Audiocasts/Shows

• Distro Hopping Doesn’t Make Sense Too Me – YouTube

  I’ve been using Arch Linux since I first started with Linux and the idea of distro hopping jas just never appealed to me, not to say that I’ll never leave Arch it’s just that swapping for the sake of swapping seems kind of weird.

• Quick Unboxing of my new Thelio Major

  I decided to show off the unboxing my my new desktop – I purchased a new Thelio Major desktop from System76. This particular unboxing was very awkward, the box was very tall and hard to position with my tripod. So please excuse the overall clumsiness of this entire video.

Kernel Space

• Linus Torvalds pushes out emergency Linux update

  In a break from tradition, Linux kernel head honcho Linus Torvalds has published the newest release earlier than usual to address a filesystem corruption issue in the previous release.

  Torvalds noted that last week’s v5.12-rc1 broke the swapfile in an unusual way that could trash the entire filesystem on certain installations. Before he put out the update to correct that issue, Torvalds marked the previous release as v5.12-rc1-dontuse to ward off anyone from using that particular release in their Linux machines.

  “Ok, so this is a couple of days early, but rc1 had the nasty swapfile issue, so I’m just accelerating rc2 a bit,” noted Torvalds as he merged the fix that was released in the days following the rc1 release.

• Linus Torvalds issues early Linux Kernel update to fix swapfile SNAFU

  Linux overlord Linus Torvalds has rushed out a new release candidate of Linux 5.12 after the first in the new series was found to include a ‘subtle and very nasty bug’ that was so serious he marked rc1 as unsuitable for use.

  “We had a very innocuous code cleanup and simplification that raised no red flags at all, but had a subtle and very nasty bug in it: swap files stopped working right. And they stopped working in a particularly bad way: the offset of the start of the swap file was lost,” Torvalds wrote in a March 3rd post to the Linux Kernel Mailing List.

  “Swapping still happened, but it happened to the wrong part of the filesystem, with the obvious catastrophic end results.”

  So catastrophic that, as Torvalds explained, “you can end up with a filesystem that is essentially overwritten by random swap data.”

• Linus Torvalds warns: Watch out for this unusually nasty bug in Linux 5.12 rc1

  Linus Torvalds has issued a warning to open-source developers to avoid the first release candidate (RC) of the Linux kernel 5.12.

  Linux kernel 5.12 was released on time despite the snow storms that lashed Oregon and knocked out power to Torvalds’ home for the better part of a week. Torvalds and his thousands of contributors managed to get version 5.12 out on time, but he now says RC 5.12 is a “double ungood” that can have catastrophic consequences for a computer’s filesystem.

• Applying mailing list patches with ‘git b4′

  b4 was created by Konstantin Ryabitsev and has become a very frequently used tool for me.

  It supports a lot of different ways for interacting with the Linux Kernel mailing lists. Of these the b4 am subcommand is what I primarily use. This subcommand downloads all of the patches belonging to a patch series and drops them into a .mbox file. But! It doesn’t apply them to the repository we’re currently in, and herein lies the itch that I would like to scratch.

• Intel Lunar Lake ‘Next-Gen’ Core CPUs Get First Support In Linux Patches, Expected To Succeed Meteor Lake By 2023

  The support page was spotted by Coelacanth’s Dream (via Osuosi / Videocardz). The patch adds support for Intel Lunar Lake CPUs on the Ethernet e1000e network driver (Gigabyte NIC for Linux and Virtual Systems). The Lunar Lake is clearly listed as a next-gen Client Platform which confirms that it will be launching for both desktop and mobility segments. Other than that, there’s not much that we can decipher from the support page.

• AMD Has A Very Exciting Announcement Next Week

  On the desktop side, Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 processors continue impressing on Linux that make us all the more excited for the EPYC 7003 series.

• Linux Kernel 5.12 rc-1 Not Ready for Use

  In a recent message on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Linus Torvalds warned everyone not to use the 5.12-rc1 kernel, due to an “unusually nasty bug” that was not caught during normal testing.

  “The reason is fairly straightforward,” Torvalds explains, “this merge window, we had a very innocuous code cleanup and simplification that raised no red flags at all, but had a subtle and very nasty bug in it: swap files stopped working right … the offset of the start of the swap file was lost.” Swapping still happened, he says, “but it happened to the wrong part of the filesystem, with the obvious catastrophic end results.”

• Intel Already Started Working On Linux Driver Code For Lunar Lake – Phoronix

  While Intel 11th Gen Rocket Lake desktop processors are launching this month, Intel’s open-source Linux driver developers known for their punctual support are already preparing early code around their 14th Gen “Lunar Lake” platform.

  Intel’s punctual open-source/Linux support across desktop, mobile, and server platforms is one of the strong selling points for those preferring to use something on their PC besides Windows (Intel normally also does more for BSD/FreeBSD than other vendors as well). A year ago Intel began upstreaming their Rocket Lake Linux enablement code and that was quickly followed by Alder Lake, which we’ll hopefully see launch before the end of the calendar year. Towards the end of 2020 Intel open-source developers were already working on the initial support around Meteor Lake while now as we end Q1’2021, there are patches beginning to surface for Lunar Lake, the successor to Meteor Lake and what will be Intel’s 14th Gen client processors.

Applications

• Plots – An Open Source Graph Plotting App for GNOME

  In our world of today, spreadsheets function mainly as a means to provide quick and easy plotting methods for numerical data in various kinds of graphical charts. Graphs provide us with an effective way to visualize data and demonstrate the relationships between large data sets no matter their size.

  You can use Plots to create graphs quickly and with minimum effort. Your graphs will not be the best polished, but they will be easy to customize, simple to read, and presentable in professional settings.

  Plots is a free and open-source plotting application built to enable users to visualize mathematical formulae. In addition to its arbitrary operation capabilities e.g. sums and products, it features a variety of mathematical operations such as arithmetic, hyperbolic, exponential, trigonometric, and logarithmic functions.

  Plots offer several features that enable you to make them presentable to your taste. For example, you can modify the borders of elements, change fonts, set colours, etc.

• PhotoFiltre Like Image Editor ‘Photoflare’ 1.6.7 Released with Paint Tool Offsets

  Photoflare, simple but powerful image editor inspired by PhotoFiltre, released version 1.6.7 with translation updates and paint tool improvements.

  Photoflare is an open-source cross-platform image editor written in C++ with Qt5 framework. It has a PhotoFiltre style user interface, and features basic image editing capabilities, paint brushes, image filters, colour adjustments and more advanced features such as Batch image processing.

  The new 1.6.7 was released with new translations: Indonesian and Spanish. And it removed incorrect image extension check, instead it now shows the actual file type in the Image Properties dialog.

  And the new version added offsets to the Paint Bucket tool and the Color picker tool. Previously, they select from the center of the cursor location.

• Use gImageReader to Extract Text From Images and PDFs on Linux

  gImageReader is a front-end for Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine. Tesseract was originally developed at HP and then was open-sourced in 2006.

  Basically, the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine lets you scan texts from a picture or a file (PDF). It can detect several languages by default and also supports scanning through Unicode characters.

  However, the Tesseract by itself is a command-line tool without any GUI. So, here, gImageReader comes to the rescue to let any user utilize it to extract text from images and files.

  Let me highlight a few things about it while mentioning my experience with it for the time I tested it out.

• 10 Best Compression Tools for Linux

  File compression is an integral part of system administration. Finding the best compression method requires significant determination. Luckily, there are many robust compression tools for Linux that make backing up system data easier. Here, we present ten of the best Linux compression tools that can be useful to enterprises and users in this regard.

  [...]

  A plethora of reliable Linux compression tools makes it easy to archive and back up essential data. You can choose from many lossless compressors with high compression ratios such as LZ4, lzop, and bzip2. On the other hand, tools like Zstandard and plzip allow for more advanced compression workflows.

Instructionals/Technical

• How to Setup APT Proxy on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

  A proxy server is an intermediate server that sits between the client computer and the internet. Generally, it is used in the internal networks for unexpected access and to prevent attacks. It is also used to control internet access, bandwidth control and content filtering and blocking.

  If your office or home network is behind a proxy server then you will need to set up a proxy in your web browser or network proxy setting to access the internet.

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to set up proxy settings and apt-proxy in Ubuntu 20.04 Server and Desktop system.

• How To Install VLC Media Player on Manjaro 20 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VLC Media Player on Manjaro 20. For those of you who didn’t know, VLC is a free and open-source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It supports subtitles, closed captions and is translated into numerous languages.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the VLC Media Player on a Manjaro 20 (Nibia).

• Create Your Own Linux Installation | Linux.org

  Some of you may want to have an installation media for installing Linux to multiple systems. Sometimes though, the pre-loaded apps may not be your favorite ones to use. In a business environment, you may need to remove a lot of apps that aren’t wanted in the workplace.

  Installing the Operating System (OS) on multiple systems, updating the system, removing specific apps and loading other apps could take quite a while to accomplish. You can streamline the process by creating your ISO file to use for installation. I have heard people look at the installation process of a Linux distro and say, ‘I wish we could….’. Well, now I hope you can.

• How To Install osTicket on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install osTicket on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, osTicket is an open-source ticket system often used for support. It is written in PHP and it comes with a simple and intuitive web interface used to manage, organize, track and archive all support ticket requests in your company.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the osTicket ticketing system on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

• Install FreeRADIUS & daloRADIUS on Ubuntu 20.04 + MySQL/MariaDB – ByteXD

  FreeRADIUS is a free and open-source implementation of the RADIUS protocol. It’s the most popular and widely deployed open-source RADIUS server, being also used by many Fortune-500 companies, telecommunications companies, and Tier 1 ISPs.

Games

• Assassin’s Greed

  I don’t think any sane person is going to disagree with the quote, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

  For those unaware, that quote came from British politician Baron Acton in 1887. That’s one of the few sayings man has uttered that stands against the test of time. Keep in mind, Acton coined this phrase from politicians who said something similar even earlier than his time; Acton’s phrase just seems to be the most popular, since it reads like modern English.

  Now, I’m not trying to get into politics; we’re a gaming web site, after all. But sadly, after a number of events have occurred — for the gaming industry in particular — within the past couple of years, I feel like even us Linux gamers get the short end of the stick. True, we always had the short end of the stick, up until Valve stepped in and basically saved our bacon around 2012-2013. But as far as native Linux games are concerned, and as advanced as Proton gets, competition that has arisen lately can either be a plus for us, or, as I bring out here, competition can be more so of a nuisance than it is anything else.

  [...]

  Yeah, some were probably expecting me to point the gun at Microsoft first. I’m not a total Microsoft hater, as I do appreciate some of their work, like some of the code they’ve contributed to the Linux kernel. But I seem to hear it all the time. Microsoft bought this company.

  [...]

  Microsoft joined the Linux foundation late 2016. Supposedly, they’re a high-paying “Platinum Member.” I don’t know if their claim, “We love Linux,” is actually true. If anything, they consider Linux as a threat, as long as they’re not making revenue via this platform. They haven’t made any official drivers for Linux as far as their Xbox controllers are concerned. Microsoft is invested in Linux at least when it comes to their whole Azure cloud services, a competitor to AWS and Google Cloud, and they have made it easier to develop for Linux within Windows with the WSL module developed in partnership with Ubuntu.

  Microsoft tried to make their own locked garden during the Windows 8 era with the Windows Store and trying to force everyone to put their applications through there. Fortunately, they failed miserably, thanks in no small part to Valve creating SteamOS. But it doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t stop trying.

• FOSS racer Yorg has a new release with improved gamepad support | GamingOnLinux

  Top-down open-source racing? Yorg is a little bit like some of the classic Micro Machines games and while rough around the edges as it’s in development it’s showing promise as another FOSS game.

  With fast arcade racing along with some amusing physics, Yorg is already a lot of fun with multiple tracks, vehicles and different drivers to pick from. You can play against AI, local multiplayer and experimental online multiplayer. There’s weapons too, so you can blow everyone up.

• Wanted Raccoon is an upcoming comedy game in the spirit of Goat Simulator

  Remember the craziness of Goat Simulator? Wanted Raccoon has a familiar theme of animals going wild and it’s entering Early Access on March 19 with Linux support.

  A game that seems like a big gimmick but apparently there’s a little more to it. The developer mentions an actual storyline and some sort of research system. You can ride skateboards, fight people, upgrade skills, and of course – steal food. Everything a good Raccoon does right? There’s also something about a kidnapped family. Hero Raccoon to the rescue?

• Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer – Part 2: Selecting a Graphics Card

  Linux graphics support is still remarkably similar to how it was 20 years ago, even with all the progress that has been made in the years since. The Mesa 3D graphics library had its origins all the way back in 1995, and through the Utah GLX project attracted the attention of industry luminaries such as id Software’s John Carmack and vendors such as ATI, Intel, Matrox, S3, and 3dfx. By the turn of the millennium all of them had at least some support in Mesa.

  Nvidia went a different route, one which continues to set them apart to this day. Rather than choosing to cooperate with Mesa they instead ported their Windows drivers over to Linux directly, maintaining their own proprietary binary blob separate from the main Linux kernel. This driver model was also later adopted by ATI when they switched focus to their own proprietary “fglrx” driver, although this was largely reversed again after AMD acquired the company in 2006.

  By the time of Red Hat Linux 9 the Direct Rendering Infrastructure or DRI was firmly in place in Mesa and offered 3D support for a wide number of cards. This included the ATI 3D Rage Pro Turbo, which was the AGP card I had selected to test the machine. While a solid 2D performer it offered lacklustre 3D graphics even for the time of its release, and was intended more as an OEM graphics solution than for gaming. That makes them easy to find, but also not worth a lot.

• Sofa gaming Linux distro GamerOS version 23 is out continuing to fill the gap of SteamOS | GamingOnLinux

  Filling in the gap left by Valve leaving SteamOS alone, the sofa / couch gaming distribution GamerOS has a brand new release available with the usual great improvements.

  Booting directly into Steam Big Picture mode, the idea is to have this is the only install on a machine hooked up to a TV. Perhaps in a living room or a dedicated gaming room. It takes things a step or two further though, including plenty of extra enhancements for emulators and non-Steam games with their special tools like Steam Buddy.

• Mario Maker-like platformer MakerKing has a huge update, lets you make mobs | GamingOnLinux

  MakerKing (previously called Jumpaï), is a free to play 2D indie platformer in the spirit of Mario Maker where all players can design their own levels. The whole idea is to design and share, then play the creations from other people. Not only that, you can also play directly online with others to compete on your favourite levels.

  Along with a name change to MakerKing, a huge 0.8 version upgrade recently went out which gives the game quite a nice overhaul. The big headline feature is that you can now add in your own mobs, created by sticking parts together – it’s actually quite amusing.

• Island Artist is a short and sweet game about relaxing and being creative | GamingOnLinux

  Love your small experimental games? I sure do and one I came across recently called Island Artist is absolutely wonderful.

  It features a hand-crafted world where you walk around and create wonderful paintings. It reminds me quite a lot of Shutter Stroll and gives off that same kind of vibe. There’s no depth to the game other than walk around, chill out and perhaps create your next masterpiece, although the tools are simple so don’t expect too much from it. Something to help you find that inner peace on a rainy day perhaps?

• First-person gun simulator action game Receiver 2 gets a proper practice area

  Love a good shooter? What about one where there’s a lot of simulation going on with the weapons directly? Receiver 2 gives you quite a bit to learn and now you can actually get some practice in.

  The key point about Receiver 2 is that it simulates every internal part of each firearm based on manufacturer schematics and gunsmithing resources. This means you can actually learn exactly how each sidearm works, including how to load and unload them, clear malfunctions, and operate their safety features. Educational? Perhaps but it’s also an action game about taking down drones and collecting tapes.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Plasma 5.21 review – Very slick, just one or five oily patches

    Can you hear the drums, Fernando? There’s a new Plasma release out there, marked 5.21. Which means test I must and see what the future of this typically phenomenal desktop environment brings us. Now, if you’ve not followed my KDE adventures lately, then I was kind of pleased with the LTS edition, similarly enthused when it comes to Plasma 5.19, and really happy with 5.20, which I felt should have been the LTS. It was everything I could have hoped, and then some. Well, almost.

    This makes today’s experiment all the more interesting. There’s an almost Ancient Greece drama level of tragic heroism in Linux, so any good or decent release must often follow with a disappointment. But hopefully, it ain’t going to be the case today. Begin to explore, we shall.

    [...]

    Plasma 5.21 is pretty nice. Very refined. But it also has problems, including some there weren’t there in the previous release. And this kind of thing always alarms and dismays me. Yes, there will be bugs, but I’ve yet to find a single Linux-associated project that has ultra-robust, detailed, fully defined, mapped and formalized QA procedure that involves 90% of the total software effort. Alas, no one wants to do the boring stuff. Take the System Monitor as an example – no need for it, KSysGuard could do with minor fixes and maybe a rename, the rev counter dashboard and broken functionality add no value. The font issues are also new. The crashes, well.

    That said, this is still one dope desktop environment. It is really way ahead of anything else GUI Linux, and it has hallmarks of a pro product. But not quite. There’s always a little bit of that open-source hobbyist chaos lurking around, like an old enemy. Still, I am largely pleased and hope to see more awesomeness from the KDE team. Plasma 5.21 is pretty, elegant, cohesive, consistent, fast, and builds on a solid foundation. Shame about the bugs, but let’s hope there will be a fundamental, methodological shift in the approach so that every future Plasma release shines, and there never be random regressions. One can hope. As for 5.21, definitely worth testing and enjoying.

  • Quick-publishing of poudriere packages

    An essential tool in the FreeBSD porter’s arsenal (“porters” are the people who package third-party software, software like KDE Plasma, Haskell, ..) is poudriere, which is an evolution of the old tinderbox. It leverages ZFS and FreeBSD jails to do clean, consistent builds even on an otherwise occupied workstation, and can build for OS versions and architectures you’re not even running. Using the packages you’ve built can be slightly harder, so here’s some notes.

    Poudriere has a chapter in the porter’s handbook. There are straightfoward guides to setting it up, also on DigitalOcean.

    Most of those guides describe setting up nginx to serve the lovely and detailed build progress and results. I tend to follow the build progress in konsole, so I’m not interested in that part. What I do need to do is serve the resulting packages to other machines on my local network (e.g. my laptop) so that everything can enjoy the latest packages. That is doubly useful when trying out things like KDE Plasma on Wayland on FreeBSD, which needs plenty of testing and doesn’t work on all my hardware.

    tl;dr Install lighttpd, write 2-line configuration file, run lighttpd; on client, configure pkg to use what lighttpd serves.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GNOME 40 Mutter Lands Wayland Presentation-Time Support

    The patch series implementing support for Wayland’s Presentation-Time protocol within the Mutter compositor has been merged ahead of this month’s GNOME 40 release.

    This Wayland Presentation-Time support has been in the works for GNOME the past four months and today was finally deemed ready for merging.

  • Molly de Blanc: Office Hours for GUADEC Call for Proposals

    If you’re interested in presenting at GUADEC and want to talk with organizers and experienced speakers about your ideas, have someone look over your session proposal, or just want to ask some questions about speaking at a conference, come by Office Hours to discuss all of these and more!

Distributions

• BSD

  • NomadBSD 1.4 overview | A persistent live system for your USB flash drive

    In this video, I am going to show an overview of NomadBSD 1.4 and some of the applications pre-installed

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Might See Micro-Architecture Packages For Better Performance

    One of the many great programs at SUSE is the roughly annual program where their developers can focus for one week on any new open-source development they desire. SUSE Hack Week has led to many great innovations and improvements since it began in the mid-2000s and for the Hack Week later this month there is one project attempt we are eager to see tackled.

    Proposed ahead of this year’s SUSE Hack Week 20 event, which runs the last week of March, is supporting glibc-hwcaps and providing micro-architecture package generation support for openSUSE Tumbleweed and down the line for SLE/Leap.

    [...]

    SUSE’s Antonio Larrosa is planning to experiment with the new capabilities and initially investigate a handful of libraries that would stand to benefit from the HWCAPS functionality. This would be catering to the openSUSE/SUSE buid process and establishing RPM macros and documentation in helping guide packagers around creating micro-architecture packages.

    The current plan would be to spin the different micro-architecture packages into separate packages that can be installed by the user to supplement the generic package if they are wanting to pursue the optimized packages in the name of greater performance.

  • How Open Source Makes SAP More Manageable [Ed: SUSE now doing shameless openwashing of proprietary software of SAP]

    SAP continues to help drive the digital transformation of tens of thousands of companies of all sizes and sectors. In fact, SAP software touches nearly every aspect of how modern businesses are run. And with continued improvements to the platform, SAP is helping businesses to constantly move forward, to make them more capable, powerful, and agile.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • What’s new in Red Hat OpenShift’s Web Terminal Operator 1.2

    Red Hat OpenShift‘s Web Terminal Operator is a way for users to access a web terminal with common cluster tooling pre-installed. This gives you the power and flexibility to work with your product directly through the OpenShift web console, eliminating the need to have all your tooling installed locally.

    This article is an overview of the new features introduced in Web Terminal Operator 1.2. These improvements include allowing cluster administrators to securely access the terminal, more information for users when a terminal has shut down due to inactivity, and a tooling update to align with OpenShift 4.7.

  • Introduction to the Node.js reference architecture, Part 1: Overview – Red Hat Developer

    Welcome to this new series introducing the Node.js reference architecture from Red Hat and IBM. This article is an overview of our reasons for developing the Node.js reference architecture—both what we hope the architecture will offer our developer community and what we do not intend it to do. Future articles will offer a detailed look at different sections of the reference architecture.

    Before we dive into this first article, it’s important to acknowledge that the Node.js reference architecture is a work in progress. The development team is working through different areas, discussing what we’ve learned, and distilling that information into concise recommendations and guidance. Given the fast pace of development in the JavaScript ecosystem, the reference architecture might never be “finished.” Instead, we’ll continue updating it to reflect what we learn through new Node.js production deployments and ongoing experience with our deployments at scale. The reference architecture is meant to reflect our current experience and thinking, which will evolve.

  • New developer quick starts and more in the Red Hat OpenShift 4.7 web console

    We are continuing to evolve the developer experience in Red Hat OpenShift 4.7. This article highlights what’s new for developers in the OpenShift 4.7 web console. Keep reading to learn about exciting changes to the topology view, an improved developer catalog experience, new developer quick starts, user interface support for Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines and Red Hat OpenShift Serverless, and more.

  • Red Hat Summit Virtual Experience 2021: Register today

    Automation, application deployment, and how to speed up your journey to the cloud. These and other developer hot topics will take center stage at Red Hat Summit 2021. Join thousands of your peers by registering for our all-new, free, two-part virtual Summit experience. Keynote speaker Burr Sutter will be delving deep into developer technologies as we come together to learn, share stories of success and failure, and turn knowledge into action.

    We’ve reimagined this year’s Red Hat Summit as a multi-part experience that includes two no-cost virtual components in April and June, followed by a series of small-scale in-person events later in the year.

  • Fedora Community Blog: Contribute at the Fedora 34 IoT Edition Test Day

    Fedora test days are events where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed to Fedora before, this is a perfect way to get started. On Wednesday, March 10, we’ll test Fedora IoT.

  • Traditional doesn’t mean staid: how banks should be innovating today

    When looking into a fiduciary for your assets, a bank with a long-standing history may seem like a stable, trustworthy choice. However, that very legacy may be one of the reasons large banks lose out to the competition in an age where customers are expecting open, quick, and real-time banking.

    Not unique to banks, big companies have a challenge of navigating legacies. These legacies do not just pertain to mainframes with monoliths on them, but also how they work. Along with their associates, senior managers should also show a desire to change. It’s harder to move fast if you are huge, but embracing an open culture from the top down can be a good starting point. I’ve seen huge amounts of talent, smart people, and big budgets hindered by a staid way of working. The strategy still needs to come from the top, but everyone should be enabled—and perhaps more importantly, empowered—to contribute.

    Regulations have forced banks to be more siloed, and now they continue to operate like that because it is easier, and traceable. IT in a bank was merely a cost center, a service provider until about 10 years ago. Technology was never an enabler, but seen as a cost-sink. We’re still struggling with this mindset today, even though we have continuously seen how technology can be a competitive differentiator.

    Large banks often don’t know where to start with some of their legacy, often the product of mergers and acquisitions. Then, you throw in a pandemic, during which the world of banking had to transform at a rapid pace to expand digital banking and chatbot services, and it ends up being a lot to take on all at once for large institutions. It can feel easier to keep legacy systems in place to stay afloat.

    Traditional banks still need help with faster transaction times, integrating artificial intelligence to improve the customer experience, and implementing agile ways of working for their IT teams. The hurdle lies in figuring out a way to get started. As a customer, I saw this innovation from Red Hat.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Why is Ubuntu Linux the leading choice to replace CentOS for Finserv infrastructure?

    Operating systems are the foundation blocks of technology stacks in organisations. When considering an open source operating system for Finserv infrastructure, there are four factors that are key to any enterprise using it – maintainability, continuity, stability and security. The Financial Services industry have started exploring options for a stable and supported open source Linux OS following IBM Red Hat announcement to accelerate the end-of-life for CentOS 8 with no further operating system updates after December 31, 2021.

    Finservs that have been using CentOS as a stable point distribution for their servers, virtual machines, and appliances had migrated to CentOS 8 expecting support until 2029—only to find out that their “until-2029” distro became “until-2021” distro just a few months after upgrading.

    Finservs need a secure, open source Linux distro that can provide long term continuity and maintainability. This blog provides an overview of why Ubuntu is the leading choice for a secure, stable platform for finserv infrastructure and cloud native banking.

  • Canonical Talks Up Why Ubuntu Is A Great Replacement To CentOS

    Following the surprise announcement last year that CentOS 8 will be EOL’ed at the end of 2021 to focus instead on CentOS Stream and all the uncertainty that brought with Red Hat now being owned by IBM, new distributions like Rocky Linux were conceived while existing Linux distributions have been looking to capitalize on that move. Oracle Linux has been advertising how it’s a great RHEL downstream while Canonical is now promoting how Ubuntu is a great replacement to CentOS.

    Published on the Ubuntu Blog today was an outline on why Ubuntu is a great replacement to CentOS in the financial services infrastructure space. Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS has long enjoyed a stronghold in the financial services sector while with the fundamental changes to CentOS, financial companies may be reconsidering their operating system decisions.

Devices/Embedded

• IP67-rated edge AI gateway runs Linux on Jetson Xavier NX

  Axiomtek’s rugged, IP67-protected “AIE800-904-FL”edge AI computer runs Ubuntu 18.04 on a Jetson Xavier NX with GbE with PoE, HDMI, 2x USB 2.0, M.2 B-key for NVMe, and mini-PCIe with SIM.

  The AIE800-904-FL follows other edge AI gateways featuring Nvidia’s Jetson Xavier NX module including Axiomtek’s own recent AIE100-903-FL-NX. While that slightly more feature rich, dual-LAN box sits on a desktop, the AIE800-904-FL is available with wall- and VESA-mount kits and is protected against water and dust per IP67. The fanless system is designed for traffic management, city security, smart manufacturing, and other outdoor edge AI applications.

• Robotics kit runs AI code on Myriad X, Coral Edge TPU, and Elkhart Lake GPU

  The “Fast Sense X Robotics AI Platform” runs Lubuntu and ROS on Intel’s Elkhart Lake with up to 2x Myriad X and 3x Coral Edge TPU M.2 accelerators for up to 20-TOPS AI.

  Moscow-based startup Fast Sense Studios unveiled an 84 x 55 x 30mm, Intel Elkhart Lake based embedded computer comprised of 3x stacked boards designed for deployment on robots. The Fast Sense X Robotics AI Platform provides autonomous robots or drones with 3D navigation with depth estimation and obstacle avoidance, fusing data from multiple depth cameras and LIDAR sensors. The system also supports object and pose detection and web-based telepresence.

• Cast your Android device with a Raspberry Pi

  It’s hard to stay away from the gadgets we use on a daily basis. In the hustle and bustle of modern life, I want to make sure I don’t miss out on the important notifications from friends and family that pop up on my phone screen. I’m also busy and do not want to get lost in distractions, and picking up a phone and replying to messages tends to be distracting.

  To further complicate matters, there are a lot of devices out there. Luckily, most of them, from powerful workstations to laptops and even the humble Raspberry Pi, can run Linux. Because they run Linux, almost every solution I find for one device is a perfect fit for the others.

• NXP unveils i.MX 8ULP Cortex-A35/M33 secure processors

  NXP will offer support for Linux and Android on the Arm Cortex-A35 core(s), and real-time operating systems on the Cortex-M33 core with FreeRTOS the most commonly used option on other i.MX 8 heterogeneous processors.

• Run an Edge AI K3s Cluster on NVIDIA Jetson Nano Boards

  For several years I have worked with customers who wanted to use artificial intelligence (AI) in their products (mostly embedded hardware) but ended up relying on the cloud. With the advances of embedded platforms in recent years, this dependency is gradually disappearing, giving rise to the so-called Edge AI.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Galaxy A71 4G model starts receiveing One UI 3.1 with Android 11

  • Google Messages just gave us the Android texting feature we’ve wanted forever – CNET

  • TechCrunch is now a part of Verizon Media

  • Motorola 4K Android TV streaming stick launched in India | TechRadar

  • Connect DualSense Controller to Android Smartphones [How To]

  • Onyx BOOX Nova3 Color is a 7.8 inch E Ink Color Android tablet and eReader with pen support – Liliputing

  • The Best Weight Loss Apps for iOS and Android | Digital Trends

  • Mid-Range Android Upgrades To Expect Following Snapdragon 775 Leak

  • Android 11 arrives on even more Samsung Galaxy phones this month – full list here | Express.co.uk

  • Sony Android 11 update supports Album app unofficially

  • Samsung Galaxy A50 joins the Android 11 family – GSMArena.com news

  • Realme Narzo 20 Receiving Stable Android 11-Based Realme UI 2.0 Update | Technology News

  • Samsung Galaxy A50 gets Android 11 update w/ One UI 3 – 9to5Google

  • Sony Xperia 5 II Assistant Button can now be remapped on Android 11…

  • OnePlus follows Huawei as next big Android phone launch is confirmed | Express.co.uk

  • Can you use an Apple Watch on Android? | Android Central

  • Google is testing an Android TV-like YouTube Chromecast ‘app’

  • Android phone starter pack: Top 15 games for your new phone | Android Central

  • Use Chrome As File Explorer on Android to Access Hidden Files on Any Phone – Gadgets To Use

  • Disable Read Receipts, Typing Indicator in Signal for iPhone, Android

  • How to Access Your Clipboard on Android

  • Mastercard Partners With Hellopay for Solution That Enables Android Devices as Contactless POS | The Fintech Times

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Haiku activity report – February 2021

  Andrew Lindesay continues his work on cleaning HaikuDepot sources and removing a custom-made List class to use standard (BeAPI and C++ stl) containers. There were some regressions in the process, that were found and identified.

  He also fixed various other bugs.

• Haiku Seeing Much Faster HTTP Code, Support For Downloading Files Larger Than 4GB

  Over the past month developers on Haiku as the open-source operating system inspired by BeOS have continued advancing the project.

  Haiku’s latest monthly progress report was issued outlining some of the advancements made. Over the course of February 2021 some of the work included:

  - The HTTP code within the Haiku Network Kit has been seeing improvements. There should be “a big performance boost” to Haiku’s HTTP code as well as being simpler and having various fixes — including the ability to download files larger than 4GB.

• Web Browsers

  • The Brave Browser Will Launch Its Own Search Engine

    Google is so synonymous with searching the Internet that it’s become a verb. There are other companies and some browsers that have developed their own search engines, but none of them have really been able to compete. The company behind the Brave browser intends to change that. It’s launching the Brave search engine.

    [...]

    Eich says Brave Search already has a waitlist for its launch in the first half of 2021 and vows not to track or profile users. “Brave already has a default anonymous user model with no data collection at all,” boasts the Brave founder. The search engine will do the same – IP addresses will not be collected. His company is exploring how to have both a paid no-ads search engine and a free one supported by ads.

  • Trying Brave Browser. Will it win me over?

    So many people have suggested that I try Brave instead of Firefox. So here’s my trying it out. Will it earn my undying affection as it has so many others?

  • Mozilla

    • How one woman fired up her online business during the pandemic

      Sophia Keys started her ceramics business, Apricity Ceramics, five years ago. But it wasn’t until a global pandemic forced everyone to sign on at home and Screen Time Report Scaries became a thing that her business really took off. She had never been active on social media, but decided to create relaxing videos of pottery throwing as a type of craft-ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response videos that provide relaxation with a sedative, tingling sensation for some) early in the pandemic. These videos gained traction and Keys started building a community. A couple months into the pandemic, when she had more finished pieces than she knew what to do with, she posted about the sale on her Instagram page. She sold out. She now has over 21K followers and her ceramics sell out in hours. Amidst the chaos of 2020, here’s how Sophia expanded her woman-owned online business, found her own confidence on social media, and built a community around her handmade products.

    • Mozilla Performance Blog: Performance Sheriff Newsletter (February 2021)

      In February there were 201 alerts generated, resulting in 29 regression bugs being filed on average 4 days after the regressing change landed.

      Welcome to the February 2021 edition of the performance sheriffing newsletter. Here you’ll find the usual summary of our sheriffing efficiency metrics, followed by some analysis on the data footprint of our performance metrics. If you’re interested (and if you have access) you can view the full dashboard.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • LibreOffice QA/Dev Report: February 2021

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • MIT/GNU Scheme version 11.2 is released

      This includes a bunch of bug fixes to 11.1, but is otherwise the same.
      Download from the usual place.

• Public Services/Government

  • NGI POINTER offers funding for internet/web architects

    The NGI POINTER organization, which is funded by the European Commission, has put out its second open call for providing development/research funding; the first open call was in April 2020. This time around, the organization is looking for individuals or projects that are working on “changing the Internet and Web with European Values at its core”. The goal is to “support promising bottom-up projects that are able to build, on top of state-of-the-art research, scalable protocols and tools to assist in the practical transition or migration to new or updated technologies, whilst keeping European Values at the core”. Those interested may want to look at some of the previously funded projects; more information can also be found in the Work Programme [PDF].

• Programming/Development

  • Git Reset to Remote Head – How to Reset a Remote Branch to Origin

    Branching is a core concept in Git. It can help you set up a distributed workflow for team collaboration and makes your development process more efficient.

    When you’re using version control and you’re distributing features across branches, there’s a lot of communication between your local computer and your online repository on GitHub. During this process, you might need to reset back to the project’s original copy.

    If resetting a branch scares you, then don’t worry – this article will introduce you to remote branches, remote head, and how you can easily reset a remote branch to remote head.

  • Sparse Arrays vs Dense Arrays in JavaScript — Explained with Examples

    I had a really interesting bug recently that, at first glance, completely stumped me.

  • Ravgeet Dhillon: Turn a Google Sheet into a REST API

    What if we can use our Google Sheets as a CMS? What if we want the data in our Google Sheet to be publicly available. This can be done easily using Google Sheets and Google Apps Script. In this blog, we will take a look at how we can convert a Google Sheet into a REST API and access it publicly from any app we want.

    [...]

    Let us send a GET request to our published Web App using Postman. The path for the GET request would be our Web App’s URL and query parameter path set to our Google Sheet’s name.

  • Use Scheme functional programming language with LambdaChip Alonzo STM32 board

    Most MCU-based embedded systems come with firmware programmed with assembler, C, and/or C++. But as referenced in a paper published in 2000 entitled ” Point of view: Lisp as an alternative to Java“, functional programming languages like Lisp or Scheme may lead to shorter development times compared to C/C++ or Java.

    That’s with this idea in mind that LambdaChip was created. It is a lightweight, open-source virtual machine designed to run on embedded systems with limited resources, for instance, an 80MHz microcontroller with 50KB RAM, and programmable with Scheme multi-paradigm programming language, a dialect of Lisp widely used for functional programming research and teaching.

    The company behind the project, also called LambdaChip, has just created its own hardware with LambdaChip Alonzo, an STM32 Cortex-M4 development board with 512KB flash, 128KB RAM, and that also comes with Bluetooth LE connectivity.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.10 Automated Star

      Patrick Spek has announced the release of the Rakudo Star 2021.02.1 package (based on the 2021.02.1 Rakudo Compiler release). This is the first time this has happened using a Github Action workflow. Binary releases are not yet available: like everything in the Raku Programming Language, it is the work of volunteers. To create MacOS and Windows installable packages, a volunteer is needed to create the Github Actions workflow for MacOS and/or Windows! The advantage being that this way, you would only need to do this once instead of for each release! So please, stand up if you have the know-how and time to do it!

  • Python

    • Fedora Magazine: How to use Poetry to manage your Python projects on Fedora

      Python developers often create a new virtual environment to separate project dependencies and then manage them with tools such as pip, pipenv, etc. Poetry is a tool for simplifying dependency management and packaging in Python. This post will show you how to use Poetry to manage your Python projects on Fedora.

      Unlike other tools, Poetry uses only a single configuration file for dependency management, packaging, and publishing. This eliminates the need for different files such as Pipfile, MANIFEST.in, setup.py, etc. It is also faster than using multiple tools.

      Detailed below is a brief overview of commands used when getting started with Poetry.

  • Java

    • What’s coming in Java 16

      Java 16 is scheduled to be released on March 16. Here is a look at what changes you can expect in the release.

      JEP 338: Vector API (Incubator)
      This Java Enhancement Proposal (JEP) will provide an initial iteration of an incubator module that can express vector calculations that are compiled at runtime. This module will be clear and concise, platform agnostic, have reliable runtime compilation and performance on x64 and AArch64 architectures, and offer graceful degradation when a vector computation cannot be fully expressed, the OpenJDK team explained.

    • 10 questions for modernizing your old Java applications

      I recently open sourced an application modernization sample, which demonstrates how to modernize an old (2010) Java EE application to become a modern (2021) cloud-native application.

Andy Wingo: 99% spam

Hey all, happy new year apparently! A quick service update on the old wingolog. For some time the site has been drowning in spam comments, despite my best efforts to point a bayesian classifier at the problem.

I don’t keep logs of the number of attempts at posting comments that don’t pass the classifier. But what I can say is that since I put in the classifier around 4 years ago, about 2500 comments a year made it through — enough to turn the comment section into a bit of a dump. Icky, right??

At the same time of course, that’s too many comments to triage manually, so I never got around to fixing the problem. So in fact I had two problems: lots ‘o spam, and lots ‘o incoming spam.

With regards to the existing spam, I took a heavyhanded approach. I took a look at all good emails and URLs that people had submitted for comments prior to 2017, assuming they were triaged. Then I made a goodlist of comments since 2017 that had those comments or emails. There were very few of those — maybe 50 or 70 or so.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

      • Signal Appears To Have Abandoned Their AGPL-licensed Server Sourcecode

        The source code for the server-side part of the Signal messaging application application has been available at GitHub under the GNU AGPL license since 2013. Signal Messenger LLC updated the Signal-Server repository regularly until they did one last commit bumping the version to 3.21 on April 22nd, 2020. There has been no new activity there since then. They appear to have abandoned it and they are not commenting on why that is.

  • Security

    • Researchers Discover Intel CPU Ring Interconnects Vulnerable To Side Channel Attack

      University of Illinois researchers have discovered that Intel’s CPU ring interconnects are vulnerable to exploit by side-channel attacks. This opens a whole new can of worms with the cross-core interconnect now being vulnerable to exploit but so far Intel doesn’t appear to be overly concerned and there are some open questions on whether this interconnect exploit would still work with the latest Intel Xeon processors.

      The university researchers believe their new side-channel attack vector could lead to encryption keys being leaked among other sensitive information. Existing side channel mitigations don’t effectively protect against this “Lord of the Ring(s)” vulnerability.

    • Wladimir Palant: How Amazon Assistant lets Amazon track your every move on the web

      I recently noticed that Amazon is promoting their Amazon Assistant extension quite aggressively. With success: while not all browsers vendors provide usable extension statistics, it would appear that this extension has beyond 10 million users across Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Edge. Reason enough to look into what this extension is doing and how.

      Here I must say that the privacy expectations for shopping assistants aren’t very high to start with. Still, I was astonished to discover that Amazon built the perfect machinery to let them track any Amazon Assistant user or all of them: what they view and for how long, what they search on the web, what accounts they are logged into and more. Amazon could also mess with the web experience at will and for example hijack competitors’ web shops.

    • ROS Kinetic and Ubuntu 16.04 EOL: how to mitigate the impact

      For more than ten years, the Robot Operating System (ROS) has been enabling innovators around the world to develop their robot platforms and applications. Through its collection of tools, libraries, and conventions, ROS simplifies the task of creating complex and robust robot behaviour.

      Ubuntu has been the primary platform for ROS from the very beginning. That is the reason why every ROS release is supported on exactly one Ubuntu LTS. A ROS distribution is a versioned set of ROS packages. Today, the ROS Kinetic release, and its corresponding Ubuntu distribution, Xenial, reach end-of-life (EOL) in April 2021. This means the end of security updates and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) fixes for both ROS and Ubuntu, as well as dependencies such as Python 2.

      Issues with unsupported software tend to manifest themselves in different and often unexpected ways. Continue reading to understand what the implications are for developers, explore some key considerations to prepare for the impending Xenial and Kinetic EOL, and read to the end for information about how you might stay with ROS Kinetic.

    • Security updates for Monday

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (activemq, libcaca, libupnp, mqtt-client, and xcftools), Fedora (ceph, mupdf, nagios, python-PyMuPDF, and zathura-pdf-mupdf), Mageia (cups, kernel, pngcheck, and python-pygments), openSUSE (bind, chromium, gnome-autoar, kernel, mbedtls, nodejs8, and thunderbird), and Red Hat (nodejs:10, nodejs:12, nodejs:14, screen, and virt:8.2 and virt-devel:8.2).

    • Server Security Tips – Secure Your Server with These Best Practices

      Servers play a vital role in organizations. Their primary function is to provide both data and computational services.

      Because of the critical role they play, servers hold confidential organizational data and information. Information is like gold nowadays, and hackers are gold miners.

      An insecure server is vulnerable to all sorts of security threats and data breaches.

    • Multiple Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities Could Allow Privilege Escalation

      Fortunately, before any active exploitation, Popov fixed these bugs for the users. Popov has confirmed merging of these patches with the mainline kernel version 5.11-rc7.

      Also, the fixes have been “backported into the stable affected trees”.

      As Positive Technologies elaborated, this isn’t the first time Popov found and patched a vulnerability. Earlier, he has also caught and fixed two Linux, bugs CVE-2017-2636 and CVE-2019-18683, as well in 2017 and 2020 respectively.

    • Understanding Samsung Knox Vault: Protecting the data that matters most

      Eight years ago, Samsung set out on a mission to build the most trusted and secure mobile devices in the world. With the introduction of our Samsung Knox platform at MWC in 2013, we put in place the key elements of hardware-based security that would help defend Samsung mobile devices and our customers’ data against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

      Samsung Knox has since evolved into more than a built-in security platform, now encompassing a full suite of mobile management tools for enterprise IT administrators. But our mobile product planners, developers and security engineers have remained laser-focused on answering the primary question: how do we remain a step ahead of hackers and keep our users safe at all times?

      [...]

      In the first days of Android, the main focus was building a more open and flexible mobile operating system. Security was state-of-the-art for the time, inherited from the world of Unix and mainframe computers. But from the start, it became clear that smartphones were different; they were the most personal computers anyone had ever built.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• United Nations Whisteblower Says The Tor Anonymity Network Is Great For Human Rights Work

  US military subsidiaries such as the NSA, who use Tor for open source intelligence gathering, are not the only ones who need a secure traffic analysis resistant anonymity network like Tor. UN human rights lawyer Emma Reilly says it is “great” when working with human rights defenders.

  [...]

  We feel for her, she is not the only one who was forced to learn Pascal in her youth.

  We also feel for all the victims of the UN Human Rights Council who has been handing over names of human rights activists from the day it formed in March 2006.

  China is not only having a very negative impact on human rights activists who contact the UN for help, China is also committing grave crimes against pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong (香港).

  [...]

  The free software tool OnionShare is a very user-friendly program that lets you share files and setup chat-rooms over the Tor network in case you need to communicate with human rights activists or other endangered people in a secure fashion.

  You can follow human rights lawyer Emma Reilly on Twitter if you want to learn more about her important human rights work. She does not appear to have a fediverse social media account in case Twitter de-platforms her on behest of the Chinese regime.

Monopolies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Make Sure your Patent Application is “DIRECTED TO” a Specific Technological Solution

      On motion to dismiss, the district court found the claims directed to the abstract idea of “automated stenography implemented on a computer.” The court looked particularly to the claim limitations and found them written at a “high-level of generality” and using “broad form functional terminology.” With regard to Alice step two, the court found the claim limitations lacked any particular or concrete configuration that could serve to ground the abstract idea.

      To know whether a patent claim is improperly “directed to” an abstract idea, the court have been looking to the claims and specification in a search for objective suggestions of what the inventor thinks is the advance provided by the invention. What does the patent document assert as the “focus of the claimed advance over the prior art.” Slip Op, quoting Affinity Labs of Tex., LLC v. DIRECTV, LLC, 838 F.3d 1253 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Here, the court looked to the claims and the specification and concluded that the focus “is simply the abstract idea of automating the AV-captioning process.” In this process, the court is typically looking for a “technical solution to a technical problem,” although that is not always required. Here, the court noted that, although the invention involves computers it is not directed toward “any specific improved computer techniques for performing those functions—functions intrinsic
      to the concept of AV captioning.” Rather, the benefit from the invention is simply automation of work previously done by humans.

• Copyrights

  • 2021 US Copyright Compendium Series #2: Court Decisions

    In 2019, the Supreme Court addressed the registration requirement that applies to US works prior to bringing litigation for copyright infringement, in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-street.com. US works must be registered prior to filing a suit for copyright infringement under Section 411 of the Copyright Act.

    At issue in Fourth Estate was whether registration was affected when an application for a registration was filed, or when a registration was granted by the Copyright Office. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that registration was affected upon registration, rather than upon application.

    In addition to incorporating this decision in defining the effective date of registration, the Compendium frequently quotes the decision in regard to the preregistration process.

    [...]

    Not only do these revisions provide for a review of recent decisions in US copyright law, but the revisions reflect the complexities posed by the imposition of formalities as a prerequisite to copyright protection, and the nuance of preserving the public domain through copyright exemptions.

    The next instalment in this series will cover Compendium revisions relating to recent statutory developments, including the Music Modernization Act and the implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty, so be sure to keep a Kat-eye out for the next post!

9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: March 7th, 2021

This week has been really interesting as we saw the release of Manjaro ARM’s first update in 2021, Arch Linux’s first ISO release powered by Linux kernel 5.11, which finally and completely fixes the touchpad on my Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 laptop, KDE’s Plasma Mobile sees its first major update in 2021, and Lenovo brings another ThinkPad laptop to Linux.

On top of that, Linus Torvalds kicked off the development cycle of the upcoming Linux 5.12 kernel, Star Labs finally adds Coreboot open-source firmware to its Linux laptops, Valve’s Steam Link finally gets ported to Linux as a Flatpak and Snap, and Canonical chooses to use Google’s Flutter to build future Ubuntu apps.

Linux Weekly Roundup #120

We had a full week in the world of Linux Releases with Pardus 19.5, Bluestar Linux 5.11.2, OpenSUSE 15.3-beta, Robolinux 12.03, MakuluLinux Lindox 2021-03-05, and SparkyLinux 2021.03.

Desktop/Laptop

• The Kubuntu Focus M2 Linux Notebook Gets Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-Series GPUs

  Kubuntu Focus has started to offer Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series graphics processor with its Kubuntu GNU/Linux distribution-based M2 laptop aimed at gamers and performance-hungry professionals.

  Linux-based laptops are usually niche products for people with very specific requirements, so there aren’t many configurations available. Yet, a few companies offer high-end notebooks with powerful hardware that can compete against their Windows-powered counterparts. Kubuntu Focus is one of the vendors that offers such machines.

• Lenovo M93 Ultra Small PC Running Linux – Week 1

  This is a weekly blog looking at the Lenovo M93 Ultra Small Desktop PC running Linux.

  We previously published a series of articles on the AWOW AK41, an inexpensive quad-core mini PC. Rather than put a different mini PC under the spotlight, we plumped for an enticing alternative, a refurbished Lenovo Ultra Small Desktop PC.

  Along the way, we’ll make comparisons to the AWOW. We chose a refurbished Lenovo that retails on ebay for £185 in the UK. The Lenovo is cheaper than the AK41 but as it was supplied with a painfully slow 5400 RPM mechanical hard drive, we replaced that component with a spare SSD. The secondhand value of the SSD when added to the cost of the Lenovo brings parity in cost.

Audiocasts/Shows

• GNU World Order 396

  Makefiles, **GNU Automake** , and **autotools** in general.

• Smenu: Script The Perfect Terminal Interface – YouTube

  While FZF will do the job for a lot of tasks sometimes I want to have a bit of a custom interface and while we’ve looked at GUI interface builders we haven’t looked at something for the terminal and that changes today.

• GOOGLE’s new TRACKING method is even WORSE – What FloC is, and what it means

  Google announced in early March that they would stop using third party cookies to track you across Google ads, and Chrome. It seems, on paper, like it’s a good thing: after all, less tracking means less intrusion in our privacy, less data collected, and a more private web, right?

• Livrestream for the Matrix Foundation

  I’ll do a painting demo live for the Matrix Foundation, don’t miss it!

• Open Source Security Podcast/Josh Bressers: Episode 261 – DWF is back! Welcome to community powered CVE

  Josh and Kurt talk about DWF. It’s back and the intention is to have real community driven security identifiers!

• Linux Action News 179

  Canonical reveals long-term Ubuntu plans that you might have missed, and the “double ungood” warning from Linus this week.

• SMLR 326 SMLR The First Reboot

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.11.4

  I'm announcing the release of the 5.11.4 kernel.
  
  All users of the 5.11 kernel series must upgrade.
  
  The updated 5.11.y git tree can be found at:
  	git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.11.y
  and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:
  
  https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
  
  thanks,
  
  greg k-h
  

• Linux 5.10.21

• Linux 5.4.103

• Linux 4.19.179

• Linux 4.14.224

• Linux 4.9.260

• Linux 4.4.260

Benchmarks

• Waffle 1.7.0

  Hi all,
  
  I'd like to announce waffle 1.7.0 as available for download immediately.
  
  Notable changes since 1.6.0:
   - wayland: Support for the xdg-shell protocol.
   - surfaceless: Implement window resize
   - GLX/WGL: Behave correctly in the presence of ARB_create_context
   - tests: Rework and extend test suite
   - cmake: Bump requirement to 2.8.12
   - man: Spelling and associated fixes.
   - GBM: Pass valid arguments to gbm_surface_create_with_modifiers
   - apple: Build fixes
  
  https://mesa.pages.freedesktop.org/waffle/files/release/waffle-1.7.0/waffle-1.7.0.tar.xz
  
  
  https://mesa.pages.freedesktop.org/waffle/files/release/waffle-1.7.0/waffle-1.7.0.tar.xz.asc
  
  
  https://mesa.pages.freedesktop.org/waffle/files/release/waffle-1.7.0/waffle-1.7.0.sha256sums
  
  
  https://mesa.pages.freedesktop.org/waffle/files/release/waffle-1.7.0/waffle-1.7.0.sha256sums.asc
  
  

• Waffle 1.7 Released For Runtime OpenGL / Windowing System Selection

  It’s been a while since last having anything to report on Waffle as the library abstracting OpenGL and windowing system selection to run-time while this weekend marked its v1.7 release.

  The Waffle FreeDesktop.org project allows deferring OpenGL API and window system selection to run-time to easily switch between OpenGL vs. OpenGL ES as well as for Wayland vs. X.Org and other options. While the project site is rather stale at this point, those wanting to learn more can visit Waffle-GL.org.

Applications

• ZeMarmot Is Working On Searchable Layer Groups, Stored Layer Selection And Other Cool Features For GIMP

  ZeMarmot is a 2D animation film project that uses free software to create animated films and other artwork made free available under the Art Libre and Creative Commons licenses. It is easy to see what software you are using daily is missing. Jehan from ZeMarmot has written code for several cool new features that make his GIMP experience better.

  ZeMarmot is an animated 2D movie made freely available under the Creative Commons by-SA/Art Libre licenses. They use free software to create their movie.

  Jehan, a ZeMarmot member from France, has also been a major GIMP contributor since 2012. He is working on some interesting new features for the GNU Image Manipulation Program such as searchable layer groups, pattern-matching selection and stored layer selection.

Instructionals/Technical

• How To Install CloudPanel on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install CloudPanel on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, CloudPanel is an open-source server management control panel designed to be fast, easy to use, and customizable. This piece of software supports management of Domains, Linux services, Cron jobs, FTP services, System security through IP and Bots blocking, User management, Cloud platforms support, among many others.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the CloudPanel Control Panel on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

• Install ProjectSend on Ubuntu 20.04 with Nginx (LEMP Stack) – LinuxBabe

  This tutorial will be showing you how to install ProjectSend on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with Nginx web server.

  [...]

  You can install ProjectSend on your home server or a VPS (virtual private server). You also need a domain name, so later on your will be able to enable HTTPS to encrypt the HTTP traffic. I registered my domain name from NameCheap because the price is low and they give whois privacy protection free for life. ProjectSend can be installed without a domain name, but it really doesn’t make sense if you don’t encrypt the HTTP connection to prevent snooping. I recommend buying a domain name, if you really want to tinker with server software and use them to the fullest potential.

• How to Self Host Jitsi Meet With Docker [Step by Step Guide]

  Jitsi Meet is an open source videoconferencing software that you can self-host. It is a good alternative to proprietary services like Google Meet or Zoom.

  Jitsi Meet can be integrated with other open source tools like Nextcloud, Rocket.Chat or Synapse (Matrix implementation) to give you a comprehensive solution.

  With some limitations, Jitsi Meet can be used for free on their server. For premium features, you can opt for Jitsi as a Service from Jitsi developers. You may also deploy it on your own server? I’ll help you with the self-hosting part.

• How to Install WordPress using Nginx in Ubuntu Linux

  WordPress is the most used, user-friendly, free, and open-source content management system (CMS) and website builder for both beginner and professional developers. Creating a website was never so easy and straightforward before WordPress. It doesn’t require any programming and coding experience. WordPress has a lot of free and premium themes and plugins that you can use to design your website. Installing WordPress is not a hard task on a Linux machine. You can install WordPress easily on your Ubuntu/Debian Linux with the Nginx server.

• How To List Disks on Linux – devconnected

  For the system administrator, checking that disks are working properly is a big concern.

  In many cases, you will have to list all the disks available on your computer, with their sizes, in order to make sure that they don’t run out of space.

  If they were to run out of space, you could essentially have your server down, preventing all your users from accessing it.

  In this tutorial, we are going to see how you can easily list disks available on your Linux machine.

• Building a Linux container by hand using namespaces | Enable Sysadmin

  How user namespaces related to container security.

• How to Set a Static IP Address in CentOS Linux

  An IP (Internet Protocol) Address is a unique numerical representation of a computer on a network. Every computer connected to the Internet is identified by an IP Address.

  Usually, IP addresses are dynamically assigned to a computer by a dedicated server called DHCP Server (Dynamic Host Control Protocol), and hence change from time to time as and when the connection is lost and reestablished.

  However, there are scenarios where a static IP address is more preferable; Eg. In large corporations, where it removes the load of using DHCP for each computer in the organization.

  Today, we will learn how to set a static IP address on a local network in CentOS.

• Installing VMware workstation player on Linux – LinuxH2O

  A quick guide, installing VMware workstation player on Linux. The guide is for all kinds of Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Manjaro, Mint, Kali, Elementary, Pop os, MX Linux, Fedora, etc.

  VMware is a commercial company that offers many products and services in the area of cloud and virtualization. One such product is the VMware workstation player, which allows desktop virtualization though it is a premium commercial tool but comes with free use for personal non-commercial use.

  VMware can be a great alternative to the famous VirtualBox, offered by Oracle. Now, let’s see how to get it up and running in your favorite Linux distribution.

• How To Install FFmpeg on Manjaro 20 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FFmpeg on Manjaro 20. For those of you who didn’t know, FFmpeg is open-source software (also a command-line tool) for transcoding multimedia files. It contains a set of shared audio and video libraries such as libavcodec, libavformat, and libavutil. With FFmpeg, you can convert between various video and audio formats, set sample rates, capture streaming audio or video, and resize videos.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of FFmpeg on a Manjaro 20 (Nibia).

• CPU Isolation – Nohz_full – by SUSE Labs (part 3)

  The “nohz_full=” kernel boot parameter is the current main interface to configure full dynticks along with CPU Isolation.

• Linux pee Command – Tee Standard Input Into Pipes

  The Linux pee command will split your output into two streams… Yes, pun intended. It is another incredibly useful tool provided by the moreutils package. Although the name and description may give you a chuckle, this is a serious utility. Let’s take a look at the pee command and it’s basic usage.

• How to Create Disk Partitions with Parted Command in Linux

  Managing storage devices is one of the essential skills that any Linux user or systems administrator worth his salt needs to have. There are numerous ways of creating disk partitions in Linux, both graphical and on the command-line. In this guide, we feature an opensource tool known as parted. Parted is a collaborative effort of two developers – Andrew Clausen and Lennert Buytenhek.

  We are going to take you through the parted command along with how to create disk partitions.

• OPNsense set up and configure DNS Over TLS (DoT)

  OPNsense is an open-source, FreeBSD-based firewall and routing security software. It also acts as a DNS resolver for all of your desktops and mobile devices. Let us see how to configure the OPNsense DNS resolver to encrypt all DNS queries to protect from eavesdropping to increase our privacy and security.

  All DNS queries routed using plaintext. We either use UDP and TCP protocol 53 in plaintext, and your ISP or an attacker/hacker can monitor transmissions even if you use HTTPS, the DNS queries and answers of the site leaked. Hence we need to encrypt our DNS queries to protect ourselves. DNS over TLS (DoT) is nothing but a security protocol for encrypting DNS traffic using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. The main objective is to increase your security and privacy.

• Install Drupal in Raspberry PI – peppe8o

  Drupal is, before all, a Content Management System (CMS). Between their users you can find, for example, City of London web page, New York web page, Tesla and many others.

  Drupal focuses to make working well these features that everyone refers as standard, like easy content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security. It also aims to get macimum felxibility with modular core, enabling website owners to extend functionalities by installing add-ons.

  Like quite all CMSs, you can customize your website appearence by selecting your favourite theme.

• How to install V.S. Whitty Full Week on a Chromebook – Friday Night Funkin Mod

  Today we are looking at how to install the V.S. Whitty, Friday Night Funkin, mod on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

Games

• Steam Link app comes to Linux, joining Android, iOS and Raspberry Pi [Ed: May be plagiarised]

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Kdenlive 20.12.3 is out

    The last maintenance release of the 20.12 series is out with the usual batch of usability and bug fixes. The highlights include lots of polishing of the Subtitling Tool and adding a spell checking feature. The Titler also got a fair amount of usability improvements most notably fixing the invisible text cursor. Fixes were also made to the chroma key color picker and various clip selection issues. The Windows version received fixes to resetting the config file and finding downloaded title templates and lumas.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • Alpine Linux Review: Ultimate Distro for Power Users

    Alpine Linux is gathering a lot of attention because of its super-small size and focus on security. However, Alpine is different from some of the other lightweight distros we covered on FOSSLinux. It isn’t your typical desktop distribution as it is terminal-based like Arch and is marketed as a “general purpose distro.”

    It is currently widely adopted as a Docker container thanks to its ultra-small footprint. However, it can be used for all sorts of Linux deployments that benefit from small, resource-efficient Linux distros.

    Now, that statement might feel too generic. But don’t worry, as we have put together an in-depth and comprehensive review of Alpine Linux, giving you a detailed look at what it has under the hood and how to use it. As such, by the end, you should have a clear understanding of whether you should consider Alpine Linux as your next Linux distro.

    So without further ado, let’s dive in.

  • Review: Artix Linux in 2021

    Artix Linux is a fork (or continuation as an autonomous project) of the Arch-OpenRC and Manjaro-OpenRC projects. Artix Linux offers a lightweight, rolling-release operating system featuring alternative init software options, including OpenRC, runit, and s6. The distribution is available in many editions, including Base, Cinnamon, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, KDE Plasma and Xfce. With all of the desktop options, combined with the available init choices, there are 21 editions, not including community spins from which to choose. All editions appear to be built for 64-bit (x86_64) machines. Picking randomly, I selected Artix’s Plasma edition featuring the runit init software. The download for this edition is is 1.3GB. Browsing the other editions it looks like most flavours are about 1.1GB to 1.3GB in size, though the minimal Base edition is a compact 618MB.

    The project’s live media boots to the KDE Plasma desktop. On the desktop we find multiple documentation and README icons. There is also an icon for launching the system installer. The default layout places a panel at bottom of the screen where we can find the application menu and system tray. The default wallpaper is a soft blue while the theme for windows and menus is dark with high contrast fonts.

    [...]

    Artix Linux is one of those distributions I really enjoy using and yet struggle to review in a meaningful way because it doesn’t really go out of its way to introduce new or exciting features and everything works smoothly. The distribution is wonderfully easy to install, offers top-notch performance, and is unusually light on resources. Artix is somewhat minimal, but still ships enough software to be immediately useful right out of the gate. We can browse the web, install packages, view files, and play videos. Meanwhile the application menu isn’t cluttered with a lot of extras. The developers clearly expect us to install the functionality we need, while doing a really good job of providing enough for the desktop environment to feel base-line useful right from the start.

    Artix does a nice job of balancing performance and functionality while also juggling ease of use against not getting in the way. There is a little documentation, but no initial welcome screen or configuration wizards that might distract the user.

    The one piece I felt was missing was a graphical package manager which would have made it easier to build the extra functionality I wanted on top of the base distribution. However, that one piece aside, I felt as though Artix was really well designed and put together, at lease for someone like me. It’s not a distribution geared toward beginners, it’s not a “first distro”. It is a bit minimal and requires command line knowledge. However, for someone with a little experience with Linux, for someone who doesn’t mind the occasional trip to the command line or installing new applications as needed, then Artix provides an excellent experience. It’s fast, light, looks (in my opinion) great with the default theme, and elegantly walks the line between minimalism and having enough applications ready to go out of the box to be immediately useful. I’m unusually impressed with how smooth and trouble-free my experience was with this distribution and the fact it offers such a range of desktop and init diversity is all the more appealing.

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • Pardus 19.5

    Today we are looking at Pardus 19.5, the XFCE edition. It comes with Linux Kernel 4.19, XFCE 4.12, based on Debian 10, and uses about 1GB to 1.5GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!

  • Pardus 19.5 Run Through

    In this video, we are looking at Pardus 19.5.

• Debian Family

  • SparkyLinux 2021.03 Release Introduces a KDE Plasma Edition, Xfce 4.16 Update, and More Upgrades

    SparkyLinux is a Debian-based operating system that aims to provide a fast, lightweight and fully customizable experience to the user. Out of the box, the user has the option to choose from four different desktop environments that will be provided with a set of pre-installed open-source software.

    The developers behind Sparky Linux have announced the release of “SparkyLinux 2021.03” which is based on the “Bullseye” testing branch of Debian and is a rolling release distribution.

    This new release features many updates and new desktop environments. Let’s have a look at what is on offer.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Top 25 icon themes for Ubuntu

    An icon is a graphical representation of something. It can be termed as being a symbolic thing or noted figure. An icon theme is, therefore, a combination of icons that share the same feel and look. Thus, when a user selects a specific icon theme, all the apps will look and feel as specified by the icon theme used.

    In this article, we shall concentrate our findings on the top 25 icon themes for Ubuntu. If you are bored by the old Ubuntu look, then this is the right article for you.

    Icon themes are the easiest way to change the look and feel of your Ubuntu desktop. Your Ubuntu desktop is transformed to your desired theme. If you are stuck and wish to give your Ubuntu a new feel, try out the tricks highlighted in this article.

  • Finding Ubuntu Crash Reports

    Back when we shipped Unity desktop as the default desktop environment in Ubuntu, there was a simple button to take a user to their previously uploaded crash reports. There was also an easy, graphical way to disable crash reporting.

    I say was in the past tense, but Unity still exists in the Ubuntu repository. Indeed there’s even a revived Ubuntu Unity Remix. So those of us who prefer Unity can still run it, despite it not getting a lot of new development or maintenance since 2017.

    In fact on my ThinkPad X220 I have Unity installed on the Ubuntu 21.10 release, which still performs very nicely.

  • Ubuntu Studio review

    For many years, Ubuntu Linux OS has been a lifesaver, bringing many older computers I have owned, inherited, and found, back to life. Since its release back in 2004, it has become one of the most powerful and popular Linux OS in history. First off, it’s impossible not to love something that does everything the expensive big boys do but does them for free.

    Ubuntu Studio is similar to regular Ubuntu, but comes with a suite of software geared toward creatives and the productivity standards included in regular Ubuntu builds such as LibreOffice. Most of the software suite you find on Ubuntu Studio is Linux-based and available to download for free. And you can also find a free version for Mac and PC if you’re interested in trying them out on your computer.

Devices/Embedded

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • The 10 Best Icon Packs for Android To Change Your Device’s Outlook

  • Best Free Android Apps of March Week 1 – GizChina

  • The 10 Most Graphically Demanding Android And Mobile Games

  • 5 Android Smartphone Cyber Security Tips For SMBs

  • 3 Best Free Video Editing Apps For Beginners (Android and iOS) – Gadgets To Use

  • Top 5 must-install Android apps for pet owners

  • 3 Ways to Turn Any Website Into Android App [Guide] | Beebom

  • How to Back Up Your iPhone or Android Device With Google One | PCMag

  • How To Download And Use IRCTC Rail Connect App On Android Smartphones? – Gizbot News

  • How to play GTA 5 on Android smartphones using Steam Link (March 2021): Step-by-step guide for beginners

  • Parental controls on Android: how to make a phone or tablet child friendly | TechRadar

  • How to use your Sony Android TV | Tom’s Guide

  • Motorola 4K Android TV Stick Launched in India, Priced at Rs. 3,999 | Technology News

  • Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro Review: Fantastic all-round ANC Earbuds for Android – Gizmochina

  • Galaxy S10 Lite, Galaxy M51 updated to Android 11 with One UI 3.1

  • Samsung Galaxy M51 starts receiving Android 11 update – Mobiles News | Gadgets Now

  • BREAKING: Galaxy A50 starts getting the Android 11 update – SamMobile

  • OPPO Find X3 Pro Will Run on ColorOS 11.2 Based on Android 11, Bluetooth SIG Certification Reveals – MySmartPrice

  • Mi MIX 3 Android 11 plan likely shelved, MIUI 12.5 update in limbo too

  • Oppo A94 with Android 11 and 4,310mAh battery launched – Mobiles News | Gadgets Now

  • LG Android 11 update (LG UX 10) list of eligible devices & release date

  • Niagara Launcher gets revamped weather widget, Android 11 animation support

  • Huawei P50 series could mark the phone debut of Huawei’s Android alternative | TechRadar

  • SN30 Pro for Xbox Cloud Gaming on Android Devices – - Gamereactor

  • 3 things Android 12 can do that Android 11 just can’t – CNET

  • Motorola Android 12 update: Eligible or supported devices, release date…

  • Samsung Rolls Out One UI Update Based On Android 11 For Galaxy M51

  • Who needs Android? Huawei reveals big news that’ll have Google worried | Express.co.uk

  • Samsung fixes critical Android bugs in March 2021 updates

  • SOS: 2 Ways to Get Help in Emergency on Your Android Phone – Gadgets To Use

  • 16 new Android games from the last week: The best, worst, and everything in between (3/1/21 – 3/7/21)

  • How to code in Android Studio from any device with JetBrains Projector

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• 6 open source tools for wedding planning

  If I were to say I had planned on writing this article a year or so ago, I would be wrong. So, I’ll give you a small amount of backstory about how this came to be.

  On March 21st, I will be “getting married.” I put that in quotes because I got married in Las Vegas on March 21, 2019. But I’m getting married again because my mom, who told us to elope, decided she was wrong and wanted a real wedding. So here I am, planning a wedding.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • International Women’s Day – March 8, 2021

    A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day.

    We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.

• Programming/Development

  • How to manipulate strings in bash

    Without explicit support for variable types, all bash variables are by default treated as character strings. Therefore more often than not, you need to manipulate string variables in various fashions while working on your bash script. Unless you are well-versed in this department, you may end up constantly coming back to Google and searching for tips and examples to handle your specific use case.

    In the spirit of saving your time and thus boosting your productivity in shell scripting, I compile in this tutorial a comprehensive list of useful string manipulation tips for bash scripting. Where possible I will try to use bash’s built-in mechanisms (e.g., parameter expansion) to manipulate strings instead of invoking external tools such as awk, sed or grep.

    If you find any missing tips, feel free to suggest it in the comment. I will be happy to incorporate it in the article.

  • Python Generators

    Python generators are very powerful for handling operations which require large amount of memory.

  • We got lucky

    If you’re having enough production incidents to be able to evaluate your preparation, you’re probably either unlucky or unprepared

    If you have infrequent incidents you may be well prepared but it’s hard to tell. Chaos engineering experiments are a great way to test your preparation, and practice incident response in a less stressful context. It may seem like a huge leap from your current level of preparation to running automated chaos monkeys in production, but you don’t need to go straight there.

    Why not start with practice drills? You could have a game host who comes up with a failure scenario. You can work up to chaos in production.

  • React Testing Library – Tutorial with JavaScript Code Examples

    This post will help you to learn what React Testing Library is, and how you can use it to test your React application.

    This tutorial will assume you already know some basic JavaScript and understand the basics of how React works.

    React Testing Library is a testing utility tool that’s built to test the actual DOM tree rendered by React on the browser. The goal of the library is to help you write tests that resembles how a user would use your application, so that you’ll have more confidence that your application work as intended when a real user do use it.

  • Why I Moved From Ops to DevOps (and why you might want to)

  • fs-extra to fs

    I’m a big fan of the fs-extra module for Node.js. It has made my life much easier over the years. However, as I migrate my modules from CommonJS to ECMAScript Modules (ESM) and as I’m looking at bundling Place into a single JS file for deployment using esbuild, I’ve started removing third-party dependencies wherever I can easily replicate their behaviour using modules from the Node standard library.

Opinion | 9 Skillful Struggles Happening Right Now

Learn some lessons from these nonviolent struggles around the world working to bring justice, equity and change to their communities.

Science

• Canadian Nobelists warn country over innovation malaise

  One clear need at the federal level, Professor McDonald said, was for the creation of a single point of contact to help scientists – whether individuals or part of a large team – negotiate the legal hurdles associated with forming international partnerships.

  “The government can do more than it does to encourage science and technology cooperation,” he said. “It’s very difficult, when someone is attempting to bring together a large international collaboration, to know exactly who it is that one needs to speak to in Ottawa.”

  On the university side, Professor Strickland said, there were still too many faculty members who gave the message that students in the sciences should aspire to careers in academia, when the bulk of the jobs are elsewhere.

Health/Nutrition

• Opinion | Sounds of Silence: Extinction Is Erasing the Earth’s Music

  Writer Kathleen Dean Moore turns her ear to nature’s sounds and what we’re losing as species disappear.

• Teachers are terrified that experts don’t really know how risky re-opening schools is

  The Daily News made no mention of the essential role played by the United Federation of Teachers, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators and the tens of thousands of staff that implemented a complex and expensive plan that included mandatory testing of 20 percent of all of the staff and students in each school.

  Nor did the newspaper make any mention of the steep and deadly learning curve the de Blasio administration had been on from the earliest day of the pandemic when it downplayed the virus before it shut the schools down mid-March. And the de Blasio administration has been anything but transparent.

  As The City newspaper reported in May, the city was slow to close down its schools as the virus was getting traction in the community and resisted the United Federation of Teachers’ (UFT) call to shift to remote learning, despite mounting evidence the pandemic was starting to take a toll.

• The World Needs Syringes. He Jumped In to Make 5,900 Per Minute.

  In late November, an urgent email popped up in the inbox of Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices, one of the world’s largest syringe makers.

  It was from UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children, and it was desperately seeking syringes. Not just any would do. These syringes must be smaller than usual. They had to break if used a second time, to prevent spreading disease through accidental recycling.

  Most important, UNICEF needed them in vast quantities. Now.

• Mexico moves closer to becoming the world’s largest legal cannabis market

  The Chamber of Deputies, Congress’ lower house similar to the U.S. House of Representatives, will take up the issue early next week, Martha Tagle Martínez, a member of the chamber’s health committee, said in a series of tweets.

  The Senate approved the legalization of medical marijuana almost four months ago, and two months later, the Health Ministry published rules to regulate the use of medicinal cannabis.

  Former President Vicente Fox, who is on the board of global medical marijuana company Khiron Life Sciences Corp., said he sees the potential for Mexico to cash in on much-needed job creation, economic investment and medical advancements.

  A regulated market could also help to lessen the cartel violence that has become synonymous with the country.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • Microsoft Attack Blamed On China Morphs Into Global Crisis [iophk: Windows TCO]

      The attack, which Microsoft has said started with a Chinese government-backed [cracking] group, has so far claimed at least 60,000 known victims globally, according to a former senior U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation. Many of them appear to be small or medium-sized businesses caught in a wide net the attackers cast as Microsoft worked to shut down the [attack].

      The European Banking Authority became one of the latest victims as it said Sunday that access to personal data through emails held on the Microsoft server may have been compromised. Others identified so far include banks and electricity providers, as well as senior citizen homes and an ice cream company, according to Huntress, a Ellicott City, Maryland-based firm that monitors the security of customers, in a blog post Friday.

    • Windows ransomware gangs will hit all creatures big and small [iophk: Windows TCO]

      Ransomware operators are catholic in their approach to breaking into businesses, and the size of a business really appears to be of no import. A good example of this is the compromise last week of a small businessman from Ohio whose annual turnover is barely US$150,000 (A$194,687).

      The man, who requested anonymity, is a close friend of the writer, and the site which was compromised does not really need to be exposed to the Internet.There is no indication on the site as to the company’s annual revenue, but it has a professional look as the man himself has been in the IT business for more than three decades and knows the value of a decent website.

      However, as he himself confessed on Monday morning, he had committed two cardinal sins: one, he had been running Windows on the site which ended up being breached, and two, he had neglected to lock down his Internet facing sites.

    • Ubuntu Blog: Security podcast: February

      Welcome to the first post of our series based on the Ubuntu Security Podcast! I’m Alex Murray, the Tech Lead for the Ubuntu Security team at Canonical. Each month, I will be covering the most interesting security fixes around Ubuntu, as well as an in-depth discussion of the different vulnerabilities that we’ve been addressing. I will also talk a bit more about some of the other services that are related to security with Ubuntu, like kernel live patching, extended security maintenance, and more.

      [...]

      This update concerns Apport, the Ubuntu crash handler. When an application crashes, Apport hooks into the kernel to find out what process stopped working properly. The kernel can then execute the crash handler to find out information regarding the faulty process and build up a crash report that can be sent to developers. Since Apport is run as root by the kernel, it needs to drop privileges so that it doesn’t overstep the bounds of the user whose application crashed and inadvertently collects more privileged information or enables a possible root privilege escalation attack. That’s what different vulnerabilities often try to exploit, and the one we fixed recently was in the same vein.

      As I said, when Apport runs, it tries to read information about the process and the various files in the proc file system. It figures out things like which user ID the process is running as, and then it drops privileges to run as that user before finding out other details about the process. Unfortunately, the attackers realized that if you could manipulate certain files there, even things like the process name, Apport would then get confused while trying to figure out what the details of the process were, and in the end, fail to properly drop privileges. As a result, an attacker could possibly then get code execution as root.

      We worked with the researchers who found this vulnerability after they reported these via Launchpad to us. In particular, Senior Engineer Marc Deslauriers on our team worked with them to mitigate these vulnerabilities in Apport.

    • How Secure Is Linux?

      The general consensus among experts is that Linux is a highly secure OS – arguably the most secure OS by design.

      [...]

      The security of the OS you deploy is a key determinant of your security online, but is by no means a sure safeguard against malware, rootkits and other attacks. Effective security is dependent upon defense in depth, and other factors including the implementation of security best practices and smart online behavior play a central role in your digital security posture. That being said, choosing a secure OS is of utmost importance, as the OS is the most critical piece of software running on your computer, and Linux is an excellent choice as it has the potential to be highly secure – arguably more so than its proprietary counterparts – due to its open-source code, strict user privilege model, diversity and relatively small user base.

      However, Linux is not a “silver bullet” when it comes to digital security – the OS must be properly and securely configured and sysadmins must practice secure, responsible administration in order to prevent attacks. Also, it is crucial to keep in mind that security is all about tradeoffs – both between security and usability and between security and user-friendliness. LinuxSecurity Founder Dave Wreski explains, “The most secure system is one that is turned off, covered in cement, and located at the bottom of the ocean – but this system is obviously not very usable. Admins should configure their systems to be as secure as is practical within their environment. In regards to convenience, Linux has a bit of a learning curve, but offers significant security advantages over Windows or MacOS. It’s a tradeoff that’s well worth it if you ask me.”

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Tech giants in brewing battle over tracking, ads

        Silicon Valley giants are drawing battle lines over personal data collection practices and targeted ads as the threat of regulation looms.

        As Apple presses ahead with plans to give users greater control over their privacy, companies like Facebook and Google have aligned themselves over the latter’s more measured approach to scaling back tracking features.

Defence/Aggression

• Biden Iran envoy boasted of depriving civilians of food, worsening Iranian inequality in sadistic sanctions manual

• Civil War 2.0

  About a week later, on June 6, Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputies were engaged in a firefight and attacked with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), claiming the life of one deputy. Shortly after, active duty U.S. Air Force sergeant and self-identified libertarian Steven Carrillo was arrested and charged for the pair of attacks. Five days later a second suspect, Robert Justus Jr., turned himself over to authorities. Both suspects have since pleaded not guilty to the charges.

  According to federal authorities, it appears the attacks were launched during the BLM protests to deflect suspicions or trigger a violent response against demonstrators. Investigators also found the word “Boog” scrawled in blood on the stolen vehicle used by Carillo, along with a Hawaiian-themed patch. Authorities later announced that Carillo and Justus were linked to a group known as the Boogaloo bois.

• Right-wing Central American leaders praise neoliberal ‘Biden Plan’ to strengthen US ‘sphere of influence’

• Humanitarian imperialism: How the media exploits liberals’ empathy to sell them war

  If history is any judge, further aggressive actions will also be met with approval by corporate media, who have continually found creative ways to pitch such actions to the traditionally anti-interventionist left, primarily through the use of progressive language to justify Washington’s global agenda.

  Media are experts in using progressives’ empathy and compassion against them, presenting them carefully selected images and stories of suffering around the world, and suggesting that U.S. military power can be used to alleviate it. As such, intervention is sold to the U.S. left less on the basis of fear than of pity.

  But when, as in the examples below, U.S. actions make the situation worse for the peoples affected, the corporate press is careful to ignore or gloss over that suffering, or at least not present it as a direct consequence of U.S. meddling in other nations’ affairs.

Environment

• Energy

  • Goldman Crypto Chief Flags Institutional Demand Driving Boom

    Cryptocurrency enthusiasts argue that digital tokens and the underlying blockchain technology are gaining acceptance among more mainstream institutions and investors. The derivatives market and new investment products have made digital assets more easily accessible. Some strategists posit that the asset class is a potential diversifier for portfolios, while others are more skeptical and blame speculators for inflating a possible bubble in Bitcoin and other cryptos.

Finance

• ‘We Must Deliver on This Issue’: Jayapal Vows to Fight for $15 Minimum Wage

  The Congressional Progressive Caucus chair said that despite the Senate failing to include the wage boost in the relief bill, the fight for $15 must go on.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Opinion | The Talented Mr. Bin Salman

  The Saudi prince, like the Patricia Highsmith character, is a confidence man, serial killer, and all-around psychopath. The United States should stop enabling him.

• As Biden Unveils Order to Boost Voting Access, Dems Urged to Beat Back GOP Voter Suppression

  “Government, at all levels, should tear down barriers to the ballot, not build them as we are seeing in far too many places,” said Wade Henderson of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

• Biden’s Commerce Secretary is Pure Clintonism

  President Joe Biden selected RI Gov. Gina Raimondo as Commerce Secretary on January 7, 2021 and she was approved by Congress, after some theatrical and positively-demented anti-Chinese red-baiting from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Cancun), on March 2. This came after being previously mentioned for several other Cabinet positions in the immediate aftermath of the November election.

  Thus closes a certain chapter of my journalism career. I’ve been reporting on Raimondo for several years [1] now and predicted almost four years ago exactly in a CounterPunch column [2] her career was far from over.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Google HR reportedly advised mental health leave in response to complaints of racist or sexist behavior

• Covid child brides: ‘My family told me to marry at 14′

  A new Unicef report released on Monday suggests millions more underage girls are at risk of being forced into marriage around the world due to the coronavirus pandemic.

• Opinion | Why the Amazon Worker Vote in Bessemer Means So Much

  Unions don’t just raise worker wages. They help flatten grand private plutocratic fortunes.

• Opinion | Remembering W.E.B. Du Bois: A Giant in the Struggle for Black Freedom in the US

  As America faces a period of renewed racial and political polarization, Du Bois’s vision for building a multi-racial democracy is more relevant than ever

Monopolies

• Say NO to Big Tech deciding Global Governance of Big Tech

  But instead of such an organization, we now face the unbelievable prospect of “a Big Tech led body for Global Governance of Big Tech”.

  This prospect comes from a proposal for a new “strategic and empowered” body with substantial digital policies related roles, in which corporation and government nominees will participate as equals. This is unacceptable. Equally unacceptable, if not worse, is that this Body will rely largely on corporate funding, and maybe also assigning seats only to funders. This is a new low for the UN, and an unthinkably dangerous direction for the future of global governance.

  It is dangerous to give a private funding base to a regulator body for global digital governance. And it is even absurd, in a moment when calls for stronger regulation of Big Tech are rising in the EU, as well as in US and many other countries.

• The Authors’ Take – The Commission’s vision for Europe’s Digital Future: Proposals for the Data Governance Act, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act – A critical primer

  In November and December 2020, the EU Commission has presented a triad of proposals concerning data governance, the regulation of gatekeepers in digital markets and the regulation of digital services (namely including an ambitious, yet considerate, reform of provider liability in Europe as well as the introduction of certain duties of diligence in particular for very large platforms). Specifically, this Digital Services Package respectively comprises a proposed Data Governance Act (DGA), Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA). Altogether, these bills represent the hitherto most ambitious and broad regulatory project in the field of data and digital services regulation worldwide.

  While the (rather heterogeneous) DGA as well as the DSA will also have to be critically discussed in detail (and partly are in the paper), immediate attention has to be paid to the fundamentals of the DMA Proposal, namely, the necessary discussion of its legal basis, objective and context. To put it in a nutshell, the Proposal represents a hybrid approach to specific regulation of gatekeeper platforms, which comprises prominent elements of competition law as well as certain elements of unfair practices regulation and some other objectives (such as the efficient enforcement of certain rights relating to protection of personal data). Taken together, most of this makes perfect sense as a European Magna Carta for businesses’ and customers’ competitive freedoms vis-à-vis core platform intermediary and infrastructural services. Practically, in its current form, the proposal would effectively apply to the GAFAM-companies and a handful of further gatekeeper platforms.

  However, notwithstanding the substantive competition law elements within this regulatory approach, the Proposal is only based on Art. 114 TFEU as an instrument of internal market harmonization. Against this background, presently, the main fundamental weakness of the Proposal concerns the integration in the context of or at least a more specific co-ordination with European and national competition law. This has practical consequences since sufficiently consistent and specific provisions on coordinating public enforcement of the Commission on the one hand and of the Member States’ authorities (in particular on the additional basis of competition law) on the other are lacking in the Proposal. In fact, this latter more practical aspect is partly linked to the former more fundamental aspect, since contextual integration in the realm of competition law (and consequently the use of Art. 103 TFEU as an additional basis for the Proposal) would allow to make use of the European Competition Network under Regulation 1/2003 for the public enforcement of the DMA Proposal’s provisions in order to efficiently coordinate EU and national enforcement, based on both, the DMA Proposal and EU or national competition law. Apart from that, a European legal framework for private remedies and enforcement in regard to the obligations laid down in the Proposal seems of paramount importance, since otherwise there is a considerable danger of disharmonization and inefficiency in regard to diverse or lacking private remedies according to the different Member States’ respective national contract, tort and unfair competition laws.

• Around the IP Blogs

  The JIPLP Blog also featured a commentary on the Digital Services Package initiative, advanced in December 2020 by the European Commission. The post addresses competition law aspects of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), one of the three proposals included in the Digital Services Package (together with the Digital Governance Act and the Digital Services Act).

• FOSS Patents: Apple may already have lost the strategic battle over antitrust market definition in multiple European jurisdictions: App Store monopoly

  Never before has there been so much hope that the mobile app store tyranny may come to an end. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. There’ll be appeals, and the freedom fighters of the Digital Era may experience setbacks. But the first week of March 2021 may very well be judged by history as the end of the beginning.

  I’ve previously commented on the app store bill adopted by the Arizona House of Representatives. This is just the first legislative hurdle of three, and there may be court challenges even if the state senate voted in favor and the governor signed. But it shows that the app store liberation movement is able to build political majorities and overcome Apple and Google’s counterlobbying. Initiatives are underway in multiple states, and it varies by state whether Democrats or (as in Arizona) Republicans take the lead.

  On the other side of the Big Pond, Apple’s purely pretextual defenses of its app store monopoly are falling apart.

• Counsel reveal how pharma can benefit from patent arbitration [Ed: Views from the public not even sought because this propaganda site is a front group for patent profiteers, including predators from pharmaceutical companies (or their lawyers)]

  Counsel should keep good records to ensure they walk away from arbitration with a positive result, say those who have presided over pharma patent disputes

• Patents

  • Second medical use dosage regimen claim successfully traverses both insufficiency and “obvious-to-try” attacks (T 0799/16) [Ed: Again, as usual from AstraZeneca shills, no mention of the fact that those EPO Boards of Appeal lack independence — a fact they repeatedly complain about]

    The decision in T 0799/16 is a rare example of dose claim found both sufficient and inventive by the EPO Boards of Appeal. The claim was found to be sufficiently disclosed over the entire scope of the claim, despite the claimed treatment being shown as non effective in almost two thirds of patients. The Board of Appeal (3.3.01) further found the claim inventive in view of prior art disclosing clinical trial information, information that included the claimed dose itself. The key factor in persuading the Board of Appeal on both counts was the particularly challenging nature of the target indication.

    The case related to Acorda’s patent (EP 2377536) relating to a 4-aminopyridine (branded as Fampridine) dosage regime for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS). The granted claims specified 4-aminopyridine for use in a method of increasing walking speed of a patient with MS, wherein the 4-aminopyridine was administered as a 10 mg twice daily dose (Bid).

  • Cross-Examination of French Judges (Interview Part I: National Introspection) [Ed: Team UPC does not mention that France has a corrupt patent system and that corruption has spread to EPO]

    It’s an understatement to say that it’s not always very easy to be a French patent litigator in transnational litigation, in any case a good dose of humor is needed: how many jokes have I heard about our jurisdictional system? Then you have to accept that France is almost systematically considered as the territory at the bottom of the pack. The main reason for this is that our Courts are still underestimated, often seen as anti-patentee, slow, unable to order preliminary injunctions, or even and (especially) not “specialized”… In short, they would be just (and perhaps) good at ordering seizures (i.e. “saisie-contrefaçon”), and still… At the end of the day the idea of Paris as an epicenter of the UPC is easily mocked and seen as presumptuous (see comments from a previous post here).

  • Sen. Tillis Sends Letter to President Regarding Next USPTO Director [Ed: Politicians as bribed moles (see him and his colleagues) of the litigation fanatics and patent profiteers]

    Last month, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, sent a letter to President Biden regarding the selection of the next Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Sen. Tillis (at right) noted that “at this critical juncture in our nation’s history, we cannot take our innovation and creative economy for granted,” and urged the President to work together with Congress “to provide strong protections for our innovative and creative works.”

  • German and UK IP firms dominate top EPO representative list for 2020

  • Top EPO and PCT IP firms named; Ups and downs of licensing in a pandemic; IPRs post-Iancu; Big Pharma patent monetisation peril; Asia shift for SEPs; and much more

    Firms from Germany and the UK accounted for nearly 90% of applications filed at the EPO by the top 50 representatives last year, new data reveals

• Trademarks

  • The Authors’ Take – Final decision from a UK Community Design Court clarifies how to interpret a registered design

    The decision in Rothy’s Inc v Giesswein Walkwaren AG [2020] EWHC 3391 (IPEC) (16 December 2020) relates to a design for ballerina shoes, which an informal, women’s slip-on shoe, with a relatively thin, flexible sole and a wide, low heel. This decision is the last judgment handed down by a UK court acting as a Community Design Court. David Stone, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, was faced with the task of construing what was protected as the Registered Community Design.

    [...]

    In determining what constitutes the claimed design, the judge rejected the submission of the Claimant that he should take into account a shoe made to the design. This would clearly risk introducing features extraneous to those claimed in the registration. As the judge pointed out, whilst superficially attractive, this argument is circular – to determine if the proffered shoe is indeed a shoe made to the design, one first needs to assess what the registration means.

    The judge also rejected the submission of the Claimant that he should consider the description of the claimed design in the US design patent application from which priority was claimed. It cannot be correct to import subject matter from a priority application in this manner, in particular when the effect would be to circumvent Article 36(6) of the Community Design Regulation which stipulates that the description of a RCD does not affect the scope of protection.

    This leaves only the images of the registered design to define what is claimed in the registration. The judge scrutinised closeups of the images on the EU IPO website, and concluded that the patterning shown on the upper depicts a knitted fabric. This led to the conclusion that the RCD possessed individual character, as neither of the pleaded prior designs had knitted uppers (both were suede).

• Copyrights

  • A French Appeals Court Has Found Jeff Koons Guilty of Copyright Infringement Again—and Hiked Up His Fines

    In a double hit of bad news for art star Jeff Koons, a French appeals court not only upheld a 2018 decision that found him and the Centre Pompidou guilty of copyright infringement, but also increased his fine.

    French photographer Frank Davidovici initially brought the lawsuit in 2015, alleging that Koons had copied his photo for an ad campaign for the clothing line Naf Naf. Koons’s 1988 sculpture Fait d’hiver, from his “Banality” series, depicts a woman lying in snow next to a pig wearing a ring of roses and a barrel around its neck, and penguins standing nearby. Davidovici’s photo also shows a female model lying in snow in a similar position with a pig (which is the Naf Naf mascot), also wearing a small barrel around his neck. Davidovici’s image did not feature penguins, and his model wore a jacket as opposed to Koons’s model, who wore a revealing mesh top.

  • [Old] 10 of the Most Famous Cats Throughout History | Purina

    We’re a nation of cat enthusiasts, so it should come as no surprise that there’s so many famous cats in the world. Find out who made our top 10 list.

  • Overbroad DMCA Takedown Campaign Almost Wipes Dictionary Entries From Google

    A software review site recently tried to remove links to ‘competitors’ that lifted its writings without permission. While this urge is understandable, the execution was far from perfect. In addition to using long phrases to identify copied content, the site also asked Google to remove pages that mentioned “here is a brief introduction,” or even the word “outstanding.”

  • Warning! Pirate Devices Threaten US National Security…Apparently

    A study carried out by a group funded by the entertainment industries is warning of a potential national security disaster in the US. The Digital Citizens Alliance says that law enforcement, national security and military personnel are exposing systems to threats through their use of pirate devices. But are they?