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Links 21/10/2020: $8000 GNU/Linux Desktop, Tails 4.12, Open Infrastructure Foundation and Firefox Release



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Thelio Mega: The World’s Smallest Quad-GPU Deep Learning System
        Most quad-GPU workstations on the market right now use a generic chassis. It works if you want something just for storing components, but what you get is a machine that runs hot and slows down your system. That’s where Thelio Mega comes in.

        We’ve engineered Thelio Mega to ensure your top-line components perform to their fullest potential. Its thermals are actually two separate systems, as we found it more effective to divide and conquer. Unique airflows keep heat generated by the CPU and GPU from mixing, exhaust air effectively, and prevent throttling.

        Heat builds up quickly when you have up to 4 NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs stacked atop one another. Rather than use a single vent to cool the entire system, Thelio Mega uses intake fans on the bottom and side panels to blow cool air directly onto your GPUs. Everything down to the GPU brace has been tested for maximum thermal efficiency. The result is consistent access to every last core of performance in your system.

      • RTX 2080Ti vs RTX 3090 Machine Learning Benchmarks

        NVIDIA’s 2nd generation RTX architecture brings more performance for faster Machine Learning training. We tested four Geforce RTX 2080Ti GPUs against three Geforce RTX 3090 GPUs and found that three RTX 3090s performed similar or better than four RTX 2080Ti’s for most tests with the same batch size. The RTX 3090s offer faster training with larger batch sizes as well, thanks to the additional memory available in the RTX 3090. Three RTX 3090s were used, rather than four, due to their increased power requirements.

        The tests were conducted on the new Thelio Mega workstation from System76. Thelio Mega was engineered specifically for graphics compute intensive workloads.

      • System76 Thelio Mega is a quad-GPU Linux desktop powered by Ryzen Threadripper

        System76 began its life as a Linux computer seller only. Essentially, the company would sell re-branded laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed. To provide a class-leading experience, however, System76 also provided top-notch customer service, helping Linux beginners get started with a little hand-holding when needed. This focus on service continues today, and it is largely responsible for the company's success and longevity.

        Seeking to better control its own destiny, the company branched out from only being a computer-seller and transformed into a maker too. It's handcrafted Thelio desktops are powerful works of art, comprised of wood, metal, and good ol' fashioned American elbow grease. Yes, these Thelio machines are made in the USA -- Colorado, specifically.

        System76 has even created its own operating system -- the Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS, which has been very well received by the Linux community. This Linux distro will work on most computers -- not just Sytem76 machines. If you want vanilla Ubuntu, don't worry -- the company continues to offer that OS as an option when buying one of its computers.

      • System76 Launches The Thelio Mega With Threadripper + Four GPUs
        The System76 Thelio Major with AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3900 series is already a beast, but now this Linux PC vendor has managed to outdo themselves once again with the Thelio Mega.

        The System76 Thelio Mega is what the Colorado company calls "the world's smallest quad-GPU deep learning system". The Thelio Mega pairs the latest-generation AMD Ryzen Threadripper platform with up to four NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs to make for an incredibly powerful system.

      • System76 unleash a quad-GPU Linux monster with the 'Thelio Mega'
        What has four GPUs and could probably heat up your entire house? System76 have announced the Thelio Mega and it's absolutely ridiculous.

        System76 say that the Thelio Mega is the world's smallest quad-GPU workstation primarily made for deep learning and scientific computing. I'm sure that won't stop someone trying to play games with it though as this might be (probably is) the most powerful Linux desktop you can buy and it's gorgeous too.

      • System76 Launches Thelio Mega as World’s Smallest Quad-GPU Linux Workstation

        It took System76 almost a year to perfect the Thelio Mega, which they dub as a “LeMans hypercar” due to the advanced technologies and engineering that this new Linux-powered workstation includes, thus making it ideal for deep learning and scientific computing.

        The state-of-the-art thermal system in the Thelio Mega appears to be the thing that set it apart from other desktop computers. It comes with two separate thermal system, designed to keep the heat generated by the CPU and GPUs from mixing and to prevent throttling.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • From The Factory Floor | LINUX Unplugged 376

        We put the new Ubuntu 20.10 to the test, and chat with System76's Mechanical Engineer to get the secrets of the new Thelio Mega.

        Plus some important community news, feedback, picks, and more.

      • The COOLEST Linux Terminal App I've Ever Seen! - YouTube

        Say hello to a stunning, futuristic, Tron-inspired Terminal app for Linux, Windows and macOS that'll bring to life those hacker fantasies you had in the late 90s and early 2000s. It's also a fully functional system and resource monitor!

      • There Are Too Many "Real Life" Script Kiddies - YouTube

        Just another boomer rant about some of the people that annoy me in real life and on the interwebs. I'm talking about the "script kiddies". And not just about programming "script kiddies" but people that are "script kiddies" in all aspects of life.

      • Fd: Stop Using The Find Command And Try This - YouTube

        The find command on linux is great and all but it's quite slow, especially when searching over large directories like your home, but luckily there's better and faster alternatives that exist like fd which is written in rust and is the topic of today's video.

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux 5.10 Xen Brings Security Updates - Includes Fixing ARM Guests With KPTI - Phoronix

        The Xen virtualization work for the Linux 5.10 kernel revolves around security.

        Last week brought the initial Xen updates for the Linux 5.10 merge window which primarily consisted of fixes. The main change to point out though was a temporary fix for allowing Xen guests on ARM to work with Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) enabled. A more long-term fix is still being worked on for Xen support in KPTI-enabled ARM environments.

        The fix is around the VCPUOP_register_runstate_memory_area hypercall that under KPTI-protected guests would be passed an invalid virtual address, so the short term solution is to just avoid that call. ARM relies on Kernel Page Table Isolation as part of their mitigation against the Meltdown vulnerability on affected ARM Cortex processors, similar to the more well known usage on Intel processors.

      • XanMod Linux Kernel

        There is a new tool available for Sparkers: XanMod Linux Kernel Installer

        What is XanMod Linux Kernel?

        XanMod is a general-purpose Linux kernel distribution with custom settings and new features. Built to provide a stable, responsive and smooth desktop experience. The real-time version is recommended for critical runtime applications such as Linux gaming eSports, streaming, live productions and ultra-low latency enthusiasts. Supports all recent 64-bit versions of Debian and Ubuntu-based systems.


        [...]

        – GPLv2 license. Can be built for any distribution or purpose.

      • XFS Lands More Code For Linux 5.10 - "Even More Monumental" - Phoronix

        Last week saw the XFS file-system with Linux 5.10 support timestamps until the year 2486 rather than year 2038 and other improvements too. This week a second round of XFS work has landed for Linux 5.10.

        XFS maintainer Darrick Wong describes this week's file-system changes as "even more monumental than last week!"

        XFS developers are announcing that in the Year 2030 they intend to deprecate their Version Four (V4) file-system format -- thus users have a decade to upgrade to the newer V5 format. Making use of the newer on-disk format means better metadata validation, support reflink and online fsck, and this support for timestamp handling beyond the year 2038.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Mesa Just Got A Significant Performance Boost For Intel Tiger Lake Chips

          Intel's Kenneth Graunke has written a few patches for Intel Gen12+ graphics chips that boost graphics performance by one to twelve percent. Don't get too excited, it only applies to Intel Tigerlake and newer and they won't arrive in mainstream GNU/Linux distributions until Mesa 20.3 is released mid-December.

        • The Vulkan driver for Raspberry Pi 4 becomes official for Linux, merged into Mesa | GamingOnLinux

          In case you've missed what's been going on, the progress on proper Vulkan support for the Raspberry Pi 4 has been going really well. So well in fact, that it's been merged into the upstream Mesa project and so it's all a bit more official.

          Writing in a guest post on the official Raspberry Pi blog, Igalia's Iago Toral, who has been largely responsible for hacking away on the v3dv driver gave an update on the progress.

          [...]

          Plenty more still to be done, and as they said, passing tests is one thing but real-world use is another. I've no doubt people will find many ways to break it while it's still in development. That's part of the point of being official in Mesa now though, makes it vastly easy to try it. As a proud owner of a Raspberry Pi 4, it's going to be fun to see it in action with Vulkan now.

        • AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1 Is Released With A New Vulkan Extension And Three Game-Specific Fixes - LinuxReviews

          AMD has released a new version of their AMDVLK Vulkan driver for Linux with support for one new Vulkan extensions and game-specific fixes for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Second Extinction and X-plane. Performance is still overall worse than the AMD RAVD Vulkan driver that comes with Mesa 20.2.0 and performance is much worse in specific graphics benchmarks and image up-scaling.

          [...]

          AMDVLK's performance has long been sub-par compared to Mesa's RADV driver. That's the driver GNU/Linux distributions ship with, AMDVLK is optional. AMDVLK is much closer to the Windows-driver than Mesa's RADV and compatibility may be a reason to install the latest and greatest AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1 driver. Performance is, as you will see if you read on, not a reason to install it.

        • AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1 Released With Various Game Fixes - Phoronix

          AMD has issued their first open-source Vulkan driver code drop of the quarter with AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1.

          The main changes of AMDVLK 2020.Q4.1 are updating against the Vulkan API 1.2.156 revision and enabling support for VK_EXT_shader_image_atomic_int64. VK_EXT_shader_image_atomic_int64 allows for 64-bit integer atomic operations to work on images.

        • Arch Linux - News: nvidia 455.28 is incompatible with linux >= 5.9

          nvidia is currently partially incompatible with linux >= 5.9 [1] [2]. While graphics should work fine, CUDA, OpenCL, and likely other features are broken. Users who've already upgraded and need those features are advised to switch to the linux-lts kernel for the time being until a fix for nvidia is available.

        • Radeon Linux Driver Seeing "MALL" Feature For Big Navi - Phoronix

          The AMDGPU open-source Linux kernel graphics driver continues seeing work on next-generation GPU support around the forthcoming "Big Navi" GPUs.

          Building off the Sienna Cichlid support that has come together and made its debut for Linux 5.9, and has further improvements for the now in-development Linux 5.10 kernel, new patches are now surfacing as material that will eventually make its way into Linux 5.11 for release as stable in early 2021.

          One of these late feature additions for Sienna Cichlid is the "MALL" display feature. MALL in this context is the Memory Access at Last Level. This Memory Access At Last Level is a DCN 3.0 feature for enhancing power savings with the screen contents coming from the "MALL" when certain conditions are met. At least at this point the support is only enabled for Sienna Cichlid and not other variants like Navy Flounder.

        • NIR-To-TGSI Support Added To Mesa 20.3 - Phoronix

          Mesa 20.3 has merged a long work-in-progress patch series providing support for going from the modern NIR intermediate representation to TGSI as the conventional Gallium3D IR.

          The NIR-To-TGSI translation layer has been in the works for most of the year with hopes of using that to eventually kill the Mesa state tracker GLSL-to-TGSI code that is quite large and crusty. While RadeonSI, Iris, and the other larger Gallium3D drivers are making use of NIR for a while now, this NIR-to-TGSI path can help other Gallium3D drivers like Softpipe that still rely on TGSI. If getting rid of the GLSL-to-TGSI path, GLSL shaders would ultimately go through NIR and then translated to TGSI.

    • Benchmarks

      • A Quick Look At Ubuntu 20.04 LTS vs. 20.10 With The Core i9 10900K - Phoronix

        With Ubuntu 20.10 due for release this week I have begun testing near-final Ubuntu 20.10 builds on many more systems in the lab. Larger than our normal distribution/OS comparisons, here is the culmination of running hundreds of benchmarks (366 tests to be exact) under both Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with all available updates and then again on the Ubuntu 20.10 development state while testing on Intel Comet Lake. Aside from specific improvements for bleeding-edge hardware like Intel Tiger Lake performing better on Ubuntu 20.10 or when looking at cases like the Intel and Radeon graphics performance being better on Ubuntu 20.10 due to the newer Linux kernel and Mesa, for general CPU/system workloads the performance has largely been found to be similar to that of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. The other caveat is for workloads being built from source, Ubuntu 20.10 now ships with GCC 10 rather than GCC 9. GCC 10 doesn't normally yield any night-and-day differences in performance but in some cases for newer CPU microarchitectures there has been some improvements there or with features like LTO.

    • Applications

      • The 10 Best Linux Guitar Tools: The Guitarist’s Essential Toolkit

        Linux guitar tools are helping the guitarists for a long time. I always say that Linux is a great environment for music composers. Yet some people have different arguments. In their logic, Linux is not that useful for multimedia because of the lack of some popular paid tools. It’s a partial truth. But still, there are a lot of free Linux tools available for acoustics and mixing. You know the electric guitar completely relies on electronic devices and software. Even there are some great tuner and amp tools for the acoustic guitars also. As a music enthusiast, I love tinkering with these audio-related programs.

      • You can Surf Internet in Linux Terminal With These Command Line Browsers

        I’m guessing that you are probably using Firefox or a Chrome-based browser like Brave to read this article. Or, maybe, Google Chrome or Chromium.

        In other words, you are utilizing a GUI-based approach to browse the web. However, back in the days, people used the terminal to fetch resources and browse the web because everything was mostly text-based information.

        Even though you cannot get every information from a terminal now, you can still try the command line browsers for some text-based information and open a web page from the Linux terminal.

        Not just limited to that, but if you are accessing a remote server or stuck in a terminal without a GUI, a terminal web browser can prove to be useful as well.

        So, in this article, I will be mentioning some terminal based web browsers that you can try on Linux.

      • VirtualBox 6.1.16 Released with Full Support for Linux Kernel 5.9, Various Improvements

        The biggest news in VirtualBox 6.1.16 is the implementation of support for the latest and greatest Linux 5.9 kernel series. This support is offered for both Linux hosts and guests, which means that you’ll now be able to install VirtualBox on distributions powered by Linux 5.9, as well as to run distros that use Linux 5.9 as virtual machines.

        But wait, there are even more Linux improvements in VirtualBox 6.1.16. For example, this release comes with a workaround to improve the resizing of 32-bit virtual machines that use the VMSVGA graphics controller while avoiding the use of RandR 1.3 due to bugs causing hangs with the X server, as well as VMSVGA 3D support for Linux guests when using the Hyper-V hypervisor.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Btrfs on CentOS: Living with Loopback | Linux Journal

        The btrfs filesystem has taunted the Linux community for years, offering a stunning array of features and capability, but never earning universal acclaim. Btrfs is perhaps more deserving of patience, as its promised capabilities dwarf all peers, earning it vocal proponents with great influence. Still, none can argue that btrfs is unfinished, many features are very new, and stability concerns remain for common functions.

        Most of the intended goals of btrfs have been met. However, Red Hat famously cut continued btrfs support from their 7.4 release, and has allowed the code to stagnate in their backported kernel since that time. The Fedora project announced their intention to adopt btrfs as the default filesystem for variants of their distribution, in a seeming juxtaposition. SUSE has maintained btrfs support for their own distribution and the greater community for many years.

        For users, the most desirable features of btrfs are transparent compression and snapshots; these features are stable, and relatively easy to add as a veneer to stock CentOS (and its peers). Administrators are further compelled by adjustable checksums, scrubs, and the ability to enlarge as well as (surprisingly) shrink filesystem images, while some advanced btrfs topics (i.e. deduplication, RAID, ext4 conversion) aren't really germane for minimal loopback usage. The systemd init package also has dependencies upon btrfs, among them machinectl and systemd-nspawn. Despite these features, there are many usage patterns that are not directly appropriate for use with btrfs. It is hostile to most databases and many other programs with incompatible I/O, and should be approached with some care.

      • How To List Filesystems In Linux Using Lfs - OSTechNix

        Lfs is a commandline tool used to list filesystems in Linux system. Lfs is slightly a better alternative to "df -H" command.

      • How to Install Debian Linux 10.5 with MATE Desktop + VMware Tools on VMware Workstation - SysAdmin

        This video tutorial shows how to install Debian Linux 10.5 with MATE Desktop on VMware Workstation step by step.

      • How to Install Mageia Linux 7.1 + VMware Tools on VMware Workstation - SysAdmin

        This video tutorial shows how to install Mageia Linux 7.1 on VMware Workstation step by step.

      • How to install Krita 4.3.0 on Deepin 20 - YouTube

        In this video, we are looking at how to install Krita 4.3.0 on Deepin 20.

      • How to install PHP 7.4 in Ubuntu 20.04? | LibreByte

        PHP-FPM is used together with a web server like Apache or NGINX, PHP-FPM serves dynamic content, while the web server serve static content

      • How to install the Blizzard Battle.net on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install the Blizzard Battle.net on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

      • How to install the MGT GTK theme on Linux

        MGT is a modern theme that is based on the Materia GTK theme. It comes in 4 different colors (Grey, Semi-Dark, Light, and Dark) and brings the Google Material Design look that many Linux users love. In this guide, we’ll show you how to install the MGT GTK theme on Linux.

      • How to install the RavenDB NoSQL database on Ubuntu 20.04 - TechRepublic

        If you're looking to deploy a powerful NoSQL database on Linux, let Jack Wallen walk you through the process of installing RavenDB.

      • Implementing a self-signed certificate on an Ubuntu Server > Tux-Techie

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a self-signed certificate with OpenSSL on an Ubuntu 20.04 server and discuss its use cases.

      • How to Configure And Customize Openbox [Linux]

        Openbox is a great lightweight desktop manager for Linux, except that it can be a bit intimidating for the first time user. Here's a complete guide to configure and customize Openbox for new users.

      • 2 Ways to Upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 To Ubuntu 20.10 (GUI & Terminal)

        Ubuntu 20.10, codenamed Groovy Gorilla, will be released on October 22, 2020. This tutorial will be showing you 2 ways to upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 20.10.

      • 3 Ways to Power off Debian

        Along with many other routine tasks, Linux administrators also have to perform a safe shutdown or reboot. It seems the simplest task but should be done in a secure way. Our systems are continuously running processes. If the system is not properly powered off, files and processes will not safe closely, might result in corrupted files, and can leave your system in an unstable state. It is therefore advised to properly and securely power off the system.

      • Disowning a process in Linux | Network World

        When you disown a process in bash, you keep it from being terminated when you log out and allow it to finish on its own. This post shows how to use the disown command.

      • How to install Ubuntu Budgie 20.10 - YouTube

        In this video, I am going to show how to install Ubuntu Budgie 20.10

      • Install Lutris on Manjaro - LinuxConfig.org

        In this tutorial, we guide you through the process of installing Lutris on Manjaro, allowing you to play a lot of popular gaming titles on Linux.

      • How To Install Apache Kafka on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Kafka on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Kafka is the most popular open-source software that provides a framework for storing, reading, and analyzing streaming data. Kafka was originally developed by LinkedIn and to be open-sourced in early 2011 under Apache Software Foundation.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of Apache Kafka on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How To Install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 18.04 – TecAdmin

        Installing Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 18.04 with Apt. Two methods to install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 18.04 using PPA or Source code.

      • How to install ONLYOFFICE Workspace on Ubuntu

        This tutorial shows how to install the new ONLYOFFICE 6.0 Workspace on Ubuntu 20.04....

      • How to install and set up SeedDMS | Enable Sysadmin

        If you need a document management system that's quick and easy to set up, SeedDMS might be your solution.

      • How to install the Nextcloud server in Ubuntu 20.04 > Tux-Techie

        This tutorial shows how to set up a Nextcloud server on an Ubuntu install along with an overview of the latest Nextcloud features.

      • How to install WordPress in Ubuntu 20.04 > Tux-Techie

        In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Wordpress in Ubuntu 20.04. The prerequisites for this guide require an Ubuntu installation with a static IP assigned.

      • How to set up a Samba file server in Ubuntu 20.04 > Tux-Techie

        In this tutorial, we will set up a samba file server in Ubuntu 20.04 and access it in Ubuntu DDE. Share files across Linux, Windows, and Mac.

      • The four things you must be able to do in Vim | Enable Sysadmin

        A list of the four tasks that any Linux user should be able to accomplish when using the Vim text editor.

      • Marvell offers native NVMe SSD Raid 1 Accelerator > Tux-Techie

        Linux and windows open source tech guides and news. NVMe ssd raid 1 native support.

      • How to assign a Static IP address in Ubuntu DDE > Tux-Techie

        In this tutorial, we are going to focus on how to assign a static IP address in the DDE version of Ubuntu.

      • Creating LDAP accounts with phpLDAPadmin > Tux-Techie

        For this tutorial, you will first need to have an OpenLDAP server installed along with phpLDAPadmin. If you do not already have an OpenLDAP server setup, then check out this article to learn how to do so. In this tutorial, we will create a new user with an Organizational Unit named TestUser and the Posix Group named TestAccount. The user ID for this test account is btester.

      • Configuring Ubuntu Linux to authenticate to an LDAP server > Tux-Techie

        The prerequisites for this tutorial require an OpenLDAP server and a client-side system with Ubuntu Linux. To learn how to set up your own OpenLDAP server, check out this article.

    • Games

      • Get some thrills on in the latest Humble Bundle with DUSK and Detention | GamingOnLinux

        Need to boost your library ready for Halloween? Humble Bundle are back with some cheap thrills for you. As usual, we will highlight those with Linux support / Linux builds in bold text to make it easy at a glance.

      • Stadia gets PAC-MAN 64-player Battle Royale, Jedi: Fallen Order soon and HUMANKIND beta | GamingOnLinux

        When Google started hyping up three days of announcements and demos, it has probably disappointed many that the first day was PAC-MAN.

        That's right, after Stadia got an exclusive Bomberman Battle Royale, it's now getting PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle, a 64-player last-pac standing game. There's a demo available right now, which anyone can register for a Stadia account to hop in and try it (Stadia Pro not needed). Surprisingly, it's actually pretty good. Sounds like it might be Stadia exclusive at release too on November 17.

      • The latest horror from Frictional Games with Amnesia: Rebirth is out now | GamingOnLinux

        Frictional Games have now released their latest horror title with Amnesia: Rebirth, as you walk in the shoes of Tasi and guide them through an emotional experience.

        Using the same game engine as their previous game SOMA, which they call HPL3, Amnesia: Rebirth is a horror game that focuses on the journey as much as the end. It's all about the narrative and sinking into the thick atmosphere, Frictional say to not go in aiming to beat it but rather to immerse yourself in the world. Rebirth has a direct connection to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, however it's a fully stand-alone experience so you don't actually need to have played any others.

      • Steam Proton Updated To 5.13 Making Red Dead Redemption 2 Playable On Linux

        Linux users are simply some of the most stubborn users in the world, willing to forgo almost any convenience in exchange for keeping themselves both secure, and in absolute control of their operating system.

        Whereas Microsoft has attempted to further dummy-proof Windows 10 (bringing about a disastrous ‘software as a service’ routine with consistent updates and changes to everything with little to no warning), Linux is on the far other end of the spectrum where files and configurations rely a bit more on the user understand what they’re doing, rather than intelligent installers doing the necessary heavy lifting.

        If it’s a toss-up between the two, Linux is strongly recommended for the more tech-savvy users. If you’re keener, however, to ensure that you can play all of the latest games and popular tools, then Windows is likely the answer even with its arguably draconian policies and bloat-ware shoveling.

      • X11 display server progress report

        I'm Camille, aka PouleyKetchoupp. I use Godot as an indie game developer (Nekomatata) and I've been a Godot contributor for a while (Github). Recently I was hired to work as a contractor on fixes and improvements for the Linux port of Godot 4.

        Most of the work was dedicated to fixing regressions due to the new Display Server used for window management, which allows support for multiple windows. I've also spent some extra time fixing old issues we had with X11 which required some refactoring in how the engine communicates with the X server. Some of them will be available in a later Godot 3.2 release as well.

        In this post I'm summarizing all the changes I've made in the X11 Display Server, in order to (hopefully) clarify how the X server works and how Godot communicates with it.

      • Godot Engine to get improved Linux support in the upcoming Godot 4 release | GamingOnLinux

        While the free and open source game engine Godot Engine already has Linux support, for both exported games and the full editor, it's set to get even better in Godot 4.0.

        In a blog post written by Camille Mohr-Daurat, they mentioned how they've been hired by the Godot team to work as a contractor on fixes and improvements for the Linux port of Godot. Camille Mohr-Daurat is an indie developer who actually uses Godot too at Nekomatata, where they created the unique ping-pong battler Punch Pong. So this is a real fun example of open source in action.

        Godot 4.0 will be coming with a new windowing system, so that you can separate parts of the Godot Engine editor from the main window. A lot of their work is focused on ensuring that works great on Linux with X11, which seems like there's a lot of work involved, because there's places where X11 doesn't have APIs to handle things where it does on other platforms like Windows and macOS - with drag and drop between windows being one mentioned example they've had to solve directly.

      • Lutris game launcher has a huge new Beta update out for testing | GamingOnLinux

        Lutris is the impressive all-in-one solution for managing games on Linux, bundling tons of sources of Linux releases from different stores under one roof as well as emulators, compatibility layers and more.

        Just recently on October 19 they put up the Beta of the new 0.5.8 release, and it includes some pretty huge changes and improvements all across the application. The way it actually works under the hood has been completely changed in many ways, along with the way you add games to it.

        Instead of manually importing games, it now attempts to sync up with your library across other stores like GOG, Humble and Steam. Adding games from the Lutris website using their scripts to set things up is also now in its own section, just called Lutris and it no longer depends on having install scripts for 3rd party services as Lutris will now run stuff with an "auto-generated" script but scripts on the Lutris database will take precedence if available

      • XCOM-ish combat and HOMM-styled world exploration Fort Triumph has a major update and sale | GamingOnLinux

        Possibly one of my favourite strategy game releases of 2020, Fort Triumph blends together XCOM styled combat with HOMM (Heroes of Might and Magic) exploration into quite a gem that doesn't take itself too seriously.

        What makes it fun is the environment interactions during battles, as you push rocks and drop trees onto enemies - it never gets old. It appears the team at CookieByte Entertainment have been busy too, with a huge free first post-release content upgrade out now.

        They've added in 27 new locations/events to the world map, and with some of these encounters you can add/remove traits from your heroes. Some of these encounters mix up the combat too, with some being unique Physics-only battles where you can only move around parts of the environment and not use normal abilities which sounds pretty hilarious.

      • KeeperRL, the open source dungeon building sim is getting a price bump in November | GamingOnLinux

        Fancy becoming a dungeon master? Well, if you're watching the pennies you might want to go and pick up KeeperRL before they price gets bumped up.

        This excellent open source building sim that mixes in RPG and roguelike elements has a lot to like about it, and it's been continually improved over 7 years now. Since it's had a lot added to it, and the developer has been working almost full time on it, they're going to be increasing the price from $14.99 to $20 on November 15. Plenty of notice if you were thinking about picking it up.

        Keep in mind they also said there will be no discounts planned until the big 1.0 release, so it's not going to be cheaper again any time soon.

      • Ampersat is an upcoming hack and slash shooter where everyone is ASCII | GamingOnLinux

        Mixing together ASCII characters and enemies, along with a full colour world, the hack and slash shooter Ampersat seems like a rather unique blend. A little weird too, with styles that usually clash and don't make sense together. You're the "at sign", the ampersat, and enemies are also these flat characters yet the world is 3D and full of colour. It looks bizarre but it works.

        Solo developer Gaterooze, Ink mentioned it was inspired by elements of Gauntlet and Smash TV to Zelda and a dash of Angband that "distils some favourite childhood gaming experiences into a fresh, fun hybrid that sees you killing a lot of monsters, finding a lot of loot, freeing captured letters and growing from a world-weary warrior mage into a powerful smashing/blasting machine".

      • Free copy of Europa Universalis II on GOG, with a huge Paradox Interactive sale going on | GamingOnLinux

        Paradox Interactive are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Europa Universalis series so they're giving away Europa Universalis II and putting a bunch of other games on sale.

        For the free game, simply head to GOG.com and find the big banner. It doesn't support Linux like Paradox's later games, since it's a proper classic from way back in 2001 but you can try your luck with the Wine compatibility layer if you really want it.

      • Try the demo for Pyramid Plunge, a lighthearted platformer with a really odd couple | GamingOnLinux

        Ah yes, dangerous ancient pyramids with traps and deadly creatures, why not let a totally unprepared couple explore it? That's what you're doing in Pyramid Plunge as you run, carry your partner, fart to get airtime are more.

        The result is actually quite hilarious, mixing together challenging random generation with a sprinkle of comedy from the two wildly different characters that have a bit of banter between them like a true couple would. You don't see many platformers come along like this, what joy.

      • Proton: The Native Port Killer?

        The thrill surrounding the announcement of Street Fighter V coming to Linux was real. It was a few years after SteamOS was announced. After years of silence, fans started to doubt that this was becoming a reality. It wasn’t until two years after the initial release of Proton that Valve started to work with Capcom to try and make the Windows version compatible with Linux. Some people are still salty that it took this long to get here, and even more upset that this isn’t a native port. On the other hand, fans like myself are pleased that Valve/Capcom held to their word, even though they may have compromised a bit by making it Proton-compatible.

        The same goes for Rocket League. End-users like myself naturally get upset when delays happen, even though we don’t understand what it’s like to be on the developer’s side. Several months came and went after the original announcement, and finally the Mac and Linux versions of the game went live on Steam. Fast forward a few years later, and Psyonix decides to drop the ball for said versions, leaving it up to Proton to pick up the slack on Linux and bootcamp for Mac OS. Don’t even get me started on the fact that they basically abandoned support on Steam altogether in favor of the Epic Crap Store.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • Linux themes update for October 2020

        Hello there and welcome to LinuxH2O. I’m continuing with the Linux themes update for the month. It’s October 2020 now so let’s see what do we have got here.

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDE Plasma 5.20.1 – First Point Release is Here

          KDE Plasma 5.20 was released last week and it came with a couple of bugs. So, to address those the KDE team announced the first maintenance update on the 5.20 series i.e. KDE Plasma 5.20.1.

        • KDE Plasma 5.20 Desktop Gets First Point Release, 45 Changes Included

          KDE Plasma 5.20.1 is here only a week after the launch of KDE Plasma 5.20, which is one of the biggest and most polished releases of all time, to fix various annoyances or issues that might block the Plasma desktop from functioning correctly.

          There are several Wayland fixes in this first point release to prevent the session from crashing when killing XWayland, correctly clip the mouse cursor clip, and forcing windows to re-open in the same state they were before being closed.

        • KD Chart 2.7.2 released!

          KDAB has released KD Chart 2.7.2, the final release in the KD Chart 2.7 series. This is a very minor release; however, it’s significant in that it may be the final release of KD Chart that will support Qt 4.

          KD Chart is a comprehensive business charting package with many different chart types and a large number of customization options. We are constantly improving the package, and have been doing so for years.

        • TSDgeos' blog: Make sure KDE software is usable in your language, join KDE translations!

          Translations are a vital part of software. More technical people often overlook it because they understand English well enough to use the software untranslated, but only 15% of the World understands English, so it's clear we need good translations to make our software more useful to the rest of the world.

          Translations are a place that [almost] always needs help, so I would encourage you to me (aacid@kde.org) if you are interested in helping.

          Sadly, some of our teams are not very active, so you may find yourself alone, it can be a bit daunting at the beginning, but the rest of us in kde-i18n-doc will help you along the way :)

    • Distributions

      • BSD

      • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

        • Extra! Extra! KDE Plasma updated to 5.20.1

          KDE Plasma has been updated to 5.20.1 which is a bug fix update for the recently released 5.20.0. This update should arrive shortly in the software repository for those using the KDE Plasma desktop. Enjoy!

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Node.js 15 release: Updated handling of rejections, npm 7, N-API Version 7, and more – IBM Developer

          Users can plan for a new release every April and October, with the latest even-numbered release (14.x, in this instance) being promoted to LTS in October. Since the 15.x release is an odd-numbered release, it won’t be promoted to LTS. The predictable timetable for quality releases has increased adoption of the next LTS release over time. In general we recommend that only LTS releases be used for production deployments.

          Today, the Node.js community is releasing Node.js 15 with new features that are important to Node.js users and customers. While it won’t be promoted to long-term support (LTS), we need our customers and the greater ecosystem to try it out and give us feedback to help pave the way for the Node.js 16 release.

        • Key findings from IDC Red Hat Quarkus Lab Validation

          Recently, Arnal Dayaratna, a research director and analystocused on Software Development at IDC, explored Quarkus in an IDC Lab Validation report, sponsored by Red Hat. The report quantifies performance metrics forQuarkus to another widely used Java framework for cloud-native development, referred to throughout as Framework A. The comparison is based on attributes that are important for developers and the developer experience, as well as those that are important for containers, Kubernetes and cloud deployments.

        • Accelerated development cycle enables Macquarie deployments in near real time, addressing business and technical challenges

          As companies continue their quest for digital transformation and face uncertainty in the business environment, especially in current times, the ability to react in an agile manner to address customers’ needs is increasingly apparent. It is a proven strategy cited by industry research and consulting firms, and has delivered results for Macquarie’s Banking and Financial Services Group (BFS), as it modernizes its legacy banking systems.

        • IBM Launches Call For Code For Racial Justice [Ed: IBM trying to flip reality on its head]

          These include Police & Judicial Reform and Accountability; Diverse Representation; and Policy & Legislation Reform.

      • Debian Family

        • Tails 4.12 Anonymous OS Is Out with Linux Kernel 5.8, Latest Tor Updates

          Tails 4.12 is here three weeks after Tails 4.11 and it’s the first release of the Debian-based amnesic incognito live system to ship with the Linux 5.8 kernel series. Of course, the firmware packages have been updated as well to provide users with better newer hardware support, making Tails run on more computers.

          On top of that, Tails is now based on the Debian GNU/Linux 10.6 “Buster” operating system. Tails’ purpose is to keep you safe and protect your privacy when surfing the Internet or accessing various other online services. At its core, the distribution relies on the Tor technologies for anonymous and encrypted communication.

        • Tails 4.12 is out

          This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

        • TrueNAS R-series hyperconverged appliances blend storage and compute

          Today, storage vendor iXsystems is launching a new R-series hyperconverged infrastructure appliance for its TrueNAS product line—and the first alpha release of TrueNAS SCALE, a Debian Linux-based version of the TrueNAS storage distribution.

          The new R-series appliances are designed to run either traditional, FreeBSD-based TrueNAS, or the new Debian-based TrueNAS SCALE. The series launches with four models—all rack-mounted—ranging from the 1U, 16-bay TrueNAS R10 to the up to 12U, 52 bay TrueNAS R50. All four models offer Ethernet connectivity up to dual 100GbE, as well as optional dual 32Gb Fibre Channel and Intel Xeon CPUs. The three larger models are expandable via separate JBOD shelves as well.

        • Petter Reinholdtsen: Buster based BokmÃ¥l edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook

          I am happy to report that we finally made it! Norwegian Bokmål became the first translation published on paper of the new Buster based edition of "The Debian Administrator's Handbook". The print proof reading copy arrived some days ago, and it looked good, so now the book is approved for general distribution. This updated paperback edition is available from lulu.com. The book is also available for download in electronic form as PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, and can also be read online.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Trisquel 9 LTS Finally Released with Download Links, Mirrors and Torrents

          We are pleased to welcome the long awaited Trisquel 9 LTS. This is the free computer operating system for everyone mostly suitable to replace Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS for daily purposes and server. Codenamed Etiona and based upon stable base Ubuntu 18.04, Trisquel, at Friday 16 October 2020, it announces availability for desktop and server plus for old and modern computers. The new big thing is that now it features a KDE edition called Triskel. This list delivers all the download links plus computer vendors where you can purchase PCs or laptops with Trisquel.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Over 60 Global Organizations Join in Establishing ‘Open Infrastructure Foundation’ to Build the Next Decade of Infrastructure for AI, 5G, Edge
      • OpenStack Foundation Becomes Open Infrastructure Foundation

        The OpenStack Foundation is changing its name to the Open Infrastructure Foundation (OIF), a move that mirrors the rebranding of the project’s OpenStack Summit to Open Infrastructure Summit. The changes, according to the press release, reflect “an expansion of the organization’s mission, scope and community to advance open source over the next decade to support open infrastructure.”

        As Frederic Lardinois reports for TechCrunch, the OpenStack project itself, “which helps enterprises run their private cloud, found its niche in the telecom space, though, and continues to thrive as one of the world’s most active open source projects.” Last week, OpenStack released a new major version (called Victoria), which includes more than 20,000 code changes.

      • 10 Years of OpenStack – Ghanshyam Mann at NEC

        Happy 10 years of OpenStack! Millions of cores, 100,000 community members, 10 years of you.

        Storytelling is one of the most powerful means to influence, teach, and inspire the people around us. To celebrate OpenStack’s 10th anniversary, we are spotlighting stories from the individuals in various roles from the community who have helped to make OpenStack and the global Open Infrastructure community successful.

        [...]

        What advice do you have for the Stacker community and other growing open source communities based on your experience with OpenStack?

        I have my team working in different open source communities and discuss daily on how each community works and solves the issue. Based on that, I found the OpenStack community is more open and transparent (our four opens strength). We might not be perfect but we are definitely one of the best open source communities.

        There is no specific advice as such, but I will suggest keep doing the same and never compromise on defined four opens principles.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Firefox 82 Is Released With Four High-Impact Security Fixes

            Mozilla Firefox 82 is faster on websites using flex CSS layout, there's a new picture-in-picture button that you may or may not find annoying enough to disable and there's four high-impact and two medium-impact security fixes. There's no performance improvement in synthetic benchmarks.

          • Firefox 82 Released with Picture-In-Picture Improvements, 17% Faster Session Restore

            Firefox 82 isn’t a major update, but it brings a few enhancements to the Picture-In-Picture mode, which now has a new look and position to make it easier for users to access it and use it when watching videos, and further enhances the Pocket integration by letting users explore new articles when saving a webpage from the Firefox toolbar.

            Most of the improvements in Firefox 82 are under the hood, making the free and open-source web browser more faster on both page loads and start up time. For example, Firefox is now up to 17% faster when restoring a session, and up to 20% faster when loading websites that use flexbox-based layouts.

          • Firefox 83 Enters Beta with HTTPS-Only Mode, WebRender Support for Intel Gen12 GPUs

            Scheduled for release next month on November 17th, the Firefox 83 web browser comes with a new security feature that was supposed to land in a previous version. It’s called HTTPS-Only Mode and will be available in the Privacy & Security tab under Preferences.

            The HTTPS-Only Mode provides a secure and encrypted connection between your web browser and the websites you visit, even if they don’t use HTTPS. While most websites already support HTTPS, when HTTPS-Only Mode is enabled Firefox will upgrade all connections to use HTTPS.

          • Firefox 82 Released with Faster Page Loading, Picture-In-Picture Improvements
            Firefox web browser 82.0 was released today with improved picture-in-picture, faster page loading and start-up time.

          • Coming through with Firefox 82
            As October ushers in the tail-end of the year, we are pushing Firefox 82 out the door. This time around we finally enable support for the Media Session API, provide some new CSS pseudo-selector behaviours, close some security loopholes involving the Window.name property, and provide inspection for server-sent events in our developer tools.

            This blog post provides merely a set of highlights; for all the details, check out the following...

          • Firefox 82 Released With Performance Improvements, Video Playback Enhancements
            Firefox 82.0 is now available as the latest release of Mozilla's web browser that continues on their expedited release cycles.

            Performance work in Firefox 82.0 includes faster page loads and start-up times. Websites using Flexbox-based layouts should see around a 20% speedup, session restoration should be about 17% quicker, and Windows users see new windows about 10% quicker. WebRender also continues rolling out to more Firefox users.

            Firefox 82 also brings multiple picture-in-picture improvements for video playback, screen reader improvements, security fixes, the MediaSession API is now enabled by default, and other enhancements.

          • Firefox 82.0 and ESR 78.4.0

            Firefox 82.0 has been released, with improvements "that make watching videos more delightful" and improved performance. Firefox ESR 78.4.0 is also available with various stability, functionality, and security fixes. See the release notes (82.0, 78.4.0) for details.

          • Marking issues as regressions

            The Rust project gets many issues filed every day, and we need to keep track of them all to make sure we don't miss anything. To do that we use GitHub's issue labels feature, and we need your help to make sure we fix regressions as soon as possible!

            We have many issue labels that help us organize our issues, and we have a few in particular that mark an issue as a regression. These labels will ping a Rust working group called the prioritization working group, whose members will work to determine the severity of an issue and then prioritize it. But, this won't happen unless someone marks the issue with one of those labels!

          • New Contributors, Firefox 82 – about:community

            With Firefox 82 hot off the byte presses, we are pleased to welcome the developers whose first code contributions shipped in this release, 18 of whom were new volunteers!

          • Defining Data Intuition

            Last week, one of my peers asked me to explain what I meant by "Data Intuition", and I realized I really didn't have a good definition. That's a problem! I refer to data intuition all the time!

            Data intuition is one of the three skills I interview new data scientists for (along with statistics and technical skills). In fact, I just spent the first nine months of 2020 building Mozilla's data intuition. I'm really surprised to realize I can't point to a good explanation of what I'm trying to cultivate.

          • Five-Year Moziversary – chuttenblog

            In team news, Georg’s short break turned into the neverending kind as he left Mozilla late last year. We gained Michael Droettboom as our new fearless leader, and from my perspective he seems to be doing quite well at the managery things. Bea and Travis, our two newer team members, have really stepped into their roles well, providing much needed bench depth on Rust and Mobile. And Jan-Erik has taken over leadership of the SDK, freeing up Alessio to think about data collection for Web Extensions.

            2020 is indeed being the Year of Glean on the Desktop with several projects already embedding the now-successful Glean SDK, including our very own mach (Firefox Build Tooling Commandline) and mozregression (Firefox Bug Regression Window Finding Tool). Oh, and Jan-Erik and I’ve spent ten months planning and executing on Project FOG (Firefox on Glean) (maybe you’ve heard of it), on track (more or less) to be able to recommend it for all new data collections by the end of the year.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • LibreOffice Math Guide 7.0 is Published - The Document Foundation Blog

          The Documentation Team is happy to announce the publication of the Math Guide 7.0, the latest update of the guide based on the recently released LibreOffice 7.0, the best open source office suite ever.

          The effort was mostly carried by Rafael Lima and reviewed by Jean H. Weber. The new guide covers were designed by Rizal Mutaqin and Drew Jensen. The final publication was carried by Olivier Hallot.

        • Tender to finish transition of LibreOffice to ODF 1.3 (ODF 1.3 delta) (#202010-01)

          The Document Foundation (TDF) is the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free/libre open source (FLOSS) office suite LibreOffice.

          We are looking for an individual or company to finish transition of LibreOffice to ODF 1.3 (ODF 1.3 delta).

        • The Document Foundation Is Looking To Finish ODF 1.3 Support In LibreOffice - Phoronix

          The ODF 1.3 Open Document Format specification was approved by the OASIS Committee at the start of the year and now as we approach the end of the year The Document Foundation is hoping to see ODF 1.3 support completed soon for this leading open-source office suite.

          The Document Foundation is now soliciting bids from developers / third-party firms to finish up the ODF 1.3 document support in LibreOffice.

      • CMS

        • News – WordPress 5.6 Beta 1 – WordPress.org

          WordPress 5.6 Beta 1 is now available for testing!

          This software is still in development, so we recommend that you run this version on a test site.

          [...]

          The current target for final release is December 8, 2020. This is just seven weeks away, so your help is needed to ensure this release is tested properly.

      • Programming/Development

        • Git's move away from SHA-1: Version 2.29 brings experimental SHA-256 support
          The latest version of Linus Torvalds' Git version-control system brings experimental support for the SHA-256 cryptographic hash, moving it away from its reliance on the less safe SHA-1.

          Google and other researchers in 2017 showed that the SHAttered SHA-1 collision attack made it cheaper than previously thought to cause a SHA-1 collision. That is, when two files, in that case two PDFs with different content, were represented by the same SHA-1 hash value.

        • 9 Benefits of Laravel Framework for Cost-Effective Web Development - LinuxTechLab

          The success of any business depends on its ability to work quickly and with high quality. Nowadays, business development is so fast that many companies simply can’t keep up and leave the race.

          Thus, every business needs a framework that can handle the desirable high speed of work. Laravel is among such frameworks. Let’s find out what Laravel is and what the benefits of the Laravel framework for business are.

        • COBOL’s Enduring Usefulness and Digital Transformation

          These days, it’s difficult to imagine anything untouched by disruptive change, and the same applies to our IT systems. Regardless of the current setting, there are certain critical systems that simply cannot afford to fail. These are the systems that deliver too much value for organizations to be ripped out and replaced. In most cases, a business has made substantial investments in their systems over time, including the development of additional IP and processes to support it. These core systems continue to enable real benefits, and ripping them out and starting from scratch has the potential to put critical revenue at risk.

        • New Training Course Provides a Deep Dive Into Node.js Services Development

          The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the availability of a new training course, LFW212 – Node.js Services Development.

        • Qt 6.0 Beta Released

          There is a huge number of things to talk about when it comes to the features and functionality of Qt 6.0, so I will leave this to the multiple detailed blog posts about Qt 6.0. We have already published many blog posts about all the cool things Qt 6.0 provides, and will continue to publish more blog posts throughout the year. In the upcoming Qt World Summit Online we have lined up many interesting talks about Qt 6.0, so please join to hear more.

        • Qt 6.0 Beta Released For This Big Toolkit Update - Phoronix

          Qt 6 drops Qt Script, temporarily removes Qt Multimedia/Bluetooth/Virtual-Keyboard modules until later Qt6 releases, introduces a major overhaul to their graphics architecture to better support Vulkan and other modern graphics APIs like Metal and Direct3D 12, various other 3D improvements, next-generation QML, various tooling improvements, updated host/platform support, and more.

          Going from Qt5 to Qt6 should mean much less breakage and changes compared to the prior Qt4 to Qt5 transition. Qt 6 adoption though likely won't tick up until well into 2021 or even 2022 with the first long-term support release not being until Qt 6.2 LTS and due to time/resource constraints several modules not being ported in time for Qt 6.0 but coming later.

          More details on today's Qt 6.0 Beta via Qt.io.

        • Python

  • Leftovers

    • Glück Glück Glück

      They say what they want Is law and order — Either pleonasm or oxymoron — Though, really, they only want order By which they mean murder

      And some folks believe That a murder of crows Should henceforth be known As crow crews

    • Hardware

      • Intel: replace thermal compound “every few years”

        Thermal compound (sometimes called thermal paste or grease) is applied to fill minuscule gaps in the materials in the heat spreader (the metal covering on top of the processor) and the heatsink. Eliminating these gaps is essential to ensuring efficient heat transfer into the heatsink.

        The thermal compound that is used in your computer generally won’t go bad or degrade in its useful lifespan. It will get displaced over time, however. You’d need higher temperatures than what you’ll typically find in a computer for other failure modes to come into effect.

        The displacement is caused by thermal cycling that results in an effect known as “thermally induced pump-out.” As the components heat up and cool down, the processors’ heat spreader (its metal top) and the heatsink will expand and contract. This effect will, over time, pump the thermal compound out from in between the two metal plates. You can find illustrations and a more technical explanation in the source links below.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Videoconferencing Malware, Vizom, Discovered [Ed: Wrong. Zoom itself is malware and they admit having back doors.]

            It was probably only a matter of time before the cyber attackers hit videoconferencing software in 2020. Apps such as Zoom had a bona fide boon this year because of the world health crisis. Researchers discovered a new form of malware that uses remote overlay attacks to hit Brazilian bank account holders who use videoconferencing software.

            [...]

            Phishing campaigns spread Vizom, disguising it as Zoom. Once the malware accesses a Windows computer, it hits the AppData directory to start infecting the system. Using DLL hijacking, it tries to force malicious DLLs to be loaded, using names the attackers believe are on the software directories for the Delphi-based variants.

          • Combating abuse in Matrix - without backdoors.

            Last Sunday, the UK Government published an international statement on end-to-end encryption and public safety, co-signed by representatives from the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India and Japan. The statement is well written and well worth a read in full, but the central point is this:

            We call on technology companies to [...] enable law enforcement access to content in a readable and usable format where an authorisation is lawfully issued, is necessary and proportionate, and is subject to strong safeguards and oversight.
            In other words, this is an explicit request from seven of the biggest governments in the world to mandate a backdoor in end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) communication services: a backdoor to which the authorities have a secret key, letting them view communication on demand. This is big news, and is of direct relevance to Matrix as an end-to-end encrypted communication protocol whose core team is currently centred in the UK.

            Now, we sympathise with the authorities’ predicament here: we utterly abhor child abuse, terrorism, fascism and similar - and we did not build Matrix to enable it. However, trying to mitigate abuse with backdoors is, unfortunately, fundamentally flawed.

          • Security updates for Tuesday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (python-flask-cors), Fedora (kleopatra, nextcloud, and phpMyAdmin), Gentoo (ark, libjpeg-turbo, libraw, and libxml2), openSUSE (bind, kernel, php7, and transfig), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-alt, kernel-rt, rh-python36, virt:8.1 and virt-devel:8.1, and virt:8.2 and virt-devel:8.2), and Ubuntu (collabtive, freetype, linux, linux-hwe, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-oem, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-snapdragon, and linux-oem-osp1, linux-raspi2-5.3).

          • Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 161 released

            The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 161. This version includes the following changes:

            [ Chris Lamb ]
            * Fix failing testsuite: (Closes: #972518)
              - Update testsuite to support OCaml 4.11.1. (Closes: #972518)
              - Reapply Black and bump minimum version to 20.8b1.
            * Move the OCaml tests to the assert_diff helper.
            
            

            [ Jean-Romain Garnier ] * Add support for radare2 as a disassembler.

            [ Paul Spooren ] * Automatically deploy Docker images in the continuous integration pipeline.

          • Google Patches Bug Used in Active Attacks Against Chrome

            Google has discovered and patched a serious vulnerability in Chrome that attackers are actively exploiting at the moment. The bug is a high-severity heap buffer overflow in FreeType, a free font-rendering engine that Chrome, among many other projects, uses. A member of Google’s Project Zero vulnerability research team discovered the vulnerability and subsequently found that attackers were already exploiting it. Google patched the flaw in Chrome 86.0.4240.111 for desktop browsers and the maintainers of the FreeType Project pushed out an emergency release of the library to fix it, as well. “I've just fixed a heap buffer overflow that can happen for some malformed .ttf files with PNG sbit glyphs. It seems that this vulnerability gets already actively used in the wild, so I ask all users to apply the corresponding commit as soon as possible,” Werner Lemberg, one of the original authors of the FreeType, said in an email to the FreeType announcement mailing list.

          • FreeType 2.10.4 Rushed Out As Emergency Security Release

            The FreeType text rendering library is out with version 2.10.4 today as an important security update.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Migrating away from Google services

              My inbox tells me I started using GMail around 2004. The oldest mail I can find in my archive is from 16 years ago. After Gmail, Google Photos, Keep, Docs, Drive and Fit followed.

              I have reasons to stop. Whether your reasons are privacy, the U.S. as a data harbor, GMail becoming sluggish, karma for killing Inbox, fear about getting your account locked, or you found a better email provider, the objective of this post is not to convince you about my reasons but to help you with a migration plan and showing you alternatives.

              Breaking the dependency on Google services is really hard. This dependency was a showstopper and motivator at the same time. If you are locked-in at this level, something is wrong.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Hawkins Files Communications Act Violation with FCC to Order Rush Limbaugh to Provide 2 hours of Equal Time

        Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for President, has filed a formal complaint under the Communications Act seeking equal time on the syndicated radio show of Rush Limbaugh.

        Rush Limbaugh conducted a 2-hour “radio rally” for Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump on The Rush Limbaugh Show.

        Hawkins had previously contact Mr. Limbaugh seeking equal time but has not received a response.

        Hawkins said he wants equal time to speak to Limbaugh listeners because many live in media markets where the only news/talk commercial radio station features arch-conservative programming 24 hours a day.

        “Limbaugh’s audience deserves to understand that it is me, not Biden, who is the democratic socialist in this race. It is me, not Biden, who supports Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. Limbaugh’s listeners also deserve to hear my responses to Trump’s claims about Covid-19, so-called fake news, mail-in ballots, Black Lives Matter, immigration, fracking, and the economy,” said Hawkins.

      • Howie Hawkins To Campaign with independent Green Senate candidate Lisa Savage in Maine on Wednesday

        U.S. Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins will be in Maine on Wednesday and will have some availability for press interviews alongside independent Green U.S. Senate candidate Lisa Savage.

        Hawkins, and his running mate Angela Walker, are on the ballot in 30 states representing 73% of voters and 381 electoral votes. Including the other states where they are qualified write-in candidates, 96% of Americans, representing 514 of the total of 538 electoral votes, will be able to vote for the Hawkins/Walker Green Party ticket.

        Most significantly, Maine is awarding its electoral votes this election based on ranked-choice voting, which ensures voters can cast ballots for the candidate they like most without invoking the myth a third-party candidate is “spoiling” an electoral win for a corporate-party candidate.

        “There are no states safe from the predatory corporate duopoly,” Hawkins said. “Every state is a battleground. Every state is under economic and environmental assault from the two governing parties. Maine is no exception and I’m excited to be campaigning along with Lisa on platforms that Mainers deserve and need.”

      • Frank Morano’s exclusive interview with Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins – 77 WABC
      • Why Vote Green? – The Jimmy Dore Show
    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • The New Humanitarian | Lake Van: An overlooked and deadly migration route to Turkey and Europe

        Numbers of Afghans entering Turkey from Iran and then trying to reach Greece have soared in recent years, but many don’t survive the journey.

        [...]

        During that time, Turkey’s policies towards people fleeing conflict, especially Afghans, have hardened. As the number of Afghans crossing the border from Iran increased, Turkey cut back on protections and accelerated efforts to apprehend and deport those entering irregularly. In 2019, the Turkish government deported nearly 23,000 Afghans from the country, according to the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA.

        Early on, travel restrictions put in place due to the coronavirus appeared to reduce the number of people entering Turkey irregularly. But seven months on, the pandemic is worsening the problems that push people to migrate. The economic crisis in Iran has only intensified, and the head of the UN’s migration agency, IOM, in Afghanistan has warned that COVID-19-induced lockdowns have “amplified the effects of the conflict”.

      • Abbie Hoffman: the Man at Gate 5

        Abbie Hoffman was a co-founder of the Youth International Party – or Yippies – whose semi-serious political antics dotted the political landscape of the sixties.

        And Hoffman was a co-defendant in the Chicago 7 trial, one of the most important political trials of the sixties. Originally there were eight defendants, but Black Panther Bobby Seale’s trial was severed after Seale repeatedly disrupted proceedings when he wasn’t allowed to choose his own lawyer, and after he was bound to a chair and gagged in the courtroom.

    • Monopolies

      • Justice Department Sues Monopolist Google For Violating Antitrust Laws

        oday, the Department of Justice — along with eleven state Attorneys General — filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop Google from unlawfully maintaining monopolies through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices in the search and search advertising markets and to remedy the competitive harms. The participating state Attorneys General offices represent Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Texas.

        “Today, millions of Americans rely on the Internet and online platforms for their daily lives. Competition in this industry is vitally important, which is why today’s challenge against Google — the gatekeeper of the Internet — for violating antitrust laws is a monumental case both for the Department of Justice and for the American people,” said Attorney General William Barr. “Since my confirmation, I have prioritized the Department’s review of online market-leading platforms to ensure that our technology industries remain competitive. This lawsuit strikes at the heart of Google’s grip over the internet for millions of American consumers, advertisers, small businesses and entrepreneurs beholden to an unlawful monopolist.”

      • Mozilla Reaction to U.S. v. Google

        Like millions of everyday internet users, we share concerns about how Big Tech’s growing power can deter innovation and reduce consumer choice. We believe that scrutiny of these issues is healthy, and critical if we’re going to build a better internet. We also know from firsthand experience there is no overnight solution to these complex issues. Mozilla’s origins are closely tied to the last major antitrust case against Microsoft in the nineties.

        In this new lawsuit, the DOJ referenced Google’s search agreement with Mozilla as one example of Google’s monopolization of the search engine market in the United States. Small and independent companies such as Mozilla thrive by innovating, disrupting and providing users with industry leading features and services in areas like search. The ultimate outcomes of an antitrust lawsuit should not cause collateral damage to the very organizations – like Mozilla – best positioned to drive competition and protect the interests of consumers on the web.

      • DOJ May Force Google To Sell Chrome To Settle Antitrust Case: Report

        he U.S. Department of Justice may force Google to sell its Chrome browser. The development came after the US Congress’ antitrust report on big tech companies.

        It is also told that the DOJ is targeting Google’s advertising business as well. The prosecutors aim at breaking Google’s monopoly on the $162 billion digital advertising market. Politico reported the development via anonymous sources.

      • The Evolution of IP Management [Ed: Admitting patents are just fences and not innovation as it's all about monopoly and making competition a crime]

        Patents were either used to build a fence around a product or seek to avoid stepping into another firm’s fenced territory. This made the invalidation of patents or the filing of oppositions to someone else’s patents a principal activity of patent professionals.

      • Patents

        • Software Patents

          • When the State is an Involuntary Plaintiff[Ed: Dennis Crouch is wrong. Patents are not "rights".]

            The usual rule is that a patent infringement lawsuit cannot proceed unless the patentee — i.e., the patent owner — is a plaintiff. And, in a normal lawsuit being a plaintiff is voluntary business. However, our rules of civil procedure do also call for “involuntary plaintiffs.”

            [...]

            35 U.S.C. 281. The petition mentions that on remand it will be able to raise this issue and dismiss the case since Gensetix is not a “patentee.” The FedCir has held that exclusive assignees can be considered a patentee if they have “all substantial rights” to the patent. In this case, Gensetix originally argued that it had all substantial rights, but now admits that it does not. Thus on remand this may become a standing issue.



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