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Links 14/07/2023: Godot Engine Needs Help, AlmaLinux Diverging From RHEL, Rust 1.71.0 is Out



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • GamingOnLinux Star Labs announced the compact Byte Mk II PC
        Need a new mini-PC? Hardware vendor Star Labs have announced their refreshed Byte Mk II and it looks like quite a tidy little unit.

        Coming with an Intel N200 fanless processor, dual 1Gbps ethernet, coreboot and 8GB 3200MHz RAM (up to 16GB) and a 480GB PCIe SSD (up to 2TB) it has what you need to get going. As usual for Star Labs it has exceptional support for various Linux distributions with you being able to configure it with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, elementary OS, Linux Mint, Manjaro and more options.

    • Applications

      • Linux LinksMachine Learning in Linux: LibreTranslate is Self-hosted Machine Translation

        We recently explored Argos Translate, state of the art neural machine translation software. That software provides a Python library, command-line interface, and a GUI.

        LibreTranslate is a machine translation API which is entirely self-hosted. This software lets you use open source machine translation in your projects. It uses Argos Translate for its translation engine.

        We tested LibreTranslate with the Arch distro. As we recommended in our review of Argos Translate, use a virtual environment to install LibreTranslate. We’ll use conda, but you may prefer to run the software with Docker.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Data SwampEasily use your remote scanner on Linux (Qubes OS guide)

        Hi, this is a quick guide explaining how to use a network scanner on Qubes OS (or Linux/BSD in general).

        I'll be using a network printer / scanner Brother MFC-1910W in the example.

      • Ruben SchadeMy home IPv6 network plans

        Our ISP began offering IPv6 earlier this year. Rather than a single public IPv4 address, we’ve now been delegated a /48, from which our router can DHCPv6 addresses to every Internet-connected interface in our local domain.

      • APNICPrivacy and networking: Part 8 — IPv6 addresses and privacy

        One of the biggest advantages of IPv6, from a network administration perspective, is the ease of renumbering. While IPv4 networks can be renumbered using DHCP, the process of changing the address of every device on a network is always fraught with unexpected challenges. People (like me) have a habit of manually assigning printers and network-attached storage (NAS) devices a fixed address so they will be easy to find and use.

      • University of TorontoTwo views of security and vulnerability scanners

        In my entry on how web server should refuse requests for random URLs, I mentioned that we have an open source security and vulnerability scanner. Among the reactions I saw to that entry was people who felt that such scanners are basically a bad idea, and in thinking about the issue I've decided that I can see two views of such scanners.

    • Games

      • GamingOnLinuxFactorio upgraded with controller support - now in the stable release

        Factory building and automation sim Factorio has a fresh stable release out, continuing years of free upgrades and it now has gamepad controller support. Becoming available first in the 1.1.83 experimental build that I wrote about previously, the developers continuing refining various bits in the game for a few more testing releases before pushing it out to everyone today.

      • GamingOnLinuxGodot Engine has a new funding platform and they're calling for help

        With Godot Engine moving over to being supported by the Godot Foundation directly, they've begun pushing for people to support their efforts via their new funding platform inspired by Blender.

      • GamingOnLinuxNintendo Switch emulator yuzu makes some big progress in the latest report

        The incredible team building the Nintendo Switch emulator yuzu have a new progress report out for June 2023 and it's quite a doozy. Yes June, they're running over previous work. As usual, it's a lengthy read full of technical speak and exciting features and fixes so I'm here to summarise the important bits for you.

      • GamingOnLinuxTeam Fortress 2 - Summer 2023 Event is live as it smashes player records

        Finally it's here! Valve has updated Team Fortress 2 with a Summer Event for 2023 and it appears to have exploded the player counts. Going from around 100-125 thousand players at time to a record-breaking€ 253,997 peak as of 2 hours ago. Seems TF2 has plenty of life left in it, if only Valve gave it a bit more regular attention huh?

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • SDx CentralIstio Service Mesh hits milestone (years after the open source project should have)

      The open source Istio service mesh project is hitting a major milestone today as it officially graduates to be a full project at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

      Istio describes a service mesh as “a dedicated infrastructure layer that you can add to your applications. It allows you to transparently add capabilities like observability, traffic management, and security, without adding them to your own code.”

      Graduation at the CNCF is an indication of the maturity, usefulness, contribution and production-grade quality of a project, which are all check boxes that Istio arguably achieved years ago. Istio was originally started by Google in 2017, where it remained until April 2022 despite repeated calls from users and other vendors for the project to be contributed to a neutral third-party organization. That organization is the CNCF, which is also home to the open source Kubernetes container orchestration project that is routinely the primary way that Istio is deployed.

    • UndeadlyOpenBGPD 8.1 released

      Version 8.1 of OpenBGPD, the OpenBSD Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing daemon, has just been released.

    • GamingOnLinuxAMD opens up the FidelityFX SDK and it's now on GitHub

      Helping game developers integrate various AMD FidelityFX technologies into their games, AMD yesterday open sourced the FidelityFX SDK.

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Mozilla

        • Mozilla4 things we learned from Mozilla’s Responsible AI challenge

          From chat engines and generative apps to self-driving cars, technologies that use artificial intelligence continue to transform our lives in new ways. But how do we create AI that serves society without disempowering some of us? How can we make sure these innovations are fair and trustworthy?

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • YottaDBMaking lua-yottadb Fast

        TLDR: YottaDB is a fast and clean database and it deserves a Lua API that is as fast as possible. This article discusses how we improved lua-yottadb to go ~4× as fast when looping through database records, and a stunning 47× as fast when creating Lua objects for database nodes, plus other improvements (results here). Low-hanging fruit aside, the biggest (and trickiest) improvement was caching the node’s subscript array in the Lua object that references a specific database node. Finally, porting to other language wrappers is discussed, as well as a tentative thought on how YDB might support an even faster API. Along the way we learned numerous things that might help someone port these efficiencies to other languages.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • A complete guide to factory reset LibreOffice to its default state

        LibreOffice is a powerful and versatile open-source office suite that provides a free alternative to commercial software like Microsoft Office. While using LibreOffice, you may encounter issues or experience glitches that can disrupt your workflow. In such cases, a factory reset can often resolve these problems and restore LibreOffice to its default settings. In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through how to factory reset LibreOffice, step by step.

    • Education

      • RIPEConnected to Port 53 - A Report from the DNS Hackathon 2023

        DNS Hackathon took place during the weekend before RIPE 86 in Rotterdam. Co-hosted by DNS-OARC, Netnod and the RIPE NCC, it included 46 "hackers" who worked on 6 projects, had a lot of fun and many stroopwafels. Read about the results, and join us next time!

    • Programming/Development

      • Terence EdenA whimsical fuzzy clock

        And here we come to a central problem with any fuzzy system - repetitiveness. How to make it say something new every time it is called? I guess there are three main approaches: [...]

      • Evan HahnA picross game in 1024 bytes

        It was challenging to fit this all in just 1024 bytes! This post is a retrospective on the project.

      • Pierre EquoyAutomated blog builds with Sourcehut

        I am a happy Sourcehut user and I wanted to try its build service. Every time changes are pushed to a git repository hosted on Sourcehut, it is possible to trigger a series of actions described in a manifest that will be run in a virtual machine on builds.sr.ht. If you've ever used Github Actions or Gitlab Pipelines, you should be pretty familiar with this concept.

      • Rust

        • Rust BlogAnnouncing Rust 1.71.0 | Rust Blog

          The Rust team is happy to announce a new version of Rust, 1.71.0. Rust is a programming language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.



          [...]

          The behavior for unforced unwinding (the typical case) is specified in this table from the RFC which proposed this feature. To summarize:

          Each ABI is mostly equivalent to the same ABI without -unwind, except that with -unwind the behavior is defined to be safe when an unwinding operation (panic or C++ style exception) crosses the ABI boundary. For panic=unwind, this is a valid way to let exceptions from one language unwind the stack in another language without terminating the process (as long as the exception is caught in the same language from which it originated); for panic=abort, this will typically abort the process immediately.

          For this initial stabilization, no change is made to the existing ABIs (e.g. "C"), and unwinding across them remains undefined behavior. A future Rust release will amend these ABIs to match the behavior specified in the RFC as the final part in stabilizing this feature (usually aborting at the boundary). Users are encouraged to start using the new unwind ABI variants in their code to remain future proof if they need to unwind across the ABI boundary.
        • LWNRust 1.71.0 released [LWN.net]

          Version 1.71.0 of the Rust language has been released. Changes this time include the C-unwind ABI, an upgrade to musl 1.2, and more.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft ("a Dying Megacorporation that Does Not Create") and IBM: An Era of Dying Giants With Leadership Deficits and Corporate Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
Microsoft seems to be resorting to lots of bribes and chasing of bailouts (i.e. money from taxpayers worldwide)
Daniel Pocock: "I've Gone to Some Lengths to Demonstrate How Corporate Bad Actors Have Used Amateur-hour Codes of Conduct to Push Volunteers Into Modern Slavery"
"As David explains, the Codes of Conduct should work the other way around to regulate the poor behavior of corporations who have been far too close to the Debian Suicide Cluster."
 
[Video] 'Late Stage Capitalism': Microsoft as an Elaborate Ponzi Scheme (Faking 'Demand' While Portraying the Fraud as an Act of Generosity and Demanding Bailouts)
Being able to express or explain the facts isn't easy because of the buzzwords
Links 18/05/2024: Caledonia Emergency Powers, "UK Prosecutor's Office Went Too Far in the Assange Case"
Links for the day
US Patent and Trademark Office Sends Out a Warning to People Who Do Not Use Microsoft's Proprietary Formats
They're punishing people who wish to use open formats
Links 18/05/2024: Fury in Microsoft Over Studio Shutdowns, More Gaming Layoffs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 17, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, May 17, 2024
Links 18/05/2024: KOReader, Benben v0.5.0 Progress Update, and More
Links for the day
Microsoft-Connected Sites Trying to Shift Attention Away From Microsoft's Megebreach Only Days Before Important If Not Unprecedented Grilling by the US Government?
Why does the mainstream media not entertain the possibility a lot of these talking points are directed out of Redmond?
[Meme] UEFI 'Secure' Boot Boiling Frog
UEFI 'Secure' Boot: You can just ignore it. You can just turn it off. You can hack on it as a workaround. Just use Windows dammit!
The Market Wants to Delete Windows and Install GNU/Linux, UEFI 'Secure' Boot Must Go!
To be very clear, this has nothing to do with security and those who insist that it is have absolutely no credentials
In the United States Of America the Estimated Share of Google Search Grew After Microsoft's Chatbot Hype (Which Coincided With Mass Layoffs at Bing)
Microsoft's chatbot hype started in late 2022
Techrights Will Categorically Object to Any Attempts to Deny Its Right to Publish Informative, Factual Material
we'll continue to publish about 20 pages per day while challenging censorship attempts
Links 17/05/2024: Microsoft Masks Layoffs With Return-to-office (RTO) Mandates, More YouTube Censorship
Links for the day
YouTube Progresses to the Next Level
YouTube is a ticking time bomb
Journalists and Human Rights Groups Back Julian Assange Ahead of Monday's Likely Very Final Decision
From the past 24 hours...
[Meme] George Washington and the Bill of Rights
Centuries have passed since the days of George Washington, but the principles are still the same
Video of Richard Stallman's Talk From Four Weeks Ago
2-hour video of Richard Stallman speaking less than a month ago
statCounter Says Twitter/X Share in Russia Fell From 23% to 2.3% in 3 Years
it seems like YouTube gained a lot
Journalist Who Won Awards for His Coverage of the Julian Assange Ordeals Excluded and Denied Access to Final Hearing
One can speculate about the true reason/s
Richard Stallman's Talk, Scheduled for Two Days Ago, Was Not Canceled But Really Delayed
American in Paris
3 More Weeks for Daniel Pocock's Campaign to Win a Seat in European Parliament Elections
Friday 3 weeks from now is polling day
Microsoft Should Have Been Fined and Sanctioned Over UEFI 'Lockout' (Locking GNU/Linux Out of New PCs)
Why did that not happen?
Gemini Links 16/05/2024: Microsoft Masks Layoffs With Return-to-office (RTO) Mandates, Cash Issues
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 16, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, May 16, 2024
Ex-Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier Did Not Retire, He Just Left IBM/Red Hat a Month Ago (Ahead of Layoff Speculations)
Rather than retire he took a similar position at another company
Linux.com Made Its First 'Article' in Over and Month, It Was 10 Words in Total, and It's Not About Linux
play some 'webapp' and maybe get some digital 'certificate' for a meme like 'clown computing'
[Meme] Never Appease the Occupiers
Freedom requires truth. Free speech emancipates.
Thorny Issues, Violent Response
They say protests (or strikes) that do not disrupt anything are simply not effective. The same can be said about reporting.
GNU/Linux in Malaysia: From 0.2 Percent to 6+ Percent
That's like 30-fold increase in relative share
Liberty in Liberia? Windows Falls Below 10% and Below iOS
This is clearly a problem for Microsoft
Techrights Congratulates Raspberry Pi (With Caution and Reservations)
Raspberry Pi will "make or break" based on the decisions made in its boardroom
OSI Makes a Killing for Bill Gates and Microsoft (Plagiarism and GPL Violations Whitewashed and Openwashed)
meme and more
The FSF Ought to Protest Against UEFI 'Secure Boot' (Like It Used To)
libreplanet-discuss stuff
People Who Defend Richard Stallman's Right to Deliver Talks About His Work Are Subjected to Online Abuse and Censorship
Stallman video removed
GNU/Linux Grows in Denmark, But Much of That is ChromeOS, Which Means No Freedom
Google never designs operating systems with freedom in mind
Links 16/05/2024: Vehicles Lasting Fewer Years, Habitat Fragmentation Concerns
Links for the day
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Not many news sites are left to cover this, let alone advocate for GNU/Linux
Links 16/05/2024: Orangutans as Political Props, VMware Calls Proprietary 'Free'
Links for the day
The Only Thing the So-called 'Hey Hi Revolution' Gave Microsoft is More Debt
Microsoft bailouts
TechTarget (and Computer Weekly et al): We Target 'Audiences' to Sell Your Products (Using Fake Articles and Surveillance)
It is a deeply rogue industry that's killing legitimate journalism by drowning out the signal (real journalism) with sponsored fodder
FUD Alert: 2024 is Not 2011 and Ebury is Not "Linux"
We've seen Microsofers (actual Microsoft employees) putting in a lot of effort to shift the heat to Linux
Links 15/05/2024: XBox Trouble, Slovakia PM Shot 5 Times
Links for the day
Windows in Times of Conflict
In pictures
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 15, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 15, 2024