vehicle with a memorable vanity plate to tail my partner and was aggressive on this one occasion about two weeks before a raid of another major political activist. We happened to film that raid and a fully uniformed agent stepped out of this vehicle that day (TheCrypto6.com).
https://blog.quarkslab.com/tearing-down-a-car-telematic-unit-and-finding-an-accident-on-facebook.html

2025-08-29 19:20:49 UTC

Love this video promoting the free state, other than the conservative stance on ID checks at the polls at least. Don't get pulled in by stupid republican politics. As a whole libertarians want freedom including open boarders, free trade, and if your physically here on voting day you should be able to vote. It doesn't matter if your 5 years old or 105, white, black, or mixed, gay, straight, bi, or something else entirely. My "legalize gay marijuana" t-shirt sums it up perfectly.
https://x.com/FreeStateNH/status/1961183320865374236

2025-07-29 08:36:52 UTC

It's about time someone stood up against these right-wing religious nut jobs that have pushed censorship and other laws that have primarily benefited politicians in the name of 'protecting' LGBTQ, women, and others and can't comprehend the difference between fantasy and reality. While I'm against the use of violence there is a HUGE difference between 'violent' video games, or in this case creepy sexual fantasies and people committing actual violence. When you pass a law criminalizing thoughts your committing a VIOLENT act that isn't justifiable. Banning actual violence (without consent) is justified, but not some sickos fantasy. Just like it's not justified to ban violent video games just because some small percentage of people will commit actual violence.
https://www.polygon.com/news/616835/visa-mastercard-steam-itchio-campaign-adult-games

2025-06-12 08:30:58 UTC

Heros defend the victims AND the victimless through any means available at their disposal. This includes use of violence when necessary against other violent actors. This includes those using violence as a defense against the gang calling itself law enforcement. The difference between most gangs and law enforcement is most gangs don't target the victimless masses by way of 'civil asset forfeiture', take a paycheck by way of 'fining' people who have no victims, or kidnap folks usually under false and manipulated pretenses in the name of some false greater good.
Police may be above the law, but they should NOT be beyond the justice of the masses and it is only the masses who can enforce justice when it comes to law enforcement, prosecutors, and other bureaucrats that place themselves beyond the reach of public accountability.
Support the protesters and those defending the public against the violent abusers calling themselves law enforcement, national guard, marines, and ICE. The real heros aren't the politicians either (except for maybe ~100 migrants for the FSP who moved to NH). The real heros in Los Angeles aren't the ones getting getting paid. They are the ones being persecuted for using whatever means were at their disposal to defend your freedoms. Be it their words, their rocks, or their cocktails.

2025-04-16 17:58:41 UTC

Trump's trying to take out the internet again: And the congress critters are getting on board. Stop SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is basically back. This new provision would make people take down content others object to.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/congress-takes-another-step-toward-enabling-broad-internet-censorship#effector

2025-01-15 20:05:55 UTC

I support Canada's proposed acquisition of Washington, Oregon, and California, how about you? New Hampshire is willing to give up these states for independence of its own too. While we are at it maybe Mexico can take some of the mid western states and we can finally declaw the tentacles of what remain of the "United States".
https://www.newsweek.com/canada-lawmaker-suggests-letting-three-us-states-join-get-free-healthcare-2011658

2025-01-03 08:21:11 UTC

The war on porn has started up again. For those old enough to remember and those concerned about the attacks on freedom of the past hundred plus years (and not just porn, but right to travel, financial freedom, speech, youths right to work/independence, etc) there is a new case to be decided at the US Supreme Court that could end up restricting your access to porn on the internet (yes again, several supreme court cases of the 90s ruled repeatedly you can't burden adults access to porn for the sake of 'protecting' youth). This law would effectively require sites to ID users as adults if primarily distributing porn. It would not apply to sites like Reddit however and of course you can't enforced anti-porn laws outside your legal jurisdiction anyway making it effectively a mute and stupid law that doesn't 'protect' kids assuming we take the 'think of the children' psycos at their word porn somehow harms kids who are if we are honest with ourselves don't care cause they haven't hit puberty and those that have are NOT children! Not to mention what this law actually does is punish the US operators of porn sites by pushing them to move porn sites to jurisdictions outside the United States or in this case at least Texas:
https://www.vox.com/scotus/391248/porn-supreme-court-free-speech-coalition-paxton-first-amendment

2024-12-22 22:16:35 UTC

- reply

You thought HP was the way to go, really? It always blows me away people you'd think should know better don't. Apple, HP, Lenovo, IBM, Dell, and Toshiba branded products are defective by design. They include digital restrictions that are hostile to proper support under Linux. WiFi card doesn't work? You can't even replace it. This is why we don't have better support in Linux. People keep giving their money to shitty companies working against our interests. I can understand historically going with one of a select number of HP printers because of the proper support on some models over the competition, but an HP laptop? Hell no.

2024-12-04 11:07:58 UTC

I don't get people's obsession with containerization. I understand there are some advantages here and there, but dang. Just give me some basic documentation so I don't have to trust some random persons shit on the internet. I don't want to dig through more than need be. And if you aren't going to do that at least provide enough basic instruction on how to use docker. If you try and look into it there is a ton of shit tutorials that direct you to jump through hoops. It isn't super complicated ... so just say apt install docker-compose ; systemctl start docker; and stop making something simple into a shit show for normal non-container obsessed folks. It should not require a degree in computer science and 45 minutes to detangle it. Containers are dangerous and it doesn't matter if it is flatpak, snaps, or docker. Just give me the source code not some proprietary dependent crap. Yes, working on jumping through hoops to detangle an otherwise good solution in a situation that at least here did make sense yo use docker. My criticism is a little more reserved .. but including some basic docker info for non docker experienced users would still have helped massively even if not so much me directly.

2024-10-24 02:35:49 UTC

Yea, I'm no fan of Putin, BUT I call bullshit on Linus's explanation and stance. This is hypocrisy at its best too. There have been talks of sanctions, but no sanctions to the best of my knowledge in the software development category have actually gone through in the United States that would force free software developers to exclude Russians. Claiming all folks who think you're wrong Russian trolls is just intellectually dishonest. While I am critical of socialism, I'll defend RMS when he's right, and when Linus is wrong I'm going to say it. RMS was right when he crafted the GNU GPL in such a way that it EXCLUDED politics outside of free software development. This has been the reason "open source" folks, "free software" folks, serial killers (governments), and activists of all kinds have all been able to work together to benefit mankind. To now come in and say "what did you expect", in response to excluding Russians I say, I expected you to object to Putin's invasion of another country- but not to undermine the very foundations of FOSS software development. No one is saying you should accept every patch from every Russian developer, but you should have a technical reason for doing so. It doesn't even take a genius to come up with a technical explanation for removing Russian developers en mass, but some silly hypocritical act like this is below pathetic. What's next, inserting backdoors because you want to help Ukraine spy on some subset of Linux users?
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/2035248/linus-torvalds-comments-on-the-russian-linux-maintainers-being-delisted