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Links 30/11/2022: Plasma Mobile Gear 22.11



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • TediumFydeTab Duo: Can This Linux Tablet Thrive Where the JingPad Faltered?

        Let’s be honest with ourselves. As much as we’d like the products we purchase and invest in to be with us for the long haul, any product is a risk. Especially a new one, by someone untested. And when you invest in a product through a crowdfunding site, you may not necessarily know what the final result is going to look like—after all, that’s part of the “fun,” I guess. Sometimes you don’t get a device at all. Sometimes, you get that device, but then all the people that were going to support it have essentially disappeared from view. I have one of those things, I reviewed it in this newsletter, and I’d like to talk about it—but I’d also like to talk about what comes after it. Today’s Tedium looks back at the JingPad experiment, one year later, faded dreams and all—and talks to another creator with big dreams and a Linux-friendly tablet with lots of potential.

        [...]

        So, my general rule with reviews is that if something significant changes I try to do updates, if possible. With the JingPad, I decided I wanted to give myself a little more time to see how things played out. And rather than just updating the piece, I thought what happened probably deserved something closer to a retelling.

        Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a review of the JingPad in which I highlighted the good and bad of the device, which took a full month and a half to land on my doorstep when delivered directly from China.

        It took a long time, but even after many delivery issues, including extended gummed-up delays in customs, it appeared, and I spent about two weeks playing with it before I wrote my full review. (I gave my first impressions over this way, in which I described the JingPad as “The Great Linux Tablet Hope.”)

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • It's FOSSWayland Protocols 1.31 Release Adds Fractional Scaling Support

        If you are using a high-resolution display, then you may have noticed issues like blurriness, jaggedness, and lag when using a program.

        This issue is caused by the fact that many programs use a default screen resolution (usually 1920×1080) to display their contents. This makes for a bad user interface experience on HiDPI devices.

        But you might be wondering, is there a solution to this? Yes, there is, in fact, a solution.

        It's called 'Fractional Scaling'. This method uses fractional values to scale a program's interface according to your display's resolution, resulting in a consistent look and feel.

        So, it would ensure that you had the same experience on any HiDPI device, regardless of the program you were using.

        Moving on.

    • Applications

      • Linux LinksBest Free and Open Source Alternatives to SAS Enterprise BI Server - LinuxLinks

        SAS Institute Inc. (“SAS”) is an American multinational developer of analytics software based in Cary, North Carolina. The company has around 14,000 employees.

        SAS started as a project at North Carolina State University to create a statistical analysis system used mainly by agricultural departments at universities in the late 1960s.

        SAS is the name of their software suite that can mine, alter, manage and retrieve data from a variety of sources and perform statistical analysis on it. It has more than 200 components covering areas including statistical analysis, econometrics and time series analysis, an interactive matrix language, data mining and much more.

        [...]

        SAS Enterprise BI Server is proprietary software and not available for Linux. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives to Enterprise BI Server.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Make Tech EasierHow to Generate A Public/Private SSH Key in Linux - Make Tech Easier

        If you are using SSH frequently to connect to a remote host, one way to secure your SSH server is to use a public/private SSH key so that no password is transmitted over the network. It can prevent against brute force attack too.

      • ID RootHow To Install Bitcoin Core on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Bitcoin Core on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Bitcoin Core is an excellent tool to create and manage your Bitcoin wallet. Bitcoin has massive volatility, and the best part is that you can manage your Bitcoins from your Bitcoin wallet where you can easily buy and sell to anyone anonymously. Bitcoin works on nodes connected to the blockchain to verify each transaction to the digital ledger.

        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 Bitcoin Core 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.

      • How to Set Up a Virtual Private Server

        There is hardly any need to extol the benefits of having your own server. From storing and sharing your data to self-hosting useful web applications, a server is a versatile platform that can make your computing life easier. Opting for a network-attached storage (NAS) appliance that comes with pretty much everything you need and requires very little tinkering seems like a no-brainer. But running your own server on a local network is not without drawbacks. To access the server from the outside world, you need to punch a hole in your network, which leads to a whole new set of problems you have to deal with. Plus, your Internet connection may or may not be up to scratch in terms of reliability and speed.

        If you are only interested in running web-based applications, shared web hosting might look like a sensible option. Most providers have plans that include a web server, PHP, and a MySQL database – all configured and ready to go. Some providers even offer easy-to-use installers for popular web applications. However, ease of use comes with serious limitations. Can you Install PHP additional libraries? No. Can you run non-PHP applications? Forget about it. Some providers don't even offer SSH access.

        A virtual private server (VPS) provides a middle ground between managing your own server and opting for shared web hosting. A VPS is a virtual Linux server system that you can manage yourself. Because you are the admin for your VPS, you have more control over it than you would with a basic web hosting arrangement. And, because the VPS is a virtual machine that shares the hardware with other VPS systems, it is much less expensive than leasing a dedicated server.

      • H2S MediaInstall Brackets Code Editor on Debian 11 Bullseye - Linux Shout

        Steps to install Brackets Code editor on popular Debian 11 Bullseye Linux to start coding and having a live preview in the Chrome browser.

        “Brackets” was developed by Adobe and can be considered a successor of AdobeEdge Code. However, later Adobe discontinued support for Brackets in 2021. Nevertheless, the project was on GitHub, hence was picked up by the open-source developers and is still active as a fork.

        With the same functionality as Adobe Edge (not active anymore), “Brackets” is available to run on Windows, Mac, and Unix).

      • Linux HandbookHow to Close Open Ports in Linux

        So you are dealing with a critical server where you have to maintain security at any cost. And closing ports to block unwanted traffic is the first step you'd take.

      • AddictiveTipsHow to read Linux partitions on Windows

        By default, it is impossible to read Linux partitions (filesystems) on Windows. Microsoft doesn’t provide the drivers to do this with the Windows kernel. However, there are ways to read these partitions. In this guide, we’ll show you how you can read Linux partitions on your Windows installation.

      • H2S Media2 ways to Install FileZilla on Fedora Linux such as 37 or 36

        Tutorial to install FileZilla client on Fedora 37 or 36 using the command terminal for transferring data to the FTP server from your Linux.

        FileZilla FTP client is free software available for all popular OS such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. Users can use it to copy files and folders via the Internet or local network from one PC to another computer. The FTP client is easy to handle and offers user interactive GUI with numerous special functions such as the continuation of interrupted transfers or the support of various transfer protocols such as FTP, SFTP, or FTPS.

      • Red Hat Official5 ways to harden your Linux server with Ansible | Enable Sysadmin

        Automation allows you to apply compliance and security policies consistently across your servers, verify compliance, and remediate servers.

      • Syslog-ng 101, part 1: Introduction - Blog - syslog-ng Community - syslog-ng Community

        Welcome to the first part of my syslog-ng tutorial series. In this part, I give you a quick introduction what to expect from this series and try to define what syslog-ng is.

        Before introducing you to syslog-ng, let me introduce myself in a few words. I am Peter Czanik from Hungary, syslog-ng user for about two decades. I work as an open-source evangelist at One Identity, the company behind syslog-ng. I do syslog-ng packaging, support and advocacy. Syslog-ng was originally developed by Balabit, which is now part of One Identity.

      • DignitedAdvantages, Vendors and How to Set Up
    • Games

      • Boiling SteamNew Steam Games with Native Linux Clients - 2022-12-01 Edition - Boiling Steam

        Between 2022-11-24 and 2022-12-01 there were 18 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients. For reference, during the same time, there were 181 games released for Windows on Steam, so the Linux versions represent about 9.9 % of total released titles.

      • Ubuntu Pit26 Best Free Linux Games That Everyone Should Play [Ed: Updated today]

        Linux users never had it so good. In the past, they typically had to make do with a limited selection of free-to-play titles, many of which lacked the polish and depth found in their console or PC counterparts. But all that has changed in recent years – the open source movement has led to an explosion of fantastic free Linux games, both casual and hardcore. Here are 30 of our favorites!

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • 9to5LinuxPlasma Mobile Gear 22.11 Is Out for Linux Phones and Tablets with Many Improvements

          Plasma Mobile Gear 22.11 is packed with all sorts of changes to improve the scrolling performance of the Homescreen in the grid app list on low-end devices and fix support for the Meta key, improve the performance and contrast of the lockscreen, as well as to add support for device panel orientations.

          This release also brings an updated design for the power menu that now includes a logout button, a new action drawer feature that lets users open the audio source app window by tapping on the media player, and updated Quick Settings to always open the mobile settings app and correctly display the marquee label in the Wi-Fi quicksetting.

        • Plasma Mobile Gear âš™ 22.11 is Out - Plasma Mobile

          We have decided to migrate the releases of Plasma Mobile applications to KDE Gear, starting with KDE Gear 23.04. This means that Plasma Mobile Gear will be discontinued in the future, and Plasma Mobile applications will follow the release schedule of most other KDE applications, simplifying packaging. To prepare for this, an ongoing effort was made to ensure all applications have proper Bugzilla categories created.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • DebugPointExodia OS: Emerging BSPWM-based Arch Linux for Pentesters

      small team of Arch Linux enthusiasts from Egypt is developing Exodia OS based on BSP window manager (BSPWM). The primary use case of this distribution is to be a perfect distro for wire & wireless penetration testing by providing all the necessary tools by default (similar to Kali Linux).

      Here's a first look.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • OpenSource.comIs sustainability still a thing in open source

      Eugen Rochko just reported that the social service Mastodon had "hit 1,028,362 monthly active users […] 1,124 new Mastodon servers since Oct 27 and 489,003 new users". Known mainly by open source developers, Mastodon has suddenly become mainstream, promising to take inclusive, open, and free values to social media. If Mastodon was sustainable, it is now thriving, attracting both users and developers, and able to launch more than 1,000 servers in a matter of days. How can this increase in users and infrastructure be explained? In this article, we want to suggest that there are different kinds of sustainability in open source and that these can have interesting interactions.

    • Matcher interview with Justin Flory - Conservancy Blog - Software Freedom Conservancy

      Software Freedom Conservancy: Why do you care about software freedom? How long have you been involved?

      Justin Flory: My trajectory in life and career for the last eight years was molded by the Software Freedom movement. As a teenager, I used Linux and Open Source software to run my own multiplayer game server for Minecraft. This exposed me both to open source as a concept but also the communities responsible for the production of great things made together with others. Fundamentally, my interest and passion for Free Software come from a human-centered perspective as a method to build more responsible technology for and by society.

    • Libre ArtsLibre Arts Weekly-ish recap — 30 November 2022

      This is an almost too good of a release this close to v3.0: floating selections out, outlined text in, Align tool rewrite, pasting multiple layers as a single one, and more. I published a review of the most important changes the same day, and there’s official release notes that cover even more changes.

    • MedevelGrist: An Open-source Spreadsheet Solution and Airtable Alternative

      Grist is a free open-source web-based app that allows you to create, edit, manage and manipulate spreadsheet files with your team and group.

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Chromium

        • GoogleChrome Releases: Chrome Dev for Android Update

          Hi everyone! We've just released Chrome Dev 109 (109.0.5414.23) for Android. It's now available on Google Play.

        • GoogleChrome Releases: Stable Channel Update for Desktop

          The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 108 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux. This will roll out over the coming days/weeks.

          Chrome 108.0.5359.71 ( Mac/linux) and 108.0.5359.71/72( Windows) contains a number of fixes and improvements -- a list of changes is available in the log. Watch out for upcoming Chrome and Chromium blog posts about new features and big efforts delivered in 108.

      • Mozilla

        • MozillaCelebrating Pocket’s Best of 2022

          The run-up to December is always my favorite time of year at Pocket. It’s when we sift through our data (always anonymous and aggregated—we’re part of Mozilla, after all), to see which must-read profiles, thought-provoking essays, and illuminating explainers Pocket readers loved best over the past 12 months.

          Today, we’re delighted to bring you Pocket’s Best of 2022. This year’s honor roll is our biggest ever: a whopping 20 lists celebrating the year’s top articles across culture, technology, science, business, and more. All are informed by the saving and reading habits of Pocket’s millions of curious, discerning users.

          The stories people save to Pocket reveal something unique—not only about what’s occupying our collective attention, but about what we aspire to be. And what we see again and again from 40 million saves to Pocket every month is the gravitational pull of stories that help us better understand the world around us—and ourselves.

    • Programming/Development

      • QtQt for MCUs 2.3 released

        Since the very first release of Qt for MCUs, your feedback and requests have been driving the development of Qt for MCUs. Today, we are happy to announce the release of version 2.3, which includes several of the most requested features and improvements. This new version adds the Loader QML type to Qt Quick Ultralite, support for partial framebuffers to substantially reduce the overall memory requirements of your applications, support for building applications using MinGW on Windows, and much more!

      • OpenSource.comGet to know Lua for loops in 4 minutes | Opensource.com

        In programming, iteration is an important concept because code often must scan over a set of data several times so that it can process each item individually. Control structures enable you to direct the flow of the program based on conditions that are often established dynamically as the program is running. Different languages provide different controls, and in Lua, there's the while loop, for loop, and repeat until loop. This article covers for loops. I will cover while and repeat until loops in a separate article.

      • Get Your Data On: Filtering Complex Data With gsignal

        The gsignal package is a new signal processing library ported from Octave. If you use Matlab or Octave, gsignal contains many of the signal processing functions you would expect to find. In this post, I’m going to compare filterComplex function to the gsignal::filter function.

      • FinnstatsReplace the first non-missing value in R

        Replace the first non-missing value in R, to retrieve the first non-missing value in each place of one or more vectors, use the coalesce() function from the dplyr package in R.

      • Simple interfaces to the forecasting API

        A few weeks ago, I introduced a forecasting API (Application Programming Interface).

      • rOpenSci | Meeting the stars of the R-universe: R Community, Exchange and Learn

        This is the first post of our interview series “Meeting the stars of the R-universe”. We aim to introduce the working groups and people behind the development of software and packages many of us use and which are available through the R-Universe. We want to highlight and explore different teams and projects around the world, the work they do, their processes and users. We begin our journey in Argentina with a team that uses R and develops R packages for the Argentinean State. Be sure to watch the video at the end with excerpts from the interview.

      • Processing large scale satellite imagery with openEO Platform and R

        openEO is an open source, community-based API for cloud-based processing of Earth Observation data. This blog introduces the R openeo client, and demonstrates a sample analysis using the openEO Platform for processing.

      • NextGenTipsHow to perform CRUD functionalities on FastAPI App – NextGenTips

        In this tutorial we are going to learn how to perform Create, Read, Update and Delete operations in a FastAPI application. In our previous post, we saw how to install and create the first application using RESTful FastAPI.

        In this tutorial we will create an API to fetch your favorite songs from the database. We will be implementing the database using the MYSQL.

      • OpenSource.comBuild test scripts for your IoT platform | Opensource.com

        In my previous article, I introduced the open source test tool JMeter and used a simple HTTP test as an example to demonstrate its capabilities. This article shows you how to build test scripts for complex test scenarios.

        The user interface displays a JMeter test script in the "tree" format. The saved test script (in the .jmx format) is XML. The JMeter script tree treats a test plan as the root node, and the test plan includes all test components. In the test plan, you can configure user-defined variables called by components throughout the entire test plan. Variables can also thread group behavior, library files used in the test, and so on. You can build rich test scenarios using various test components in the test plan.

      • Perl / Raku

        • PerlGerman Perl/Raku Workshop 2023 Call for Papers | Max Maischein [blogs.perl.org]

          The German Perl/Raku Workshop takes place from February 27 to March 1st 2023 in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

          We are looking for your contribution in the form a talk (20 minutes or 40 minutes), a lighting talk (5 minutes) or a workshop (2-4 hours). Please submit your proposals using this online form.

          The theme in 2023 is Perl Futures - of course the two developments of Perl, Raku and Perl as well as the reference to the financial metropolis Frankfurt am Main. Presentations with these emphases are especially sought after, but all contributions on Perl, Raku and software development in general are welcome.

  • Leftovers

    • VideoWoman Sues Kraft For $5 Million Over Mac-N-Cheese Prep Time - Invidious

      One of the things that makes me angry about the world today is frivolous lawsuits. Today, I was reading a story about a Florida woman that is suing Kraft Heinz for $5 million, because her Velveeta microwave Mac-N-Cheese takes longer to make than advertised on the package.

    • Joe BrockmeierA cardinal sin of content marketing: Writing what you want the audience to have read: Dissociated Press

      No matter who your audience1 may be – admins, developers, decision makers, or anyone else – they’re not obligated to read your content. It’s all about “what’s in it for me?” If you need to communicate something to an audience, you have to write what they want to read and not what you want them to have read.

      One of the things I see over and over again in writing is an assumption that the reader is going to find and read something from start to finish. It’s someone else’s job to put the content in front of the reader and assumed that once it’s there, the reader will just start with the first sentence and dutifully read through to the end, soaking up the messaging like a sponge.

    • Linux Foundation

      • PR NewswireBosch and XPENG Motors join the ELISA Project to Strengthen their Commitment to Safety-Critical Applications in Automobiles

        Bosch is one of the world's leading automotive suppliers. Bosch solutions combine automotive software know-how across all domains with expertise in electrical/electronic architecture of large integrated systems, complex real-time software, IoT, and automotive hardware. Their middleware offers functional safety, real-time behavior, and reliability under automotive requirements, combined with cyber-security. The Bosch experience and formal membership in ELISA fits well within the project goals and mission.

      • PR NewswireNew RISC-V Certification to Help Those Seeking Entry-Level RISC-V Roles or to Transition from Another Architecture

        The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, and RISC-V International, the global open hardware standards organization, have announced the immediate availability of the new RISC-V Foundational Associate (RVFA) certification exam, which is designed to test foundational knowledge of the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA).

      • Linux Foundation's Site/BlogLinux Foundation Newsletter: November 2022

        This month, we've got great news to share across the Linux Foundation. Here’s a roundup of must-read updates, including the release of Sylva, LF Europe’s first project, a new report from LF Research, community updates, Cyber Monday deals from LF Training & Certification, and so much more. We've also got a preview of what’s coming up in December!

    • Security

      • LWNSecurity updates for Wednesday [LWN.net]

        Security updates have been issued by Debian (krb5), Fedora (galera, mariadb, and mingw-python3), Red Hat (389-ds:1.4, kernel, kernel-rt, kpatch-patch, krb5, and usbguard), Scientific Linux (krb5), Slackware (kernel), SUSE (binutils, dbus-1, exiv2, freerdp, git, java-1_8_0-ibm, kernel, libarchive, libdb-4_8, libmspack, nginx, opencc, python, python3, rxvt-unicode, sudo, supportutils, systemd, vim, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (bind9, gnutls28, libsamplerate, linux-gcp-5.4, perl, pixman, shadow, and sysstat).

      • OMG Ubuntu20 Years in the Making: ClamAV Finally Hits Version 1.0 - OMG! Ubuntu!

        Does Ubuntu need anti-virus software? The general answer is no, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use one to run a check every now and then, especially if working with Windows files.

        Most folks’ go-to is open source anti-virus ClamAV, an app dedicated to ‘detecting trojans, viruses, malware, and other malicious threats’. ClamAV is available for Windows, macOS, BSD, and Linux systems, making it especially well suited to those who regularly work cross-platform and want some degree of familiarity.

        And a rather special new version was released this week.

      • LinuxiacClamAV Reached v1.0.0, Bringing Functionalities Improvements

        With the ClamAV 1.0.0 LTS release, developers move the Dockerfile and related scripts from the main repository to a new one.

        ClamAV is the most popular free and open-source antivirus software. One of its most common use cases is scanning emails on mail gateways or keeping files stored on NAS solutions virus-free.

      • dwaves.destrange Let’s Encrypt errors – when a single domain is canceled + privacy problems

        let’s encrypt privacy problems



      • Sec ListsSecurity sensitive bug in the i915 kernel driver (CVE-2022-4139)
        Hi all,
        
        

        [This is a public disclosure of an issue reported 7 days ago to linux-distros () vs openwall org. CVE-2022-4139 has been assigned to the issue since.]

        Incorrect GPU TLB flush code has been discovered in i915 kernel driver. In some cases (Gen12 hardware with specific types of engine) the engine's TLB is not flushed at all. Depending on whether the GPU is running behind an active IOMMU there are two possible scenarios which can happen, due to stale TLB mapping: 1. Without IOMMU - GPU can still access physical memory which could be already assigned by OS to different process. 2. With IOMMU - GPU can access any memory, if the malicious process is able to create/reuse necessary IOMMU mappings.

        It is currently not known if specific memory could be targeted, but random memory corruption or data leaks are a known possibility.

        All Intel integrated and discrete GPUs Gen12 are affected, including Tiger Lake, Rocket Lake, Alder Lake, DG1, Raptor Lake, DG2, Arctic Sound, Meteor Lake. Fix has already been developed and consists of fixing the method of writing to specific registers. I am attaching a set of back-ported patches which implement the fix for all affected stable branches (all since 5.4).

        This vulnerability has similar impact as CVE-2022-0330[1].
      • drm/i915: fix TLB invalidation for Gen12 video and compute engines
    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Make Tech EasierElon Musk Has Beef with Apple Over Twitter App - Make Tech Easier

        Elon Musk is finding out that buying one of the most popular social networks isn’t everything he’d dreamed it would be. He brought changes to Twitter shortly after buying it and has now claimed in tweets that Apple “threatened to withhold Twitter” from the App Store.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Al Jazeera‘No timeline’ for restoring internet to Tigray: Ethiopia minister

        There is “no timeline” for restoring internet access to the embattled Tigray region, the Associated Press reported a senior Ethiopian government official saying.

        Tigray’s internet service will be restored along with its phone and electricity services, though no timeline has been set for those goals, Belete Molla, Ethiopia’s minister for innovation and technology, said on Tuesday at the UN’s annual Internet Governance Forum in Addis Ababa.

        Tigray, home to more than 5 million people, has been mostly without internet, telecommunications and banking since war broke out between federal government troops and forces led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in November 2020.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • Public Domain ReviewA Bestiary of Loss – The Public Domain Review

          To mark Lost Species Day, images of 39 recently extinct animals and their stories — from the aurochs to the ivory-billed woodpecker.

        • Public Domain ReviewThe Launch of Our End-of-Year Fundraiser! – The Public Domain Review

          Our End-of-Year Fundraiser is now live! Running from 30th November to 14th December, this is a vital two week period in which we raise most of the funds to keep us going for the next year. We don’t have big sponsors, we don’t do intrusive advertising, instead we are kept alive by donations from you, our wonderful community of readers. If you like the project, and would like to see it continue, then please do consider donating. We need your help, now more than ever.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Hike: Bockmattli, Round 2

        I decided to do this hike again with better weather, with much more success. The route up through the pass to the summit was pre-post-holed by other hikers, making it much easier going than before. There was a bit more exposure than I was necessarily comfortable with one point, but that section was thankfully quite short before opening to a nice flat field before the summit. The view from the top was spectacular, with views of Pilatus, Grosser and Kleiner Mythen, Gross Aubrig, and Chaeserrugg (and a billion other peaks I don't know the name of and will have to get around to hiking eventually).

      • 🔤SpellBinding: AEHMNRU Wordo: FROGS
      • Group by Group Initiative

        This is how we’ve been doing initiative for the last few months. It’s fast and it gives a varied result with a lot of back & forth instead of first all on one side go, then all on the other side goes. Best of all, your parry goes immediately into your own attack.

      • Shoes: the unknown resource

        One way to play exploration games like D&D is as a resource game. Spells, HP, food, water, and light. But there’s one resource I rarely see other DMs talk about.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



Recent Techrights' Posts

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It is difficult to ignore the gains made by GNU/Linux this month
Microsoft Whistleblowers Explain How Brutal the Latest Cull is (Layoffs in Seconds-Long Calls, Mass Elimination of Whole Studios and High-Level Officials)
we see anonymous leakers or whistleblowers in the media today
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Last Summer Microsoft Mass Layoffs Came in Two Large Waves, Rumours Say Next Week Another Large Wave is Coming
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Tomorrow is Another Strike Day at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, the Media is Still Deliberately Ignoring It
Fridays are now recommended “anchor days" for EPO strikes
Public Interest News Foundation Shows News Drought or News Deserts in the United Kingdom
Public Interest News Foundation shows that we should be deeply concerned
Illusions of Choice
Choices can be differently bad or equally bad
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One Year Has Passed
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Working against us (instead of with us) has historically been a bad strategy
No Skinnerboxes, No Slop, No False Idols or Corporate Prophets
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Don't rush to call us "sensationalist" over it
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Rebellion Brewing at Microsoft
As always, we welcome Microsoft whistleblowers
Technology Against Human Nature
Losing a sense of what it means to be alive
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 15, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 15, 2026
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No recovery for IBM today
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Gemini Links 15/07/2026: Lab 6, Retrospective 2, and "Getting Back Into Gemini"
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Links 15/07/2026: "Gianni Infantino Under Fire" and "Todd Blanche's Record Raises Alarming Questions About the Future of the US DOJ"
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Allegedly More IBM RAs (Mass Layoffs) Same Day the Stock Crashed
No paper trail, so it never happened, right?
Techrights Was Right: Microsoft's Layoffs Tally Was False, Far More People Are Being Sacked
"The Xbox Bloodbath Is Actually Way Bigger Than It Seems"
Get Ready for Increase in PIPs and RAs at IBM, Red Hat, and Other Companies Devoured by IBM
IBM's "market cap" has just fallen to 199 billion dollars and it has about 70 billion dollars in debt
IBM Sinking to Lowest Levels Since 2024, But Will Any Executives Be Arrested for Securities Fraud?
52-week high of $332.46 and now down to $212.94
Microsoft Whistleblowers Say "The Entire Thing is Going to Fall Apart" and There Are "No Benefits" to Being Part of Microsoft
"Multiple sources, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal"
IBM's Crash Continues Today
Stocks go up and down, but they don't typically go down by over 25% in a single day
Like Kyndryl, Multiple Securities Fraud Investigations Into IBM
Remember what happened to Kyndryl
How Long Before GNU/Linux is Measured at 20% in Chad?
The main way to get people to adopt Vista 11 is to sell them a new PCs and in poor countries it happens a lot less
Making Techrights Faster Down Under (Australia and New Zealand)
there's more to life than speed
Strikes at the EPO Approved for the Rest of the Year, "€1,3 Billion Taken From Staff Income"
Intensity can be revised and increased over time
Focusing on What We Really Ought to Focus on
Today we'll focus mostly on EPO affairs
Violence is Not a Joke
"Police say Widdecombe killing was targeted but motive remains unclear"
How to Properly Measure the Performance of a Patent Office
A "contribution from staff [which] is published by SUEPO Munich."
Who Next After IBM? (Bubbles Don't Last Forever)
the demise of companies with "ai" in their name/domain
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XIV - "Not One of Us" (How the Group Dubbed by EPO Insiders "Alicante Mafia" Pushes Out Talent, Replacing It With Friends)
misuses the EPO's budget like it is a fountain of money for his friends
LibreTech Collective Abandons Microsoft GitHub and All Other Proprietary Software
Each time a project eliminates control by a hostile party it stands to gain
GNU/Linux Estimated at 8% "Market Share" Today (in statCounter)
Days ago it said 7.1%, then 7.3% or 7.4%
Links 15/07/2026: US Regime "Cuts Two Utah National Monuments by More Than 90%", "Hormuz is Less Crucial Than It Was"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2026: Old Computer Challenge, "Trial by Fire", LLM Slop Destroying Companies
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 14, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Heshan de Silva-Weeramuni Becomes Program Manager at the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Heshan's addition means that the FSF is growing after a solid financial year (best in years)
Michael McMahon Explains Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
The real solution is a curb on botnets. A mitigation strategy, however, would involve going static.
Matters of Public Safety
"Police say Ann Widdecombe killed in 'targeted attack' as motive investigated"
The Register MS and Its Promotional Microsoft Content
It's not too hard to see what the business model of The Register MS is
IBM: From $306 to $212 in 7 Days, IBM Won't Go Up More Than 50% to Where It Was at 'Peak Vapourware'
There's a limit to how much or how long a company can fake its performance and its potential [...] Early this morning a few insiders ("traders") cashed in on their "pump-n-dump"
Red Hat Staff Needs to Start Looking for the Next Job
Workers can conveniently lie or deny it to themselves, but waves of PIPs ("silent layoffs") will sweep over more and more units or teams as the company runs out of money to play with
IBM the Next Bear Stearns
IBM cannot recover if all it has to show is vapourware
IBM Stock Collapses and It's Only the Beginning
Will GAFAM soon follow and will any executives be arrested for the accounting fraud insiders have long cautioned about?
I'll Be Extremely Difficult for Microsoft to Sell Any XBox Consoles Now
Microsoft understands this
How Software Freedom Would Benefit Everybody
A society that denies control by greedy companies would do a disservice to monopolies and improve all services to citizens
Links 14/07/2026: Harsh But Also Fair Criticism of Hey Hi (AI) Slop, 'Open' AI Shuts Down Its Own Products as Funds Run Out
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/07/2026: Old CD Binder and AWK
Links for the day
In Defence of Physical Tickets
Tickets are not some "app" and not some "code" on some "screen"
Microsoft Layoffs Not Limited to XBox (False Narrative in the Mainstream Media)
Microsoft is becoming less relevant and workforce reductions won't end any time soon
Links 14/07/2026: Plagiarism Spun as "Training", Zelensky Announces Leadership Shuffle
Links for the day
The Register MS Has Just Published "AI" Webspam That Mentions "AI" 54 Times. It Was Paid to Do This.
Who pays for all this "AI" hype or "buzz"?
Gemini Links 14/07/2026: Self-Advocacy Online; "The Internet Is Dead: How the Web Lost Its Human Soul"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 13, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, July 13, 2026
Modern Technology Harms Women More Than Men (Because the 'Tech Bros' Who Dominate STEM Have a Poor View of Women)
“Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.”
Internet Relay Chat Trolls Are Not Expressing Opinions, They Are Saboteurs
For the record
Links 14/07/2026: "The Freedom of Information Act Is in Serious Trouble"; Irish Datacenters Use Up Almost 25% of Total Energy
Links for the day