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Links 07/04/2022: Emacs 28.1 and Linux Mint 21 is Named



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Update: A smol kernel hack



        On a previous gemlog, I described how I prefer to use my electronics device in a greyscale (desaturated) mode for accessibility and anti-doomscrolling reasons, as colour processing is nontrivial. Since I daily drive an Apple M1 machine running Linux with a display driver I co-authored, I added a kernel hack to do the desaturation in the display controller. This avoids any overhead from desaturating on the CPU or GPU, which is much more efficient.

    • Applications

      • MedevelSigil is a free, open-source eBook and ePUB editor for Windows, Linux, and macOS

        Sigil is an outstanding EPUB editor and creator for book authors, publishers, and anyone who writes and self-publish books.

        Furthermore, it is a totally, free, open-source solution that works on all popular desktop operating systems.

        [...]

        Sigil is an open-source software that is released under the GPL-3.0 License.

      • Download and Test Inkscape 1.2 Beta

        It has been almost a year since the last major Inkscape release, and the time is approaching to launch version 1.2! This “Beta” release comes with many performance tweaks, new features (such as the clipart importer) and user interface improvements (see the Release Notes for more details).

        Before we share Inkscape 1.2 with the world, we need help testing the “Beta” version. If you are confident using Inkscape and you would like to support us in refining it, please follow the instructions below.

      • MedevelAtom: Access to Memory. The Web Catalog

        Atom is an open-source web-based self-hosted cataloging and archiving system that helps collectors, and museums catalog and keep track of their items.

        Atom is compliant to International Council on Archives, so public, private, cultural centers, and NGOs, can use without worrying about international standards.

        Atom is powered and maintain by a strong community of developers, users, archivers, and museum experts.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Install Thunderbird Mail Client on Rocky Linux - kifarunix.com

        In this guide, we are going to walk you through steps required to install Thunderbird mail client on Rocky Linux system. Thunderbird is a free and opensource cross-platform email application that was developed by Mozilla Foundation. It can be used as a mail client, chat client, RSS and news client.

      • UNIX CopHow to Install Roxy-WI on Ubuntu, A GUI management server for HA Proxy, Nginx, and keepalived - Unix / Linux the admins Tutorials

        This post is about Install Roxy-WI on Ubuntu-

        Roxy-WI server manages HA Proxy, Nginx, and Keepalived servers from a centralized location. It will create servers on AWS, Digital Ocean, and G-Core Labs, install HA-Proxy, Nginx, and Keepalived, and carry out the initial configuration for the service to start.

      • UNIX CopSwitching to virt-manager

        Ever since I got into the world of Linux, I have realised that there exist these various “rabbit holes” (as I like to call it) that I could get myself into. I define these “rabbit holes” as the period when you spend your time into adopting a certain technology into your workflow. Most of these workflows are sometimes very uncommon. For example one of my first “rabbit holes” was switching to a tiling window manager. There already isn’t a big percentage of people who use Linux on their desktops let alone having a tiling window manager setup. One of the “rabbit holes” that I have recently gotten into – hence the title of this article – is switching away from VirtualBox to virt-manager. I had already seen a lot of videos and articles about this QEMU/KVM thingy already. So it was predictable for me to eventually pick this up.

      • Linux Made SimpleHow to install FL Studio 20 on a Chromebook in 2022

        Today we are looking at how to install FL Studio 20 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 use MystiQ video converter on Linux | FOSS Linux

        Open-source media file converter MystiQ or MystiQ Video Converter enables you to convert video and audio files into various popular formats. For its backend, it employs FFmpeg and C++. MystiQ can run on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Various techniques of encoding these audio and video data into efficient and portable formats have been developed due to advancements in audio and video capture technology.

        In some circumstances, you may be obliged to save a file in a specific format to send it over the internet. As a result, you may have to convert the media file into a compressed format. In addition, the material must be converted into a format that will not be corrupted upon access to the file.

        Using only a few clicks, you can change the format of your media files with MystiQ. It contains a simple, graphical user interface that makes it simple to operate. This tutorial will teach us how to set up and use MystiQ on Linux.

      • ID RootHow To Install MATE Desktop on Fedora 35 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MATE Desktop on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, The MATE Desktop Environment is the continuation of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. MATE is also an excellent choice for a lower-end system or those looking to remain efficient on system resources.

        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 MATE Desktop environment on a Fedora 35.

      • Network World2 ways to remove duplicate lines from Linux files

        There are many ways to remove duplicate lines from a text file on Linux, but here are two that involve the awk and uniq commands and that offer slightly different results.

      • TechRepublicHow to add a data source to Redash | TechRepublic

        Redash can create dashboards from various data sources that display charts, pivot tables, cohorts, boxplots, counters, funnels, maps, sankeys, sunbursts and word clouds. Here’s how to use it.

      • ID RootHow To Install PowerShell on Debian 11 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PowerShell on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, PowerShell is Microsoft’s automation platform with an interactive command-line shell and scripting language that allows administrators to simplify and automate administrative tasks. PowerShell runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and other platforms.

        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 the PowerShell on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

      • VideoHow to install deepin 20.5. - Invidious

        In this video, I am going to show how to install deepin 20.5.

      • Ubuntu HandbookHow to Install Latest Firefox as classic Deb in Ubuntu 22.04 | UbuntuHandbook

        Ubuntu 22.04 finally removed the .deb package for Firefox web browser from it’s repository! Here’s how to install it back.

        As you may know, Firefox in Ubuntu 22.04 is a Snap package that runs in sandbox. It’s easy to remove it. But when you try installing the deb package via apt, it just install the Snap version back!!

        Like Chromium, the Firefox deb in Ubuntu 22.04 is an empty package that links to the Mozilla’s official Snap.

      • Install Thunderbird Mail Client on Debian 11/Debian 10 - kifarunix.com

        In this guide, we are going to walk you through steps required to install Thunderbird mail client on Debian 11/Debian 10 system.

        Thunderbird is a free and opensource cross-platform email application that was developed by Mozilla Foundation. It can be used as a mail client, chat client, RSS and news client.

      • Install Thunderbird mail client on Ubuntu 22.04/Ubuntu 20.04 - kifarunix.com

        In this guide, we are going to walk you through steps required to install Thunderbird mail client on Ubuntu 22.04/Ubuntu 20.04 system.

        Thunderbird is a free and opensource cross-platform email application that was developed by Mozilla Foundation. It can be used as a mail client, chat client, RSS and news client.

      • Install DBeaver on Ubuntu 22.04/Ubuntu 20.04 - kifarunix.com

        Follow through this tutorial to learn how to install DBeaver on Ubuntu 22.04/Ubuntu 20.04. DBeaver is free and open source universal database tool for developers and database administrators.

    • Games

      • GamingOnLinuxGOG attempt to bring customers back with a revival of Good Old Games | GamingOnLinux

        GOG aren't having the best of times recently, with details about their financial troubles painting a bleak picture, although it seems they have something of a plan. Later they announced some changes, including a tweak to what they mean by DRM free.

      • GamingOnLinuxToasty: Ashes of Dusk confirm a Native Linux build is planned, shown off on Steam Deck | GamingOnLinux

        Toasty: Ashes of Dusk is an upcoming action RPG that honestly looks great, and now Pocket Llama has issued an update to confirm they will be doing Native Linux support. It's currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, with a little publishing hand from Top Hat Studios (who reached out to use about this) and it's managed to be successfully funded with 22 still to go on the campaign.

      • Godot EngineGodot Engine - Dev snapshot: Godot 4.0 alpha 6

        We're continuing on our fortnightly release schedule for alpha snapshots of Godot 4.0 - this time with 4.0 alpha 6. See past alpha releases for details (alpha 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

        Be aware that during the alpha stage the engine is still not feature-complete or stable. There will likely be breaking changes between this release and the first beta release. Only the beta will mark the so-called "feature freeze".

        As such, we do not recommend porting existing projects to this and other upcoming alpha releases unless you are prepared to do it again to fix future incompatibilities. However, if you can port some existing projects and demos to the new version, that may provide a lot of useful information about critical issues still left to fix.

        Most importantly: Make backups before opening any existing project in Godot 4.0 alpha builds. There is no easy way back once a project has been (partially) converted.

      • Boiling SteamNew Steam Games with Native Linux Clients - 2022-04-05 Edition - Boiling Steam

        Between 2022-03-29 and 2022-04-05 there were 26 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients. For reference, during the same time, there were 293 games released for Windows on Steam, so the Linux versions represent about 8.9 % of total released titles. Here’s a quick pick of the most interesting ones:

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • RE: Lightweight GUIs, TUIs

        I've always admired fast an efficient software. This is probably from my upbringing. The first computer I got in my own room was running at 996MHz, which was way slower than any other computer at that time. I was running Windows XP on it and it was painful slow! So the first thing I did when the computer had started was to kill explorer.exe. That made things a little better.

        I installed linux, Red Hat 5.2 and was happy, until I upgraded to Fedora and my computer got painful slow again! I had to switch to Ubuntu. After that I started to experiment. I continued to replace applications with more lightweight ones that was harder to learn ut easier to use.

    • Distributions

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Running a Container off the Host /usr/

          Apparently, in some parts of this world, the /usr/-merge transition is still ongoing. Let's take the opportunity to have a look at one specific way to take benefit of the /usr/-merge (and associated work) IRL.

          I develop system-level software as you might know. Oftentimes I want to run my development code on my PC but be reasonably sure it cannot destroy or otherwise negatively affect my host system. Now I could set up a container tree for that, and boot into that. But often I am too lazy for that, I don't want to bother with a slow package manager setting up a new OS tree for me. So here's what I often do instead — and this only works because of the /usr/-merge.

        • Red Hat OfficialInnovation and flexibility in an open design approach to Cloud RAN and access networks

          Cloud radio access networks (RANs), virtual RANs (vRANs), and open RANs are seen as ways for telecommunication operators to incorporate flexibility in how they design, build, and operate their access networks.

        • Business WireCIQ and Google Cloud to Provide Optimized Experience for Rocky Linux | Business Wire

          Rocky Linux is a community-maintained and freely available enterprise Linux distribution founded and led by Gregory M. Kurtzer, one of the original founders of CentOS. Since the project was launched, there have consistently been over a quarter of million downloads and installs per month. Rocky is rapidly growing, and many large organizations have partnered and joined the community.

        • LinuxiacGitLab Switched from Centos 8 to AlmaLinux as a Supported Platform

          AlmaLinux supporters have reason to rejoice after the distro was chosen to replace CentOS 8 in the GitLab infrastructure.

          As you know, CentOS itself reached End-of-Life (EOL) on December 31, 2021, due to which corporate users across many industries are looking for alternatives.

      • Debian Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Beta NewsLinux Mint 21 is named 'Vanessa'
          Linux Mint is a very popular operating system, so any news surrounding upcoming versions is highly sought after by members of the open source community. Today, the developers of that operating system have shared some very interesting information -- the name of Linux Mint 21!

          The Linux Mint developers always use female names (alphabetically) as codenames, and version 21 is no different. You see, following version 19 ("Tara") and version 20 ("Ulyana"), version 21 of Linux Mint is named "Vanessa." According to Think Baby Names, it is a Greek name meaning "butterfly."

        • 9to5LinuxLinux Mint 21 “Vanessa” Will Be Based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, New Upgrade Tool in the Works

          First and foremost, Linux Mint 21 has been dubbed “Vanessa” and it will come with the same three editions that you’ve been used to, featuring the Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE desktop environments.

          Second of all, as you might have expected, Linux Mint 21 will be based on the next major Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) series, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), which means that it will also be supported for a long period of time and that it will be powered by its Linux 5.15 LTS kernel series.

        • Linux Mint 21 Code Name Announced with New Upgrade Utility and More

          The Mint team announced the upcoming Linux Mint 21 codename, a utility for easy upgrade and Warpinator use cases that stuns the team.

        • Linux MintMonthly News – March 2022

          Many thanks to all of you for your support and your generous donations.

          Slow download speeds

          We are observing heavy load on our main repositories.

          If you are experiencing slow download speeds when updating large packages (Firefox and Chromium in particular), launch the Software Sources and click on the “Main” repository...

          [...]

          It’s funny to see how Warpinator became a solution to something we never actually envisioned. In this video Windows users are looking for a way to share files with their Steam Deck. I find this really cool personally, not just to see developers build on top of what we made, but to see software reach new audiences and let completely different devices interoperate like this.

          Now, before people ask, no, it’s not “coming on Switch” 🙂

        • UbuntuThe State of Robotics – February & March 2022

          When you use open source software, you establish a connection with its maintainers, contributors, and users. You join a community, leveraging code and knowledge. You share bugs, solutions, recommendations, and challenges. Open source accelerates innovation while uniting us all under the same cause.

          Today, millions of open source contributors are being affected, fighting for their survival. Members of your community, my community. And while a blog can’t stop the ongoing war, it can honour those who are suffering. It can also show you how close we are to them, in our work, in our field, and in our passion. It shows who we want to help, who we care about, because today, we all share the same pain.

          [...]

          We can’t feature them all, and I do apologize for those who were not mentioned, but I will promise you this: if you send us an email to robotics.community@canonical.com, I will add them, and keep updating this blog for as long as needed.

          These are some of the organisations, robotics companies, and communities in Ukraine that have contributed to open source robotics in different ways.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Economic Woes and FOSS



        Many people seem reluctant to invoke the term, but with rising unemployment, stagnant wages, runaway inflation, and significant shortages in all kinds of goods, I can only describe the current economic situation around the world as a recession.

        The lack of electronics supplies is particularly notable in a hyper-digital global civilization. In an age where almost everyone in the first world and an increasing percentage of the third world communicate, get news, make purchases, and even handle finances online, access to digital services is more than a luxury--it is fast becoming a right, and one that needs protection. Outside the realm of necessary interactions, the Internet is also where we often find entertainment and relaxation, in the form of videos, articles, video games, and even VR and AR spaces.

        Most companies develop these services and spaces with the unspoken assumption that their customers will access them using the latest technology available. In the case of video games in particular, devices more than a few years old are often unable to run the software at all, either due to a lack of horsepower or an intentional lack of compatibility. Web sites implement new designs that require newer technologies and heavier processing. Smartphone apps become bigger, more processor-intensive, and increasingly reliant on device optimizations. Older computers, consoles and smartphones are left in the dust.

        [...]

        Of course, such a transition in the way we think about technology can't happen overnight. Profit-driven companies will always fight to villainize technology they can't profit from, while simultaneously attracting people into their walled gardens through endless dopamine triggers and FOMO. We also need to make the case for FOSS clearly and articulately, emphasizing its economic benefits and demonstrating its penchant for bringing people together in constructive ways. We can introduce people to the topic via FOSS frontends for existing platforms, such as NewPipe for YouTube and Nitter for Twitter.

      • Web Browsers

        • Chromium

          • Eric HameleersChromium 100 out-of-band security update addresses (again) a single vulnerability | Alien Pastures

            What’s with all these updates that follow rapidly on each others’ heels? Just like the recent Chromium 99 security update which addressed a single critical vulnerability, last monday Google announced on their official blog the immediate availability of Chromium 100.0.4896.75. This hotfix release plugs a single hole which Google deemed serious enough to warrant the update. See CVE-2022-1232. The difference with last week is that no known exploit of this vulnerability is reported yet.

          • USCERTGoogle Releases Security Updates for Chrome

            This version addresses vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system.

        • Mozilla

          • MozillaA glossary of terms about cyberattacks, from ransomware to DDoS

            If you read news about technology, you’re bound to run into some jargon. Here at Mozilla, we believe that information should be as accessible as possible regardless of your level of expertise. We want to help you approach stories about technology with more curiosity and with a little less head-scratching involved. We’ll break down headline-making topics through a glossary of terms often used to discuss them. Consider it your cheat sheet to all things tech.

          • MozillaWhat is a cyberattack and what can we do to protect ourselves online?

            Cyberattacks are nothing new. According to the FBI, the first major “attack on the internet” predated even the web — a self-replicating malicious program created by a grad student who shortly apologized with instructions to remove it. While the software didn’t damage or destroy any files, it spread, within 24 hours, to about 6,000 of the 60,000 computers that were connected to the internet at the time. It slowed down university and military operations and delayed email for days. The apology that contained the fix reached few people in time.

            To say that our lives have become more dependent on the internet since the Morris worm of 1988 would be an understatement. A cyberattack can disrupt fuel supplies by shutting down the largest pipeline in the U.S. It can cut electricity for entire regions. It can disable computers at hospitals. No wonder cyberattacks have become destructive tools during international conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine war.

            With cyberattacks making headlines, we turned to Mozilla’s chief security officer to shed some light on the role of cybersecurity during the Russia-Ukraine war. Marshall Erwin has worked in cybersecurity for two decades, spending the first five years of his career in the CIA’s counterterrorism center. He also spent some time working on cybersecurity policy issues in the U.S. Congress before taking the lead on trust and security at Mozilla seven years ago.

          • USCERTMozilla Releases Security Updates for Firefox, Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird

            Mozilla has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in Firefox, Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

            CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Mozilla security advisories for Firefox 99, Firefox ESR 91.8, and Thunderbird 91.8 and apply the necessary updates.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • LWNEmacs 28.1 released
            Hi!
            
            

            Version 28.1 of Emacs, the extensible text editor, should now be available from your nearest GNU mirror:

            https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-28.1.tar.xz https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-28.1.tar.gz

            The tarballs are signed; you can get the corresponding PGP signature files at:

            https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-28.1.tar.xz.sig https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-28.1.tar.gz.sig

            You can choose a mirror explicitly from the list at: https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html

            Mirrors may take some time to update; the main GNU ftp server is at: https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/

            To verify that the downloaded tarball is intact, download both the tarball and the corresponding .sig file, and run this command:

            gpg --verify emacs-28.1.tar.xz.sig

            (and similarly for emacs-28.1.tar.gz, if you download that format).

            If the GPG command fails because you don't have the required PGP public key, run this command to import the key:

            gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys \ 17E90D521672C04631B1183EE78DAE0F3115E06B

            Alternative keyservers to try are pgp.mit.edu and keys.openpgp.org.

            You can also run sha1sum or sha256sum and confirm that these checksums match:

            SHA1 emacs-28.1.tar.gz 7af2566ff1d2a1b9b3c70e9517fa02a7137ad835 SHA1 emacs-28.1.tar.xz a198d69dfa5a42c30cabe9a82edb101ac5ee423c

            SHA256 emacs-28.1.tar.gz 1439bf7f24e5769f35601dbf332e74dfc07634da6b1e9500af67188a92340a28 SHA256 emacs-28.1.tar.xz 28b1b3d099037a088f0a4ca251d7e7262eab5ea1677aabffa6c4426961ad75e1

            For a summary of changes in Emacs 28.1, see the etc/NEWS file in the tarball; you can view it from Emacs by typing 'C-h n', or by clicking Help->Emacs News from the menu bar.

            For the complete list of changes and the people who made them, see the various ChangeLog files in the source distribution. For a summary of all the people who have contributed to Emacs, see the etc/AUTHORS file.

            For more information about Emacs, see: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs

          • LWNEmacs 28.1 released

            Version 28.1 of the Emacs editor has been released. The announcement says little about what's in this release, but there are a lot of details in the NEWS file. Significant changes include native compilation of ELisp files, support for running the editor in a seccomp() sandbox, improved emoji support, and much more. Wayland support did not make it into this release, but is already merged for version 29.

      • Programming/Development

        • GamingOnLinuxOpen source XR runtime Monado adds initial 6DoF 'inside-out' tracking support

          It's been a little while since we heard progress on Monado, the free and open source XR (VR / AR) runtime for Linux but it has been progressing nicely with a big new feature added. Developer Mateo de Mayo had a six-month internship at Collabora, and decided to do a write up on this exciting enhancement for Monado.

          Pretty tech-heavy stuff here, and not something for regular consumers to read through and think "ah yes, I understood all that". The basic gist is that Monado, on Linux, can now support XR devices that have cameras and an IMU (Inertial measurement unit) to provide 6DoF (inside-out) tracking utilizing other open source projects like Kimera-VIO, ORB-SLAM3, and Basalt.

        • Another new project



          I started this project to make searching easier. Currently, I mainly just go to my preferred search engine and type in what I want. The main disadvantage with this approach is that for most searches, only a few websites are relevant, for example if I am currently programming, it seems that 90% of all searches lead me directly to StackOverflow (which has some horrible themes now by the way, but that is a topic for another blog) or directly to the documentation of some library.

          I therefore decided that I could just query all these sites directly and forward me to the site I am actually looking for. To further enhance the searching, I decided that I needed some profiles, which decide which sites should be queried. If I am looking for documentation of a Rust module, I can therefore activate the Rust profile and just receive information from Rust documentation (e.g. doc.rust-lang.org, maybe crates.io) but not some random StackOverflow questions that are irrelevant.

          [...]

          This project will of course be open-source in the future, but as this is still completely unusable (I have just started on the project yesterday), this will have to wait a little bit.

        • Monado accepted in GSoC 2022!

          We're proud to announce that Monado, the free and open source XR platform, has been accepted for the first time as a mentoring organization for the 2002 Google Summer of Code (GSoC)! Collabora will be providing three mentors to support contributors who want to work on Monado-related projects.

          For 17 years, GSoC has focused on bringing new open source contributors into open source communities. GSoC has brought over 18,000 university students from 112 countries together with over 17,000 mentors from 746 open source organizations! Head to their website to learn more.

          Beginning in 2022, GSoC is opening the program up to all newcomers of open source that are 18 years and older. The program will no longer focus solely on university students or recent graduates! If you're new to open source and want to learn more about Monado OpenXR runtime, check out the Monado webpage on freedesktop and our 2022 GSoC Project Ideas here to get you inspired. Then join GSoC to submit your proposal, and if accepted, you'll get a mentor from Collabora to guide you on your journey!

        • MedevelWeasyPrint converts any HTML webpage into a rich PDF document

          From a technical point of view, WeasyPrint is a visual rendering engine for HTML and CSS that can export to PDF. It aims to support web standards for printing. WeasyPrint is free software made available under a BSD license.

          It comes with a developer-friendly documentation to help developers integrate it into their projects.

        • MedevelAdd a Full-Text Search to your PHP Projects with TNTSearch
        • APIs: The Building Blocks of Modern Software Development

          APIs are the foundation of modern software development in 2022, but what are the keys to success?

        • QtCommercial LTS Qt 5.15.9 Released [Ed: When Qt says "Commercial" is actually means proprietary]

          We have released Qt 5.15.9 LTS for commercial license holders today. As a patch release, Qt 5.15.9 provides important bug fixes and security updates. One highly requested improvement is support for macOS on ARM and universal builds.

        • Perl/Raku

          • PerlThe ordering operators | Aristotle [blogs.perl.org]

            Perl has two operators, cmp and <=>, which are basically never seen outside of sort blocks.

            That doesn’t mean you can’t use them elsewhere, though. Certainly sort and these operators were designed to work seamlessly together but there isn’t anything sort-specific about the operators per se, and in some contexts they can be the most appropriate solution.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • HowTo GeekHow To Validate the Syntax of a Linux Bash Script Before Running It [Ed: GNU Bash, not Linux bash. Linux is a kernel.]

            Bugs and typos in Linux Bash scripts can do dire things when the script is run. Here are some ways to check the syntax of your scripts before you even run them.

          • What is Bash shell, and know its importance in Linux | FOSS Linux [Ed: GNU, not Linux]

            If you have ever seen any movie or series with a “hacker” character (a genuinely good example would be Mr. Robot), you have seen this scene. There is a bunch of random text on the screen, the hacker puts in some command, and the screen pours out more information. So what’s that all about? Why are there no icons or anything graphical? Well, I am here with an answer.

            What is being shown in a scene like this is a Command Line Interface (CLI). The CLI of any operating system makes it possible for mere mortals like us to interact with the complex systems of our machines. We enter commands in the form that we understand them. Next, they are sent to the shell, the software that makes sense of the commands, variables, and names that we put in. Finally, the command is executed, and we are provided with the results.

        • Rust

          • Lang team April update

            Today, the lang team held its April planning meeting. We hold these meetings on the first Wednesday of every month, and we use them to schedule design meetings for the remainder of the month.

  • Leftovers

    • Everywhere

      As the time for bording aproached, the gate agent announced that, "we do not have a captain or first officer for this flight."

    • TediumFAQ: The Difference Between Centralized and Decentralized

      Today in Tedium: Recently, a reader asked me to lay out the concerns about centralization and decentralization in relation to the internet, having had questions about it in response to a recent piece of mine on my sister newsletter, MidRange, about Jack Dorsey. It’s a debate that constantly comes up, and if you’re not in the know, it can feel like it’s passing you by. In many ways, it’s about who controls the keys of digital culture, what rooms you can go in, and what you can say. It is the difference between public property and carefully curated environments. It is also the difference between you being completely responsible for your screw-ups and someone else doing something that can negatively affect you—or, depending on the situation, not doing something. Given a decision by a PayPal Mafia alum/rocket man/satellite internet guru/electric car maven/digital edgelord to acquire a significant stake in the social network Twitter this week, this conversation is going to become more important in the coming years. So, let’s have it. Today’s Tedium offers an FAQ on the centralization question.

    • Science

      • The Automation Myth

        In 1963, the Black working-class revolutionist James Boggs wrote of a coming cataclysm in American industrial production. As an autoworker at Chrysler in Detroit, Boggs had an intimate knowledge of the changes introduced on the shop floor and the impacts that reverberated from them across the city, seeing the ways in which these shifts in the technical aspects of the labor process came to affect the prospects for radical organizing. He saw one particular harbinger of this coming utter devastation of the working class, and especially the Black working class—automation. It makes sense that a Detroit autoworker would find himself especially attuned to this phenomenon. The contemporary usage of the word *automation* has its origins in the Automation Department at Ford Motor Company set up by vice president of manufacturing Delmar Harder in 1947—even though Harder’s actual proposals for the reorganization of work in Ford’s factories primarily relied on nineteenth-century technologies designed simply to speed up the production line. Throughout "The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook", Boggs speaks of automation in apocalyptic terms, issuing the grave pronouncement that “America is headed toward full unemployment, not full employment.” By the early 1960s when Boggs wrote of this fast-approaching wave of automation, the term had come to mean the replacement of jobs once done by human laborers, now performed by an integrated system of machines that themselves come to regulate the pace of production for the smaller number of workers on the line.

      • The Register UKUC Berkeley ML pioneer wins top computing gong ● The Register

        This year's ACM Prize in Computing is going toward a machine learning specialist whose work, even if you haven't heard of him, is likely to be familiar.

        Pieter Abbeel, UC Berkeley professor and co-founder of AI robotics company Covariant, was awarded the prize and its $250,000 bounty, which is given to those in the machine learning field "whose research contributions have fundamental impact and broad implications."

    • Hardware

      • Public KnowledgePublic Knowledge Urges Congress To Pass Bill Providing Veterans, Students With Refurbished Computers - Public Knowledge

        Today, the House Oversight Committee marked up the “Computers for Veterans and Students (COVS) Act,” a bill introduced by Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) to direct hundreds of thousands of out-of-service computers from the federal government to nonprofit refurbishers for repair and distribution to veterans, students, and low-income consumers. Participating refurbishers would also provide digital literacy training. Public Knowledge urges Congress to pass this bipartisan bill to help close the nation’s device divide.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • VideoHas Windows 11 Adoption Really Stopped? - Invidious [Ed: It really is bad; If Brodie Robertson gets his 'info' from Reddit, sooner or later he'll be repeating Microsoft shills and trolls]

          Based on some random data a bunch of news outlets started saying that nobody is adopting Windows 11 and microsoft is dissapointed but looking at prior Windows releases tells a very different story.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • Linux Foundation's Site/BlogAutomotive Grade Linux Announces IndyKite, Marelli and Red Hat as New Members
              • PR NewswireIndyKite, Marelli and Red Hat Join Automotive Grade Linux

                Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative cross-industry effort developing an open source platform for all connected car technologies, announces IndyKite, Marelli and Red Hat as new Bronze members.

                "Our active community of automakers and suppliers continues to expand and invest resources in AGL, demonstrating the value of participating in the AGL ecosystem," said Dan Cauchy, Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux at the Linux Foundation. "We are excited to welcome our new members to the AGL community, and we look forward to working with them as we continue to expand and enhance the AGL platform."

        • Security

          • LWNSecurity updates for Wednesday [LWN.net]

            Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (rizin), Fedora (fish, gdal, mingw-fribidi, mingw-gdal, mingw-openexr, mingw-python-pillow, mingw-python3, and python-pillow), Mageia (chromium-browser-stable), Oracle (Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) Unbreakable Enterprise kernel and kernel), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, and Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16.2 (python-waitress)), Scientific Linux (kernel), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (mozilla-nss), and Ubuntu (h2database).

          • IT World CACyber Security Today, April 6, 2022 – Patch Linux fast, secure your Totolink routers, news on the new Borat trojan and more Russia-Ukraine cyberwar
          • FOSSLifeFree Cybersecurity Resources for Protecting Your Organization

            Information is power, and staying informed about the latest cybersecurity threats and mitigation techniques is crucial for protecting your organization.

            This article looks at key agencies and organizations offering an array of free resources and guidance to help you stay informed of the latest threats, implement best practices, and strengthen your cybersecurity approach.

          • USCERTCISA Adds Three Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog [Ed: 66.6% of that is Microsoft]

            CISA has added three new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. These types of vulnerabilities are a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risk to the federal enterprise. Note: to view the newly added vulnerabilities in the catalog, click on the arrow on the of the "Date Added to Catalog" column, which will sort by descending dates.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Bruce SchneierCyberweapons Arms Manufacturer FinFisher Shuts Down [Ed: Probably just changes names, goes under some other shell, carries on as usual without the burden of lawsuits]

              FinFisher has shut down operations. This is the spyware company whose products were used, among other things, to spy on Turkish and Bahraini political opposition.

            • AccessNowIndia’s Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill jeopardizes privacy — it must not be enforced - Access Now

              In a blow for human rights, the Parliament of India has today, April 6, passed the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, which will severely jeopardize people’s privacy and expand the scope for surveillance. Once the bill receives the president’s assent, it will turn into law — it must not be enforced.

              “The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill fundamentally contravenes the Supreme Court’s rulings on the fundamental right to privacy guaranteed by the Indian Constitution,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, Senior International Counsel and Asia Pacific Policy Director at Access Now. “Instead of responding to the need of the hour and propelling reforms over government surveillance and databases, the Indian government has fast-tracked a bill through parliament that exacerbates the threat of mass surveillance, and attacks people’s fundamental rights and freedoms. This bill must not be enforced in its current form.”

              The contentious bill empowers the police, and any agency notified by the government, to collect, retain, and share an alarming range of personal information. This includes biometric data such as fingerprints, palm prints, footprints, photographs, iris and retinal scans, and other physical and biological samples. This data can be collected from people who have been convicted, arrested, or merely detained under India’s preventive detention laws, and can be retained in digital forms for at least 75 years. In doing so, the bill goes far beyond the 1920 colonial era law it claims to replace, with no meaningful oversight mechanisms or guarantees on remedy for individuals facing abuse by authorities. Resisting the collection of information under the bill would amount to an offense.

    • Finance

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

      • France24‘TikTok is having a bad war,’ say disinformation experts [Ed: Was this article sponsored by Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook?]

        The war in Ukraine has rapidly positioned TikTok as the number one source of misinformation thanks to its gigantic number of users and minimal filtering of content, experts say.

        Every day, Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist with the BBC's disinformation team, ploughs through a hallucinatory mix of fake and misleading information about the war being spewed out on the video-sharing site.

        "TikTok is really not having a good war," he told AFP.

        "I haven't seen another platform with so much false content," he added.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • MakeTech Easier7 of the Best USENET Newsgroups Still Active Today - Make Tech Easier

        USENET is arguably the oldest online network alive today. It was first developed in the late 1970s and has since been a part of internet culture. USENET has also been a witness to historical events such as the announcement of Linux and the first spam message.

        With modern websites and social media, most people think that USENET is a dead place. This is not the case. Over the decades, hundreds of communities have continued to use USENET to discuss their interests. This article aims to show 7 USENET groups that are still alive and kicking today.

    • Monopolies

      • Regulatory Competition: Where the UK Stands on Tech - Disruptive Competition Project

        Under the French Council presidency, European lawmakers reached a political agreement on the Digital Markets Act (DMA) at “the speed of lightning” (and just in time for the upcoming French Presidential Election). But will this lead to a wave of copy-cat legislation, or will the UK take a different approach?

        The DMA is set to introduce new rules that will change the design and delivery of the world’s most popular digital services. Critics are concerned that the DMA’s rules could degrade service quality, expose users to security risks, or break services altogether.

        Pro-DMA forces are now putting pressure on policy makers in the UK to follow suit. But what approach should UK lawmakers follow if they want to secure UK leadership in tech innovation, not just tech regulation?

      • Copyrights

        • Public Domain ReviewA Vanishing Nova: *Uranographia Britannica* (ca. 1749) – The Public Domain Review

          In 1748, scientific instrument maker John Neale advertised the sale by subscription of a new “exact Survey of the Heavens”. It would offer not only “all the fix’d Stars hitherto observed in any Part of the World”, but also two planispheres of the Ptolemaic constellations and a historical account of the asterisms, “from the earliest Antiquity to the present Time”. The atlas relied on the work of Dr. John Bevis (1695–1771), a London physician who had devoted a year of his life to recording the nightly transits of stars from his observatory in Stoke Newington. Documenting faintly luminous entities down to the eighth magnitude, he added to those already cataloged — by John Flamsteed’s 1729 Atlas Coelestis and Edmond Halley’s southern hemisphere observations — for a total of 3550 stars.

          Best known to historians of astronomy for discovering the Crab Nebula (depicted in Taurus), Bevis contributed papers on eclipses and comets to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, making strides toward establishing the configuration and scale of the solar system, and helping to account for apparent irregularities in the motions of the moon and planets. At a time when the accurate measurement of longitude was of paramount importance to imperial British navigation, Bevis played a prominent role in the assessment of contending claims.



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