Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 03/02/2023: Proton 7.0-6 Released, ScummVM 2.7 Testing



  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • DebugPointHow to Install elementary Tweaks Tool

        This quick tutorial demonstrates the steps to install elementary Tweaks tool/Pantheon Tweaks Tool. The elementary Tweaks tool is a handy utility specially designed for elementary OS. It gives you various options to change certain settings for elementary.

      • CitizixHow to install and configure Redpanda on Ubuntu 22.04

        Redpanda is a Kafka€®-compatible streaming data platform that boasts of being€ 10x faster and 6x more cost efficient. It is also JVM-free, ZooKeeper-free, Jepsen-tested and source available. It is distributed as a single binary with everything thus allowing you to deploy in minutes. It works natively with Kafka tools.

    • Games

      • ScummVMScummVM 2.7.0: Call for testing!

        A few months have passed since we released ScummVM 2.6.1. It's time to prepare for a new release!

        Our lovely developers added support, yet again, for a bunch of new ancient games that require testing:

        • Soldier Boyz
        • GLK Scott Adams Interactive Fiction games (C64 and ZX Spectrum)
        • GLK Scott Adams adventures 1-12 (TI99/4A format)
        • Obsidian
        • Pink Panther: Passport to Peril
        • Pink Panther: Hokus Pokus Pink
        • Driller/Space Station Oblivion
        • Halls of the Dead: Faery Tale Adventure II
      • 9to5LinuxProton 7.0-6 Released with Support for UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection

        Proton 7.0-6 is here with support for new games, including the critically acclaimed UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection, as well as Gotham Knights, Heroes of the Dark, King under the Mountain, NinNinDays2, Super Arcade Racing, 雀姬 (Mahjong ladies), and Crazy Machines 3.

        This new Proton release also brings improvements to video games that were already supported, such as Septerra Core, Persona 5 Royal, Vampire Survivors, Super House of Dead Ninjas, Enemy Mind, Out There Somewhere, Zeepkist, Overcooked! All You Can Eat, Quake III: Arena, Quake III: Team Arena, Marvel Snap, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Spyro Reignited Trilogy.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Make Use OfCarbonyl Lets You Use a Graphical Web Browser in Your Linux Terminal

        Browsing the internet in your terminal is cool, but limited. Image support can be sketchy, and JavaScript may as well not exist. If you plan on consuming media, you're out of luck.

        Carbonyl is a Chromium fork for your terminal. It's a full-fat browser that adheres to, and is compatible with modern standards, meaning that pages behave as they should, and you can even watch streaming video, within the Linux terminal!

  • Leftovers

    • World Economic ForumTech Power and Cooperation
    • Black Hand: The Devil Himself

      How an elite London night club fell under the control of an intelligence-linked sex blackmail agent, self-described satanist and antique dealer named Horace Dibben.

    • Federal News NetworkLauded rebel fashion designer Paco Rabanne dies at age 88

      Spanish-born fashion designer Paco Rabanne has died at age 88. The company that owns the Rabanne brand on Friday announced the death of the designer known for perfumes and metallic, space-age fashions. Fashion and beauty company Puig described Rabanne as a “visionary designer” and “among the most seminal fashion figures of the 20th century.” Rabanne’s fashion house shows its collections in Paris and is scheduled to unveil the brand’s latest ready-to-wear designs during the upcoming Feb. 27-March 3 fashion week. Coco Chanel reportedly called Rabanne “the metallurgist of fashion.” He used various kinds of metal in his designs, including the chain-like mail associated with Medieval knights.

    • LatviaOnly 400 Russian citizens have registered for Latvian language test

      This year, thousands of citizens of the Russian Federation residing in Latvia€ will have to pass a language test to extend their residency permits in Latvia. The Citizenship and Migration Affairs Office (PMLP) has intended to send out reminders to all these people, which has caused some controversy in€ society, Latvian Television reported on February 2.

    • Jim NielsenCORS, CORB, CORP, COOP, COEP, C…

      I recently watched“A Hipster History of CORS”, a talk from Strange Loop 2022 by Devdatta Akhawe, Head of Security at Figma. Devdatta does a great job of taking a complex, even boring, subject like CORS and weaves it into a funny, interesting narrative history. He connected many previously disparate dots in my head, making me go “Ah-ha! That’s why things are the way they are on the web.”

      For example, when working on myReadlistsproject, I ran into an issue where I couldn’t use JavaScript to read the contents of an image fetched from a third-party website. I couldn’t understand why there was a limitation there. “I fetch images all the time with<img src="...">but I guess JavaScript’s not gonna let me?”

    • AxiosOffice occupancy crosses 50%, a post-pandemic high [Ed: People are being herded back into cages in spite of health risks]

      Office occupancyhit a new post-pandemic record this week, at 50.4%, according to swipe data from Kastle Systems.

      Why it matters:Are the offices half-full or half-empty? Some executives might see crossing the 50% milestone as a sign of a comeback. But the figure has largely plateaued since September, hinting at a new reality where people work from home a lot more.

    • Marcy WheelerThe Rise Of Cities In Eurasia

      The earliest large settlements didn't have monarchs.

    • The Straits TimesSeoul city to crack down on teen use of ‘room cafes’

      These businesses provide private spaces and simple food, but some teenagers are reportedly using them for sex and booze.

    • The Straits TimesChina hotel, catering job openings surge on post-Covid demand recovery

      There’s also high demand now for drivers, plane and train crews, and tourism and factory workers.

    • The Straits TimesChina to fully resume travel with Hong Kong, Macau on Feb 6

      Group tours between China and Hong Kong and Macau will resume.

    • The Age AUThe easy work option might not always be the best

      Inevitably, any career decision comes with a degree of uncertainty and risk. It is often our appetite for certainty that can derail us.

    • The Age AUThe workplace rights of arts workers can no longer be ignored

      The Albanese government’s new Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces can strengthen the arts sector by improving the pay, safety and welfare of its workers.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Sitting in O'Hare

        The first part of my weekwas spent in Adams, Massachussets. I flew into Albany, New York on Sunday. Oddly, this location's scenery reminded me of Colorado around the Glennwood Springs/Aspen area. Not an exact match, but it reminded me of it strongly. It makes sense since this too is a ski area.

        I stayed in a high rise hotel. Odd since I was in the small town of Pittsfield. I never expect to see a high-storey building in a small town. This hotel was very hostile to its guests especially with the parking situation. The parking garage was closed "for renovations." I put that in quotes because there were no construction workers to be found the entire time I was there. The available parking was a block away at a bank. They "offered" valet service for the parking. I put that in quotes because the valet service started at 0730 and I had to be out and about before that every single day I was there.

      • Fountain Pens

        Recently I have gone fountain pen mad. It all started from seeing the Muji fountain pen. It is an aluminium affair which has a knurled pen grip area and feels very industrial chic. At a low low price of 18, it was a bit of a no brainer. Something clicked and I felt a need to find out more. Queue reading reviews and watching videos. Then I fell into the rabbit hole.

      • Album #165: Let's Stay Together

        Al Green pops up frequently enough on DJ Time Traveller's weekly radio show that I'm familiar-ish, but this was the first album I've listened to. It's starts strong and keeps going. His voice is versatile. The instrumentation never veers too far in to sappiness, nor does it ever really take centre stage. From start to finish, it’s a pleasure to listen to.

      • minimalism

        Perhaps one problem with minimalism isn't what it removes, but what it leaves: the computer, with all it's storage, and access to the internet. Don't get me wrong: I'm not one for rolling back the internet, but I am one for not being sucked into and controlled by the internet. How do we solve this?

      • Learn better

        Better learning is not reading a book in order it's going backwards in a course when you're not sure it's writing to the author when you think he's wrong It's summarising

    • Technical

      • Finally, I switched over to OpenBSD

        I have been wanting to move my daily driver over to one of the BSDs for some time now, I have written in the past about my experience's with FreeBSD [0]. At the time, the limiting factor was the hardware I was running and the issues that caused. However, now that I have the mini-pc new hardware I thought this would a good week to try it out. One evening I took the plunge, backed up $HOME on my current Alpine Linux setup and installed OpenBSD. It was super simple, and I was up and running in a shell within 15 minutes.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Getting rid of google: The *really* easy stuff and why I may have wrote my previous post a bit too fast

          So I haven't updated in a bit, but I still wanted to start things off by finishing my series of posts on getting rid of google and reduce internet surveillance.

          Here, I'll discuss hoping out of Youtube (well, more or less) and Gmail and explain where I really was too hasty last time, before giving some first thoughts on it all.

        • Zaibatsu downtime notice

          On Saturday the 11th of February, the Mare Tranquillitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu (zaibatsu.circumlunar.space) will be taken offline for an operating system upgrade. This phlog (and all the others hosted here!) will obviously be unavailable during this time. I will endeavour to keep the Gopher downtime as short as possible!

        • And into February

          I originally started this entry at 09:40 this morning, because I knew I'd be too tired this evening after work. Here I am finishing the entry at 21:27. It has been this way lately: finish work, have dinner, then tea, entertain two cats, and then it's time for bed. I must be getting old, because I'm usually awake quite early, therefore I go to bed early.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
 
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025
Slopwatch: Slopfarms All Over Google News and Real News Sites Pushed Out of Visibility
Google News is dying (as a tool of value)
Gemini Links 25/08/2025: Numeric-only VM and Alhena 5.3.0
Links for the day
Links 25/08/2025: ‘Panama Playlists’ and Live Nation/Ticketmaster Suit Aims at Class Action
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/08/2025: Empathy Towards Autistic People and Old Gadgets
Links for the day
Links 25/08/2025: Datacentres Versus Water Supplies and "The IPv6 Divide"
Links for the day
Links 25/08/2025: Data Breaches, Politics, and Financial Strain
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Distros Ought to Replace Firefox (and Firefox ESR) With Something Like LibreWolf
Perhaps it's come to replace Firefox
Father of Julian Assange Said the US Government Was Trying to Bankrupt WikiLeaks, Now the Assange Family Promotes Fake Currencies
Using the name for bad purposes?
Bailing Out GAFAM, Giving Taxpayers' Money to Failing Companies, and Trying to Outlaw Lawsuits Against Them
What would the late Lincoln have said?
Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Inc. Lost 2 Million Dollars Last Year and Its Chief Took a Salary Increase of Almost $6,000
Another year or two like this... and the SFC will be bankrupt [...] Hallmark of mismanagement
The "New Techrights" Turns Two Very Soon
Accomplishing something each year is what's important, not merely "finishing" another year
Gulf Nations Leave Microsoft Behind
How much lower will Microsoft stoop in an effort to raise money from oil-rich lenders?
How to Combat IRC Trolls (in Our Experience)
Today I want to share my experience (or knowledge) of how to deal with IRC trolls
The Register MS Needs to Stop Participating in the "Hey Hi" (AI) Hype, But It Gets Paid to Participate in This Hype
the publisher (The Register MS) wants to have it both ways
Gemini Links 24/08/2025: Living With Your Parents, Zürich Zoo, and Macondo
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 24, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 24, 2025
Gemini Links 24/08/2025: Signal on OpenBSD and Keyboard Layouts Compared
Links for the day
Men Who Abuse Women Should Never Spend Over 3 Years of the UK High Court's Time
This demonstrates that we need a reform in the UK
Links 24/08/2025: Microsoft Settles Data Breach Lawsuits and Climate Change Causes Heatwaves, Water Shortages
Links for the day
CachyOS is Rising Fast, But Slopfarms Are 'Googlebombing' It
CachyOS receives more media attention
No Reason for Red Hat Relief Yet (Layoff Rumours)
the execution could be stalled, delayed, or scheduled for some time after people come back from holiday
GNU/Linux 6%, Windows 60% in Venezuela, Suggests statCounter
The cash cows are dying
Mass Layoffs Continue at Microsoft This Month (Remaining Workers See Conditions That Deteriorate)
So far this month (one week remaining) we saw at least two waves of layoffs at Microsoft
How SPAM E-mails With Windows-Centric Files Get Twisted as Linux Threats, Then Slopfarms Spread the Word
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation
Links 24/08/2025: Heatwaves Threaten Workers, Maldives Versus Press freedom
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/08/2025: Digital Cameras and Printers
Links for the day
Links 24/08/2025: GAFAM Lie About Pollution and Slop's Carbon Footprint, The Guardian Says Slop ("Hey Hi") is a Bubble That Will Send Stock Markets Into a Freefall
Links for the day
80% of the Sponsored (Fake) Articles in The Register MS Are Promotions of Ponzi Schemes (Unethical Money), the Rest is Banned Chinese Business
Is that an ethical way to make money? No.
The UEFI Restricted Boot 'Time Bomb' is About to Go Off in a Few Weeks
Garrett was the first person to face sanctions (like muting) in our IRC channels because of his abuse; worse yet, he hijacked other people's names and then locked them out of their own accounts
Should Currys PCWorld Start Voiding Warranties of Users of Vista 11?
If a person's laptop has a mechanical issue, should this person replace GNU/Linux with Vista 11 for the repair shop? Only to damage the SSD?
Newer is Not Always Better, and It's Possible That 'Peak' is the Past
People creating their own platforms means progress, whereas centralisation (like moving from blogs to social control media) is the opposite of progress
LLM Hype is Sowing Destruction: It Contributes to DDoS Attacks and Makes the Web Less Accessible (JavaScript "R U Human?" Tests)
If it was googlebot, it would be possible to argue that you'd at least then get referral traffic from Google Search. With LLMs, all you get is plagiarised.
Links 24/08/2025: New York Times Talks About Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/08/2025: Upgrading Debian and Mobile-indifferent Design
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 23, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 23, 2025