It was a fun experiment, but I suddenly had a functioning Linux laptop, albeit an old one, that I had no idea what to do with. Other than a long boot process, the MacBook performs very well given its age. So I decided that I wanted to use it to learn Python, an intimidating process I have yet to start.
In today's rant video, I attempt to answer a common question that I hear from new-to-Linux users especially.
If you want a quick way to destroy your system it's piping links into sudo bash but this is such a common way to install software from github projects and I'd love to see that stop.
It's a Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark battle between SteamOS and Windows 10 on the Steam Deck!
Intel's third DG2 GPU based on the Xe-HPG architecture, the SOC3, has been spotted within Intel's Graphics System Controller Firmware Update library in Linux.
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Spotted within the IGSCU FU in Linux, the Intel SOC3 which is the codename for the DG2-256 GPU has been spotted. As the name suggests, this chip features 256 Execution units, making up a total of 2048 ALUs. Simply put, the SOC3 is half the core configuration of the SOC1 which means that it will be smaller and easier to manufacture.
When we are at a conference and want to present our projects in front of colleagues, a whiteboard is a mandatory tool we need for the presentation. But when it is a virtual conference, we cannot just use a manual whiteboard as people on another side of the device may not properly observe what’s on the board. However, there are many virtual whiteboards for Linux available to help in your virtual conference. These apps are also very essential for virtual classes too.
Wireless security is the prevention of unauthorized access or damage to computers or data using wireless networks, which include Wi-Fi networks. The term may also refer to the protection of the wireless network itself from adversaries seeking to damage the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the network.
To improve wireless security it’s important to be aware of measures that are used to bypass security. We cover software that’s useful for penetration testing and security assessment. Target users include security professionals and pentesters.
App launchers enable you to launch apps and find files on your computer's local storage with ease. Apart from searching local storage, some app launchers even let you look up things on the web, perform calculations, run shell commands, and translate text, among other things.
If you're on Linux, there are several app launchers you can use to streamline your system operations. Ulauncher is one of these. It's touted to be the fastest app launcher on Linux with an extensive extensions library.
Let's dive right in and explore Ulauncher in more detail.
While Raspberry PI OS Desktop has the ability to automatically mount external USB devices on plug in, the Lite version doesn’t include this feature. For this reason, projects needing USB storage automounted on Raspberry PI must include some settings to find the storage ready from boot
When you run into a problem with file permissions on Linux, quite often the source of your frustration will have something to do with settings pertaining to either the file’s owner or group. It’s pretty much inevitable that if you use Linux regularly, at one point or another, you are going to have to change a file or directory’s owner or group setting to fix a problem.
In this article, we’re going to demystify the concepts of Linux file owners and groups and show you how they affect who can access and manipulate the data on your system.
As I’m playing with PKCS#11 token a lot recently, I’m now thinking about generating all essential data off the card and then importing. This is less secure but makes backup possible. So I tried with OpenSSL to generate everything needed.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install LibreOffice on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, LibreOffice is a free and open-source office-suite productivity software. It is a free alternative for Microsoft Office. The LibreOffice suite comprises programs for Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula 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 through the step-by-step installation of LibreOffice’s open-source cross-platform office suite on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
kitty is a terminal with some nice features (I particularly like the focus on low latency, and the best-in-class support for emoji) but with a rather unusual default configuration. Since everybody's opinions are bad, I will offer my own configuration so far to get a bit closer to classic terminals' defaults...
Containers can be a real challenge to manage. With so many moving parts and commands to work with, life can get a bit challenging. This is especially so as you scale up your deployments. One to make this a bit easier on you and/or your dev teams is to make use of a GUI tool that can be accessed from anywhere on your LAN. That way all of your developers can work much more efficiently, effectively, and reliably.
One such tool for this task is Portainer. This GUI can be deployed on top of Kubernetes, Docker, or Docker Swarm works seamlessly on a third-party cloud host or can be used on-prem or even at the edge.
Portainer gives you complete control over your containers, allowing you to pull images, create containers, networks and endpoints, and create registries. For anyone looking to employ a GUI to manage containers, you could do a lot worse than Portainer.
Trivial File Transfer Protocol, well known as TFTP, is a simple lockstep File transfer protocol that lets a client get a file from or rather put a file onto a remote host. One of its basic uses is in the early phases of nodes booting from a local area network.
In simple terms, the TFTP server is a depicted protocol that functions on user Datagram Protocol. However, unlike FTP, it does not utilize Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to transfer data.
Most preeminently, the implementation of the TFTP server protocol is enforced where security and authentication are not mandatory. This is the primary reason it is barely exercised in a computer network as it lacks the required security measures hence rendering it vulnerable over the internet.
For that reason, its application is usually helpful in transferring boot and configuration files among linking PCs in a confined network setup.
How To Remove Files And Directories In Linux With Examples. There are multiple ways to remove files and directories in Linux.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Tixati on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Tixati is a simple yet powerful BitTorrent Client application. Tixati is used to download torrent files like Utorrent. This app supports a cross-platform application available to download on all popular operating systems (Microsoft Windows, Linux) excluding macOS.
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 Tixati torrent client 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.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to enable OpenLDAP audit logging. OpenLDAP uses Auditlog overlays to record any changes made to the database to a specified log file.
So I have this specific use case where I get data in a comma-separated values (CSV) file. I pick up the company name, address, telephone, email, and some other data from that file. Once data is collected, I create a final pdf using a simple script.
Python is one of the most popular high-level languages, focusing on high-level and object-oriented applications from simple scrips to complex machine learning algorithms. Python is famous for its simple, easy-to-learn syntax, emphasizes readability, and reduces program maintenance costs and more straightforward conversion to newer releases. Python supports modules and packages, and one of the many is the popular PIP package manager.
Learn the easy steps to install Telegram messenger on Debian 11 bullseye Linux desktop for chatting, voice call, and much more…
If you are familiar with WhatsApp, then Telegram would not require a detailed introduction because it is a similar kind of application. Similar to WhatsApp, users can install Telegram on their smartphone and get registered using the cell phone number to chat with other users of Telegram. You can share or download images, videos, documents and files very easily via it. Further, it is also possible to make video and voice calls, create polls, groups, and channels to connect with each other. Telegram is particularly popular because of the latter function.
One of the popular features that make Telegram popular is its subscription system for channels, which works similarly to YouTube: according to your interests, you can subscribe to channels in Telegram. If the channel operator posts new content, you can see it in the chat overview. Users can easily select posted content and forward it to family and friends. This makes it clear from which user or channel the content originally comes. In this way, you can quickly find new channels for your own interests. Also, it offers broadcast functions as WhatsApp has.
Virtual Machines are like a gateway to enjoying multiple OSs on a single system. A Windows user can enjoy Linux, Mac, and other operating systems. However, a lot of users are complaining that Ubuntu is freezing in Oracle VirtualBox. We are going to resolve this issue with some simple solutions.
The Backspace key isn't something you normally think about too much, but sometimes you might find it doesn't work correctly in the terminal, especially when logged in to a remote machine, echoing "^H" instead of erasing what you've typed.
Fortunately, this is easy to fix with a simple command.
Wine 7.4, the new development of the compatibility layer capable of running Windows apps on Linux, is out.
The new release bundled Vkd3d, 3D graphics library built on top of Vulkan, for its implementation of Direct3D 12.
Other changes include defaults to ‘Light’ theme, WineD3D, D3D12 and DXGI modules converted to PE, more large scale cleanups to support ‘long’ type. And, there more than a dozen of bug-fixes. See more here.
I haven’t told you yet, but I have a great admiration for the game Return to Obra Dinn. When I saw that someone took the visual concept and re-implemented it inside a shooter called Kingdom of the Dead, I had to give it a try.
As I continue to use the Steam Deck that Valve sent over for both work and play, I tried Grand Theft Auto V and the initial setup was a massive nuisance. See also: How Valve Can Make the Deck Verified Program Better
This is a game that has gone through verification, to get a Deck "Playable" rating. This means it should work well but may have some minor annoyances like small text or a part requiring the touch screen. Here though, it was far worse and this is the short story of a semi-eventful Saturday night where I just wanted to play a game that I picked carefully enough — or so I thought.
On first launch with Proton 7, what it was verified against, it tells you it needs to install the Rockstar Launcher before you can play. The annoyance begins here of course as I've already waited on a 100GB download. I was at least pre-warned on this since I read the compatibility note. Fine then, let's do it. Except during the launcher install Rockstar gave an error telling me that it simply couldn't proceed. It gave an option to retry with a button I clicked, but that totally failed again. Clearly not a good experience right away. Playable — apparently.
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Really, Valve needs to take another look at how they run Deck Verified if trust in it is to be a real thing. Otherwise, like my friend Nick from The Linux Experiment said in our big collaboration video, the green Verified tick will end up meaningless if strict standards aren't followed. The same of course applies to the Playable category too.
Security is paramount. Security involves defense in depth. Approaching security one step at a time, with consistency and rigour, you can mitigate threats, and keep intruders at bay.
Intruders use a variety of different techniques in an attempt to compromise a system. For example, systems can be attacked by denial of service, cracking, intrusion, snooping (intercepting the data of another user), or viruses/worms/Trojan horses. To have a secure box, a system therefore needs a variety of defenses.
Zorin 16.1 has arrived, marking the first major update of the Linux distribution since August's release.
Unashamedly user-friendly, with an interface unlikely to scare off Windows or Mac users, the most eye-catching element of the update is LibreOffice 7.3, replete with better Microsoft Office compatibility, improved performance, and tweaks for dark mode fans.
Based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, the distribution also has improved hardware support. Handy for those with pockets deep enough for an Nvidia RTX 3050 or Apple Magic Mouse 2. 12th-generation Intel Core chips are also on the list as well as a range of printers and that bête noir of the Linux world: audio hardware. It being Ubuntu, the 5.13 Linux kernel is lurking under the hood.
It's undoubted a nice thing to look at, certainly for users making their first tentative steps away the worlds of Apple and Microsoft, although as with our look at Zorin 16 last year, you will need to pay up if you want access to desktop interfaces styled on Windows and macOS, and what Zorin calls a "professional-grade suite of apps," "advanced productivity software," and access to installation support.
There’s also a bit of aspirational foreshadowing for release 0.2, which can be found here.
The advertised components are interesting. It shipped with Linux kernel 2.4.18 which many of the Linux old-timers (myself included) will remember was right before we started to get nice things like auto-mounting USB drives in kernel 2.6. XFree86 4.2.0 was also in stow, which is what we now call Xorg. If you wanted to build software, you had to use an absolutely ancient gcc toolchain (2.95.3). Web browsing was covered by the ghost of Netscape Navigator, Mozilla 0.9.9. Heady days, these were!
Missing from this release were the contemporary desktop environments of the day, Gnome and KDE – you’d have to wait for version 0.4 in December that year or build this yourself using ABS (Arch Build System). However, the more things change, the more they stay the same. While the FOSS world is still transitioning to Wayland, Xorg (then XFree86) remains the dominant display server throughout the landscape. While Firefox replaced Mozilla less than a year later, Mozilla software like Firefox and Thunderbird are still defacto packages for most distributions. Lastly, KDE and Gnome are still the preeminent desktop environments all these years later.
"Arch Linux, the rolling Linux distribution that powers Valve's Steam Deck is now 20 years old," reports Neowin.
IBM's senior veep of software reiterated for Wall Street this week that OpenShift is the linchpin of Big Blue's overall multi-cloud strategy.
Speaking at Morgan Stanley's Technology, Media and Telecom conference, Tom Rosamilia said the OpenShift container management family, developed by Red Hat that IBM bought in 2019, was key to containerizing Big Blue's Cloud Pak software so that it's easier to run wherever customers choose. That could be on or off-premises, or a hybrid of the two.
"By rebasing our Cloud Paks on OpenShift, we've now moved all of our middleware to an environment where I can deploy on AWS, I can deploy it on Azure, I can deploy it on the IBM Cloud, and I can deploy it on prem," Rosamilia said.
Red Hat has joined the growing list of tech companies to withdraw from Russia over the war in Ukraine, stopping sales just a day after Linux rival SUSE announced a similar move.
The IBM-owned open source business says it is discontinuing sales and services in Russia and Belarus, effective immediately. This withdrawal of service applies to organizations either located or headquartered in Russia or Belarus. Red Hat also said it is also ending partner relationships with organizations based or headquartered in the two countries.
Red Hat president and CEO Paul Cormier confirmed the move in a blog post, where he condemned the Russian military's invasion of Ukraine and said the company stands in unity with everyone affected by the violence.
Rocket Software (Rocket), a global technology leader that develops enterprise software for some of the world’s largest public and private sector companies, today unveiled an updated Rocket€® Open AppDev for Z software, which breaks down existing siloes to unify DevOps for all platforms, including the mainframe, in a single pipeline. The enhanced offering provides a comprehensive DevOps/AppDev modernization solution entirely based in open source and updated to incorporate IBM€® Open Enterprise SDK for Python—meeting market demand for modernization, cost reductions, and enablement of new talent.
Much has been made of the perilous future CIOs whose organizations rely on mainframes may soon have to navigate, but the reality of mainframe infrastructure’s long-term outlook is a little more nuanced than that, as two recent news announcements attest.
Fujitsu recently divulged it will end sales of its mainframes by April 2031, discontinuing support five years after that. But CIOs running workloads on Fujitsu’s GS21 mainframe family don’t need to cast around for a migration path just yet.
The vSAN support means that ObjectScale can run on Dell’s VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure appliance nodes. OpenScale supports Red Hat Open Shift v4.6 and has a bare-metal CSI driver.
I started to type that I stand by my original verdict of the keyboard not being a selling point for the phone itself, but I think I have changed my mind on that. With the changes listed above, if you are looking for a small, lightweight, low-powered and cheap 'laptop' or 'PDA', you can definitely make do with this, especially if you are short on cash and stick to CLI and TUI applications, which run much faster.
Jolla announced a great new software solution that might change the company that was founded by Nokia N9 failure. Jolla tried making hardware for its own Sailfish OS, but that didn’t go as planned which moved the company towards software development.
Lately, Jolla has been cooperating a lot with the automotive industry which lead to the development of AppSupport software for Linux Platforms giving any Linux platform capability to run Android apps. This software was presented at MWC2022.
It’s been more than a decade since Google released Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the first version of the company’s mobile operating system specifically designed for tablets. The next release, Android 4.0, basically merged the smartphone and tablet operating systems into one… and Google hasn’t really paid much attention to tablets or tablet apps since then, leaving it to third-party companies like Samsung to develop an ecosystem around tablets.
But with the release of Android 12L, Google is starting to take tablets seriously again, with a new user interface optimized for large screens. That includes tablets as well as foldable phones. But why now? Google’s Android Tablet CTO Rich Miner has some thoughts on the matter.
We look at file vs object storage locking mechanisms, how different forms of storage ensure data consistency, and especially how object storage is tackling the challenge
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The traditionally conceived relational database epitomises the operation of file system locking – of byte regions within a file, in such cases – but more recent NoSQL databases have a better fit to, and are often backed by, object storage.
NoSQL are non-relational databases. They are not used for the most demanding transactional workloads, and in fact can take semi- and unstructured data. So, they can successfully reside on object storage, and they implement their own locking mechanisms.
list of 5 free suitable alternatives to Microsoft Office with features, comparison and details.
Strattic, a WordPress hosting company that creates static files managed via a headless install, has acquired WP2Static, an open source plugin for generating a static WordPress site. Leon Stafford, the plugin’s creator, has been working for the company for the past nine months and will continue to maintain WP2Static.
In 2020, Stafford removed WP2Static from WordPress.org after the downsides of hosting in the directory began to outweigh the benefits for his project. He cited WordPress.org’s lack of a straightforward way to alert users to important updates, users abusing the Reviews section to file issues, the inability to disable support, and the cumbersome plugin release process.
The Free Software Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to promoting user freedom, has appointed Zoë Kooyman as executive director.
Kooyman, 38, joined the organisation as program manager in early 2019. The FSF said in a statement she had a diverse background as "an experienced international project manager and event producer with demonstrated skills in successfully organising and executing technology and social justice initiatives".
She succeeds John Sullivan who resigned last March after 18 years in the job, with his exit taking place at a time when the organisation was mired in controversy over allowing its founder, Richard Stallman, back on to the board.
When Stallman was reinstated, a campaign was launched to try and get him thrown out again; his supporters rallied to attempt to nullify this initiative.
Version 2.6 of Denemo has been released
New Features for release 2.6
Pitches First note entry method
Notes are visualized on a special MIDI track
Entering rhythms inserts notes from MIDI track
Recorded MIDI is re-synchronized as each bar is entered
Facilities to play, backup, advance, delete, restart recording
Support all system/markup spacing controls
Easy setting of conditional behavior of Denemo Directives
Directives attached all objects (notes, chords, time/key signatures etc)
Use e.g. for changes of clef only for certain instruments
Editing the LilyPond for individual objects
Applies to all objects (notes, chords, time/key signatures etc)
Use e.g. to create editions with chords for smaller hands
Support creating score/paper/header Directives at startup from Score Properties Editor
Directives are created only where absent
Allow easy toggling between listening/playing-in pitches via Shift key.
Create Score and Parts in one PDF
Allow setting transposition on playback easily
Allow recording and attaching musical audio fragments to a score while composing
Easier setting of Movement Tempo
Improvements to Playback Controls
Better control over playback volume
Simplify setting playback start/end markers
Better use of colors
Improve Legibility
Paler Denemo Cursor
Allow alteration of brightness of playback start/end markers
View Menu Improvements
Turn various windows on/off by shortcut
Switch back to Main Window with Esc or Ctrl-w
Staff Display Spacing Control
Ctrl-Drag to loosen/tighten spacing in display
Auto/Manual spacing available
Allows tight spacing for small screens
Allow trailing staff lines at end of movement
Bug Fixes
Fix setting of movement tempo in playback controls
Fix Inserting Breve and Longa
Fix display of dotted Breve and Longa after reload
Fix spurious 0xffffff keypress on windows
Fix setting/following links to source files esp. on Windows
Fix display of key signatures for tenor and baritone clefs
Prevent staff braces being attached to Marks/Dynamics staffs
Fix sounding duration of grace notes on dotted notes
Check part lists are same in all movements on Check Score.
Fix Performance for case where there is an upbeat at the start
Fix Performance View for LilyPond version 2.22
Fix Hide Movement as Sketch
Fix Duplicated Titles
Fix staff heights in display not resetting
Fix lyric pane not showing sometimes
Fix lyrics clashing with beaming in display
Hidden staff markers avoid clashes
Arrow at right of display now reliably shifts the displayed measures
Improvements in restoring window sizes on re-starting Denemo
Playback Fixes
Pause no longer hangs notes
Reset places end play at end
Initial Playbutton icon change when pausing fixed
Playback markers in display now follow notes accurately
Fix clutter in display at Playback Start marker
Fix Pause for Windows version
GTL is a simple CLI / TUI software to read tinylog entries from multiple users in a timeline fashion.
I'm doing well! My hatred for the node ecosystem has reached previously unimaginable heights. Definitely justified.
Today I set up GPG in my mutt on sdf.org account. It wasn't as easy, as it could be. As always it is need to search some manual on the Internet, and look under the hood of the car.
It is also interesting that the survey was conducted within a group of secondary school and college teachers. So where we expected a lot of interest in Gopher. Additionally, school teachers in the US and their counterparts in the world were listed.
This is the interesting point. If I don't need them Tasks, who does? Well, those poor souls called project managers, they need them. Their perspective on real life is totally different from mine. For them the mile-high pile of funny and not so funny details about my portion of real life is ... invisible. They know to some extent, that this pile exists, but not more. These poor souls are unable to survive dayjob without the perspective that these tickets hold. Fair enough.
Ticket systems are not for the people who have to use them. They're for people who want to know "What are those tech people DOING??"
One of the most popular container technology providers Docker registers in February 2022 a record-breaking 15+ million active users per month.
The success of Docker is a testament to the impact that container technologies have on the entire IT landscape.
But what causes more and more developers and organizations to move their applications and services into the container?
A new release 0.3.11 of RcppGSL is now on CRAN. The RcppGSL package provides an interface from R to the GNU GSL by relying on the Rcpp package.
The Language Server Protocol (LSP) standardizes communication between editors and so called language servers for different programming languages. This reduces the old problem that every editor had to implement many different plugins for all different programming languages. With LSP an editor just needs to talk LSP and can immediately provide typicall IDE features.
I already packaged the Emacs packages lsp-mode and lsp-haskell for Debian bullseye. Now lsp-java is waiting in the NEW queue.
If a proposal unveiled this week gets its way, JavaScript developers will soon have something that many of them have long been asking for: a type system, of some sort at least.
A blog post by TypeScript senior program manager Daniel Rosenwasser lays out the background and reasoning for the proposal for type syntax in JavaScript. He writes that “if we pull this all off, we have the chance to make one of the most impactful improvements to the world of JavaScript.”
Technology brands including GitLab, Starling Bank, TikTok and Wix have signed on to support a new corporate security responsibility pledge drive initiated by penetration testing and bug bounty specialist HackerOne.
Chinese web giants Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance – the latter through its Volcano Engine hyperscale cloud service – have teamed up to create, in their terms, a new video streaming standard.
The project was announced at a Chinese conference in late February. The Register has now been able to confirm information revealed in Chinese media at the time.
The term “PDF” is so ubiquitous these days that some people may have forgotten (or may never have known) that it stands for “Portable Document Format.” It was invented in the early nineties, and Adobe has spent the past 30 years trying to stay caught up with the changing of the times – and it turns out that they were more than up to the task.
By the time 2020 rolled around, the PDF should most likely have been rendered obsolete, as many other similar technologies have become over the past three decades. Instead, though, it received new updates that made it even more valuable – and usable – in today’s world of smartphones, tablets, and other devices.
Several weeks ago I attended The End of Nation-States, by technology executive and consultant Tomás Pueyo, - part of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab seminar series. In May of 2021, Pueyo launched Unchartered Territories, a newsletter he describes as aiming to explore the unchartered territories of a fast changing world “to know how we can prepare for them.”
His seminar discussed the role of information technologies in the rise of nation-states throughout history, and how information technologies are likely to lead to the end of nation-states in the coming decades. Let me summarize Pueyo’s key arguments based on his talk and two related newsletters.
Benchmarking organization SPEC has formed a committee to oversee the development of vendor-agnostic benchmarks for machine-learning training and inference tasks.
SPEC, the non-profit Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, produces a range of benchmarks that are widely used to evaluate the performance of computer systems, especially in the high performance computing (HPC) industry.
According to SPEC, the newly formed Machine Learning Committee will develop practical methodologies for benchmarking artificial intelligence and machine learning performance in the context of real-world platforms and environments.
Behavioural studies provide insights into normal and disrupted biological mechanisms. In many research areas, a growing spectrum of animal models—particularly small organisms—is used for high-throughput studies with infrared-based activity monitors, generating counts per time data. The freely available software to analyse such data, however, are primarily optimized for drosophila and circadian analysis. Researchers investigating other species or non-circadian behaviour would thus benefit from a more versatile software. Here we report the development of a free and open-source software—Rtivity—allowing customisation of species-specific parameters, and offering a versatile analysis of behavioural patterns, biological rhythms, stimulus responses, and survival. Rtivity is based on the R language and uses Shiny and the recently developed Rethomics package for a user-friendly graphical interface without requiring coding skills. Rtivity automatically assesses survival, computes various activity, sleep, and rhythmicity parameters, and performs fractal analysis of activity fluctuations. Rtivity generates multiple informative graphs, and exports structured data for efficient interoperability with common statistical software. In summary, Rtivity facilitates and enhances the versatility of the behavioural analysis of diverse animal species (e.g. drosophila, zebrafish, daphnia, ants). It is thus suitable for a broad range of researchers from multidisciplinary fields such as ecology, neurobiology, toxicology, and pharmacology.
The Canadian government is investing CA$240m ($187m) to boost the country's semiconductor and photonics segments in hopes of bolstering its role in the global market.
The recently announced investments consist of a new CA$150m ($117m) fund called the Semiconductor Challenge Callout, which will lob loonies to proposals focused on research, commercialization and manufacturing, and CA$90m ($70m) in new funding for the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre.
Execs from chipmaker NXP Semicondcutor spoke in San Francisco this week about industry supply chain problems, but also noted the increasing complexity of in-car networking was working in the firm's favour.
NXP has a portfolio that covers automotive components, communications, and industrial semiconductors, with product lines including microprocessors, power management, RF chips and wireless communications, many of which have seen high demand as the industry emerges from the pandemic.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley tech conference, NXP chief financial officer Bill Betz started by commenting on how NXP's Tianjin factory – where it does assembly and testing – was shut down for 10 days due to a COVID-19 outbreak, and this hit the firm to the tune of a cool $50m. "I'm very pleased that has been back up and running, and we should see that $50m worth of supply come back in Q2," he said.
Spirent Communications has announced availability of new test appliances for high-speed Ethernet networks, including what the firm claims is the industry's first 800G test platform.
The new platforms comprise the Spirent A1 400G Appliance, B1 800G Appliance, and B2 800G Appliance, which target 400Gbps and 800Gbps Ethernet networks respectively.
Spirent said the appliances will help in the design and development of new high-speed Ethernet, and enable providers to ensure their 400G infrastructure is up to the challenge of today's data growth needs, while preparing 800G to be the future "cloud backbone."
Miscreants have launched massive, amplified distributed denial-of-service attacks by exploiting a vulnerability in Mitel collaboration systems.
Their exploitation technique can, we're told, achieve an amplification factor of almost 4.3 billion to one, potentially, meaning a single malicious packet could bring down a stranger's network.
An amplification attack typically involves sending a small amount of information to a vulnerable network service that causes it to reply with a much larger amount of data. By directing that response at a victim, an attacker can put in a relatively low amount of effort while making other people's machines do all the work of flooding a selected target offline.
In this latest string of DDoS attacks, broadband ISPs, financial institutions, logistics and gaming companies, and organizations in other verticals were pummeled with network packets.
A Ukrainian national alleged to be a member of the REvil ransomware gang has been extradited to the US and charged with multiple criminal offences.
Yaroslav Vasinskyi, 22, was charged in the US District of Northern Texas with carrying out ransomware attacks against 10 US-based organisations. The indictment [PDF] was unsealed last night.
According to the unsealed complaint, prosecutors say he co-authored the Sodinokibi ransomware variant, as deployed by the infamous REvil crew.
The US Department of Justice alleged the Ukrainian used a variety of online nicknames including Profcomserv, Robitnik and Yarik45.
At a very basic level, Elastic offers open source software that makes it possible for users and developers to build their own search tools.
Over time, Sonatype CEO E. Wayne Jackson says the company tracked the ‘staggering volume and variety’ of open source libraries in every development environment in the world. In this regard, it says it understands that when open source components are properly managed, they provide energy for accelerating innovation.
The Eclipse Foundation, which champions open-source software development, has formed a new Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) working group dedicated to developing a software platform for the automotive industry
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Eclipse asserts that electrification, autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems and ever-increasing consumer expectations about their in-car digital experience are dramatically transforming the system architectures embedded in vehicles. Automotive architectures are moving from networks of special purpose devices to something that more closely resembles servers on wheels, where more powerful general-purpose computers are responsible for implementing and coordinating the various systems in the automobile, including the ones which keep us and our families safe on the road. And these systems architectures are rapidly changing how automotive software needs to be built.
Runa Sandvik, who has previously helped journalists secure their devices and data at The New York Times, Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Tor Project, recently discussed her work on the Decipher Podcast. This is a condensed and edited version of the conversation.
The hacking group LAPSUS$ gained access to internal NVIDIA systems two weeks ago. The group demanded a ransom in exchange for not publishing the stolen data. It was reported that as much as 200 GB of files related to hardware and 1 TB of data overall were stolen. This includes files referring to unreleased architectures such as RTX 40 “Ada” or future data-center products like Blackwell. To make matters worse, hackers also published source code for one of NVIDIA’s biggest secret, the DLSS AI upscaling technology.
Mozilla Firefox's new update fixes not one, but two zero-day vulnerabilities, which are actively exploited by [cra]ckers.
Entering your credentials each time you want to log into a system can be tiring, especially when you log into the system regularly. You may even forget your passwords.
Implementing operating systems that provide a single sign-on experience for users saves you from re-entering your log-in details every single time. But there is a problem with it. Attackers can exploit your credentials saved in the system through a Pass-the-Hash attack (PtH).
The Ragnar Locker ransomware gang has so far infected at least 52 critical infrastructure organizations in America across sectors including manufacturing, energy, financial services, government, and information technology, according to an FBI alert this week.
Yet another top-tier PC maker seemingly isn't interested right now in Microsoft's vision of hardware-level security for Windows 11 systems.
Zero-trust security continues to be one of the hottest marketing phrases in an industry that loves its buzzwords. But despite so many so-called zero trust products from virtually every vendor, there's still a lot of confusion about what a zero-trust architecture looks like and how to deploy its key elements across an organization.
Recently, a very serious vulnerability found in the Linux kernel received the name of Dirty Pipe. It is basically, an escalation of privileges that is put into check the system.
On March 7, 2022, CM4all security researcher Max Kellermann published technical details on CVE-2022-0847, an arbitrary file overwrite vulnerability in versions 5.8+ of the Linux kernel. Nicknamed "Dirty Pipe," the vulnerability arises from incorrect Unix pipe handling, where unprivileged processes can corrupt read-only files. Successful exploitation allows local attackers to escalate privileges by modifying or overwriting typically inaccessible files - potentially including root passwords and SUID binaries.
There is some good news, Sayegh said, pointing to the extradition this week of an alleged ransomware slinger from Poland to the United States. Like the leak of the Conti information, that could help investigators learn more about how the organization is built and operates. That said, he expects Conti and other groups adapt and change.
It was a Ukrainian security specialist who apparently turned the tables on the notorious Russia-based Conti, and leaked the ransomware gang's source code, chat logs, and tons of other sensitive data about the gang's operations, tools, and costs.
Since then, infosec researchers around the globe have been wading through this silo of intelligence, which reveals the inner workings of the criminal enterprise.
Moscow has set up its own certificate authority to issue TLS certs to Russians affected by sanctions or otherwise punished for president Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
A notice on the government's unified public service portal states that the certificates will be made available to Russian websites unable to renew or obtain security certificates as a knock-on effect of Western sanctions and organizations refusing to support Russian customers. These certs are primarily useful for providing secure HTTPS connections. Delivery of the certificates is promised within five days of requests.
The portal is silent on which browsers will accept the certs. This is a critical matter, because if browsers don't recognize or trust the certificate authority that issued a cert, a secure connection isn't generally possible. The Register cannot imagine any of the mainstream browser devs will rush to make these Russian certs work in their applications.
Each time you visit a website, your web browser (e.g., Chrome, Safari, or Firefox) first checks for the existence of one of two digital certificates: a Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. These indicate two important things. First, they confirm the identity of the website, affirming that the website is who it says it is. Second, they verify that the information on the website—and any data you share with it—will be secure and encrypted. Encryption ensures that the information you share, whether it’s a credit card number or home address, will not be intelligible if intercepted.
Today in dystopian nightmare, Walgreens replaces glass freezer doors with advertisements.
The screens use cameras and a big tablet to show you what’s in the freezer or refrigerator.
If that sounds annoying, wasteful, and unnecessary, it’s because it is.
The company says it can’t figure out why customers are reacting negatively to being shown ads on the freezer doors.
[...]
But putting “smart screens” in basically adds cost for the store, which they will pass along to all of you, which means that you’re literally paying jacked up prices at Walgreens (and who knows where else) to have them shove ads in your face before it’ll let you know where the iced tea is.
With the current batch of managers at Walmart, I fear it’s only a time before the final nail in the low price strategy is here. You can’t eat (metaphorical) bullshit, so you shouldn’t have to pay for it.
CNN goes further to quote some alleged Christians on Facebook, saying Walgreens is implementing the mark of the beast.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an Executive Order directing US government agencies to develop a framework to promote and police digital currencies.
"The [Executive Order] will help position the US to keep playing a leading role in the innovation and governance of the digital assets ecosystem at home and abroad, in a way that protects consumers, is consistent with our democratic values and advances US global competitiveness," said NEC Director Brian Deese and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in a statement.
Microsoft has an ambitious plan to cut its carbon emissions. But on Thursday, the company reported a big increase in the greenhouse gases emanating from its operations and its products, a reminder of the challenges that companies face as they try to clean up their businesses.
Microsoft’s carbon emissions were up 21.5 percent in the 12 months through June 2021, after small declines in 2020 and 2019. The increase was almost entirely driven by emissions from energy used to build data centers and make devices — like the Xbox and the Surface tablet — and from the power that Microsoft estimates its products consume when people used them.
All cryptocurrency ATMs are operating illegally in the UK and must be shut down now, the nation's Financial Conduct Authority said in an alert on Friday.
Terminals accepting or dispensing crypto-coins in the country must be registered with the watchdog to make sure they comply with Blighty's Money Laundering Regulations (MLR), which came into effect for digital assets in 2020.
Toshiba's plan to split itself into two companies has been opposed by two significant groups of investors.
The Japanese conglomerate first planned to split into three entities, but that plan was poorly received, so management went back to the drawing board and came up with a new strategy to split into two companies.
That plan has also earned investors' ire.
Effissimo Capital Management – a Singapore-based firm that is thought to hold almost ten per cent of Toshiba stock and has in the past agitated strongly for change at the Japanese company – has popped out a press release stating it will vote against the split.
Should we censor false information from Putin? The problem with censorship, in this case, is less about the rights of Russian propagandists as it is about the rights of other people to hear them.
Lumen Technologies, the internet backbone provider formerly known as CenturyLink, has quit Russia.
The biz's announcement is titled, "Lumen's readiness to meet global events," and does not take a position on the morality of the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Instead, it frames the decision as necessary "due to increased security risk inside Russia" and "to ensure the security of our and our customers' networks, as well as the ongoing integrity of the global internet."
Google and Meta are facing scrutiny from UK and EU competition regulators over their infamous "Jedi Blue" ad-slinging deal.
Jedi Blue is the name Google gave to an agreement with Facebook (now Meta) over bidding for ad space. Header bidding is where sellers can offer online ad space to multiple buyers at the same time. Sellers can compare bids and buyers compete against each other for ad space.
Russia is considering handing out licenses to use foreign software, database, and chip design patents, and legalizing software copyright violations, in response to sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine.
According to Russian business publication Kommersant, a government document drafted on March 2 outlines possible actions to support the Russian economy, which faces extensive trade restrictions from the US, the UK, and Europe, and business withdrawals.
With companies like Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP halting sales (though not ending service to existing customers), Russia has instituted tax breaks for technology firms and conscription deferments for IT workers to retain its core resources and talent during the conflict.