Desktop/Laptop

• Microsoft Quietly Released Its Own Linux Distro [Ed: False. Not quietly (they made a blog post about it) and it’s part of the PR campaign, claiming to “love” what they’re actually attacking and blackmailing. Meanwhile the likes of Joey Sneddon promote Windows.]

• Chrome OS 91 broke Linux, here’s the workaround [Ed: The real solution is to replace ChromeOS with a "real" GNU/Linux distro rather than the trap made by Google]

  Last week, numerous Chromebook users reported a CPU-crippling bug had arrived in the latest incremental update to version 91 of Chrome OS. Shortly thereafter, Google pumped the brakes on the update and paused the server which essentially reverted the most current version of Chrome OS to the previous 91.0.4472.114 that rolled out in mid-June. For users on the newer version that weren’t experiencing massive CPU usage, there was really nothing to do. The update should be working properly and reverting isn’t a necessity. For those who did roll back or perhaps never updated in the first place, an unforeseen side effect of the pause appeared in the form of a broken Linux container.

Server

• The 10 Best Linux Web Hosting Providers for Beginners and Advanced Users

  Web admins prefer Linux hosting for its extreme security, high scalability, superior performance, and open-source advantages.

  Although plenty of Linux hosting companies claim to offer best-in-class features, finding the top ones living up to their promises in real-world situations can be a daunting task for most people.

  Here’s a list of the best Linux web hosting services for beginners and advanced users, who want to get a taste of the best in the market.

• NGINX vs. OpenLiteSpeed: Which Is the Better Lightweight Server? – Make Tech Easier

  You might not give too much thought to the type of server your site runs on, but it’s a vital cog in the wheel. It’s the foundation of your entire site and its performance. As such, two leading server types often grab the headlines, although NGINX vs. OpenLiteSpeed isn’t a simple decision.

  In this post, we compare NGINX vs. OpenLiteSpeed through features and performance. By the end, you’ll know exactly which one to choose as your server.

• March Networks’ New Linux-Based VMS Scales to Support 3,000 IP Cameras on a Single Server
  

  March Networks®, a global video surveillance and video-based business intelligence leader, is pleased to announce a new highly scalable Linux version of its video management software (VMS) that can support up to 3,000 cameras on a single server.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Rewriting Software Is Amazing For FOSS

  I know it might sound dumb but rewriting existing software is great for FOSS as a whole, not only does it give new developers something existing they can aim towards but it’s great way to find places where existing software is lacking and could use a bit of work.

• Destination Linux 235: Valve’s Steam Deck & Right To Repair Goes Mainstream

  This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re discussing the Right To Repair. This topic is so hot it created a rift in the multiverse, and Chris from Jupiter Broadcasting will be joining us in the discussion. Then we cover the biggest gaming news to hit Linux since the launch of Proton on Steam with Valve’s Steam Deck! Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.

• To Protect Yourself, Never Give Your DNA Or Biometric Data

  So many companies now are requesting people’s biometric data. Things like fingerprints, iris scans, voice scans, DNA, etc. are not pieces of information that you should freely give to a company. These are immutable identifiers and could potentially be a security risk and privacy nightmare.

Kernel Space

• A beefy Linux 5.14-rc2 and light at the end of the tunnel for Paragon’s NTFS driver

  The latest release candidate of the 5.14 Linux kernel is a hefty beast, Linus Torvald remarked yesterday, seemingly impatient over how long it is taking Paragon to send in its long-awaited and much-reviewed NTFS driver.

  It has been nearly a year since Paragon submitted code for a read-write NTFS driver in the Linux kernel. The existing kernel driver is read-only, although another, a FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) driver, is read/write.

  Despite multiple rounds of reviews (now up to v26 by our reckoning) the driver has continued to miss merge windows, the latest for the 5.14 kernel occurring earlier this month.

• Linux 5.13.3

  I'm announcing the release of the 5.13.3 kernel.
  
  All users of the 5.13 kernel series must upgrade.
  
  The updated 5.13.y git tree can be found at:
  	git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.13.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 5.12.18

• Linux 5.10.51

• Linux 5.4.133

• Graphics Stack

  • NVIDIA Talks Up RTX Capabilities On Arm – Showcased Using Arch Linux – Phoronix

    NVIDIA announced from the Game Developers Conference this week that they have been working to bring RTX ray-tracing support with their graphics cards to also work on Arm hardware running Linux.

    NVIDIA has been porting their RTX ray-tracing driver support to their Arm Linux graphics driver package and SDK.

  • NVIDIA Releases 470.57.02 Linux Driver, DLSS SDK Adds Official Linux Support – Phoronix

    In addition to showcasing NVIDIA RTX support on Arm, NVIDIA also used this first day of GDC week to release their 470.57.02 stable Linux driver as well as official DLSS SDK support for Linux.

    The NVIDIA 470.57.02 Linux driver is out today as the first stable version in the NVIDIA 470 driver series. This carries forward the earlier beta changes around XWayland acceleration, new Vulkan extensions, and numerous other improvements.

  • NVIDIA shows off RTX and DLSS on Arm using Arch Linux, DLSS SDK adds full Linux support | GamingOnLinux

    Today NVIDIA put up a rather exciting blog post talking about RTX – with Arm. Not only that, they’ve showcased it using Linux too which is pretty amazing.

    Shown off for the Game Developers Conference, NVIDIA has announced an expansion of their RTX SDKs to support to Arm and Linux.

  • NVIDIA 470.57.02 released as the next stable Linux driver | GamingOnLinux

    On top of today NVIDIA revealing RTX and DLSS from Arm, plus the DLSS SDK updated for native Linux games they’ve now released the first stable driver of the 470 series with 470.57.02.

    Compared with the monster that was the Beta release of NVIDIA 470.42.01 that gave us the likes of DLSS for Proton, hardware accelerated OpenGL and Vulkan rendering on Xwayland, and asynchronous reprojection this is a much smaller focused release to fix up some issues. However, it does also promote all the huge features from the previous release to a stable driver.

  • Nvidia Enables RTX and DLSS for Arm and Linux | Tom’s Hardware

    Nvidia announced a new major update to the capabilities of DLSS and RTX: support for both ARM and Linux. This development was showcased at this week’s Games Developer Conference (GDC), where both Wolfenstein: Youngblood and The Bistro’s demo from the Open Research Content Archive ran on a system comprised of a Mediatek Kompanio ARM SoC (8 CPU core, 6 nm) paired with an RTX 3060 graphics card. In addition, the showcased system ran both demos with full support for five key RTX technologies: Global Illumination, Direct Illumination, RTX Memory Utility, DLSS and Nvidia’s Optix AI-Acceleration Denoiser.

  • NVIDIA 470.57.02 Graphics Driver Brings Support for RTX 3070/80 Ti GPUs, DOOM Eternal Fixes

    NVIDIA 470.57.02 is here to introduce support for GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards, which means that if you own one of them you can now use it with your favorite GNU/Linux distribution as long as you have this latest production version installed.

    The new driver version also brings better support for several games, including DOOM Eternal, which received a workaround for an issue that made the video game to flip on desktop environments like GNOME, and Far Cry 5, which also received a workaround, but for a shader race condition when run with DXVK. In addition Wolfenstein: Youngblood should now work better with NVIDIA Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs.

Applications

• Tim Lauridsen: Clapper A GNOME media player

  Clapper is a very cool media player for Gnome, It is simple and is looking very good and has some very nice features.

• Andreas Schneider: Improved cmdline UX in upcoming Samba 4.15

  The initial quote is from the SambaXP talk What should we do with our user interface? in 2019. Douglas wrote that nobody can fix it as experts are locked-in, newbies are baffled and old options can’t be dropped. Since then things have changed. I’ve succeeded to do the impossible, rewrite the command line user interface.

  This is part of an effort to support FIPS mode with Samba. For this the client needs to be able have certain defaults set when the machine is set to FIPS mode. But lets first look at what the issues where and how I addressed them.

• 10 of the best IRC clients for Linux

  Internet Relay Chat is a client and a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging and synchronous conferencing. Users can connect with an IRC client to a global network of IRC servers for one-on-one or group chat. Same may consider IRC an old-fashioned way of communication, but it still has many users in the development community.

  IRC is still under constant development, with IRCv3 promising some advanced client features such as instant notifications, improved security, and standard features like group communication in forums and channels, one-on-one communication via chat or private message, and data transfers via Direct Client-to-Client.

  For file transfers in IRC, users can create file servers to share files using customized scripts or bots for their IRC client. I use IRC primarily to engage with the Linux community. You can share or engage directly with users or developers of applications and distros.

Instructionals/Technical

• Certificate Auto Enrollment from Samba – David Mulder

  Certificate Auto Enrollment allows devices to enroll for certificates from Active Directory Certificate Services. As of Samba 4.16, Linux clients can now auto enroll for certificates just like a Windows client.

  Samba’s Certificate Auto Enrollment uses the certmonger service to keep track of certificates. It also uses the cepces plugin to certmonger. The sscep command is also used to download the trust chain.

• 5 Crontab Examples to Help You Automate Linux Tasks

  The cron program automates the execution of other programs on Linux. Cron is a daemon that runs continuously and starts other programs according to a given schedule. Several different files define this schedule. They are individually known as crontabs.

  Cron can schedule any Unix command or task. Sometimes, you’ll want to work with a simple command. Other times, you’ll need to write a script to carry out the full task. Cron works fine with either approach. It also supports complicated scheduling rules and flexible ways of dealing with the script output.

  Whether you’re carrying out simple user tasks or full-blown system administration, understanding how cron works using practical examples is a must.

• TLS Email Encryption Explained – How To Encrypt Email with TLS.

  It is no secret that email is the preferred method of communication for businesses – a trend that has only been magnified with the increase in remote workers brought on by the pandemic. That being said, email is effectively a plaintext communication sent from email clients to receiving email servers or from one server to another, leaving the content of messages in transit vulnerable to compromise without additional protection via encryption technology such as the Transport Layer Security (TLS) standard.

  Learn how TLS works to help secure email communications, and how to securely implement TLS in the Postfix mail transfer agent (MTA), Microsoft 365 Exchange Online and Google Workspace to help fortify email against spoofing and data theft.

• Linux 101: What are aliases and how do you use them? – TechRepublic

  Sometimes a command is either too long to always be typing out or you simply cannot always remember it. Or maybe you have a collection of commands that you frequently run, and constantly typing them isn’t the best use of your time. When that’s the case, what do you do? You create aliases.

• Extract pages from PDF in Linux – Linux Hint

  Dealing with PDF files can be quite a hassle at times since they are not very modifiable. Often one needs to extract a handful of specific pages from a huge document, and the whole errand can feel very laborious. This is exactly why we will be devoting this tutorial to show you the best methods and the finest tools you need to extract pages from PDF files in Linux.

• Absolute and Relative Paths in Linux & How to Reference Them – Linux Hint

  Paths are a concept that many individuals who wanted to understand how to utilize the command prompt in Linux are confused about. We will illustrate how pathways are and how the distinction between relative as well as absolute pathways in this article. Let’s have a clear understanding of both first.

• How to Filter Top Output to Specific Processes – Linux Hint

  The top is a Linux command-line utility that allows you to monitor running processes and resource usage in your system. Understanding what is going on in your Linux system in real-time can help you locate resource-intensive processes and take necessary actions.

  This guide will discuss using the top command in Linux to find specific information about running processes in your system.

• How to Install and Use a Custom Dock in Xfce – Linux Hint

  This article will cover a guide on installing and using a custom dock application in the Xfce desktop environment. Acting as a window / task manager, you can use it to improve the look and feel of your Xfce desktop as well as improve productivity by enhancing window management and switching experience.

• How to Kill a Background Process in Linux – Linux Hint

  Linux is a multi-user and multi-task operating system. It supports more than one user and can run multiple processes simultaneously. Technically, that is not the case; the Linux kernel uses scheduling and other process management methods to assign a specific time to each process, making them appear to run simultaneously.

  However, Linux allows us to perform tasks to the running processes, including background and foreground jobs.

  This tutorial will discuss how to work with background processes and terminate them using various commands.

• How to Make Top Command Sort by Memory Usage – Linux Hint

  Top is a Linux process and resource usage monitoring utility. It allows users to view real-time information about the running processes and threads managed by the system’s kernel. Because of its interactivity, top enables users to perform tasks, such as filtering for specific processes, filter processes by users, PID, and kill processes.

  This guide will walk you through the basics of using the ps command to locate specific information about the system.

• How to Reduce Video Size With FFmpeg – Linux Hint

  There is a comprehensive collection of open-source tools for playing, editing, converting, saving, optimizing, and managing multimedia files. However, many tools, such as VLC and Handbrake, all share one engine: FFmpeg.

  FFmpeg is an open-source collection of tools for handling multimedia files. FFmpeg contains a set of shared multimedia libraries such as libavcodec, libavutil, and libavformat. Moreover, it works behind the scenes with many multimedia tools. Thus, allowing you to convert video and audio files, perform streams, and resize video files.

• How to Sort in Linux Bash by Column – Linux Hint

  The sort command available in Linux allows users to perform sorting operations on a file or an input. The sort command is handy when we want to get an ordered output of a file ascending, descending, or custom-defined sort order. By default, the sort command does not alter the original file unless the output is redirected back to the file.

  This article covers how to use the sort command to perform sorting operations on specific columns in a file.

• How to Use Bash to Change the File Extension of Multiple Files in a Folder – Linux Hint

  This tutorial will discuss a quick way to use Bash to rename files from a specific extension to another. We will use a bash loop, find, rename, and the mv command for this one.

• How to install EtternaOnline on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install EtternaOnline 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.

  If you have any questions, please contact us via a YouTube comment and we would be happy to assist you!

• How to install Inkscape on Linux Lite 5.4

  In this video, we are looking at how to install Inkscape on Linux Lite 5.4.

• How to save a command output to a file in Linux

  We all know that by default every command output is displayed on the terminal after execution.

  The output of a command can be used as a variable or input to another command or then redirected to a file for later reference.

  This is not always been the situation. also, the saved output of the command can shared with somebody for further analysis.

• What is Apt Systemd Daily? – Linux Hint

  When installing or updating packages on Linux distributions, a pesky common error “Unable to lock the administration directory….. locks /var/lib/dpkg” appears frequently. This error has been discussed on various help portals and forums. Yet, many users run into this problem again and again, despite applying for these potential methods as following:

  1. Detecting the process that holds a lock to the file and killing the process.

  2. Deleting the locked file to kick off the installation again.

  Though these solutions work fine, they may lead to system failure or cause some unwanted problems. In the end, you should find out the “the whys and wherefores” as there may be several reasons, among which the following can be one of the reasons.

  “It generally happens when the system uses a particular file throughout the time of pre-programmed periodic OS update, security update, or package update triggered by apt-daily.service.” So in this guide, you will get to know what is systemd daily and how it works in Linux.

• What is KVM Switch Used for and How Does It Work? – Linux Hint

  During the last year or so, many people from around the world have switched to remote work arrangements, often using a mix of personal and work devices to get things done.

  This widescale disruption of established work routines has cast new light on an old issue: how to control multiple computers using one keyboard, one mouse, and one monitor?

  As you can probably already guess, the answer is the humble KVM switch, and this article explains what it is and how it works, equipping you with all the knowledge you need to take advantage of it.

• GPIO Aggregator, a virtual gpio chip – Bootlin’s blog

  GPIOs are obviously widely used in embedded systems, and many of them are typically driven directly by Linux kernel drivers for interrupt lines, reset lines, or other control lines used to connect with various peripherals. However, a number of GPIOs are sometimes directly driven by user-space applications. Historically, the Linux kernel has provided a sysfs interface, in /sys/class/gpio to allow such direct control. But in recent years, this sysfs interface has been superseded by a new user-space interface based on /dev/gpiochip* character devices.

  This new interface has numerous advantages over the previous /sys/class/gpio interface. However, one drawback is that it creates one device file per GPIO chip, which means that access rights are defined per GPIO chip, and not per GPIOs.

• How to install XAMPP on Ubuntu 21.04 – Unixcop

  XAMPP is a cross-platform used as a local host, providing them a suitable environment for developers to test web applications before transferring data to remote servers.

  XAMPP is an open-source Apache distribution of a PHP development environment. It consists of the cross-platform software Apache, Maria DB, PHP, and Perl.

• How to Capture HTTP traffic in Wireshark

  Wireshark allows you to analyze the traffic inside your network with various tools. If you want to see what’s going on inside your network or have issues with network traffic or page loading, you can use Wireshark. It allows you to capture the traffic, so you can understand what the problem is or send it to support for further assistance. Keep reading this article, and you’ll learn how to capture http traffic in Wireshark.

• How To Install Hastebin on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Hastebin on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Hastebin is a free and open-source Pastebin software tool written in Node.js. Hastebin web interface is simplicity itself, and it gives you commands to create a new text snippet, save the current snippet, and open existing snippets for editing.

  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 the step-by-step installation of the Hastebin open-source alternative to Pastebin 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.

• How to play Max Payne on Linux

  Max Payne is a neo-noir third-person shooter video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Rockstar Games. In the game, you play as renegade DEA agent Max Payne as he hunts down those who murdered his family. Here’s how to get it working on Linux.

• How to Create Arrows in LaTeX – Linux Hint

  LaTeX is a powerful tool for creating scientific and technical documents. One element about working with such documents is the use of various types of arrows.

  In this quick guide, we shall discuss various types of arrows and how you can use them in your LaTeX documents.

• How to Change Text Colors in LaTeX – Linux Hint

  When working with LaTeX documents, you need a way to modify how the text is displayed. You can achieve this by changing font families, font styles, or size.

  You can also modify how the information is displayed by changing the text color. Changing text color allows you to add information such as warnings, hyperlinks, and more.

  This tutorial will discuss how to use LaTeX xcolor package to change text colors in LaTeX documents.

• How to Align Text and Formulates in LaTeX – Linux Hint

  LaTeX allows us to determine and control text alignment in our documents. In this tutorial, we will discuss how to align blocks of text or an entire document.

• How to Install LAMP on AlmaLinux 8 | RoseHosting

  A LAMP is a group of software that provides a fully functional environment to host websites or PHP applications on the internet. It is open-source and one of the most popular stacks to host any kind of website. A LAMP is an acronym of the four software, Linux Operating System, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL or MariaDB database management system, and PHP programming language.

  In this post, we will show you how to install the LAMP stack on AlmaLinux 8.

• How To Append Multiple Lines To A File With Bash – Linux Hint

  In Linux, we constantly work with files. As a result, we may encounter instances where we need to append multiple lines to a file.

  This quick guide will discuss various approaches you can use to append multiple lines in a file.

• Full Guide to Bash Loops – Linux Hint

  Linux is an open-source operating system. Unlike Windows and macOS, it is not limited to desktops; it is used on servers, mobile phones, gaming consoles, smart appliances, and embedded systems. Linux was developed and released in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, who started this project as a hobby. Upon release, Linux got unprecedented support from the open-source community. Soon after, the Linux kernel release community started the development on it. Software systems, window systems, and desktop environments were integrated into the newly created Linux kernel.

  Linux is also known as a Unix-like operating system because it was developed by keeping Unix standards in mind. Many Linux features are similar to Unix, like a directory system, multitasking, and multi-user operations. Still, the characteristic that distinguishes both operating systems is that Unix is a proprietary operating system while Linux is free. Apart from being open-source,

• How to Comment Multiple Lines at Once in Vim – Linux Hint

  Vim is an excellent command-line text editor, especially if you are comfortable with its shortcuts, modes, and bindings. However, when working with it, we can encounter instances where we need to comment on code blocks while editing code and configuration files.

  This article describes quick and easy ways to comment and uncomment out multiple lines of code in Vim editor. Learning how to do this will remove the need to go down each line and comment out each line.

• A Beginner’s Guide to Crontab on CentOS – Linux Hint

  The “cron” daemon is a built-in Linux application that Linux users utilize for scheduling the execution of processes. Cron searches the “cron tables” or “crontab” for the particular files and scripts. The crontab file provides a set of commands which you can execute regularly. It also provides the names of the commands that are utilized for managing the command list. Crontab also makes use of the cronjob scheduler to carry out operations. According to a set of instructions, Cron is a system function that will do or execute processes for you. Crontab is the name of the schedule, as well as the utility that is used for these modifications.

• How Do I Zip All Files In A Directory In Linux? – Linux Hint

  Zip is a lossless data compression utility supported by all Linux distributions.

  Zip archives refer to container archives that contain one or more compressed files and directories. Zip files are cross-platform, allowing you to create zip archives in Windows, Linux, and macOS using various utilities. In addition, zip archive files take less space, making them easier to transfer and store.

  In Linux, we use the zip archive utility to create zip archives. Throughout this tutorial, we will focus on how to go about creating zip archives in Linux using the zip utility.

• How to Install Splunk on Debian 11 or 10 Linux – Linux Shout

  Let’s install Splunk on Debian 11 / 10 Linux operating system analyze data collected from various resources…

  Splunk is security, information, and event management software (SIEM for short). It is a cross-platform solution that receives information from various sources and combines and visualizes the correlated information on a dashboard. The data processed by Splunk can also be enriched with the conventional data from relational databases.

  Splunk understands machine data as well as the texts that people have created. Machine data is the information (unstructured data) that is generated during the operation of various systems (computers, mobile devices, network components, security appliances, measuring devices, etc.). When you talk about the machine data, you mostly talk about the logs.

  Thus, SIEM means that you load all the log files of your devices into a large database and unify them. The SIEM warns you when something unusual occurs. You can analyze this data with Splunk to figure out what is going on.

• How to Access Ubuntu 21.10 Desktop Remotely From Windows 11 | UbuntuHandbook

  Want to access your Ubuntu desktop remotely from a Windows 11 computer? It’s easy to do the job with built-in screen sharing function.

  Ubuntu uses Vino as default VNC server to share your existing desktop. With it, users can access Ubuntu remotely either in or out of local network via a VNC client.

• How to Install Syncthing on Ubuntu 20.04

  Syncthing is an open-source tool used for synchronizing files between two or more computers on a network. It uses peer-to-peer architecture and exchanges your data directly between your devices. All data transmitted between multiple devices are encrypted with TLS. Whenever you create, modify, or delete any data on one Syncthing machine it will automatically be replicated to other servers. It can install in all major operating systems including, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, etc.
  In this guide, we will show you how to install and set up Syncthing server on Ubuntu 20.04.

• How to install TensorFlow ” Machine Learning ” on Ubuntu 21.04 – Unixcop

  TensorFlow is an open-source machine learning library written in Python and built by Google. Many well-known organizations are using TensorFlow including Paypal, Lenovo, Intel, Twitter, and Airbus. You can install it using Anaconda, as a docker container or in a Python virtual environment. A virtual environment allows users to have different python environments on a single system and they can install a particular module version based on per-project requirements, without affecting the other projects.

  This article will show you how to install the TensorFlow library in a Python virtual environment using the command line application on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Ubuntu 21.04.

• How to Install and Use Wireshark on Ubuntu 21.04 – Unixcop

  Wireshark is an open-source network protocol analyzer tool indispensable for system administration and security.It drills down and displays data travelling on the network.Wireshark allows you to either capture live network packets or to save it for offline analysis.

  One of the features of Wireshark that you will love to learn is the display filter which lets you inspect only that traffic you are really interested in. Wireshark is available for various platforms including Windows, Linux, MacOS, FreeBSD, and some others.

Games

• NVIDIA Releases More GameWorks Projects As Open-Source With Linux Support

  It looks like NVIDIA could be feeling the pressure from AMD’s GPUOpen efforts with NVIDIA now publishing more GameWorks projects as open-source for both Linux and Windows.

  As more NVIDIA announcements out today for the Game Developers Conference week, several new GameWorks projects are released as open-source. Alongside getting NVIDIA RTX working on Arm, the DLSS SDK for Linux, and the NVIDIA 470 driver stable release for Linux users, there are several new open-source GameWorks projects.

• Pre-ordered a Steam Deck? Here’s how to find out which games will run on it

  Valve shook the gaming world when it revealed the Steam Deck, a handheld that’s essentially a portable PC. The Steam Deck console lets players access their Steam libraries on the go, and looks positioned to give the Nintendo Switch a serious run for its money when it releases sometime during December 2021.

  But with some reports that certain games might not be able to run on the Steam Deck, including Destiny 2 and Apex Legends, how can you be sure your favorite go-to games will be playable at all?

  Fear not, as there’s a relatively simple way to find out ahead of time if your most beloved Steam games are compatible with the Deck, and it lies within the fact that SteamOS (the Steam Deck’s operating system) is powered by Linux.

• Steam Deck Linux-Powered Gaming System Set to Take Over the Handheld World

  A Linux and KDE-powered portable gaming platform is set to be released by Valve.

  More than just a hand-held gaming system, the Steam Deck is a Linux-powered system, with a KDE interface, that can be docked and used as a regular PC. Steam Deck uses Proton as a compatibility layer to play Windows games on Linux, but users are free to replace it.

  The device specs include an AMD 4-core Zen 2 CPU, an 8-core RDNA 2 graphics unit, 16 GB of memory, a 7-inch 1280×800-resolution touchscreen. As far as game control, Steam Deck includes several trackpads, thumbsticks, buttons, and triggers. A 40Wh battery is said to allow anywhere from two to eight hours of use. The device is charged via a single USB-C port that doubles as the means to connect the Steam Deck to external monitors and docks.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Shaun McCance: Part 3: Voice and Style

    This is Part 3 in a series about the Discovery Docs initiative, which I will present about in my upcoming GUADEC talk. In Part 1: Discovering Why, I laid the groundwork for why I think we should focus our docs on discovery. In Part 2: Templates and Taxonomies, I talked about how to structure topics differently to emphasize learning. In this post, I’ll talk about how we should write to be engaging, but still clear.

    One of the main goals of Discovery Docs is to be more engaging and to create enthusiasm. It’s hard to create enthusiasm when you sound bored. Just as your speaking voice can either excite or bore people, so too can your writing voice affect how people feel while reading. Boring docs can leave people feeling bored about the software. And in a world of short-form media, boring docs probably won’t even be read.

    This post has been the hardest in the series for me to write. I’ve been in the documentation industry for two decades, and I’ve crafted a docs voice that is deliberately boring. It has been a long learning process for me to write for engagement and outreach.

  • GNOME 40.3 Released with Improvements to GNOME Software, Many Bug Fixes

    Coming about five weeks after the GNOME 40.2 release, GNOME 40.3 is here with an updated GNOME Software app that now automatically installs application updates depending on the type of application and user configuration, includes apps from disabled repositories in the search results of the Activities Overview, an improved Updates tab, as well as better support for PackageKit apps.

    The Evince document viewer has been updated as well to display “None” when the creation or modification date is missing from a document, as well as to enable the Odd Pages Left option only when the dual page feature is active. Also, the GNOME Boxes app received improvements to the run-in-background functionaly for non-Flatpak builds.

  • GNOME 41 Alpha Released With Many Desktop Changes Accumulating
    

    The GNOME project is out today with their first alpha release of the forthcoming GNOME 41 desktop environment.

    GNOME 41 isn’t due out until September but there are already many changes merged for GNOME “41.alpha” besides the usual translation updates and bug fixes. Some major components like GNOME Shell and Mutter didn’t issue their 41 Alpha releases in time for the formal release, but among the changes to be found in the official NEWS entry for GNOME 41 Alpha includes:

    - The Epiphany web browser now uses a smaller address bar font in the narrow mode, the address bar drop-down now supports various filters, updated PDF.js, the web process is now killed when it is unresponsive for too long, new keyboard shortcuts, and other improvements.

  • GNOME 41.alpha released

    Hi,
    
    GNOME 41.alpha is now available. This is the first unstable release
    leading to 41 stable series.
    
    If you want to compile GNOME 41.alpha, you can use the official
    BuildStream project snapshot. Thanks to BuildStream's build sandbox,
    it should build reliably for you regardless of the dependencies on
    your host system:
    
    https://download.gnome.org/teams/releng/41.alpha/gnome-41.alpha.tar.xz
    
    The list of updated modules and changes is available here:
    
    https://download.gnome.org/core/41/41.alpha/NEWS
    
    The source packages are available here:
    
    https://download.gnome.org/core/41/41.alpha/sources/
    
    

Distributions

• New Releases

  • IPFire 2.25 – Core Update 158 released

    IPFire 2.25 – Core Update 158 is generally available. It comes with one-click VPNs for Apple iOS and Mac OS devices as well as with various fixes across the board including security fixes.

    Before we talk about what is new, I would like to as you for your support for our project. IPFire is a small team of people from a range of backgrounds sharing one goal: make the Internet a safer place for everyone. Like many of our open source friends, we’ve taken a hit this year and would like to ask for your continued support.

  • Kodachi 8.7

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • Linux overview | Linux Mint 20.2 “Uma” MATE

    In this video, I am going to show an overview of Linux Mint 20.2 “MATE” and some of the applications pre-installed

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

  • OpenMandriva on IRC.

    OpenMandriva is no longer using Freenode IRC. There are Matrix channels for OpenMandriva (user channel) and OpenMandriva Cooker (developer channel). These are also channels at Libera Chat. #openmandriva @ libera.chat and #openmandriva-cooker @ libera.chat. The Matrix and Libera Chat channels are bridged (interconnected). They are also bridged with Telegram.

  • Mageia at GUADEC 2021

    In my recent blog post I shared that GNOME’s GUADEC 2021 is going to be online due Covid19-pandemic. Nevertheless, I am pleased to let you know that my workshop about Mageia GNOME has been accepted!

    This workshop will give an introduction to Mageia GNOME and you will learn about the distribution itself on the 23rd of July at 18h30 UTC (at 19:30 British Summer Time (BST), 20h30 central europe time (CEST, Paris, Berlin, Rome…)) for about an hour.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Leap Gains Maintenance Update Improvements

    The recent release of openSUSE Leap 15.3 has gained some maintenance improvements from a new repository setup.

    Maintenance efforts for Leap related to Closing the Leap Gap expands to having three separate repository groups instead of one.

    The openSUSE specific package repositories called oss and non-oss repositories changed. While these two repositories contained all the content of Leap 15.2 and older, they now contain only the branding and related setup packages.

    The shared PackageHub and openSUSE packages known as the backports repository contains all the packages not in SUSE Linux Enterprise nor in the openSUSE specific packages. Previously, PackageHub was specific to SLE, which duplicated packages between openSUSE and PackageHub; now this single project is shared between both PackageHub and openSUSE Leap 15.3. This single repository will improve the quality of delivering updates and avoid package conflicts like zypper patch for openSUSE Leap 15.3.

  • Resulta underpins global growth strategy with SUSE Rancher

    “With a focus on building our international capabilities, it’s critical that our architecture can scale at speed. Kubernetes and SUSE Rancher bring an agile approach to IT that is making our vision a reality.” Jamie Fifield, head of IT operations, Resulta.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Red Hat Expands RHEL Choices For Research And Academic Institutions

    Red Hat has announced the expansion of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) academic program to include a wider range of academic and research institutions. The move is intended to help better prepare students and other learners for future opportunities in IT-related fields.

  • eCube Systems Announces NXTera 7.2 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (RHEL 8)

    eCube Systems, a leading provider of middleware modernization, integration and management solutions, announced the release of NXTera™ 7.2 High Performance RPC Middleware capable of running both client and server applications on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Platform. NXTera is the replacement middleware for Entera and continues to expand the platforms upon which it can run. NXTera now supports a variety of linux platforms including Suse, Centos, Ubuntu and Redhat in addition to the existing Unix and Windows platforms from NT, 200X Server, XP, 7, Vista and 10. With the latest RHEL8 platform, NXTera middleware fully supports in house application on most platforms with naming services through RPCbroker and database access engine JDBC_START. With the support for Webservices connectors for the applications and enhancements to the broker to support the internet, NXTera applications can now be run on the Cloud.

  • Red Hat expands Linux offerings for research and academic organizations

    Red Hat is reaching out to new users. And, how better to do that than expanding its reach to schools and research institutions? Of course, Red Hat has been doing this for years, but now the Linux giant and cloud power will offer a low-cost option for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to non-degree-granting entities. Now, a much broader range of research and academic-related organizations will have access to Red Hat’s academic subscription program.

  • The 4 Best RHEL-Based Alternatives to CentOS

    Red Hat’s announcement that CentOS would “shift direction” from a simple drop-in replacement for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to CentOS Stream left quite a few users scrambling for a replacement. Fortunately, there are several RHEL-based distros available already.

  • Red Hat Extends Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 as a Foundation for More Secure Computing with Second FIPS 140-2 Validation

  • Jim Whitehurst Left IBM Because He’d Rather Be CEO | Data Center Knowledge

    Contrary to what some may have feared, the exec’s departure wasn’t a sign that IBM was trying to make Red Hat more like IBM, reneging on its promise earlier.

  • Awards roll call: March to July 2021

    As Red Hat remains focused on our vision for open hybrid cloud, Red Hat customers, partners and associates are delivering the products and services needed to revolutionize the cloud. We are proud to have a strong open source ecosystem and team of innovators standing by us through it all. Together, we have received more than 30 accolades from industry publications and organizations in the last five months.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 692

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 692 for the week of July 11 – 17, 2021.

Devices/Embedded

• The JingPad A1 is a Feature-packed, Flagship Level… Linux Tablet?!

  An 11″, 2K, 4:3 AMOLED touchscreen. A 1.8GHz 8-core ARM SoC. 8GB of RAM. 256GB of storage. USB-C. An included stylus. Sounds like an awesome tablet right? But the thing that makes the JingPad A1 truly special is that it’s running JingOS, a Linux-based operating system.

  [...]

  As I said, the JingPad A1 comes with a stylus. But it also has an optional keyboard and trackpad accessory. I like the integrated kickstand. That’s a neat implementation.

• Pi-like RK3568 SBC grows SATA out of its USB ports

  Radxa unveiled a $35-and-up “Rock 3 Model A” SBC that runs Linux on a 2.0GHz, quad -A55 Rockchip RK3568 and offers up to 8GB RAM, GbE with PoE, M.2 M- and E-key, and SATA via USB 3.0.

  Radxa has begun sampling a new community backed SBC built around the NPU-equipped Rockchip RK3568 in a collaboration with Rockchip’s Toybrick division. The open-spec Rock 3 Model A (or Rock 3A) will launch in late August at $35 (2GB LPDDR4), $55 (4GB), and $75 (8GB).

  The Rock 3 Model A is billed as “basically a little brother of” the RK3399-based Rock Pi 4 and shares the same Raspberry Pi style dimensions, layout, and 40-pin GPIO. This is the first compact, low-priced SBC built around the RK3568, the slightly higher end sibling to the similarly quad-core, Cortex-A55 based RK3566.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Raspberry Pi History

    From building a single board computer for educational purposes and personal entertainment to selling more than 40 million boards around the globe, Raspberry Pi has come a long way. Raspberry Pi devices are developed by a UK-based charity that aims to deliver the power of digital computing to people across all sections of the world. Raspberry Pi foundations empower low-cost and high-power single-board PCs and software.

    Most of the schools and colleges prefer Raspberry Pi units for general purposes. However, Raspberry Pi was not intended as a charity program earlier. It was a small team of the computer laboratory at the University of Cambridge that discovered a declining interest in computers due to increasing costs and tough maintenance of typical computer systems. This is where they decided to get a solution to this problem and thus, Raspberry Pi was born. Let’s discuss the journey of Raspberry Pi from 2012 until now.

  • This light painting machine puts a new spin on the old geometric chuck | Arduino Blog

    Light painting is a fun way to create digital images by using just a few points of light to “draw” across a camera with a long exposure time. This gives the illusion of a virtual streamer being dragged on the canvas and can produce amazing photos. Ted Kinsman wanted to build a light painting machine, which mimics the geometric chucks from the 1860s that used several spinning platters on a lathe that rotated at different speeds to carve ornate patterns into wood. His version has a series of three platters all stacked on top of each other and are driven by three stepper motors.

  • VoiceTurn is a voice-controlled turn signal system for safer bike rides | Arduino Blog

    Whether commuting to work or simply having fun around town, riding a bike can be a great way to get exercise while also enjoying the scenery. However, riding around on the road presents a danger as cars or other cyclists / pedestrians might not be paying attention while you try to turn. That is why Alvaro Gonzalez-Vila created VoiceTurn, a set of turn signals that are activated by simply saying which direction you are heading towards.

    VoiceTurn works by using the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense at its heart to both listen for the “left” or “right” keywords and then activate the appropriate turn signal. Gonzalez-Vila took advantage of edge machine learning through the Edge Impulse Studio. First, he collected audio samples consisting of the words “left,” “right,” and then random noise via the Google Speech Commands Dataset. Next, he sent them through an MFCC block that does some processing to extract human speech features. And finally, the Keras neural network was trained on these features to produce a model.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Sony Xperia 1 III may only receive one major Android OS update – Android Community

  • Android Security: Over 150 Security and Privacy Issues Found on Stalkerware

  • Our readers keep their Android phones for longer than we expected | Android Central

  • Altice USA debuts 4K Android TV device for broadband-only subs | FierceVideo

  • Google Chrome disappearing shortcuts issue on Android? Try workaround

  • How to Change Your Navigation Language in Google Maps on Android

  • Digital Wellbeing Heads Up expands to more Android phones – 9to5Google

  • After ruining Android 12′s power menu, Google adds notification to explain where everything went

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Kubernetes Release Cadence Change: Here’s What You Need To Know

  On April 23, 2021, the Release Team merged a Kubernetes Enhancement Proposal (KEP) changing the Kubernetes release cycle from four releases a year (once a quarter) to three releases a year.

  This blog post provides a high level overview about what this means for the Kubernetes community’s contributors and maintainers.

• FreeType 2.11 Released With New Rendering Module, Smooth Rasterizer Is Faster

  FreeType 2.11 is out as the newest version of this widely-used library for font rasterization.

  It’s been over two years since the original FreeType 2.10.0 release but with various point release bug fixes since then. Now FreeType 2.11 is ready to meet the world. With FreeType 2.11 some of the changes include:

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • SpiderMonkey Newsletter (Firefox 90-91)

      SpiderMonkey is the JavaScript engine used in Mozilla Firefox. This newsletter gives an overview of the JavaScript and WebAssembly work we’ve done as part of the Firefox 90 and 91 Nightly release cycles.

      Firefox/SpiderMonkey 91 will become the next ESR branch and will remain supported over the next year.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Community Member Monday: Jackson Cavalcanti Junior

    I am Brazilian, from the city of Olinda, Pernambuco. I am 62 years old, and work as a public servant in the municipality of Olinda. I am one of the creators of the Municipal Public Archive of Olinda. I am also a human rights activist, especially for LGBT people. I am a proofreader and I also write for my blog.

    In my work, in the city of Olinda, since 2001 I have been working with free office software, having started with OpenOffice.org, then with BrOffice and LibreOffice Writer, with which I created several models of documents to be used by the agencies that are part of the administrative structure of the Municipality of Olinda. These models remained on the City Hall’s intranet until 2016, when in that year’s elections another political party was elected, and that project was discontinued.

    As a citizen, I am an activist in the LGBT movement, in which I have worked since 1980, when I helped found the Homosexual Action Group (GATHO), which was the first group in Pernambuco to fight in defense of citizenship for homosexual people. This group no longer exists, but I am a member of the LGBT Forum of Pernambuco, where I work as an independent activist, to which I was invited by my history as an activist for the LGBT cause in the state where I reside.

    I also advertise LibreOffice among my friends, in the institutions where I work, and also in the WhatsApp and Telegram groups.

    I like to photograph my city, my animals and nature.

• CMS

  • HospitalRun: an open-source clinical practice solution for low resources environment

    HospitalRun is an all-in-on clinical practice management software package for small and medium-size hospitals and clinics. It is also a completely open-source project.

    The software runs seamlessly on Linux, Windows, and macOS. It is packed in an executable package for Windows, macOS. It also offers an extensive cloud install instructions.

    What makes HospitalRun unique is its offline-first approach, which proven useful in environment with bad or no internet connections.

    HospitalRun can runs on a single machine like a doctor machine or on the cloud, allowing users to access it through their web browsers.

  • WP Briefing: Episode 13: Cherishing WordPress Diversity

    In this episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to the fabric of the WordPress project and how we can move from a place of welcoming it to cherishing it.

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • Edward Snowden Thinks GIMP Needs a Major UI Overhaul

      Edward Snowden’s recent tweet praised what free and open-source software can achieve.

      In the tweet, he highlights that every time he uses Blender (an open-source 3D software suite), it reminds him of the advantages of FOSS and the growth of the ecosystem.

      He did not just limit to that, in a follow-up reply to the same thread, he also tagged GIMP and added, “I’m really hoping for a major UI overhaul. You guys could be eating Adobe’s lunch.“

• Programming/Development

  • [Older] Ultra App Kit Released

    Unlike other alternatives like Dear ImGui, the Ultra App Kit GUI renders in retained mode rather than immediate mode, and is specifically designed for desktop GUI applications. This makes applications snappy and responsive when resizing or refreshing a window.

    DPI scaling is baked into the design for resolution-independent graphics on any screen.

    The GUI can be combined with an embedded OpenGL viewport, or combined with a 3D game engine to make custom editors and game development tools.

    Check out the video tutorials and read the documentation to learn more.

  • Budibase: A no-code platform that turns idea into apps in a blaze

    Budibase is a no-code/ low-code platform built to help developers and decision makers create solid enterprise apps in timely fashion. It packs all the required elements to connect to different data sources, views, forms, and tables which ease the collaboration and building process.

    The platform is super-easy to install, it took less than a minute to get everything up and running. But it promises more, deployment and continuous integration which other low-code and no-code platforms don’t take much good care of.

    Budibase fits perfectly in a fast, dynamic business environment, which require new solutions occasionally. It helps to model ideas into apps and ship them rapidly.

  • Run Python applications in virtual environments | Opensource.com

    If you use Python, you probably install a lot of Python applications. Some are tools you just want to try out. Others are tried and true applications you use every day, so you install them on every computer you use. In either situation, it can be useful to run your Python applications in virtual environments to keep them and their dependencies separate from one another to avoid versioning conflicts and to keep them from the rest of your system to improve security.

  • Remi Collet: PHP version 7.4.22RC1 and 8.0.9RC1

    Release Candidate versions are available in testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests, and also as base packages.

    RPM of PHP version 8.0.9RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-php80-test repository for Fedora 32-34 and Enterprise Linux.

    RPM of PHP version 7.4.22RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-test repository for Fedora 32-34 or remi-php74-test repository for Enterprise Linux.

  • Meson 0.59 Build System Adds First Class Cython, Wine Resource Compiler Support – Phoronix

    The open-source Meson build system that continues to be increasingly used by open-source projects and other software is out with version 0.59, which continues tacking on more features.

    Meson 0.59 adds Cython as a supported first class language, support is added for the Wine Resource Compiler, new VS2012/VS2013 back-end options for those older versions of Microsoft Visual Studio, Meson sub-projects commands are now run on each sub-project in parallel by default, new build target methods, support on Windows for automatically setting up the Visual Studio environment if necessary, and other changes.

  • Nibble Stew: A quick look at the O3DE game engine and building it with Meson

    Earlier today I livestreamed what it would take to build a small part of the recently open sourced O3DE game engine. The attempt did not get very far, so here is a followup. It should not be considered exhaustive in any way, it is literally just me poking the code for a few hours and writing down what was discovered.

  • Use GDB Print Stack Trace of Core File

    If you have been programming for a while, you have come across the term core dump.
    If you look at the core man page, it defines as core dump as “a file containing an image of the process’s memory at the time of termination. This image can be used in a debugger (e.g.) gdb to inspect the state of the program at the time that it terminated”.

    In simple terms, a core dump file is a file that contains memory information about a process when the specific process terminates.

    There are various reasons why processes may crash and create a core dump file. This tutorial will show you how to use GDB to view the core dump file and print the stack trace.

  • Calling getpid function in C with Examples – Linux Hint

    Getpid() is the function used to get the process ID of the process that calls that function. The PID for the initial process is 1, and then each new process is assigned a new Id. It is a simple approach to getting the PID. This function only helps you in getting the unique processes ids.

    Functions used in getting ids

    Two types of IDs are present here. One is the current id of the process PID. Whereas the other is the id of the parent process PPID. Both these functions are built-in functions that are defined in library. While running the code without using this library may cause an error and stops executing.

  • C String Concatenation – Linux Hint

    Concatenation is the process to append second string to the end of first string. In this article we are going to discuss how to concatenate strings in C by using different methods.

    The standard C library function which is used to concatenate string is strcat().

  • Perl/Raku

    • Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.29 Scheduled To 3

      After a lot of discussion, Andrew Shitov has announced the schedule of the first ever Raku Conference (online on 6, 7 and 8 August 2021). Yes, you read that right: 3 days! One track per day.

  • Python

    • How to Create Audiobooks Using Python – Linux Hint

      As you might already know, Python is a wonderful programming tool because it allows us to do virtually anything! This also means that we can create our own software. In this tutorial, we will learn to synthesize speech, get Python to read pdfs, even translate them for us, and then read them to us.

      What we’re going to do here is to get Python to read us a pdf, and translate it for us. First, we’ll try to create an English audiobook. As such, the first thing we must logically do is to extract the text from the pdf. For this, we use the module known as tika. As usual, to install Tika, one conjures pip.

  • Rust

    • A GPIO driver in Rust

      As an example of what a “real” device driver in Rust would look like, Wedson Almeida Filho has posted a translation of the PL061 GPIO driver alongside the original. For ease of reading, the resulting HTML has been reformatted a bit and placed below; viewing in a wide window is recommended.

  • Java

    • Top 7 Linux Questions from Java Interviews – LinuxTechLab

      In the realm of operating systems for programmers, Linux reigns supreme. There are a lot of reasons to prefer it over other OS: memory management, case sensitivity, and built-in packages.

      So, as a Java developer, you will likely have to make a transition from Windows to macOS to Linux. What should you know to get started and which Linux questions from Java interviews, that programmers should be ready to answer at job interviews?

    • Quick Sort in Java Explained

      Quick Sort, also written as Quicksort, is a list sorting scheme that uses the divide-and-conquer paradigm. There are different schemes for Quick Sort, all using the divide-and-conquer paradigm. Before explaining Quick Sort, the reader must know the convention for halving a list or sub-list and the median of three values.

      [...]

      What about the case, when the number of elements in the list or sub-list is odd? At the start, the length is still divided by 2. By convention, the number of elements in the first half of this division is length / 2 + 1/2. Index counting begins from zero. The middle index is given by length / 2 – 1/2. This is considered as the middle term, by convention. For example, if the number of elements in a list is 5, then the middle index is 2 = 5/2 – 1/2. And, there are three elements in the first half of the list and two elements in the second half. The middle element of the whole list is the third element at index, 2, which is the middle index because index counting begins from 0.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary/Cracking

  • The Pegasus leak: What you need to know right now- Technology News, Firstpost

  • Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus, a powerful Israeli cyberweapon

    On 19 July, a consortium of 17 international media organisations published an investigation around a leaked list of phone numbers from across the world, dubbed the Pegasus Project. These numbers are allegedly a “target list” of phones hacked/to be hacked by the Pegasus spyware product sold by Israel’s NSO Group.

  • Security

    • Researchers Warn of Linux Cryptojacking Attackers Operating from Romania [Ed: Misleading crap; they target weak passwords ("SSH brute-forcer written in Golang") rather than Linux but The Hacker News seems to be pushing Microsoft's propaganda line instead. At the moment millions of Windows machines are being hijacked for Microsoft holes that it failed to patch, the media rarely mentions the real culprit.]

      A threat group likely based in Romania and active since at least 2020 has been behind an active cryptojacking campaign targeting Linux-based machines with a previously undocumented SSH brute-forcer written in Golang.

      Dubbed “Diicot brute,” the password cracking tool is alleged to be distributed via a software-as-a-service model, with each threat actor furnishing their own unique API keys to facilitate the intrusions, Bitdefender researchers said in a report published last week.

    • Linux Variant of HelloKitty Ransomware Targets VMware ESXi Servers [Ed: This issue here is not Linux; this seems like a black PR campaign]

      According to researchers on the MalwareHunterTeam, HelloKitty has joined a growing list of ransomware gangs targeting VMware ESXi. Researchers found a Linux encryptor used by the HelloKitty ransomware gang in an attack against videogame developer CD Projekt Red. The researchers reported that the attack, which occurred in February, targeted the organization’s Vmware ESXi servers and the virtual machines running on them. Therefore, one hit in this type of attack can affect multiple different virtual machines. The discovery marks the first time that researchers have observed the ransomware group using a Linux encryptor in an attack.

    • Linux version of HelloKitty ransomware targets VMware ESXi [Ed; How to tarnish the name Linux using something that's not related to it (while at the same time not naming Windows when Windows is, in fact, at fault)]

    • Security updates for Monday [LWN.net]

      Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (chromium, firefox, mbedtls, nextcloud, python-pillow, ruby, ruby2.6, ruby2.7, systemd, thunderbird, varnish, and vivaldi), Debian (thunderbird), Fedora (chromium, firefox, and linux-firmware), Gentoo (apache, commons-fileupload, dovecot, and mediawiki), openSUSE (firefox, fossil, go1.16, and icinga2), Oracle (firefox, kernel, and kernel-container), Red Hat (nettle), and SUSE (firefox and go1.16).

Monopolies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Europe’s SEP bombshell; Huawei and Verizon settle patent fight; Protecting AI via the EPO; Ericsson royalties jump; Arthrex – the good, bad and ugly; plus much more

      The EPO is ready and waiting for AI-related patent applications, but that doesn’t mean it will make the path to getting protection an easy one.

    • How to secure AI patents in Europe [Ed: EPO mouthpiece IAM is promoting illegal software patents under the guise of "Hey Hi"]

      In this co-published piece, Haseltine Lake Kempner partner Caroline Day explains how a good draft could dramatically improve the chances for an AI application at the EPO

      Perhaps more than for any other technology area, the European Patent Office (EPO) has promoted its artificial intelligence (AI) practice proactively in expectation of the wave of AI-related applications that they hope is to come.

      However, there are particular considerations in relation to preparing AI patent applications which stand the best possible chance of success in Europe. Below, we introduce just some of these concepts, but do keep an eye out for our up-coming series of articles, in which we will be exploring the issues – and others – in much greater detail.

9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: July 18th, 2021

This week has been slow in news and I was busy traveling for personal matters. Despite that, we got some very hot news, such as the release of Firefox 90, the Ubuntu Touch OTA-18 software update for Linux phones, and Valve’s own gaming handheld powered by Arch Linux and KDE Plasma.

On top of that, we also covered the news about the release of digiKam 7.3 professional photo management app and Tails 4.20 amnesic incognito live system. You can enjoy these and much more in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for July 18th, 2021, below!

Audiocasts/Shows

• Why does this Maine legislator use Linux?

• Why does this Maine legislator use Linux

  I had a chance to sit down with Maine State Representative Grayson Lookner, representing Maine’s 37th legislative district. He was one of the primary sponsors of Maine’s LD-1585 (also known as the Anti-facial Recognition Bill). It was really nice to be able to chat with Rep. Lookner and I thank him for his time.

Benchmarks

• The Importance Of Thermald On Linux For Modern Intel Tiger Lake Laptops

  Most Linux distributions including the likes of Ubuntu and Fedora have been shipping Intel’s Thermald daemon the past few years as it’s important to achieving good thermal/power behavior on modern Intel SoCs. For those curious about its impact, here are some benchmarks carried out with Intel Thermald or not when using an Intel Core i7 1185G7 Tiger Lake notebook.

  Thermald is Intel’s Thermal Daemon in user-space for interacting with their multiple thermal/power kernel drivers for proactively controlling thermal behavior using P-States, power clamping, and more. Thermal Daemon is developed in the open on GitHub and is specific to Intel processors. It’s relatively safe to assume the major Linux distributions are shipping it by default and automatically used on supported Intel systems while on some of the more DIY/niche distributions it is worth verifying its presence if you are using an Intel notebook.

Applications

• Open Source Video Transcoder HandBrake Releases Version 1.4.0, Supports 10 & 12 Bit Encoding Now

  HandBrake hardly needs an introduction. This is one of the most popular open source software for converting video files from one format to another, with several configuration options for advanced users.

  I know ffmpeg on Linux is the ultimate tool but that’s command line. Handbrake also utilizes ffmpeg underneath and provides a good graphical user interface for ease of use.

  Let’s see what’s new in this release of HandBrake.

• HandBrake 1.4 Open-Source Video Transcoder Adds Support for Native 10- and 12-Bit Encodes

  HandBrake 1.4 comes about a month after the release of HandBrake 1.3.3 maintenance update in the 1.3 series of the open source software, and it’s here to introduce a major functionality, namely support for native 10-bit and 12-bit video encodes, including HDR10 metadata passthrough.

  Of course, this means that you’ll now be able to open 10-bit or 12-bit encoded streams in HandBreak to convert them to another format of your choice. As most of these encodes are usually HDR, the built-in HDR10 metadata passthrough feature will come in handy as well, but the devs warn that not all filters will support 10-bit and 12-bit.

• Handbrake 1.4 Released with Apple M1 Support

  Handbrake 1.4 released with many new features and updates. We wrap up the release in this post.

• Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Google Docs Editors

  Google has a firm grip on the desktop. Their products and services are ubiquitous. Don’t get us wrong, we’re long-standing admirers of many of Google’s products and services. They are often high quality, easy to use, and ‘free’, but there can be downsides of over-reliance on a specific company. For example, there are concerns about their privacy policies, business practices, and an almost insatiable desire to control all of our data, all of the time.

  What if you are looking to move away from Google and embark on a new world of online freedom, where you are not constantly tracked, monetised and attached to Google’s ecosystem.

  In this series, we explore how you can migrate from Google without missing out on anything. We’ll recommend open source solutions.

• Meet Clapper: A Sleek Looking Linux Video Player for Minimalists

  Love minimalism? You’ll love Clapper.

  Clapper is a new video player for Linux. Actually, it’s more for GNOME than Linux.

  Built on top of GNOME’s JavaScript library and GTK4 toolkit, it blends naturally in the GNOME desktop environment. It uses GStreamer for media backend and OpenGL for rendering.

  I like application with minimalist approach. While VLC is the Swiss Knife of media players, I prefer MPV player for the sleek, minimal interface. And now I think I am going to stick with Clapper for sometime.

Instructionals/Technical

• We update our content and website

  However, this time, we do not only update single articles one after another, but started to restructure our website and the whole content. Restructuring our website means that some content is unavailable at the moment. It also means that some links may not work anymore. The missing content will be back soon.

• How to Easily Install Vim plugins

  Most Linux distribution is now preinstalled with VIM 8+ version. Vim 8 has built support for packages. You can now easily install Vim plugins with this added support.

  Package support helps to add, update, remove and manage packages. Vim can natively load third-party packages without the help of any plugin manager.

  In this tutorial, you learn how to install Vim plugins manually and using a plugin manager.

• How to Install Latest PHP 8.0 on Rocky Linux 8

  PHP 8.0 was officially released back on November 26, 2020, and is a major update to PHP 7.4. At the time of publishing this guide, the latest stable release is PHP 8.0.8, which was released on July 1, 2021.

• How to install Rocket.chat with nginx reverse proxy on Ubuntu 20.04 – VITUX

  If you are searching for an open-source self-hosted chat platform then Rocketchat can be the best option. Rocket chat can be used as an alternative to different communication channels such as slack, mattermost etc. Rocket chat comes with different features such as group chats, video conferencing, and you can integrate live chat with other platforms. In this article, we will learn how to set up a self-hosted Rocketchat system with let’s encrypt SSL certificates.

• How to make your Ubuntu Desktop look like Windows 11 – Techzim

  Although my laptop is more than capable of running Windows 11 that is never going to happen. While Windows 11 is no doubt an awesome operating system with stunning visuals and very impressive under the hood improvements I stopped dual-booting many years ago. That was after discovering that the only time I was booting into Windows was to install updates.

  But this weekend I did something Windows related. A friend of mine who is a gamer challenged me. I am always telling people about the malleability of Linux and how you can make it look like anything including Windows 11. He wanted me to make my Desktop, yes running Ubuntu if you haven’t already guessed, look like Windows 11. So I went to work and the results surprised both of us. You can indeed make Ubuntu look like Windows 11.

• Kali Linux on VirtualBox: A Step-by-Step Installation Guide

  This step by step tutorial will show you and guide you through all the steps on how to install Kali Linux on VirtualBox.

  Kali Linux is mainly used for advanced penetration testing and security auditing. It is a Debian based rolling release Linux distribution that specifically caters to the likes of network analysts and penetration testers. The main aspects of Kali Linux is its pre-installed security tool suite that can be used for a variety of cyber-security purposes.

  This guide is about how to install Kali Linux on VirtualBox, allowing you to have a Kali VM. VirtualBox is a free, open-source and cross-platform virtualization software that creates a virtual machines on top of your OS.

• How To Install Zenmap on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Zenmap on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Zenmap is the official cross-platform GUI for the Nmap Security Scanner. The main difference between Zenmap and Nmap tools is its graphical interface, which can be suitable for beginners or speed up the work process. This means that you can simply scan graphically without using a Linux terminal. It is free and runs on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, etc.

  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 the step-by-step installation of the Zenmap Nmap GUI 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.

• 10 Apt Command Examples You Must Know

  The apt is the most powerful command-line utility for managing the packages such as installing packages, updating package info, upgrading packages as well as Linux kernel, and removing unused packages in the Linux Debian family. The apt command is a CLI package managing tool that is a combination of apt-get and apt-cache which is more structured and advanced

  Aside from installing, updating, and deleting packages, apt command has other features also. In this article, we will be discussing ten apt commands you must know with their examples. To demonstrate these examples I have used the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS system.

• How to Remove Directory in Linux by command and GUI Guide 2021

  Are you a new user of Linux OR You are trying to delete a directory in Linux, and getting error “Directory is not empty”

  Don’t worry anymore. This article will help learn “How to remove directory in Linux step by step by using a command-line interface and graphical interface both.

• How to Extend XFS Root Partition without LVM in Linux

  There are some situations where / or root partition is running out of disk space in Linux. Even compressing and deleting old log files did not help, so in such cases we are left with no option but to extend / filesystem. In this article, we will demonstrate how to extend xfs based root partition without lvm in a Linux system.

  If we talk about the logical steps, first we have to add additional space to OS disk and then use growpart and xfs_growfs commands to extend the root partition (or filesystem).

  I am assuming we have a Linux based Virtual Machine running either on KVM hypervisor or VMware or VirtualBox. In this machine, we have 10 GB XFS based / root partition and want to extend it till 20 GB.

• lsblk command in Linux to List Block Devices tutorial for beginners 2021

  The lsblk command in Linux is a useful command for administrators, which is used to list information about all available block devices.

  It does not list information about RAM disks.

  lsblk command gets the information from the /sys virtual file system to obtain the information and display on the screen.

  By default, you will get the information about all block devices in tree-like formate excluding except RAM disks.

• Popular Commands to reboot Linux System with examples

  You don’t need to reboot a Linux server, they are not running only 2-3 weeks even years without interruption. Still, I am explaining the most popular commands to reboot Linux server and system.

  If you are window user then you know simple way to reboot you system using graphical interface.

  Linux is not one step back then windows operating system, It’s developer build up Linux with beautiful graphical interface.

Games

• Scalpers are already trying to make some quick cash with the Steam Deck | GamingOnLinux

  Scalpers, the scourge of anyone trying to buy a graphics card or console have now decided to move onto the Steam Deck too and so the cycle continues. Anyone surprised? We’re guessing not at all.

  Valve did make a few steps to try and combat them but it seems not enough. Although, there is only so many ways you can stop people doing it. For the first 48 hours, Valve made sure only users who had purchased something on Steam before June 2021 could order one and there is a small reservation fee too.

  The question is, why go to a scalper at all? Valve are still taking reservations. Well, take a look at ebay and you’ll see plenty of listings like these:

• OpenLoco for Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion has an important update out | GamingOnLinux

  Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion is the lesser known follow-up spiritual successor to Transport Tycoon that now lives on again thanks to the free and open source reimplementation OpenLoco. The project is getting into a pretty good state after the last few major updates, however some problems managed to creep in that a fresh release 21.07 fixes up.

• An interview with the developer of TRBot for running your own Twitch Plays like event | GamingOnLinux

  “My name is Thomas “Kimimaru” Deeb and I am a professional and hobbyist software developer. I started playing video games at a very young age. I continue to be fascinated with imaginative game worlds and the compelling challenges games present through their gameplay.

  Some of my favorite games include classic franchises such as Mario, Zelda, Sonic, and Kirby. Recently, I’ve been playing games I missed out on growing up, such as Tomb Raider, Ōkami, and even some more obscure titles like Chibi Robo!. I’ve played numerous games at this point and don’t intend to stop anytime soon!”

• The classic Crusader: No Remorse is ready for testing in ScummVM | GamingOnLinux

  Crusader: No Remorse, the classic sci-fi action game from 1995 is getting a new home with ScummVM and you can go ahead and test it right now.

  For those unaware ScummVM is a free and open source application that allow you to run tons of classic graphical adventure and role-playing games, as long as you have the data files needed. This allows you to easily play them on modern systems, often with enhancements to make the experience a bit smoother.

  Over time the ScummVM project has expanded to include more types of games and following on from supporting Origin Systems classic Ultima games they’ve moved onto adding in support for Crusader: No Remorse (but Crusader: No Regret is not yet supported).

• Didn’t take long: the Linux Editor for the Open 3D Engine sees great progress | GamingOnLinux

  After the huge announcement recently from the Linux Foundation that Amazon had donated the Lumberyard game engine as open source, with the formation of the Open 3D Engine and the Open 3D Foundation we’re seeing some good progress on getting the editor supported on Linux.

  Developer Fabio Anderegg shared the news via Twitter, as they’ve been hacking away at the code to get it into a usable state on Linux. There’s a pull request in progress on the official GitHub page which mentions a bunch that needs to be done but that didn’t stop Anderegg showing it off:

• Official Linux support for The Lightbringer is now confirmed | GamingOnLinux

  After putting up a Beta test, developer Rock Square Thunder who are working on The Lightbringer has now confirmed full official Linux support is happening.

  “The Lightbringer is a poetic adventure/puzzle platformer with light combat elements, set in a beautiful world claimed by a vile corruption. Guided by your sister’s spirit, you must prevail where she could not. Cleanse the corruption, become The Lightbringer.”

• Godot 4.0 with Vulkan getting closer to Alpha, looks like GLES2 to be dropped | GamingOnLinux

  As Godot 4.0 gets ever closer to seeing the light with an Alpha version, the team has clarified what OpenGL / OpenGL ES support to expect from it since the big thing with 4.0 is Vulkan.

  It’s looking like there won’t actually be any OpenGL/ES support when 4.0 is out, because the renderer went through such a massive overhaul for Vulkan and many new advanced features. A lot of it was done from scratch to make use of new and more modern techniques so they’re looking at Godot 4.1 to bring back in official OpenGL/ES support.

• Ultra App Kit 1.1 Released As New Cross-Platform UI Toolkit

  Ultra App Kit is a new cross-platform, user interface toolkit option focused on satisfying the needs of game engines/tooling but also covering needs for other desktop GUI applications.

  Sunday’s release of Ultra App Kit 1.1 delivers on Linux and macOS support complementing its prior Windows support. Josh Klint of the Ultra Engine project wrote into Phoronix further explaining some of his motivation with Ultra App Kit, “I’m the developer who brought Leadwerks Game Engine to Linux a few years ago. I’m working on new game development technology and the first stage I am releasing is a cross-platform GUI toolkit that includes support for Linux. I had a pretty rough time wrangling with GTK for Leadwerks, which lead me to replace it with my own GUI system written directly on X11/XRender (and GDI+ / Quartz on Windows and Mac, respectively). The GUI toolkit was first released in April of this year, and now version 1.1 is released, adding Linux and Mac support. I plan to use this to build new game development tools, but it’s also available now as a standalone product for other developers to build GUI applications with.”

Distributions

• BSD

  • A Look at Profiling: FreeBSD Sort

    Still, we got a decent performance boost out of this exercise. And by using sort’s flags to change up the sorting algorithm to quicksort or mergesort rather than heapsort, we have perfomance that’s almost as good as GNU sort and NetBSD sort.

• Fedora and IBM/Red Hat

  • The NeuroFedora Blog: Next Open NeuroFedora meeting: 19 July 1300 UTC

    Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 19 July at 1300UTC in #fedora-neuro on IRC (Libera.chat). The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend.

  • Linux package managers: dnf vs apt

    There are many ways to get applications onto a Linux system. Some, like Flatpak and containers, are new. Others, like DEB and RPM, are classic formats that have withstood the test of time.

    There isn’t a universal installer for any operating system. Today, all major OSes use a mix of app stores (both first and third party), drag-and-drop installation, and installation wizards because there are innumerable developers delivering software. Different developers have different requirements for the code they deliver, and this informs the installation method they each choose.

  • Expanding Red Hat Enterprise Linux choices for research and academia

    Modern workloads, whether critical production applications or leading-edge research projects, require a more reliable, stable and secure operating system foundation. The adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) by governments, businesses and nonprofit organizations across the globe, has led to RHEL being the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform and helps demonstrate our belief that it provides the best backbone for nearly every computing need, anywhere on the open hybrid cloud. This is why we’ve been working to make RHEL more readily available to more users, from enabling individual developers to run RHEL in production at no cost to streamlining how open source projects can access no-cost RHEL to drive the next wave of innovation.

    Today, we’re further extending the availability of RHEL by expanding access to our subscription offerings for research and academic institutions. While Red Hat has historically offered a low-cost option for academic institutions, it was only available to degree-granting entities. Now, a much broader range of research and academia-related organizations can enter Red Hat’s academic subscription program, making it far easier to access, run and maintain RHEL to suit their unique needs, whether it’s simply running a web server to underpinning a high-performance computing (HPC) environment. This greater accessibility is also intended to help better prepare students and other learners for future opportunities in IT-related fields.

  • Benchmarking Kafka producer throughput with Quarkus | Red Hat Developer

    The interest in event-driven architecture has sped up within the last couple of years, with a great level of adoption and modernization effort across all enterprises. Apache Kafka, one of the most pervasive streaming middleware technologies, is being tried and tested by many development teams. High performance is a critical goal for these teams.

    There are numerous resources for configuring and benchmarking your Kafka cluster size. Such guides and benchmarks naturally involve producers and consumers, but their primary aim is the performance of the Kafka cluster itself. Recently, I was asked to give pointers regarding how to fine-tune Kafka producers for high throughput. Many guides explain the most important Kafka producer configurations and their relationship to performance, as well as the trade-offs. But there isn’t much benchmark data showcasing how different configuration combinations can impact producer message throughput.

    In this article, I show the throughput outcomes resulting from various producer configurations I employed in a recent test setup. My hope is to help other developers and architects better understand the relationship between producer configurations and message throughput. You can use this information to make educated guesses while configuring your own Kafka clusters.

  • Apps for daily needs part 2: office suites – Fedora Magazine

    Today, almost every family has a desktop computer or laptop. That’s because the computer has become a very important requirement. Moreover, many people have to create documents and presentations in digital format for work or study. Therefore, the office suites are must-have application on almost all computers. This article will introduce some of the open source office suites that you can use on Fedora Linux. You may need to install the software mentioned. If you are unfamiliar with how to add software packages in Fedora Linux, see my earlier article Things to do after installing Fedora 34 Workstation. Here is the list of apps for daily needs in the office suites category.

  • Fedora 35 Approved For Third-Party Repo Changes, More Optimal Encryption Default – Phoronix

    The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has unanimously approved a large number of new Fedora 35 features this week.

    There are a number of additional features now approved for Fedora 35, which is due for release this October. Among the latest feature changes approved by FESCo include:

    - An update mechanism for opting into third-party software repositories more easily and so the repositories are immediately enabled. No new repositories or other changes are there by default, just changing how such third party repositories are enabled if carried out by the user.

  • 5 essential soft skills for sysadmin self-improvement | Enable Sysadmin

    You might be the most technically skilled person in your company, yet you might not be able to pitch your ideas in a meeting or track your work and get it done on time. So what could be the problem in this scenario? More often than not, your soft skills—or the absence of them—are causing this problem. In this article, I dig a little deeper into why these five soft skills are essential for a sysadmin and the resources available to improve them.

  • OKRs and KPIs: 6 counterintuitive tips for leaders | The Enterprisers Project

    Conventional thinking isn’t always bad, but it can lead to a bad result – missing out on new ways of doing things. This idea is particularly important to goal-setting and performance measurement in IT and business. A “same old, same old” approach to metrics will likely lead to the same old results. That’s good if you’re happy with the way things are; it’s less effective if you’re launching a brand-new initiative or driving significant change.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy: 10 questions to ask about yours

    In recent years, the vast majority of the enterprises that invested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities fell into one of two categories: those who used AI applications successfully to improve operations or cut costs and those who were participating in what Goutham Belliappa, vice president of AI engineering at Capgemini North America calls “AI theater:” They implemented AI models “to create some buzz in the marketplace, but they didn’t go through the hard work of tying their AI capabilities to business value,” Belliappa says.

    Today, companies stand on the precipice of a new era. “AI is on the cusp of a tremendous economic impact that will disrupt every industry in the same way that software was positioned about thirty years ago,” says Brian Jackson, analyst and research director at Info-Tech Research Group. “AI’s rapidly growing capabilities are being applied to solve problems in far more efficient ways than we were able to do previously.”

• Devuan Family

  • Devuan 4.0 Alpha Builds Updated For Debian 11 Stripped Of systemd

    Back in April Devuan 4.0 alpha builds began for this Debian fork/downstream that aims for init system freedom by allowing Debian GNU/Linux to work without a dependence on systemd. Devuan 4.0 is tracking upstream Debian 11 quite closely with its changes.

    Following this weekend’s full freeze for Debian 11 “Bullseye”, the Devuan project has now published a new set of ISOs.

Devices/Embedded

• Rock 3A Offers Faster M.2 Storage in Raspberry Pi Form Factor

  The Raspberry Pi form factor is a popular one, compact enough to fit in some interesting places yet packed with power and IO. What the form factor lacks is fast and cheap storage possibilities. Step forward the Radxa Rock 3A, as spotted by CNX Software, which offers the familiar form factor and two M.2 slots for Wi-Fi and SSDs.

• ROCK 3A SBC brings M.2 slots for NVMe SSD, WiFi 6 to Raspberry Pi form factor

  Radxa ROCK 3A is a single board computer powered by Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor that closely follows Raspberry Pi 3 Model B form factor like the early Rock Pi 4 SBC, but with a twist.

  By switching from a Rockchip RK3399 to a Rockchip RK3568, the board loses some CPU and GPU performance, but gains extra I/Os with enabled the company to add an additional M.2 slot with PCIe to ROCK 3A board, meaning it’s now possible to attach one NVMe SSD and another M.2 module like a WiFi 6 M.2 card.

• Toughened up DAQ system runs Linux

  Adlink has launched two rugged DAQ systems that run Linux on a Cortex-A9 SoC and provide 16- (MCM-216) or 8-channel (MCM-218) analog inputs plus 2x analog outputs, 2x GbE, 2x USB, and DIO.

  Adlink has announced two standalone, Ethernet digital acquisition computers designed for 24-hour sensor measurement and condition monitoring applications. The rugged, 126.5 x 110.5 x 40mm MCM-216 and MCM-218 can be used for tasks such as distributed and remote data acquisition, edge analytics, and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) in applications like semiconductor factory digitization, petrochemical plant monitoring, and wafer feeder vacuum pump monitoring.

  The MCM-216 and MCM-218 are similar to last year’s MCM-204, which also runs Linux on a 1GHz Cortex-A9 SoC (possibly the i.MX6). Adlink also offers a larger, Apollo Lake based MCM-100 system with DAQ features that supplies more general purpose embedded I/O and mini-PCIe.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • A Low Cost Hackable Watch

    The PineTime is supposed to be the partner of the PinePhone – a Linux open source phone, but it can be used with other phones or standalone. Its spec isn’t hugely impressive and it is a bit on the big size, but you can program it: [...]

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android 12 beta testers receive shockingly large number of notifications from Gboard – PhoneArena

  • Motorola Android 11 update: List of eligible devices & release date

  • Xiaomi Android 11 update tracker: Mi & Redmi devices received beta/stable

  • Galaxy M01s finally gets the Android 11 update with One UI 3.1 – SamMobile

  • How to Recover Deleted Files from Android without Root | TechBullion

  • How to print from your Android phone – Phandroid

  • Terrifying Android scam returns! Here’s what you must do to avoid it | Express.co.uk

  • Digital Wellbeing’s “Heads Up” feature rolls out to more Android phones

  • Google Launches the Android Game Development Kit

  • How to Take Scrolling Screenshots on your Android Smartphone

  • Terrifying Android scam is back! Here’s what you must do to avoid it | Express.co.uk

  • How to Move or Back Up Telegram Secret Chats on Android

  • New Android TV Beta Delivers Image, UI Enhancements – channelnews

  • OnePlus Nord N10 5G Android 11 rolls out as its first and last upgrade – SlashGear

  • Xperia 1 III premium flagship might get only one Android upgrade – SlashGear

  • #Pegasus is a Malware That Infects IPhones and Android Devices. It Allows Its Users to …

  • onn Android TV UHD review: Is this Walmart streaming device any good? | Tom’s Guide

How to Make Tech Interviews Suck Less

Interviews for tech jobs can be performative at best and exclusionary at worst. Candidates often report they are left feeling anxious, on display, judged — and set up to fail. Exercises meant to gauge a developer’s technical prowess can seem arbitrary and irrelevant to the role being filled.

Hiring processes often accentuate the worst sides of the tech industry. A bias toward pedigree — four-year computer science degrees, work experience at a FAANG — excludes candidates from non-traditional backgrounds. Whiteboard tests, a mainstay of developer interviews, favor the most charismatic, not the best person for the job. Making candidates jump through lots of hoops — all while unpaid — can push those under-represented in tech to drop out mid-process, as many do at alarming rates.

How to Make Tech Interviews More Inclusive

Tech interviews can be “performative at best and exclusionary at worst,” writes Jennifer Riggins, with stress-inducing whiteboard tests, for example, favoring the most charismatic candidates rather than the most qualified.

Science

• European Research Council bans journal impact factor from bids

  In the European Research Council’s (ERC) latest work programme, applicants are for the first time explicitly told to avoid mentioning the metric when listing their publications.

Education

• Taliban sweep through Afghanistan, imperiling girls school

  They will close my school,” said Khaliqyar, whose three daughters attend the one-story building defended by a lone, unarmed guard.

• MIT digital learning dean quits as edX sale backlash grows

  Krishna Rajagopal, who has announced his departure, told colleagues that he had “serious continuing reservations about the path forward for edX that MIT has announced”. Meanwhile, many of his colleagues have vowed to create a new non-profit alternative platform to distribute their courses online.

Health/Nutrition

• Detroit’s Prison Population Will Soon Be Stuck Living Next to a Toxic Site

• ‘Pandemic Is Not Over’: As Delta Variant Spreads, US Surgeon General ‘Worried About What Is to Come’

  During appearances on multiple Sunday talk shows, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy expressed dismay over the current surge in Covid-19 cases—more than half of which are now linked to the highly transmissible Delta variant—throughout the country, especially in areas with low inoculation rates, and urged people to get vaccinated swiftly.

  “We’ve made so much progress over this past year, but what I worry about are those… millions of people in our country who are not vaccinated.”—Dr. Vivek Murthy

• How Fox News’ Covid vaccine denialism hurts my patients

  I don’t blame my patients for their refusal. What breaks my heart, as someone who took an oath to prevent harm, is that my patients choose to abandon the science and evidence that can save their lives. I do blame Fox News and other right-wing media outlets for poisoning the minds of millions of Americans with the deceptive propaganda they spray into living rooms 24/7.

  This isn’t just my experience. As executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, an organization of medical professionals across the country, I hear stories like these from members every day.

• Some people can tell if you have an infection just by looking at you

  The team worked with 169 volunteers from six different cultural backgrounds, including city dwellers in Stockholm and hunter-gatherers in the rainforests of Thailand and Malaysia, and in the coastal deserts of Mexico. Each volunteer was shown photos of Swedish people taken 2 hours after they had been injected with either Escherichia coli or a placebo.

  Those who had been injected with E. coli were at the beginning stages of an immune response when their photos were taken – and some of the volunteers in all six groups had a better-than-chance ability to identify that they were sick.

• Smaller Pharma Firms Boost EU Innovation Presence

  The 15-year anniversary report from the European Medicines Agency’s SME Office highlights the growing importance of smaller biopharmaceutical companies in the development, assessment and approval of innovative drugs.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Microsoft Has Found Another Flaw In The PrintSpooler Service

    Microsoft has found yet another security flaw in its PrintSpooler service that allows Windows to print documents. The total tally of flaws now sits at three.

    The first one was addressed in a June security update, only for another one to be discovered called ‘PrintNightmare’ which affected every version of Windows and the company put out a patch that partially fixed the issue. Now a third flaw has been discovered which leaves Windows unable to print documents.

  • Microsoft Recommends Users Disable Print Spooler to Avoid Exploit

  • Detecting and Hunting for the Malicious NetFilter Driver

    During the week of June 21st, 2021, information security researchers from G Data discovered that a driver for Microsoft Windows named “netfilter.sys” had a backdoor added by a 3rd party that Microsoft then signed as a part of the Microsoft OEM program. [...]

  • Security

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Data Leak Exposes Global Surveillance Plot Targeting Journalists and Dissidents

        NSO Group, a private Israeli firm that sells surveillance technology to governments worldwide, insists that its Pegasus spyware is used only to “investigate terrorism and crime.” Leaked data, however, reveals that the company’s hacking tool “has been used to facilitate human rights violations around the world on a massive scale.”

        “The Pegasus Project lays bare how NSO’s spyware is a weapon of choice for repressive governments seeking to silence journalists, attack activists, and crush dissent, placing countless lives in peril.”—Agnès Callamard, Amnesty

      • Pegasus: Spyware sold to governments ‘targets activists’

        Rights activists, journalists and lawyers around the world have been targeted with phone malware sold to authoritarian governments by an Israeli surveillance firm, media reports say.

      • From Macy’s to Ace Hardware, facial recognition is already everywhere

        Some of the US’s most popular stores — including Macy’s and Ace Hardware — are using facial recognition on their customers, largely without their knowledge.

        Now the digital rights nonprofit Fight for the Future has helped launch a nationwide campaign to document which of the country’s biggest retailers are deploying facial recognition. Launched on Wednesday, the campaign, which has the support of more than 35 human rights groups, aims to draw attention to retail stores using facial-scanning algorithms to boost their profits, intensify security systems, and even track their employees.

        The campaign comes as a clear reminder that the reach of facial recognition goes far beyond law enforcement and into the private, commercial storefronts we regularly visit. Experts warn that facial recognition in these spaces is particularly concerning because the technology is largely unregulated and undisclosed, meaning both customers and employees may be unaware this software is surveilling and collecting data about them.

Defence/Aggression

• Media Embellish Protests, Downplay Effects of US Sanctions in Cuba

  A wave of protests in Cuba became the somewhat unlikely focus of global attention earlier this week, the events becoming the worldwide No. 1 trend on Twitter for over 24 hours, as celebrities, politicians and even the president of the United States weighed in on the action. A statement from Joe Biden’s office read:

• My Heart Aches for Cuba — and I Yearn for More Solidarity From the Global Left

• Iran [cr]ackers masqueraded as UK scholars to [cr]ack journalists, think tanks

  Iranian [cr]ackers masqueraded as British scholars with the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in an attempt to solicit sensitive information from journalists, think tank experts and senior professors since the beginning of the year, according to a new report by the cybersecurity company Proofpoint on Tuesday.

• Sweden: Migrant Mafia Terrorizes Business Owners – Police Warn They Can Not Protect Victims (Video)

  Policeman Ulf Boström breaking into tears when discussing the hidden victims suffering from migrant Gangs: “The victims have no chance.”

  Swedish entrepreneurs have lost their families, their livelihoods, or been forced to move out of the country for fear being killed.

  The reason: They are systematically extorted by criminal networks. Now Gothenburg police officer Ulf Boström sounds the alarm that the problem is gigantic and that the police cannot protect the victims.

• ‘Islamic State’ poses growing threat across Africa

  “Unfortunately, ISIS is so widespread in Africa today that you can say it is across the continent,” Nigerian political analyst Bulama Bukarti told DW. “You are talking about groups of countries and subregions.”

  Jihadis have taken control of significant territories in the Sahel and the Lake Chad regions, which include parts of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and Nigeria. In 2018, the West Africa Center for Counter Extremism (WACCE) reported up to 6,000 West Africans who had fought with IS had returned home from Iraq and Syria after the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Sharia in the U.S. Judicial System?

  It is vital to understand that in Islam, Allah’s Law is supreme for Muslims, above all other laws and legal systems. And that poses a problem for America when Islam resides on its territory, because Sharia is completely incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and the foundations of a free society.

  Quraishi’s relationship to Islam, therefore, matters a great deal — seeing that his new position entails significant power and influence in America.

  So let’s dig a little bit deeper on Quraishi.

Environment

• Investigation: How the Meat Industry is Climate-Washing its Polluting Business Model

  In February last year, the head of a leading global meat industry body gave a “pep talk” to his colleagues at an Australian agriculture conference. 

  “It’s a recurring theme that somehow the livestock sector and eating meat is detrimental to the environment, that it is a serious negative in terms of the climate change discussions,” Hsin Huang, Secretary General of the International Meat Secretariat (IMS), told his audience. But the sector, he insisted, could be the “heroes in this discussion” if it wanted to.

  Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts

• Meat Industry Responses: In Full

  DeSmog approached all 10 organisations for which it added profiles to the Agribusiness Database, as part of an investigation into the meat industry’s “climate-washing”. They are: Vion Food Group, Danish Crown, JBS, Tyson, European Livestock Voice, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, Animal Agriculture Alliance, North American Meat Institute, European Roundtable on Beef Sustainability and the International Meat Secretariat.

  The responses DeSmog received are published in full below.

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• Oregon’s Growing Bootleg Fire Is One of 70 Raging in US West Amid Heatwave

• Despite Climate Crisis, Governments Failing to Use Covid Stimulus for Green Recovery

  On the one hand, killer heat is leading to terrifying fires. On the other hand, killer floods are wrecking havoc. Some parts of the planet bake and boil, others sink and swim.

• Energy

  • DOE Quietly Backs Plan for Carbon Capture Network Larger Than Entire Oil Pipeline System

    An organization run by former Obama-era Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, with the backing of the AFL-CIO, a federation of 56 labor unions, has created a policy “blueprint” to build a nationwide pipeline network capable of carrying a gigaton of captured carbon dioxide (CO2).

    The “Building to Net-Zero” blueprint appears to be quietly gaining momentum within the Energy Department, where a top official has discussed ways to put elements into action using the agency’s existing powers.

    Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts

Finance

• When Does the Greed Stop?

  Every aspect of American life has been corrupted by greed. One of the purposes of government is to protect both individuals and society from such corruption, and that means protecting people and institutions from greedy predators.  In that simple task, over the past 40 years since America embraced Reaganomics and Reaganism, our government has failed.

• The Anti-Family Party

  They need it. Even before the pandemic, child poverty had reached post-war records. Even non-poor families were in trouble, burdened with deepening debt and missed payments. Most were living paycheck to paycheck – so if they lost a job, they and their kids could be plunged into poverty. It’s estimated that the new monthly child allowance will cut child poverty by more than half.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The For the People Act Is Still Alive

  The pundits are saying that the For the People Act (FTPA) — the Democrats’ historic voting rights and anti-corruption bill — is dead. It’s not, but perhaps it’s easier to craft a narrative around the futility of legislative efforts than to fairly chronicle a necessary but uphill battle. 

• How “In God We Trust” Bills Are Advancing a Christian Nationalist Agenda

• Disgraced Former Governor Claims He’s Been Exonerated, But the GOP Isn’t So Sure

• Ethiopia Warns News Outlets Not to ‘Mischaracterize’ Tigray

  EMA officials on Thursday said they revoked the license over complaints that the Addis Standard was advancing “the terrorist group’s agency,” including by “legitimizing a terrorist group as a ‘Defense Force.’” The suspension drew outrage from global press freedom watchdogs, who’ve accused the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of taking an increasingly hard line against domestic news outlets covering the conflict.

• The next voting rights battleground is Michigan

  But SB 303 also requires every voter to sign a form before they can vote. The signature on this form must be examined by a poll worker and compared to “the elector’s digitized signature contained in the electronic poll book.” If, in the poll worker’s subjective determination, the signatures do not match, then the voter will be given a provisional ballot.

  SB 304, meanwhile, lays out what happens to these provisional ballots. Essentially, a voter given such a ballot has six days to prove their identity and residency to the county or township clerk — something that they can do by showing many of the same forms of ID that they are already required to show at the polls.

  Read together, the two bills create an absurd situation where some voters could be disenfranchised unless they make a special trip to the clerk’s office to show the same ID card that they already provided to the poll worker. Imagine, for example, that a voter shows their valid driver’s license at the polls, but a poll worker, for whatever reason, declares that the voter’s signature does not match. The voter then has less than a week to make a special trip to the clerk’s office to show the clerk the exact same driver’s license.

• What Thurgood Marshall Taught Me

  When the Judge told that story, he never laughed. Instead, he grew introspective — and would, for once, explain himself. To Marshall, the tale illustrated what the struggle was really about. School desegregation or employment equality or voting rights, all were important, but none were ends in themselves. They were goals in the service of creating a world in which Black people would no longer see themselves the way the stranger in the pool hall did.

• France Learns about Islam’s 1,400 Year Assault

  A historian, linguist and philologist, and a specialist in oriental languages, Ibrahim has methodically exploited first-hand sources, both Muslim and “Western”, and has consulted numerous manuscripts from the Library of Congress in Washington. His book is not only a detailed chronicle of the battles, it is also and above all a rigorous analysis of the intentions and strategies of the various warring leaders. Ibrahim shows that the Muslim forces were essentially obeying a religious, messianic, expansionist, conquering logic, whereas the Christian armies wanted above all to recover territories that for centuries had been Roman, Greek and Christian. He also shows that the religious fervor of today’s Islamists overlaps exactly with ancestral Islamic dogmas, that Western reactions are 1400-year-old self-defense mechanisms, and that current rivalries are the reflection of a very old existential struggle. We interviewed him for La Nef.

• Elite gatekeeping in the age of surveillance capitalism

  I recently had the pleasure of reading Dr. Andy Farnell’s essay “Why we will win the war for general purpose computing”. While I agree with a lot of his statements and thoroughly enjoyed a spot of British wit, the conclusions reached and a few of the stops along the way bother me. Though I am Swedish, my comments here have an undeniably American perspective. Partly because that is where this fight mostly takes place and partly because several European nations are showing signs of the same symptoms.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Kurt Westergaard, Danish cartoonist behind Muhammad cartoon, dies at 86

  Westergaard was a cartoonist for the conservative Jyllands-Posten newspaper from the early 1980s.

  He became world famous in 2005 for his controversial depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in the newspaper.

  Westergaard’s cartoon, which showed a turban bomb, was one of 12 published by the newspaper to make a point about self-censorship and criticism of Islam.

• Kurt Westergaard, Danish cartoonist behind caricature of Mohammed, dies at 86

  The illustrations, which initially went unnoticed, eventually sparked Denmark’s biggest foreign policy crisis since the end of World War II.

  One of the cartoons which sparked particular backlash showed the prophet wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb.

• Danish Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard dies aged 86

  The anger then escalated into anti-Danish violence across the Muslim world in February 2006.

  The violence linked to the cartoons culminated in a 2015 massacre that left 12 people dead at the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly in Paris, which had reprinted the cartoons in 2012.

  Westergaard had been working at Jyllands-Posten since the mid-1980s as an illustrator, and according to Berlingske the drawing in question had actually been printed once before but without sparking much controversy.

• There’s still only one way for authoritarians to control the [Internet]

  Internet shutdowns are a well-worn tactic by authoritarian regimes over the past decade. After Egypt blocked the web during Arab Spring protests, embattled dictators have repeated the tactic in Syria, Myanmar, Uganda, Eswatini, and most recently, Cuba. Full shutdowns, however, represent a worst-case scenario for any regime: In addition to disrupting protesters, they also disrupt the economy and make it harder for the government itself to operate. They are a censorship method of last resort.

• Sweden: Authorities Are Punishing Me for Criticizing Islam

  The law they used against me was meant to stop people from criticizing the government for its disastrous open border policy, and to protect Islam. Our prime minister also said many years ago that he would never criticize Islam, and I’m sure he has never read the Qur’an. I’m worried that my once-beautiful country can become the first caliphate in Europe, and that a demographic jihad can give Muslims a majority within 30 years. Many people are also afraid of a civil war, since criminal Muslim gangs create more and more no-go zones that police don’t dare to enter. Swedish leaders have all attended Bilderberg meetings, and they are not loyal to my country. With this statement I want the rest of the world to know what’s going on in my country.

  Here is a summary article from last year on my case: [...]

Civil Rights/Policing

• Taliban back to old ways in newly seized Afghan territory

  “All imams and mullahs in captured areas should provide the Taliban with a list of girls above 15 and widows under 45 to be married to Taliban fighters,” said the letter, issued in the name of the Taliban’s cultural commission.

• Life under the Taliban in Afghanistan reverts to ‘dark age’

  “The Taliban banned women from going outside without the burqa and without male companions. They have banned music and instructed that men should not shave their beards,” said Sojod, 26, from the province of Jowzjan. “They are asking families to give their daughters to the commanders to marry

• ‘No smoking, no shaving’: Taliban restore old rules in newly seized Afghan territory

  “Girls attending schools beyond sixth grade were barred from classes.”

Monopolies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • AI Inventions and Patents | BananaIP Counsels [Dd: Patents pushed using buzzwords and unadulterated garbage]

      As new technologies emerge, they challenge traditional legal principles and concepts, which often lag behind technological progress. Though Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a term and a field has been in existence since the 1950s, it did not pose serious legal challenges as its implementability and applicability was limited. Today however, developments in computation, communication, information, data and other technologies have significantly enhanced the implementability and utility of AI for different purposes in different fields. This has set off debates with respect to several well settled legal principles including those governing ownership, protection and enforcement of intellectual property (IP) relating to AI inventions and creations.

      When they finally emerge, the answers to some of the questions might affect the ability of the IP system to promote progress of science, technology, and creativity. Though Courts in some countries have arrived at determinations on AI inventorship and ownership, several questions are still open, and are the subject of legislative activity and/or policy making. Reports of WIPO and different patent offices such as the USPTO indicate that AI techniques have diverse applications across many fields, and are difficult, if not impossible, to track. The ubiquity of AI applications and related consequences, and the rapid pace at which Artificial Intelligence research seems to be progressing makes it very challenging to arrive at a specific policy framework and approach, and the resultant openness/ambiguity is reflected in the response of patent offices to applications involving AI. With that in mind, this article gives a perspective of some AI patent trends and patentability issues with specific focus on India.

• Copyrights

  • Developer on Twitch Creates Neat Tool to Prevent DMCA Notices

    Twitch users who play copyrighted music in the background leave themselves open to DMCA notices that can result in a ban. Other than expensive licensing there has been no obvious solution to this problem but thanks to developer Peter Frydenlund Madsen, Twitch streamers can now play copyrighted music to their fans, without risking infringement complaints.