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Links 3/8/2021: Nitrux 1.5.1 and Gerbera Media Server 1.9.0



  • GNU/Linux

    • Linux in space: CloudLinux powers Atlas V rocket

      In a world where some question the code-share channels of open source communities and the use of components that may (or indeed may not) bring into question their provenance, prowess and performance… CloudLinux is an organisation on a mission to increase security, stability and availability of Linux servers and devices.

      Headquartered in Palo Alto, CloudLinux Inc. develops a hardened Linux distribution, Linux kernel live security patching, extended support options for Linux and web server security software.

      The organisation this year detailed what it calls TuxCare services, with the Tux reference obviously being the Linux penguin.

    • Server

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • WP Briefing: Episode 14: The Art and Science of Accessibility

        In this episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses the nuances of building accessible software, the differences between access, usability, and accessibility, and how this all applies to the WordPress project.

      • LHS Episode #423: [Title of Podcast]

        Hello and welcome to the 423rd episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short-topics episode, the hosts discuss the upcoming third QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo along with ham radio emcomm in India and Pakistan, Missouri's bicentennial radio event, insecurity in Python libraries, an open source laptop, Linux sound subsystems and much more. Thanks for listening and we hope you have a great week.

      • LEVEL UP Linux Gaming with ProtonUp!

        What's better than Proton for gaming on Linux? A bleeding-edge, rolling release version of Proton! What's better than THAT? Installing and updating it automatically!

      • USB Type C Docking Stations - Getting Started Primer

        Docking stations are incredibly useful - with the right hardware, they can enable you to transform your notebook into a desktop. Unfortunately, there's a great deal of complexity around them. In this video, I attempt to demystify some of the confusion.

      • Chat About Linux And Open Source on Matrix and IRC

        In the early days of the channel, I had a couple of chat rooms where fans of the channel could talk about Linux and free and open source software. Those chat rooms were on Discord and the Freenode IRC network. Ultimately, I deleted those channels because I didn't want to be on those platforms. But now, I'm creating two new chat rooms... ON MATRIX...

      • Buying A Free Software Project: How Is That Possible

        Every so often a company will purchase a free software project and this causes mass outrage so instead of just fueling outrage again why not talk abouw how it's possible for a company to actually do this.

      • Destination Linux 237: What’s The Most Underated Linux Distro?

        This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re discussing what’s the most underrated distro in Linux? Then we’re going to cover the amazingly awesome and repairable Framework Laptop. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.

      • Late Night Linux – Episode 136

        Whether GNOME is meant to be used in its default state, why open source doesn’t need to conquer the world to succeed, emulating ancient Windows versions on dirt cheap modern hardware, KDE Korner, and more.

    • Kernel Space

      • Five trends that will mark the development of Linux in 2021 [Ed: This perpetuates the highly offensive lie that Microsoft "loves Linux" while in fact it continues to besiege and attack it]

        The Linux kernel currently has about 27.8 million lines of code (Phoronix data) that is, one and a half million lines more than what it presented a year ago (26.1 million). Its "controversial" and relatively new startup system, system, has reached 1.3 million lines in the last year.

        That same year, 75,000 code commits were registered, compared to the 80,000 registered in 2018, and represents the lowest figure since 2013. The companies that contributed the most to the cause were Intel and Red Hat, while individually, in addition to the everlasting Linus Torvalds (3.19% of the commits), David Miller (Red Hat), and Chris Wilson (Intel) stood out. In total, more than 4,000 people contributed to improving the code.

        As we pointed out at the beginning against its initial rejection, the system is gaining in popularity (43,000 commits in 2019) and has begun to replace init systems in many distributions. The new system is also evolving at great speed and there are plans to extend it to also manage home folders.

      • AMD SB-RMI Driver Coming For Linux 5.15 - Phoronix

        AMD continues pushing new code out for Linux in better exposing their platform's capabilities in the open-source world. The latest AMD driver work now queued via "-next" branches for introduction this autumn in Linux 5.15 is SB-RMI sensor support.

        AMD SB-RMI is the Side-Band Remote Management Interface for out-of-band communication between the AMD SoC/CPU and the baseboard management controller (BMC) via the Advanced Platform Management Link (APML / SBI). Queued via the hwmon-next Git branch is an initial AMD SB-RMI sensor driver for Linux.

      • Following Torvalds' nudge, Paragon's NTFS driver for Linux is on track for kernel [Ed: Microsoft Tim and SJVN (below) boosting Microsoft agenda inside Linux… just like their employers would like.]

        Paragon Software, in response to a nudge from Linux Torvalds, said it will submit a pull request for its NTFS driver for Linux.

        The process of submitting a read-write NTFS driver for Linux was initiated by Paragon nearly a year ago, when it ran into complaints that its 27,000 line patch was too big to review.

        Paragon resubmitted the code in more manageable chunks, but its less than complete understanding of the Linux kernel development process apparently continued, with Torvalds stepping in last month to point out that it was not enough to post the code to the fsdevel list – at some point the code would actually have to be submitted as a pull request.

      • Paragon NTFS driver might finally make it into Linux

        Microsoft introduced the New Technology File System (NTFS), a proprietary journaling file system, in Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. Since then, it replaced 1977's File Allocation Table (FAT) file system in all versions of Windows. Unlike FAT, which Microsoft would eventually open up for other users, NTFS has remained proprietary. That's made it difficult, but not impossible, to use in Linux.

        Recently, Paragon Software announced it would port some of its NTFS driver software to the Linux kernel.

    • Applications

      • FWUPD 1.6.2 Released With Exciting Improvements For Hardware Firmware Updates On Linux

        While FWUPD 1.5.12 released last week with expanded support for Poly web cameras, FWUPD 1.6.2 is out today as the newest feature release in their latest series. FWUPD 1.6.2 brings several significant improvements for advancing open-source firmware update capabilities on Linux.

        FWUPD 1.6.2 is an exciting update with:

        - Initial support for interacting with the Powerd daemon.

        - Support for CapsuleOnDisk, which allows for storing UEFI system capsules to be delivered to the pre-OS environment on-disk.

      • Gerbera Media Server 1.9.0 Released with New and Improved Features

        If you’re searching for an easy to use, flexible media server for in-home streaming, Gerbera is a great choice.

        Gerbera is a free UPnP media server which allows you to stream your digital media through your home network and consume it on a variety of UPnP compatible devices. It’s based on MediaTomb and work with any UPnP compliant client.

        With Gerbera you can stream your personal media library of movies, TV shows, and music to a wide range of devices ranging from smart TVs and streaming boxes to game consoles and mobile devices.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Why You Should Update Linux Package Repositories Before Installing New Software

        One of the best things about Linux distributions is that they install software from central repositories using package managers, a concept that other operating systems are just picking up on.

        But if you don't frequently update these repositories, your system might run into trouble while installing new packages. Here's why.

      • Jakub Steiner: 5G Backup

        When I get glimpses of the world outside of my FOSS bubble, I see all these tips and tricks articles how people can use their computers that provide something surprising or not universally known.

        The equivalent of this in the FOSS world is a 6 page wiki outlining how to produce a smb.conf to share files between two computers in 2021.

        To offset this depression, I’d like to present some cases when things work … as they should.

      • How to Install Sublime Text 4 on Ubuntu 20.04

        Sublime Text is a cross-platform and proprietary source code editor. It provides tons of features and plugins which greatly help in the development of applications. Sublime Text is written in C++ and Python.

        Notable features include split editing, quick shortcuts, syntax highlighting, autocompletion, selection of multiple lines or words, and much more.

      • How to Install LAMP on Rocky Linux 8 Server

        LAMP is a stack of software- Apache, MySQL, and PHP installed on Linux operating systems such as Rocky Linux 8 server, AlmaLinux, CentOS, Ubuntu, etc.

        To run a website on any server we need to install a web server platform such as Apache or Nginx. Whereas to save data and support PHP-based CMS; Mysql, and PHP are needed. In today’s world, where hundreds of websites are running on CMS like WordPress you will easily find LAMP setup on most of the hosting services- pre-installed. Thus, no hassle or messing with commands at all. Moreover, WHM Cpanel-like control panels make our life further easier.

        Nevertheless, if you are already a user of Linux and want to set up your own LAMP server from scratch on some VPS or Cloud hosting platform using Rocky Linux then here is the tutorial to assist you.

      • How to Install DevOps Lab - Gitlab Server on RH Cloud | RoseHosting

        GitLab is a web-based Git repository manager providing wiki, issue-tracking, and continuous integration and deployment. It is a DevOps platform that helps developers to modernize their application development lifecycle. It allows you to create your private repository with the required control, flexibility, and simplicity within your own server.

        RoseHosting Cloud provides pre-configured GitLab image. You can deploy a GitLab with Docker containers in the RoseHosting PaaS platform to increase scalability and elasticity.

        In this post, we will show you how to deploy a GitLab with Docker on RoseHosting Cloud.

      • How to install Medibang Paint on a Chromebook in 2021

        Today we are looking at how to install Medibang Paint 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 configure static IP address in CentOS 8 / RHEL 8

        Dynamic IP can be used in home system or Local Area Network (LAN) because they are only used internally.

        It can be assigned through DHCP (Dynamic Network Configuration Protocol) by either your ISP or your router.

        But, you should assign a static IP address to the Linux servers that are accessible through internet.

        Also, large organizations use static IP to avoid network issues due to the unavailability of DHCP servers.

      • How to Install and Set up Gerbera Media Server in Ubuntu / Debian | UbuntuHandbook

        This simple tutorial shows how to install and setup Gerbera home media server in all current Ubuntu and Debian releases.

        Gerbera is a free and open-source UPnP media server for Linux, BSD, and Mac OS. With it, you can stream audio and/or video files over home network, and play on any device with a media player with UPnP support, e.g., VLC.

      • How to install and use PhotoRec to recover deleted files in Ubuntu 20.04 – VITUX

        PhotoRec is an open-source software utility to recover lost or deleted media files like photos, videos, documents, etc from CD-ROMs, Hard disks, and digital camera memory. PhotoRec is associated with TestDisk. The TestDisk is used to recover deleted partitions and make non-bootable disks bootable again and photoRec recovers deleted media files or document files. It supports and can recover more than 480 file extensions.

        When you accidentally deleted the file you better not add more media or document files to that memory or hard drive as you might overwrite your lost data. In this article, we will install and use PhotoRec to recover deleted files in ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

      • Linux 101: How to compress a folder from the command line with tar

        The Linux command line is an incredibly powerful tool. From the CLI there's next to nothing you can't do. And although a GUI might make some of the tasks a bit easier, the simplicity of doing your work in a terminal window is about as elegant a solution as you'll find.

    • Games

      • Where Do Linux Users Buy Games? Meet 5 Different Profiles

        We are back with another little story coming from the data collected in April 2021 regarding Linux Gamers’ habits and perceptions. This time we thought it could be fun to go through the usage of game stores… Namely which game stores are currently used by Linux gamers, and at what frequency.

        [....]

        Where Do Linux Users [License proprietary] Games? Meet 5 Different Profiles https://boilingsteam.com/where-do-linux-users-buy-games-meet-5-different-profiles/

      • Linux Now Makes Up 1% Of Steam Users Once Again

        Linux has always been a popular operating system for a certain kind of user, but it's always presented complications if you want to play a wide variety of games. Now, however, the number of monthly active Steam users running Linux has risen to 1%, according to the Steam Hardware Survey.

        As spotted by the Linux site GamingOnLinux, the percentage of Linux users on Steam has increased and decreased over the past three years, but the overall line of fit tends towards the positive. This is the first time that the tracker has shown above a 1% Linux share since at least September 2018.

      • Latest Steam Survey Notes Linux Gaming Market Share Hits 1%

        Linux wasn’t really popular for its gaming capabilities until Proton stepped in and revolutionized one of the weakest areas of the OS. A recent steam survey shows that Linux gaming has hit a 1% market share, which is the all-time high for the OS.

        Steam released a survey today, which shows that the market share has hit 1%, a 0.14% increase since last year. Of course, this isn’t a huge feat in itself, but we understand from these numbers that gaming on Linux is getting better with each year.

      • Percentage of Linux Gamers on Steam Tops 1% for First Time in Years

        Gaming on Linux is still niche, but the number of users doing so has recently shot up, according to Valve’s Steam.

        In July, the market share for Linux-based gaming on Steam reached the 1% threshold after three years of remaining at the 0.8 to 0.9% range. GamingOnLinux noticed the sudden increase through Steam’s hardware and software survey, which regularly polls users to see what platforms they use to game.

      • Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 6: A Lone Marine Battled

        In the same vein as Quake: The Offering, the next game in the series got a similar treatment for Linux with Quake II: Colossus from Macmillan Digital Publishing, containing Quake II as well as it's two mission packs The Reckoning and Ground Zero. This time the mission packs were included on a separate CD-ROM from the main game, but that disc only holds the soundtrack for Ground Zero, meaning that music tracks unique to The Reckoning are absent.

        Installation was much the same as with the first Quake, with the port now done by David Kirsch still having most of the same limitations as Dave Taylor’s original Quake port, although Quake II does at least have better support for mouselook. That said, I did find I had to copy my system’s libGL.so.1.2 file to the Quake II installation directory twice named as both opengl32 and libGL.so in order to get OpenGL acceleration to work reliably.

        Rather than featuring multiple different binaries as Quake did to launch the various different rendering options, Quake II instead accepts command arguments using the "vid_ref" variable to just the one application. SVGAlib can still used for both software rendering from a console as well as hardware acceleration on 3dfx cards, with the "softx" and "glx" renderers working instead through an X11 window on any graphics card.

        Like with the original Quake, I created a custom launch script that blanks the mouse cursor and adjusts the X11 gamma as well as providing a nice menu for selecting the mission packs. After encountering memory leaks with Nautilus when playing the game from Gnome, I also went ahead and created a custom all black style for Blackbox to make use of my full screen hack and switched to playing Quake II from Blackbox instead.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Release Announcement: Nitrux 1.5.1

          Today is the day! — Nitrux 1.5.1 is available to download

          We are pleased to announce the launch of Nitrux 1.5.1. This new version brings together the latest software updates, bug fixes, performance improvements, and ready-to-use hardware support.

          Nitrux 1.5.1 is available for immediate download.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Introducing the GNOME Web Canary flavor

          Today I am happy to unveil GNOME Web Canary which aims to provide bleeding edge, most likely very unstable builds of Epiphany, depending on daily builds of the WebKitGTK development version. Read on to know more about this.

          Until recently the GNOME Web browser was available for end-users in two flavors. The primary, stable release provides the vanilla experience of the upstream Web browser. It is shipped as part of the GNOME release cycle and in distros. The second flavor, called Tech Preview, is oriented towards early testers of GNOME Web. It is available as a Flatpak, included in the GNOME nightly repo. The builds represent the current state of the GNOME Web master branch, the WebKitGTK version it links to is the one provided by the GNOME nightly runtime.

          Tech Preview is great for users testing the latest development of GNOME Web, but what if you want to test features that are not yet shipped in any WebKitGTK version? Or what if you are GNOME Web developer and you want to implement new features on Web that depend on API that was not released yet in WebKitGTK?

          Historically, the answer was simply “you can build WebKitGTK yourself“. However, this requires some knowledge and a good build machine (or a lot of patience). Even as WebKit developer builds have become easier to produce thanks to the Flatpak SDK we provide, you would still need to somehow make Epiphany detect your local build of WebKit. Other browsers offer nightly or “Canary” builds which don’t have such requirements. This is exactly what Epiphany Canary aims to do! Without building WebKit yourself!

        • Matthias Clasen: More on input

          I’ve written about input before (here and here), and more recently, Carlos and myself gave a Guadec talk about input-related topics (slides). In those writings, I have explained how dead keys work, and how you can type

        • Madeline ‘Madds’ Holland: Career Goals

          For this week’s Outreachy blog post, I’ll be talking about my personal career goals, so it’ll be less GNOME/Librsvg-focused than my recent posts.

    • Distributions

      • The OSMC Skin redesign

        It's been nearly five years since the last big change to the OSMC Skin and with our next update which will introduce Kodi v19 (codename Matrix) and our new video stack, we'd like to introduce some design changes to the OSMC skin.

        The basic structure and look of texts, buttons and fanart will remain the same. There will however be some changes to how background colours are shown and how they structure the overall layout of every window and dialogue. Additionally, we've chosen to use a new default colour scheme but have retained the option to use the old colours via the colour sets in the skin settings.

        Here are some screen shots to give you an idea of how things will look when the next OSMC update lands imminently.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Optimize public cloud workloads on RHEL with Red Hat Insights Resource Optimization

          The Beta of the Red Hat Insights Resource Optimization service is now available. Resource Optimization is a new service that we’ve added to our portfolio of Insights services. In this post we'll explain how Resource Optimization can help you optimize your public cloud workloads on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and how to get started with it.

          Insights helps provide a single, consistent tool for analyzing Red Hat products running across hybrid cloud and on-premises infrastructures. Insights analyzes platforms and applications to predict risk, recommend actions, and track costs so enterprises can better manage hybrid cloud environments. The service is aiming at existing and new Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers who need to grasp control over their public cloud investment.

          Running legacy or non-scalable workloads in a public cloud requires estimating the instance size and monitoring the actual usage. The Resource Optimization service looks at several metrics of your workload - CPU, memory and disk usage - and compares them to resource allocation information provided by the public cloud provider.

        • Learn the networking basics every sysadmin needs to know | Enable Sysadmin

          One of the sysadmin's most important domains is the network.

          While understanding everything there is to know about networking is a big topic, there's much to learn from your own humble Linux computer's networking stack.

          Learning basic networking commands can help you understand how a device knows what network to connect to, how to find a shared printer or a file share—or the biggest network of all, the internet.

        • Leading teams at Red Hat: From individual contributor to managing real-time Linux kernel development

          Red Hat's Products and Technologies organization is doing game-changing work in the IT industry. In showcasing the unique stories of Red Hatters around the world, it's clear that there's no one path to finding success at Red Hat. For each of us, it's about open collaboration and building something together.

        • Fedora Community Blog: Nest with Fedora: Thanks to our Sponsors!

          Fedora’s annual contributor conference Nest with Fedora is this week: August 5th–7th. Even with the virtual format, we are so excited to see everyone together! Free registration for Nest with Fedora is still open and you can check out the schedule in the wiki. Nest with Fedora is made possible by funding from our sponsors. Their assistance brings us everything from the conference platform to promotion to swag.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Xubuntu Linux dumps open source Pidgin

          Back in the days before Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and WhatsApp, we had other chat platforms such as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN Messenger, and ICQ to name a few. At first, everyone used the first-party apps for each platform, but eventually, many of us switched to third-party software that could connect to multiple chat platforms at once. The multi-chat apps were more convenient, but equally important, they were usually advertisement-free. AIM, for instance, had annoying ads.

          One of the most popular such programs was Gaim, which was ultimately renamed to Pidgin. Believe it or not, Pidgin is still being developed to this day. The open source Pidgin is available on both Linux and Windows. Unfortunately, use of Pudgin has dipped dramatically over the last decade. Hell, I don't even remember the last time I used it. And now, in what is certainly a huge blow to Pidgin, the Ubuntu Linux-based Xubuntu is finally ditching it.

        • Launchpad now runs on Python 3!

          I wanted to take a bit of time to reflect on why my emotional responses to this port differ so much from those of some others who’ve done large ports, such as the Mercurial maintainers. It’s hard to deny that we’ve had to burn a lot of time on this, which I’m sure has had an opportunity cost, and from one point of view it’s essentially running to stand still: there is no single compelling feature that we get solely by porting to Python 3, although it’s clearly a prerequisite for tidying up old compatibility code and being able to use modern language facilities in the future. And yet, on the whole, I found this a rewarding project and enjoyed doing it.

          Some of this may be because by inclination I’m a maintenance programmer and actually enjoy this sort of thing. My default view tends to be that software version upgrades may be a pain but it’s much better to get that pain over with as soon as you can rather than trying to hold back the tide; you can certainly get involved and try to shape where things end up, but rightly or wrongly I can’t think of many cases when a righteously indignant user base managed to arrange for the old version to be maintained in perpetuity so that they never had to deal with the new thing (OK, maybe Perl 5 counts here).

          I think a more compelling difference between Launchpad and Mercurial, though, may be that very few other people really had a vested interest in what Python version Launchpad happened to be running, because it’s all server-side code (aside from some client libraries such as launchpadlib, which were ported years ago). As such, we weren’t trying to do this with the internet having Strong Opinions at us. We were doing this because it was obviously the only long-term-maintainable path forward, and in more recent times because some of our library dependencies were starting to drop support for Python 2 and so it was obviously going to become a practical problem for us sooner or later; but if we’d just stayed on Python 2 forever then fundamentally hardly anyone else would really have cared directly, only maybe about some indirect consequences of that. I don’t follow Mercurial development so I may be entirely off-base, but if other people were yelling at me about how late my project was to finish its port, that in itself would make me feel more negatively about the project even if I thought it was a good idea. Having most of the pressure come from ourselves rather than from outside meant that wasn’t an issue for us.

        • Watson: Launchpad now runs on Python 3

          On his blog, Colin Watson has a lengthy reflection on moving the code for Ubuntu's Launchpad software-collaboration web application from Python 2 to Python 3. He looks at some of the problem areas for upgrading, both in general and for Launchpad specifically, some pain points that were encountered, lessons learned, and the nine known regressions that reached the Launchpad production code during the process.

        • Ubuntu Blog: Model-driven observability: modern monitoring with Juju

          The end-to-end monitoring of complex software systems is difficult, toil-intensive and error-prone. Developers, SREs and Platform teams must continuously invest effort in setting up and maintaining the monitoring setups that underpin the observability of their systems, or accept the risk of being unaware of ongoing issues and their impact on end users. Enter model-driven observability powered by Juju!

          Juju is a framework for opinionated “charmed operators”, colloquially called charms, that manage other software, like your databases, applications and other infrastructure components (including Kubernetes, OpenStack and LXD). Juju is declarative and model-driven, allowing you to compose charms and the relations between them in expressive, reusable and portable models.

          This post, the first of a series, provides a first glimpse at a new generation of observability charms for Juju, and how they can drastically simplify the monitoring setup for systems, reduce its ongoing maintenance costs and, at the same time, contextualize and enhance the actionability of the collected telemetry.

        • The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 694

          Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 694 for the week of July 25 – 31, 2021.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Time for PineTime

        I just received my PineTime and set it up with GadgetBridge on my Android device. So far it has been a pleasant experience.

        [...]

        My device was shipped with version 1.2 of the InfiniTime firmware, so I’m one release behind. I ordered the sealed device (because the price is amazing), but I already am itching to get coding.

      • Express-TL Tiger Lake-H COM Express module offers 8K video, PCIe Gen4 x16 connectivity
      • Open Hardware/Modding

        • ESP32-H2 RISC-V WiSoC announced with Zigbee 3, Thread, and Bluetooth LE 5.2 - CNX Software

          Just a few days ago, we noted ESP32-H2 802.15.4 & BLE RISC-V SoC had shown up in the source code, and tried to derive specs and a block diagram from the info seeing it was similar to ESP32-C3, but swapping the WiFi radio for an 802.15.4 radio.

          We don’t need to guess anymore, as Espressif Systems has just announced ESP32-H2 RISC-V WiSoC with support for Zigbee 3.x, Thread 1.x through the 802.15.4 radio, as well as Bluetooth LE 5.2.

      • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

        • Sxmo 1.5.0 released with networking, screen lock, and UI improvements

          The latest version of Sxmo adds a few new features including support for configuring a WiFi hotspot from your phone’s Network Menu and support for a proximity lock that automatically locks or unlocks the display based on proximity (so the screen doesn’t come on when your phone is in your pocket, for example).

          Sxmo 1.5.0 also brings a number of performance and user interface tweaks and some under-the-hood changes. But overall, Sxmo continues to be a simple, speedy user interface for mobile Linux devices. In fact, it’s so well optimized that it can make even a low-end smartphone like the PinePhone feel fast.

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • How to Sync Firefox Bookmarks, Tabs, History, and Passwords Across Devices

            Firefox comes with a feature that allows you to sync your browsing data across multiple devices. This is very useful, especially if you use Firefox on different Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, or iOS devices. Here we show you how to sync Firefox bookmarks, tabs, history and passwords across all devices you are using.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU Guix: Taming the ‘stat’ storm with a loader cache

            It was one of these days where some of us on IRC were rehashing that old problem—that application startup in Guix causes a “stat storm”—and lamenting the lack of a solution when suddenly, Ricardo proposes what, in hindsight, looks like an obvious solution: “maybe we could use a per-application ld cache?”. A moment where collective thinking exceeds the sum of our individual thoughts. The result is one of the many features that made it in the core-updates branch, slated to be merged in the coming weeks, one that reduces application startup time.

        • Licensing/Legal

          • GitHub Copilot is ‘unacceptable and unjust', according to Free Software Foundation

            GitHub Copilot, a Visual Studio Code extension that uses artificial intelligence to help developers write code, has drawn the ire of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which is calling for white papers that address legal and philosophical questions raised by the technology.

            GitHub Copilot is “unacceptable and unjust, from our perspective,” the FSF wrote in a blog post calling for white papers on the implications of Copilot for the free software community. The reason is that Copilot requires running software that is not free, such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE or Visual Studio Code editor, the FSF contends, and constitutes a “service as a software substitute” meaning it’s a way to gain power over other people’s computing.

      • Programming/Development

        • Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppFarmHash 0.0.2: Maintenance

          A minor maintenance release of the new package RcppFarmHash, first released in version 0.0.1 a week ago, is now on CRAN in an version 0.0.2.

          RcppFarmHash wraps the Google FarmHash family of hash functions (written by Geoff Pike and contributors) that are used for example by Google BigQuery for the FARM_FINGERPRINT digest.

          This releases adds a #define which was needed on everybody’s favourite CRAN platform to not attempt to include a missing header endian.h. With this added #define all is well as we can already tell from looking at the CRAN status where the three machines maintained by you-may-know-who have already built the package. The others will follow over the next few days.

        • GSoC 2021 KMyMoney - Week 8

          Week 8 revolved around removing all the usages of webpricequote on the equity price update dialog source code. For people not much into finance, an article from Investopedia about quotes. I first replaced the WebPriceQuote constructors and their members of AlkOnlineQuoteSource. Replacing m_webIDBy with m_idSelector popped up error. After putting in a little effort I remembered that m_idSelector is the member of AlkOnlineQuoteSource::Private and I will have to use the getter(idSelector()) to use that member for an AlkOnlineQuoteSource object.

        • SEGGER’s Linux Studio makes top rated development environment available to Linux developers

          Linux Studio is a development environment designed specifically for native host development, making the features of SEGGER’s top rated Embedded Studio IDE available to all Linux application developers. With its sleek Visual Studio-style user interface, powerful project management and integrated source-level debugger, Linux Studio greatly simplifies development on Linux.

          Linux Studio’s project manager enables clear organization of all project resources. Multi-project solutions can keep all parts of an application together, such as an executable file, additional libraries and resources.

        • Perl/Raku

          • Only infinite elements
          • Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.31 Counting Down

            Only a few days to go until the first Raku Conference (on 6, 7 and 8 August), online this time because of the pandemic. With attendees from more than 30 countries, 3 workshops sessions, 13 presentations, and a nice selection of Lightning Talks (schedule). Brought to you by Andrew Shitov and associates, and sponsored by Edument and Perl Services. It’s not too late to register yet! And if you’re registered, don’t forget to have your Conference T-Shirt made for the complete experience!

        • Python

          • Week8kdesoc

            helpers module for the printers has been ported to support python2 since no mingw supports python 3 yet, as this just requires removing the variable types in function decarations and returns, however in the case of the actual printers i have decided to create two seperate files for it.

            Although it may be a little time consuming, it makes more sense because there are have become faster in python3 and would be restricting if still using the python2 implemenetation. for example in the case of f"" and %. Some classes to do not work when used with pyhton2 and gdb-mi

          • Read QR Codes from Raspberry PI with Pyzbar and Python

            With a camera and a few python code lines you can transform your Raspberry PI into an advanced QR codes reader by usin Pyzbar, also making your RPI able to perform more actions on conditions mach

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • The many faces of awk

            The awk command provides a lot more than simply selecting fields from input strings, including pulling out columns of data, printing simple text, evaluating content – even doing math.

        • Java

          • Eclipse Adoptium achieves its first Java SE release

            The Eclipse Adoptium community has achieved its first Java SE release based upon the OpenJDK code. Adoptium is the new home of the AdoptOpenJDK project, the most popular build of OpenJDK in production according to the recent JVM Ecosystem Report, with over 300 million downloads.

            Adoptium’s success builds upon the community development of Java SE in OpenJDK. OpenJDK creates the implementation of Java SE and Adoptium performs the structured build, test, and delivery to end users. Red Hat has brought best in class working practices to these projects to deliver high quality binaries that are ready for production usage.

            Red Hat engineers have a strong representation in the Adoptium project management committee and Red Hat is a strategic member of the Adoptium working group. Together the project management committee and working group provide technical and governance oversight of the project.

            This release from Adoptium is the first from the Eclipse Foundation. As part of the move to Eclipse, Adoptium code underwent enhanced scrutiny through the Eclipse intellectual property review process, and the project’s binaries have passed the Oracle Java SE JCK test suite—- used to determine compatibility with the Java SE specification.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

    • Hardware

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Google Meet PWA Launches On Windows, Mac, Chrome OS & Linux [Ed: Google acts like it just owns the Internet (it does Vint Cerf) while pushing its proprietary bits into the WWW]

          Google Meet is now available as a Progressive Web App (PWA). It’s a standalone app that offers the same features and functionality as the conventional desktop app but in a smaller package.

        • WireGuardNT, a high-performance WireGuard implementation for the Windows kernel [Ed: So basically they don't care about real security]
        • WireGuard Sees Native, High-Performance Port To The Windows Kernel - Phoronix

          The excellent WireGuard open-source secure VPN tunnel has been seeing growing adoption on Linux now that it's been in the mainline kernel for a while and also seeing continued progress on the BSDs. While there has been beta WireGuard for Windows in user-space, "WireGuardNT" was announced today as a native high-performance port to the Windows kernel.

          This WireGuard port to the Windows NT kernel started as a port of their current Linux kernel code-base but then adapted to better fit with the Windows kernel and its APIs. WireGuard founder Jason Donenfeld commented, "The end result is a deeply integrated and highly performant implementation of WireGuard for the NT kernel, that makes use of the full gamut of NT kernel and NDIS capabilities...For the Windows platform, this project is a big deal to me, as it marks the graduation of WireGuard to being a serious operating system component, meant for more serious usage. It's also a rather significant open source release, as there generally isn't so much (though there is some) open source crypto-NIC driver code already out there that does this kind of thing while pulling together various kernel capabilities in the process."

        • Security

          • Security updates for Monday

            Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (389-ds-base, consul, containerd, geckodriver, powerdns, vivaldi, webkit2gtk, and wpewebkit), Debian (aspell, condor, libsndfile, linuxptp, and lrzip), and Fedora (bluez, buildah, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-latest-openjdk, kernel, kernel-tools, mbedtls, mingw-exiv2, mingw-python-pillow, mrxvt, python-pillow, python2-pillow, redis, and seamonkey).

          • Wladimir Palant: Data exfiltration in Keepa Price Tracker

            As readers of this blog might remember, shopping assistants aren’t exactly known for their respect of your privacy. They will typically use their privileged access to your browser in order to extract data. For them, this ability is a competitive advantage. You pay for a free product with a privacy hazard.

            Usually, the vendor will claim to anonymize all data, a claim that can rarely be verified. Even if the anonymization actually happens, it’s really hard to do this right. If anonymization can be reversed and the data falls into the wrong hands, this can have severe consequences for a person’s life.

            Today we will take a closer look at a browser extension called “Keepa – Amazon Price Tracker” which is used by at least two million users across different browsers. The extension is being brought out by a German company and the privacy policy is refreshingly short and concise, suggesting that no unexpected data collection is going on. The reality however is: not only will this extension extract data from your Amazon sessions, it will even use your bandwidth to load various Amazon pages in the background.

          • Cloudflare Vulnerability Enabled Compromise of 12% of All Websites

            Cloudflare recently disclosed a vulnerability that could have resulted in successful cyberattacks on the millions of websites (12.7% of ALL websites to be precise) that rely on JavaScript and CSS libraries found on cdnjs, an open-source content delivery network (CDN) hosted by the CDN service provider.

            Fortunately, there is no evidence (so far) that cybercriminals have exploited the vulnerability. But the fact that this serious vulnerability was most likely present for quite some time is in itself alarming, to say nothing of the “what-if” scenarios.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Howie’s Testimony to the New York Senate Committee on Elections

        Few credible democracies in the world still have the governing parties administering their own elections. But that is what we have in New York state.

        The credibility of U.S. elections are under assault by Republicans. Their national leaders proclaim without evidence that Joe Biden did not win the presidency. In the states, Republicans are passing laws in state legislatures they control to suppress the vote of minorities and give their legislatures the power to certify elections in place independently elected Secretaries of State and local boards of elections. New York should contribute to resolving this democracy crisis by showing how to depoliticize election administration with an independent, nonpartisan election administration agency.

        As the Green Party candidate for president in 2020 who was removed from the ballot in three states by Democratic challengers to our petitions, I can tell you that the partisan election administration is thoroughly politicized in many states. At every level, from bipartisan election boards to each states’ highest court, Democratic and Republican commissioners and judges voted strictly along party lines on our ballot access cases with little to no reference to the facts and the law.

        In Montana, Democratic operatives succeeded in harassing and intimidating signers of our ballot petitions to withdraw their signatures by email messages to the Secretary of State’s office months after our ballot petition had been accepted. Signed petitions are similar legally to affidavits. Email messages have no signature or witness. Montana election law has no provision for using email messages to withdraw signatures. Even though these signature removals happened after the Green Party candidates had already run in primaries, the courts affirmed the signature withdrawals by email in order to rule the Green Party off the ballot for the general election.

      • The Big Money Behind the Big Lie

        It was tempting to dismiss the show unfolding inside the Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, as an unintended comedy. One night in June, a few hundred people gathered for the première of “The Deep Rig,” a film financed by the multimillionaire founder of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne, who is a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump. Styled as a documentary, the movie asserts that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen by supporters of Joe Biden, including by Antifa members who chatted about their sinister plot on a conference call. The evening’s program featured live appearances by Byrne and a local QAnon conspiracist, BabyQ, who claimed to be receiving messages from his future self. They were joined by the film’s director, who had previously made an exposé contending that the real perpetrators of 9/11 were space aliens.

    • Monopolies

      • KOL353 | Zoom AMA on IP, Argumentation Ethics, Norms vs. Facts

        Some twitter users were confused about IP and whether stealing someone's document from their safe implied damages greater than stealing a blank document, and whether this difference implied IP, etc.

      • Neurim's Melatonin War With Mylan Fast-Tracked For Trial [Ed: Who benefits from patents that destroy generics? Only greedy monopolies]

        Neurim Pharmaceuticals will be headed to trial against a rival drugmaker in October in a bid to pull generic versions of its insomnia medication off the market after a London judge expedited the proceedings on Monday to focus on preliminary issues.

        High Court Judge James Mellor scheduled a two-day trial to begin sometime in October to hear Neurim Pharmaceuticals' claims that two Viatris Inc. subsidiaries are legally barred from challenging the validity of its patent for a melatonin-based insomnia drug.

        The judge said that the trial will likely save time and money by focusing on whether the parties have already litigated the issues and...

      • The Non-Tech Antitrust Conduct Cases Defining 2021

        Antitrust cases against technology platforms may have grabbed most of the competition headlines so far this year, but antitrust professionals say they shouldn't outshine equally important developments in pharmaceuticals, labor and...

      • Epic’s Tim Sweeney warns: ‘Apple Tax is far more pernicious than many realize’

        Tim Sweeney, the billionaire owner of Epic Games who is dueling tech giants Apple and Google over what he considers antitrust issues, took to Twitter over the weekend to talk up his case. The comments came after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted his support for Epic’s ongoing legal battles.

        “The Apple Tax is far more pernicious than many realize,” Sweeney warned in a tweet Friday from his personal account.

        ‘“It only applies to digital goods accessible on iOS”, they say — but in the future all physical goods will have a digital presence, and Apple will tax and gatekeep world commerce. Apple must be stopped.”

      • Patents

        • How to Expedite Prosecution Before the Chinese Patent Office [Ed: When all you care about is litigation, sometimes embargo too, and nothing else (not even justice)]

          Chinese patent protection has become a very important component of a worldwide intellectual property portfolio. Considering China only began granting patent rights in 1984, while the United States has been doing so since 1790, this has been an absolute sea change in business planning for many global companies over the past few decades. In the last year alone, a total of 1.49 million patent applications were filed with the National Intellectual Property Administration, PRC (the Chinese Patent & Trademark Office). By comparison, this is more than were filed with the United States Patent & Trademark Office and European Patent Office combined.[1]

          In such an inundated system, it stands to reason that the backlog and resulting wait times before the Chinese Patent Office until examination can be substantial. For example, patent applicants can often wait over a year after filing until receiving a first substantive examination from a Chinese Examiner, with an overall pendency in excess of two years between filing to final disposition not being uncommon.

        • Broad Files Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1 in CRISPR Interference [Ed: CRISPR should not be allowed in the domain of patents, but endless lobbying by the greedy wants to turn the patent system into its paper tissue]

          On May 28th, Junior Party the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and MIT (collectively, "Broad") filed its Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1 in CRISPR Interference No. 106,126 (where ToolGen is the Senior Party). While this Motion shares many similarities to a similar motion filed in Broad's interference against the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier; Junior Party and collectively, "CVC"), there are significant differences in the proposed Count 2 in this interference and the proposed Count 2 proposed in the '115 Interference (wherein the Board denied Broad's motion in that interference).

        • Software Patents

          • DABUS Scores Again with Win on AI Inventorship Question in Australia Court
          • PTAB Won't Take Up Unified's Challenge Of Video Patent [Ed: A tad odd as software patents are easy to squash, even using Alice on its own]

            Unified Patents was dealt a loss when the Patent Trial and Appeal Board refused to review a video compression standard-essential patent owned by the Electronics Telecommunications Research Institute and other Korean institutions.

            In a decision issued Friday, the PTAB said Unified failed to show that at least one of the challenged claims in the patent owned by ETRI, Kwangwoon University and Sejong University were invalid for being anticipated or obvious over prior art.

            Among other things, the PTAB said an earlier U.S. patent known as Nishi did not disclose either the horizontal or vertical intra prediction modes that would render a...



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