While Star Labs is still working hard on the StarFighter Linux notebook, which looks to be the first Linux-powered laptop from Star Labs to feature a 4K display, the company also worked on the next-generation StarBook laptop.
StarBook Mk VI features 12th Gen Intel CPUs, namely the Intel Core i3-1220P with 10 cores and up to 4.40GHz clock speed and Intel Core i7-1260P with 12 cores and up to 4.70GHz clock speed, but you can also order it with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U processor with 8 cores and up to 4.40GHz clock speed.
Since I switched to Linux, I have become more aware of the importance of privacy and data protection in the dangerous world of the Internet. Today, companies are voracious to user's data, and hackers will not hesitate to provoke you if they gain access to your device and data. I will be frank with you, there is no one hundred percent protection as long as you use the Internet, but you can raise the level of security by using a device that respects your privacy and works to protect it. In this article, we will review the Librem 14 laptop from Purism.
I hope that you are doing well?
We had another full week in the world of Linux releases with Deepin 23 Preview, KaOS 2022.08, and Neptune Linux 7.5.
LibreOffice 7.4, Krita 5.1.0 and KDE Apps 22.08 has also been released.
Linux is the second most popular OS after Windows. There is a very large community that prefers it and uses it as their primary operating system. This is why we have put together a list of the 6 best Linux mechanical and programmable keyboards that are both great for gaming, developers and programmers. We have written this with compatibility in mind so there are wired and wireless choices available.
In this video, we are looking at KaOS 2022.08.
Flameshot is my screenshot tool of choice and trying out Wayland I want keep going with flameshot but it's not as simple as just running it and it works there's a bit more tweaking to be done
It's Sunday afternoon (ok,early evening, just randomly doing this a bit later than usual), and there's a new rc out.
Nothing particularly interesting here, rc2 tends to be fairly calm with people taking a breather and not yet having found a lot of bugs.
The most noticeable fix in here is likely the virtio reverts that fixed the problem people had with running tests on the google cloud VMs, which was the "pending issue" that we had noticed just as the merge window was closing. And it's noticeable - and notable - mainly because that problem then kept people from running some of the automated tests and thus finding other issues.
But obviously there's a lot of other things in here too, as per the appended shortlog. The diffs are somewhat dominated by the amd gpu fixes - they missed the "drm fixes" pull during the merge window, so there were a bunch of fixes pending on that side. But there's some network driver fixes, some filesystem fixes (btrfs and a late ntfs3 half-fixes-half-updates pull), and the usual set of architecture fixes and other core code (mainly networking).
And some tooling fixes - a mix of selftests and perf.
Go forth and test,
Linus
The second 6.0 kernel prepatch is out for testing. "The most noticeable fix in here is likely the virtio reverts that fixed the problem people had with running tests on the google cloud VMs, which was the 'pending issue' that we had noticed just as the merge window was closing".
Released at the end of May 2022, Linux kernel 5.18 is yet another short-lived kernel series. It introduced new features like support for “user events” in the tracing system, support for AMD’s “host system management port” function, support for 64-bit integrity checksums on NVMe devices, support for Intel’s “hardware feedback interface” feature, as well as indirect branch tracking support for the x86 architecture.
Renowned kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced today the release of Linux kernel 5.18.19, which appears to be a very small patch that only includes 6 changes. What’s most important is that Linux kernel 5.18.19 is also the last maintenance release to the Linux 5.17 kernel series, which now reached end of life and will no longer receive security and bugfix updates.
I'm announcing the release of the 5.19.3 kernel.
All users of the 5.19 kernel series must upgrade.
The updated 5.19.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.19.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
thanks,
greg k-h
Taking website screenshots is an essential part of a Linux user’s routines. We take website screenshots for a number of reasons with the most common one being the need to document a project’s configuration or installation procedure.
Various GUI apps like Flameshot assist Linux users in taking these website screenshots directly gazetted into active projects’ documentation or archived for future reference.
However, we do not always have to use third-party GUI apps to take website screenshots as this article will demonstrate. We will look at various viable command-line tools that can capture website screenshots from the comfort of the Linux terminal environment.
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With these workable solutions, you should be able to effectively capture a website’s screenshot from the comfort of a Linux command-lin environment.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install KDE Plasma on Fedora 36. For those of you who didn’t know, KDE is a well-known desktop environment for Unix-like systems designed for a lightweight, fast, smooth environment with superior performance. By default, Fedora 36 comes with the GNOME desktop environment preinstalled. If you have installed the Gnome edition and now want to change your Dekstop to KDE then that is not a problem at all. You can do that easily.
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 KDE Plasma Desktop Environment on a Fedora 36.
This is just a short note to myself, and to anyone who might run VMs via home-grown scripts (or systemd units). I expect modern VM managers to do this automatically, but for myself, I have just a few hacked together scripts.
By default, QEMU (at least as of version 7.0) does not honour/pass discard requests from block devices to the underlying storage. This is a sane default (like lvm’s default setting), but with long-lived VMs it can lead to lots of wasted disk space. I keep my VMs on SSDs, which is limited space for me, so savings here are important.
Today we are looking at how to install Kdenlive 22.08 or newer 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.
As a Photoshop alternative, GIMP has been getting better each year. The program can be used for graphic design, photo editing, image conversion, and even making digital paintings with various features and functions. Despite being a free and open-source program, GIMP provides users with high-quality results. For example, when it comes to image editing, GIMP offers a wide variety of tools such as cropping, resizing, color correction, and noise reduction. It also supports layers, which is essential for complex graphics editing. In addition, GIMP can be used to create digital paintings from scratch or convert existing photos into images. Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, GIMP is worth checking out.
In the following tutorial, you will learn to install GIMP on Linux Mint 21 release series using the apt package manager or the flatpak package manager, along with some tips for maintaining or removing GIMP in the future.
Fedora is one of the most popular Linux distributions, and Fedora 37 is set to be another great release. For Workstation users, GNOME 43 and Linux Kernel 5.19 are featured. Fedora 37 is looking to be officially released around October 25th, 2022. Still, like always, this can be extended an extra week or two like the previous few releases for those wanting to upgrade now and willing to deal with the dramas of a pre-released Fedora. Do note that Fedora 35 will reach the end-of-life status on roughly September 11th, 2022, so make preparations.
The tutorial below will teach you how to successfully upgrade Fedora 36 to the pre-released Fedora 37 Beta/Pre-Release Development branch that features the incoming GNOME 43 and Linux Kernel 5.19 but may feature Linux Kernel 6.0 on release.
The Vanessa release of Linux Mint 21.0 has Cinnamon 5.4 and the 5.15 LTS Linux Kernel. This is the first major release in the Linux Mint 21 series, which most would know is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish. The primary focus of this release is to provide stability and improve the overall experience for users. In addition, several new features have been added, including support for HiDPI displays, a redesigned system tray, and improved performance when using multiple monitors. As always, many bug fixes and security updates are also included. Overall, the Vanessa release provides a solid foundation for the future development of the Linux Mint operating system.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to upgrade to Linux Mint 21 codenamed Vanessa using the terminal method with tips on dealing with any problematic issues during the upgrade.
Founded in 2005, TeamViewer is a German company that provides remote connectivity solutions. The company offers a range of products that allow users to securely access and control devices remotely, regardless of location. In addition to its desktop software, TeamViewer also provides mobile apps and a web-based platform. The company’s products are used by businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises.TeamViewer is the perfect solution for businesses that need to provide remote support or collaborate remotely. The software is easy to use and provides a secure connection between devices. With TeamViewer, companies can provide remote support to customers, employees, and partners without needing expensive VPNs (virtual private networks). The software is also helpful for collaborating on projects or sharing files between computers.TeamViewer is a versatile tool that can be used for various purposes. Whether you need to provide remote support or collaborate with others, TeamViewer has the perfect solution for you.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install TeamViewer on Linux Mint 21 release series. The tutorial will import the official repository and gpg key and update and remove the remote desktop software using the command line terminal.
In the world of online gaming, Discord has been the reigning champion for the past few years. It has cemented its place as the go-to platform for gaming communities by partnering with major gaming companies and e-sports organizations. However, TeamSpeak self-hosted is making a comeback. The future will determine if Discord can keep its dominance, given these days’ privacy concerns.Discord has benefited from the popularity ofFortnite and other battle royale games. It has also been embraced by the e-sports community. However, TeamSpeak self-hosted is starting to gain traction again. The main reason for this is privacy concerns. With TeamSpeak, users can host their own servers and have more control over their data. This is becoming increasingly important to gamers, who are becoming more aware of the potential risks of using platforms like Discord. Only time will tell if Discord will be able to keep its place at the top of the gaming world.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install the Discord client on Linux Mint 21 release series using two different methods with the command line terminal.
Redis is an open-source database frequently used as a cache or message broker. Unlike other databases, Redis stores data in memory, making it significantly faster. In addition, Redis supports a wide range of data structures, including strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, and streams. This makes Redis an incredibly versatile tool that can be used for various purposes. For example, Redis can be used as a message queue or for tracking user sessions. It can also be used for leaderboards or for storing real-time data. In addition to its speed and flexibility, Redis is highly scalable and can be easily deployed in both physical and cloud environments. As a result, it is no wonder that Redis has become one of the most popular databases among developers.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Redis on AlmaLinux 9 workstation or server using the terminal command line with two methods: appstream or Remi Redis pm, along with basic setup instructions to get you started using the command line terminal.
MariaDB is one of the most popular open-source databases next to its originator MySQL. The original creators of MySQL developed MariaDB in response to fears that MySQL would suddenly become a paid service due to Oracle acquiring it in 2010. With its history of doing similar tactics, the developers behind MariaDB have promised to keep it open source and free from such fears as what has happened to MySQL. Many Linux distributions include MariaDB as their default database management system due to this assurance from the developers.
MariaDB 10.6 brings several significant improvements, including improved performance, scalability, and new features such as a crash-safe replication mechanism and improved SQL compatibility. In terms of performance, MariaDB 10.6 includes several optimizations that can help to speed up database operations. For example, the new version contains several changes that can help to reduce disk IO and improve caching strategies. In addition, MariaDB 10.6 introduces a new storage engine called MyRocks, which is designed for modern hardware architectures and can provide significant performance improvements. In terms of scalability, MariaDB 10.6 includes several changes that make it easier to run large databases on multiple servers. For example, the new version introduces sharding support, which allows databases to be divided into numerous pieces that can be spread across multiple servers. In addition, MariaDB 10.6 includes several changes that improve the ability to replicate databases across multiple servers. Finally, regarding SQL compatibility, MariaDB 10.6 introduces several features that make it easier to port applications from other database systems. For example, the new version includes support for Oracle’s PL/SQL language and introduces a compatibility mode that can make running MySQL applications on MariaDB servers easier. As a result, MariaDB 10.6 is a significant release that includes many improvements that users of all types will welcome.
As any Linux user knows, there are a variety of package managers available, each with its advantages and disadvantages. While some package managers are more popular, they all have benefits and drawbacks. One relatively new package manager is Snap. Snap can be installed and, for the most part, work with most packages on Rocky Linux-based systems that are currently actively supported. There are a few conflicts with specific packages. The issue with Snaps VS DNF package manager is that Snaps are self-contained, which results in an increased .snap due to having all its dependencies included along with various degrees of slight performance degradation when compared to running the same package from DNF. However, the benefits of Snap’s self-containment may outweigh these performance concerns for some users. In addition, Snap is designed to be more secure than other package managers, making it an attractive option for users who prioritize security. Snap is a promising new package manager with unique advantages that may make it the right choice for some Linux users.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Snapd on Rocky Linux 9 with the terminal and GUI methods with basic tips on how to launch or install/remove packages with Snapcraft.
Yandex browser is the most popular internet browser for all major platforms. It’s based on Chromium, making it fast to load with Standards compliance ensuring no compatibility issues arise due to its ability to be customized through translation services if needed! Yandex also has an outstanding built-in ad blocker that removes annoying ads, improves loading speed, and protects your privacy by blocking tracking requests. Yandex Browser also offers you a variety of customization options so that you can make the browser work precisely how you want it to. You can choose from various themes, set up custom wallpapers, and even change the toolbar buttons to suit your needs. Overall, Yandex Browser is an incredibly stable and fast browser that offers an excellent experience for all users.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Yandex Browser on Linux Mint 21 LTS desktop using the command line terminal with tips about maintaining and removing the browser versions.
In this short, but productive post, you will learn how to install PIP on Ubuntu 22.04 | Linux Mint 21 which is a package gesture for Python.
Here’s how you can fix the annoying error “Can’t fetch summary from disabled remote ‘flathub’”.
For some unknown reasons, Fedora Linux, Ubuntu and other distros give this following error, despite you have installed and setup Flatpak with Flathub with correct steps.
Here’s a sample error which I encountered a while back in Fedora during installation of an app via Flathub.
FFmpeg is a free, open-source multimedia framework that can decode and encode just about any file type. With its ability to transcode almost all media files created on different platforms, it’s no wonder why this program has become so popular among those looking for versatility in their video editing software!
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install FFmpeg on Linux Mint 21 release series using the command line terminal and the FFmpeg PPA by Rob Savory to get the latest up-to-date version for your desktop.
SMPlayer is free, open-source software that can be used on any operating system. It has been localized in more than 30 languages, making it easy to enjoy your favorite videos no matter what language(s) are spoken around them! A front end called SMplayer offers graphics tools from Mpv (a forks version), along with its interface widgets provided by qt. This player also falls under the terms given out through GPL v2 or later versions which ensures freedom while providing access via financial means if desired so long as copyright restrictions aren’t violated during use. The best media players are also portable, so you can carry them around on a USB drive and use them without leaving traces behind. SMPlayer is worth trying for this reason alone!
The following tutorial will teach you how to install SMPlayer Linux Mint 21 LTS release series using a LaunchPAD APT PPA with the command line terminal.
Rendering now supports an experimental Parallel Processing feature for faster render speeds. This version adds support for importing AVIF, HEIF, HEIC and JPEG XL image formats, LOTTIE and RAWR animations, as well as VTT (Web Video Text Tracks) and SBV (YouTube) subtitle files. New features include an improved audio recording experience, global subtitle styling, exporting of guides as chapters for YouTube/PeerTube/Vimeo, and integration with Glaxnimate vector graphics animation program. Colorscopes (Waveform, Vectorscope, and RGB parade) are finally working on Windows.
The team would like to thank the code contributions from Eric Jiang, Nathan Hinton, Gary Wang, Marius Pa, Daniel Novomeský, Martin Owens, Brendan Davidson and Ivan Sudakov; and extend our gratitude to all the community members for reporting issues, creating tutorials and offering support.
By releasing v0.24, Celluloid (formerly Gnome MPV) is now a LibAwaita app. Meaning it works good on any screen sizes, including mobile or tablet devices.
Celluloid is a graphical front-end for MPV, defaults in Linux Mint. As MPV is a command line video player, Celluloid adds graphical controls and options to make the player easy to use.
Now, the app has ported to GTK4 plus LibAwaita. Which makes it look modern and stylish, and works good on small screen sizes.
[...]
If you’re going to make a switch, then Celluloid is really a good choice, especially for Gnome desktop Linux, such as Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation.
Well, it’s not that big of a deal. However, I was eager to see ‘what the plan was’ for GTK4/libadwaita apps within the context of Ubuntu’s Yaru theme. Ubuntu 22.04, for those who’ve forgotten, intentionally held back on shipping a number of GTK4/libadwaita ports that were part of GNOME 42
Well, I’m pleased to see (and say) that the new-look GTK4/libadwaita version of the Nautilus file manager sits proud within Ubuntu’s Yaru-themed desktop. Any custom Yaru accent colour choice is applied to libadwaita apps too — there had been some worry in the community that libadwaita apps wouldn’t be theme-able in this regard.
New on the GNOME desktop is their terminal emulator application simply named Console. It seems aimed at providing a no-nonsense, stable command-line environment for Linux users.
The GNOME Console isn't as feature-rich as a lot of other terminals, including the previous GNOME terminal, but I like it and have been using it regularly for the past few months. I enjoy the simplicity of it. I waste time in other terminal emulators configuring fonts, colors, and profiles.
Console does have some options and nice integration with the GNOME desktop. I'll start with the small menu accessed by clicking the hamburger menu at the top-right. It allows for configuring the color theme and font zooming.
Last month I was fortunate enough to be able to attend GUADEC 2022 in Guadalajara, Mexico, and overall it was a worthwhile experience where I learned a lot. Also it was the 25th anniversary of the GNOME project (give or take a month) and where better to celebrate than in the country where it all began?
My main contribution this year was to give a talk, “Integrating Progressive Web Apps in GNOME”, the recording of which you can find here. The attendance of it and engagement with it was pretty good so hopefully folks found it useful. Now with GNOME 43 around the corner, the revamped web app support should be coming to a distribution near you soon so you can see for yourself in case you haven’t been adventurous enough to try it out in GNOME OS Nightly!
A few days later into the conference and kind of at the last minute (just the day before) I organized a Flatpak/Portals BoF that took place on Saturday. It was hybrid both online and in-person and pretty well-attended in both mediums. As with past such meetings, there’s always much more to discuss than there’s time for, and perhaps that means we should do more of them. But in any case there were some productive discussions on camera portals and some triaging of open issues and pull requests of Flatpak, which is imminently due for a 1.14.0 release.
Today we are going to take a look at the new upcoming Makulu-Max Distro. Watch the video below for more information...
There is a certain charm to Peropesis. It is exactly what the project's website says it is: a somewhat incomplete, lightweight, cleanly organized Linux distribution. It can be used for a few things - education, rescuing installed systems, and checking e-mail. But that's about it, that is all it seems to be intended to do, and that's what it does. There is no hype, no package manager, or extension modules. It's just... a super minimal Linux system which works pretty well and very quickly.
This makes Peropesis quite limited, there aren't many situations where I'd use it instead of the live media of a desktop distribution to do similar tasks. However, there is something nice about its simplicity. It's not often I get to run a distribution that does what it says it will and nothing else. This may not be a practical distribution for almost any situation, but I kind of like it nonetheless.
Geniatech SCB32IM is a sensor board based on Silicon Labs EFR32FG14 Arm Cortex-M4 microcontroller with a sub-GHz radio enabling wireless M-Bus (Wireless Meter Bus) designed for remote reading of smart meters, and also equipped with a Quectel EC200S “IoT/M2M-optimized” LTE Cat 1 module.
The sensor module does not actually come with any sensor on board, but provides a terminal block to connect any sensor you may need for your product. It’s also possible to extend wireless connectivity options with Zigbee 3.0, Z-Wave, Bluetooth LE 5.0, LoRa, and more through the GT-IoT interface with UART, SPI, and one GPIO.
The Morefine S600-Apex Engineer is a Mini PC built around the latest Intel’s i9-12900H/HK processor. The product comes in an aluminum-magnesium case offering features such as up to 64GB 3200 MHz of RAM, triple 4K displays, flexible storage expansion and a Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.2.
[...]
The operating systems supported include Windows 10 Pro and Ubuntu 20.04+.
[...]
According to AndroidPC.com, Morefine S600 might be released on Indiegogo as other products from Morefine (i.e. Morefine S500). The company didn’t provide a specific date, although this post will be updated if there is additional info shared. Refer to the Morefine S600 product page for additional information.
Making a new project and want a quick logo placeholder or even a free logo to use without a fuzz, then head to Logodust, it collects all open-source logos that are released to be used for personal and commercial use.
It is an ideal solution for designers and developers who wanna lunch their MVP or mockup faster without getting stuck in creating a brand-new logo or entrapped by ideas.
Logodust team adds new free logos frequently, which anyone can download them for free in a high quality SVG format.
As it happens every year, I had to pull a lot of information from various financial intermediaries and convert them into the way the local tax system wanted them. For this reason, I created a Go program that does this modularly. Whenever I have a new financial intermediary, I create a new module that can read whatever format they create and returns a structured object in the form that the application expects. This year I added a new financial intermediary with a very “interesting” CSV format.
To be able to condense multiple different kinds of data in the same file, they created a CSV file that has as the first column the name of the content (I think of it as the database table name). In the second column, we will find either Header or Data to distinguish if the row represents the headers for that “table” or rows of data, and then from the third column, it looks like a normal CSV file.
The console.log() function is an incredibly useful part of JavaScript that you can use to debug your code.
This function allows you to write messages to the console from your JavaScript. It allows you to easily debug your code on the fly as you can print out any required values when a problem occurs.
Believe it or not but the future is going to be in the hands of compact devices such as mobile phones, tablets, etc. In the last few years, the pandemic has changed the whole business metrics. That’s the fact, companies are now trying to find a way to reduce their production cost and speed up their sales figures. and they’re focusing more on developing sustainable mobile applications to maintain their true existence. There’s no surprise that it is one of the most important trends in the world of the software development industry.
For as long as I’ve been into programming I’ve been learning some new programming languages on the side. The more “exotic” and “niche” they were - the better.1 While my professional career was mostly focused on C, C++, Java and Ruby, over the years I’ve been playing to a different extent with languages like Prolog, Common Lisp, Scheme/Racket, Clojure, Smalltalk, Erlang, Elixir, Scala, Haskell, just to name a few. It’s funny that every couple of years I revisit Erlang and Haskell, but I always fail to truly master them. Anyways, for some reason (laziness?) I haven’t been seriously learning anything new since my last (failed) stint with Haskell 3-4 years ago and I’ve decided it’s time to change this. After compiling a short list of appealing candidates2 I’ve opted for OCaml - one of the most famous members of the ML family of programming languages.
I still can’t believe we did this for two years; even just a weekend of it left me feeling irritable and tired. My dad used to say the most exhausting thing you can do is nothing, and I’ve really come to understand this of late.
We put together a list that includes vulnerable XSS and SQL sites too. When we say this word we actually mean ethical hacking and using such sites and apps for testing gives a safe environment to practice the craft legally while staying on the right side of the law. Like this, you can hack freely without the fear of being arrested.
Social engineering is a powerful method for hackers to exploit computer systems without the use of malware or computer hacking tools.
Josh and Kurt talk to Dustin Childs about the recent ZDI Black Hat talk where they discovered the current trend of security patches not actually fixing the security problem. We talk about what this problem means. Why is it happening, and what ZDI is doing to try nudge the industry in the right direction.
In 2022 we have already had 14 CVEs reported so far, and we will announce the 15th when we release curl 7.85.0 at the end of August. Going into September 2022, there have been a total of 18 reported CVEs in the last 12 months.
During the whole of 2021 we had 13 CVEs reported – and already that was a large amount and the most CVEs in a single year since 2016.
There has clearly been an increased CVE issue rate in curl as of late.
It was a rare look inside the strategic planning of an upstart neo-Nazi movement.
In a video posted last summer on social media, Chris Hood, 23, the founder of the Nationalist Social Club - 131, a New England white nationalist collective, gave instructions to a 22-year-old UMass Lowell student named Liam MacNeil.
“If you’re in college you should be getting together with all the other guys on campus that think like you, circling all the frat parties and bullying the chicks that race mix and start dominating the party and take over the campus,” Hood said. “Same policy as out here [the street] but just do it on campus.”
“We can do that,” MacNeil responded. “Everyone knows where I am now, but they’re going to have to physically remove me. You know, they’re going to have to kick me out.”
Solar power has a problem. Its a problem that we are working around, but it also represents an opportunity, because if someone can seize the opportunity, its seriously going to help everyone. It will help energy security, it will help the cost of living, it will help equality, it will help fight climate change. An opportunity existing precisely because solar power has a problem:
Solar panels are things we all know about. You can get big ones, and small ones, even tiny ones that power something as small as a pocket calculator (remember those?) or that unroll and plug into your phone to charge on a sunny day. We all know about solar panels. What most of us are not aware of, is inverters, and how our home wiring works. The big thing I need to get across in this post is that right now there is a LOT of complexity and crap that goes in between those solar panels you see on someone’s roof, or in a field, and the wall socket you plug your TV into.
Qantas is trying to take over Alliance Airlines, a competitor in the lucrative FIFO market – the flying in and out of mine workers in remote locations. The ACCC is not so sure it’s a good idea, so what’s the scam?
Fresh from the mortifying news that he was sharing the second highest post in government with his leader, former treasurer Josh Frydenberg is being spoken of as a Liberal saviour. Apparently Peter Dutton has not inspired the nation in his role as opposition leader.
As outrage swirls around Scott Morrison for running a secret parallel ministry, there are some wistful musings about the prospect of Josh getting back into parliament, even by replacing ScoMo. The former PM has become an unwelcome presence on his own side, and few would be sorry to see his back. Perhaps only Labor really wants him to hang around.
Enter the Liberal elder statesman. John Howard has lunches with Josh Frydenberg. They talk politics, Honest John helpfully informed Radio National’s Patricia Karvelas on Wednesday. She then asked him about the prospects of Josh taking Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook.
As Australians reeled from the news that Gough Whitlam had been replaced as prime minister by Malcolm Fraser at the whim of an unelected official acting in the name of a foreign-born monarch, comedian Garry McDonald inserted himself into the action.
In character as gormless TV reporter Norman Gunston, the comedian mingled with the assembled politicians, journalists, lawyers and academics on the steps of Parliament House. Then he turned to the impassioned crowd that had gathered on the forecourt. He shouted: ”Is this an affront to the constitution of this country?”
The property market is a favourite for money launderers, forcing ordinary Australians to compete with organised crime for their dream home, says investigative author Nathan Lynch. He blames the power of lobbyists as a cancer on our democracy. Lynch’s new book is a wake-up call, writes Stephanie Tran.
Australia has been captured by a phenomenon called the property industrial complex. It poisons our politics and institutions, but worse, it forces aspiring home-owners on restricted incomes to compete with the bottomless pockets of criminal networks.
This is the convincing hypothesis of a new book by crime investigator Nathan Lynch. The Lucky Laundry, subtitled How the Aussie Economy Got Hooked on the World’s Dirtiest Cash, delves deep into how political inertia has enabled “dark money” to pollute our financial system. The book is a wake-up call.
Xi Jinping has never given a press conference. He is the head of China’s ruling Communist Party—a colossal, sprawling political machine with 96.7 million members—yet he does not have a press secretary. His office does not preannounce his domestic travel or visitor log. He does not tweet.
What are billed by the official media as important speeches are typically not released until months after Xi has delivered them in closed forums. Even then, the published versions can be pallid reworkings of the documents that have been circulated internally and, very occasionally, leaked.
The secretiveness of Beijing’s ruling party might once have been dismissed as a mere eccentricity, fodder for an industry of intelligence analysts and academic Pekingologists to sort through for clues about top-level machinations. But with Xi now often described, without hyperbole, as the “world’s most powerful man,” and on the verge of winning a norm-breaking third term later this year at the party congress, Beijing’s radical opacity has real-world consequences.
NetBlocks metrics confirm the disruption of YouTube on multiple internet providers in Pakistan on Sunday 21 August 2022. The disruption comes as former Prime Minister Imran Khan makes a live broadcast to the public, despite a ban issued by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA).
Like Billy Pilgrim, the unstuck-in-time protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade, it can sometimes feel like we're all witnessing the same censorship fights again and again.
Since it was published in 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five has been a repeated target for book burners—sometimes quite literally. In 1973, 32 copies of the book were thrown into the furnace at a high school in Drake, North Dakota, on orders from the local school board after parents complained about the book's sex and profanity. Sensibilities about those things have come a long way in the past few decades, but Vonnegut's novel is still a target. In 2011, a school board in Missouri barred the book from the curriculum and ordered it confined to a special section of the school's library.
The devil went down to Moscow not long after the Bolshevik takeover, along with a valet, a vampire, an assassin, and a gunslinging man-sized cat called Behemoth. That's the setup for Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, a scathingly satiric tale of Soviet censors, informers, and intellectual courtiers that doubles as an unorthodox retelling of the Book of Matthew. Finished in 1940, the novel was not formally published until the late 1960s, and then only in heavily censored form. The full novel finally appeared in 1973, but even then Russian readers were more likely to encounter a samizdat edition than the hard-to-find official printing.
One challenge prohibitionists face is that not everybody supports their prohibitions. Many people under their nominal authority want access to what's forbidden, no matter what the law says.
Aware that the procedure remains available elsewhere, South Carolina lawmakers seeking a near-complete ban on abortion propose to forbid speech about terminating pregnancies to prevent residents of the Palmetto State from learning of such services. The recently rebooted Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is reminding `them that speech that politicians don't like is not only the best speech but is also protected by the First Amendment.
How a Soviet-born developer and a West Virginia billionaire destroyed a 141-year-old Colorado newspaper
Sima Nan is roasted on social media after admitting to having bought the property in 2010.
It looks like Salman Rushdie is going to lose an eye. He also has stab wounds on his neck and chest. He’s finally off the ventilator that was used to keep him alive in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but his son has called the injuries “life-changing.”
The novelist was getting ready to deliver a lecture in New York last Friday when a man rushed the stage to stab him. It seems to be a belated attempt to carry out the clerical death sentence against Rushdie issued decades ago by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The fatwa was issued because Rushdie wrote a “blasphemous” novel, The Satanic Verses.
To say all of that a bit more succinctly, a writer just spent days on the brink of death because a religious leader found his novel offensive. It’s a brutal reminder of the importance of free speech.
A new poll looking at Americans' belief in conspiracy theories finds high levels of support for loony-tunes ideas about sex, Satan, and U.S. institutions. In addition, more than half of those surveyed believed child sex-trafficking myths.
The situation echoes fears prevalent during the 1980s and '90s, a mass hysteria that has in retrospect been dubbed the Satanic Panic. This vintage worry about ritual murders, sexual abuse inspired by devil worship, and Satanists in child care centers, the entertainment industry, and elsewhere was unfounded—but still ruined lives. (You can read much more about the Satanic Panic in Reason Books Editor Jesse Walker's The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory.)
In late July, the journalist Sam Thielman, who’d been working on contract as an editor for Substack, the newsletter company, was fired. As he would explain in a newsletter published earlier this week that described the firing as an act of retaliation, and as Substack would quickly acknowledge—”We fucked up” is the way founder Hamish McKenzie put it—he not only hadn’t done anything wrong, he hadn’t really done anything at all.
The episode ended well enough for Thielman, with him being paid for the work he would have done if he hadn’t been fired and Substack apologizing, but raised—hardly for the first time—a number of questions the company hasn’t been able to convincingly answer. Most of them have to do with what Substack, which at times seems to operate as a mission-driven journalistic outlet and at others as a neutral tech platform, actually is.
People have been trying to ban Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird since the 1960s. And since the 1960s, they have largely failed.
Two years ago Salman Rushdie joined prominent cultural figures signing an open letter decrying an increasingly “intolerant climate” and warning that the “free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” It was a declaration of principles Mr. Rushdie had embodied since 1989, when a fatwa by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, calling for his murder, made him a reluctant symbol of free speech.
The letter, published by Harper’s Magazine in June 2020 after racial justice protests swept the United States, drew a backlash, with some denouncing it as a reactionary display of thin-skinnedness and privilege — signed, as one critic put it, by “rich fools.”
The reaction dismayed Mr. Rushdie, but didn’t surprise him. “Put it like this: the kinds of people who stood up for me in the bad years might not do so now,” he told The Guardian in 2021. “The idea that being offended is a valid critique has gained a lot of traction.”
Amusing that it happens to one of America’s kangaroo courts.
GULAG (Google) doesn’t even feel compelled to tell them why they have been banned, and the court begs GULAG to allow them back on instead of ordering them to.
So I've decided to give blogging a try, or rather journaling. I'm not normally one for writing about myself and I've never been great at keeping diaries so I have no idea how this might go. I do have a lot of thoughts in my head though - it's just getting them down fast enough that's the problem!
So I'm over-prepping for my date on Saturday.
I've been plotting out what measures I must make to hide my slobbish tendencies. my actions reminded me of Stradlater from Catcher In The Rye, hiding the fact he's a total slob and only Holden knowing the wiser. So I decided to name my agenda for the next day and a half "Operation Stradlater".
I've been thinking a lot about games recently. I've decided to take a break from college for an indeterminate amount of time, and I have started thinking about what I want to put into the world. It's been far too long since I've completed a project that I'm proud of, so with that in mind as I traveled back to my parents house to visit, I resolved to participate in the Godot Wild Jam.
I have three larger prototypes I've been working on in the back of my mind, but I found it hard to work on them. I'm not sure if it was leftover fatigue from finish school, covid, or anxiety about the future, but nevertheless I was feeling burnt out. The game jam was a great opportunity to put all of that aside and work on a small standalone project, both to further develop my skills with godot, and to prove to myself that I can finish a project.
So I love crows, well really all corvids, but especially crows. Something about their intelligence just amazes me, they know to fly towards the sound of a gunshot because it means a dead animal may be on the other side. One time I watched a crow drag an unopened bag of chips into the road so a car could drive over it and pop it open. He placed it exactly where the driver side wheels were and waited until someone hit it. He then flew into the road and dragged back the bag where he enjoyed his feast.
I completed my order of the Steam Deck last week. I preordered it over
a year ago. Now of course I had a moment of cognitive dissonance over
it. Do I really need a new gaming console? I already have my Switch
Lite. And of course the price... But hey, why not? I mean I have a few
games in my Steam library and I'm not playing those as I do not want
to turn on my desktop computer to play a couple of minutes. That is so
easy with the switch, I can play when my wife is taking a bath, etc. A
click of a button and it sleeps and I can always continue at the exact
same location. So the Deck is underway from the Netherlands to me.
It's interesting that the Gemini protocol is in the most cases identified with the cosmos. It's probably the first time, when raw technical specification in the common belief is fitting some theme. There are of course lots of clues. So the origin of the Gemini is the Circumlunar Space, which mentions its [backstory] as one of the space opera novels. The second important place is Gemini protocol [faq] which is describing the protocol name origin. But there is no obligation to follow this route.
So there aren't many things in the Gophersphere which are connected with a gopher rodent. Gophersphere isn't conceptually related with a burrow. But the Geminispace, with it's space prefix, for me is very cosmos oriented name.
I use TextExpander to turn easily-typed text into time-consuming-to-generate text.
All the shell-script ones are written in zsh since that’s the default shell on my system of choice, but they probably run identically in bash, and maybe even sh.
Fair warning: A bunch of these snippets use common UNIX programs. One of the problems with stringing together common UNIX programs like date(1), tr(1), and sed(1) is that they’re often implemented slightly differently depending on what UNIX(alike) you’re on.
Most people with an interest in Free Software or scheme/functional programming have probably heard of GNU Guile: GNU's main embedded extension language. They may also have heard of MIT/GNU Scheme, whose main claim to fame is being the scheme interpreter often used in conjunction with the inimitable SICP wizard book.
There is, however, another GNU scheme: [GNU scm]
``GNU scm'' has, as you can imagine, some discoverability issues, but maybe that's for the best, or even intended, making sure that no-one accidentally finds it without looking for it.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.