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Links 17/11/2022: Red Hat Satellite 6.12 and Twitter's Two-Factor Authentication Breaks Down



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

    • Server

      • Make Use OfWhat Is a Linux Hypervisor and What Does It Do?

        Virtualization is a neat way of experimenting with different operating systems. Generally, software like VirtualBox or VMware is used to set up and use virtual machines. But what exactly is VirtualBox or VMware? Well, they are hypervisors.

        Hypervisors are software that you can use to create and run virtual machines. So, what is a Linux hypervisor? What are its features, and how is it different from Windows hypervisors?

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Applications

      • It's FOSSAuthenticator: A Simple Open-Source App to Replace Authy on Linux

        Authy is a popular app for storing and managing two-factor codes. It is a cloud-based service that gives you convenience with industry-grade security. Unfortunately, it is not open-source.

        Would you consider using a more straightforward (and open-source) authenticator app on your Linux desktop?

        Well, of course, you cannot cloud sync here. But you can generate a backup for the two-factor authentication codes. Keeping that in mind, let me tell you more about Authenticator.

      • Ubuntu Pit10 Best Linux Educational Software for Your Kids

        The expense of getting an education is always high, no matter where you are in the world. If you want to use educational software, that cost will be even higher. You may have been searching online for the best educational software for your children or yourself. If you are using Linux, I can help you get a list of the best educational software for your needs. If you doubt that Linux has much to offer in terms of education, wait until you see this list.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • [GNOME] GNOME Files and custom file icons: setting a cute 2x2 image preview for photo albums

        Going further in my delight at belatedly discovering the "metadata::custom-icon" GVFS attribute used by Nautilus, I extended beyond just music album covers to write a script that did a fun 2x2 grid for photo album covers.

      • VideoHow to install Toontown Rewritten on Linux Mint 21 - Invidious

        In this video, we are looking at how to install Toontown Rewritten on Linux Mint 21.

      • ID RootHow To Install Eclipse Mosquitto on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Eclipse Mosquitto on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Mosquitto is an open-source message broker that uses the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) Protocol. It implements MQTT protocol versions 5.0, 3.1.1, and 3.1. And because of its low power consumption, it can be used on boards like Raspberry pi.

        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 Eclipse Mosquitto 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.

      • DebugPointHow to Install OpenOffice in Ubuntu

        Simple beginner’s guide on how to install Apache OpenOffice in Ubuntu Linux.

        OpenOffice, developed by Apache, is the oldest free and open-source office productivity suite which is currently under maintenance. No significant new features are being added. It has been forked as LibreOffice, which is more advanced and brings more features.

        However, many still try to use OpenOffice for various reasons & this tutorial is for those who want to install the OpenOffice suite in Ubuntu and other distros.

      • UNIX CopHow to install CMake on Rocky Linux 9 /CentOS 9 Stream

        In this post, you will learn how to install CMake on Rocky Linux 9 / CentOS 9 Stream. Let’s get started.

      • TechRepublicHow to set, change, and recover your MySQL root password

        Chances are you have MySQL running somewhere in your data center. If that’s the case, there might be a time when you need to set or change the root user password. This can happen when you’ve forgotten the password or when you’re looking to up your security game (remembering you set the original MySQL password to something far too simple).

        As you might expect, the process is handled entirely through the command line and works with either MySQL or MariaDB installations. The Linux distribution being used doesn’t matter as long as you have admin access by way of su or sudo.

      • Linux Made SimpleHow to install A Mega Night Funkin' (Vs Mega Man) on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install A Mega Night Funkin' (Vs Mega Man) on a Chromebook.

        If you have any questions, please contact us via a YouTube comment and we would be happy to assist you!

        This tutorial will only work on Chromebooks with an Intel or AMD CPU (with Linux Apps Support) and not those with an ARM64 architecture CPU.

      • Make Use OfHow to Install and Dual Boot Linux on Your Mac

        Here's how to install Linux on your Mac. You can try dual-booting Ubuntu, or replace macOS with Linux entirely!

        Whether you need a customizable operating system or a better environment for software development, you can get it by dual booting Linux on your Mac. Linux is incredibly versatile (it's used to run everything from smartphones to supercomputers), and you can install it on a MacBook, iMac, Mac mini, or any other kind of Mac.

        Apple added Boot Camp to macOS to make it easy for people to dual boot Windows, but installing Linux is another matter entirely. Follow the steps below to learn how to do this.

      • VideoHow To Upgrade To Fedora 37 From Fedora 36. - Invidious

        In this video, I am going to show ho upgrade to Fedora 37 from Fedora 36.

      • VideoHow to install Fedora 37. - Invidious

        In this video, I am going to show how to install Fedora 37.

      • Network WorldWays to look at logged in users on Linux | Network World

        There are quite a few ways on Linux to get a list of the users logged into the system and see what they are doing. The commands described in this article all provide very useful information.

      • Video: awk delimiters

        I have published a new video on YouTube: Introduction to AWK Delimiters. Please subscribe to my channel if you haven’t done so yet!

    • Games

      • Boiling SteamNew Release of Box86 and Box64, with Better Compatibility of X86 and X86_64 Games on ARM Hardware!

        Good news! Box64 (and Box86) is getting another major update with its new 0.2 version. In this version the major new features...

      • CubicleNateSteamDeck | What Makes it Awesome for an openSUSE User - CubicleNate’s Techpad

        When it comes to my tech, I am reluctant to add anything that has the potential to become a technical liability that I cannot accommodate. I am also not interested in any tech that locks me into a cloud based ecosystem where my future with the technology is at the whims of some faceless corporation. As a consequence, I require a certain level of freedom with my tech. If some distant server shuts down, the software and hardware I have purchased should be largely unaffected, obviously with some caveats.

        Bottom Line Up Front: The SteamDeck is everything I ever wanted in a hand held console and more. I think it would have been a better experience built on openSUSE, mostly for my own gratification but despite the choice of using Arch Linux tools, Valve has done a wonderful job of making SteamOS top notch. This is, without a shred of hesitation, the finest gaming console I have ever purchased.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • DebugPointWindows is Testing a GNOME-like Dark Mode Switcher. Copy Again?

          A possible feature in the upcoming Windows update is under test, which features a dark mode switcher from the Windows tray.

          From the moment Windows 11 default look unveiled, it resembled mostly the major Linux desktop. Mostly a blend of KDE Plasma and GNOME. The start menu, taskbar, and desktop widgets – all remind us of the features of KDE Plasma and GNOME. Those features long existed in the Linux desktop world.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Leftovers

    • Hardware

      • The Next PlatformDatacenter Can Carry Nvidia Through The Rough Spots

        After a decade and a half of ceaseless and focused work, Nvidia has created a modern compute platform, and a unique one at that. And while the collapse of the PC market and the Dot Coin Bust has not done its financials any favors in recent quarters, Nvidia’s datacenter business is clipping along despite the economic uncertainties out there on Earth.

        In fact, that Nvidia datacenter business seems poised to expand in the coming years thanks to its entry into CPUs and DPUs, the need for high bandwidth networking, and the ongoing adoption of GPU compute for HPC, AI, and now data analytics workloads. And this despite increasing competition in GPUs and already fierce competition in CPUs.

        The trajectory of that datacenter business is clear, and made even more dramatic by the drop in sales for GPUs dedicated to gaming and professional visualization that continued in the third quarter of fiscal 2023 ended in October.

    • Security

      • LWNSecurity updates for Thursday [LWN.net]

        Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr and thunderbird), Fedora (expat, xen, and xorg-x11-server), Oracle (kernel, kernel-container, qemu, xorg-x11-server, and zlib), Scientific Linux (xorg-x11-server), Slackware (firefox, krb5, samba, and thunderbird), SUSE (ant, apache2-mod_wsgi, jsoup, rubygem-nokogiri, samba, and tomcat), and Ubuntu (firefox and linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-dell300x, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon).

      • Twitter Two-Factor Authentication Has a Vulnerability

        The vulnerability comes as Twitter enters its third week under the ownership of Elon Musk, a period during which key security and compliance staff at the company have departed, masses of employees and contractors have been laid off, and cracks have begun to show in the company's customer-facing technology (see: Twitter Ramps Up Regulatory Exposure After Loss of CISO).

        A researcher contacted Information Security Media Group on condition of anonymity to reveal that texting "STOP" to the Twitter verification service results in the service turning off SMS two-factor authentication.

        "Your phone has been removed and SMS 2FA has been disabled from all accounts," is the automated response.

        The vulnerability, which ISMG verified, allows a hacker to spoof the registered phone number to disable two-factor authentication. That potentially exposes accounts to a password reset attack or account takeover through password stuffing. Twitter allows uses to set up multifactor authentication through other means besides SMS, including an authentication app and a security key. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment; its communication team reportedly no longer exists.

      • WiredTwitter’s SMS Two-Factor Authentication Is Melting Down | WIRED

        FOLLOWING TWO WEEKS of extreme chaos at Twitter, users are joining and fleeing the site in droves. More quietly, many are likely scrutinizing their accounts, checking their security settings, and downloading their data. But some users are reporting problems when they attempt to generate two-factor authentication codes over SMS: Either the texts don't come or they're delayed by hours.

        The glitchy SMS two-factor codes mean that users could get locked out of their accounts and lose control of them. They could also find themselves unable to make changes to their security settings or download their data using Twitter's access feature. The situation also provides an early hint that troubles within Twitter's infrastructure are bubbling to the surface.

        Not all users are having problems receiving SMS authentication codes, and those who rely on an authenticator app or physical authentication token to secure their Twitter account may not have reason to test the mechanism. But users have been self-reporting issues on Twitter since the weekend, and WIRED confirmed that on at least some accounts, authentication texts are hours delayed or not coming at all. The meltdown comes less than two weeks after Twiter laid off about half of its workers, roughly 3,700 people. Since then, engineers, operations specialists, IT staff, and security teams have been stretched thin attempting to adapt Twitter's offerings and build new features per new owner Elon Musk's agenda.

      • USCERTCISA Releases Two Industrial Control Systems Advisories | CISA

        CISA has released two (2) Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on November 17, 2022. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.

      • TechTargetTop Kali Linux tools and how to use them

        Kali Linux is the operating system most frequently used by both ethical hackers and malicious hackers for almost every aspect of cybersecurity. Kali includes almost every imaginable hacking tool, which means learning to use it is a journey, not a simple skill that can be picked up watching a 10-minute tutorial.

        Based on the Debian Linux distribution, Kali includes hacking tools that can be used to carry out and defend against brute-force attacks, wireless attacks, IP spoofing attacks, reverse-engineering attacks, password cracking, dictionary attacks, phishing attacks, SQL injection and more.

        Other Kali tools are more aligned with ethical hackers using penetration testing tools, network security information gathering, vulnerability assessment, security testing and security auditing. As a general platform, it also enables cybersecurity professionals to take an offensive rather than a defensive security stance by actively detecting vulnerabilities.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • QtProduct-led Growth and Product Analytics, Can There Be One Without The Other? [Ed: Qt for surveillance]

          Product-led growth puts the product experience, both from a software and a hardware perspective, into the focus of the go-to-market strategy. Instead of planning sales and marketing operations around high-touch customer engagements and marketing campaigns, the digital and physical experience of the embedded device is such that customers proactively engage in the purchase process.

        • India TimesRejigged localisation rules in Data Protection Bill to ease worries of Big Tech companies

          Big Tech companies such as Meta Inc and Alphabet Inc may get some respite from a revised version of the Data Protection Bill, which is expected to permit the transfer and storage of data in “trusted geographies”.

          The government’s stance on data localisation is significantly different from the old version of the Bill, in which it had categorised data as personal, sensitive and critical.

          It had also said that certain categories of data would have to be necessarily stored in the country, while copies of other kinds would have to be retained within India for law enforcement purposes.

    • Finance

      • IBM Old TimerThe Disruptive Economics of AI

        In 2017, I attended a seminar by University of Toronto professor Avi Goldfarb on the economic value of AI. Goldfarb explained that the best way to assess the impact of a potentially transformative technology is to look at how the technology reduces the cost of a widely used function. Computers, for example, have dramatically reduced the cost of digital operations like arithmetic by several orders of magnitude. As a result, we’ve learned to define all kinds of tasks in terms of digital operations, e.g., financial transactions, inventory management, word processing, photography. Similarly, the internet has reduced the cost of communications and the Web has reduced the cost of access to information, which has led to a huge increase in applications based on communications and information, like music and video streaming, and digital media.

        Viewed through this lens, AI is essentially a prediction technology, and its economic impact is to reduce the cost and expand the number and variety of applications that rely on predictions. A key finding of Stanford’s 2022 AI Index report was that AI is becoming much more affordable and higher performing, leading to the widespread commercial adoption of AI-based applications. “Since 2018, the cost to train an image classification system has decreased by 63.6%, while training times have improved by 94.4%.,” said the report.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Twitter: first, consider human rights impacts

        Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, now owns one of our most vital communication platforms, and has taken control of Twitter’s privacy, freedom of expression, and content moderation. While there is great speculation about the future of the platform, very little is being said about the duties of the shareholders who agreed to sell, or of the financial institutions that backed the acquisition - and the impact their decisions are already having on the human rights of millions.

        [...]

        With the Twitter sale, their responsibility should have extended to the community of people - present and future - that relies on the platform as a tool for freedom of expression and assembly. So it is critical to examine whether these firms spent any time considering how their actions might impact the human rights of people who use Twitter across the globe.

        One of Musk’s obvious flags is his record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues at Tesla, which was excluded from the S&P 500 ESG Index, an industry standard on corporate responsibility, in part due to racial discrimination and fatal car crashes. Musk responded with, “ESG is a scam.” While ESG as a concept admittedly has a way to go, it is incredibly alarming that a manufacturer of electric cars - generally considered a very good thing for the E in ESG - was removed from the index over its poor performance in S and G.

        These issues at Tesla, coupled with Musk’s behavior on Twitter, should have been enough to ring alarm bells for Twitter shareholders.

        The United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the de facto standard for rights-respecting corporate behavior, require corporations - including institutional investors and asset managers - to conduct human rights risk assessments to identify how their operations impact others. The baseline is very simple: “do no harm.”

        The results of the Twitter takeover are already staggering. Within 12 hours of the completion of sale, there were reports of a massive increase of “antisemitic, homophobic, transphobic, and other racist terms”. In addition to mass layoffs - including of the human rights team - the check-and-balance that was the Board of Directors is now gone, and Musk’s planned subscription fees for verified accounts could lead to many people, particularly those outside of North America and Europe, disconnected.

      • Bruce SchneierFailures in Twitter’s Two-Factor Authentication System
    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • BBCAstronomer in Twitter limbo over 'intimate' meteor

        An astronomer from Oxfordshire was locked out of her Twitter account for three months after sharing a video of a meteor which was flagged by the site's automated moderation tools.

        Mary McIntyre was told that her six-second animated clip featured "intimate content", shared without the consent of the participant.

        Her only option was to delete the tweet.

        However, in doing so she would have had to agree that she had broken the rules.

        Her initial 12-hour ban went on for three months - and she exhausted the online appeals process.

        "It's just crazy... I don't really want it on my record that I've been sharing pornographic material when I haven't," she said of her refusal to delete the tweet.

        Her account was still visible, but Ms McIntyre couldn't access it.

        Following the BBC publishing this article, it has now been restored.

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • Public Domain ReviewA Pantomime and Masquerade: *Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London* (1716) – The Public Domain Review

          Burlesquing the Augustan era’s fixation on classical tradition, Gay renders practical advice for walking around London into oftentimes absurd verse.

        • Walled CultureTop EU court's advisor points out that geoblocks can be easily circumvented: time to get rid of them - Walled Culture

          One of the central ideas of both Walled Culture the blog and Walled Culture the book is that copyright simply doesn’t work in the digital world. One proof of that fact can be found in the ridiculous concept of geoblocks. This is the idea that you can carve up the Internet according to geography, such that somebody in one nation or region cannot access something that is meant for another country. This arises from Big Copyright’s desire to sell many smaller, local licences to material that add up to more than would be obtained by selling a global licence. That might have worked well with physical objects like books, which can be stopped at the border, but doesn’t work with the digital packets of the Internet, which can’t be stopped there.

          It’s true that there are various technical schemes for trying to block a person in the “wrong” geographical location from accessing material, notably by checking where they are sending their Internet packets from. But there is an easy way to circumvent such moves by using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). These essentially allow a user to appear to be in any country where the VPN has a local server, a so-called ‘exit node’. Although it is possible to block such nodes once they become known, they can easily be moved to different Internet addresses, so that the cat and mouse game begins again.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Pro tip for learning

        In order for this to work, you need to also get over the fear and hesitation associated with the thing. When I started learning finger picking nylon guitar, I couldn’t get the timing right and my fingers were cramping and it sounded so awful but because I knew I was allowed to put the guitar down at any time I never feared picking it up. I kept longing to pick it up. And I got it, not at a professional level but at a joy level, much faster than I ever could’ve dreamed of.

      • My Workstation

        Here is some advice on setting up an ergonomic workstation for very little money.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: EHKMWRO Wordo: THEIR
      • New House

        It's mid-November and we've been working on the mortgage and the renovation since January. It's a journey and we're almost done: the kitchen, pretty much the only missing piece, should arrive some time in December, and the leftovers won't take long.

      • Rules of Engagement

        My wife and I went to dinner the other day and we got to talking about our old college relationships. We met at work a few years after we'd both graduated; I think we've always been curious about that younger version of us. I've heard stories here and there, but that period of both our lives has missing spots, like a hazy strip of overexposed negatives on a roll of film.

      • Star Log 2022-11-16 Evening (Fairbanks, AK, US)

        Fairbanks is still in a high pressure zone with clear skies, sunny days, and cold nights. So last night I gave stargazing another try, late in the evening. This time I tried out the boat launch area on Chena Pump road, and I found the site to be very ideal, with less obstructions in all directions, some privacy away from the road, and dramatically less light pollution. It is still possible to see the glow from the city lights, but only in about 1/5th of the sky towards cardinal east. But the rest of the view was a glorious display of God's celestial creation.

    • Technical

      • Ubuntu Setup on a ThinkPad

        I have just set up my trusty old ThinkPad X1 Carbon 3rd gen (2015 vintage) with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. I have run OpenBSD on it for a long while, but emacs, among other things, play better with Linux, and Linux perform better on this laptop than OpenBSD. Ubuntu is the Linux distribution I am most at home with, so it's a perfectly boring choice for me, in the most positive way.

      • Decentralized Infrastructure

        Many projects have developed tools for decentralized communication, content distribution and even discovery protocols. One thing that remains highly centralized, however, is infrastructure. A few key companies own and control the telecom radio towers, the fiber cable tunnels, the communication satellites, the electrical substations, the cargo and passenger aircraft, and the container ships. Even amateur radio often relies on repeaters placed atop privately-owned skyscrapers and broadcast towers.

        One reason why I find self-sustainability so interesting is that it can help break reliance on infrastructure. By growing one's own fruits and vegetables, one doesn't have to buy produce from a megastore, while simultaneously adding nutrients back to the soil and capturing CO2 on a small scale. Rain barrels can save money and conserve water when used prudently. Renewable sources of energy, from wind turbines to solar power, cut down on carbon emissions in the long run.

      • Hard user separation with two NixOS as one



        This guide explains how to install NixOS on a computer, with a twist.

        If you use the same computer in different contexts, let's say for work and for your private life, you may wish to install two different operating systems to protect your private life data from mistakes or hacks from your work. For instance a cryptolocker you got from a compromised work email won't lock out your family photos.

      • Some Thoughts On Privacy

        I encountered what privacy is by coming to Linux and interacting with the people of the FOSS community. And It has taught me things that I would not have learned anywhere else. But when it comes to why we need privacy, and why losing some comfort is worth it, I quite can't teach or make it clear to people. I follow the practice to be private on the internet mostly because I agree with the people from the community. I learned about the Gemini protocol, the Fediverse, the Matrix protocol, self-hosting and many more concepts because of the community.

      • State of my headphone stash — Nov 2022

        It's the 1-gen ones (with permanent cable and regular-shaped oval casings), not the Live!2 ones (with detachable cable, and with a microphone inline on it).

        They serve me long. I ordered them back when still underage, from a guy who I know used to work in Polkomtel if it wasn't his current occupation even, doing recablings of these taken from repairshop returns, per orders from Allegro (a Polish online marketplace) offers.

      • Enabling a simple-but-good minibuffer completion experience in Enabling a simple-but-good minibuffer completion experience in Emacs

        I mentioned on [emacs.ch] that to use Emacs effectively, you don't actually have to memorize all of the cryptic multi-chord keybindings for every mode you use. If you know the basics, you can pretty much always do anything you need in just a few keystrokes using M-x and a decent minibuffer completion system. I recommended the lightweight completion stack of `vertico `, `marginalia `, `orderless `, and `prescient `, a set of packages that work well together and with Emacs' built-in completion systems. Someone requested that I post my config, and it took me a while to get to it, but here it is.

      • Emulators in Debian Buster and Bullseye

      • Programming

        • Regular Expression Alternation

          Causes of this bug are where the alternation is thrown together at random--and never tested nor reviewed, an all too common case--or where software automatically builds the alternation and that building software is buggy. The Data::Munge Perl module by contrast takes a number pains in the list2re function to get this right.


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



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perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025