Bill and Brandon have a discussion with Neal about the conferences he was able to attend this summer. We also talk about the outcomes of other open-source conferences this from this year. Conference Links Conference Video Playlists on Youtube: Coming Up LinuxFest NorthWest in Bellingham, WA
This week, Linux Out Loud chats about the different types of Linux users. Welcome to episode 72 of Linux Out Loud. We fired up our mics, connected those headphones as we searched the community for themes to expound upon. We kept the banter friendly, the conversation somewhat on topic, and had fun doing it.
When Apple was about to introduce Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard, John Siracusa wrote in the summer of 2006 about how a new file system should be coming to Macs (which it did, 11 years later). The Mac, Siracusa wrote, needed something that could efficiently handle lots of tiny files, volume management with pooled storage, checksum-based data integrity, and snapshots. It needed something like ZFS or, perhaps, ReiserFS, file systems “notable for their willingness to reconsider past assumptions about file system design.”
Two months later, the name Reiser would lose most of its prestige and pick up a tragic association it would never shake. Police arrested the file system’s namesake, Hans Reiser, and charged him with murder in connection with the disappearance of his estranged wife.
Reiser’s work on Linux file systems was essentially sentenced to obscurity from that point on. Now that designation has been made official, as the file system that was once the default on systems like SUSE Linux has been changed from “Supported” to “Obsolete” in the latest Linux 6.6 kernel merge process (as reported by Phoronix). While a former employee of Reiser’s company, Namesys, continues out-of-source work on later versions of ReiserFS, it is likely to disappear from the kernel entirely in a matter of years, likely 2025.
The newest Linux kernel, version 6.5, now includes initial support for two very exciting features.
The 6.5 release is here and it comes with many changes. As is often the case, Collabora has been actively involved in the submission of patches, mostly in the task of hardware enablement for Mediatek and Rockchip SoCs.
Transmission, Ubuntu’s default BitTorrent client, announced new 4.0.4 release with various bug-fixes. For users of Transmission 4.0.x, it’s recommended to update to the new release for stability improvements. For me, the last 4.0.3 crashes often when downloading Kali Linux image in 7z format. Now, it’s working good in the new 4.0.4 release.
Dragonfire is an open-source virtual assistant designed specifically for Ubuntu based Linux distributions. Its functionality is impressive, and it goes through several steps for each command you give it.
Firstly, it searches through the built-in commands and evaluates algebraic expressions.
The software utility cron also known as cron job is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like computer operating systems. But there are other high quality CLI command schedulers.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install GlassFish on Fedora 38. In the realm of web application development, the utilization of robust and efficient servers is paramount. GlassFish, an exemplary Java EE application server, has earned its reputation as a stalwart in deploying and managing Java applications.
In the realm of Linux command-line utilities, the bat command emerges as a powerful tool for enhancing your file-viewing experience. Unlike its predecessors such as cat and less, bat offers a unique blend of syntax highlighting, language detection, and Git integration, making it an indispensable asset for developers, sysadmins, and Linux enthusiasts alike.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Erlang on Debian 12. For those of you who didn’t know, Erlang, a programming language designed for building highly concurrent and fault-tolerant systems, has gained remarkable prominence in the realm of modern software development.
OpenVPN is a well-known VPN protocol that secures your connection when accessing the internet. It is a tool that lets you browse the internet world with some level of anonymity.
Properly configuring networking is vital for any Ubuntu desktop or server. In this introduction, we’ll cover the key topics involved in managing network settings on Ubuntu 22.04 systems.
When you click a link on terminal, or on another app on your Desktop, the browser window that pops up, is the browser that is set as default web browser on your system.
In this tutorial we show you the easiest way to see thumbnails for AVIF (AV1) images in the Nautilus file manager, as well as to enable AVIF image support on other GTK apps.
Coming almost two years after Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 4, the Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 5 release is based on the Debian GNU/Linux 12.1 “Bookworm” operating system and it’s powered by the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel series, which is a major bump from Linux 5.10 LTS used in the previous release.
Emmabuntüs DE 5 sticks to using a dual desktop setup with Xfce being the primary graphical environment for the live session and LXQt remaining the alternative for those who want even a lighter desktop environment. This release ships with Xfce 4.18.1 and LXQt 1.2.0 by default.
MidnightBSD 3.1.0 has been released.
The rolling release for openSUSE temporarily slowed the frequency of its snapshot releases cycle to support the migration efforts and data center move of the Open Build Service from last week.
The release engineer team reported in its weekly meeting that the check in of Tumbleweed builds were intentionally paused so as not put additional stress on the OBS migration that was needed.
The first check in build happened on Monday, passed openQA and snapshot 20230828 was released to update a half-dozen packages. An update of ImageMagick 7.1.1.15 removed a Common Vulnerability and Exposure patch after it was merged upstream. Some settings for RGBA images were corrected and some image compatibility issues were resolved. An update of clamav 0.103.9 addressed a possible denial of service vulnerability fixing CVE-2023-20197. The update also includes fixes for compiler warnings that may become errors in the Clang 16 compiler. The package for hardware identification and configuration data, hwdata, updated to version 0.373 and brings updates to Peripheral Component Interconnect, USB, and vendor IDs. An update of java-11-openjdk 11.0.20.1 brought an emergency release in response to a regression in the July 2023 update and addresses an issue of an invalid Central Directory Entry header. The wtmpdb package, which is meant to help solve the Y2038 problem, updated to 0.9.1 and includes a fix manual page reference and had a correction of the printf format specifier on 32-bit systems. Xfce users will be happy to see an update of xfce4-terminal 1.1.0 that introduces various changes, including allowing passing arguments to custom commands, translating strings in the unsafe paste dialog and improving window synchronization for showing tabs. The package also adds support for kinetic scrolling in VteTerminal and enhances the preferences dialog.
Red Hat’s move to restrict access to its source code at the end of June left the enterprise Linux market’s leading players, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and Oracle Linux, in an unexpected predicament.
Each of them was looking for a solution to get out of the situation, and now, two months later, we have a relatively good idea of the path each of these distributions will take.
In this light, and alongside the recently established by CIQ, SUSE, and Oracle, the ÞpenELA project, in an announcement on the topic, Rocky Linux confirmed its decision to strictly adhere to this to be a 1:1 fully compatible, drop-in replacement to RHEL.
Powered by Linux kernel 6.1, antiX 23, codenamed "Arditi del Popolo," comes with the latest IceWM 3.4.1 and an updated software stack.
The Linux kernel has recently introduced the Rust programming language as an alternative to C for creating kernel modules. Rust is a strongly, statically typed programming language with a focus on memory safety features which produces extremely compact executable code.
We are excited to celebrate all things open source at the upcoming Open Source Summit Europe 2023 in the beautiful city of Bilbao, Spain. The event will take place on 19-21 September. The summit serves as a reminder of the open source movement’s ongoing significance, fostering a space where attendees can explore the latest trends, developments and breakthroughs. In the three-day event, open-source developers, technologists, and community leaders will collaborate, share expertise, solve problems, and work on creating an even more sustainable open source ecosystem.€
Large language models (LLMs) are the topic of the year. They are as complex as they are exciting, and everyone can agree they put artificial intelligence in the spotlight.
The Fairphone 5 is the latest version of the ethical, repairable, and sustainable smartphone with the company promising 8 years of software updates thanks to the use of a Qualcomm QCM6490 industrial IoT processor that benefits from a longer life cycle than consumer-grade processors typically found in phones.
The phone comes with 8GB RAM, a 256GB flash, a replaceable 6.46-inch display, 50 MP front-facing and read cameras both of which are replaceable, 5G, WiFi 6, BlueTooth 5.2, GNSS, and NFC connectivity, as well as a replaceable battery.
LuckFox Pico is a small Linux camera board based on the Rockchip RV1103 Cortex-A7 and RISC-V AI camera SoC and offered with an Ethernet port in a longer version of the PCB called LuckFox Pico Plus. Both models come with 64MB RAM (apparently embedded in RV1103), a microSD card slot for storage, a MIPI CSI camera connector, a USB Type-C port for power, and a few through holes for expansion through GPIO, I2C, UART, and so on.
Kernel 6.5, Kali Linux, Mageia, Firefox, Vivaldi. Plenty of new releases this week.
The coreboot 4.21 release was tagged on August 21st, 2023. In the past quarter year, the coreboot project has gotten over 1250 new patches from around 140 authors, 21 of whom contributed for the first time.
Multimodal AI Story Teller, built with Stable Diffusion, GPT, and neural text-to-speech
The latest point release of Thunderbird 115 – aka the new version you’ve no-doubt heard people raving about — features a flurry of fixes.
We are pleased to announce the 1.0-rc1 release of pg_cirrus. This automated tool streamlines the process of setting up a 3-node cluster, making it significantly easier for users to set up and manage high availability in PostgreSQL.
We understand that configuring a PostgreSQL cluster can be a complex and time-consuming task, which is why we have designed pg_cirrus to help make the process faster and more efficient.
We're happy to announce Kiwi TCMS version 12.6.1!
IMPORTANT: This is a small release which contains several improvements, bug fixes and new translations!
You can explore everything at https://public.tenant.kiwitcms.org!
Supported upgrade paths: [...]
In this blog post, we talk about our experience teaching R and Python for geocomputation. The focus of the blog post is on geographic vector data, meaning points, lines, polygons (and their ‘multi’ variants) and the attributes associated with them.
Data and hypotheses
ANOVA by hand
Overall and group means
SSR and SSE
ANOVA table
Conclusion of the test
We are at the end of the summer and this means that this year Google Summer of code is ending.
The recent changes applied now in the main branch include:
- Remove usage of
pkg_resourcebecause it's deprecated.- Fix elf binary check with ELF files with a prefix.
- New check for python packages with multiple .pyc files for different python versions.
- Improve the testing framework (merged the work done during the GSoC 2023)
Summer of Code 2023 updates
The summer of code is ending and the work done by Afrid was good enough to be merged,
MauiKit: A Toolkit for Multi Adaptable User Interfaces.
Today, we bring you a report on a brand-new release of the Maui Project.
In the last 10 years I’ve given more than 400 coding interviews. That’s the equivalent of 2 working months just watching strangers having a crack at the same handful of programming challenges. Some of my would-be colleagues solve the problems without incident, but others run into trouble for similar, easily-correctable reasons. I wish I could give better feedback, but because of legal and time constraints that’s not how the system works.
So instead of personalised advice, I’ve written this cheat sheet containing 22 tips about how to pass a programming challenge interview with me. The tips can’t replace skill and practice, but they will help you calm your nerves, avoid silly mistakes, and showcase the best of your ability. Most of the tips are easy to implement, and put together they’ll increase the number of interviews that you pass.
Let me tell you a story…
In my first professional year (~1995/1996) as a ~~web developer~~, well webmaster at that time, I was working on the BNP website (around 300 html files). Yes, the BNP French bank website, except at that time it was only a couple of hundreds static web pages.
The client asked us to fix the footer of all these html files. The job was assigned to me.
I open the local FTP folders with all the files for the site and started to look at the HTML and noticed a simple search and replace would not do it.
Let's use Regex for parsing/fixing HTML. Haha.
WebDriver is a remote control interface that enables introspection and control of user agents. As such it can help developers to verify that their websites are working and performing well with all major browsers. The protocol is standardized by the W3C and consists of two separate specifications: WebDriver classic (HTTP) and the new WebDriver BiDi (Bi-Directional).
This newsletter gives an overview of the work we’ve done as part of the Firefox 117 release cycle
Today we are launching the process to elect new Project Directors to the Rust Foundation Board of Directors. As we begin the process, we wanted to spend some time explaining the goals and procedures we will follow. We will summarize everything here, but if you would like to you can read the official process documentation.
Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust!
These posts really write themselves.
A re-enactment of an event yesterday evening.
I was just leaving an online game when I noticed a conversation among the Late Night Linux Telegram group about printing. One person quipped that people don’t print much anymore. Someone else suggested that they print more these days than they used to.
My brain saw this and thought “Huh, I wonder how many pages my printer has completed in its lifetime. I imagine that’s easy to find out.
I only noticed this difference recently. In the Commonwealth, we voice quote marks like this this:
She said she’d quote get it done unquote.
This is the same way it’s written: “get it done”.
I’m not sure if supermarkets elsewhere do this, but the local duopoly in Australia are always doing these cheesy voucher promotions. Spend a certain amount of money, you accrue points, and you can use them to get a cheap saucepan, for free. It might even have a handle!
Of course, none of it is free… and deep down I think we all know this. The cost of the items are factored into the prices we pay for other goods. It’s the same reason supermarkets will boast how cheap their staples are, then raise prices on everything else.
Just … why?
The news that West Virginia University (WVU) may ax its entire world languages program sent humanities scholars and others into a tailspin — so much so that the university backpedaled a bit late Tuesday.
Nvidia's GeForce Now gaming service, run by partner GFN.ru, is shutting down in Russia.
Discussing the current and future economics of silicon chip fabrication.
Infections have surged in Rzeszow, whose strategic location near the Ukrainian border has transformed it into a hub for the Western response to Russia’s invasion.
Seattle-based cloud automation and migration startup SkyKick laid off 140 employees, including 98 in the U.S.
The startup also announced SecurityRadar, which has been purpose-built to support 100,000 Microsoft cloud partners with security insights that can be used for personalized customer engagement.
We’re near the one-cable-to-rule-them-all point, but odds are that further battles will emerge from here. Let’s consider the state of port standards in the waning days of Lightning.
Earlier this year, as part of its experiments with artificial intelligence, Google released a new search feature that provides an AI-generated overview of search results. The idea is to get users to their answers faster, without needing to leave the search results page.
I thought I had malware on my main Windows 11 machine this weekend.
[...]
This annoying popup even appeared above a game.
While quantum-based attacks are still in the future, organizations must think about how to defend data in transit when encryption no longer works.
Mozilla and Google have released stable updates for the Firefox and Chrome browsers to address several memory corruption vulnerabilities.
U.S. officials are warning open-source software could be a cyber security threat. Their solution? Money. But do we want them picking the winners and losers of open source?
Interesting story of an Apple Macintosh app that went rogue. Basically, it was a good app until one particular update…when it went bad.
With more official macOS features added in 2021 that enabled the “Night Shift” dark mode, the NightOwl app was left forlorn and forgotten on many older Macs. Few of those supposed tens of thousands of users likely noticed when the app they ran in the background of their older Macs was bought by another company, nor when earlier this year that company silently updated the dark mode app so that it hijacked their machines in order to send their IP data through a server network of affected computers, AKA a botnet...
The cybersecurity giant's CEO confirmed the layoffs ahead of a major corporate restructuring that will see its business split into two.
Your Fitbit is useless – unless you consent to unlawful data sharing
Montenegro has rejected Russia's extradition request for Dmitry Senin, a former officer for the Federal Security Service (FSB).
North Korea has said it fired two short-range ballistic missiles as part of a "tactical nuclear strike drill" prompted by US-South Korean military exercises, state media reported Thursday.
It conducted a simulated "scorched-earth" nuclear strike on targets across South Korea.
After 12 years of conflict, anger over growing economic hardships has boiled over. Protesters are demanding the ouster of the authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad and an end to the war.
United Nations sanctions in€ Mali€ will end on Thursday after€ Russia€ vetoed a renewal of the regime that targeted anyone violating or obstructing a 2015 peace deal, hindering aid delivery, committing rights abuses or recruiting child soldiers.
The extraordinary Seymour Hersh, now 86 and still more worth reading than the entire output of The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Time, Newsweek, and the farcical PBS news coverage combined, has just released another enormous scoop on his personal sub stack.
Yury Harauski, a former member of Belarusian authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s special security forces, is set to face trial on September 19 in a Swiss court for allegedly participating in the abduction of Belarusian politicians in the late 1990s.
The Foreign Ministry has invited the Vatican's representative in Lithuania for a conversation in the wake of Pope Francis' statements praising Russia.
The story of Algirdas à  vanys, who abducted his baby and fled to Russia, has been exploited by Russian propaganda, which portrayed him as a hero and defender of family rights.
On August 31, Lithuania marks Freedom Day, commemorating the 30th anniversary of Russian troops leaving the country.
The Ministry of Defense has categorically denied any involvement of Latvia in the drone attack on Pskov airport, which took place on Tuesday evening. Russian media reports that around 20 drone vehicles were involved in this attack; several vehicles, Il–76, were damaged by the attack.
Ukraine’s sense of urgency in obtaining the fighter jet reflects concerns about the war against Russia, but also the political calendar in the West. But training pilots and support crew is a lengthy process.
The leaders of the two countries have exchanged letters, a White House spokesman said, as Moscow searches for another source of weapons to fight the war in Ukraine.
Also, a referendum divides Australia.
The Cold War-era Leopard 1A5 may be old, but it is still effective, Germany says. The country is now training Ukrainian troops to operate the weapons.
Four military cargo planes at a Russia airfield were damaged, and the Kyiv region was hit with one of the most significant missile and drone barrages in months.
The country’s progress in ensuring equality before the law and curbing graft is as critical as the military counteroffensive.
Keith Gessen discusses whether the United States should encourage negotiations with Russia.
A court in Belarus placed a man from the northern city of Novopolotsk in administrative arrest for 15 days for taking a photo of himself while on vacation in Georgia in 2021 against the backdrop of the Georgian and Ukrainian flags.
The Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan has reversed a verdict handed to Askar Kubanychbek, who was convicted of mercenary activities over his involvement in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russia and the United States separately discussed alternatives to the UN-brokered Black Sea grain deal, which fell apart last month after Moscow backed out of the arrangement aimed at allowing the safe passage of Ukrainian exports to world markets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in his nightly video address on August 30 said authorities will crack down on corruption in the drafting of men for the country’s military service.
A film crew working for RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service escaped injury after their vehicle came under rocket fire in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region on August 30.
On Tuesday, heavy rainfall hit the Primorye region. Currently, 29 villages are isolated from road access.
Tropical Storm Idalia was producing "very heavy rains" over North and South Carolina and causing "significant" flooding Wednesday night after earlier making landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane, per the National Hurricane Center.
With what is (or was by now?) hurricane Idalia crossing past my house today, I decided to write a quick summary of what I usually do in cases like this to prepare. This is for a home office or a small business, assuming you have the resources for a typical home. Unlike natural disasters like Earthquakes, Hurricanes are somewhat predictable, and you typically have a couple of days warning. If you live in a hurricane-prone area like Florida, you are likely familiar with nhc.noaa.gov. The site provides "raw data" about current storm activity and avoids some of the hype added by some news outlets.
The hot Florida sunshine is broken by a gentle breeze, carrying with it salty sea air.€ But the mood is anything but idyllic as the town of Keaton Beach assesses the damage from Hurricane Idalia, which left overturned trees and destroyed homes in its wake after making landfall nearby Wednesday morning.
This is post #6. The previous post in this Milo Stove project:
https://bkhome.org/news/202308/milo-stove-making-some-small-parts.html
I decided to use a barbecue skewer on which the pot will sit: [...]
Forest fires have reached the town of Gelendzhik, one of Russia's most popular resort areas on the Black Sea, local officials said.
According to data from the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN), T-Mobile has begun its layoffs. WARN data shows that 401 employees at T-Mobile headquarters will be laid off on Oct. 24 of this year.
Serbian authorities have canceled the residence permit of Yevgeny Irzhansky, a Russian citizen who organized concerts of anti-war bands and arts events in Serbia, the Belgrade-based expat NGO Russian Democratic Society announced on August 29, the latest in a series of harassment incidents targeting anti-war Russian expatriates.
A federal court in Washington DC found former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani guilty on Wednesday of defaming Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss during the 2020 US presidential election.
The states have gone rogue. In the last year alone, at least nine states enacted internet censorship laws. And more legislators are promising to take up the cause. But these laws are directly at odds with the First Amendment’s command that the government shall not abridge the freedom of speech.€
Back in 2021, Mastercard developed a new policy for adult content websites using its credit card or payment options. The policy imposed requirements such as pre-approval of all content before publication, forbidding certain search terms, and keeping records of age and identity verification for all performers. These restrictions not only restrict free speech and harm the livelihood of sex workers, but fail to make adult content platforms safer.
Shawn Batey was sweating in the August sun on the 100th day of the writers strike, carrying her “IATSE Solidarity” sign on the picket line outside Netflix's New York offices, but she was glad to be there.
The U.S. is using unreliable information from El Salvador for immigration processes, entrapping innocent immigrants. It's time to stop dirty data-sharing agreements, reform the process, and protect people's rights.
The country’s largest locomotive manufacturer and its striking union workers have reached a tentative agreement that could end a two-month strike that saw about 1,400 people walk off the job at its Pennsylvania plant.
A federal judge in New Jersey€ struck down AB 5207 on Tuesday, concluding that New Jersey’s ban on detaining individuals for violating US civil immigration laws is unconstitutional. US District Judge Robert Kirsch found that the New Jersey law, as applied to a private prison operators, violates the US Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.
Voting is now open on the APNIC By-laws resolutions.
Submit your online vote for the NRO NC election. Voting closes on 14 September.
New rules floated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in its April Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM), followed by the PREVAIL Act’s introduction in Congress, have generated considerable discussion in recent months.
The blood thinner Eliquis is one of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s most important blockbuster products, and for two years now a dispute has been raging throughout Europe over the market entry of generic products containing the active ingredient apixaban.
In a non-precedential opinion authored by Judge Pauline Newman, the Federal Circuit has affirmed USC IP Partnership’s asserted patent claims are all invalid.€ Back in 2020, USC IP sued Facebook for infringing its U.S. Patent No. 8,645,300.€ The arguably pro-patentee Judge Alan Albright served as the district court judge.€ Like Judge Newman, he had also found the claims invalid as unduly directed to an abstract idea. USC IP P’ship, L.P. v. Facebook, Inc., 576 F. Supp. 3d 446 (W.D. Tex. 2021) (granting summary judgment of ineligibility).
The Board dimissed another opposition brought by frequent TTAB litigant Monster Energy Company, finding Applicant SS Vape's mark ICE MONSTER and Design for "electronic cigarette liquid (e-liquid) comprised of flavorings in liquid form, other than essential oils, used to refill electronic cigarette cartridges," not confusingly similar to various "MONSTER" marks owned by Opposer for, inter alia, nutritional supplements in liquid form, energy drinks, and collateral merchandise. The findings that the goods are not related and are offered in different channels of trade, coupled with the lack of proof of actual confusion, carried "great weight" in the Board's Section 2(d) analysis. Monster Energy Company v. SS Vape Brands, Inc., Opposition No. 91255786 (August 28, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Marc A. Bergsman).
The Conservative Party distributed three Chronicle-branded pamphlets in areas covered by MNA's Chronicle Week.
The USPTO has issued Examination Guide 3-23 (pdf here) to provide further guidance regarding domicile addresses in trademark applications.
The U.S. Copyright is seeking feedback from the public surrounding AI and copyright issues.
Lithuania’s media watchdog has fined three people for using the torrenting site Linkomanija.net to download pirated films.
The firm behind ChatGPT is asking a court to dismiss all but one of authors' claims in lawsuits alleging AI outputs infringe their copyright.