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Links 6/9/2021: RetroArch 1.9.9 and Mozilla Firefox 92



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • System76 Pangolin Linux laptop with AMD Ryzen 5500U & 5700U CPUs
        If you are in the market for a new Linux laptop you will be pleased to know that the team over at System76 have recently announced the availability of its new Pangolin Linux laptop equipped with a choice of AMD Ryzen 5500U or 5700U CPUs depending on your budget and performance preference. Equipped with a 15.6 inch full HD display the laptop comes with a choice of Ubuntu or Pop!_OS operating system is and supports up to 64GB of RAM and 2TB of onboard storage.

        “Feast your eyes on System76’s first laptop powered by AMD Ryzen mobile processors. Get up to the Ryzen 7 5700U CPU for fast and nimble everyday computing. Round out your AMD experience with integrated AMD Radeon graphics. This one-two AMD punch makes our Pangolin outshine all others! (Apologies to any pangolins reading this.)”

      • Linux for Starters: Your Guide to Linux – Try Different Desktops – Part 16

        This is a series that offers a gentle introduction to Linux for newcomers.

        A desktop environment is a collection of disparate components that integrate together. They bundle these components to provide a common graphical user interface with elements such as icons, toolbars, wallpapers, and desktop widgets. Additionally, most desktop environments include a set of integrated applications and utilities.

        Desktop environments (now abbreviated as DE) provide their own window manager, system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system. They also provide a file manager which organizes, lists, and locates files and directories. Other aspects include a background provider, a panel to provide a menu and display information, as well as a setting/configuration manager to customize the environment.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Create New WordPress Admin User via phpMyAdmin

        There are several reasons why you would want to have a new WordPress Admin user to manage and customize your site in relation to privileged actions related to the site’s layout, appearance, and content.

        The most common reason is that you underestimated what WordPress could achieve and now you are dealing with impressive user web traffic towards your site.

      • How To Install Splunk on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Splunk on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Splunk is the most used software technology platform for analyzing, searching, and monitoring system-generated log databases in real-time. Splunk supports all major operating systems including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. It is easily scalable, fully integrated, and supports both local and remote data sources.

        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 Splunk data platform on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How to install Funkin' Kepler Observation Unit on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Funkin' Kepler Observation Unit mod 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.

      • How to Convert Strings into Numbers in Bash

        Like everything is file in Linux, everything is string in bash.

        Yes! Technically, there are no data types in Bash. Essentially, Bash variables are just character strings.

        And that creates a problem when you are trying to do arithmetic operations in bash. The numbers you try to add give you weird results.

      • How to Install Docker CE on AlmaLinux 8 or Rocky Linux 8

        Docker is an open-source project that allows you to easily and quickly build, test, and deploy applications. Docker organizes software into containers that contain everything the software requires to run, such as libraries, system tools, code, and runtime. Docker allows you to quickly deploy and scale applications in any environment. Developers can use the development environments on Windows, Linux, or macOS.

        In this tutorial, we learn how to install Docker CE on AlmaLinux 8. The steps are also applicable to Rocky Linux 8, CentOS 8, and REHL.

      • How to Install a tar.gz File on Your Chromebook in 2021 | Beebom

        If you frequently use Linux on your Chromebook, then you must have seen programs coming in tar.gz, AppImage, and DEB packages. While DEB programs can be installed easily and AppImage programs run well on a Chromebook, it’s a bit tricky to install a tar.gz file in Chrome OS. So to make things easier, we bring you a handy guide on how to install a tar.gz file on your Chromebook. You need to run a couple of commands, and you will be all set.

      • How to check Network Interface details in Linux - blackMORE Ops

        Few ways to check Network Interface details in Linux such as interface name, associated IP address, MAC address and interface speed etc.

      • Ansible: How to work with inventory, variables,€ and€ facts - Anto ./ Online

        This guide will show you how to work with the inventory file, variables, and facts in Ansible. Understanding these concepts in Ansible is critical. Generally, Ansible uses the information provided in the inventory and variables to discover information about your remote systems. And, the information gathered is then stored as facts.

    • Games

      • RetroArch 1.9.9 is out with AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) support | GamingOnLinux

        Emulation just got even more interesting as the RetroArch team have released another major update. This release adds in AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) support.

        RetroArch is a frontend for emulators, game engines and media players. It enables you to run classic games on a wide range of computers and consoles through its slick graphical interface. Settings are also unified so configuration is done once and for all.

        On September 5 the developers released RetroArch 1.9.9 which among other things, added in FSR. While the developers mention that FSR is supposed to be used in a compute shader, which they don't have in RetroArch, they instead "used it in a fragment pass anyway and it Just Works!". As always, people working on emulators come up with pretty clever solutions to improve how old games look. FSR with RetroArch will work with both OpenGL and Vulkan on Linux (and other APIs on other platforms).

      • Sir, You Are Being Hunted gets a huge upgrade with a 'Reinvented Edition' coming in 2022 | GamingOnLinux

        Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a 2013 classic sandbox stealth experience from Big Robot Ltd. They've teamed up with Den Of Thieves Games to bring a huge overhaul to the game and a new Sir, You Are Being Hunted: Reinvented Edition has been announced for 2022.

        The Reinvented Edition is actually being made for the Nintendo Switch as a "comprehensive remaster" but it's also coming as a standalone game for Linux, macOS and Windows in 2022 with "enhanced visuals, new gameplay options, a modern engine, bigger islands, faster procedural generation, and more".

      • Keeping the classic Heroes of Might and Magic II alive fheroes2 0.9.7 is out | GamingOnLinux

        fheroes2 is a game engine reimplementation for the absolute classic that is Heroes of Might and Magic II. It's free, open source and a new release is out now. Written from scratch much like OpenMW for Morrowind, OpenRA for classic Westwood RTS games, openXcom for for the X-COM and more it's another great example of a community of people reviving old games for modern platforms.

      • Totally Reliable Delivery Service adds Linux support in the latest update | GamingOnLinux

        Totally Reliable Delivery Service is a comedy physics game from We're Five Games and publisher tinyBuild about terrible package delivery couriers.

        You and up to three others (you can play solo) can join together to deliver some packages by land, air, sea and any possible way you can come up with that might possibly get a package delivered with odd machinery, useful gadgets, and the wonders of physics to reliably deliver packages to their destination.

      • Play the 9th chapter of the story in the latest Last Epoch RPG upgrade | GamingOnLinux

        Probably one of the best Early Access games, Last Epoch, has an almighty upgrade out now with Sands of Majasa. This update adds in the 9th Chapter of the story to expand the campaign.

        "To stop the Void from ensuring the dark fate of the world, you must destroy the Immortal Emperor, who is believed to be the one who unleashed it. This quest takes you to the Divine Era to search for The Lance of Heorot, an ancient weapon Heorot once wielded against his son Morditas."

      • Get a taste of dungeon crawling tower defense in Dwerve: Prologue out now | GamingOnLinux

        Dwerve mixes together elements of a dungeon crawling RPG with tower defense and you can now try it out with the new release of the Dwerve: Prologue. Funded on Kickstarter back in 2020, Dwerve is a very promising upcoming indie game you should be keeping an eye on.

        The Prologue is very similar to the older demo except it's gone through some more QA with "bug fixes, better balancing, design improvements, new HUD art, full controller support (including menus), difficulty options, graphics settings, new dialogues and other improvements". Check out the new trailer:

    • Distributions

      • Reviews

        • Review: elementary OS 6.0 "Odin"

          Think of elementary OS as the distro that - in a perfect world - would carry Linux to desktop domination. It's slick, it looks good, it's surprisingly nimble, and its developers have only the best of intentions.

          So why doesn't it come with a word processor?

          One would think, in the second decade of the 21st century, that a word processor would be standard equipment, showing up next to the email, calendar, and other apps after installation. But not in the new elementary OS 6, code named Odin. Yes, with a little bit of command line keystroking, you can add LibreOffice or Calligra or even AbiWord.

          But an office suite, just because almost everyone uses a word processor or a spreadsheet or a presentation app these days?

      • Debian Family

        • Antoine Beaupré: Automating major Debian upgrades

          It's major upgrade time again! The Debian project just published the Debian 11 "bullseye" release, and it's pretty awesome! This makes me realized that I have never written here about my peculiar upgrade process, and figured it was worth bringing that up to a wider audience.

          My upgrade process also has a notable changes section which includes major version changes (e.g. Inkscape 1.0!), new packages (e.g. podman!) and important behavior changes (e.g. driverless scanning and printing!).

          I'm particularly interested to hear about any significant change I might have missed. If you know of a cool new package that shipped with bullseye and that I forgot, do let me know!

          But that's for the cool new stuff. We need to talk about the problems with Debian major upgrades.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Mozilla Firefox 92 Is Now Available for Download, Here’s What’s New

            The new features and improvements implemented in the Firefox 92 web browser include the ability to automatically perform HTTPS upgrades when HTTPS RR is available (using HTTPS RR as Alt-Svc headers), updated bookmark toolbar menus to follow Firefox’s visual styles, and redesigned certificate error pages for a better user experience.

            In addition, this release promised an improved Firefox PDF viewer with support for filling more forms, such as XFA-based forms used by various governments and banks, during the beta phase, so this might be available in the final release as well.

  • Leftovers

    • Education

      • Wearing the Muslim veil has a negative impact on school performance, says French economist

        [...] An analysis published in his book “Trois leçons sur l’école républicaine” ( Publisher Seuil). To reach this conclusion, Eric Maurin analysed the success rate of Muslim girls in the baccalaureate according to their year of birth. [...]

      • Proctorio's awful reviews disappear down the memory hole

        Remember Proctorio? They're the "remote proctoring" company that boomed during the pandemic by promising that they could stop exam cheating through gross, discriminatory privacy invasions and snake-oil machine learning.

        In case you've lost the thread (it's been a minute), Proctorio is a tool that transforms students' personal computers into surveillance tools.

    • Health/Nutrition

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Confidentiality

              • Privacy alarm in Indonesia over president's leaked vaccine certificate

                Digital analyst Ismail Fahmi said the leak showed how easy it was to view or potentially use another individual's vaccination certificate, even that of a head of state.

                "If there was protection, there would be an investigation into why this problem persists, why personal records can be easily mined," he said.

                "But there is no such protection."

    • Defence/Aggression

      • How Trump’s Attempted Coup€ Could Still Succeed

        Last Sunday, at a Republican event in Franklin, North Carolina, Congressman Madison Cawthorn, repeating Trump’s big lie, called the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 “political hostages.“ € 

      • France's Biggest Trial to Open Over November 2015 Attacks

        The biggest trial in France's modern legal history begins on Wednesday over the November 2015 attacks on Paris that saw 130 people slaughtered at bars, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall.

        The suicide bombing and gun assault by three teams of jihadists, later claimed by the Islamic State group, was France's worst post-war atrocity.

      • France set to open biggest trial in its modern history over 2015 Paris attacks

        Court case over terror attacks that killed 130 to begin Wednesday, will see 20 defendants tried, including one of the gunmen who has so far refused to cooperate with proceedings

      • 19 People Burned and Hacked to Death in DR Congo

        Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of State designated ADF as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and categorized them as ISIS-DRC. The group has the primary aim of creating an Islamic Caliphate in Central Africa. While a large majority (85-90%) of DRC’s population is Christian, violence rooted in Islamic extremism continues to worsen, putting the country at number 40 on the 2021 Open Doors World Watch List for Christian persecution. “These predominantly Christian communities are attacked by an Islamic extremist group with a clear Islamic expansionist agenda,” Open Doors spokesperson Illia Djadi stated in reference to the rebel group.

      • Germany: Afghan rams a knife into the neck of a female landscape gardener because women are not allowed to be professionals in Islam

        The Public Prosecutor’s Office and the State Security of the State Criminal Police Office are investigating the details of the crime and its background – also from the perspective of a possibly Islamist-motivated attack. The police arrested the suspect at the scene of the crime. He has been in Germany since 2016.

      • 9/11: 20 years on, Germany still grapples with militant Islamists

        Since 2019, Kurenbach has headed the newly established Islamist-Motivated Terrorism/Extremism Department of the BKA. Around 500 criminal investigators, scientists, translators, and analysts work there to investigate Islamists, monitor dangerous individuals, and try to prevent attacks. Just recently Germany arrested a major suspected fund raiser for the "Islamic State."

      • Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: How '9/11 mastermind' slipped through FBI's fingers

        The former FBI special agent had pursued Mohammed for nearly three decades, yet the alleged 9/11 mastermind is yet to face justice.

        A lawyer for Mohammed has told the BBC it may be another 20 years before the case is concluded.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Digital Transparency: A Right to Information Report for August, 2021

        Since our last report for the month of July, IFF has filed 64 RTI requests, 5 First Appeals and 1 Second Appeal. Here, we give you an overview of the requests filed and an analysis of the responses we have received from the different public authorities. This report highlights why demanding transparency and accountability from Government authorities is one of the key elements in our fight to protect digital rights.

    • Environment

      • Opinion | Climate Scientist: This is a Dystopian Moment

        I'm a climate scientist and on Wednesday night, I watched the rain outside my New York City window€ break the local record for the most accumulation in an hour. It was an event that caused catastrophic flooding and infrastructure failures across both the New York Metro area and a wide swath of the Northeast US, delivered by the remnant of a powerful hurricane that had visited even greater destruction on Louisiana a couple of days ago.

      • ‘No Vaccine for the Climate Crisis’: Over 230 Health Journals Demand Wealthy Nations Take Action

        Developed countries must do “much more, much faster” in their efforts to tackle the climate crisis, over 200 health journals have said in a statement warning of the unequal health impacts of rising global temperatures.

        The editorial, published today in over 230 medical, nursing, and public health journals across the world, demands international coordinated action to limit global temperature increases, restore biodiversity, and protect health.

      • Wildlife/Nature

    • Finance

      • Opinion | To Be Like FDR, Joe Biden Must Strengthen Labor

        The place of honor in President Biden’s Oval Office is reserved for a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From above the fireplace, FDR looks down upon the efforts of a president whose plans for responding to contemporary challenges facing the United States are frequently compared with those of the 32nd president.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Opinion | My Friend, Ed Asner

        For more than twenty-one years, as a television and film historian and critic focusing on the intersection of politics and entertainment, I’ve covered many talents who use their star status to speak out on larger issues: They oppose war, fight oppression, and support a wide variety of causes and candidates. Seven-time Emmy Award winner Ed Asner epitomized this breed—an actor-activist who used his celebrity to raise public attention, awareness, and funds for social justice issues.

      • Thousands of Trump Supporters Answered Bannon's Call to Seize GOP at Local Level
    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Everyday IP: Who owns the internet? [Ed: Lawyers who profit from blackmail and litigation have a hard time grasping the fact that not everything has "owners" and in the Internet "IP" isn't the propaganda term they like to misuse]

        It is fascinating — and more than a little bit complicated — to think about a system as vast and multifaceted as the internet from an Intellectual Property (IP) perspective. We must first examine some critical points of the internet's early history and take a look at its present-day makeup to answer any question regarding "ownership."

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies Announces That It Has Been Granted an H-P2A Patent in Europe [Ed: Wanna bet these patents too were granted in a rush and would likely not withstand (not easily anyway) an actual court's scrutiny? They need to read up on the collapse of the EPO (the media is paid to turn a blind eye)]

          Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies (ISIN: FR0013451044, Ticker: ALHGR) (Paris:ALHGR) (“Hoffmann Green Cement” or the “Company”), a pioneer in clinker-free low-carbon cement, today announces that it has been granted a European patent for its H-P2A technology.

          This issuance of a second patent for the Company’s H-P2A technology, following the one granted in the United States in 2020, further strengthens the protection of Hoffmann Green Cement’s intellectual property and therefore intensifies the barriers to entry on the decarbonized cement market. Following over five years of appraisals, the H-P2A patent was validated by the European Patent Office under number 3274315.

        • JW Pharmaceutical obtains patent for homegrown gout treatment in Europe
        • JW Pharm’s gout drug URC102 certified as source technology in Europe [Ed: EPO just scatters around loads of low-quality and invalid patents; apparently many companies are still unaware of what happened to the EPO]

          The patent is the company’s method to prepare a compound that works as the main ingredient and intermediate of URC102. URC102, developed as a new oral drug, inhibits uric acid transporter-1 (URAT1) and is effective for gout patients caused by abnormally elevated uric acid levels in the blood, JW Pharm said.

          The company licensed out the rights to develop and commercialize URC102 in China, including Hong Kong and Macau, to China’s Nanjing Simcere Dongyuan Pharmaceutical in 2019. In addition, it is pursuing global technology transfer based on the results of phase 2 clinical trials conducted in Korea.

          With the recent EPO’s decision, JW Pharmaceutical plans to take steps for necessary procedures to fully acquire the patent in major European countries in the future.

        • The US Says AI Can't Be an Inventor As It's Not An Individual, Yet [Ed: Loaded headlines with words like "yet" as if it is inevitable and necessary to grant monopolies to bots]

          Last month, we covered a historic moment. For the very first time, the patent office in South Africa allowed artificial intelligence (AI) to be an inventor on a patent. However, subsequent patent applications in the UK, the EU, and the US were rejected by their respective patent offices. Now, a US court has upheld the US Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) decision and ruled that AI cannot be an inventor, simply because it is not an individual, yet, The Verge reported.



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