October 2021 Web Server Survey [Ed: Microsoft became so irrelevant in Web servers that it is not even mentioned anymore and most tables don't even list Microsoft (it's miniscule, outside view)]

In the October 2021 survey we received responses from 1,179,448,021 sites across 265,426,928 unique domains and 11,388,826 web-facing computers. This reflects a loss of 8.59 million sites, but a gain of 1.07 million domains and 20,800 computers.

The number of unique domains powered by the nginx web server grew by 789,000 this month, which has increased its total to 79.5 million domains and its leading market share to 29.9%. Conversely, Apache lost 753,000 domains and saw its second-place share fall to 24.7%. Meanwhile, Cloudflare gained 746,000 domains – almost as many as nginx – but it stays in fourth place with an 8.15% share while OpenResty’s shrank slightly to 14.5%.

Cloudflare also made strong progress amongst the top million websites, where it increased its share by 0.24 percentage points to 18.2%. nginx is in second place with a 22.5% (+0.12pp) share but has closed the gap on Apache which still leads with 24.0% after losing 0.21pp.

Apache also continues to lead in terms of active sites, where it has a total of 48.0 million. However, it was the only major vendor to suffer a drop in this metric, with a loss of 277,000 active sites reducing its share down to 23.9% (-0.29pp). In terms of all sites, nginx lost the most (-9.99 million) but remains far in the lead with a total of 412 million.

Ubuntu 21.10 – Full Review – Invidious

Ubuntu 21.10 finally features the GNOME 40 desktop, better Wayland support, and more. In this video, I’ll give you my thoughts on “Impish Idri” and we’ll go over some of the new features. I’ll talk about the installation process, Wayland changes,

LHS Episode #435: The Weekender LXXX

It’s time once again for The Weekender. This is our bi-weekly departure into the world of amateur radio contests, open source conventions, special events, listener challenges, hedonism and just plain fun. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we’re doing. We’d love to hear from you.

Time to Rice and Make the Best Looking Desktop – Invidious

We have our script that sets up the system… now we make our script to automatically make our desktop the best looking one out there!

Paul E. Mc Kenney: TL;DR: Memory-Model Recommendations for Rusting the Linux Kernel

These recommendations assume that the initial Linux-kernel targets for Rust developers are device drivers that do not have unusual performance and scalability requirements, meaning that wrappering of small C-language functions is tolerable. (Please note that most device drivers fit into this category.) It also assumes that the main goal is to reduce memory-safety bugs, although other bugs might be addressed as well. Or, Murphy being Murphy, created as well. But that is a risk in all software development, not just Rust in the Linux kernel.

Those interested in getting Rust into Linux-kernel device drivers sooner rather than later should look at the short-term recommendations, while those interested in extending Rust’s (and, for that matter, C’s) concurrency capabilities might be more interested in the long-term recommendations.

Verification Challenges

You would like to do some formal verification of C code? Or you would like a challenge for your formal-verification tool? Either way, here you go!

Cluster Scheduler Support Queued Ahead Of Linux 5.16 – Phoronix

Cluster scheduler support has been queued up for landing in the Linux 5.16 kernel for AArch64 and x86_64 systems for improving the CPU scheduler behavior for systems that have clusters of CPU cores.

The cluster scheduler support in this context is about enhancing the Linux kernel’s scheduler for systems where sets of CPU cores share an L2 cache or other mid-level caches/resources.

This cluster scheduler work stems from work by HiSilicon and Huawei aiming to improve the Linux performance for the Kunpeng 920 server chip. That HiSilicon SoC has six or eight clusters per NUMA node with four CPU cores per cluster and a shared L3 cache. With the cluster scheduler patches they were able to enhance the overall performance of the system and also improve the efficiency.

AMD Finally Enabling PSR By Default For Newer Hardware With Linux 5.16 – Phoronix

With it getting late into the Linux 5.15 kernel cycle, the focus is shifting by the Direct Rendering Driver maintainers from new feature work targeting the next cycle (5.16) to instead on bug fixes. AMD sent out a pull request of new AMDGPU Linux 5.16 material this week that is primarily delivering bug fixes but one notable addition is finally enabling PSR by default for newer GPUs.

Graphics Stack

• Intel Compute-Runtime 21.41.21220 Ships Updated DG1 Support – Phoronix

  Intel’s open-source engineers have shipped Compute-Runtime 21.41.21220 as the newest version of this Linux compute stack enabling OpenCL and Level Zero support with their graphics processors.

  Intel Compute-Runtime 21.41.21220 is the latest weekly update for this compute stack. New this week is updated DG1 platform support and Level Zero support for SPIR-V static module linking.

Sourcing a file in Linux: Here are the basics of this important concept – TechRepublic

Open source expert Jack Wallen explains the Linux source command and offers an example.

How to play Legion TD 2 on Linux

Legion TD 2 is a tower defense game for Windows. It was developed and published by AutoAttack Games. Thanks to Proton, you’ll be able to play this game on Linux. Here’s how.

How to play Stick Fight: The Game on Linux

Stick Fight: The Game is a physics-based online fighting game for PC. It was developed by Landfall West and published by Landfall. Here’s how you can enjoy Stick Fight: The Game on Linux.

Setting up a ThinkPad x250 with Linux

Two chapters in this article are Debian-specific, the rest is more or less Archlinux-specific. It never grew into the device-specific alround tutorial I envisioned and has been partially superseded by this article. The ThinkPad itself is in daily use. No regrets there!

How to Install Fish Shell on CentOS 8 and Rocky Linux 8 – VITUX

Fish Shell also known as ‘Friendly interactive shell’ used for Unix/Linux-like operating distributions. It provides a smart, fully equipped, and user-friendly command-line environment for all Linux users. Fish shell supports various features unlike any other shell such as autosuggestion, Tab completion, syntax highlighting, Sane Scripting, Glorious VGA Color, and web-based configuration. Using this interactive shell environment, you do not need to remember a bunch of Linux commands because it is more productive and comes with various handy features.

We will talk about the installation of interactive Fish Shell on CentOS 8 in this tutorial. The same steps apply to Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux too.

How to install Devuan(II) – Unixcop

In this article I show how to install Devuan using the installer included in the desktop-live iso, refractainstaller. In a previous article I’ve showed how to install it using the net-install ISO.

From the devuan site: Devuan GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd that allows users to reclaim control over their system by avoiding unnecessary entanglements and ensuring Init Freedom.

How to install and configure NextCloud on Centos 8 and LEMP

In this guide, we are going to set up NextCloud on a Centos 8 server hosted with Nginx and php (LEMP stack). We will be using Mysql 8 and PHP 7.4 for this guide.This will also work for RHEL derivatives like Alma Linux 8, Rocky Linux 8 and RHEL 8.

Nextcloud is an Open Source suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services. It is a a free self-hosted cloud storage solution similar to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. With Nextcloud, you don’t have to worry about the pricey alternatives and since you will host your own files, you don’t have to worry about privacy or someone collecting your data.

How To Install SuiteCRM on CentOS 8 – Unixcop

SuiteCRM is a free open source Customer Relationship Management application for servers. It is written in PHP. Open source CRM is often used as an alternative to proprietary CRM software from major corporations such as HubSpot, Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRM applications. SuiteCRM is a software fork of the popular customer relationship management (CRM) system from SugarCRM. The SuiteCRM project started when SugarCRM decided to stop development of its open-source version.

In this guide, we will show you how to install SuiteCRM in your CentOS 8 Linux.

How to Install & Configure VNC Server on CentOS 8, Rocky Linux 8, or AlmaLinux 8 – ByteXD

Virtual Network Computing, commonly known as VNC, is a platform-independent protocol that uses the client-server architecture to access a remote computer over a network.

It enables users to access the remote computer’s graphical desktop and send mouse clicks and keyboard strokes to the remote system.

Alternatives to VNC for CentOS that we have covered are xRDP and X2Go. All these technologies have similar goals, but their methods for achieving them differ.

This post will give you a step-by-step tutorial for installing and configuring a VNC server on your CentOS 8, Rocky Linux 8 or AlmaLinux 8, along with how to install and use multiple popular desktop environments.

Over the course of this article we’ll refer to all 3 operating systems when mentioning only CentOS 8, to avoid repeating all 3 every time.
Also, the screenshots provided in this tutorial are mostly from CentOS 8. I have provided a few from Rocky Linux 8 and AlmaLinux 8, to prove that I have also tested this tutorial on them.

How to Install Apache Spark on Debian 11

Apache Spark is a free, open-source, general-purpose and distributed computational framework that is created to provide faster computational results. It supports several APIs for streaming, graph processing including, Java, Python, Scala, and R. Generally, Apache Spark can be used in Hadoop clusters, but you can also install it in standalone mode.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Spark framework on Debian 11.

How to Install Specific Version of Package using DNF

As part of application requirements or testing, you might need to install specific version of a package. DNF is a package manager for RPM-based Linux distributions such Fedora, RHEL, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and more.

In this tutorial, we learn how to install specific version of package using DNF.

How to Install Unity Desktop on Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri – LinuxCapable

Unity Desktop Environment is a graphical shell for the GNOME desktop environment created and maintained by Canonical for Ubuntu operating systems. As time has passed and Ubuntu is now officially using GNOME as the default desktop environment, it is maintained and developed by the Unity7 Maintainers and UBports.

With Ubuntu 21.10 being released, another Unity Desktop environment has occupied it. This release still uses the Unity 7 interface as the UnityX 10 is still under development. However, in further Ubuntu distribution releases, this interface will undoubtedly appear. Overall, Unity is an excellent option for its speed, alternative looks to rival any other Desktop Environment.

In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Unity on Ubuntu 21.10 with various options.

How to install Craft CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa – Linux Shout

Just like WordPress, we have another open-source Craft CMS that is a new and innovative content management system with a large community of developers and communities worldwide. Here we learn the steps to Install Craft CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 or 18.04.

It is an open-source CMS based on PHP / MySQL with the TWIG template engine, flexible in nature, and has a user-friendly interface for creating digital current and administrative tasks. Craft CMS also offers a built-in plugin store with hundreds of free and paid plugins. Whereas is robust framework allows developers to develop modules and plugins.

Install Guacamole for Remote Linux/Windows Access in Ubuntu [Ed: Just updated]

As a system administrator, you may find yourself (today or in the future) working in an environment where Windows and Linux coexist.

It is no secret that some big companies prefer (or have to) run some of their production services in Windows boxes and others in Linux servers.

Uh oh, looks like Despot’s Game: Dystopian Army Builder is going to suck all my time away | GamingOnLinux

Despot’s Game: Dystopian Army Builder is a brand new release from Konfa Games and tinybuild that sees you command a bunch of naked people and send them through a strange post-apocalyptic labyrinth. Note: personal purchase.

Like it Loop Hero, you have no direct control during combat you just watch it play out and hope for the best. Here though you’re running through some kind of maze-like dungeon full of strange machines, with multiple people you need to look after. They’ll likely die a lot though, don’t get too attached, you can buy more naked people. Eventually you might come across the nefarious d’Spot who runs the show and perhaps destroy them to earn your freedom.

It blends together quite a few different genres and it feels totally unique. The structure is a bit like The Binding of Isaac with you going from room to room, it’s also a strategy game with you buying people and equipping them with various weapons you buy from shops spread throughout the maze and then there’s the fusion of auto battling so you can sit back and watch the mess unfold.

Techland continue expanding the Hellraid DLC as they try to improve reviews | GamingOnLinux

When Techland released the Hellraid DLC in August 2020 inspired by their unreleased dark fantasy slasher Hellraid the reviews were not kind, as it was very basic but they’ve kept at it and another big update is out now.

Brawlhalla to get Easy Anti-Cheat, dev puts up Beta with EAC working on Linux with Proton | GamingOnLinux

Blue Mammoth Games announced that later in October that the platform-fighter Brawlhalla will be getting Easy Anti-Cheat. Thankfully, they’ve put up a Beta for Linux users playing it on Steam Play Proton and it works.

Apple is now funding Blender development joining many big names | GamingOnLinux

There’s apparently absolutely no stopping the Blender train, with the developer announcing that Apple has now joined their development fund.

Valve banning games that allow exchanging cryptocurrencies or NFTs | GamingOnLinux

It seems Valve aren’t a big fan of cryptocurrencies or NFTs as they’ve updated their onboarding guide with a new point about disallowing games that allow you to exchange them.

Under the Rules and Guidelines heading where it mentions “What you shouldn’t publish on Steam” there’s a new line that states “Applications built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs”.

Check out this crowdfunding campaign to learn Godot Engine from GDQuest | GamingOnLinux

GDQuest, a well-known name in the free and open source Godot Engine land has launched a new crowdfunding campaign aiming to get you to go from zero to hero with Godot programming. A course aimed at anyone and everyone who fancies getting into making games with Godot.

The founder of GDQuest, Nathan Lovato, emailed in a little info about it: ” Learn to Code From Zero is a course for everyone who wants to learn development.

With it, you will learn programming from the very basics to creating a complete video game inspired by the hectic action game Enter the Gungeon.

Game development courses typically consist of hours of step-by-step tutorials. They feel nice while you follow along, but as soon as you’re left alone, working on your game, you get stuck.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• KDE Plasma 5.23 Desktop Released

  The release of the custom KDE Plasma 5.23 shell is available , built using the KDE Frameworks 5 platform and the Qt 5 library using OpenGL / OpenGL ES for rendering acceleration. You can evaluate the work of the new version through the Live build from the openSUSE project and the build from the KDE Neon User Edition project . Packages for various distributions can be found on this page .

  The release is timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the project – on October 14, 1996, Matthias Ettrich announced the creation of a new free desktop environment aimed at end users, not programmers or system administrators, and able to compete with the commercial ones available at that time. products such as CDE. The GNOME project, which had similar goals, appeared 10 months later. The first stable release of KDE 1.0 was released on July 12, 1998, KDE 2.0 was released on October 23, 2000, KDE 3.0 on April 3, 2002, KDE 4.0 on January 11, 2008, KDE Plasma 5 in July 2014.

• KDE turns 25 and the celebration is already underway

  KDE turns 25 . On this day a quarter of a century ago, a young German software engineer named Matthias Ettrich culminated his final degree project with an ambitious proposal : the creation of a desktop environment for Linux and other Unix systems that was “consistent, pleasant and free »using the Qt library. Thus was born Kool Desktop Environment, more popular today for its acronym.

  Since then it has not rained not much, but a lot and KDE has become one of the most important Free Software projects and communities in the world , although it has remained on the less populous and profitable side of the end user and not so much on that of the company, even though the truth is that the software as such is agnostic and only attends to what its license allows.

  KDE thus became the first Linux desktop environment and after four major versions in which it has not stopped expanding and improving, in one of the best desktop environments for PC, standing up to and even surpassing alternatives developed by the big companies in the technology sector. But KDE is not just a desktop environment, it is much more than that.

• KDE Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition: Five Biggest Changes! – Kockatoo Tube

• digiKam – digiKam Recipes 21.10.15 released

  It has been a while since the last update of digiKam Recipes. But that doesn’t mean I neglected the book. In the past few months, I’ve been doing a complete language review and adding new material. The new revision of digiKam Recipes features detailed information on how to move digiKam library and databases from one machine to another, how to access digiKam remotely from any machine, and how to import photos from an iOS device. The book now uses the Barlow font for better legibility along with a slightly improved layout.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• GNOME 41 Desktop Lands in openSUSE Tumbleweed, KDE Plasma 5.23 Is Coming Soon

  The GNOME 41 desktop environment series was released at the end of September 2021, and is slowly making its way into the stable software repositories of various rolling-release distributions. It still didn’t arrive for Arch Linux users, but it landed in openSUSE Tumbleweed.

  If you can’t wait any longer for GNOME 41 to arrive in the software repositories of your favorite distro and you want to use it right now, you can download and install the latest openSUSE Tumbleweed Live GNOME ISO snapshot from here.

New Releases

• Xubuntu 21.10 released!

  The Xubuntu team is happy to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 21.10.

  Xubuntu 21.10, codenamed Impish Indri, is a regular release and will be supported for 9 months, until June 2022. If you need a stable environment with longer support time we recommend that you use Xubuntu 20.04 LTS instead.

  The final release images are available as torrents and direct downloads from xubuntu.org/download/.

  As the main server might be busy in the first few days after the release, we recommend using the torrents if possible.

  Xubuntu Core, our minimal ISO edition, is available to download from unit193.net/xubuntu/core/ [torrent]. Find out more about Xubuntu Core here.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• OpenSSH, Squid, PostgreSQL Update in Tumbleweed

  Three openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots released this week have brought updates for text editors, browsers, emails clients, database management systems and many other pieces of software.

  Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, nano, and PostgreSQL were all in the latest 20211012 snapshot. A new major version of Firefox 93.0 added support for the optimised image format AVIF, which offers a significant file size reduction as opposed to other image formats. The browser also improved web compatibility for privacy protections and fixed more than a handful of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures. Thunderbird 91.2.0 addressed many of the same CVEs, fixed some issues with the calendar and fixed the new mail notifications that did not properly take subfolders into account. The 5.9 version of text editor nano added syntax highlighting for YAML files and fetchmail 6.4.22 added a few patches, addressed a CVE related to an IMAP connections and now highlights being compatible with OpenSSL 1.1.1 and 3.0.0. The new major version of postgresql 14 provided improvements for heavy workloads, enhanced distributed workloads and added a couple more predefined roles like pg_read_all_data, pg_write_all_data and pg_database_owner. Other packages to update in the snapshot were GNOME’s document viewer evince 41.2, Flatpak 1.12.1, graphics library gegl 0.4.32, glusterfs 9.3 and many RubyGems and YaST package updates.

• openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the weeks 2021/40 & 41

  Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

  Due to my slacking off last Friday, I have to write the review over two weeks again. But that might turn out even better this time, as otherwise, the review might be a bit short (we struggled a bit this week with ‘openQA being slower in testing than OBS with building’). During the last two weeks, we have released a total of 6 snapshots (0929, 1001, 1005, 1008, 1011, and 1012).

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

• Red Hat Announces Updates To Red Hat OpenShift And Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management For Kubernetes

• How bare metal cloud is powering the telecommunications industry

  Bare metal clouds are gaining a lot of momentum in the telecommunications industry—but why? What is a bare metal cloud, and what are the benefits of using it? In this post, we answer these questions and more.

Devuan Family

• Devuan 4.0 ‘Chimaera’ Systemd-Free Distro Released

  The Devuan community has announced the release of Devuan 4.0 with code name Chimaera, which strives to make GNU/Linux free of systemd.

  Devuan came into existence in 2014 as a result of Debian shifting to systemd after a long technical and much publicized debate. The move led to several Debian developers coming together to create Devuan by removing all traces of systemd from the Linux distro, instead sticking to the well-known init system, sysvinit.

  The name Devuan was chosen as a blend word, formed from parts of two others – “Debian” and “VUA“. And if you’re curious what “VUA” means, it’s the shortened form of Veteran Unix Admins.

• Devuan GNU/Linux 4.0 Available to Download – itsfoss.net

  The latest version of Devuan includes options for running the SysV, runit, and OpenRC init software implementations. “What’s new in Chimaera 4.0? Based on Debian Bullseye (11.1) with Linux kernel 5.10. Your choice of init: sysvinit, runit, and OpenRC. Improved desktop support – virtually all desktop environments available in Debian are now part of Devuan, systemd-free. New boot, display manager and desktop theming. Enhanced accessibility: installation via GUI or console can now be accomplished via software or hardware speech synthesis, or using a refreshable braille display, and Devuan Chimaera has the ability to install desktop environments without PulseAudio, allowing speech synthesis in both console and GUI sessions at the same time.” Further information on the new release can be found in the project’s release announcement.

• Devuan 4 ‘Chimaera’ makes the jump to Debian 11 (but without systemd) – LinuxStoney

  We already have among us Devuan 4.0 Chimaera , the latest version of the Debian Stable fork and reimplementation that stands out for not using systemd and offering the possibility to choose between various inits more akin to the Unix philosophy in the installation process.

  As you might expect, Devuan 4.0 Chimaera is based on the Debian 11 Bullseye software suite , more specifically from the 11.1 release . This means that the major novelties include, above all, what differentiates it from the operating system that forks, so, for example, the “engine” of the system is still Linux 5.10 LTS .

  Compared to previous releases of the same system, Devuan 4.0 has improved desktop support . Those responsible have explained that “practically all the desktop environments available in Debian are now part of Devuan, without systemd” . On the other hand, support for GDM and SDDM and new themes for the startup, the graphical session manager and the desktop have been incorporated .

Debian Family

• Debian blocks VPN and Tor users from reading its Wiki. – BaronHK’s Rants

  I understand that they don’t want VPN and Tor users messing up their Wiki anonymously, where it would be difficult to ban any one vandal, but to block people from even _reading it_ unless they unmask themselves is a bit heavy-handed.

  On Wikipedia, they block Tor and VPN users from editing, but you can read it all you want, and you can view the page’s source code if you are on a VPN. This is the right thing to do.

  I’m not sure why Debian is requiring us to de-anonymize ourselves just to read their Wiki. I wish that they would stop doing this.

ODROID-H2+ SBC discontinued due to supply shortage – CNX Software

Hardkernel has just discontinued ODROID-H2+ single board computer based on the Intel Celeron J4115 Gemini Lake Refresh processor, which followed ODROID-H2 SBC itself being discontinued shortly after Intel decided to phase out Intel J4105 and other Gemini Lake processors.

The reason given is the “uncertain situation of main component supply”, which could mean Celeron J4115 processor is hard to get (or expensive), or the Realtek RTL8125B chipset provides 2.5GbE networking. That means Hardkernel does not offer any x86 SBC at this time. That’s a shame before ODROID-H2+ was a well-supported SBC running Linux or Windows, and great value for money at $119, especially for people interested in the two 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports found on the board (and upgradeable to six), not to mention support for SO-DIMM memory and M.2 NVMe SSD.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Issue #373 – Robotic tickles

  We thought we’d lead with the weirdest Raspberry Pi-powered thing, purely because we couldn’t resist the bizarre visual. These robotic hands move according to actions taken on social media. And they’re creepy. We like creepy.

  Another robot from the blog this week can solve your Sudoku in seconds, and a hackathon-winning student project can photograph any object and automatically turn it into an NFT.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• Michael Meeks/2021-10-15 Friday

  After Italo’s keynote announcement of the new LibreOffice Technology marketing plan at the LibreOffice conference, we lost no time integrating this great way to fairly present the goodness of LibreOffice that we depend on to build Collabora Online & Collabora Office mobile into the product. With new links that can take you to our LibreOffice Technology page where we can celebrate the community & credit all the hard work done under the hood here, and of course the logo. Still a work-in-progress, and will start to appear in our products over the next weeks as/when we refresh them, but so far it looks like this for desktop & mobile

  [...]

  up-coming COOL About dialog up-coming COOL About dialog
  Thanks to Italo & Mike at TDF for developing the concept, and also to Pedro & Elisa, for their work on the code & logos – we’ll be iterating it with them over the next days & weeks.

• Let’s do awesome things! Get support for your projects and ideas from our budget – The Document Foundation Blog

  Want to organise a local (or online) LibreOffice event? Need some merchandise to boost your project or community? Then we can help you! The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice, is backed by contributions from ecosystem members and volunteers, as well as donations from end-users. This helps us to maintain TDF, but we can do a lot more too. And next year, we want to do a lot of projects again!

• Next batch of videos from the LibreOffice Conference 2021 – The Document Foundation Blog

  Here are some more videos from the LibreOffice Conference 2021! Check out the playlist, using the button in the top-right – or scroll down for links to individual videos…

• Automated bibisect to find source of a bug – LibreOffice Development Blog

  In programming, we usually face bugs that we should fix to maintain or improve our software. In order to fix a bug, first we should find the source of the problem, and there are tools like “Automated bibisect” are available to help, specially when the bug is a regression.

Programming/Development

• Software testing – a 32-year-old message

  And then, after having tested hundreds of Linux distributions, thousands of applications, every release of Windows since 3.11, and then some, I can definitely say that the slow, steady erosion of professional testing in the software world is noticeable. And by that mean, in those scenarios it actually existed, because in some domains, it’s never been there, and it shows. If anything, the longer I keep my hands on this or that application or program, the more I’m convinced that the new, casual approach to quality is simply not working. There will be a moment of reckoning.

• Python

  • DearPyGui 1.0.0 user interface Toolkit Released – itsfoss.net

    Published edition Dear PyGui 1.0.0 (the DPG), a cross-platform toolkit for GUI development in Python. The most important feature of the project is the use of multithreading and outsourcing of operations to the GPU to speed up rendering. The key goal of shaping the 1.0.0 release is to stabilize the API. Compatibility-breaking changes will now be proposed in a separate “experimental” module.

    To ensure high performance, the bulk of the DearPyGui code is written in C ++ using the Dear ImGui library , designed for creating graphical applications in C ++ and offering a fundamentally different operating model. The Dear PyGui source code is licensed under the MIT license. Declared support for Linux, Windows 10 and macOS platforms.

• Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

  • What Happens When You Run a Command in Linux?

    Most Linux users are often unaware of the internal working of the operating system. You might be running Linux commands on the shell for a long time, but have you ever wondered what’s happening behind the scenes when you hit Enter?

    By the end, you’ll have a brief understanding of how the shell processes the typed command in Linux.

Former Democratic Senators Lobbying Against Medicare Drug Price Negotiations

IN 2004, then-Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., cast herself as a conservative, commonsense Democrat focused on finding savings, such as moving to allow Medicare to use its size and scale to collectively negotiate lower drug prices.

Proprietary

• Chrome OS 94 Released – itsfoss.net

  The release of the operating system Chrome OS 94 has been published , based on the Linux kernel, the upstart system manager, the ebuild / portage build toolkit, open components and the Chrome 94 web browser . The user environment of Chrome OS is limited to a web browser, and instead of standard programs, web applications are used, however, Chrome OS includes a full-fledged multi-window interface, desktop and taskbar. Chrome OS 94 is available for most current Chromebooks. Enthusiasts have formed unofficial assemblies for ordinary computers with x86, x86_64 and ARM processors. Source texts are distributed under the free Apache 2.0 license.

• Security

  • Security updates for Friday

    Security updates have been issued by Debian (squashfs-tools, tomcat9, and wordpress), Fedora (openssh), openSUSE (kernel, mbedtls, and rpm), Oracle (httpd, kernel, and kernel-container), SUSE (firefox, kernel, and rpm), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4).

  • This Week In Security: The Apache Fix Miss, Github (Malicious) Actions, And Shooting The Messenger | Hackaday

    Apache 2.4.50 included a fix for CVE-2021-41773. It has since been discovered that this fix was incomplete, and this version is vulnerable to a permutation of the same vulnerability. 2.4.51 is now available, and should properly fix the vulnerability.

    The original exploit used .%2e/ as the magic payload, which is using URL encoding to sneak the extra dot symbol through as part of the path. The new workaround uses .%%32%65/. This looks a bit weird, but makes sense when you decode it. URL encoding uses UTF-8, and so %32 decodes to 2, and %65 to e. Familiar? Yep, it’s just the original vulnerability with a second layer of URL encoding. This has the same requirements as the first iteration, cgi-bin has to be enabled for code execution, and require all denied has to be disabled in the configuration files.

  • Apache Releases Security Advisory for Tomcat   | CISA

    The Apache Software Foundation has released a security advisory to address a vulnerability in multiple versions of Tomcat. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause a denial of service condition.

  • Security Risks of Client-Side Scanning

    Even before Apple made their announcement, law enforcement shifted their battle for back doors to client-side scanning. The idea is that they wouldn’t touch the cryptography, but instead eavesdrop on communications and systems before encryption or after decryption. It’s not a cryptographic back door, but it still a back door — and brings with it all the insecurities of a back door.

    I’m part of a group of cryptographers that has just published a paper discussing the security risks of such a system. (It’s substantially the same group that wrote a similar paper about key escrow in 1997, and other “exceptional access” proposals in 2015. We seem to have to do this every decade or so.) In our paper, we examine both the efficacy of such a system and its potential security failures, and conclude that it’s a really bad idea.

  • The Open Source Security Foundation receives $ 10 million in funding – itsfoss.net

    The Linux Foundation has announced a $ 10 million commitment to the OpenSSF (Open Source Security Foundation), an effort to improve the security of open source software. Funds raised through royalties from parent companies of OpenSSF, including Amazon, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Ericsson, Facebook, Fidelity, GitHub, Google, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, Red Hat, Snyk, and VMware …

  • KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Highlights Security for Open Source

    Vulnerabilities in the life cycle of open-source software development can start from tiny crumbs but grow into substantial issues.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Facebook Should Clarify Terms of Service, Irish Privacy Regulator Says

      A draft ruling from Ireland’s privacy regulator would require Facebook Inc. to change how it informs users about its data processing but disregards complaints that the social-media giant needs to obtain direct consent for its activities.

      If the decision is finalized, Facebook would also face a fine of between €28 million and €36 million (equivalent to $32.4 million to $41.7 million) for failing to be transparent with users. The case stems from a 2018 complaint filed by Austrian privacy lawyer Max Schrems, whose nonprofit organization NOYB published the draft decision on Wednesday. The Irish Data Protection Commission hasn’t made the decision public.

      A spokesman for the Irish regulator declined to comment because the investigation is still open, and said the office shared the document with regulators from the 26 other European Union countries last week. These regulators have one month to respond and could raise objections. The Irish Data Protection Commission will then issue a final decision, and other European watchdogs could still object at that stage.

    • AI fake-face generators can be rewound to reveal the real faces they trained on

      Load up the website This Person Does Not Exist and it’ll show you a human face, near-perfect in its realism yet totally fake. Refresh and the neural network behind the site will generate another, and another, and another. The endless sequence of AI-crafted faces is produced by a generative adversarial network (GAN)—a type of AI that learns to produce realistic but fake examples of the data it is trained on.

      But such generated faces—which are starting to be used in CGI movies and ads—might not be as unique as they seem. In a paper titled This Person (Probably) Exists, researchers show that many faces produced by GANs bear a striking resemblance to actual people who appear in the training data. The fake faces can effectively unmask the real faces the GAN was trained on, making it possible to expose the identity of those individuals. The work is the latest in a string of studies that call into doubt the popular idea that neural networks are “black boxes” that reveal nothing about what goes on inside.

Governments are finding new ways to squash free expression online

On october 8th two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, won the Nobel peace prize for their “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression”. The Kremlin congratulated Mr Muratov for being “brave”, which he is. Six of his colleagues at Novaya Gazeta, the Russian newspaper he founded in 1993, have been murdered.

[...]

The Nobel award recognises a sad truth. Globally, freedom of expression is in retreat. The bluntest methods of silencing dissent are widely wielded: autocrats and criminal gangs often use the sword against the pen (or bullets against bloggers). Many governments also lock people up for peacefully expressing their views.

But these old-fashioned forms of repression are increasingly reinforced with or replaced by newer techniques. Freedom House, a think-tank, reports that in the past year efforts to control speech online escalated in 30 of the 70 countries it monitors, and receded only in 18 (see map). Many autocrats and would-be autocrats look with envy at China, where the Communist Party has overseen the construction of a walled-off information sphere, within which criticism of those in power can barely be seen or heard. None can copy it exactly, but many are deploying digital tools to curate the information that reaches their citizens.

Google is breaking the web to rebuild it in their own image. – Invidious

Basics Of Remote Cellular Access: Watchdogs | Hackaday

When talking about remote machines, sometimes we mean really remote, beyond the realms of wired networks that can deliver the Internet. In these cases, remote cellular access is often the way to go. Thus far, we’ve explored the hardware and software sides required to control a machine remotely over a cellular connection.

However, things can and do go wrong. When that remote machine goes offline, getting someone on location to reboot it can be prohibitively difficult and expensive. For these situations, what you want is some way to kick things back into gear, ideally automatically. What you’re looking for is a watchdog timer!

The Dell Inspiron 15 3501 supports Linux

With the Inspiron 15 3501, Dell has a 15.6-inch office laptop in its lineup with its technology housed in a slim, matte-black plastic case. The chassis lacks stability: The lid and the base unit in particular can be twisted a bit too much. The matte display (Full HD, IPS) offers stable viewing angles, good contrast, and decent color reproduction. However, the brightness and color-space coverage are too low.

The built-in combination of the Core i7-1165G7 processor, 16 GB of RAM (dual-channel mode), and a 512 GB NVMe SSD (M.2 2230) equips the laptop for office and Internet applications. If the storage space isn’t enough, an additional 2.5-inch storage drive can be installed. You can also replace or expand the RAM.

Google adds VM support to Anthos, admits not everyone is ready for containerised everything [Ed: Kubernetes becoming increasingly just an openwashing shim for proprietary software with back doors]

Google has added support for workloads running in virtual machines to its Anthos hybrid Kubernetes platform.

“While we have seen many customers make the leap to containerization, some are not quite ready to move completely off of virtual machines,” wrote Google Application Modernization Platform vice-presidents Jeff Reed and Chen Goldberg.

“They want a unified development platform where developers can build, modify, and deploy applications residing in both containers and VMs in a common, shared environment,” the pair added.

The “What If” Performance Cost To Kernel Page Table Isolation On AMD CPUs – Phoronix

Made public this week by CPU security researchers at Graz University of Technology and CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security was the research paper published “AMD Prefetch Attacks through Power and Time”. The paper points to AMD CPUs suffering from a side-channel leakage vulnerability through timing and power variations of the PREFETCH instruction. The paper argues that AMD CPUs should activate stronger page table isolation by default. AMD has now published their security response where they are not recommending any mitigation changes at this time. But what if Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI/PTI) proves necessary for AMD CPUs? Here are some initial benchmarks showing what that performance impact could look like.

Excellent System Utilities: Pingnoo – traceroute/ping analyser

Essential System Utilities is a series of articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems.

The series examines both graphical and text based open source utilities. For details of all tools in this series, please check the table at the bottom.

This article looks at Pingnoo, an open-source cross-platform application for analysing and measuring the round trip time (latency) between two hosts. It offers a graphical representation for traceroute and ping output.

10 Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 21.10

Once you’ve installed Ubuntu 21.10 check out this list of post-install tasks, all designed to help improve your default Ubuntu experience.

This is the latest instalment in our ‘things to do‘ series and, as always, it is written for those who want to use Ubuntu as it comes, not make foundational changes that affect the operating system’s overall stability.

Those who try Ubuntu 21.10 and decide it’s not for them — which is fine; it’s not for everyone — should switch to an Ubuntu flavour (or, more dramatically, a different distro) that better suits their needs.

All of the tasks listed below are there as a guide, not a rule book; don’t feel like you have to follow every item. Pick out the tips that make sense for you, and ignore anything that doesn’t.

Finally, if there’s an essential ‘thing’ you do after you install Ubuntu that is not included on our list, do share it down in the comments for other readers to learn from!

Top 10 Things to Do After Installing Ubuntu 21.10 Desktop | UbuntuHandbook

Everyone needs to tweak the default desktop environment before getting ready to work! And here are the top 10 things that I’ve done after installing Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri.

How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10 From 21.04

Here’s how you can upgrade from Ubuntu 21.04 to Ubuntu 21.10 “Impish Indri”.

Access AlmaLinux 8 remote desktop using Windows RDP – Linux Shout

Do you want to use Windows 7/8/10/11 RDP to connect and access Almalinux 8 GUI remote desktop? Then here is the way to do that by installing XRDP.

RDP is the in-built feature of the Windows operating system, however, on Linux, we don’t have this feature. But we can get this with the help of XRDP, an open-source implementation of remote desktop protocols developed by Microsoft.

How to Install Zoom in Debian-Based Linux Distros

Zoom is one of the most popular applications for online meetings. Seeing its most significant user spike in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown, the communication platform integrates cloud video conferencing, media sharing, and real-time messaging into a simple application.

Zoom has become a go-to software for hosting webinars, creating conference rooms, and organizing online meetings on all platforms including Linux distros.

In today’s article, we present you with the quickest guide on how to install the latest version of Zoom on your Ubuntu machine. Not to worry, the same instructions apply to all Debian-based operating systems.

How to Install MATE Desktop 1.26 on Fedora 35 – LinuxCapable

For those not familiar with MATE Desktop Environment, it is the continuation of GNOME 2. It is famous for being lightweight, fast, and stable that runs on Linux and most BSD operating systems. MATE is also an excellent choice for a lower-end system or those looking to remain efficient on system resources. The newest version of MATE Desktop includes Wayland support for a swathe of desktop components and applications.

How to Upgrade From Ubuntu 21.04 to Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri | UbuntuHandbook

Ubuntu 21.10 officially released! Here’s what’s new and how to upgrade from the previous Ubuntu 21.04.

Ubuntu 21.10, codenamed “Impish Indri”, is the new short-term release with 9 months support. It features Linux Kernel 5.13 with new hardware support. And it ships GNOME Desktop 40 with a redesigned activities overview screen. Workspaces are now arranged horizontally. Three-finger touchpad gestures are supported out-of-the-box to toggle overview and switch workspaces.

For Ubuntu Server 21.10, it integrates OpenStack Xena, QEMU 6.0, PHP8, libvirt 7.6, Kubernetes, and Ceph with advanced life-cycle management tools.

How to Upgrade Ubuntu 21.04 to Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri – LinuxCapable

Ubuntu has officially released the Ubuntu 21.10 codenamed Impish Indri. This has seen the introduction of GNOME 40 as the default desktop, and sadly GNOME 41 did not make the final cut. The release also introduces Linux Kernel 5.13 among new applications and other back-end performance improvements.

How to create database migration in Laravel – Anto ./ Online

How to install the Vidiot video editor on Linux

Are you in need of a simple non-linear video editor for Linux? Consider checking out Vidiot. It’s a straightforward editor tool targeted at new users. It does basic things like compositing, changing speed, transitions, titles, and other essential things a user would want when editing.

The Vidiot video editor works on Linux, and the developer has ported the program to Ubuntu and Debian via a downloadable DEB package. Additionally, the users can install the application via a standalone TarGZ archive and a Snap package via the Snap store. Here’s how to get it working on your Linux system.

How to install and configure docker In Centos 8 – Citizix

Docker is an open source containerization platform. It enables developers to package applications into containers—standardized executable components combining application source code with the operating system (OS) libraries and dependencies required to run that code in any environment.

Docker is a set of platform as a service products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. Containers are isolated from one another and bundle their own software, libraries and configuration files; they can communicate with each other through well-defined channels.

In this guide we are going to explore various options to install docker in Centos 8…

How to install RPG Paper Maker on a Chromebook

Today we are looking at how to install RPG Paper Maker 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.

Effective Tips To Improve Linux Environment

Many people have used the Windows environment for several years and before they migrate to Linux, they feel like they are in a different world. Linux was released in 1991 and has been a free, open-source OS that has gained immense popularity in the world of technology. It offers several benefits to the users but to enjoy better performance, you need to pay attention to Linux installation. Domain brokerage service experts have seen a rise in the number of buyers running their systems on a Linux environment. It is important to ensure that the environment runs smoothly and effectively so as to avoid any challenges to the crucial applications. Let us take a look at some tips to improve the Linux environment.

There are several background elements and services running on every server in Linux. But all these components are not always necessary. Such extras will take up a lot of CPU and RAM space. It is best to incapacitate them with the startup script which starts the unnecessary services in the booting time. Once you disable the extra services, it is possible for you to make more memory space available, boost the performance of the OS, and cut the start-up time.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• KDE Plasma 5.23 Continues the Trend of Incremental Improvements

  The new KDE Plasma 5.23 release offers users a more beautiful Plasma desktop and immersive experience for its 25th Anniversary.

  Let’s start with some clarification: KDE Plasma 5.23 desktop environment has just been released, but if you were expecting a revolution in how you use your desktop, that is not the release for you.

  This release is mainly focused on small but very useful features and incremental improvements. And to be honest, it has done a brilliant job with this task. So let’s go through the updates.

• Congrats KDE

  If you you like open source you embrace it fully and embrace that it is about freedom, and part of that freedom is to make a desktop for people that don’t mind options.. you like a different desktop with less options?, great we in open source also made that for you enjoy.. and a ton of other things in between, that is what is great about it.. freedom to experiment.. freedom to choose..

  The vast majority of the Designers in KDE do their work in their free time without any more compensation than an occasional thank you, back in my time we were no more than 2-3 people at any given time…

  Please stop comparing us to the likes of Apple and Microsoft, 2-3 designers can’t do the work that you expect from multiple hundreds ? The simple fact that sometimes we nail things better is bloody amazing.. so… Yeah… c’mon we do it for the users not to get random abuse online…

• Kdenlive on TV for a main national Italian broadcaster

  Our beloved application was able to deliver the content keeping to a deadline (which on TV is always very tight), at the requested quality standard, and in the required format. Also, Kdenlive allowed us to quickly carry out a lot of the modifications the network asked for to better adjust the content to their internal policy.

  But this is not the end of our quest for quality and improvement, in fact, it is only the beginning. It is, however, a sign we are moving in the right direction. But we cannot carry on without you, our community. You help us improve, and we would love to share your recent productions with the world. Send us your work and help us and others learn how Kdenlive is being used and how the community is growing.

• Kubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri Released

  The Kubuntu Team is happy to announce that Kubuntu 21.10 has been released, featuring the ‘beautiful’ KDE Plasma 5.22: simple by default, powerful when needed.

  Codenamed “Impish Indri”, Kubuntu 21.10 continues our tradition of giving you Friendly Computing by integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

  The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

  Under the hood, there have been updates to many core packages, including a new 5.13-based kernel, KDE Frameworks 5.86, KDE Plasma 5.22 and KDE Gear 21.08.

Screenshots/Screencasts

• CutefishOS Built on Ubuntu Run Through – Invidious

  In this video, we are looking at CutefishOS Built on Ubuntu.

• CutefishOS Built on Ubuntu

  Today we are looking at CutefishOS Built on Ubuntu. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.11, based on Ubuntu 21.10, and uses about 900MB of ram when idling. Enjoy!

Arch Family

• Arch Linux vs Ubuntu: which to choose?

  Arch Linux and Ubuntu are two major Linux distributions that both get a lot of attention, have dedicated fanbases, and are used base-distributions for other systems that are forked off of them… But, how they do things are quite different, and some users might find one more to their liking than the other.

  It’s no secret to anyone who has followed previous articles I’ve written on Ghacks, that I love Arch Linux and its derivatives… But, that’s not to say that Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based systems are something I don’t use. Actually, I have multiple Ubuntu systems running as I write this, and zero Arch based systems. I use Ubuntu as a server distribution right now, on three different servers. I love the APT system for package management, and I find Ubuntu stable and secure, with a huge support community for any issues I may face.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

• My Fedora Linux home network part 1 – the data server

  The following article is the first of a series about how I’ve used the Fedora Linux operating system to create a home network. My goal is to demonstrate a few ways that Fedora Linux can be useful to a home user or a Small Office / Home Office (SOHO) user and to encourage more people to test, implement and use Fedora Linux. There is also demand in the workforce for Information Technology (IT) professionals who are ready to step into duties that require familiarity with Linux. With Linux, you can start without big investments. You can use what equipment you have and grow with your idea

• A new conceptual model for Fedora

  It’s no news now that Fedora has a new logo, and what you may not realize is that we do not have a new website – when we began the new logo rollout process, we simply updated the logo in-place on our pre-existing website.

  The thing is – and this is regardless of the underlying code or framework under-girding the website, which I have no issues with – the messaging and content on the current getfedora.org website has not kept pace with the developments, goals, and general narrative of the Fedora project. We have a lot of different initiatives, developments, and collaborations happening at what I find at times is a dizzying pace that is challenging to keep up with. The number of different fronts that Fedora development takes place on and the low, technical level they occur at makes it difficult to understand the big picture of what exactly Fedora is, and why and how would one want to use it.

• 3 ways to manage RPG character sheets with open source

  It’s that time of year again for gamers everywhere.

  Tomorrow is Free RPG Day, a day when publishers across the tabletop role-playing game industry release games for players both new and experienced, and they’re all completely free. Although Free RPG Day was canceled in 2020, it’s back this year as a live event with some virtual support by way of free RPG sampler downloads from Dungeon Crawl Classics and Paizo. And if the event’s virtual offerings aren’t enough, you might check out my list of open source tabletop RPGs.

  Over the past two years, like most people, I’ve been playing my tabletop games online. I use open source video conferencing and some shared mapping software. Don’t get me wrong: I love my pen and paper for analog games. To this day, I rarely leave home without my 2E5 quad book so I can sketch out dungeon maps on the go. But I find my computer desk gets pretty cluttered between RPG sourcebooks, splat books, random tables, dice tower, dice, and character sheets. To clear some space, I’ve recently adopted a digital system for my character sheets, for both my player characters and non-player characters when I DM.

• Reach your open source community with content marketing [Ed: IBM has totally lost direction; this is how they think of Free software...]

  Both startups and more established firms are increasingly turning to content marketing as a way of reaching prospective customers.

  However, corporate marketers often consider the open source software (OSS) community a challenge to reach. This article features ways your technology and content marketing teams can work together to target and reach the community around an OSS project your organization supports.

• Why digital transformation demands a change in leadership mindset

  Recently a key retail executive forecast that their industry will change more in the next five years than it has in the past fifty. Another executive believes society will change more in the next fifty years than it has in the last three hundred. A recent headline declared that, “We are approaching the fastest, deepest, most consequential technological disruption in history”, and Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering and co-Founder of Singularity University, has said that there will be fourteen internet size revolutions in the next decade. Whichever way you look at it, things are shifting… fast.

  When you speak with the visionaries and entrepreneurs actually building the solutions of tomorrow, from on-demand retail to vertical farms, and ask how far into this new era we are, almost universally the reply is: “only one percent”. Imagine then, where we will be ten years from now? How about 50?

  Major industries, from medicine to energy to travel to entertainment, are radically transforming, putting pressure on others such as manufacturing, construction, transportation, finance, education…frankly, all of it. What an extraordinary opportunity this presents.

• DevSecOps lessons learned during a pandemic | The Enterprisers Project

  As we’ve seen over the past year and a half, the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and forever changed workplace culture. Increased reliance on digital tools has elevated the value of DevSecOps, as enterprises of all sizes and across all industries realize the importance of automating and integrating security at every phase of the software development lifecycle – from initial design through integration, testing, deployment, and product delivery.

  My engineering team was no exception to this shift – we had to quickly prepare to build a new Virtana SaaS platform and deliver several new modules, all while working remotely.

  Here I’ll share some observations, pain points, and lessons learned to help others intelligently embrace DevSecOps best practices within their teams.

Devuan Family

• Devuan debuts version 4.0 – as usual without a hint of the hated systemd

  The team of self-described “veteran Unix admins” who opposed Debian’s adoption of systemd instead of sysvinit init, have released a fourth version of their alternative Linux distro, “Devuan”.

  Devuan Chimaera 4.0 is based on Debian 11.1, and version 5.10 of the Linux Kernel. That version of the kernel enjoys long-term support until 2026, and Debian 11.1 will also be tended to until that year. Devuan’s devs are clearly thinking long-term!

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Codename is a Jolly Good Choice

  The new name was posted on Launchpad, home of Ubuntu development, as is tradition. But what does the codename tell us? Can we glean anything from this mercurially minded moniker?

  Jammy is an interesting adjective. Broadly speaking it means to be filled with jam (what American’s call jelly) or something that has the consistency of jam. But the word ‘jammy’ is also used informally in the UK to mean someone or something that is very lucky or fortunate, e.g., “that jammy cat had an extra plate of milk!”.

• Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri Released with Flavors Download Links, Mirrors and Torrents

  Congratulations to Ubuntu community, finally Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri released Thursday, 14 October 2021! This latest operating system is released for Desktop, Server, and Internet of Things computers. Canonical published all information at its official website. However, this article will help you to download Ubuntu including Flavors from Kubuntu to Kylin, verify their checksums, make bootable medium, and install it to your machine.

• Canonical launches Ubuntu 21.10 for desktop and server

  The latest version of the world’s most popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu 21.10, codenamed ‘Impish Indy’, has landed on Canonical’s download channels.

  The highlight of the release is the inclusion of GNOME 40 as the default desktop environment, bringing aboard a horizontal workspace switcher and application launcher, and also a set of new touchpad gestures.

• Canonical Releases Ubuntu Linux 21.10 Impish Indri

• Ubuntu 21.10 Available, News and Download

  We are launching today and to crown the day, here is Ubuntu 21.10 ‘Impish Indri’ , a new intermediate version of «the distribution of the people» that … does not point ways, no sir. But let’s go in parts.

  Ubuntu 21.10 is the run of Ubuntu 21.04 ‘Hiruste Hippo’ launched last April and like this one, whose cycle ends next January, will consist of only nine months of support, although the upgrade procedure to the next Ubuntu version will be ready quite a bit. before that time comes.

  What’s new in Ubuntu 21.10

  Among the general news of Ubuntu 21.10, extendable to the rest of the family, is the kernel Linux 5.13 and Mesa 21.2 as prominent components. In the case of Ubuntum, in addition, Wayland is maintained by default even when using the proprietary Nvidia drivers, as this version comes with that support ready.

  Ubuntu 21.10 also stands out for finally dressing GNOME 40 and although GNOME 41 came out recently, it is not enough to ask the distro not to adopt it. Now that could have been prepared because time to spare, too. But it’s not a bad deal either. In fact, with GNOME comes almost all the new features at the desktop level.

Extreme Overclocker Takes Raspberry Pi to 3 GHz

Some people will do anything for a speed boost, prying the lids off expensive i9s and subjecting them to all manner of chilly chemical concoctions to drag every last megahertz out of the silicon. We’ve not seen anybody do such an extreme overclock with a Raspberry Pi before, but there’s a first time for everything. Claude Schwarz has overclocked his Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 to an extraordinary 3 GHz.

[...]

Schwarz’s earlier efforts saw him overclock the Compute Module 4 to 2.89 GHz, still an extreme speed boost over the stock 1.5 GHz. As well as using liquid metal thermal paste, Schwarz used active cooling on the Compute Module 4 in the form of a heatsink and fan designed for the Raspberry Pi (which could be a 52Pi model cooler). Taking the steps to overclock even further Schwarz disabled power management features to unlock a higher overclock, resulting in much higher CPU speeds than we can achieve with a typical overclock. We should probably say at this point that anyone doing this is on their own, as these extreme actions will definitely void your warranty, and we take no responsibility for whatever happens if you try it.

A little more fumbling in the Pi’s firmware – what Schwarz refers to as “removing all safety nets” – and the CM4 is running at an impressive 2.4GHz at 26.2°C (79.16°F). Not bad for a board that started life at 1.5GHz and didn’t require cooling.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Printed Piano Mechanism Sure Is Grand | Hackaday

  Do you know how a piano works? Sure, you press a key and a hammer strikes a string, but what are the finer points of this operation? The intricacy of the ingenious mechanism is laid bare in [Mechanistic]’s 3D-printed scale model of a small section of the grand piano keyboard. The ‘grand’ distinction here is piano length-agnostic and simply refers to any non-upright. Those operate the same way, but are laid out differently in order to save space.

• FPGA Boards Add VGA And HMDI Interfaces To The Original Game Boy | Hackaday

  The classic Game Boy remains a firm favorite in the realm of retrocomputing. Revolutionary as it was at the time, by today’s standards its display is rather primitive, with no backlight and a usable area measuring only 47 mm x 44 mm. [Martoni] figured out a way to solve this, by developing GbVGA and GbHdmi, two projects that enable the Game Boy to connect to an external monitor. This way, you can play Super Mario Land without straining your eyes, and we can also image potential uses for those who stream their gameplay online.

• Art Project Fast And Fouriously Transforms Audio Into Eye Candy | Hackaday

  The overall build is relatively simple. Audio is acquired via a line-in jack or a microphone, and then piped into an ESP32. The ESP32 runs the audio through the FFT routine, sampling, slicing, and dicing the audio into 16 individual bands. The visual output is displayed on a 16 x 16 WS2812 Led Matrix. [mircemk] wrote several routines for displaying the incoming audio, with a waterfall, a graph, and other visualizations that are quit aesthetically pleasing. Some of them are downright mesmerizing! You can see the results in the video below the break.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• Sky Brasil ops for t4h Android TV remote

• Stable One UI 4 (Android 12) ‘likely’ to arrive before the end of the year | Android Central

• Android 12 CDD Defines ‘Performance Class’ Requirements for OEMs

• Samsung Galaxy A21 gets Android 11 and One UI 3.1 update in the United States

• Rockchip RK3566 Benchmarks in Android 11 (Zidoo M6) – CNX Software

• Motorola Android 11 update: List of eligible devices & release date

• Palm teases new pair of earbuds for one of the tiniest Android phones – PhoneArena

• HTC Vive Flow uses Android phones as a VR controller – 9to5Google

• Best Android app deals of the day: Monument Valley 2, more – 9to5Toys

• The Best Android Games on Sale This Week – Reigns: Game of Thrones, Gris, Botanicula and More – Droid Gamers

• ColorOS 12: The 12 Best Features in Oppo’s Android Phones

• Many Android flagships will use MediaTek Dimensity 2000 SoC next year -

• 5 Ways To Fix Touch Screen Issues On Your Android Phone

• How much do you trust your Android smartphone? A new study suggests its spying on you | Euronews

• How To View Your Notification History On Android

• Roku Starts Rolling Out OS 10.5-Focused Updates to Android Mobile App on Oct. 15th | Cord Cutters News

• New ZTE ZPAD 10 Android Tablet Now at TELUS | Business Wire

• SD Times news digest: Android Basics in Kotlin course; SharePoint Framework 1.13 release candidate; Crystal 1.2 – SD Times

• Realme UI 3.0 beta roadmap revealed: When will your phone get Android 12? | Technology News,The Indian Express

• Samsung redesigns its Weather widget for Android 12 – 9to5Google

• Android 12-based Realme UI 3.0 is now official: Here’s what you need to know | Android Central

• Samsung One UI 4.0 (Android 12) update tracker: Eligible devices & more

• Chrome for Android might be getting this feature previously reserved for desktop

• Google’s Pixel 6 reveal event is Oct. 19: How to watch the Android phone reveal – CNET

• What fitness tech and apps do the Android Central staff actually use? | Android Central

• Best clock widgets for Android – Phandroid

• Lenovo launches Tab6 5G mid-range Android tablet in Japan – Liliputing

• How to Clear the Cache on an Android Device

• Alarm Didn’t Go Off on Your Android Phone? Here’s How to Fix It

• How Android is tracking you even when you think you’ve opted out

• How To Change Keyboard On Android And Best Ones To Try First

• BenQ GS50: IPX2 portable projector launches with built-in speakers and Android TV – NotebookCheck.net News

• Android data sharing remains significant, no opt-out available to users – Help Net Security

• PinePhone Pro Linux Smartphone Unveiled with 4GB RAM, Custom Rockchip SoC

  Meet the PinePhone Pro, PINE64′s latest Linux-powered and Open Source smartphone device featuring a custom-made RK3399S Rockchip Hexa-Core processor that runs at at 1.5GHz and allows the smartphone to receive calls and SMS messages during suspend state, thus preserving battery.

  PinePhone Pro also features a gorgeous in-cell IPS 1440×720 display covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 4, 4GB of dual-channel 800MHz LPDDR4 RAM, 128GB of internal eMMC flash storage, a high-fidelity 13MP rear camera, and a 5MP front-facing camera for video calls and selfies, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1, and an ARM Mali T860 GPU.

• Must Read: $399 PinePhone Pro Announced with More Power, 4GB RAM

  PinePhone Pro is billed as “the fastest mainline Linux smartphone on the market” and packs some serious performance upgrades compared to the original PinePhone.

  More powerful, the new model comes outfitted with a six-core ARM processor, 4GB RAM, and 128GB internal memory. Physical hardware privacy dip switches are also included as standard.

• PinePhone Pro is a faster Linux Smartphone for $399

  Most modern smartphones ship with Android or iOS, but there’s also a small, but growing number of phones designed to run Linux-based operating systems. And it’s likely that no phone has been more successful in spurring the development of mobile Linux distributions than the PinePhone, an inexpensive phone that’s made mobile Linux accessible.

  But while the PinePhone’s $150 starting price makes the device attractive, it’s only possible because the phone’s hardware is… not great. So now the folks at Pine64 have introduced a new phone for folks that want to run mainline Linux on a phone with more powerful hardware. Meet the PinePhone Pro.

• Pine64 Announces Updated PinePhone Pro Linux Powered Cell Phone

  Pine64 today announced its latest Linux-powered device, the PinePhone Pro, an update to the original PinePhone which sees a more powerful device running mainline Linux (Manjaro in this case) on a mobile device that works as a cell phone and a desktop computer.

• PinePhone Pro launches with RK3399 and 4GB RAM

  Pine64 opened $399 developer pre-orders for a Linux driven “PinePhone Pro” with a power-efficient RK3399S variant, 4GB LPDDR4, 128GB flash, 6-inch screen, LTE and WiFi-ac, and 13MP and 5MP cameras.

  Pine64 unveiled a Linux smartphone follow-on to its PinePhone that advances from a quad -A53 Allwinner A64 to an RK3399S variant of the hexa-core -A72 and -A53 RK3399 that was developed especially for Pine64 by Rockchip. The PinePhone Pro is available to Pine64 developers for $399, with shipments expected in December. A production version will soon follow and is expected ship in early 2022.

• PinePhone Pro Is Here! Plus An Exclusive Interview with Pine64

  Pine64 is at it again, just when you thought they couldn’t possibly have any more tricks up their sleeves after the announcement of the PineNote, today Pine64 has revealed the new PinePhone Pro! The community has been talking about this device since the moment the PinePhone was announced with anticipation of what it could be and that day has come. The PinePhone Pro is here!

  The Pinebook was a break through device that showed that a product could be made at very low costs and be successful. The Pinebook Pro was the successor to this break through device and it lived up to its “Pro” label by making it much more powerful and capable of a device. So this begs the question, “does the PinePhone Pro live up to the label”? Let’s see.

• PinePhone Pro Announced As New Linux Smartphone – Phoronix

  The PinePhone Pro is being announced this morning as the organization’s new smartphone building upon the successes and experience of the original PinePhone Linux smartphone.

  The PinePhone Pro is a more polished Linux smartphone that is powered by a Rockchip hexa-core 1.5GHz SoC, 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 128GB of eMMC flash stoage, 13MP + 5MP cameras, and a display completed with using Corning Gorilla Glass 4.

• PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone to feature a power-optimized Rockchip RK3399S processor – CNX Software

  Pine64 has now announced the PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone with a Rockchip RK3399S hexa-core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz, that’s a power-optimized version of the popular Rockchip RK3399 processor. It will provide a noticeable upgrade to the PinePhone Linux smartphones launched in November 2019, which, by today’s standards, is quite underpowered.

  Besides the faster processor, PinePhone Pro also comes with 4GB RAM and 128 GB storage which should make it a better candidate at mobile desktop convergence, as well as a 5.95-inch display with 1440×720 resolution, a 13MP rear camera, a 5MP front-facing camera, and more.

• PinePhone Pro – Do Linux Phones have their flagship? – Invidious

  The PinePhone PRO was just announced! I own a regular PinePhone, and while it’s a great device to try out, and develop for mobile versions of Linux, I always felt the hardware couldn’t really carry that phone into a daily driver state for me. It seems like The Pine 64 have decided to offer a more premium device this time around,

ThreatMapper: Open source platform for scanning runtime environments – Help Net Security

Deepfence announced open source availability of ThreatMapper, a signature offering that automatically scans, maps and ranks application vulnerabilities across serverless, Kubernetes, container and multi-cloud environments.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Jan-Erik Rediger: Fenix Physical Device Testing

    The Firefox for Android (Fenix) project runs extensive tests on every pull request and when merging code back into the main branch.

    While many tests run within an isolated Java environment, Fenix also contains a multitude of UI tests. They allow testing the full application, interaction with the UI and other events. Running these requires the Android emulator running or a physical Android device connected. To run these tests in the CI environment the Fenix team relies on the Firebase test lab, a cloud-based testing service offering access to a range of physical and virtual devices to run Android applications on.

    To speed up development, the automatically scheduled tests associated with a pull request are only run on virtual devices. These are quick to spin up, there is basically no upper limit of devices that can spawn on the cloud infrastructure and they usually produce the same result as running the test on a physical device.

  • CTCFT 2021-10-18 Agenda

    After the CTCFT this week, we are going to try an experimental social hour. The hour will be coordinated in the #ctcft stream of the rust-lang Zulip. The idea is to create breakout rooms where people can gather to talk, hack together, or just chill.

  • Hacked! Unravelling a data breach

    The bottom line: If you get snagged in a data breach, tie up any loose threads quickly to protect yourself, and stay on top of monitoring your accounts for suspicious activity.

  • Dyn async traits, part 5

    If you’re willing to use nightly, you can already model async functions in traits by using GATs and impl Trait — this is what the Embassy async runtime does, and it’s also what the real-async-trait crate does. One shortcoming, though, is that your trait doesn’t support dynamic dispatch. In the previous posts of this series, I have been exploring some of the reasons for that limitation, and what kind of primitive capabilities need to be exposed in the language to overcome it. My thought was that we could try to stabilize those primitive capabilities with the plan of enabling experimentation. I am still in favor of this plan, but I realized something yesterday: using procedural macros, you can ALMOST do this experimentation today! Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work owing to some relatively obscure rules in the Rust type system (perhaps some clever readers will find a workaround; that said, these are rules I have wanted to change for a while).

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• LibreOffice 7.2.2 for Slackware-current is available

  LibreOffice Community Edition 7.2.2 was released yesterday and I have uploaded a new set packages for Slackware-current.

  The document conversion libraries have been split off and made available via the Document Liberation Project : documentliberation.org . It is the home for a growing community of developers ‘united to free users from vendor lock-in of content‘. Software like Calligra, Inkscape and Scribus also make good use of the document format conversion capabilities these libraries offer.

Programming/Development

• Josef Strzibny: Organizing business logic in Rails with contexts

  Rails programmers have almost always tried to figure out the golden approach to business logic in their applications. From getting better at object-oriented design, to service objects, all the way to entirely new ideas like Trailblazer or leaving Active Record altogether. Here’s one more design approach that’s clean yet railsy.

• Status update, October 2021

  On this dreary morning here in Amsterdam, I’ve made my cup of coffee and snuggled my cat, and so I’m pleased to share some FOSS news with you. Some cool news today! We’re preparing for a new core product launch at sr.ht, cool updates for our secret programming language, plus news for visurf.

  Simon Ser has been hard at work on expanding his soju and gamja projects for the purpose of creating a new core sourcehut product: chat.sr.ht. We’re rolling this out in a private beta at first, to seek a fuller understanding of the system’s performance characteristics, to make sure everything is well-tested and reliable, and to make plans for scaling, maintenance, and general availability. In short, chat.sr.ht is a hosted IRC bouncer which is being made available to all paid sr.ht users, and a kind of webchat gateway which will be offered to unpaid and anonymous users. I’m pretty excited about it, and looking forward to posting a more detailed announcement in a couple of weeks. In other sourcehut news, work on GraphQL continues, with paste.sr.ht landing and todo.sr.ht’s writable API in progress.

  Our programming langauge project grew some interesting features this month as well, the most notable of which is probably reflection. I wrote an earlier blog post which goes over this in some detail. There’s also ongoing work to develop the standard library’s time and date support, riscv64 support is essentially done, and we’ve overhauled the grammar for switch and match statements to reduce a level of indentation for typical code. In the coming weeks, I hope to see date/time support and reflection fleshed out much more, and to see some more development on the self-hosted compiler.

  [...]

  The goal of this project is to provide a conservative CSS toolkit which allows you to build web interfaces which are compatible with marginalized browsers like Netsurf and Lynx.

• Perl/Raku

  • Monthly Report – September

    The month of September is very special to me personaly.

    Why?

    Well, I got married in the very same month 18 years ago. The best part is, I choose the day 11 to get married. I have never missed my wedding anniversary, thanks to all the TV news channel.

  • My Favorite Warnings: uninitialized | Tom Wyant [blogs.perl.org]

    This warning was touched on in A Belated Introduction, but I thought it deserved its own entry.

    When a Perl scalar comes into being, be it an actual scalar variable or an array or hash entry, its value is undef. Now, the results of operating on an undef value are perfectly well-defined: in a nuneric context it is 0, in a string context it is ”, and in a Boolean context it is false.

    The thing is, if you actually operate on such a value, did you mean to do it, or did you forget to initialize something, or initialize the wrong thing, or operate on the wrong thing? Because of the latter possibilities Perl will warn about such operations if the uninitialized warning is enabled.

Proprietary

• Client-side content scanning as an unworkable, insecure disaster for democracy • The Register

  Fourteen of the world’s leading computer security and cryptography experts have released a paper arguing against the use of client-side scanning because it creates security and privacy risks.

  Client-side scanning (CSS, not to be confused with Cascading Style Sheets) involves analyzing data on a mobile device or personal computer prior to the application of encryption for secure network transit or remote storage. CSS in theory provides a way to look for unlawful content while also allowing data to be protected off-device.

  Apple in August proposed a CSS system by which it would analyze photos destined for iCloud backup on customers’ devices to look for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), only to backtrack in the face of objections from the security community and many advocacy organizations.

  The paper [PDF], “Bugs in our Pockets: The Risks of Client-Side Scanning,” elaborates on the concerns raised immediately following Apple’s CSAM scanning announcement with an extensive analysis of the technology.

• Vivaldi Adblock is mostly Adblock Plus and ublock-origin.

  The Vivaldi browser has a built-in ad blocker.

  However, the company hasn’t been extremely forthcoming about how it works.

  However, it seems to accept any list in adblock plus format, and Vivaldi seems to have implemented Webkit Content Blockers as well.

  Vivaldi includes a list called “DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar”, which leads to what seems to be a Webkit Content Blocker format list mirrored by Vivaldi.

  In my testing, the DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar seems to largely duplicate what Fanboy’s Ultimate List already had in it.

  While Fanboy’s Ultimate List is not in Vivaldi by default, you can add it by going to Vivaldi Menu/Settings/Privacy, and then select “Block Trackers and Ads”, and then I would suggest de-selecting everything in both columns that Vivaldi defaults to having on, then clicking + under Ad Blocking Sources, then adding https://www.fanboy.co.nz/r/fanboy-ultimate.txt and then Import. It should tell you it brought in a bunch of ad blocking rules.

• This week’s Windows 11 patch didn’t fix AMD performance woes • The Register

  Windows 11 received its first bundle of fixes this week, but AMD users hoping for respite from performance issues that have dogged their PCs were to be disappointed. In fact, for some, performance might have actually got a bit worse.

  It wasn’t the news AMD fangirls and fanboys were hoping for. After AMD noted performance issues with Microsoft’s latest operating system, a fix had been expected to drop during October. Alas, that fix didn’t turn up in this week’s first Cumulative Update for the GA code. In fact, according to hardware site TechPowerUp, things might have even deteriorated.

• Microsoft’s first Windows “11” update addresses AMD CPU scheduling problems. Ends up making them worse. – BaronHK’s Rants

  Microsoft released their first “Windows 11” update.

  It was deployed to try to correct the AMD CPU problems that Windows “11” created on Ryzen, which tripled L3 CPU cache latency and slowed the processor down by an average of 15%.

  The update ended up making the problem worse. Doubling the cache latency from where it already was at launch.

  “Early adopters” of Microsoft’s latest broken operating system are seeing much worse performance than they were on Windows 10, even on the Intel side, as Microsoft’s “virtualization based security” was already wreaking havoc on video game performance.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Privatisation/Privateering

    • Linux Foundation

      • Linux Foundation raises USD 10 mln to secure software supply chain

      • ISO establishes SBOM standard for open source development with SPDX

        You’re not getting attention because of your choice of text editor or the number of spaces you use to indent code blocks. However motivating those preferences are for you and me, the non-technical world sees them as private choices. You find your code in the headlines for a different and unpleasant reason: open source dependency management.

• Security

  • White House ransomware summit calls for virtual asset crackdown, without mentioning cryptocurrency [Ed: They need to crack down on Microsoft Windows, instead; they use their NSA back doors as a ruse to protect big banks. Microsoft has infiltrated think tanks about ransomware, so now instead of tackling the security breaches themselves (which can lead to sabotage or worse) they treat it like a financial transaction issue.]

    The 30-nation gabfest convened under the auspices of the US National Security Council’s Counter-Ransomware Initiative has ended with agreement that increased regulation of virtual assets is required to curb the digital coins’ allure to criminals.

    A joint statement issued after the event’s conclusion opens with anodyne observations about the need for good infosec, international collaboration, and the benefits of private sector engagement.

    The first mention of concrete action comes in a section of the statement entitled “Countering Illicit Finance” – and while the document never mentions cryptocurrencies, it’s plain they’re a target.

    “Taking action to disrupt the ransomware business model requires concerted efforts to address illicit finance risks posed by all value transfer systems, including virtual assets, the primary instrument criminals use for ransomware payments and subsequent money laundering.”

  • Thingiverse suffers breach of 228,000 email addresses • The Register

    Thingiverse, a site that hosts free-to-use 3D printer designs, has suffered a data breach – and at least 228,000 unlucky users’ email addresses have been circulating on black-hat crime forums.

    News of the breach came from Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), whose maintainer Troy Hunt uploaded the 228,000 breached email addresses to the site after being tipped off to their circulation on the forums.

    Hunt claimed on Twitter that in excess of two million addresses were in the breach. He qualified that by saying the majority were email addresses that appeared to be generated by Thingiverse itself, judging from their format: webdev+$username@makerbot[.]com.

    HIBP’s maintainer also claimed that some of the data included poorly encrypted passwords: one he highlighted was an unsalted SHA-1 hash which resolved to the password “test123″.

  • Thingiverse Data Leaked — Check Your Passwords | Hackaday

    Every week seems to bring another set of high-profile data leaks, and this time it’s the turn of a service that should be of concern to many in our community. A database backup from the popular 3D model sharing website Thingiverse has leaked online, containing 228,000 email addresses, full names, addresses, and passwords stored as unsalted SHA-1 or bcrypt hashes. If you have an account with Thingiverse it is probably worth your while to head over to Have I Been Pwned to search on your email address, and just to be sure you should also change your password on the site. Our informal testing suggests that not all accounts appear to be contained in the leak, which appears to relate to comments left on the site.

  • New PureBoot Feature: Scanning Root for Tampering – Purism

    With the latest PureBoot R19 pre-release we have added a number of new changes including improved GUI workflows and new security features and published a ROM image so the wider community can test it before it turns into the next stable release. To test it, existing PureBoot users can download the R19-pre1 .rom file that corresponds to their Librem computer and flash it like any other PureBoot release.

    In this post I want to highlight a new experimental security feature we added in this release that will extend the tamper detection PureBoot already does with the boot firmware and the /boot directory into the main root file system. This will allow you to detect attacks that modify system binaries (like /bin/bash) with backdoored versions. I also want to give some background on this feature and my thought process behind it so people understand where I’m coming from and why I made the design decisions I did.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • We need to talk about digital ID: why the World Bank must recognize the harm in Afghanistan and beyond – Access Now

      With two of the world’s most influential power brokers meeting this week, what they failed to put on the agenda speaks volumes. Every year the World Bank and International Monetary Fund holds an annual summit to discuss the challenges and choices that determine whether we will have a sustainable and inclusive world. This year, they chose not to discuss digital identity programs, even though the World Bank itself funds and promotes these “Big ID” systems — including the systems the Taliban reportedly seized in Afghanistan. Instead of ignoring the urgent human rights concerns these systems raise, these international agencies should be doing everything in their power to prevent further rights abuse, marginalization, and exclusion.

      Consider what’s happening in Afghanistan today. The World Bank offered technical advice and promoted Afghanistan’s biometric digital identity program as part of its efforts to help women. But without sufficient human rights protections built in from the outset, a digital ID and its associated databases can be turned against the holder. Now, with the Taliban in charge, the very systems that were supposed to help women could make them more vulnerable. Those especially at risk: women human rights defenders, gender justice activists, and journalists.

Britain’s chicken king says the 20-year binge on cheap food is over

LinkedIn shutting down in China after mounting government pressure to censor social media content [Ed: Misleading headline because for a very long time Microsoft has been keely censoring for China's regime]