06.03.22

Links 04/06/2022: Coreboot 4.17

Posted in News Roundup at 11:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How To Enable SSH On FreeBSD

        Create A Normal User In FreeBSD

        Enable SSH Access On FreeBSD

        Start ssh Service On FreeBSD

        SSH Into FreeBSD As Normal User

        Enable SSH Root Access In FreeBSD

        SSH Into FreeBSD As Root User

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Signal Messenger on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Signal Messenger on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Signal Messaging is a free, open-source messaging app that can be used to share text, voice messages, photos, videos, GIFs, and files for free. Signal messenger is one of the better forms of communication for those that require the utmost privacy.

        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 Signal Messenger on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

      • Hackaday ☛ Optimizing Linux Pipes | Hackaday

        In CPU design, there is Ahmdal’s law. Simply put, it means that if some process is contributing to 10% of your execution, optimizing it can’t improve things by more than 10%. Common sense, really, but it illustrates the importance of knowing how fast or slow various parts of your system are. So how fast are Linux pipes? That’s a good question and one that [Mazzo] sets out to answer.

        The inspiration was a highly-optimized fizzbuzz program that clocked in at over 36GB/s on his laptop. Is that a common speed? Nope. A simple program using pipes on the same machine turned in not quite 4 GB/s. What accounts for the difference?

        What follows is a great use of performance measuring tools and optimization. Along the way there is plenty of exposition about how pipes work inside the kernel. In addition, some other subjects rear up including paging and huge pages. Using huge pages accounted for a 50% improvement, for example.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ Installing Nagios on OpenBSD 7.1

        Nagios is regarded as the industry standard for IT infrastructure monitoring. It’s fairly easy to use, flexible and provides a ton of extensibility. In this article, we’re going to see how to install nagios on OpenBSD 7.1.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ Install OpenProject Server for your team on the Docker platform

        OpenProject is an open-source project management software. OpenProject is the fasted and safest way for teams to connect, structure their work and achieve results. Organize your own task and assign tasks to a teammate.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ How to install microk8s on Ubuntu 22.04

        In this post, you will learn install microk8s on Ubuntu 22.04.

        MicroK8s is a CNCF-certified upstream Kubernetes deployment that runs entirely on your workstation or edge device. Being a snap it runs all Kubernetes services natively (i.e. no virtual machines) while packing the entire set of libraries and binaries needed. Installation is limited by how fast you can download a couple of hundred megabytes and the removal of MicroK8s leaves nothing behind.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ How to install Apache Maven on CentOS 9 Stream

        Developing an application requires certain tools that help us to improve creation and coding times. In the case of Java, one of them is Maven. This tool provides us with a whole set of utilities for the administration of a Java project. So, today you will learn how to install Apache Maven on CentOS 9 Stream.

      • TechRepublic ☛ How to deploy Joomla with Docker | TechRepublic

        Joomla is a world-class, open-source content management system that is search-engine and mobile-friendly, multilingual and flexible; it also offers unlimited design potential. With more than 110 million downloads, 10,000+ extensions and templates, Joomla is used on 2 million+ websites. You might deploy Joomla for business websites or portals, e-commerce or online publications.

        With the help of Docker, you can quickly deploy a containerized version of Joomla and use it for just about anything. Let’s do just that.

      • TechRepublic ☛ How to install OpenLDAP on Ubuntu Server 22.04 | TechRepublic

        Jack Wallen guides you through the steps for installing both OpenLDAP and the LDAP Account Manager on Ubuntu Server 22.04.

      • H2S Media ☛ How to install MediaWiki on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy – Linux Shout

        Let’s learn the steps to install MediaWiki on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish server to run your own Wiki system such as Wikipedia.

        Mediawiki is an open-source management software for content in the form of a wiki system that makes websites such as Wikipedia.org possible. With the help of MediaWiki, you can not only read a website together with other users but also edit it in real-time. You can quickly and easily put texts, photos, and movies on your Mediawiki page.

        With the help of MediaWiki, you can quickly edit, delete or publish the content of your website. Mediawiki keeps every currently saved change without deleting the previous versions. If you accidentally deleted important content, you can restore it at any time. It enables joint editing of content and is suitable, among other things, for building knowledge databases or log collections.

    • Games

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Devices/Embedded

      • CNX Software ☛ Orange Pi 800 Keyboard PC – A Raspberry Pi 400 alternative powered by Rockchip RK3399 – CNX Software

        There’s now a Raspberry Pi 400 alternative with the Orange Pi 800 Keyboard PC that offers a very similar design, but it is powered by a Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core Cortex-A72/A53 processor,

        Like the Raspberry Pi model, the Orange Pi 800 comes with 4GB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, two USB 3.0 ports, and one USB 2.0 port, but it also adds 64GB on-board flash storage and features one full-size HDMI port capable for 4Kp60 resolution plus a VGA port, instead of two micro HDMI ports.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Digital Trends ☛ ARM vs. RISC-V: Is one better than the other? | Digital Trends

        If you wanted to make a CPU, and you’re not AMD or Intel, there are two real choices: ARM and RISC-V. But what are the differences between the two, and why do companies choose one over the other? These questions are fundamentally intertwined with differing philosophies about open source hardware and what’s best for the processor and computing industry.

      • The Verge ☛ New York state passes first-ever ‘right to repair’ law for electronics

        The New York state legislature has passed the United States’ first “right to repair” bill covering electronics. Called the Fair Repair Act, the measure would require all manufacturers who sell “digital electronic products” within state borders to make tools, parts, and instructions for repair available to both consumers and independent shops.

        Having passed the legislature, it is awaiting signature by Governor Kathy Hochul, who is expected to support the measure. The measure will take effect one year after it passes into law.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Announcing coreboot 4.17 – coreboot

      The coreboot 4.17 release was done on June 3, 2022.

      Since the 4.16 release, we’ve had over 1300 new commits by around 150 contributors. Of those people, roughly 15 were first-time contributors.

      As always, we appreciate everyone who has contributed and done the hard work to make the coreboot project successful.

    • Should software paid for by taxpayers be open-source?

      Today, open-source has become a movement whereby it uses values and decentralized production models to find new ways to solve problems.

      [...]

      When you talk about Open Source, the first thing that comes to mind are often companies like Red Hat, Mozilla and the Linux operating system in general. Over the years, these systems and organisations continue to work together with the open source community in developing new solutions.

    • CSO ☛ The Open Source Software Security Mobilization Plan: Takeaways for security leaders
       [Ed: Linux Foundation is a front group for proprietary software companies; seems inadequate for it to speak on such issues, in effect promoting anti-Free software FUD]

      The Linux Foundation and the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) have introduced the Open Source Software Security Mobilization Plan. This is in response to attacks on the software supply chain and an uptick in interest in securing them. Supply chains are appealing targets to malicious actors because they can compromise a single point and have a cascading impact across the ecosystem of customers, as the SolarWinds and Log4j attacks have shown.

    • OpenCost Kubernetes Cost Monitoring and Optimization Project Launches

      Multiple vendors including AWS, Google, Kubecost, and SUSE are supporting the open source OpenCost project for Kubernetes cost monitoring.

  • Leftovers

    • The Drive ☛ California Man Fined $573K for Fixing Broken Cars in His Yard

      All cars have been removed from Alstatt’s lawns, but he still has a hefty fee to pay to the city. Unfortunately, his case is consistent with many municipalities in America, which levy massive fines for the slightest violations of city code and often without informing homeowners they are in violation until the sums are so massive there is no hope of actually paying them off. Even my laissez-faire hometown of Houston, a city so lax it doesn’t have zoning laws, has an allowance to fine homeowners $150 a day for parking a car in their yards. In short, watch where you park, and if you don’t, perhaps consider a very good attorney.

    • California ☛ Court upholds $573,000 penalty against East Sacramento homeowner who worked on cars in yard

      Altstatt in 2014 parked an old van in his fenced backyard, where he worked on it on the grass — a code violation.

      He also had at least five other vehicles on the property, some of which he inherited when his brother died, he said.

      A neighbor complained, and the city cited him, claiming all the vehicles appeared to be inoperable. It also issued violations for other backyard items — car parts, generators, propane tanks and fruit that had fallen off his orange and grapefruit trees.

    • Memory

      We’re going to have a get-together tomorrow to celebrate Brandon’s life. So for the a while I have been helping to gather pictures and songs for the party. As I have worked on this, I have naturally seen and thought of many memories of my brother. But Memory is a trickster, and one that can be harmful or helpful. And most of what we remember is not the way that the past actually happened because memory isn’t just thought or record alone, but also our emotions shading everything.

    • Tedium ☛ Offbeat Television Broadcasting Standards: From Jamaica to North Korea

      Back in 2017, I wrote a nice lengthy piece on the evolution of TV technology, particularly a forthcoming standard called ATSC 3.0, which when fully rolled out could greatly change our relationship with broadcast-quality television. (Among other things, it’s based on the internet protocol, or IP, standard.) While a number of stations have voluntarily launched it around the country, there’s not really many TVs out there that natively support the technology at this time—you have to buy a set-top box to get the full experience. But ATSC 3.0 is out there in the wild as a mainstream standard in at least one country—Jamaica, where it launched in earnest just a few months ago. Today’s Tedium spends a little time thinking about television standards, because it’s what we like thinking about.

    • New York Times ☛ When Elon Musk Dreams, His Employees Have Nightmares

      Elon Musk’s repeated wavering on his deal to buy Twitter has roiled markets and raised fresh questions about his seriousness. His promises to preserve free speech, ban spam bots and dramatically boost revenue may have earned the blessing of the company’s founder, Jack Dorsey, but with Twitter’s stock falling well below his offer price, Mr. Musk appears to be reneging on a deal that has made even Wall Street grow skeptical.

      For those of us who have followed Mr. Musk’s antics for some time, the latest twist in his bid for the social media platform is entirely in character. The way that he has managed and marketed his businesses from Tesla’s early days reveals a dysfunction behind the automaker’s veneer of technofuturism and past stock market successes. Often announcing new features without consultation with his team, he forces his employees to bridge the enormous gap between technological reality and his dreams. This disconnect fosters a negligent and sometimes cruel workplace, to disastrous effect.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • The Impact of Funding on Longevity Research | Technology Networks

        Age-related changes and illnesses have been associated with genetics, the proteome, diet and even gut bacteria. Longevity research focuses on understanding the biological processes behind how we age, with the aim of delaying or preventing age-related disease.

        Cutting-edge research and innovation can require large monetary investment to carry projects from concept to practice. To find out more about how early-stage funding could improve longevity research, Technology Networks spoke to Garri Zmudze, executive director of the Longevity Science Foundation, a non-profit organization looking to fund a longer and healthier human lifespan by supporting longevity research.

      • Broadband Breakfast ☛ Debra Berlyn: Online Shopping is Here to Stay for Older Adults

        In 2020, many of those 65+ were averaging $187 in online shopping per month. It’s also clear the online shopping habits that started during COVID-19 are not going to disappear anytime in the near or distant future.

    • Proprietary

      • The Hill ☛ Ransomware groups rebrand to dodge sanctions [iophk: Windows TCO]

        Ransomware groups that have been sanctioned by the U.S. government are switching their tactics to evade sanctions and continue to receive ransom payments, according to a report released Thursday by cybersecurity firm Mandiant.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • A Message from the Superintendent: National Gun Violence Awareness Day

        Virtually every week of the school calendar is replete with the acknowledgment of special days. Unfortunately, June 3 is not just another one of those days, but rather a stark reminder of the horror of last week’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which nineteen elementary school students and two teachers were gunned down with an assault rifle while in their classroom. June 3 cannot be just another day.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Guernica and Bucha

        Guernica and Guernica

        Guernica (Gernikara in Basque) is a city of 17,000 located in the province of Biscay (Vizcaya) in the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain. It has a recorded history that goes back almost a thousand years and for centuries has been at the center of Basque culture and politics. The Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau based some of his ideas about direct democracy and the “general will” upon public assemblies held beneath the renowned Tree of Guernica. But the town is best known because of Picasso. When people today speak of Guernica, they see it through the lens of Picasso’s Guernica.

      • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Sucking Up to Murderers’: Biden Plans to Visit Saudi Arabia in Push for Oil

        Two and a half years removed from his campaign trail vow to make Saudi Arabia’s leaders “pay the price” for their role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, U.S. President Joe Biden is reportedly planning to visit Riyadh in the coming days as part of the White House’s effort to shore up ties with the oil-rich kingdom as Russia’s war on Ukraine roils global energy markets.

        The timing of the trip has not yet been finalized, but the New York Times reported Thursday that Biden intends to add the Riyadh visit to his planned visit to Israel and Europe later this month.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Environment

      • Reuters ☛ In the race against time to cut emissions, companies’ supply chains are key | Reuters

        The question of how the hundreds of companies that have set net-zero commitments are actually going to deliver on them has taken on greater urgency in the wake of the UK Met Office’s recent assessment that there is an even chance global temperatures will overshoot the “safe” limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next five years.

        According to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), 1,373 companies have had emissions reduction plans approved as being in line with the science of climate change, which calls for emissions to be halved globally by 2030.

        But talk – and targets – are cheap, and there are concerns that companies that are voluntarily setting targets could undermine the global effort to address climate change if it becomes a substitute, rather than a spur, for decisive action to cut emissions.

      • Energy

        • RTL ☛ China to double wind, solar energy capacity by 2025

          China aims to double its wind and solar capacity by 2025, according to a new road map that also allows for more coal-fired power plants to bolster energy security.

          The world’s biggest polluter earlier estimated it needs to double wind and solar use by 2030 to deliver on its pledges under the Paris climate accord.

          The latest plan — if implemented — means China might reach that goal earlier.

        • India Times ☛ New York passes bill to halt Bitcoin mining for two years

          In bad news for Bitcoin and Blockchain lovers, the New York State on Friday passed a bill to halt new permits for certain fossil fuel power plants to be used in Bitcoin mining.

          The measure establishes a two-year moratorium on new permits for cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work (PoW) authentication methods to validate Blockchain transactions.

          The measure also initiates a study on the environmental impact mining facilities are having in New York state.

        • NBC ☛ New York just passed a bill cracking down on bitcoin mining — here’s everything that’s in it

          If Hochul signs the bill, it would make New York the first state in the country to ban blockchain technology infrastructure, according to Perianne Boring, founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. Industry insiders also tell CNBC it could have a domino effect across the U.S., which is currently at the forefront of the global bitcoin mining industry, accounting for 38 percent of the world’s miners.

        • The Verge ☛ New York lawmakers pass a moratorium on Bitcoin mining

          The Bitcoin mining boom in New York state hit a roadblock as the state Senate passed a bill that will halt new permits for certain fossil fuel power plants to be used in Bitcoin mining. The measure, which also initiates a study on the environmental impact mining facilities are having in the state, passed in the state Assembly earlier this year.

          Promising new jobs, the [cryptocurrency] industry had split Senate Democrats on whether the moratorium would come with greater environmental or economic costs. Talks languished until late in the evening as the state Senate neared its legislative deadline.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • European boats accused of illegally catching tuna – Oceanographic – Oceanographic

          Tuna numbers are dwindling all over the world due to overfishing and illegal fishing activities. Some populations are even close to extinction, experts have suggested. Figures by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission revealed that the yellowfin tuna catch in 2020 was 100,000 tonnes over the commission’s 2015 recommendation which would allow the fish stock to recover.

          Two new investigations carried out by the OceanMind group and another by the charity Blue Marine Foundation further investigated tuna fishing activities in the Indian Ocean. They found that EU purse seine fishing vessels fished in coastal areas of the Indian Ocean, while reporting catches in the Chagos archipelago marine protected area and in Mozambique’s exclusive economic zone.

          The first report looked at data published by the EU from its fishing fleet from 2016 to 2020. It found evidence for EU vessels fishing in the Indian Ocean, where main catches include skipjacks, bigeyes and yellowfin tunas. “Blue Marine Foundation subsequently established that the vessels were not authorised,” reports The Guardian.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • CNN ☛ In Hong Kong, memories of China’s Tiananmen Square massacre are being erased

        For decades it was a symbol of freedom on Chinese controlled soil: every June 4, come rain or shine, tens of thousands of people would descend on Victoria Park in Hong Kong to commemorate the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

        The atmosphere would be at once defiant and somber. Speakers would demand accountability from the Chinese Communist Party for ordering the bloody military crackdown that cost the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed pro-democracy protesters on that fateful day in Beijing.

        In memory of the dead, at 8 p.m. every year the park would turn into a sea of candles, held high by people vowing never to forget.

        This year, whether those candles light up once again will offer a litmus test for Hong Kong, its freedoms and aspirations, and its relationships to both the rest of China and the world.

      • Amnesty International ☛ Tiananmen Square: Four things you should know

        The Chinese government have never acknowledged what actually happened at the protests. There are no official acts of remembrance – in fact, the event is heavily censored in China. On social media – even today – reposting images from the protest can get you detained.

        We can’t allow this tragic event to be forgotten. Here are four things you should know about Tiananmen Square.

      • The Print ☛ China: No justice 33 years after Tiananmen Massacre

        The Chinese government should acknowledge and take responsibility for the mass killing of pro-democracy demonstrators.

        A few months ago, Hong Kong’s universities removed the Tiananmen memorials. In December 2021, the University of Hong Kong removed “Pillar of Shame,” a large sculpture commemorating the massacre victims, from the university premises.

        The Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot tried to reclaim the artwork but no shipping companies wanted to be involved, citing fear of retaliation by the authorities. University students protested the removal by holding an “invisible” flash mob at the sculpture’s original site.

        The Chinese University of Hong Kong and City University of Hong Kong removed “Goddess of Democracy” statues, which were modeled after the original statue erected by students at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Lingnan University also removed a Tiananmen wall relief.

      • VOA News ☛ In Hong Kong, Authorities Ban Tiananmen Square Vigil for 3rd Year

        It is the second year in a row that the national security law, imposed on June 30, 2020, has strengthened the pandemic-related ban on what was long the only large-scale massacre memorial on Chinese-ruled soil. The event’s organizer, Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, disbanded on September 25 because of the security law.

        On Thursday, Hong Kong police warned residents not to participate in any “unlawful assemblies” around the park on Saturday, where there would be stepped-up patrols, according to the South China Morning Post.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Reuters ☛ Ethical issues surrounding research of AI in health care [Ed: Calling every bit of automation "hey hi!"]

        May 31, 2022 – Artificial Intelligence or AI includes the ability of computers, or machines run by a computer, to perform tasks that are commonly performed by humans. This means that AI includes not only the ability to recognize and analyze data, but also to “infer” or “predict” what that data actually means in certain contexts. Not surprisingly, the use of AI in health care has become the subject of many research studies to ensure that these tools and technology are safe to use on animals and human beings. But given that AI calls for computers/machines to practically “act,” “react,” and process data like humans, the potential ethical issues are numerous.

      • TruthOut ☛ 85 Percent of Voters Want Congress to Pass the Equal Rights Amendment
      • Counter Punch ☛ Ten Domestic Injustices Worsened by War

        The militaristic and imperialist foreign policy of the United States has negative consequences for every aspect of life in the US and abroad. As long as we’re investing so much in the military, not only will we not have the money to invest in better things, but we are also exacerbating countless problems on a global level. In order to create the world we want and need, US social movements must take up the struggle against militarism. Here are just ten ways that injustices in the United States are fueled by the war machine.

        1. Police violence is armed by the Pentagon. Since 1996 the 1033 program has been providing excess military equipment to police departments throughout the United States. A 2014 report by the American Civil Liberties Union titled “War Comes Home” found that “militarized police act aggressively and violently, target Black and Brown communities, and kill Americans at an alarming tempo.” This violence was shown explicitly when city police departments as well as federal police and the National Guard were deployed to tear-gas, blugden, and kettle anti-racist protesters in 2020. Within the last year, we saw abortion rights, activists in Los Angeles and water protectors in the Indigenous-led struggle to stop Line 3 been subjected to similar militarized police suppression.

      • Counter Punch ☛ America Needs a Jubilee

        The Buffalo and Uvalde mass shootings, which took place only ten days apart, were strikingly similar in that they both left gaping holes in minority communities and exemplify much of what is broken in American society. A profound response is needed.

        White supremacist mass shootings aside, Black children and teens in America are 14 times more likely to die from a gun homicide than their white counterparts. With over 20,000 gun-related deaths, not counting gun suicides, having occurred in 2021 alone, the disproportionate impact on people of color, is staggering.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Joe Biden Fights White Supremacy With More White Supremacy

        Ten people were slaughtered in cold blood, and another three were grievously wounded on the linoleum battlefield of an urban supermarket specifically selected on a map for its proximity to a predominantly Black community. An 18-year-old white kid, a fucking child, traveled 200 miles and three and a half hours from his predominantly white small town on the Pennsylvania border, armed with an AR-15 littered with racist graffiti, just to kill people he never met because he was terrified that somehow, they would replace him in America’s twisted caste system. Something isn’t wrong with this picture, everything is, and we should all be able to agree that something needs to be done to reshape the paradigm of this nation’s entrenched race relations to end this madness. Our president and his party, which has long billed itself as the guardians of America’s marginalized communities, claim they agree, but they have come up with a rather strange way to show it.

        The Democrat’s answer to the distinctly American cancer of white supremacy is to add it to our nation’s long list of targets in the ever-expanding and decidedly undemocratic wars on crime and terrorism. The House recently passed yet another in a long line of domestic terrorism prevention acts, which thankfully died a partisan death in the Senate, as part of a long campaign to empower both local and federal law enforcement to confront the scourge of radical extremism in the wake of Donald Trump’s incendiary dog-whistle concert of a presidency and the January 6 riot which seemed to epitomize it.

    • Monopolies

      • The Hill ☛ The US cannot afford to give intellectual [sic] property [sic] rights [sic] to China

        So, why should we be gifting China and other countries the intellectual property (IP) [sic] rights [sic] to American-developed COVID-19 vaccines? India and South Africa — with the support of the CCP and the Biden administration — have proposed to do just that by waiving certain provisions of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent Freak ☛ New VPN Crackdown Underway in Russia, Government Confirms

          Authorities in Russia have confirmed a that a new crackdown to prevent citizens from accessing VPN services is underway. Telecoms regulator Roscomnadzor says that “measures” are being taken to limit access to VPN services that violate Russian law, which can simply mean providing access to content previously deemed illegal by the government.

Links 04/06/2022: Notkia and Severe Flaws in Dominion Voting Systems

Posted in News Roundup at 6:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Liliputing ☛ Notkia puts a Linux PC inside the shell of a Nokia 1680 cellphone

      he Nokia 1680 classic is a basic cellphone that was released in 2008 just as smartphones were starting to become a thing. Designed for phone calls, texting, and not much else, the phone has a small screen, a numeric keypad, and support for 2G networks.

      But a hardware hacker going by Remu NotMoe has scooped out the guts of the phone and replaced them with a custom printed circuit board (PCB) and other components to transform the Nokia 1680 classic into the Notkia: a pocket-sized Linux computer/communication device.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • markaicode by Mark ☛ How to Install Fail2ban on Ubuntu 22.04 | Mark Ai Code

        Fail2ban is a free and open-source IPS that helps administrators safeguard Linux servers against brute-force assaults. Python-based Fail2ban has filters for Apache2, SSH, FTP, etc. Fail2ban blocks the IP addresses of fraudulent login attempts.

        Fail2ban scans service log files (e.g. /var/log/auth.log) and bans IP addresses that reveal fraudulent login attempts, such as too many wrong passwords, seeking vulnerabilities, etc. Fail2ban supports iptables, ufw, and firewalld. Set up email alerts for blocked login attempts.

      • HowTo Geek ☛ How to Use the scp Command on Linux

        The scp command makes copying files between Linux computers easy and secure. It uses SSH security, but best of all, it is simple. If you can use cp, you can use scp.

      • TechRepublic ☛ How to deploy Joomla with Docker | TechRepublic

        Joomla is a world-class, open-source content management system that is search-engine and mobile-friendly, multilingual and flexible; it also offers unlimited design potential. With more than 110 million downloads, 10,000+ extensions and templates, Joomla is used on 2 million+ websites. You might deploy Joomla for business websites or portals, e-commerce or online publications.

        With the help of Docker, you can quickly deploy a containerized version of Joomla and use it for just about anything. Let’s do just that.

      • Setup Replicated GlusterFS Volume on Ubuntu – kifarunix.com

        Follow through this tutorial to learn how to setup replicated GlusterFS volume on Ubuntu. There are different types of Volume architectures that you may want to consider.

      • How to Add User in Linux – Linux Nightly

        In this tutorial, you will see how to create a new user in Linux from command line and GUI.

      • Easy multifactor authentication in Django – Oli Warner

        Use django-multifactor to make your Django websites extra-secure by requiring a secondary authentication factor. Disclaimer: I made this.

      • Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install AbiWord on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install AbiWord 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.

      • TechRepublic ☛ How to manage Flatpak permissions with Flatseal | TechRepublic

        Flatpak apps are gaining serious popularity on Linux distributions but managing the permissions of those apps can be a challenge. But with this handy GUI tool, those permissions are simple to deal with.

      • Nasdaq ☛ Why You Should Use A Computer Specifically Meant For Bitcoin Transactions And How To Do It

        Tails is an operating system that boots from a USB thumb drive and temporarily takes over the hardware of any computer. It uses Tor connections only, so you’d need to be comfortable using Tor. None of the data that you write to memory during your session is saved to the drive (it starts fresh every time), unless you tweak the settings and create a permanent storage option (on the USB thumb drive), which you lock with a password.

        It’s not a bad option and it’s free, but it’s a little clunky for our purposes. Installing new software on it is not a breeze. One good feature is that it comes with Electrum, but the downside of this is that you didn’t install it yourself. Make sure the USB drive you use is at least 8GB.

        Your flexibility is reduced if you use Tails. You may not be able to follow various guides to set up what you need and get it working properly. For example, if you follow my guide to installing Bitcoin Core, there are modifications needed to make it work. I don’t think I’ll be making a Tails specific guide, so you’d need to build your skills and do it alone.

        I also am not sure how well hardware wallets will interact with this OS.

        Having said all this, a Tails computer for bitcoin transactions is a nice additional option, and it will certainly help your overall privacy skills to learn to use Tails.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • State of the Budgie: May 2022

        One of the biggest developments this month is that we held our first two workshops, where we talked about a wide range of topic from our Core Values, Consensus Creation, organization structure, Budgie 10 development items, Budgie 11 – and more.

        The goal of these workshops was to provide a transparent process for everyone to get involved and express their thoughts / opinions, whether they were brand new faces to the community, long-time contributors, or just folks dropping by in Twitch chat. These were held over Google Meet and used Miro for our collaborative whiteboard.

      • OS News ☛ Budgie team details plans for Budgie 10, 11

        Joshua Strobl, the lead developer of Budgie, the (currently) Gtk+-based desktop, posted a lengthy article about the state of the project and the future it’s embarking on. Budgie had been in a feature-freeze and maintenance mode for a long time, but now that Strobl is no longer involved with the Linux distribution Solus, Budgie has become truly independent, and development can pick up again.

        The article touches upon a lot – such as the way the Budgie developers intend to lead the project, how they want to involve the community as much as they can, and similar things. They don’t want to mandate defaults or force distributions into “stock” Budgie. They intend to take this pretty far.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • #46 Going Mobile · This Week in GNOME

          Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from May 27 to June 03.

        • ep0: The Journey Begins | My Blog

          Hey! I’m Thejas Kiran P S, a sophomore pursuing my Bachelor’s in Computer Science. I have been selected to GNOME organization as a GSoC’22 contributor and will be working on Pitivi. Pitivi is a non-linear video editor based on the GStreamer Editing Services library.

        • My Vacation in Android Land | Indulgent Ramblings

          Recently I was pulled into a project to build an Android app at Endless. While Android is Linux, it’s quite a bit different than “traditional” Linux. In our case, we’re trying to assemble a Python app into an Android app using python-for-android (aka, p4a). As you might imagine, this adds a couple more layers to the mix, which is always fun.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • New Releases

      • LWN ☛ NixOS 22.05 released

        Version 22.05 of the NixOS distribution is out. “”NixOS is already known as the most up to date distribution and is the distribution with the most packages. This release saw 9345 new packages and 10666 updated packages””. Significant changes include an update to version 2.8.0 of the Nix package manager with experimental support for flakes, GNOME 42, and many new services; see the release notes for details.

    • BSD

      • TechRepublic ☛ pfSense vs Netgear Router: Compare Features & Pricing

        pfSense is a fully open-source network firewall solution that is free to use and is based on the FreeBSD operating system. It works with a host of routers and appliances, and you can even build your own if you need the added customization and options.

        pfSense also offers its own routers under the name Netgate for those who want an experience closer to a bundled hardware and software option, such as with Netgear, but with the added options and flexibility pfSense offers.

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2022-22 [Ed: As a matter of fact, IBM has scared or even banned a lot of Fedora volunteers]

        Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

        Fedora Linux 34 reaches end of life on Tuesday 7 June.

        I have weekly office hours on Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time) in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Digital Trends ☛ The Astro Slide phone is a throwback you’ll want to throw away | Digital Trends

        If you really want a smartphone with a physical keyboard, just how much are you prepared to forgive about the rest of it to get one? That’s the dilemma with Planet Computers’ Astro Slide 5G phone, as sure enough it has a slide-out mechanical keyboard, but the rest of the phone leaves a lot to be desired.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Arduino ☛ GetFit is a DIY fitness tracker based on the Nano 33 BLE Sense | Arduino Blog

        When it comes to fitness tracking, the average consumer would most likely reach for a smartwatch or similar wearable band. These all work by using their internal accelerometers and gyroscopes to sense motion and detect when a certain action, such as stepping or lifting a weight, has been completed. But to further simplify the process by eliminating the need to select a workout before starting an exercise routine, Nekhil and Shebin Jacob have worked together to come up with the GetFit fitness tracker.

        The GetFit is a battery-powered device that uses machine learning to detect not only when an action has been done, but also what kind of workout is being performed. They achieved this by gathering plenty of samples from a Nano 33 BLE Sense’s onboard accelerometer and training a Keras model with the help of the Edge Impulse Studio. It can accurately identify between arm circles, pushups, squats, and anything else in the future while also disregarding anomalous data.

      • Arduino ☛ A real-world health bar for Old School RuneScape | Arduino Blog

        For those of us of a certain age, RuneScape provides a deep sense of nostalgia. The original RuneScape MMORPG died off in popularity many years ago, but Old School RuneScape, which launched in 2013, recently gained traction once again. As with most MMORPGs, Old School RuneScape gives the player a health readout in the form of hit points. Austin Blake wanted to see his character’s health in the real world and turned to Arduino to make it happen.

        Blake chose to display his hit points on a heart-shaped LED array. It indicates health through both color and level. At full health, all of the LEDs light up in green. At half health, only half of the LEDs are lit and they light up in amber. The LEDs are strips of Adafruit NeoPixels and Blake controls them with an Arduino Nano Every board running the FastLED library. Those mount into a 3D-printed frame that Blake designed in Autodesk Fusion 360.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

      • The Register UK ☛ Murena and /e/ Foundation launch privacy-centric smartphones • The Register

        The /e/ Foundation’s de-Googled version of Android 10 has reached the market in a range of smartphones aimed at the privacy-conscious.

        The idea of a privacy-centric version of Android is not new, and efforts to deliver are becoming friendlier all the time. The Register interviewed the founder of the /e/ Foundation in 2020, and reported on /e/ OS doing rather well in privacy tests the following year. Back then, the easiest way to get the OS was to buy a Fairphone, although there was also the option of reflashing one of a short list of supported devices.

        Now there’s another option: a range of brand-new Murena phones. The company supplied The Register with a Murena One for review, with a pre-release version of the /e/ OS installed.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Adopting Open Source Firmware Approach for Intel FSP

      We have heard you, and we agree with you: “Innovation thrives in an open, democratized environment where people can connect, collaborate, and respond together to new stimuli.…. This free exchange increased our ability to learn from one another.” [1] Under this exact sentiment, we hereby request a pledge from Intel to adopt an open source friendly development approach for silicon firmware delivery.

      According to the published technical article by Subrata Banik from Google (Open Source Firmware Development: Reduce Firmware Support Package (FSP) boundary on Intel® SoC Platform) [2], there are imminent and industry-wide demands calling for a more open source approach in the host firmware space. Let’s examine the current situation and define the most feasible path forward.

    • Why the State of Diversity in Open Source Is Improving
    • LinuxCNC translators life just got a bit easier

      Back in oktober last year, when I started looking at the LinuxCNC system, I proposed to change the documentation build system make life easier for translators. The original system consisted of independently written documentation files for each language, with no automated way to track changes done in other translations and no help for the translators to know how much was left to translated.

    • Web Browsers

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

    • Programming/Development

      • I Programmer ☛ Why Is Go Good?

        The five co-creators of the Go language, Russ Cox, Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, Ian Lance Taylor and Ken Thompson, have co-authored a paper in this month’s edition of Communications of the ACM in which they address the question, Why has Go grown in popularity when so many other language projects have not?

        As outlined in The Go Programming Language and Environment which is freely accessible online, Go was created at Google in late 2007 and released as open source in November 2009. Since then, it has operated as a public project, with contributions from thousands of individuals and dozens of companies. It is a garbage-collected, statically compiled language with support for concurrency and parallelism, which helped take advantage of the multicore machines that were becoming mainstream during its early years. It initial popularity must have been helped by its Google connections.

      • Perl / Raku

        • Perl ☛ The File Access Operators: To Use, or Not to Use

          The file access operators are, for the purpose of this blog entry, the file test operators -r, -w, -x, -R, -W, and -X. The upper case operators test the ability of the user’s real UID to read, write, or execute the file being tested. The lower case operators do the same for the user’s effective UID.

          Though Perl provides these, their documentation comes with cautions about their use. The rest of this blog entry represents my thoughts on their use or avoidance.

          The primary limitation on these operators is that they only test the mode bits returned by the stat() function. The result of this test does not guarantee what will happen if you actually try to operate on the file. For example, most operating systems support Access Control Lists (ACLs) on files, and these can override the mode bits. Even without these, a file system can be mounted read-only, and this will probably not be reflected in the results of the -w and -W tests. An executable file can be corrupt in various ways, including something as simple as a shebang line that points to a non-existent executable.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • ‘Mind-boggling’ scrambled genome found in octopus and squid. It could explain their smarts. | Live Science

        Squid, octopus and cuttlefish have scrambled-up genomes that may help explain how these cephalopods evolved the most complicated nervous systems of any invertebrate.

        New genetic sequencing reveals that these animals’ genes are mixed up, arranged in strange orders not seen in other, non-cephalopod species. This DNA mixing and matching may have given evolution a new sandbox to play in, study co-author Caroline Albertin, a biologist at the University of Chicago Marine Biological Laboratory, told Live Science.

      • The Register UK ☛ Quantum computing startup probed in report, securities suit

        Quantum computing startup IonQ is facing a securities fraud lawsuit after a barrage of accusations came to light in a blistering report from Scorpion Capital, which claims the company lied about the maturity (and even existence of) its quantum device in addition to a smattering of claimed financial fictions.

        The Scorpion Capital report, issued May 3, provides a rigorously scathing assessment of the IonQ technology, which is described as “a useless toy that can’t even add 1+1″ as assessed by internal experiments run by unnamed but numerous quantum experts hired by Scorpion and exhaustively detailed in the full report [PDF].

    • Hardware

      • The Era of Exascale Computing Has Arrived. What Does That Even Mean?

        FLOPS or floating point operations per second is a measurement of computing performance particularly important in the field of scientific computing where floating point operations are a requirement. An exaflop translates to 10^18 flops and 1.1 exaflops equates to 1,100,000,000,000,000,000 flops. That is a lot of operations per second!

        There are so many moving pieces to Frontier and I am proud to say that I am part of a smaller team that works on the Lustre file system that runs on the Cray Clusterstor E1000 storage system on the backend of Frontier. So, what does this mean?

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • How COVID-19 Raised Indonesian Society’s Awareness of Green Architecture

        A decreasing number of COVID-19 patients and easing travel restrictions have begun in several countries across the globe, including Indonesia. In May 2022, the Indonesian government dropped the outdoor mask mandate as the pandemic got more and more under control. Soon, this pandemic will end and people will move on, but the question is: what will happen then? This question emerges as a result of many aspects of life in Indonesia being affected by the pandemic itself, such as the economy, business, politics, health, etc., with the adjustments needed in each. What about architecture?

        [...]

        Present-day, The Breeze BSD has become one of the most sought-after destinations among Jakarta and South Tangerang residents. Other aspects closely related to architecture are adjusting as well. Property developers have begun marketing a new commercial shophouse concept that provides outdoor space. For example, Melody Shophouses in BSD has a balcony and a terrace as an outdoor area. In landscape architecture, many places around Jakarta, such as Mangrove Park Kapuk and San Antonio Promenade PIK, highlight their outdoor experiences.

    • Security

      • USCERT ☛ CISA Releases Security Advisory on Dominion Voting Systems Democracy Suite ImageCast X

        CISA has released an Industrial Controls Systems Advisory (ICSA) detailing vulnerabilities affecting versions of the Dominion Voting Systems Democracy Suite ImageCast X, which is an in-person voting system used to allow voters to mark their ballot.

      • USCERT ☛ Vulnerabilities Affecting Dominion Voting Systems ImageCast X

        This advisory contains mitigations for Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature, Mutable Attestation of Measurement Reporting Data, Hidden Functionality, Improper Protection of Alternate Path, Path Traversal: ”../filedir’, Execution with Unnecessary Privileges, Authentication Bypass Spoofing, Incorrect Privilege Assignment, and Origin Validation Error vulnerabilities in versions of Dominion Voting Systems Democracy Suite ImageCast X software.

      • USCERT ☛ Atlassian Releases New Versions of Confluence Server and Data Center to Address CVE-2022-26134 [Ed: Microsoft leaves actively-exploited holes unpatched for months or years; Atlassian is at least tackling bugs]

        Atlassian has released new Confluence Server and Data Center versions to address remote code execution vulnerability CVE-2022-26134 affecting these products. An unauthenticated remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute code remotely. Atlassian reports that there is known exploitation of tmhis vulnerability..

      • How to prevent future cyber incidents in local schools [Ed: Delete Windows]

        Despite local schools going online following the pandemic, the cybersecurity threat prevails – here’s how to prevent future cyber incidents

      • The Register UK ☛ EnemyBot malware adds enterprise flaws to exploit arsenal

        Alien Labs recommends enterprises reduce the exposure of Linux servers and IoT devices to the internet, use properly configured firewalls, enable automatic updates, and monitor network traffic.

      • The Register UK ☛ That critical vulnerability might not be the first you should patch [Ed: This seems more like an ad than reporting...]

        Startup Rezilion suggests enterprises should change prioritization strategies

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Toyota Connected ‘Cabin Awareness’ Concept Uses New Tech to Detect Occupants

          Toyota Connected North America (TCNA), an independent software and innovation center of excellence, today introduced its Cabin Awareness concept technology that uses millimeter-wave, high-resolution 4D imaging radar to help detect occupants (including certain pets) in cars and has the potential to detect them if ever they’re left behind.

        • The Register UK ☛ Millions of people’s info stolen from MGM Resorts dumped on Telegram for free

          Miscreants have dumped on Telegram more than 142 million customer records stolen from MGM Resorts, exposing names, postal and email addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth for any would-be identity thief.

          The vpnMentor research team stumbled upon the files, which totaled 8.7 GB of data, on the messaging platform earlier this week, and noted that they “assume at least 30 million people had some of their data leaked.” MGM Resorts, a hotel and casino chain, did not respond to The Register’s request for comment.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • ‘Zombie clause,’ ban on nuclear weapons hidden in these tech user agreements

        Imagine if you entered a restaurant and the manager asked you to sign a contract blocking you from suing the business if everyone falls ill, and barring you from writing a bad online review. The agreement might even spell out what happens if zombies invade.

        You might dine elsewhere or just go back home.
        Fortunately, restaurants don’t try to impose demands like that (well, not usually). Yet we routinely agree to similar restrictions by clicking “yes” to long and tangled agreements on websites or simply by using software and gadgets. And yes, one tech powerhouse even includes a clause about reanimated corpses.

        Even if you’re distrustful of all that turgid legal prose, you may still be surprised by some of the clauses in terms of service and end-user license agreements, including the ones spelled out below. A number of them are odd but relatively harmless. In other cases, these agreements try to take away important consumer rights.

    • Environment

      • Energy

        • Nasdaq ☛ Bitcoin Miner Bitzero To Build $500 Million Headquarters In North Dakota [Ed: Burning power for no purpose at all]

          Bitzero Blockchain Inc., a 100% renewable bitcoin mining company, is making North Dakota the central headquarters for its North American operations.

          The miner distilled the plans on Thursday in a joint press release with the governor of North Dakota’s office and notable investors such as Kevin O’Leary.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • Right to Repair is Real

        What began as a dream in 2012 has finally blossomed into reality. Today, New York passed Asm. Patricia Fahy and Sen. Neil Breslin’s Fair Repair Act, making it the first state in the country to pass an electronics Right to Repair Bill.

        Everyone in NY is going to benefit from this landmark legislation. We’ll all be able to fix the stuff we like, stop being forced to buy new things we don’t want, and it will be possible for the secondary market to provide high quality options for reuse.

        The NY bill that just passed is a huge first step that covers a lot of ground—including cell phones, tablets and IT equipment. The future looks bright for more state legislatures to pass similar legislation and take up some of the equipment categories that didn’t get taken up in NY. We know that legislators like to advance bills they know are winners, and a vote of 145 to 1 in favor is a clear endorsement of a winning bill.

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • let’s talk about AI art i guess

          there are two areas in which machine learning can be exploitative: hardware and software.

          hardware can’t quite be helped, in some ways, because the entire electronics production chain hinges on exploitation of the environment and workers around the world (but mainly, keeping with imperialism, in the global south), and as such can anyone truly have spotlessly clean hands when tweeting from their phone? of course, AI research is part of the push for “better”, more powerful new hardware, and with more compute power comes more energy use, and i’m certainly not denying that [3].

          as for software, the path splits. what people are probably most aware of when it comes to image generation is stuff like dall-e, neuralblender (stole code for profit btw [4]) and artbreeder (the site where i first encountered GANs). these large models use fittingly large datasets like imagenet, that attempt to collect and classify the entirety-ish of our world (specifically imagenet builds on wordnet and uses just nouns because they’re supposed to be possible to illustrate with e.g. a photo. it’s based on image classification because that’s what makes it possible to use prompts).

Links 03/06/2022: GSoC 2022 Projects and More

Posted in News Roundup at 2:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • HowTo Geek ☛ HP and System76 Teamed Up to Build a Powerful Linux Laptop

        System76 has been selling some of the best Linux laptops for years, but now the company is teaming up with HP to sell the ‘HP Dev One’ — a laptop built for developers with System76’s custom flavor of Linux.

        System76 has plenty of its own laptops and desktops, and in 2017, it started developing its own variant of Ubuntu Linux called Pop!_OS. Pop is now a popular Linux distribution in its own right, with a customized desktop interface and additional built-in drivers, and the OS can be installed on third-party PCs. However, the only computers that shipped with Pop were from System76 itself… until now.

        HP has started accepting pre-orders for the HP Dev One, a new laptop primarily aimed at development work. It appears to be a slightly-customized version of the HP EliteBook 845 G8, with an 8-core/16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U processor, a 14-inch LED screen (without touch), a glass touchpad, a 1TB NVMe SSD for storage, 16GB RAM, and a 720p camera. That amount of RAM might be too little for some development work, but System76 confirmed that the SSD, Wi-Fi card, and RAM can be easily replaced or upgraded.

    • Applications

      • Medevel ☛ MyDrive is an open-source self-hosted Google Drive alternative and DMS

        MyDrive is an Open Source cloud file storage server (Similar To Google Drive). Host myDrive on your own server or trusted platform and then access myDrive through your web browser.

        MyDrive uses mongoDB to store file/folder metadata, and supports multiple databases to store the file chunks, such as Amazon S3, the Filesystem, or just MongoDB. MyDrive is built using Node.js, and Typescript. The service now even supports Docker images!

      • Medevel ☛ GrapesJS: an Outstanding Open-source Web Visual Builder

        GrapesJS is an open-source, multipurpose, Web Builder Framework which combines different tools and features with the goal to help you (or users of your application) to build HTML templates without any knowledge of coding.

        [...]

        GrapesJS is released under the BSD 3-clause License.

      • Medevel ☛ Uppy is an Open-source self-hosted file uploader

        Uppy licensed under the MIT license. It is written with JavaScript.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Network World ☛ Use bash to change an IP address from dynamic to static on Linux

        Changing the IP address of a Linux system from dynamic to static is not difficult, but requires a little care and a set of commands that you likely rarely use. This post provides a bash script that will run through the process, collect the needed information and then issue the commands required to make the changes while asking as little as possible from the person running it.

        The bulk of the script focusses on making sure that the correct settings are used. For example, it collects the 36-charater universally unique identifier (UUID) from the system so that you never have to type it in or copy and paste it into place.

      • Video ☛ How to install Linux Lite 6.0 – Invidious

        In this video, I am going to show how to Linux Lite 6.0.

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install VirtualBox on AlmaLinux 9 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VirtualBox on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, VirtualBox is a free and open-source virtualization software commonly used at the desktop level to create a test environment. Using VirtualBox you can run Windows on Linux Machine and Linux on a Windows machine without getting into complications of installing a dual boot operating system. VirtualBox may be installed on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Solaris.

        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 VirtualBox virtualization on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

      • ByteXD ☛ How to Flush DNS Cache in Ubuntu 22.04 – ByteXD

        In this article you will learn what is the purpose of DNS caching and why it is important to flush it.

        Additionally you’ll be acquainted with how to clear DNS cache using the system-resolved service.

        In order to understand the importance of flushing your DNS cache, first we need to break down some several components.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Improve SD Card Lifespan Using Log2RAM – Raspberry Pi

        The Raspberry Pi uses the SD-card as a primary storage device allowing users the space to install different applications or packages on the device. However, it also gets hammered with the presence of excess log files (system record files) that may reduce the performance and lifespan of the SD-card. Log2RAM is a bunch of scripts designed especially for the Raspberry Pi users that changes the physical location of log files to RAM in order to increase the SD card performance.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Configure and Run Stadia on Raspberry Pi

        Stadia is a google cloud gaming service that provides the service to play different high-end AAA games online. You can access Stadia on any device using a web browser. However, on the Raspberry Pi device, you will require to set up a few things so that you would be able to run the platform on the device.

        If you don’t know how to run Stadia on Raspberry Pi, go through this article’s guidelines.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to build your first Raspberry Pi Cluster?

        Raspberry Pi is an extremely lightweight device utilized to explore computing and learning how to program. However, its processor isn’t that powerful in performing multiple high-computational tasks all at once. For example, if you are using this device for mining purposes, it may heat up too early because it doesn’t have much capacity to perform these tasks single handily. In that case, you will surely need to build a Raspberry Pi cluster to speed up the performance of your Raspberry Pi device.

        This article will guide you in building your first Raspberry Pi cluster. However, before going into the details, let’s first discuss the Raspberry Pi cluster.

      • How To Remove Your Personal Information From The Internet

        Today you’ll learn how to opt-out and remove your personal data from people search engine sites.

        The opt-out procedures will be shown at the bottom of this post, for those who want to skip ahead.

        In case you didn’t know.

        Your sensitive personal information, including your name, phone number, home address and even financial records are visible on the web.

      • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ How to Easily Zoom in/out Your Screen in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | UbuntuHandbook

        Want to zoom in or zoom out your screen content? It’s easy to do the job via the system built-in magnifier tool.

        If you just want to magnify your web pages, press Ctrl and + key combination on keyboard can do the trick in the most web browsers. For others, Ubuntu has a built-in screen magnifier.

        It’s definitely the GNOME feature that also works in Fedora Workstation, and other Linux with the desktop environment. Which, can be useful when recording video tutorials.

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install CSF Firewall on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install CSF Firewall on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, ConfigServer Security & Firewall (csf) is an open source software firewall application. It is working based on iptables. Firewall configuration script created to provide better security for your server while giving you an easy to use, advanced interface for managing your firewall settings. CSF configures your server’s firewall to lock down public access to services and only allow certain connections.

        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 CSF Firewall on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

      • Install Wine 7.9 On Ubuntu 22.04 & Linux Mint | Tips On UNIX

        This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install wine 7.9 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04, and Linux Mint 20.3.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Sails.js Framework with Nginx on AlmaLinux 9

        Sails.js is a Javascript framework that you can easily and quickly build customized enterprise-grade for Node.js. It resembles the MVC architecture from such frameworks as Ruby on Rails but with improved support for the more data-oriented modern style of developing web applications and is compatible with other front-end, including Angular, React iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and much more.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Sails.js on AlmaLinux 9 and how to access the web-based interface by installing and configuring an Nginx reverse proxy setup.

      • FOSSLife ☛ The Linux cheat Command

        The Linux cheat command lets you search for and display a list of example tasks you might do with a command, writes Seth Kenlon.

      • Network World ☛ Connecting to your Linux system with your Android phone | Network World

        While using your cell phone to connect to your Linux system might not seem like much of a priority, it is possible and you might have a good reason to do this from time to time. If you have an Android cell phone, you can install a tool that will allow you to connect, open a terminal session on your Linux box and run commands just like you would if you were sitting in front of the system. Well, almost.

        The tool that I recommend is called JuiceSSH. It installs easily and leaves an icon with an image of a lemon with its name below it on your screen. Click on that icon and select Quick Connect to set up your connection.

      • Using Gandi DNS for Let’s Encrypt certbot verification

        I had some problems getting the Gandi certbot plugin to work in Debian bullseye since the documentation appears to be outdated.

    • Games

      • Boiling Steam ☛ New Steam Games with Native Linux Clients – 2022-06-03 Edition – Boiling Steam

        Between 2022-05-27 and 2022-06-03 there were 31 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients. For reference, during the same time, there were 290 games released for Windows on Steam, so the Linux versions represent about 10.7 % of total released titles. Here’s a quick pick of the most interesting ones…

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Utkarsh Gandhi: Inrotductory Post

          I’m Utkarsh Gandhi, a 20-year-old, second-year B.Tech student. I have been coding for a few years now but had never contributed to an open-source project before. My seniors advised me to participate in GSoC as it is the best way to start contributing to open source projects.

          I looked at a lot of organisations, but none of them seemed right. Then finally, GNOME caught my eye. I had been using the GNOME desktop environment and its applications for a year, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to give back to this organisation. I knew this would be the right fit for me.

          I started contributing to GNOME (more specifically Nautilus) around mid-February this year. I chose Nautilus as it is one of those applications which I use on a daily basis, and it just seemed logical to try and contribute to the app which is really important to me.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • 9to5Linux ☛ Help Shape Fedora Linux’s Future by Taking the Fedora Contributor Survey 2022

        If you’re a Fedora Linux user or a Fedora Project contributor, the development team behind this popular and powerful GNU/Linux distribution would love to hear from you and they invite anyone interested in shaping Fedora Linux‘s future to take the annual Fedora Contributor Survey.

        Powered by LimeSurvey, the Fedora Contributor Survey has a total of 44 questions and it’s split into several sections, starting with basic details about you as a Fedora contributor, member, or user, your familiarity with Linux-based operating systems, what social network you use, and what do you use Fedora Linux for.

      • Fedora Magazaine ☛ Fedora Linux editions part 1: Official Editions – Fedora Magazine

        Fedora Linux provides several variants to meet your needs. You can find an overview of all the Fedora Linux variants in my previous article Introduce the different Fedora Linux editions. This article will go into a little more detail about the Fedora Linux official editions. There are five editions — Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, Fedora IoT, Fedora CoreOS, and Fedora Silverblue. The Fedora Linux download page currently shows that three of these are official editions and the remaining two are emerging editions. This article will cover all five editions.

      • Red Hat Official ☛ High availability for SAP on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

        Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been providing high availability (HA) for business critical workloads at the application and database (DB) level for years, helping maximize uptime and minimize unplanned disruptions of service, making critical environments more resilient.

      • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: CPE Weekly Update – Week 22 2022

        Purpose of this team is to take care of day to day business regarding CentOS and Fedora Infrastructure and Fedora release engineering work.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers

      • Mozilla

        • Mozilla ☛ Introducing Ryan Johnson

          Please join me to welcome Ryan Johnson to the Customer Experience team as a Staff Software Engineer. He will be working closely with Tasos to maintain and improve the Mozilla Support platform.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • PostgreSQL ☛ PostgreSQL: pgtt v2.8.0 has been published

        pgtt is a PostgreSQL extension to create, manage and use Oracle-style Global Temporary Tables.

        The main interest of this extension is to reproduce Oracle behavior with GTT when you can not or don’t want to rewrite the application code when migrating to PostgreSQL. In all other case best is to rewrite the code to use standard PostgreSQL temporary tables.

      • PostgreSQL ☛ PostgreSQL: pgcluu v3.3 released

        pgCluu is a Perl program used to perform a full audit of a PostgreSQL Cluster performances. It is divided in two parts, a collector used to grab statistics on the PostgreSQL server using psql and sar, a reports builder that will generate all HTML and charts output.

        This release is a maintenance release that fixes issues reported by users since past nine months. It also adds new reports and features.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

    • GNU Projects

      • GSoC 2022 project announced: CMYK features

        The cat is out of the bag: Nikc, a Google Summer of Code student, is working this year on getting CMYK features into GIMP. Let’s talk about this in a little more detail.

        For the record, we only requested this unique project slot to Google. Nikc discussed beforehand with us to understand the needs, the project current state as well as the wanted direction. They also contributed patches before GSoC selection so we knew how they interact during code review. If anyone is interested in GSoC in future years, please consider communicating with us like this, not just dropping a proposal without contacting us on our mailing lists or IRC.

    • Programming/Development

      • OpenSource.com ☛ How static linking works on Linux | Opensource.com

        Code for applications written using C usually has multiple source files, but ultimately you will need to compile them into a single executable.

        You can do this in two ways: by creating a static library or a dynamic library (also called a shared library). These two types of libraries vary in terms of how they are created and linked. Your choice of which to use depends on your use case.

        In a previous article, I demonstrated how to create a dynamically linked executable, which is the more commonly used method. In this article, I explain how to create a statically linked executable.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Dart Conditionals

        Decision-making expressions are those which let programmers choose which statement to execute under different circumstances. Conditional statements are used in different programming languages to inform the computer on what factors to make when certain conditions are met. These decisions are taken only if the already stated conditions are true or false: it depends on the functions in the mind of the programmer. The if statement, if-else statement, and if-else-if statements are often used in Dart to introduce the conditional implementation of statements based on one or more Boolean expressions.

        The syntax within the example of the Dart If statement, If-Else statement, If-Else-If ladder, and nested If-Else statement will be covered in this tutorial.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Dart Interfaces

        An interface in the Dart programming language is considered as a way of creating abstraction within your code. The Dart interface acts as a blueprint for all the classes that wish to implement this interface. Afterwards, these classes are required to provide their own implementations for all the interface methods. In this article, we will teach you the use of the interfaces in the Dart programming language in Ubuntu 20.04.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Dart Sets

        A set in the Dart programming language is defined as a collection of multiple elements of the same data type. However, each of these elements needs to be unique. In this guide, we will study the usage of the Dart sets in Ubuntu 20.04 by going through some simple yet helpful examples.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Dynamic Memory Allocation in C

        In DMA, the decision on memories that are allocated cannot take during the compile time. This decision or memory is allocated during the Runtime.

        Whenever we create any variable through DMA, that type of variables do not have any name; we access these variables through address or pointer.

        In SMA, Programmer knows from earlier time that how many Variables or How many memories are required for his/her program.

        But In DMA, programmer does not know from earlier state that how many variables or memory is required, it depends upon the user’s requirement.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Arithmetic Operator in C

        There are several types of operators are present in C languages. With these operators, we can manipulate different types of operands or data with different procedure. Arithmetic operator is one of the operators by which we can operate different types of mathematical values. First, we have to see that what the position of arithmetic operator in operator groups is.

      • Qt ☛ VR with Qt Quick 3D—source code now available

        Some of that work is already part of Qt: Qt Quick 3D Physics will be released as Tech Preview in Qt 6.4. The VR part is not currently on the roadmap, however, so we haven’t got to the stage where we polish the module to Qt levels of quality. But it is still a lot of fun to play around with, and it is amazing to be able to experience a Qt Quick 3D scene in VR by just adding a couple of lines of code.

      • Barry Kauler ☛ User override of top-level zram

        This means that as you use the applications, download packages, etc., it will all be happening in zram, with no writes to the drive. Instead, there is a “save” icon on the desktop, and save is offered at shutdown, when or if you want to save the work to the drive.

        This is great for a flash drive, where you likely want to limit writes to the drive; however, if Easy is installed to a HDD or a high-quality SSD, it will not be such a concern. In that case, you might prefer the previous behaviour with direct writes to the drive, and no “save” icon on the desktop.

        I know that some people prefer to have a “save” icon anyway, as a security measure. That is, if something happens that you don’t like, just shutdown without saving.

        Anyway, there is now a mechanism for users to override the default setting for top-level-zram…

      • Perl / Raku

      • Python

        • Linux Hint ☛ Numpy Np.Apply_Along_Axis

          The apply_along_axis() function is used to apply a specific function to a 1D slice along a specified axis.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Numpy Np.Add.At

          The add.at a function in NumPy allows you to perform an in-place operation on the left-side operand.

          In the case of an addition operation, the function will add the right operand to the left operand at the specified array index.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Numpy Fromfile

          This article will discuss saving and reading a NumPy array to and from a binary file.

        • Linux Hint ☛ NumPy Count True

          We have an array containing Boolean elements. The goal is to determine how many of those elements in the array are True.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Find Strings in Pandas

          This article will help you understand various methods we can use to search for a string in a Pandas DataFrame.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Combine Date and Time

          This short article will discuss how you can create a Pandas timestamp object by combining date and time strings.

  • Leftovers

    • Security

      • LWN ☛ Security updates for Friday [LWN.net]

        Security updates have been issued by Debian (cifs-utils, debian-security-support, and pypdf2), Fedora (fapolicyd, mariadb, openssl, and qt5-qtbase), Oracle (firefox, maven:3.5, maven:3.6, postgresql:10, postgresql:12, and postgresql:13), Red Hat (.NET 6.0, firefox, gzip, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, pcs, rsync, subversion, thunderbird, and zlib), Scientific Linux (thunderbird), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (firefox, hdf5, suse-hpc, kernel-firmware, libarchive, patch, php8, and redis), and Ubuntu (cifs-utils and vim).

      • Diffoscope ☛ Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 215 released

        The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 215. This version includes the following changes:

        [ Chris Lamb ]
* Bug fixes:
  - Also catch IndexError (in addition to ValueError) when parsing .pyc
    files. (Closes: #1012258)
  - Strip "sticky" etc. from "x.deb: sticky Debian binary package […]".
    Thanks to David Prévot for the report. (Closes: #1011635)
  - Correctly package diffoscope's scripts/ directory, fixing the extraction
    of vmlinuz kernel images. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#305)
  - Correct the logic for supporting different versions of argcomplete in
    debian/rules.

* New features:
  - Support both PyPDF 1.x and 2.x.

* Codebase improvements:
  - Don't call re.compile and then call .sub on the result; just call
    re.sub directly.
  - Clarify the logic around the difference between --usage and --help.

* Testsuite improvements:
  - Integrate test coverage with GitLab's concept of artifacts.
  - Re-enable Gnumeric tests as its now available again.
  - Test --help and --usage, and additionally test that --help includes
    the programmatically-generated file format list as well.

[ Holger Levsen ]
* Bump Standards Version field in debian/control to 4.6.1.

      • eSecurity Planet ☛ Millions of MySQL Servers are Publicly Exposed [Ed: Something being reachable does not imply it being breached, unlike with Microsoft; you might say this enables DDOS attacks, but then again those databases can be connected to sites that are publicly exposed and which can be DDOSed too]

        More than 3.6 million MySQL servers are publicly exposed on the internet, security researchers noted this week.

        Shadow Server Foundation researchers reported that they simply issued a MySQL connection request on default port 3306 to see if a server responded with a MySQL Server Greeting, rather than intrusive requests that pentesters use to break into databases.

      • Raphaël Hertzog: Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, April 2022

        Two projects are currently in the pipeline: Gradle enterprise and Tryton update. Progress is quite slow on the Gradle one, there are technical difficulties. The tryton one was stalled because the developer had not enough time but seems to progress smoothly in the last weeks.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • TheNewArab ☛ Syrian regime arrests citizens under new cybercrime law
      • AccessNow ☛ U.S.-Canadian firm Sandvine fosters Russian censorship infrastructure

        Infamous Canadian-American company, Sandvine Corporation, owned by a notorious Silicon Valley investment firm, Francisco Partners, was providing Russia with Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies, according to a Bloomberg investigation published today.

        Access Now calls on Sandvine to immediately withdraw all technology from Russia that could be used for censorship and surveillance, and for the U.S. government to launch a full investigation into Sandvine’s involvement in Russia and other countries with human rights abuses, and implement robust regulations of technologies that can be misused for human rights violations.

        Sandvine has been selling DPI technologies through its Russian partners, state-owned Tele2 Russia and Megafon. Sandvine’s DPI tech has helped facilitate human rights abuses in more than a dozen countries, including Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and, most recently, in Belarus—where the company was forced to pull out its business in 2020 after scandal and pressure from U.S. officials, diaspora groups, and human rights organizations, led by Access Now.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Some Thoughts on Spartan

        Spartan is seeing a fair bit of adoption it would seem, including some software that I author and now my own Gemini capsule being mirrored on Spartan as of last night. It is an interesting protocol and very easy to work with, and handily solves certain issues that one might have with Gemini in a clever way. That said, I have mixed feelings about Spartan, especially when taken together with Gemini.

        On the one hand, the simplification that goes hand in hand with ditching tls makes the protocol even simpler than one might expect, and the prompt line idea is a nice way to skip a round trip to the server. I also rather like the fact that cross site redirects are not allowed, and rather wish that Gemini had gone this way to begin with.

      • The Record ☛ It’s exam time in Syria — and that means internet shutdowns

        As hundreds of thousands of Syrian high school students sit to take national exams, their government is taking an extreme proctoring measure: shutting down national internet access.

        Syria’s authoritarian regime has long kept a tight grip on the country’s internet access via government-affiliated Syrian Telecom, which controls the primary routes web traffic can transit in and out of the country. Internet shutdowns became common during the ongoing Syrian Civil War — but have been deployed in the country for years to prevent academic misconduct.

        How well Syrian students do on their final high school exams is a primary factor in what higher education options they can access — defining the economic futures of many. That puts a lot of pressure on students and even family members who may be looking to help the next generation gain whatever advantage possible amidst years of conflict.

        “The stakes for the exams are so high and there’s an assumption that everyone is cheating,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik.

        Prior to Syria implementing the exam blackouts, “questions would begin appearing on social media 30-60 minutes before each exam, thus allowing cheaters to circulate correct answers and compromise the integrity of the test,” Madory wrote in a 2016 blog post chronicling what’s believed to be the first round of Syrian academic internet outages.

        The way the exam blackouts typically operate in Syria is by blocking fixed line and mobile internet access in the hours before the exams as paper tests are printed and physically distributed across the country. Mobile service remains down while students take the tests, according to Madory. The recent outages appear to be implemented by taking down the routes that announce how internet traffic comes into the country, he said.

        Local state-funded outlet Syria TV noted the outages are happening again, despite Syria’s education minister saying last summer they would be canceled in the coming year.

A Sincere, Non-Revisionist History of Techrights

Posted in Site News at 1:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum caeec24fd1fc7619a513fbee14068ff7
Our History and Plans
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Looking back at the progress made, including GNU/Linux becoming more mainstream and 35 U.S.C. § 101/Alice (SCOTUS) obliterating many software patents, we’re proud to say that there’s a potentially bright future ahead; there will also be a number of milestones and announcements, so we look back at what happened here since 2006 (33,611 blog posts ago)

We are very excited by a number of things. As we noted moments ago, Techrights turns 16 later this year. We must recognise the fact that many people aren’t familiar with the history and thus tradition of the site.

It would not be the first time we tell the story, but looking back at 16 years perspective varies a tad bit. In 2006 I was very active in Digg.com (I was in fact ranked 17th in the entire site, which was a very major hub on the Web back then).

Shane, like me, was very upset about what Novell had done with Microsoft. It was a patent collusion. Almost everyone in the GNU/Linux community was furious. Shane wanted me to join him in opposing the patent deal. So I did. That was way back in 2006. By that point I had already been very actively in USENET and in my own site. Social control media wasn’t quite a thing yet.

It’s perfectly sincere to say this site was always about patents. It was also about GNU/Linux and the way Microsoft misused of patent schemes to undermine GNU/Linux (in retrospect it failed because GNU/Linux is very much iniquitous these days).

Novell was sold or tentatively sold around 2010, so we refocused a bit on software patents and Microsoft’s misdeed, which soon haunted Nokia (2011) and other companies. The E.E.E. tactics culminated around 2015 with “Microsoft loves Linux” (a lie) and “joining” the Linux Foundation not so long after that.

In 2014 we started focusing on EPO abuses and one year later the gangster Benoît Battistelli sent not one but several British law firms to intimidate me. This had the unpredictable effect of encouraging me to focus even more on the EPO — something we do to this very date with António Campinos (a total phony, a friend of Battistelli) in charge.

In November we can proudly say that we’ve survived 16 years. Since we never relied on social control media we have been very stable and relatively robust to censorship. We’ve received more legal threats than I care to recall, but we never got sued because the facts and the law were on our side.

And the journey continues. █

Working Document: Strategy for Tackling Tech Abuse and Our Long-term Plans

Posted in Site News at 11:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A decade
Preparing for the next decade

Summary: We’re making plans for the coming decade or decades; generally speaking, we plan to write more not just about software freedom or software patents; the issue of Internet freedom (e.g. centralisation) becomes a high priority too

THIS week we commenced the drafting of this crude list of so-called ‘tech’ companies and what they do (for profit and to society). I put tech in scare quotes for reasons some people can guess; I’m very cynical about the direction technology has taken, not because I’m unfamiliar with tech (my degrees are in technical fields) but because I think it’s overused, misused and abused. One classic example of that is voting machines; who ever said paper ballots were so problematic? Is advancement defined as “embracing tech”? Automation? Counting a few millions of ballots once in several years isn’t a massive endeavour.

In any event, we’re planning to present the data we’ve gathered more visually. There’s also this Free Software timeline from FigOSDev, who meticulously prepared the Librethreat Forecast and Librethreat Database, dealing a lot with inside threats.

tuxmachines.org turns 18 one week from now, we in Techrights turn 16 later this year, and it seems increasingly likely that I will be semi-retired (part time work) some time later this summer, which means I’ll be able to spend a lot more time reading and writing.

ICANN on tuxmachines.org
Yes, tuxmachines.org is really that old and we’ve renewed the domain until 2027

Watch this space as we’ll probably have a lot to say in weeks to come.

We’ve repeatedly stated that the number one priority is EPO coverage. It has had a profound positive effect and we wish to keep that. But when things are relatively calm at the EPO we want to issue 3-4 batches of Daily Links, aside from detailed articles, especially commentary about the state of Free software. Last week I registered our home as a high-priority address for power supply because we’re hosting Gemini and other services from home. The expectation is that I should be able to run the site, along with our associates and awesome geeks, for decades to come. If the Web is waning, that’s fine. We’ve been about more than the Web for 2 years already and we have our own IRC network, our own Git server, and our self-signed certificates (the centralised CA model seems to be optimised for censorship in the long run).

Stay tuned for further news and updates. █

Links 03/06/2022: Replacing WPA with IWD

Posted in News Roundup at 10:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Trend Oceans ☛ Pre-order HP Dev One laptop specially crafted for developers with a POP!_OS

        
        System76 announced its collaboration with HP, which attracted much public interest. Why not developers’ folk get excited when the two best of their industries collaborate with each other and develop the best product for the consumers?

        Three months back, one of the users on Reddit posted a question on the subreddit of pop_os: “Some kind of partnership between HP and System76 on the horizon?” To be honest, we were all sure something interesting was happening between HP and System76, and today’s curtain gets lifted with a new line of products called “HP Dev One”.

      • Liliputing ☛ HP Dev One laptop with Pop!_OS Linux now available for $1099

        The HP Dev One is a notebook designed for professional developers. The 3.24 pound notebook has a 14 inch full HD display, a backlit spill-resistant keyboard with a pointing stick in the center as well as a glass-covered clickpad below it, and an AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U processor.

        But the main thing that marks this as a developer-centric laptop (other than the name)? It ships with a Linux distribution called Pop!_OS rather than Windows. First announced in may, the HP Dev One is now available for $1099.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Applications

      • Linux Links ☛ Essential System Tools: btop++ – resource monitor

        
        The top utility needs little introduction to seasoned Linux users. top is a small utility that offers a dynamic real-time view of a running system. It allows users to monitor the processes that are running on a system.

        top remains a useful utility. It helps with system administration by identifying users and processes that are hogging the system. It is also useful for non-system administrators, helping to track and kill errant processes. However, top is showing its age and there are a bunch of utilities that offer a more feature-laden and visually attractive alternative.

        btop++ is an alternative to top. It’s a resource monitor that shows usage and stats for processor, memory, disks, network and processes. It’s a continuation of bashtop and BpyTOP. It’s free and open source software written in C++.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Techtown ☛ How to Install Pycharm on Debian 11 – The best IDE for Python! – Atechtown

        It is no lie to say that Python is one of the most important and widely used programming languages in the world. And to take full advantage of it, we need to have an IDE up to the highest demands. Today, you will learn how to install PyCharm in Debian 11 and thus have one.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Change Your Display Name and Username in Roblox

        Roblox is a widely used gaming platform where you can find tons of games of different genres. If you are new to this platform and want to change your display name with username then follow this guide as I have explained the process of changing the username as well as the display name of your Roblox account.

      • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Get Current System Time Zone in Linux

        For social, commercial, and legal purposes, areas on the world map that share a uniform standard time complete the definition of a time zone. Therefore, the implementation of a time zone depends on the divisions and boundaries that separate different countries and regions.

        This approach of identifying time zones is more convenient than strictly relying on longitudes. Enough with the geography lesson, let us get back to solving computing problems the Linux way.

        Linux is smart enough to identify the time zone you are under; whether you are a Linux developer on the move or a Linux enthusiast that embraces a change in their environment from time to time.

        Under the Linux operating system environment, you will never fail to come across time management utilities like date and timedatectl. It is through such time management utilities that we can be able to run various Linux command tweaks to reveal the exact current system time zone associated with our environment.

      • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Convert Videos to GIFs Using FFmpeg

        Since the onset of GIF or Graphical Interchange Format back in 1987, the internet fell in love with this technological approach of making an image exist in a state of continuous motion.

        With this brief fact, Gif’s popularity on business and social platforms is becoming impossible to ignore, and for good reasons. This article guide will explore their importance and how to effortlessly create them via the FFmpeg tool.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to dual boot on Raspberry Pi – Step by Step Guide

        Raspberry Pi device is a portable mini-computer where you can easily install an operating system. It includes a robust processor with a large memory storage that can go up to 8GB thus keeps your system performance well up to the mark. However, most people are unaware about running multiple operating systems on Raspberry Pi devices. This article is written to help you in running multiple operating systems on your Raspberry Pi using the dual boot process.

      • GNU Linux bash – get root partition
      • GNU Linux bash – get distribution OS version
      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Wiki.js on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Wiki.js on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Wiki.js is open-source wiki software that is robust and adaptable, written in javascript, and powered by a Node.js engine. Wiki.js offers support for various databases such as MySQL, MariaDB, and MSSQL with the primary support for PostgreSQL.

        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 Wiki.js on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to run Windows applications on Raspberry Pi using Wine

        Want to run Windows application on your Raspberry Pi desktop? Try out Wine. It’s a multi-format reader designed specially to run Windows applications on different platforms such as Linux, Debian, Fedora and so on. It’s a lightweight compatibility layer that efficiently runs on your Raspberry Pi desktop without reducing the device performance.

        This guide will show you how you can install Wine on your Raspberry Pi device and install Windows applications with ease.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Install Jellyfin on Raspberry Pi | Watch media from a web browser

        Jellyfin is a free and open-source online media solution designed to manage, organize and share media files to other networked devices. It lets you run your media files directly onto your browser via its web dashboard. You can install it on any platform, such as Windows, Linux and macOS.

        If you want to install Jellyfin on Raspberry Pi, you should follow the guidelines provided in the article so that you will be able to access the Jellyfin web interface.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to install Box64 on Raspberry Pi? – 4 Easy Steps

        Raspberry Pi OS is an ARM based operating system that won’t allow you to directly run Windows applications on its environment. However, with the inclusion of Box64, the users will be able to run x64 applications with ease. Box64 is an emulation platform that converts the x64 program instructions to ARM instructions, allowing users to easily run x64 applications on Raspberry Pi desktop.

        This tutorial guides you in installing Box64 on Raspberry Pi.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Grafana – Visualization Tool on Raspberry Pi

        Grafana is a multi-platform open-source visualization tool with an online web-based interface allowing users to monitor their system metrics on their Raspberry Pi device. It has a built-in alert manager that keeps you updated whenever the server receives data. It also includes visualization options like charts and graphs which are generated from data source and you can view them directly onto your browser tab. With the inclusion of different built-in plugins, you can also use Grafana service on a cloud environment.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Ly Window Manager on Debian 11

        Ly is a free, open-source, minimalistic, and lightweight terminal-based display manager for Linux.

        Ly is a great alternative to those who are used to staring at the terminal window all day.

        Let us now discuss how to install it on Debian 11.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • DebugPoint ☛ Titan Linux: A Blend of Debian Stable and KDE Plasma

      A review of Titan Linux which is a mix of Debian stable branch with lightweight KDE Plasma desktop and brings additional tools.

    • Ubuntu Pit ☛ MX Linux: Try This Linux Distro for A Snappy Desktop Experience

      Are you looking for a clean and snappy Linux-based desktop experience? Then take a look at MX Linux, which is known for its light yet powerful package for all types of hardware specifications. This distribution is great for old PC, and low-end laptops yet offers the latest software support. Additionally, the advertisement-free user interface makes it even more appealing to many PC enthusiasts.

      If you are new to Linux, then skip this all over and settle down with Ubuntu or distros like Linux Mint. This is for pre-exposed users from intermediate level to experts. There are some tips and tricks to cope with it, even if you are new and coming from a Windows environment. I hope this article on MX Linux will help you know a bit more about the overall ecosystem.

    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • SUSE’s Corporate Blog ☛ openSUSE Conf 2022 – Day Two: ALP Roast – An open discussion with the ALP Steering Committee | SUSE Communities

        On Day two, June 3, of the openSUSE Conf 2022 the main event was the discussion of the ALP Steering Committee with the openSUSE community. ALP, the Adoptable Linux Platform, stands for the next generation of the SUSE Linux family. As intro to the event Michal Svec, SUSE Product Manager for SLES, explained what it is all about. ALP stands for a new approach, for a new thinking out of the Box when it comes to Linux, especially to the openSUSE/SUSE Linux distro.

        Michal is member of the Steering Committee together with Anja Stock, Director Program Management Linux Systems, and her team: Jiri Srain, Alex Herzig, Lubos Kocman, Pavel Niahodkin, Stefan Weiberg, all SLE Release and Project Managers. They all were available on Stage to answer the community questions.

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the weeks 2022/21 & 22 – Dominique a.k.a. DimStar (Dim*)

        Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

        Last week, I skipped the review as over here, Thursday was a holiday and I decided to take Friday off as well and make for a long weekend (for a $random value of ‘off’ as it turned out). In total, Tumbleweed has seen 13 snapshots since the last review, which means it was ‘almost daily’ with one gap {0519..0601, except for 0529 – and 0526 was published, but never made it to the mirrors due to a config error)

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Red Hat Official ☛ Getting started with RHEL 9, interpreting system log files, and more sysadmin tips | Enable Sysadmin

        Today, we are looking back at our top 10 articles of May to give you a chance to catch up on any of the great content you might have missed. In this list, you will see various topics covered, and we are confident that some, if not all, will be of interest to you.

      • Red Hat Official ☛ 6 deprecated Linux commands and the tools you should be using instead | Enable Sysadmin

        Swap your old Linux commands for new and improved alternatives that provide the same functionality, if not more.

      • Enterprisers Project ☛ 4 ways digital transformation enables a diverse, future-ready workforce

        To remain competitive, today’s businesses must use digital systems to improve efficiencies and meet customer needs. As people increasingly expect digital options in their daily lives, companies are reevaluating their workforces and ensuring that their employees and internal processes are prepared for digital transformation.

        While it can be daunting to embrace changes brought on by technology amidst the pandemic, doing so will position your business to grow and flourish in the 21st century. One of the greatest benefits it brings is the ability to create a diverse workforce that is prepared for the future. Here are four examples of how digital transformation helps organizations do that.

      • Enterprisers Project ☛ What it takes to lead today’s digital ecosystem: CIOs share advice

        After years of accelerated digital transformation, CIOs are now playing a central and critical role in defining the digital future – but the best IT leaders would quickly tell you that they could not have gotten here on their own. Success in this new normal takes collaboration, smart partnerships, and an unwavering focus on the people who make up a strong digital ecosystem.

        For the past 15 years, in conjunction with its annual event, the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium has recognized excellence in IT leadership through its CIO award program. This year, we had a chance to ask each of the award finalists what they believe is required to lead in today’s digital ecosystem.

        From celebrating setbacks, to building a culture of curiosity, to leading with empathy, learn how leading CIOs are driving innovation and positioning their organizations for success.

      • IBM Old Timer ☛ IBM Emeritus: The Digital Divide in How We Use the Internet

        A few weeks ago I attended an MIT seminar by Esteban Moro, professor at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid and visiting professor at MIT. Moro’s talk discussed the socio-economic digital divide based on how we use the internet, focused on two key questions: how profound is the digital usage gap in our society?; and can we use mobile phone traffic to infer socioeconomic status? His seminar was based on a recently published article in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface co-authored with four collaborators, – News or social media? Socio-economic divide of mobile service consumption.

        “Inequality is a central societal problem, especially within rapidly expanding urban areas,” wrote the authors. “While it is a crucial driver for economic growth, the progressive clusterization of workers, industries, companies and services in cities has a tremendous cost in terms of segregation and discrimination. This cost is not only economic: in the same city, different areas can have a 10- to 15-year imbalance in life expectancy and highly divergent education levels, with little chances of social mobility.”

    • Debian Family

      • Trend Oceans ☛ Armbian 22.05 added support to Orange PI, Banana, and other arm devices

        Armbian community has rolled up a new version of Armbian 22.05 after three months of v(22.02). In this release, they have added support to several arm devices like DevTerm A06, Orange Pi R1+ LTS, Orangepi 3 LTS, Radxa Rock 3A, and Zero. Apart from that, they have even made improvements to the Allwinner A20, Allwinner H5, Odroid N2, and Orange Pi Zero.

      • CNX Software ☛ Armbian 22.05 release adds support for Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS, Radxa Zero & Rock 3A, DevTerm A06

        The latest release of Armbian, version 22.05, is now out with hundreds of Linux kernel and user space-related bug fixes, a focus on stabilizing existing platforms, while still adding four new boards with Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS (RK3328), Radxa Zero (Amlogic S905Y2), Radxa Rock 3A (RK3568), and DevTerm A06 (RK3399).

        The community also added two new maintainers for ESPRESSObin and Radxa Rock Pi 4 (Model A) SBCs which should mean the images for those boards will be tested more regularly and potential issues fixed more quickly. You may want to read the more detailed changelog to see if any changes may impact the board(s) you are using. The new Armbian 22.05 release succeeds Armbian 22.02 outed on February 28, 2022.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • DebugPoint ☛ Ubuntu 22.10 Plans to Replace WPA with IWD for Wireless Connectivity

        Ubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu plans to introduce IWD by replacing the WPA for wireless connectivity and management.

      • Beta News ☛ Say goodbye to Microsoft Windows 11 and wave hello to Ubuntu-based Linux Lite 6.0

        Is Windows 11 a good desktop operating system. Absolutely. Is it the best desktop operating system? Well, that is harder to answer. Ultimately, if you are 100 percent dependent on Windows software, then yes, Windows 11 is the best operating system… for you. If you can get by without using software designed for Microsoft’s OS, however, a Linux-based operating system might be the better option — especially if you have an older computer.

        You see, Windows 11 is very polarizing. The operating system features radical changes to the user interface (such as a centered task bar) which some users do like, but many others do not. Not to mention, the system requirements will leave many still-capable computers unable to upgrade without using unofficial hacks. Even worse, computers deemed incompatible could eventually stop getting updates! Linux doesn’t have these problems.

        But if you want to switch to Linux after only using Windows your entire life, what distribution should you choose? While there are many good options, I often recommend Linux Lite. Why? Because that distro (which uses the Xfce desktop environment), is one of the best Linux distributions for Windows-switchers; it is lightweight, modern, and very familiar. Seriously, folks, Linux Lite is a dream.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Its FOSS ☛ Spotify Introduces an Open-Source Tool to Fix a Big Problem for Modern Musicians

      Spotify is a leading music streaming platform with several open-source projects.

      While most of the projects/tools are built for niche users, they have finally introduced something that seems enticing to all the modern musicians involved with digital music production.

      ‘Basic Pitch’ is a new free and open-source tool by Spotify that lets you convert any audio file to its MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) version.

    • GNU Projects

      • Second second

        In GNU’s parse-datetime.y, or as it used to be called, getdate.y, the second ordinal is commented out. I guess for English ambiguity reasons.

    • Programming/Development

      • sss: simple spartan server

        I wanted to play around with the Spartan protocol. To that end, I bodged together a simple server written in Go.

    • Standards/Consortia

      • Re: A reader friendly browser

        I think that’s one reason why Gemini is succeeding. (It’s already as much of a success as it needs to be. Smol. Anything else that happens is gravy.) With fewer line types and a narrower grammar for semantics, it’s less easy to mess it up and there’s less data to scrape and exploit.

        I’ve ranted before on how many Markdown sites will have you render <em> for italic things that aren’t emphasis at all, like titles and foreign names.

  • Leftovers

    • 28 day months

      I’m starting to notice that more and more subscription services are opting to use a 28-day monthly renewal period. At first, I thought it was just a lazy way to make sure the business gets the best end of the deal each month, but the result means they can charge an extra monthly fee per year.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • MakeTech Easier ☛ Axon Wants to Use Armed Drones to Stop School Shootings

        The news of yet another school shooting shook much of the U.S. and confused the rest of the world. Ideas to remedy the situation range from arming teachers to limiting access to guns. The CEO of Axon, the company behind Taser stun guns, has another idea. He wants to stop the shootings with armed drones.

    • Finance

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Pages on Fire

        Sweden’s chief prosecutor Per-Erik Rinsell calls the racist inciter’s deportation rants and book burning a “constitutionally protected right”, and calls protests against it unacceptable violence.

        If only the book-burning inciter would’ve put his complaints in a Washington Post op-ed instead. Then he would’ve become the Internet’s most hated woman, and sentenced to pay his ex-husband $10000000. That’s one dollar per second in four months.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • MeitY publishes and then withdraws a proposal to amend IT Rules, 2021

        On June 2nd, 2022, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (‘MeitY’) proposed amendments to IT Rules, 2021 to ‘address the gaps identified’ and invited comments on the proposal. Instead of addressing the gaps, the proposals perpetuated the already existing illegalities in the IT Rules, and sought to impose impractical obligations on social media platforms and subjected them to direct government oversight. As soon as the proposed amendments were published, we summarised our concerns on Twitter. Later in the day, it was reported that MeitY had decided to withdraw the proposal and that the proposal may be released again next week.

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • AI art is bad

          If AI art ever becomes good, that’s fine too because even though all human endeavor and expression will become meaningless, at least we’ll have some pretty darn neat art to look at while we’re screaming through the cosmos.

          Yeah, that’s the bar I’ve set for AI art to beconsidered good or worthwhile. I’m not worried it’ll get there any time soon. AI-assisted art, sure, but humans have used tools for art since Lasceaux.

          The camera did strike a pretty huge blow against art; for example, Millais’ Ophelia is unmatched by the works in its shadow.

          But the camera has also created art, like Star Wars, or The Bride Wore Black.

[Meme] A Need for Father’s Discipline?

Posted in Europe, Humour, Patents at 7:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Who said 'Fuck'? Tony

Summary: António Campinos is breaking the rules, but don't expect his fake supervisor to do what's required to rectify things

EPO Staff Demands Release of the F***ing Recordings of António Campinos Breaching the Code of Conduct of the Office With Repeated Slurs/Swear Words

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum bfda37307becbb658ed4d8c1505e139e
Lack of Dialogue and Accountability
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) and the Central Staff Committee (CSC) of the EPO are not tolerating the bad behaviour of António Campinos, who is acting in bad faith like his friend and predecessor Benoît Battistelli

THE staff of the EPO (not the kakistocrats in management but staff which does all the actual work!) is too smart to fool and push around. Cursing at the staff isn’t just counterproductive; it is a serious violation of the rules of the Office.

As usual, if the kakistocrats do all the enforcement of the Code of Conduct (as we saw in the Linux Foundation), the Code of Conduct will only even be used to protect the powerful, not the vulnerable. Selective enforcement.

“The victims are being framed as “troublemakers” and those who constantly break the law are painted in media (which they bribe) as peacemakers.”This is exactly what’s happening at the EPO right now. The victims are being framed as “troublemakers” and those who constantly break the law are painted in media (which they bribe) as peacemakers.

The Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) has sent an open letter to the chief kakistocrat, stating: “Staff demands publication of the GCC recording of 26 April 2022″ (not a new request, but the kakistocrat keeps ignoring the request; it’s June already!).

The LSCMN wrote to colleagues: “To further the earlier request of the CSC, the LSCMN had put the following question to staff: “Do you request Mr Campinos to publish the recording of the GCC meeting of 26 April 2022?” 306 participants answered yes (96%), 9 answered no and 4 abstained.”

European Patent Convention; I am the f***ing president!!It’s clear that people do want to hear and judge it for themselves. It’s also clear that the kakistocrat, António Campinos, is eager to hide what happened there. As if time alone will ‘fix’ things and amend the past…

The LSCMN continued: “We conclude that the request of the CSC has found the overwhelming support of staff in Munich and urge the President to accede to it in this open letter.”

The Central Staff Committee (CSC) also wrote to colleagues, in a message entitled “Meeting on 1 June: Professional conduct and meaningful dialogue” and sent some day ago: “The President has invited the CSC to inform him of any topics we would like to add on the agenda of the meeting with him scheduled for 1 June 2022. We think it is against the interest of staff if we simply return to a “business-as-usual” agenda after the GCC meeting of 26 April 2022. Rather, we see two problems that need to be urgently addressed in order to prepare a new beginning on a common basis: professional conduct and meaningful dialogue.”

“Whether is is just a mental or instability issue (inability to control one’s language), or even connected to alcohol/narcotics… that’s not for us to judge. But there are rumours and whisper campaigns inside the Office about Campinos and drugs.”“Professional conduct” refers to the rudeness of António Campinos. There have been no consequences whatsoever for breaking the rules of the Office and he’s seeking to extend his term. Insane!

To remind readers what he said: “You will never have such a nice person being the f***ing President for the next fifty f***ing years. So you wake up and make agreements with me, or you never will for your f***ing life.”

Sounds like an ego problem. He thinks he’s always right. He cannot come to grips with disagreement. This is another Battistelli. We don’t want to recklessly assert or claim a profound mental issue, e.g. God complex of sorts, as we never met him in person and diagnostic, arm chair psychiatry would not be our professional field, either. But do you want a megalomaniac to run Europe’s second-largest organisation? Is this going to be beneficial to peace and dialogue?

Whether is is just a mental or instability issue (inability to control one’s language), or even connected to alcohol/narcotics… that’s not for us to judge. But there are rumours and whisper campaigns inside the Office about Campinos and drugs. “Either way,” an associate has noted, “it’s not a desirable trait in one in his ostensible role.”

Does the Administrative Council get that? Does the Council serve any function at all? After four years of failure and growing unrest, was anything learned?

Here is what staff representatives wrote:

Europäisches Patentamt
80298 München
Deutschland

Local Staff Committee Munich
Comité local du personnel de Munich
Lokaler Personalausschuss München

Email: mnstcom@epo.org

Date: 25.05.2022
sc22009ml

Europäisches Patentamt | ÖPV München | GERMANY

President of the Office
Mr António Campinos

Per E-Mail: PRESIDENT@epo.org

SUBJECT: Request of Staff in Munich to publish the recording of the GCC Meeting of 26 April 2022

Dear Mr President,

On 18 May 2022, the Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) held an online General Assembly attended by 667 staff members.

During the assembly, we presented the ”Mobility” Package (CA/32/22) to staff and detailed the events which took place during the GCC meeting of 26 April 2022 as reported by the Central Staff Committee (CSC). Reference was made to the ServRegs, in particular Article 38(5), which stipulates that

the meetings of the GCC shall be recorded. In that earlier publication by the CSC, it was requested that this recording be published.

The LSCMN had put the following question to staff:

“Do you request Mr Campinos to publish the recording of the GCC meeting of 26 April 2022?”

306 participants answered yes (96%), 9 answered no and 4 abstained.

From this, we conclude that the request of the CSC has found the overwhelming support of staff in Munich. It is our duty to convey this support to you, and ask that you proceed with the publication of the recording of this last GCC meeting.

Sincerely yours,

Michael Alex Kemény

Chair of the Local Staff Committee Munich City, Haar and Brussels

The staff representatives that staff represent other branches of the Office wrote this:

European Patent Office
80298 Munich
Germany

Central Staff Committee
Comité central du personnel
Zentraler Personalausschuss

centralSTCOM@epo.org

Reference: sc22058cl

Date: 19/05/2022

European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY
Mr António Campinos
President of the EPO

By email

OPEN LETTER

Agenda of the upcoming President / CSC meeting on 1 June 2022

Dear Mr President,

In your email of 4 May 2022, you invited the CSC to inform you of any topics we would like to add on the agenda of the meeting with you scheduled for 1 June 2022.

After the GCC meeting of 26 April 2022, your office informed us that the “consultation did take place in good faith” (email of 28 April 2022), that “the members of the GCC nominated by the administration do not share [our] recollection of this specific meeting” but that indeed “GCC meetings may be some times tense” (email of 29 April 2022). Later, your official report in the Intranet downplayed the incidents as “issues creating tensions at times”.

Rarely has a recollection been so far removed from reality, and the draft minutes of the meeting that you sent us on 19 May evening even seem to ignore the matter completely.

We see two problems that need to be urgently addressed in order to prepare a new beginning on a common basis:

Firstly, professional conduct would require you as Chair to refrain from ad hominem attacks against individuals for what they say or how they say it. It is up to the Chair to be flexible with the time constraints of a GCC meeting, and it may also be part of his duties to admonish inappropriate contributions. However, at no point in time did our behaviour go beyond normal conduct, which would even have justified such a response. For example, we cannot accept that you divide staff representatives into some who would engage into “lengthy monologues” and “other CSC members”, who would have “interacted openly”.

Secondly, meaningful dialogue is also at stake. You suggest that the GCC should be the place for “direct discussions” on all agenda items “with the time required by their complexity”. Just taking the Professional mobility agenda item as an illustration, how can one reasonably expect a meaningful discussion to take place in such a short time on such a long and legally complex document (CA/32/22)?

We expect a direct interaction in Working Groups, where our point of view would be genuinely taken into account before a version is submitted to the GCC. This happens much too seldom because your appointees often seem to have no leeway or mandate to really interact and have the “remarkably fruitful exchanges” you claim in your email of 29 April 2022.

We think it is against the interest of staff if we simply return to a “business-as-usual” agenda after the GCC meeting of 26 April 2022, unless we address together some issues which have accumulated over the year s and culminated in this last GCC meeting. We have a genuine interest in finding better formats for bringing in the opinion of staff so that it can be taken into account in the decision-making process. In the interest of all stakeholders, and first and foremost of the staff itself, we are open to an educated discussion on such improvements.

In conclusion, we believe that we need to address these issues first before we consider addressing the items on your social agenda.

Yours sincerely,

Alain Dumont
Chairman of the Central Staff Committee

Parts of these texts are discussed in the video above. █

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