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Links 8/9/2021: OpenSSL 3.0, GhostBSD 21.09.06, and Plans for sudo 1.9.8?



  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

      • Russell Coker: Oracle Cloud Free Tier

        It seems that every cloud service of note has a free tier nowadays and the Oracle Cloud is the latest that I’ve discovered (thanks to r/homelab which I highly recommend reading). Here’s Oracle’s summary of what they offer for free [1].

        Oracle’s “always free” tier (where presumable “always” is defined as “until we change our contract”) currently offers ARM64 VMs to a total capacity of 4 CPU cores, 24G of RAM, and 200G of storage with a default VM size of 1/4 that (1 CPU core and 6G of RAM). It also includes 2 AMD64 VMs that each have 1G of RAM, but a 64bit VM with 1G of RAM isn’t that useful nowadays.

      • Kubernetes CI/CD pipelines: What, why, and how

        GitLab is a popular DevOps platform for end-to-end development and operations. It provides users with a Git repository for source version control, issue tracking, and CI/CD features. Developers can use the GitLab web UI and API to track builds, track test results, monitor deployments, and schedule batch jobs across various testing environments.

      • Revised - Support for Istio 1.9 ends on October 5th, 2021

        Istio is expanding the support window of the 1.9 release by six weeks to allow time for users to upgrade to Istio 1.10 or directly to Istio 1.11. Previously, we had announced that Istio 1.9 support would end on August 24, so our new end of support date for Istio 1.9 is October 5, 2021.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux boosts Microsoft NTFS support as Linus Torvalds complains about GitHub merges | ZDNet [Ed: Another Microsoft booster. Another Microsoft media operatives promoting the idea that Linux is a Microsoft thing.]

        Linux creator Linus Torvalds has agreed to include Paragon Software's NTFS3 kernel driver, giving the Linux kernel 5.15 release improved support for Microsoft's NTFS file system. But he also had some process and security lessons to offer developers about how to code submissions to the kernel should be made.

        Paragon's NTFS driver will make working with Windows' NTFS drives in Linux an easier task -- ending decades of difficulties with Microsoft's proprietary file system that succeeded FAT.

      • Linux 5.15's New "-Werror" Behavior Is Causing A Lot Of Pain - Phoronix

        Landing this past weekend was the surprise move by Linus Torvalds to enable "-Werror" behavior by default for all kernel builds. That compiler flag addition makes all warnings be treated as errors, which in turn stops the kernel build. As expected, this change has led to quite a mess.

        That change to enable "-Werror" by default when building the Linux kernel led to some immediate errors. In particular, build/test farms were quick to hit pain points and quickly finding various areas of the kernel that were emitting warnings not immediately correctable.

      • Kernel 5.14: 30 years in the making and still improving

        With the release of the 5.14 kernel, the Linux community celebrates 30 years since the birth of the biggest collaborative software project in the world. Since then, this open collaboration by thousands of engineers has produced an operating system kernel that is more reliable, efficient, and better suited for countless applications than any single organization could ever achieve.

        While the high quality of this huge collaborative effort is definitely apparent by the widespread presence of Linux in the market today, this also means there is an ever-increasing interest in more modern hardware support, as well as a more reliable kernel that is thoroughly tested. This is where Collabora's developers come in to help make this a reality. Here's a look at their contributions to this latest kernel release.

      • Linux 5.15 KVM Defaults To The New x86 TDP MMU, Enables AMD SVM 5-Level Paging - Phoronix

        The Linux 5.15 Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes this cycle are quite exciting on the x86 (x86_64) front with several prominent additions.

        The KVM feature updates were sent in today for this new kernel cycle. While there are Arm and IBM s390 updates, the x86/x86_64 work is most notable for KVM in Linux 5.15.

        Earlier this year during the Linux 5.12 cycle the hope was KVM would switch to the new x86 MMU code by default later in the cycle but that didn't happen... Now a few kernels later with continuing to improve the new MMU, it's now the default with Linux 5.15.

      • Graphics Stack

        • The Khronos Group Is Hosting A Virtual Vulkan Event Next Month - Phoronix

          While The Khronos Group previously hosted in-person Vulkan events, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic their "Vulkanised 2021" event next month has morphed into a free virtual event.

        • X.Org DMX Dropped After More Than A Decade Of Crashes - Phoronix

          The X.Org Distributed Multihead X (DMX) DDX driver has been dropped from the X.Org Server source tree due to its rather broken state for more than one decade.

          Xdmx is for distributed multi-head X serves as a proxy server so multiple displays for a desktop can be hosted from different machines / X.Org Servers and increasingly rare to find it used. As noted last week, the DMX DDX was on the chopping block since for about fourteen years now it's been rather broken -- trying to start any OpenGL clients with it will result in a crash. Back in 2017 was a proposed fix for this crashing on OpenGL clients but even that fix didn't get picked up.

        • Vulkan 1.2.191 Released With New Extension To Make Wiser Memory Decisions - Phoronix

          Vulkan 1.2.191 is out this morning as the latest update to this graphics/compute API. As usual is a variety of bug fixes / clarifications to the specification while this time around is also one new extension.

          VK_EXT_pageable_device_local_memory is the new extension to Vulkan 1.2.191. The VK_EXT_pageable_device_local_memory extension allows for indicating to the application that the operating system supports pageable device local memory, in order for the application or game engine to make wiser decisions around memory management.

    • Applications

      • What is coming in sudo 1.9.8?

        Sudo development is at version 1.9.8 beta 3. There are two major new features: sudo can intercept sub-commands and log sub-commands. In this quick teaser I introduce you to log_subcmds. I hope it is interesting enough for you to test it out and provide feedback.

        So, what is log_subcmds good for? There are many UNIX tools that can spawn external applications. You only see vi in the logs, but can you be sure without session recording that your admin only edits what he is supposed to? With log_subcmds you can see all the commands started from an application run through sudo. Or you can see all the commands started from a shell, even without session recording.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Use lspci on Linux to see your hardware | Opensource.com

        When you're running Linux on a desktop or server, sometimes you need to identify the hardware in that system. One command used for this is lspci. It works by showing all devices attached to the PCI bus. It's provided by the pciutils package and is available for a wide range of Linux and BSD-based operating systems.

      • Martin-Éric Racine: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade



        Debian 11 (codename Bullseye) was recently released. This was the smoothest upgrade I've experienced in some 20 years as a Debian user. In my haste, I completely forgot to first upgrade dpkg and apt, doing a straight dist-upgrade. Nonetheless, everything worked out of the box. No unresolved dependency cycles. Via my last-mile Gigabit connection, it took about 5 minutes to upgrade and reboot. Congratulations to everyone who made this possible!

        Since the upgrade, only a handful of bugs were found. I filed bug reports. Over these past few days, maintainers have started responding. In once particular case, my report exposed a CVE caused by copy-pasted code between two similar packages. The source package fixed their code to something more secure a few years ago, while the destination package missed it. The situation has been brought to Debian's security team's attention and should be fixed over the next few days.

      • Kubernetes clusters within AWS EKS
      • Introduction to managing Linux containers | FOSS Linux

        Linux Containers have been around for some time but became widely available when introduced in the Linux kernel in 2008. Containers are lightweight, executable application components that combine app source code with OS libraries and dependencies required to run the code in any environment. In addition, they offer application packaging and delivery technologies while taking advantage of application isolation with the flexibility of image-based deployment methods.

        Linux Containers use control groups for resource management, namespaces for system process isolation, SELinux Security to enable secure tenancy and reduce security threats or exploits. These technologies provide an environment to produce, run, manage and orchestrate containers.

        The article is an introductory guide to the main elements of Linux container architecture, how containers compare with KVM virtualization, image-based containers, docker containers, and containers orchestration tools.

      • A Candid explainer: Opt is special – Blog – Joachim Breitner's Homepage

        Initially, the upgrade rules of Candid were a straight-forward application of the canonical subtyping rules. This worked and was sound, but it forbid one very commonly requested use case: Extending records in argument position.

      • How to boot RHEL 8 system into Rescue mode

        This article describes how to bootup RHEL/CentOS 8 system into rescue mode using the systemd rescue target unit.

        You may need to boot your RHEL 7/8 and CentOS 7/8 system to fix some common problems when the system refuse to boot normally.

      • Q&A trip to Linux’s Black Hole - /dev/null | Linux Journal

        As per NASA, “A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out”. Something similar exists in the Linux universe as well - it discards anything written to it and when read, just returns an EOF (end-of-file). It’s a special file which is also referred to as null device - /dev/null

      • How To Install phpMyAdmin on Debian 11 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install phpMyAdmin on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, phpMyAdmin is a free, open-source, and web-based application used for managing MySQL or MariaDB databases from the web interface. It is written in PHP and is one of the most popular database administration tools used by web hosting companies to enable novice system administrators to carry out database activities.

        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 through the step-by-step installation of phpMyAdmin on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

      • How to increase the swap space in Linux | FOSS Linux

        Linux is an open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Linux kernel. The Linux operating system has recently evolved to run on a wide variety of hardware, from phones, tablets, and supercomputers. Every Linux-based OS is packaged with a Linux Kernel that manages hardware resources and software packages that make up the operating system.

        How do I increase swap space in Linux? Have you been looking for a way to increase the swap space on your Linux PC? If so, don’t worry since this article will cover all the aspects you need to know about increasing swap space in Linux.

        Generally, every processor in the machine requires a certain amount of data capacity to run and store loaded applications. Therefore, all PCs are designed to have both primary and secondary memories from where all the programs can be run and stored information is executed.

      • How to install AWS sdk on Ubuntu - Unixcop

        AWS CLI or Amazon Web Service Command Line Interface is a command-line tool for managing and administering your Amazon Web Services like s3, ec2, lambda, and more services. AWS CLI provides direct access to the public API of Amazon Web Services.

      • How to copy|sync data between s3 to s3 or local using AWS CLI - Unixcop

        Aws Cli is a very powerful tool for working with AWS services. If you have configured the Access key and secrete key on your working machine then you can easily play with AWS services from your local machine.

      • How to Install Pip 3 or 2 on Debian 11 Bullseye Linux - Linux Shout

        Pip stands for Pip Installs Python and is a tool for Python programming language to install various modules. It is an explicit replacement and indirect successor for the older one easy_install from the Python setup tools.

        In a direct comparison, the syntax of pip is based on that of other package administrators, such as APT. Furthermore, even with pip, dependencies on other modules are resolved directly, ie additionally required modules are installed directly. Using it we can install packages from Python Package Index (PyPI) and other repositories.

      • Linux 101: What are environment variables? - TechRepublic

        How many times have you installed something on Linux, only to find out that you need to set certain environment variables before the installation will work? For me, it happens all the time.

        But what are these environment variables, and how do you set them? Let's dive in and find out.

      • Understand Cyber Security and Cryptography - Unixcop

        To understand cyber security and cryptography we will continue further today. In the previous chapter, we discussed the basics elements.

        Also In 1960-70 computers started getting popular in industry and offices. Initially, security and encryption were a concern for govt offices only.

        In addition to In 1973 IBM developed the Fiestal cipher. in 1949 an American cryptographer Claude Shanon introduced the substitution and permutation method of cryptography.

        Another Method of Cryptography came into the picture as well. “Confusion and Diffusion” was that new cryptography method.

      • Microservices with Python3 - Unixcop

        They were interested in microservices. How can microservices use them for increased agility and scalability?

        Microservices are architectural style and pattern structures which application as a collection of services. Services are highly maintainable, testable, loosely coupled, independently deployable, and precisely focused.

    • Wine or Emulation

      • GateBoy is a Game Boy Emulated at Gate Level

        Old game systems are typically the most popular targets for emulation. With huge communities of fans wanting to recreate the good times of yesteryear, most old systems have all been brought back to life in this manner. However, some simply dive into emulation for the technical challenge, and [Austin Appleby] has done just that with GateBoy.

        GateBoy is a project to emulate the Game Boy logic gate by logic gate. It’s a lower level approach that builds upon earlier work [Austin] did on a project called MetroBoy, which we featured previously.

    • Games

      • Humble serves up a fresh plate of games in Humble Choice September | GamingOnLinux

        Ready to grab even more games? The monthly curated bundle Humble Choice has a fresh plate of games ready to claim for subscribers.

        This is the bundle that replaced Humble Monthly, where you pay for whatever tier you feel is the best value to get access to the Humble Trove (a ton of DRM-free games), a discount at the Humble Store and the ability to claim Steam keys for multiple top titles. It's usually a mix of native Linux games and some that work with Steam Play Proton.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Weekly-ish recap — 7 September 2021

          There have been two Krita releases lately. Version 4.4.8 arrived last week with bugfixes. And then the first beta of v5 was released nearly two weeks ago, representing a few years of work and an insane amount of new features and improvements. If you ever hear them saying that this would be their greatest release ever, this won’t be a marketing ploy, it’s god’s honest truth.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Get your apps ready for Software 41

          Software 41 will be released with the rest of GNOME 41 in a few weeks, and it brings a number of changes to how app metadata is presented, including the newly added hardware support information, larger screenshots, more visible age ratings, and more.

          If you haven’t updated your app’s metadata in a while this is the perfect moment to review what you have, update what’s missing, and release a new version ahead of the GNOME 41 release!

          In this blog post I’ll walk you through the different kinds of metadata your app needs to really shine in Software 41, and best practices for adding it.

    • Distributions

      • Latest POP_OS! Release Brings COSMIC Overtones

        When I reviewed POP!_OS 20.04 in May 2020, I saw its potential to be one of the best starting points for any new Linux user.

        The latest release, POP!_OS Linux 21.04 issued June 29, clearly shows that the in-house tweaking of the GNOME desktop to the COSMIC GNOME-based desktop is even more inviting.

        Given this distro’s rising popularity, it will continue to hold that distinction. COSMIC is an attractive offering for seasoned Linux users as well.

        That is a bold statement, but developer System76 has made some bold moves to push this distro to the forefront and spark its popularity among newcomers to Linux — as well as with seasoned users. That was true for the changeover to a modified GNOME desktop last year. It is even truer with this latest release’s added COSMIC polish to GNOME.

        COSMIC stands for Computer Operating System Main Interface Components. While it is not an out-of-this-world or strikingly new desktop environment, it does provide enough change to the traditional GNOME user interface to be better than the original.

        That has been System 76’s goal from the get-go. The company has refined the desktop experience primarily for its own line of Linux-powered computers. But even running POP_OS! on your own unoptimized hardware, this Linux distribution soars like a heavenly creature.

      • New Releases

        • GhostBSD 21.09.06 ISO's now available

          I am happy to announce the new ISO 21.09.06. This new ISO contains the switch from OpenRC to FreeBSD rc.d and numerous fixes and improvements.

        • GhostBSD 21.09.06 Available to Download

          GhostBSD moved back to FreeBSD rc.d to start services. Github ticket completed: Disable access to home directories. ghostbsd-src opened by ghost. Leaving some fractured pastes about Update-Station and sudo pkg update update-station#21 opened by wb7odyfred. (GhostBSD-21.04.27.iso) package configuration file anomalies at /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/ ghostbsd-pkg-conf opened by grahamperrin. Empty list of packages software-station opened by simonsaman. Inappropriate connections to open Wi-Fi networks with 5.5 on FreeBSD networkmgr opened by grahamperrin. For Open Networks, /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file gets written without double quotes around SSID name. networkmgr opened by wb7odyfred. Automatic switchover networkmgr opened by Crushless. Minor cosmetic – authentication is spelled wrong networkmgr, opened by technics. Wired: DHCP: not gaining an address networkmgr opened by grahamperrin.” Further details can be found in the project’s release announcement.

        • GhostBSD 21.09.06 Released For This FreeBSD-Based Desktop OS

          GhostBSD 21.09.06 is now available as the latest release of this desktop-minded, FreeBSD-based operating system.

          The principal change with GhostBSD 21.09.06 is switching back from using OpenRC as the init system to FreeBSD's rc.d for this handling of starting services. GhostBSD had enjoying OpenRC's service status feature but in the end it wasn't worthwhile due to GhostBSD needing to keep the OpenRC handling up-to-date with FreeBSD services catering to rc.d. After spending more than the past month transitioning back, GhostBSD is now ready to go with using rc.d.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • 8 skills you need to be successful in IT automation | Enable Sysadmin

          Looking back now, I was lucky ... before the year 2000, I started working in an IT shop that already had an automation team. This team had some sort of magic that proactively fixed issues before they happened—or at least addressed them when they happened without waking someone up in the middle of the night. At 19 years old, I had no idea that this was not the norm or really what automation even meant. Then, one day it hit me: This is how I can make time for all the other things in my backlog of work, and even more importantly, I don't have to do this manually ever again. The realization that anything you can do on a command line could easily be saved as code and run again systematically without human intervention completely changed my life and set me on the path I am on today.

        • Build a Kubernetes Operator in six steps | Red Hat Developer

          Operators greatly increase the power of Kubernetes as an environment and orchestration tool for running scalable applications This article shows you how to create your own Kubernetes Operator. Although production applications often run in the cloud, you don't need a cloud service for the tutorial; you'll download everything you need onto a local system.

          This article is an update to one I wrote last year, 'Hello, World' tutorial with Kubernetes Operators. Architecture upgrades in the Kubernetes Operator SDK (in version 0.20) put that article out of date. This tutorial takes you on the journey of writing your first Kubernetes Operator using Kubernetes Operator SDK 1.11+.

        • Business and Consumer Services tops Red Hat Enterprise Linux install base as of August 2021

          The largest percentage of IT management solution Red Hat Enterprise Linux installations were in the business and consumer services sector as of August 2021, according to GlobalData Install Base database.

          In all Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments across sectors, the business and consumer services sector accounted for a 21.1% share, followed by communications and IT with 21.1%.

        • Customer success stories: speeding data insights with Red Hat

          Gathering data can help organizations better understand customers and track performance. As you scale, how do you make sure your business-critical insights are processed efficiently?

          From harnessing edge insights to speeding cross-team data delivery, organizations are counting on Red Hat technologies to help manage and analyze their valuable information. In this month’s customer success highlights, we’ll share how two media companies, Verizon and Globo, used Red Hat OpenShift to manage their data and stay ahead of the market.

        • Top 10 most used Open Practice Library concepts

          The Open Practice Library has quickly grown in its popularity and has become a trusted resource for anyone wanting to learn ways to get optimal outcomes for their teams. Created in 2016 by the Red Hat Open Innovation Labs team, the library offers various strategies and concepts to focus on DevOps and product development practices. Not sure where to start? We’re highlighting the Library’s top 10 tools in this post.

        • What is ransomware? 5 facts IT leaders should understand now

          Ransomware has been headline news in 2021, highlighted by the Colonial Pipeline hack and underlined by scores of other attacks.

          Data on ransomware infections varies, with multiple estimates suggesting the majority of organizations worldwide have been affected. Even more conservative measurements point to a widespread security problem. A recently published survey conducted by IDC found nearly one-third (31 percent) of organizations globally have been hit by ransomware in the previous 12 months. (IDC found a far lower rate among U.S.-based companies.)

          Such data points also tend to indicate that ransomware attacks are increasing. According to research group Statista, the percentage of organizations globally that have been impacted by ransomware has grown steadily each year from 2018 through 2021.

          Ransomware is "another way of monetizing attacks on IT systems." By any measure, ransomware is a real – and potentially expensive – problem. And the reason it exists is fundamentally simple. “Ransomware is in the news a lot these days,” says Gordon Haff, technology evangelist at Red Hat. “But at the end of the day, it’s just another way of monetizing attacks on IT systems.”

        • IT leadership: How the pandemic can shift your perspective for the better

          For many of us, the pandemic has changed how we work, how we live, and how we spend our time – redefining where work gets done and bringing new opportunities.

          The redefinition of work has influenced our workspaces, our location strategy, the need for contingency sites, and the pace of digitization for clients and employees. For our BNY Mellon teams, redoubling our work to enhance our scalable and resilient operating model will likely be a core part of our strategy. This enables us to optimize and streamline the interactions across our businesses, as well as technology and operations, all in the interest of servicing clients and driving growth.

          Here are a few ways the challenges of the pandemic have sharpened our focus on technology.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Canonical’s Anbox Cloud Appliance Now Available On AWS Marketplace

          Canonical has announced the launch of its Anbox Cloud Appliance on the AWS Marketplace, which simplifies the installation and deployment process and also allows billing directly handled through AWS.

          Anbox Cloud containerises workloads using Android as a guest operating system enabling enterprises to distribute applications from the cloud. Anbox Cloud allows enterprises and service providers to deliver mobile applications at scale, more securely and independently of a device’s capabilities. Use cases for Anbox Cloud include cloud gaming, enterprise workplace applications, software testing, and mobile device virtualisation.

        • Canonical scales down Anbox Cloud to an appliance on AWS ● The Register

          Canonical has shrunk its Anbox Cloud Android app container platform with an appliance available on the AWS Marketplace.

          Android developers using the Anbox Cloud Appliance will now require a virtual or bare-metal machine on AWS (or Oracle OCI, according to Ubuntu's documentation) in order to load up their applications for prototyping or small-scale deployments.

          Anbox Cloud turned up earlier this year as a platform to containerise workloads using Android as a guest operating system. Back then, Canonical boasted of the elasticity available by running things in the cloud (be it AWS, OCI, Azure or GCP.) However, while scaling out might be one thing, scaling in is not quite the same, hence the appliance.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Ryzen V2000 Mini-ITX offers triple M.2 and PCIe x16

        Ibase has launched a “MI989” Mini-ITX board with an up to octa-core Ryzen Embedded V2000 SoC, up to 64GB DDR3, 4x DP, 2x GbE, 3x USB 3.1 Gen2, 3x M.2, and PCIe x16.

        Ibase teased the M1989 last November when AMD announced its 7nm, Zen 2 based Ryzen Embedded V2000 system-on-chip. The company has now released the product at an unstated price.

      • Industrial mini-PC powers up with RK3399

        Vecow’s rugged “EIC-1000” industrial mini-PC runs Android or Linux on an RK3399 with 2GB DDR3L, 32GB eMMC, 2x USB, 2x COM, HDMI, GbE, and mini-PCIe.

        Vecow announced a fanless, compact computer equipped with Rockchip’s hexa-core -A72 and -A53 RK3399 SoC. The EIC-1000 offers industrial features including a 9-55 DC terminal plug input, an extended 0 to 70€°C operating range, IEC 60068-2-27 rated shock resistance, IEC 60068-2-64 vibration resistance, and humidity and EMC tolerance.

        The EIC-1000 is aimed primarily at digital signage, but also supports smart retail, factory automation, and other AIoT/Industry 4.0 applications. We’re not sure why the EIC-1000 is referred to as an “edge AI” system, which would make more sense if it was using the NPU-equipped RK3399Pro. Yet, we suppose you could add a half-sized Coral Edge TPU based Mini PCIe Accelerator card to the mini-PCIe slot. One image shows a camera, which could be attached via USB or GbE. The RK3399 supports up to 1080p @ 30fps encoding.

      • Open Hardware/Modding

        • Trying Out The RasPad 3, My Unboxing & Review

          Today we’re going to be taking a look at the RasPad 3, an all-in-one tablet-style device designed around the Raspberry Pi 4B that Sunfounder have sent me to review and share with you.

          The RasPad 3 was brought to life through a successful Kickstarter campaign in October 2020 which saw almost 2000 backers pledge over $300,000, so it definitely gathered a lot of early interest.

        • Qubes Now A Preinstall Option for Librem 14 and Mini

          While we default to our own PureOS on our hardware, we have also supported the high-security QubesOS on Purism hardware ever since the Librem 13 v1 became the first hardware officially supported by the Qubes project. Since then we have continued to treat Qubes as a first-class citizen and ensured that it works well on new iterations of our hardware, up to and including our current Librem Mini and Librem 14 which we feel is the best laptop for running Qubes. We are pleased to announce this support now extends to pre-installing Qubes on the Librem Mini and Librem 14, for any customer who selects it as their OS of choice.

        • Measuring 20V signals on an Arduino Uno with a quantizer | Arduino Blog

          The Arduino Uno is well-known for its 10-bit 5V ADC within its ATmega328p, which means that it takes between 0 and 5V as input and produces a digital value that ranges from 0 to 1023. However, attempting to measure any voltage above 5V will cause some less-than-desirable results, such as creating magic smoke and destroying the IC. To get around this problem, some makers add a voltage divider that divides the incoming voltage by a predetermined factor. This solution reduces the resolution of the ADC, as a single unit of change in the digital value corresponds to a larger change in voltage. To address this, the YouTuber known as Techoyaki came up with a novel solution that can measure the full range of values without decreasing the resolution.

        • Use the Nano 33 BLE Sense's IMU and gesture sensor to control a DJI Tello drone | Arduino Blog

          Piloting a drone with something other than a set of virtual joysticks on a phone screen is exciting due to the endless possibilities. DJI’s Tello can do just this, as it has a simple Python API which allows for basic aspects to be controlled such as taking off, landing, and moving within a horizontal plane. Soham Chatterjee built a system that takes advantage of two sensors within the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense’s onboard suite, namely the APDS-9960 and LSM9DS1 IMU.

          He started this endeavor by creating two simple programs that ran on the BLE Sense. The first initializes the APDS-9960 to detect gestures, which then sends strings like “detected DOWN gesture” via the USB port to a host machine. The second program checks if the IMU has gone over a certain threshold in a single direction and relays a corresponding string if it has.

        • DIY 3D water depth mapping with Arduino | Arduino Blog

          Knowing the exact depths that water reaches within a harbor can be vital to navigating around certain hidden obstacles that might cause a boat to become stuck. But rather than using an expensive drone or even satellite to take these measurements, Jan Neumann was able to create a DIY version that is a fraction of the cost.

          The system is comprised of an Arduino Uno at its core with a small GPS module for gathering positional data and a NMEA-capable echo sounder. As Neumann’s boat moved around the harbor, the Uno would take a reading of the water’s depth and the boat’s current position every second and log it to an SD card within a CSV file. And because the water’s natural level rises and falls over the course of a few hours due to tidal forces, Neumann used a Wasser&Schiffahrsamt water level sensing module that also takes a reading every second.

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Firefox 92 enables WebRender everywhere

            Mozilla Firefox 92 will be officially released during the course of the day, but the browser has been available on the company’s FTP server since yesterday . The new version of the Mozilla browser is inconspicuous, but completes a development that has been delivered to users piece by piece for several years.

          • Firefox 92.0 and Firefox ESR

            Firefox 92.0 has been released. In this version Firefox can now automatically upgrade to HTTPS using HTTPS RR as Alt-Svc headers, support full-range color levels for video playback on many systems, and more.

          • Firefox 92.0 Released with More Secure HTTPS Connection / Full-range Color

            Mozilla Firefox 92.0 was released today with new features and various security fixes.

            The release will use HTTPS resource record (HTTPS RR) as Alt-Svc headers to make connections more secure.

            The full-range color (0-255) levels are now supported for video playback. Though the limited color range (16-235) is ideal for movies and TV, the source can be switched to full-range color to match PC monitor.

          • Chris H-C: This Week in Glean: Data Reviews are Important, Glean Parser makes them Easy
          • Data@Mozilla: This Week in Glean: Data Reviews are Important, Glean Parser makes them Easy

            At Mozilla we put a lot of stock in Openness. Source? Open. Bug tracker? Open. Discussion Forums (Fora?)? Open (synchronous and asynchronous).

            We also have an open process for determining if a new or expanded data collection in a Mozilla project is in line with our Privacy Principles and Policies: Data Review.

            Basically, when a new piece of instrumentation is put up for code review (or before, or after), the instrumentor fills out a form and asks a volunteer Data Steward to review it. If the instrumentation (as explained in the filled-in form) is obviously in line with our privacy commitments to our users, the Data Steward gives it the go-ahead to ship.

            (If it isn’t _obviously_ okay then we kick it up to our Trust Team to make the decision. They sit next to Legal, in case you need to find them.)

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • pgagroal 1.3.0

          The pgagroal community is happy to announce version 1.3.0.

          This release was driven by Junduo Dong (@An-DJ) and his Google Summer of Code project to enhance monitoring and metrics of pgagroal.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • CMS

        • Grav: a Databaseless free Open-source WordPress Competitor

          Grav is an open-source CMS and web publishing system which uses Flat-file to store content and data instead of a Database.

          If you are familiar with WordPress, then you know it has a rich community, a vast extensions libraries, free and commercial and a numerous list of themes. The main reason was it is a user-friendly system and does not take much time or effort to install and run.

      • FSF

        • RMS: Cancellation as mob rule

          Cancellation as mob rule: the article compares it with the Puritans of old New England.

          To me, it resembles the Red Guards that I read about in Life and Death in Shanghai (Nien Cheng).

          Although people attempted to cancel me two years ago, what has happened to me is not as bad as what happened to those described in the article. I was fortunate.

      • Programming/Development

        • Secure AI workloads using fully homomorphic encrypted data

          For decades, the industry has benefitted from modern cryptography to protect sensitive data in transit and at rest. However, it has been impossible to keep the data protected while it is being processed. IBM Research is closing this gap with the release of HElayers, a software development kit (SDK) for the practical and efficient execution of secure AI workloads using fully homomorphic encrypted (FHE) data.

          HElayers promises to address a primary concern in computing security, enabling the ability to use data safely without exposing any sensitive information, a key enabler for migrating compute to the cloud. HElayers provides encryption schemes and methods that allow specific operations to be performed on encrypted data without decrypting that data and any intermediate values computed, allowing for maximum utility of the data while preserving privacy and security. Foundational areas for applying FHE include:

        • What's new in QML Tooling in Qt 6.2?
        • These are the most popular programming languages ​​of 2021 - itsfoss.net

          The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) has developed and published a list of the main and most popular programming languages ​​of 2021 . The list, which has been published in the entity’s magazine, IEEE Spectrum , has 55 positions, of which the first is occupied, to the surprise of very few, by the popular Python .

          This language is, according to the IEEE, the most used this year, followed by others that are also very popular and used in the development world: Java, C, C ++ and JavaScript ; that occupy from second to fifth place, in that order. These are followed by C #, R, Go, HTML, and Swift . Past tenth place are Arduino, Matlab, PHP, Dart, SQL, Ruby, Rust, Assembly, Kotlin and Julia.

        • Fast Duplicate Tracking

          In 2019, I optimized QStringList::removeDuplicates() by using std::pmp::unordered_set with a std::pmr::monotonic_buffer_resource, when available. The class that I wrote to encapsulate this optimization has since been re-implemented three times. The latest iteration has recently landed in KDToolBox.

        • When you really appreciate clang-format

          In the KDE repos, a lot of repositories have been formatted using clang-format (almost all of the KDE Frameworks, and IIRC a lot of parts in Plasma, and some apps, and Okular and KActivities (the latter two have had clang-format much longer before the rest of KDE caught up)).

          There was this Linux Kernel talk given by Greg-Kroah Hartman where he talked about the importance of formatting patches submitted to the Kernel, they have tools/scripts to format patches according to the coding style used in the Kernel, in that talk he said that the human brain recognises patterns, and because of that it is much easier to read code that is formatted in a regular pattern that you're used to; which in, my experience so far, is pretty much true.

        • Perl/Raku

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • Put an editable command at the next prompt

            I audit data files that vary a lot in structure, and I often have to modify a command to suit a particular file's complement of fields. The "base" command to be modified can be fairly long, there can be several parameters to be adjusted within it, and there's more than one kind of "base" command.

            Typing and modifying those long commands gets pretty tedious. For this reason I built a pick-list of "base" commands called "sniplist" that lives in my ~/scripts directory. I call up the list, pick the "base" command I want and edit it at the next prompt. There are two very different ways to do this job.

        • Rust

  • Leftovers

    • Eyes on Trade: Rethinking Trade - Season 1 Episode 38: Labor Day Special: An Historic Vote in a Mexican Auto Plant

      On August 19th, workers at the massive General Motors plant in Silao, Mexico participated in an historic vote that ousted the corrupt and undemocratic protection union that had long controlled labor relations there. The effort to win such a vote...

    • Science

      • Here’s how to fix the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act

        The European Union is getting back to work after the summer break, and one of the key files on everyone’s mind is the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). Over the summer, the European Commission held a consultation on the AIA that received 304 responses, with everyone from the usual Big Tech players down to the Council of European Dentists having their say.

        Access Now submitted a response to the consultation in August that outlined a number of key issues that need to be addressed in the next stages of the legislative process. Here’s a quick refresher on some of our main recommendations.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Openwashing

            • Updated Python support in VS Code brings browser editing and ditches open-source language server for Pylance [Ed: Microsoft Tim is pushing proprietary software of Microsoft to Python developers]
            • Why we abandoned open source: LiveCode CEO on retreat despite successful kickstarter [Ed: Microsoft Tim now a megaphone for people who use proprietary GitHub and abandon Free software (LiveCode); I think his agenda is important to keep abreast of.]

              An easy to use programming language that was made open source in 2014 after a successful crowdfunding campaign is going back to closed source after too many customers switched to using it for free.

              LiveCode Community, open source under the GPLv3, was archived on GitHub and future development will be closed source.

            • Summer 2021 Newsletter [Ed: Mission changed. Half their budget promotes proprietary GitHub.]

              Welcome to the Open Source Initiative's quarterly newsletter. We hope the information shared in each edition provides you with interesting insights into our initiatives and activities.

              [...]

              Our old mission statement was pretty wordy and didn't succinctly encompass all the work that we do anymore. The OSI finds itself in a very different place than we were when we started. Open source software is everywhere now and the tech landscape has changed quite a bit. The needs of the open source community are more varied and little more complicated than they were in 1998. We aim to meet the needs of a larger, more global community and that means declaring our intent to embrace change and update our tactics.

              NEW: As steward of the OSD, we set the foundation for the open source software ecosystem.

              OLD: We are the stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD) and the community-recognized body for reviewing and approving licenses as OSD-conformant.

        • Security

          • OpenSSL 3.0 Has Been Released! - OpenSSL Blog

            After 3 years of development work, 17 alpha releases, 2 beta releases, over 7,500 commits and contributions from over 350 different authors we have finally released OpenSSL 3.0! In addition to this there has been a large number of contributions from our users who have been actively working with the pre-release versions to test it, make sure it works in the real world and with a large array of different applications and reporting their results. I am also delighted to note that there has been a 94% increase in the amount of documentation that we have since OpenSSL 1.1.1 and an (adjusted) increase in the “lines of code” in our tests of 54%. There has never been a better demonstration of what an active and enthusiastic community we have than when you look at the statistics for the OpenSSL 3.0 development work. Thanks to everyone who has taken part - no matter how small that part was.

          • OpenSSL 3.0 Officially Released - Phoronix

            After many development snapshots and three years worth of work, OpenSSL 3.0 is now available as a major update to this widely-used SSL library.

            Compared to OpenSSL 1.1, OpenSSL 3.0 features greater extensibility, various code clean-ups and deprecations, and architectural improvements. OpenSSL 3.0 has also switched to being distributed under the Apache 2.0 license.

          • OpenSSL 3.0.0 released

            Version 3.0 of the OpenSSL TLS library has been released; the large version-number jump (from 1.1.1) reflects a new versioning scheme.

          • PoC released for Ghostscript vulnerability that exposed Airbnb, Dropbox | The Daily Swig

            Hackers have released proof-of-concept code that exploits a recently demonstrated vulnerability in older but still widely used versions of Ghostscript, the popular server-side image conversion software package. Security researcher Emil Lerner demonstrated an unpatched vulnerability for Ghostscript version 9.50 at the ZeroNights X conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia last month.

          • Top 6 Breaches In the Last 20 Years That Reshaped Cybersecurity
          • Elon Musk’s top-secret ‘full self-driving’ AI car software leaked to hackers
          • Resource Anesthesiology Association of California warns patient information was on stolen laptop
          • Bits relating to Alpine security initiatives in August

            As always, the primary focus of my work in Alpine is related to security, either through non-maintainer updates to address CVEs, new initiatives for hardening Alpine, maintenance of critical security-related packages or working with other projects to improve our workflows with better information sharing. Here are some updates on that, which are slightly delayed because of the long weekend.

            sudo deprecation>

            One of the key things we discussed in the last update was our plan to deprecate sudo, by moving it to community. sudo exists in a similar situation as firejail: it allows for some interesting use cases, but the security track record is not very good. Additionally, the maintenance lifecycle for a release branch of sudo is very short, which makes it difficult to provide long-term support for any given version.

            As such, the security team proposed to the Technical Steering Committee that we should deprecate sudo and move to an alternative implementation such as doas. This required some work, namely, doas needed to gain support for configuration directories. I wrote a patch for doas which provides support for configuration directories, and last week, pushed a doas package which includes this patch with some migration scripts.

            At this point, basically everything which depended on sudo for technical reasons has been moved over to using doas. We are just waiting for the cloud-init maintainer to finish testing their support for doas. Once that is done, sudo will be moved to community.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Public (Corruption) Radio, NPR, posted a story about Facebook calling black people “primates”; had to disclose that they’re funded by Facebook. “Philanthropy” troubles.

        Lately, I’ve heard NPR admit they’re funded by the Bill Gates Foundation, Facebook, DuckDuckGo, ExxonMobil, Amazon, and many others.

        [...]

        The billionaire class want a finger in every pie. They don’t just “donate” to get nothing in return. In fact, the open corruption of PBS (the over the air “public” TV sibling of NPR) and NPR has been known for some time now to anyone paying attention. Some years back, when Walmart was having major scandals, they just made a donation to PBS and they started running ads about “all the good Walmart brings to the community”.

        When they were about to do an informative documentary about how the Koch Brothers corrupted American politics, a large donation changed that.

        In fact, you can see a list of sponsors for PBS, which is more open about who is financing them than NPR is, and you’ll never hear anything too bad about them on the air.

      • Propaganda in the Covid Era with Mark Crispin Miller

        Professor Mark Crispin Miller joins the podcast to discuss the propaganda that has been used to opportunistically sell certain agendas to the public in the Covid era, just as in past crises of similar scale.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • The battle for control of Afghanistan’s internet | WIRED UK

        When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan, between 1996 and 2001, the nation remained resolutely analogue. The internet was effectively banned alongside music and other ‘modern concepts’ such as women having a role in society. The result was that most Afghans were cut off from the emerging online world.

        Yet despite its hostile approach to digital life within its borders, the Taliban held a more nuanced view when it came to spreading the word outside Afghanistan. The terror group has been on Twitter for a decade, and has maintained an official website since 1998, even while Afghan civilians were barred from going online.

        Twenty years on, the situation is even more complicated. Our reliance on digital connections has grown exponentially since the Taliban were last in power, and even the militia themselves use social media as part of a vast propaganda machine. Afghanistan’s new leader – expected to be Mullah Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political arm – has a full in-tray of issues. Policing, the economy and Afghanistan’s place in the international community are all priorities. But equally challenging is what the Taliban does with the internet.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Google Has Mass Layoffs (Again), But the Problem is Vastly Larger
started as a rumour about January 2025
Electronic Frontier Foundation Defends Companies That Attack Free Speech Online (Follow the Money)
One might joke that today's EFF has basically adopted the same stance as Donald Trump and has a "warm spot" for BRICS propaganda
 
Links 21/12/2024: EU on Solidarity with Ukraine, Focus on Illegal and Unconstitutional Patent Court in the EU (UPC)
Links for the day
[Meme] Microsofters at the End of David's Leash
Hand holding the leash. Whose?
Deciphering Matt's Take on WordPress, Which is Under Attack From Microsofters-Funded Aggravator
the money sponsoring the legal attacks on WordPress and on Matt is connected very closely to Microsoft
Gemini Links 21/12/2024: Projections, Dead Web ('Webapps' Replacing Pages), and Presentation of Pi-hole
Links for the day
American Samoa One of the Sovereign States Where Windows Has Fallen Below 1% (and Stays Below It)
the latest data plotted in LibreOffice
[Meme] Brian's Ravioli
An article per minute?
Links 21/12/2024: "Hey Hi" (AI) or LLM Bubble Criticised by Mainstream Media, Oligarchs Try to Control and Shut Down US Government
Links for the day
LLM Slop is Ruining the Media and Ruining the Web, Ignoring the Problem or the Principal Culprits (or the Slop Itself) Is Not Enough
We need to encourage calling out the culprits (till they stop this poor conduct or misconduct)
Christmas FUD From Microsoft, Smearing "SSH" When the Real Issue is Microsoft Windows
And since Microsoft's software contains back doors, only a fool would allow any part of SSH on Microsoft's environments, which should be presumed compromised
Paywalls, Bots, Spam, and Spyware is "Future of the Media" According to UK Press Gazette
"managers want more LLM slop"
On BetaNews Latest Technology News: "We are moderately confident this text was [LLM Chatbot] generated"
The future of newsrooms or another site circling down the drain with spam, slop, or both?
"The Real New Year" is Now
Happy solstice
Microsoft OSI Reads Techrights Closely
Microsoft OSI has also fraudulently attempted to censor Techrights several times over the years
"Warning About IBM's Labor Practices"
IBM is not growing and its revenue is just "borrowed" from companies it is buying; a lot of this revenue gets spent paying the interest on considerable debt
[Meme] The Easier Way to Make Money
With patents...
The Curse (to Microsoft) of the Faroe Islands
The common factor there seems to be Apple
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 20, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, December 20, 2024
Gemini Links 21/12/2024: Death of Mike Case, Slow and Sudden End of the Web
Links for the day
Links 20/12/2024: Security Patches, Openwashing by Open Source Initiative, Prison Sentence for Bitcoin Charlatan and Fraud
Links for the day
Another Terrible Month for Microsoft in Web Servers
Consistent downward curve
LLM Slop Disguised as Journalism: The Latest Threat to the Web
A lot of it is to do with proprietary GitHub, i.e. Microsoft
Gemini Links 20/12/2024: Regulation and Implementing Graphics
Links for the day
Links 20/12/2024: Windows Breaks Itself, Mass Layoffs Coming to Google Again (Big Wave)
Links for the day
Microsoft: "Upgrade" to Vista 11 Today, We'll Brick Your Audio and You Cannot Prevent This
Windows Update is obligatory, so...
The Unspeakable National Security Threat: Plasticwares as the New Industrial Standard
Made to last or made to be as cheap as possible? Meritocracy or industrial rat races are everywhere now.
Microsoft's All-Time Lows in Macao and Hong Kong
Microsoft is having a hard time in China, not only for political reasons
[Meme] "It Was Like a Nuclear Winter"
This won't happen again, will it?
If You Know That Hey Hi (AI) is Hype, Then Stop Participating in It
bogus narrative of "Hey Hi (AI) arms race" and "era/age of Hey Hi" and "Hey Hi Revolution"
Bangladesh (Population Close to 200 Million) Sees Highest GNU/Linux Adoption Levels Ever
Microsoft barely has a grip on this country. It used to.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, December 19, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, December 19, 2024
Gemini Links 19/12/2024: Fast Year Passes and Advent of Code Ongoing
Links for the day
Twitter is Going to Fall Out of Top 100 Domains as Clownflare (DNS MitM) Sees It
evidence of Twitter's (X's) collapse
[Meme] Making Choices at the EPO
Decisions, decisions...
'Dark Patterns' or a Trap at the European Patent Office (EPO)
insincere if not malicious E-mail from the EPO's dictators
There's an Abundance of Articles About the New Release of Kali Linux, But This One is a Fake
It can add nothing except casual misinformation (fed back into the model to reinforce lies)
Large and Significant Error Correction in South America?
Windows now has less than half what Android achieved in terms of "market share"
IBM's Leadership Ruining Lives of People Who Thought Working for IBM Would be OK
Nobody gets fire-lined for buying IBM?
The United States' Authorities Ought to Become Enforcers of the General Public License (GPL) for National Security's Sake
US federal agencies ought to pursue availability of code and GPL compliance (copyleft), not bans
The Problem of Microsoft Security Problems is Microsoft (the Solution is to Quit Microsoft) and "Salt Typhoon" Coverage Must Name CALEA Back Doors
Name the holes, not those who exploit them.
A "Year of Efficiency"
No, we don't mean layoffs
Links 19/12/2024: Astronaut Record and Observer Absorbed
Links for the day
Links 19/12/2024: Seven Dirty Words and Isle Release v0.0.3 (Alpha)
Links for the day
Links 19/12/2024: Nurses Besieged by "Apps", More Harms of Social Control Media Illuminated
Links for the day
15 Countries Where Yandex is Already Seen to be Bigger Than Microsoft (in Search)
Georgia, Syrian Arab Republic, Cyprus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Turkey, and Russia
Links 19/12/2024: Magnitude 7.3 Earthquake and Privacy Camp
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/12/2024: Port Of Miami Explosion, TurboQOA, Gnus
Links for the day
Fake Articles About 'Linux'
Dated yesterday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 18, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 18, 2024