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Links 25/07/2022: Mozilla Firefox 103 and GNU poke 2.4



  • GNU/Linux

    • The Register UKUpgrading what might be the world's oldest running Linux install

      There are some complexities involved in upgrading what the Reg FOSS desk suspects may be the world's oldest running Linux installation: an OS install dating back to 1993.

      The machine called chiark.greenend.org.uk appears to be a relatively ordinary webserver, hosting a bunch of home pages, a few mailing lists, usenet groups and things. People with no links to Cambridge University may have encountered it only if they downloaded the PuTTY SSH client for Windows from the author's own site.

      What's remarkable about Chiark is that it was originally installed with Debian Linux 0.93R5 in 1993, and the same installation of the OS is now running Debian 11 "Bullseye", the x86-64 version, freshly upgraded from an x86-32 installation of Debian 8 "Jessie".

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Linux MagazineSystem76 Refreshes Their Popular Oryx Pro Laptop with a New CPU
        The makers at System76 are never one to rest on their laurels and are always trying to improve the already outstanding hardware they offer. This time around, they gave the Oryx Pro, one of their most popular laptops, a bit of a refresh. This machine is an outstanding option for gaming as well as AI/ML. And with the new 12th Gen CPU (boasting 14 cores and 20 threads running between 1.7 to 4.7 GHz), you’ll have more power than you need to run the software you require.

        But this new update isn’t just about the CPU. System76 has also made it so you can configure the Oryx Pro with either NVIDIA RTX 2070 Ti or 3080 Ti graphics (along with the RTX 3070 and 3080 that were previously available).

      • WiredHP Dev One Linux Laptop Review: The Best for Linux

         HP's latest Linux laptop sees the computer maker collaborating with erstwhile competitor (or at least, fellow Linux laptop maker) System76. It seems like an odd combo, given that System76 makes its own competing laptops, but the collaboration works.

        The Dev One is a very nice Linux machine that packs enough punch for developers or creatives without hitting top-tier laptop prices. Even more impressive is the work HP and System76 have put into making Linux work perfectly with the AMD chipset.

        Combining HP's hardware capabilities and industry experience with System76's Pop!_OS desktop has produced the best all-around Linux laptop you can buy right now.

    • Server

      • Kubernetes Troubleshooting: Finding the Right Monitoring Solution - Container Journal

        Kubernetes is revolutionizing application development because it is designed for ease of use, flexibility and scalability. In spite of these compelling advantages, however, troubleshooting Kubernetes problems can be a formidable challenge. Once you are alerted to an error, just knowing where to begin can even be overwhelming.

        Imagine you are developing an app in a Kubernetes-based development environment and you get an alert for a container error that you do not recognize. First, you ask your colleagues if they have seen this before. Next, you search multiple blogs to see what other developers are saying about this error. Maybe you check multiple dashboards and logs; try to dig up any information you can find. The whole process can take hours and involve multiple teams. Ultimately, you end up back at the command line, trying to solve a problem that you do not really understand. Does this frustrating scenario sound familiar? This is a hit-or-miss approach to Kubernetes troubleshooting that does not benefit the development process or the business.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Applications

      • CPU-X The Best Linux Alternative Of CPU-Z

        For those want to check PC hardware specs in Linux, CPU-X is a good choice for user switching from Microsoft Windows.

        It’s a free open-source system profiling and monitoring application, that looks quite similar to CPU-Z for Windows. With it, you can check your CPU specification, vendor, codename, clocks, and L1/L2/L3 caches.

        CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system : Processor name and number, codename, process, package, cache levels. Mainboard and chipset. Memory type, size, timings, and module specifications (SPD). Real time measurement of each core’s internal frequency, memory frequency.

      • OMG UbuntuTopHat is a Nifty System Monitor for GNOME Shell - OMG! Ubuntu! [Ed: Another extension limited to GNOME/GTK crowd because of integration]

        Want to keep an eye on your system resources without pulling up a terminal or launching GNOME’s System Monitor tool?

        Check out TopHat.

        TopHat is a new system monitor GNOME extension that puts a top-level overview of active CPU, RAM, and network usages in the GNOME Shell top bar.

        There are, of course, ample system monitor GNOME extensions out there. Heck, I feel like I’ve written about them all at some point. But most tend to be singular, putting a wealth of system resource info within a two column table.

      • OSNoteSeafile - Sync and Share Your Files Ubuntu - OSNote

        Seafile is the high-performance open-source cross-platform software for file sharing and sync. The stored file can be synchronized from various devices from the central server through built-in file encryption. Before syncing the files to the server files are encrypted. The Seafile core is built using C programming which may be small but has fantastic performance. Files can be organized into libraries that can be encrypted by the password set by the user itself. Seafile provides similar functionality just like other file hosting services like dropbox, google drive, etc. but seafile is a self-hosted file sharing service. If you are curious about how we can sync and share files from self-hosted Seafile this article is for you. All the procedures in this article are performed on the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS system. Before continuing the installation we need to pre-install the Nginx, Mysql, and Python along with additional Python modules.

      • Ubuntu HandbookFindex – A Super Fast Tool to Search & Launch Your Apps in Linux | UbuntuHandbook

        Looking for an alternative app launching tool for your Linux? Findex is one with highly customizable interface and fast performance.

        The app runs silently in the background. Once you hit the shortcut key, a search box pop-up in screen center allows to quickly search and open desired applications.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • HowTo ForgeLinux nm Command Tutorial for Beginners (10 Examples)

        This is a tutorial for Linux users who do system-level software development. Learn more in this Linux nm command tutorial for beginners.

      • TechRepublicHow to easily open files with sudo privileges in the GNOME File Manager | TechRepublic

        Not all Linux file managers are created equal. Some file managers have more bells and whistles than the average user will ever need, while other file managers are as inflexible as cold, hard steel. There are also those that ship with a bare minimum of features but allow users to extend the feature set with add-ons.

        Given how we so often take the file manager for granted, once you find a feature that could really make your daily life a bit more efficient, you realize just how important the tool is. Such is the case with the GNOME File Manager. Out of the box, it works great and includes enough features to get you by for a while. Eventually, however, you’ll find some features that could make things a bit easier.

      • AddictiveTipsHow to watch Live TV on the Linux desktop with Hypnotix

        Want to watch free TV on your Linux desktop? With Hypnotix, you can! The Hypnotix application gives you access to tons of free, legal live TV channels right on the Linux desktop. Here’s how to use it.

      • ID RootHow To Install Java on Rocky Linux 9

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Java on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Java is a popular programming language and software platform that allows you to run many server-side applications. The general purpose of the Java programming language is to let developers write programs or applications once, but the application itself can be run on any system across multiple operating systems.

        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 Java programming language on Rocky Linux. 9.

      • RoseHostingHow to Install Netdata Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu 22.04

        In this tutorial, we are going to explain how to install Netdata Monitoring Tool on the latest Ubuntu 22.04.

        Netdata Monitoring tool is an open-source software developed to track and show the statistic of server usage. System Administrators, Developers, or even non-technical users are using this software to check the CPU usage, RAM usage, available DISK space, Network bandwidth and etc. Netdata Monitoring tool is mainly written in C, JavaScript, and Python and can be installed on various operating systems such as Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS.

        Installing the Netdata Monitoring tool on Ubuntu 22.04 can take up to 10 minutes. Let’s get started!

      • MakeTech EasierWhat is the Rc Shell and How to Install It in Linux - Make Tech Easier

        The rc shell is a simple and innovative command interpreter built for the Plan 9 family of operating systems. It is currently a part of plan9port, which is a suite of Plan 9 software that is available for Linux.

        Rc aims to improve on the default UNIX shell and it introduces a cleaner syntax for writing scripts. It is also built to be as simple to understand as possible. This makes rc a good program for someone that wants to learn how a shell works.

      • How to Install DokuWiki with Nginx on Ubuntu 22.04

        DokuWiki is a free and open-source wiki software written in PHP that allows users to create and edit pages using a web browser. It is easy to install and use, and doesn’t require a database since it works on plain text files. Using a very familiar interface, allows you to easily scale and optimize using many advanced features.

        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.

      • TecAdminHow to declare boolean variable in shell script

        he shell (bash) script doesn’t offer any data type with the variables. So we can’t specifically declare a variable of type boolean in shell scripts.

        But, you can still use the variable like a boolean in shell scripts. Store a sample string “true” to a variable and match it with the if condition. This works similarly to boolean.

      • Trend OceansHow to Copy the contents of a file into the clipboard without displaying its contents - TREND OCEANS

        While working on the terminal, we copy a lot of text from the file content to the clipboard and then paste the content where it needs to be pasted.

        If I ask you how do you copy the content of the file from your terminal to your clipboard, you may say that I usually display the content of the file using the cat command and then I select the text that I want to copy.

        Absolutely correct, and nothing is wrong with the approach, but why make an unnecessary effort when you can use the xclip command to copy the content of a file directly into the clipboard?

      • ID RootHow To Install MySQL Workbench on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MySQL Workbench on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, The MySQL Workbench is a GUI application for administrators’ and developers’ databases. Its graphical interface provides database architects and administrators with an easier way to model data, build and run SQL queries, and maintain a database. MySQL Workbench is available on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

        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 MySQL Workbench on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

      • VituxHow to Install AWS-CLI on Ubuntu

        Since Linux users are more comfortable working with command line interfaces, Amazon Web Services introduced the AWS CLI to manage all these services from a single platform. With this tool, you can manage multiple services at once, easily and conveniently. In this guide, we’ll show you how to install the AWS CLI on Ubuntu Linux.

      • dwaves.deGNU Linux – how to allow sftp file access to webserver only – lock sftp user to /var/www – bad ownership or modes for chroot directory component
      • dwaves.deGNU Linux Bash – simple backup web root and mysql mariadb database in one go script
    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • psifidotos: Latte Dock | Farewell...



          Unfortunately I would like to inform kde community that I am stepping away from Latte development. No time,motivation or interest from my part is the main reason. I hope that this will give free space and air for new developers/maintainers to step in and move Latte forward.

          I hoped that I would be able to release Latte v0.11 but unfortunately I can not. Releasing Latte v0.11 it would mean that someone would maintain it afterwards and that is no more the case.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Liam Provenliam_on_linux | On GNOME advocacy

          The odd things for me, having tried more or less every single Linux desktop under the sun, including several that no longer exist, is that there's no one definition of "user friendly" that holds true for everyone.

          In this story's comments, there are people saying Windows is the best, others saying certain particular versions are best, others saying they find it unusable or at least hard.

          Yet this has been the best-selling desktop OS in history for about 35 years now, used by _billions_ of people, so it must be getting *something* right.

          Counter to that, there are also people castigating Macs and macOS. That's normal; there are as many biased fanboys *against* as there are *for*.

          And yet, again, for nearly 40 years now, Apple has been *THE ONE COMPANY* to resist the rise of Microsoft, and has a fantastically loyal fan base and makes a lot of money.

          I also have a number of blind friends, and they mostly tell me that Windows is the most accessible OS there is, that it has the best selection of assistive tech, that the apps are more accessible, and so on.

          Some favour macOS. What macOS provides out of the box is *way* better, it's true. If you're a casual computer user -- bit of surfing, bit of online chat, very occasionally write a letter -- it's better for blind users than Windows.

          If you have a job to do, in business, and need rich powerful apps, and need them to be accessible, my working blind mates tell me Windows easily trounces the Mac.

          I am not blind so I must take their word for it.

          But I can make Windows and macOS and my preferred Linux desktops, Unity and Xfce, stand on their heads and do back handsprings for me. I regularly read people telling me that any of these OSes just can't do X or can't do Y, when X and Y are things I do on a daily basis.

          What this really means is: they don't know how to do X or Y, and they haven't bothered to look for instructions or guidance. It doesn't do it -- whatever "it" is, it varies a lot -- and so they decide it can't, it doesn't work, and they move on.

        • Berlin Mini GUADEC

          The Berlin hackfest and conference wasn’t a polished, well organized experience like the usual GUADEC, it had the perfect Berlin flavor. The attendance topped my expectations and smaller groups formed to work on different aspects of the OS.

          GNOME shell’s quick settings, the mobile form factor, non-overlapped window management, Flathub and GNOME branding, video subsystems and others.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • DebugPointFeren OS Review: Clever KDE Distro for Easy Migration from Windows

      An in-depth review of Feren OS, which is based on Ubuntu LTS and KDE Plasma desktop with an unique way to help Windows users to migrate.

    • HaikuOS[GSoC 2022] Ham: Status Update

      Hello everyone. This is a brief update on the Ham project - a drop in replacement for the Jam build system. For those more curious about the technical details, there will be a larger blog post on Ham’s action modifier implementation coming soon.

    • Fedora and IBM

      • Network WorldRocky Linux 9 arrives with Peridot
        Release 9 of Rocky Linux just made its public appearance on July 14, and the big news is something called Peridot, which anyone (yes, anyone) can use to reproduce Rocky Linux 9 from scratch on their own. This is a truly exciting turn for the Linux community.

        If you’re not familiar with Rocky Linux, don’t be too surprised that it made it to Release 9 and you’re just now tuning in. “Release 9” doesn’t mean that Rocky has gone through eight prior major releases. Instead, the name indicates its connection to RHEL 9. Rocky Linux began life as Release 8.3 in April 2021 as a replacement for CentOS, which was EOL’ed in December 2020.

      • LinuxiacNobara Is a Fedora-Based Linux Distro with Gamers in Mind

        Nobara is a new user-friendly distribution with a modified GNOME aimed at new Linux users with gaming affinities.

        Fedora is a distribution that improves with each new version. As a result, it is becoming a more attractive choice for developing new ones based on it.

        The fact that Fedora comes with a vanilla GNOME opens up many possibilities for developers to build on. This is the case with a relatively new distribution that attempts to make GNOME more user-friendly for novice Linux users, particularly those who enjoy gaming. Please, meet Nobara.

      • LWNFedora to disallow CC0-licensed code [LWN.net]

        The Creative Commons CC0 license is essentially a public-domain declaration (or as close as is possible in jurisdictions that lack a public domain). The Fedora project has allowed the distribution of code under this license, but, as announced by Richard Fontana, that policy is changing and CC0 will no longer be allowed for code...

      • Power10 Entry Machines: The Power S1022s

        Software-based replication surfaced in the 1990s and continues to be a very popular choice for IBM i shops of all sizes, across an array of industry sectors. But what are the benefits of using software solutions versus hardware alternatives for HA/DR? There are a number of benefits that are an outgrowth of an HA/DR strategy that go beyond HA/DR and where the software approach is better than the hardware approach.

      • The Case For Software-Based IBM i HA/DR

        Software-based replication surfaced in the 1990s and continues to be a very popular choice for IBM i shops of all sizes, across an array of industry sectors. But what are the benefits of using software solutions versus hardware alternatives for HA/DR? There are a number of benefits that are an outgrowth of an HA/DR strategy that go beyond HA/DR and where the software approach is better than the hardware approach.

      • No Plan To Bring .NET To Power, IBM Says
      • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 30
    • Debian Family

      • LWNDebian.community domain name seized

        The Debian project, Debian.ch, and Software in the Public Interest recently filed a WIPO action to take control of the "debian.community" domain name, which has been used by Daniel Pocock to attack the Debian project and its members. Red Hat had made a similar attempt to take control of WeMakeFedora.org earlier this year, but that attempt failed. The Debian action succeeded, though; on July 19, WIPO decided in favor of the action and ordered the domain name transferred. That domain name can no longer be used, but the attacks seem certain to continue.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • ArduinoReviving a vintage secondary split-flap clock with Arduino | Arduino Blog

        In the world of computing, many interfaces utilize a primary/secondary model of asymmetric communication, in which a primary host device controls one or more secondary client devices. This model is, for example, common among PATA and SATA hard drive arrangements. It is also common in clock networks, with a central time server updating several client clocks. iSax had a unique example of such a client clock with a vintage split-flap display, and made it useful again by retrofitting an Arduino board.

        This clock likely came from a set of many, which would have been used in a government building, train station, or similar application. It would have received a signal from a primary clock and set its time accordingly. In the original setup, that signal came in the form of a 1Hz alternating square wave that drove a motor for the clockwork gears. Instead of attempting to reverse-engineer and replicate that signal, iSax chose to drive the motor with an Arduino Nano board that keeps its own time with an RTC (real-time clock) module.

      • ArduinoNow you can make shawarma at your desk | Arduino Blog

        If you’ve ever been lucky enough to visit a country in the Middle East or around the Mediterranean Sea, then you’ve probably seen street food vendors cutting slices off of a big ol’ hunk of slowly rotating meat. This delicious delicacy is called shawarma and is a form of vertical rotisserie. The meat can be beef, lamb, chicken, or even turkey — the cooking process is what is important. And now, thanks to a tutorial from Roni Bandini, you can perform that cooking process on your desktop with this Micro Shawarma machine.

        This machine is exactly what it sounds like: a tiny vertical rotisserie machine that sits on a desktop. It is sure to make your coworkers jealous in the hours leading up to lunchtime. Like its traditional full size cousins, this Micro Shawarma machine is open-air and has a spit that spins on a vertical axis. Offset to one side of the spit, there is a heating element that continuously roasts the meat. Anytime you get a hankering for some protein, you can slice off some meat. The machine even hosts its own web app, so you can operate everything from your smartphone.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers

      • Mozilla

        • 9to5LinuxMozilla Firefox 103 Is Now Available for Download, This Is What’s New

           Firefox 103 has been in beta since June 27th, 2022, and it introduces improved WebGL performance on Linux systems when using the NVIDIA binary drivers via DMA-Buf, improved performance on high-refresh rate monitors of 120Hz or higher, and stronger security due to the removal of the configuration option that allows SHA-1 signatures in certificates

        • OMG UbuntuFirefox 103 Available to Download, But Promised Swipe Gesture is MIA

           Mozilla Firefox 103 features another clutch of conservative changes aimed at improving the overall experience of using the browser rather than dramatically reinventing it.

          This release was expected to add a big new feature: two finger horizontal swipe to move back/forward between pages on Linux, with accompanying animation/OSD indication – as this gif demos...

        • ThunderbirdThunderbird Time Machine: A Look Back At Thunderbird 0.1

          Let’s take a walk down memory lane to the summer of 2003. Cinemas are dominated by sequels like Iron Man 3 and Fast & Furious 6. Linkin Park, 50 Cent, and Evanescence have top-selling new albums. Apple’s iPod hasn’t even sold 1 million units. Mozilla’s brand new web browser is still called Firebird. And a new cross-platform, open-source application called Thunderbird has debuted from the foundations of Mozilla Mail…

          Because the entirety of Thunderbird’s releases and corresponding release notes have been preserved, I’ve started a self-guided tour of Thunderbird’s history. Why? A mixture of personal and technical curiosity. I used Thunderbird for a couple years in the mid-2000s, and again more recently, but there are giant gaps in my experience. So I’m revisiting every single major version to discover the nuances between releases; the changes big and small.

          (If you ever get the craving to do the same, I’ve found the easiest operating system to use is Windows, preferably inside a virtual machine. Early versions of Thunderbird for Macs were built for PowerPC architecture, while early Linux versions were 32-bit only. Both may cause you headaches with modern PC hardware!)

    • GNU Projects

      • GNUpoke - News: GNU poke 2.4 released [Savannah]

        I am happy to announce a new release of GNU poke, version 2.4.

        This is a bugfix release in the poke 2.x series.

        See the file NEWS in the distribution tarball for a list of issues fixed in this release.

        The tarball poke-2.4.tar.gz is now available at https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/poke/poke-2.4.tar.gz.

        > GNU poke (http://www.jemarch.net/poke) is an interactive, extensible editor for binary data. Not limited to editing basic entities such as bits and bytes, it provides a full-fledged procedural, interactive programming language designed to describe data structures and to operate on them.

        Happy poking!

    • Programming/Development

      • KDEMeasurement Lab Follow-Up: Sprint Achievements And To-dos - KDE Eco

        On Saturday 16 July 2022 KDE Eco held the second in-person Sprint to work on the community measurement lab at the KDAB office in Berlin. The Sprint is one of several planned follow-up events.

      • GSoC update: Draw Ellipses in Krita

        I’ve been working on Krita’s ellipse tool as my GSoC project. Here’s a status update and demo of what I have till now. I’m trying to improve the reading experience by using no code and reducing technical details in the post; if you are interested in those details, just visit the merge request page.

        If you have ever tried to draw an ellipse of small size in Krita, you must have noticed that the ellipse is asymmetric and twisted. These minor errors can be negligible when drawing ellipses of larger size, but it became annoying when trying to draw some small-sized ellipses for pixel arts. To fully understand the cause, let’s look at how Krita draws the ellipse.

      • Drew DeVaultCode review at the speed of email

        I’m a big proponent of the email workflow for patch submission and code review. I have previously published some content (How to use git.sr.ht’s send-email feature, Forks & pull requests vs email, git-send-email.io) which demonstrates the contributor side of this workflow, but it’s nice to illustrate the advantages of the maintainer workflow as well. For this purpose, I’ve recorded a short video demonstrating how I manage code review as an email-oriented maintainer.

      • Make Use OfThe 6 Best Vim Plugin Managers

        Vim is one of the best command-line text editors you can lay your hands on. It comes preinstalled by default on Linux, macOS, and other Unix-like systems.

        Vim plugins allow you to extend Vim's functionality according to your workflow and preferences. But you'll need a good plugin manager to install and manage your Vim plugins.

        Here are some of the best plugin managers for Vim that will make your life a bit easier.

      • Perl / Raku

        • RakulangRakudo Weekly News: 2022.30 What

          Someone with the nick MicrowaveOven86 asked a question on /r/rakulang: What do yall use raku for? With some nice, insightful, revealing and funny answers. Maybe more answers can be given by the readers of the Rakudo Weekly News?

      • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

        • Guru: Regular Expressions, Part 1 - IT Jungle

          In the first part of this series, I will show how to replace characters in a string using SQL and regular expressions. I know I can replace characters using RPG or SQL, and they work great, but there are some cases where I find using regular expressions is a bit easier.

          For the examples I’ll show, I’m using the REGEXP_REPLACE function. REGEXP_REPLACE allows me to search for a particular value within a string and replace it with another value.

          In the first example (Figure 1), I want to search a string that has both letters and digits and I want to extract the just digits or periods. To accomplish this objective, I use REGEXP_REPLACE to replace characters that are not digits.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • BloombergBCI Startup Implants First Device in U.S. Patient
      • IEEEThis Car Charger Bot Will Also Hold Your Spot

        The vision of Ziggy, a mobile EV charger designed to tool around parking lots like a plug-wielding valet, raises an important question: Do robots take tips?

        EV owners may be happy to toss Ziggy a fiver if it can hold an open parking spot and deliver electrons to fill up the car’s battery, with no worries over fixed chargers being occupied by other cars. As importantly, site operators could lease turnkey robo-chargers without the pricey hassles of charger installation, or setting aside precious real estate for chargers that are often underutilized.

      • Blockchain not just for bitcoin: It can secure and store genomes, too

        Blockchain is a digital technology that allows a secure and decentralized record of transactions that is increasingly used for everything from cryptocurrencies to artwork. But Yale researchers have found a new use for blockchain: they’ve leveraged the technology to give individuals control of their own genomes.

        Their findings are published June 29 in the journal Genome Biology.

    • Proprietary

      • Liam Provenliam_on_linux | Why MS Word jumped from version 2 to version 6

        There were three products all called MS Word, only peripherally related:

        Word for DOS, which I first saw at version 3, and of which I used 3, 4, 5, 5.5 (when it suddenly switched to CUA menus), and 6 (like WordPerfect, the last and best version).

        Word for Mac, which I first saw at version 4, and which in generally-held opinion peaked at v5.1.

        Word for Windows, AKA WinWord, which went v1, v2, v6.

        But there were legit reasons.

        MS was making an effort to harmonise and coordinate its versions.

        IIRC the story is that Gates met Paul Brainerd (founder of Aldus) at some event, and Brainerd told him that Aldus (creators of PageMaker, the ultimate DTP app in its day and the product that made the Mac a big success) was working on a wordprocessor for Windows, because there wasn't a good one. The product was codenamed "Flintstone" and was nearly ready for alpha test.

        Gates panicked, lied to Brainerd that they shouldn't waste their time because MS was almost ready to launch its and it'd be a killer app.

        Brainerd went back to base and cancelled Flintstone. Gates went back to base and told his team to write a Windows word-processor ASAP because Aldus was about to kill them.

    • Security

      • LWNSecurity updates for Monday [Ed: Some patches, deprecation etc.]

        Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, djangorestframework, gsasl, and openjdk-11), Fedora (giflib, openssl, python-ujson, and xen), Mageia (virtualbox), SUSE (git, gpg2, java-1_7_1-ibm, java-1_8_0-ibm, java-1_8_0-openjdk, mozilla-nspr, mozilla-nss, mozilla-nss, python-M2Crypto, and s390-tools), and Ubuntu (php8.1).

      • Red Hat OfficialEnhancing RHEL Security: Understanding SHA-1 deprecation on RHEL 9

        While Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL 9) deprecated SHA-1 for signing for security reasons, it is still used by many for signing packages. In this article, I’ll go over some typical problems users may face with Fedora SHA-1 status (including some possible workarounds), and how you can update your infrastructure to use a more secure SHA-256.

      • Trend Micro Tightens Container Security Integration in Cloud Platform - Container Journal

        Trend Micro today extended its Trend Micro Cloud One platform to more tightly integrate its container security offering.

        Mike Milner, vice president of cloud technology for Trend Micro, said the latest edition of Trend Micro Cloud One eliminates the need to separately deploy a container security platform. Instead, the company’s container security capabilities are now deployed as part of the larger Trend Micro Cloud One platform—making container security administration simpler at a time when the number of container applications running in production environments that need to be secured continues to steadily increase.

        In addition, Trend Micro has simplified the deployment and management of its cloud intrusion prevention system.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Zach FlowerAnonymity and Pseudonymity | flower.codes

          Being anonymous on the internet isn't impossible, but it sure as hell isn't easy either. You have a name, a face, and email address, a phone number... these things, and more, are being asked of us all the time to prove our legitimacy on countless websites.

          [...]

          A not-insignificant number of apps and websites have decided that emails and passwords are "bad," so they've moved to using pin-based logins that get texted to your phone number—nevermind the fact that SIM swapping makes using a phone number as a login method a laughable instance of security theater.

          While you can always generate a single pseudonymous phone number using Google Voice, a more "on rails" solution is https://www.burnerapp.com/, a mobile app that can be used to generate (and destroy) multiple temporary phone numbers at once. I don't personally use this service, but I like the idea behind it.

        • TrustDoxxing: a new tool of repression against Arab women
  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

    • Technical

      • FreeBSD Firewall
      • figlet test
      • DIY Macro-keyboard

        Using a short Python script, an extra keyboard can easily be configured to serve as custom macro-keyboard.

        The script relies on the `evdev`package that provides and interface for passing events generated in the kernel directly to userspace. Simulating key presses (and controlling the mouse) can be done with `xdotool`(which allows access to all keys - binded or not), or with Python's `pyautogui`package.

      • IPFS Quickstart



        This is just a short pointer on how to use IPFS to access the care list, for anyone who doesn't know and/or isn't interested in learning more about it right now. To learn more you should go to the official website or search around.

      • ipfs.scm

        I wrote a CHICKEN Scheme egg to control a Kubo node through its RPC API.

      • Programming

        • Programming languages

          I have a little clock app that I use on my Raspberry Pi 0. It is written in Go. The Pi0 is a slow machine, so compiling Go code is actually pretty painful, despite the language having a reputation for fast compile times.

          An older version written in C acquitted itself rather well compile-time wise, and seemed AT LEAST as good as Go. Go has excellent cross-compile support, so my new strategy is to compile on my arm64, and copy the program to the Pi.

          C++ is of course very slow to compile on the Pi. Cross-compiling is more difficult. There's a library that I'm thinking of linking to, and I haven't yet fathomed out how I'm going to do it.

        • Petri Nets Log #003

          It has to be a real programming language, not a modelling one!

          [...]

          In this net acc may start empty, but bound must have a single token. When a token is produced to input, either kons or default-acc is enabled. If there's no token in acc, then there must be a token in bound, and in that case default-acc is enabled; if there's a token in ac, then there's no token in bound, and in that case kons is enabled. kons behaves as before. On the other hand, peek may consume the token from acc at any time, but does not put it back, and instead puts a dummy token in bound. This place bound is only used to "signal" that acc has no tokens, so that default-acc may move one there. default-acc simply moves an input token to acc to initialize the accumulator.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Gemini Links 09/09/2025: Moon Eclipse and ROOPHLOCH Reports
Links for the day
Official SUSE Blog Still Uses LLM Slop (Bots) to Make Fake Articles (Marketing)
The company is all about sound bites
Companies Realise That Slop Doesn't Work as Advertised, Accordingly Dump It
"Hype dims as a country-wide survey of US corporations shows a sudden drop-off in AI use among firms with more than 250 employees."
Microsoft-Funded Lawsuits Against Critics of UEFI 'Secure Boot'
Remember that no company (or law firm) ever survives collaborations with Microsoft
It's Only the Second Week of September and Already Two Waves of Layoffs at Microsoft, Slopfarms and Microsoft-Funded Sites Spin It as "AI Investments" Rather Than Commercial Failure
A very large third one expected next week
If Your Machine Still Has "Secure Boot" Enabled, Then Microsoft Has a de Facto Kill Switch (Even If Your Machine Doesn't Have Windows and Never Had Windows)
It is not incorrect to call UEFI 'secure boot' a "kill switch"
 
Current Events in France
It needs to dump Microsoft and other GAFAM (US) giants, move to Free software
Further Media Cut-downs
media reporting about the media being cut
Links 09/09/2025: US-Korea Tensions and Meta Whistleblowers
Links for the day
Links 09/09/2025: “Torrents of Hate” and Political Crisis in France
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/09/2025: "Dedigitizing" and Forgejo on FreeBSD
Links for the day
Google News (Not Just Google Search) Lets Itself by Gamed by One Slopfarm - to the Point Almost Half of "Linux" News is Bot-Produced Plagiarism (LLM Slop With Slop Images)
That says a lot about what Google thinks of quality, even in Google News
Bill Gates-Funded Media Inadvertently Refutes the Microsoft Lie That in 2025 Microsoft Had Just Two Waves of Layoffs
There were about 12 rounds of layoffs so far in 2025
From theregister.co.uk to theregister.com (US) to The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives) and theregister.ai
The best way to break this racket (or cycle of hype and harm) is to break the chains of funding
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Culture of Censorship Necessitates More Speech
The OSI bans dissent or people who merely point out that the OSI is abusive
How to Reach Us Discreetly (Other Than Encrypted E-mail)
We're still managing to maintain a 100% source protection record. We soon turn 19.
LLMs Are Vastly Worse Than a Waste of Energy and the Externalities Are Huge
Worse than just higher power bills for everybody
LLMs Versus Search (Not Replacing Search But Engaging in DDoS Attacks Against Web Sites That Permit Searching)
The state of the Web isn't just bad; it's utterly terrible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 08, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 08, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IX - Shunning Old Computers (in 2023 the Certificate Was Updated/Overridden, Underlying Aim May Be Herding/Forcing People to Get TPM and Other 'Novel' Restrictions)
the "upgrade treadmill"
Rumour: Second Wave of Microsoft Mass Layoffs in September to Commence Third Week of September
That basically answers questions like, "Any specific date or time of the month?"
Gemini Links 08/09/2025: Reality, ROOPHLOCH 2025, and Writing Another Gemini Client
Links for the day
Updating Firmware is Not the Solution But Only Additional Risk, Disable "Secure Boot" Today
firmware blobs are buggy, secret, impossible to audit, and barely tested
Microsoft Tim's DevClass (Part of The Register MS/Situation Publishing) is Full of Slop
Looking at many sites that are full of slop images is becoming an eye sore and hallmark of text too likely generated by LLMs or 'assisted' (tainted) by them
Microsoft Trying to Fake Demand for Slop. At What Cost?
That's a giant demotion and broken promises
Reddit is Corporate Propaganda
To make matters worse, Reddit ousted many original moderators
Jeff Geerling Shocked to Discover Many Metrics in YouTube Are Fake (His Audience Turns Out to be Much Smaller)
Maybe self-host all videos, don't rely on Google's "FOMO" cheating (addiction based on false assumptions)
Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant and Kryptonite/Garlic to Vampires
Transparency (sometimes described by words like "Sunlight" or "Truth") is paramount
The Register MS Uses Slop in Articles About Slop
we are fairly certain it's slop or CG based on other people's work
Visiting a Web Page or a Public URL Should be Safe, Predictable, and Benign
It's probably too late to "fix" the Web
The Register MS (Situation Publishing) is Paid to Spread Mindless Hype for the "Hey Hi" Ponzi Scheme and That's a Serious Problem
"Sponsored by Zoom."
Links 08/09/2025: Burger King Cracked, Cox v. Sony Analysed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/09/2025: Socialist Computer Museum and GAFAM/ByteDance/TikTok-Dominated Net
Links for the day
Links 08/09/2025: Tim Crook Disappoints Apple Faithfuls and Zuckerberg Lies (Financial Fraud) for Cheeto King
Links for the day
EPO Workers Point Out that the EPO is Destroying the Planet Under the Guise of "Hey Hi" (It Also Grants Many Invalid Patents Illegally
On 12 March and 16 June 2025, staff representation met with the administration in the Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in Munich
Turn Off Microsoft's Restricted Boot ("Secure Boot")
We're still running a series on this issue
Social Control Media Sites Have Become Bot Farms (Not Limited to LLMs and Automation)
linkedin.com was nothing but trouble and losses for Microsoft
Deep in Debt With the Magnitude of Losses Quickly Growing, Microsoft "Open" "Hey Hi" Now Uses Broadcom for Vapourware, Pretending It'll Do OK Next Year
At some stage it'll collapse
You Can Tell Microsoft is in Trouble When Its Own Fans and Staff Blast it
"Microsoft sinks billions into chasing artificial intelligence fads to hype up its share price."
Multiple Undersea Cable Cuts and We're Still OK
Microsoft customers experience problems
Lawyers Who Think They Are Online Assassins Don't Deserve a Licence to Operate
they've become a laughing stock in their "sector"
Microsoft Windows Fell to 3.9% "Market Share" in Bahamas
Based on statCounter
How the European Union (EU) Fell Out of Love With Free/Libre Software
Lots of bribery
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 07, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 07, 2025
Gemini Links 07/09/2025: Scanner, Slop, and Chadobear
Links for the day
The UEFI 9/11 is 3 Days Away
Nobody denies that bad things will happen
Google Versus Journalism
Google played a big role in the demise of news sites
Gemini Links 07/09/2025: Advertising, Decentralized Archival, and Outsourcing to Bezos
Links for the day
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Has Almost Gone Down to Zero, Nearly Totally Extinct in Geminispace, the Few Capsules Still Using It Are Spam/Dead/Stagnant
This represents another decrease for Let's Encrypt; the last decrease was last week
Not Much Left in News Cycles
To be very clear, this does not describe "Linux" anything; it's true in just about every facet of news, except the paid-for fake "journalism" about "hey hi" (sites getting paid explicitly to maintain or rekindle hype)
Trying to Silence Techrights Was a Huge Mistake
Peter Thiel attacked a publisher for asserting, correctly, that he was gay. Now everyone knows it.
Throwing Away "Old" Computers (Mozilla and Other Climate Deniers)
Mozilla is not leftist
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VIII - Denial of Service and Selling Us WSL (Windows) Instead of "Risky" (Prone by Breakage by Microsoft) GNU/Linux
Restricted Boot (so-called 'SecureBoot') does not improve security. It is nothing but trouble. It's meant to trouble non-Windows users. In dual-boot setups, SecureBoot is a recipe for disaster because Microsoft keeps erasing or tampering with the boot sector, to paraphrase an associate
Slop is Extremely Rare in Geminispace, Slop Images Are Unheard Of (Despite Images Being Supported)
As long as Geminispace grows in terms of domains it's safe to predict the protocol will still be used in 2029 and hence Geminispace will turn 10
Links 07/09/2025: Robodebt Class Action, Fines, and Copyright Settlement
Links for the day
Links 07/09/2025: Yle Impersonated in Social Control Media, Boat-Attacking Orcas, Midjourney Sued Again
Links for the day
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Linux Journal, and the Serial Slopper
Google won't tackle the issue because Google participates not only in relaying slop but also in generating lots of it
Links 07/09/2025: Google Fines in EU and "Your Internet Access Is at Risk"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/09/2025: Little Brother and Corporate Theatre
Links for the day
Links 07/09/2025: More Harms of Slop and Anthropic's Nightmare Scenario (Huge Legal Liabilities for Slop)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 06, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 06, 2025