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Links 24/11/2021: Alpine Linux 3.15 and Endless OS 4.0 Released



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • The backbone of a Linux Industrial I/O driver

        As part of recent projects, we had to dig into the Linux kernel Industrial I/O (IIO) subsystem with the goals of supporting a new ADC and adding new features to an existing driver. These tasks involved quite a few discussions between our engineering team and the IIO maintainers and reviewers. The aim of this blog post is to summarize the substance of these explanations to help others understand how an IIO kernel driver works and interacts with the core IIO subsystem.

      • Intel Posts New Iteration Of Key Locker Support For Linux - Phoronix

        With Intel Tiger Lake mobile processors introduced last year there has been good open-source support going back to launch, but a few of the more niche features have seen slower than normal handling for getting the features supported by the upstream Linux kernel. The latest patch series being revived now is for Intel Key Locker support.

        Just a few days ago I talked about Intel pursuing a new Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) patch series as part of their Control-Flow Enforcement Technology (CET) introduced on Tiger Lake. After months of silence, another Tiger Lake feature is seeing revised kernel patches emerge this week and that is for Key Locker.

      • EasyOS: Kernel 5.10.81 compiled with improved AMD CPU support

        I don't have a PC with AMD CPU, so haven't bothered much with configuring the kernel to work with them. However, some guys testing EasyOS are keen on them, so today have given it a closer look.

    • Benchmarks

      • AMD P-State v4 Linux Testing On A Ryzen 5 5500U

        With AMD having published a new revision to their AMD P-State Linux CPU frequency scaling driver that they are working towards mainlining with a goal of better power efficiency on Linux, here are some initial benchmarks of that new patch series when using a Ryzen 5 5500U notebook.

        The amd-pstate driver was updated a fourth time this past week since its unveiling in September with a goal of delivering better performance / power efficiency over the generic ACPI CPUFreq driver used on Linux systems. AMD's P-State driver makes use of ACPI CPPC that is supported on Zen 2 and newer processors for making more precise handling and better informed decisions around ramping up/down the performance state of the processor.

    • Applications

      • Where in the Stack?

        For one of my projects – not KDE-related – I have a parser, written in YACC / bison. To build the project, the bison grammar needs to be compiled (by the bison command) to C, and then the C can be compiled to the final executable. On my workstation, the bison step would fail when the build was run one-process-at-a-time in KDE konsole. Workarounds were really weird: build with a -j flag to build with more processes at once, or pipe the build-output to cat, or run the build in xterm instead of konsole. So where is the bug? In konsole, in bison, or in something underneath? It’s definitely something to do with the terminal emulator: here’s a screenshot of bison compiling a sample file successfully in xterm, and crashing in konsole, roxterm and alacritty. It crashes in cool-retro-term as well, but leaves the terminal itself in a messed-up-state. It also crashes on the FreeBSD text console.

      • Wireshark 3.6.0 Release Notes

        Wireshark is the world’s most popular network protocol analyzer. It is used for troubleshooting, analysis, development and education.

      • Wireshark 3.6 Network Analyzer Release - itsfoss.net

        After a year of development, a new stable branch of the Wireshark 3.6 network analyzer has been released. Recall that initially the project developed under the name Ethereal, but in 2006, due to a conflict with the owner of the Ethereal trademark, the developers were forced to rename the project to Wireshark. The project code is distributed under the GPLv2 license.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Running Linux on the GPD Pocket 3 mini-laptop - Liliputing

        The GPD Pocket 3 is a tiny laptop computer with an 8 inch touchscreen display, a swivel-hinge that allows you to fold the screen over the keyboard for use in tablet mode, and a modular port system that allows you to customize the little computer’s capabilities.

      • How to install phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS using repository

        Well, we can install phpMyadmin by manually downloading and setting its files along with Apache on Ubuntu. However, it could be difficult for a few users to go through various steps to configure phpMyAdmin, instead of that we can automate its installation using the phpMyadmin repository on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa.

        phpMyAdmin is an open-source web platform developed in PHP to manage MariaDB or MySQL database server via a graphical web interface. Most of the hosting platforms come with this database web-based management application, already, however, if you are using some private virtual server or cloud hosting then you may need to install it manually. And here in this article, we learn that.

      • How to Install Icinga 2 on Ubuntu 20.04 | RoseHosting

        In this article, we are going to explain about installing Icinga 2 Monitoring Software on Ubuntu 20.04.

        Icinga is an open-source and cross-platform monitoring tool that monitors network resources, generates performance data, sends notifications about outages and etc. It is one of the most popular monitoring tools on the internet that provides high availability and distributed monitoring. Besides the installation, we will explain in more detail the configuration and accessing the Icinga through the web interface.

        Icinga 2 installation may take up to 40 minutes but don’t worry it is very easy and straightforward. Let’s Start

      • How to listen to radio on the Linux desktop with ease

        Want to listen to the radio on your Linux desktop but can’t find a radio app with a simple user interface? If so, Raddiola is for you. It’s a simple, easy-to-use radio program that you can use to listen to internet radio on the Linux desktop.

      • How to play Halo Wars: Definitive Edition on Linux

        Halo Wars: Definitive Edition is the PC release of Halo Wars. Halo Wars is a real-time strategy video game based inside of the Halo video game universe. Here’s how you can get the game working on Linux.

      • FreeBSD CPU Information Command - nixCraft

        How do I get more information about CPU under FreeBSD operating systems such as CPU Speed and model using the command-line options?

      • How to install PHP 7.2/7.3/7.4 or 8.0 on Amazon Linux 2 - nixCraft

        While working with an application, I needed PHP 7.4 and 8.0 on Amazon Linux 2 EC2 and Lightsail instance. Here is how to install PHP version 7.2/7.3/7.4 or 8.0 on Amazon Linux 2 using the yum command.

        The default PHP version is 5.4.16 on Amazon Linux version 2. However, for Lightsail or EC2 cloud server, I needed either PHP 7.4 or PHP 8.0 as my application works with both versions flawlessly. So, let us see how a developer can install PHP 7.4 or 8.0 on an Amazon Linux 2 virtual machine.

      • How to set up the Pretty Hostname - Unixcop the Unix / Linux the admins deams

        A pretty hostname avoids most of the limitations of other hostname types, giving users more freedom when naming their systems.

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to set up a pretty hostname for a Linux system in two different methods.

      • How to install and use SAR command (to Monitor system Performance) in Linux - Unixcop the Unix / Linux the admins deams

        System Activity Report (sar) is a Unix System V-derived system monitor command used to report on various system loads, including CPU activity, memory/paging, interrupts, device load, network and swap space utilization. Sar uses /proc filesystem for gathering information.

        In this tutorial, We will show you how to install and use SAR command in Linux.

      • How to Ping a Port Number in Linux - Unixcop the Unix / Linux the admins deams

        Ping is a computer network administration software utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network. It is available for virtually all operating systems that have networking capability, including most embedded network administration software.

        Port numbers belong to transport layer protocols, such as TCP and UDP. Port numbers help identify where an Internet or other network message forwarded when it arrives.

        So Pinging ports is one of the most effective troubleshooting technique in order to see if a service is alive or not.

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to ping a port in Linux using three different tools.

      • How to install Apache Cassandra with Podman – NextGenTips

        Apache Cassandra is a free and open-source, distributed, wide-column store, NoSQL database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers, providing high availability with no single point of failure.

        Linear scalability and proven fault-tolerance on cloud infrastructure make it the perfect platform for mission-critical data.

      • Force SSH Client to Use IPv4 or IPv6 - Putorius

        In this Linux quick tip we will discuss using command line options to force the SSH client to use IPv4 or IPv6 specifically. We will also show you how to set which IP protocol you would like to use in your SSH client configuration file.

      • How to Install Zoom on Linux - Make Tech Easier

        “Can I install Zoom on Linux?” was the first question that came to mind when my bosses informed me that we would be working from home and using Zoom for remote meetings and one-on-one interactions with fellow employees and clients. The answer to that first question is yes, you can install Zoom on Linux. Let’s look at how to download and install the Zoom client on four different Linux distributions: Fedora, Manjaro (Arch), OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu/Debian.

      • How to upgrade from Fedora 34 to Fedora 35 | FOSS Linux

        The official stable release of Fedora Workstation 35 was made available for download on November 2, 2021, after being pushed back to resolve some outstanding bugs. You can now install or upgrade to Fedora 35 Desktop, Fedora cloud, Fedora Servers, or any spin or labs that come with any new release cycle.

        If you prefer a fresh installation, you will have to download the latest ISO, create a bootable USB and perform a fresh install. I prefer an upgrade of the Fedora 34 system to Fedora 35. An upgrade will retain any existing files and all installed applications.

        The article is a step-by-step guide on how to upgrade to Fedora 35 via GUI (GNOME software) and the CLI method.

      • €» Android – how to: wireless access device (wifi wlan) via ftp and how to: save apps to apk and send via bluetooth or even messenger (whatsapp, signal, telegram) | dwaves.de

        what is definately great and a big plus is the “openness” of the Android (a by Google heavily modified GNU-Linux) environment.

    • Games

      • Lands Awakened is live now for Albion Online, big open-world improvements | GamingOnLinux

        Albion Online, the free to play MMO that has native Linux support, has been upgraded with some massive improvements landing in the Lands Awakened update.

        One of the big noticeable changes is the rework of the open-world areas. Expect to find improved visuals and layouts in all the biomes, better mobs that become stronger over time and give better rewards, a rework of dungeons and treasure sites that spawn randomly and more. You also get the War Gloves weapon, new Elite levels for weapons and armour, a rework of Guild Seasons and so on.

      • Settlement-builder King under the Mountain hits Early Access | GamingOnLinux

        King under the Mountain is a fresh take on building up a settlement, this time with a fantasy setting that looks a bit nordic.

        The visual style of it will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played the likes of Prison Architect and RimWorld, with the small floaty characters and colourful tile-based building. Currently in Early Access, for the second time, after initially being available on itch.io as an early Alpha. This version is much further along although still largely incomplete.

      • Steam Autumn Sale 2021 is live now

        It's that time of the year again. It's getting cold outside, dark and so you should keep warm with some new games. The Steam Autumn Sale 2021 is up.

        You know the drill, you probably have a Wishlist stocked full of interesting games but for those who don't we have a couple of items you should take a look at including...

      • Zid Journey is another colourful and inviting prehistoric adventure coming up | GamingOnLinux

        Developer Azure Mountain has announced the second game in the Zid and Zniw Chronicles series, with Zid Journey.

        The game will offer up a familiar look and feel, with its classic point and click adventure gameplay and cartoony visuals much like its predecessor Zniw Adventure. Set in the Cretaceous Period, it stars Zid, a young dinosaur who is searching for the lost parents of a tyrannosaur hatchling.

      • Hanoi Puzzles: Flip Match is a nice no-frills experience based on the Tower of Hanoi | GamingOnLinux

        One for puzzle game fans after something to relax with and test the brain a little, Hanoi Puzzles: Flip Match released back in October from Hanoi Studios.

        The developer tells us it has a similar idea to the previous title Hanoi Puzzles: Solid Match, this time around it adjusts the gameplay with "a harder mechanic, enhanced graphics and colours, new original soundtrack and dozens of new challenges". At its core the main mechanic is taken from the Tower of Hanoi, with you moving around differently sized discs to get them to fit together.

      • Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition gets an official HD model and texture pack | GamingOnLinux

        Love the Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition from Beamdog and want to make it look just that little bit more modern? Beamdog has your answer now.

        After years of work, Beamdog has now released a free HD Models & Textures Pack for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition that gives a visual boost to player character models and their equipment (including armour, weapons and shields). The newer models now support "normal and spec information", plus they can be further modded by the community just the the base game.

      • Capture monsters and explore dungeons in Siralim Ultimate on December 3 | GamingOnLinux

        Thylacine Studios have announced that their dungeon-crawling and monster-catching roguelike RPG, Siralim Ultimate, which leaves Early Access on December 3.

        A game that the developer says is a bit like "Pokemon meets Diablo, or more accurately, Dragon Warrior Monsters meets Path of Exile". It might not be a looker but it has a huge amount of depth and replay value to it, and one that's easy enough to really get stuck into.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Plasma wonder tools: Digital Clock

          A bunch of months back down the trouser leg of time, I published my Plasma is awesome article. Indeed, it's the most cohesive, consistent and convenient desktop environment in the Linux world, and beyond. You get a great experience, with big things as well as small ones. A good example is the Digital Clock widget, the topic of today's piece.

          You may think, digital clock, who cares? Well, if you've used other operating systems and/or desktop environments, you would. Quite often, the clock tool is merely a simple placeholder for time and date, perhaps calendar, and ... that's about it. Also, you may say: wait, didn't we talk about this already? Yes, we did talk about the Digital Clock in 2018, so it would be nice to see how things have changed and improved three years later. Now, let's see how Plasma handles it, and why it does a better job than its rivals. After me.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • How To Survive GNOME With GNOME Extensions

          When you start as a Linux User, you are very likely to fall in two camps. Either you are a GNOME user, or a KDE user, whether it was by choice or by default. So you already know you won’t be missing any fanboy-ism or any flamewar in the Linux community. Since a good chunk of Linux users are tinkerers, we end up with a lot of experiments: different distros, different desktops, different bootloaders, different everything. I personally think it’s very healthy, even if it goes against having a consistent experience across the board. This is what happens when users are able to modify and tweak every piece of the system. It’s an inherent property of its original design.

          Of course, you can avoid the GNOME vs KDE war by using something completely different altogether, like a tiler i3, awesomevm or other alternatives… or just use both GNOME and KDE and recognize that they both have some merits.

          These days I tend to find myself more at home in KDE than in GNOME, but I still use GNOME on one of my machines – it moved recently to GNOME 41. Out of the box I’m in the camp that GNOME defaults are not for me, making it barely usable. Thankfully there’s the wonderful world of GNOME Extensions to make it possible to live in GNOME, keeping the good bits and ironing out the bad ones with Extensions. I won’t go at length on how to install extensions, suffice to say that you simply need the above link and a browser plugin (available for Firefox and Chromium/Chrome) if you like it the easy way.

          So, here is what I recommend if you feel a little lost by the lack of customization or options in Vanilla GNOME. I will split my recommended extensions into three parts: Essential, Important, and Nice to have.

        • The Top 8 Features of the GNOME Desktop Environment

          GNOME is one of the oldest and most popular interfaces for free and open-source operating systems like Linux. But modern GNOME looks nothing like its origins, and it has evolved into one of the best ways to use a computer.

          Whether you’re already using Linux or curious why you might want to make the switch, here are some of the best features of GNOME.

          [...]

          On GNOME, the panel at the top does not contain any app launchers. This panel is small and black, like on a phone or tablet, and is lately static. It contains the date and time, a few system indicators in the top right, an Activities button in the top left, and the name of the currently running app next to that.

          You click that Activities button when you want to do anything unrelated to the currently open app. Otherwise, there’s little on-screen to distract you from what you're doing.

    • Distributions

      • Deepin 20.3 Released with Kernel 5.15, Scrolling Screenshot Support

        The beautiful Debian based Linux distribution Deepin 20.3 was released. Features Kernel 5.15, new features and optimizations for its core apps.

        The stable Linux kernel has been updated to v5.15 with better support for Intel 12th Gen processors and NTFS file systems. Though the iso image by default boots with 5.10 LTS kernel, user have to select the new kernel to install from ‘Advanced’ menu in Grub boot-loader.

        The Deepin screen capture can now take scrolling screenshots via the ‘Scrollshot‘ option. After selecting an app window to capture, a ‘Scrollshot’ option is available in tool-bar. By clicking on it, you may scroll the page to take a continuous screenshot with real-time preview. Also OCR is supported in this mode to extract text from image.

      • Distribution kit for mobile phones NemoMobile 0.7 Released

        After more than a year of development, an updated distribution kit for mobile phones NemoMobile 0.7 version was released, using the developments of the Mer project, but based on the ManjaroArm project. The system image size for Pine Phone is 740 MB. All applications and services are open under GPL and BSD licenses and are available on GitHub .

        NemoMobile was originally planned as an open replacement for Nokia’s Harmattan project and was developed in collaboration between the community and Jolla. However, over time, Jolla focused on the partially closed SailfishOS without paying due attention to the open part of the Mer – NemoMobile project. The last release of NemoMobile took place in April 2013

        In 2019, a team of enthusiasts began the transfer of NemoMobile components from the Mer base to the Manjaro base. There have also been projects to port NemoMobile to other operating systems like Fedora and OpenEmbedend. The main reason for moving from the Mer base was obsolete components. In particular, Mer still uses version 5.6 of Qt due to licensing restrictions.

      • New Releases

        • Alpine Linux 3.15 Released with Linux 5.15 LTS, GNOME 41, and UEFI Secure Boot Support

          Alpine Linux 3.15 is here more than five months after Alpine Linux 3.14 to provide those who want to use this security-oriented distribution on their computers. As you can imagine, this is a major update and it’s the first release of Alpine Linux to be powered by the latest and greatest Linux 5.15 LTS kernel series.

          Highlights of this release include initial support for UEFI Secure Boot on the 64-bit (x86_64) architecture, support for disk encryption in the installer, support for out-of-tree kernel modules via AKMS (inspired by DKMS), gzip compressed kernel modules, and SimpleDRM as default in-kernel framebuffer driver for a flicker-free boot.

        • Alpine 3.15.0 released

          We are pleased to announce the release of Alpine Linux 3.15.0, the first in the v3.15 stable series.

        • Alpine Linux 3.15 Released - Builds Off Linux 5.15, Drops MIPS64, SimpleDRM For FB

          Alpine Linux 3.15 is out today as the newest feature update to this lightweight/embedded/containers focused Linux distribution known for its musl+Busybox usage along with OpenRC as the init system.

          Alpine Linux 3.15 ships with a wide variety of package updates including use of the Linux 5.15 LTS kernel, LLVM 12, PostgreSQL 14, Rust 1.56, OpenJDK Java 17, GNOME 41, X.Org Server 21.1, KDE Plasma 5.23, and many other updates.

        • Endless OS 4.0 Released as Long-Term Supported Series, Based on Debian Bullseye

          Endless OS 4.0 is a major release that introduces numerous new features and enhancements, starting with an improved app grid navigation with clickable arrows that allow users to more easily navigate between app pages, with dots that indicate the total number of pages and the page you’re currently on.

          This release also introduces fast user switching to allow you to easily switch to a different user while another user is still logged in. The new feature has been implementing in both the user menu and the lock screen.

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • Digest of YaST Development Sprints 135 & 136

          As already explained in this same blog quite some time ago the YaST Partitioner can be used to set up several kinds of encryption, but “Regular LUKS2” was not one of those. That was intentional because using LUKS2 comes with many challenges, as summarized in this Bugzilla comment. But now the time has come to start introducing experimental support for general LUKS2 encryption. Initially it will be available in openSUSE Tumbleweed and pre-releases of SLE-15-SP4 but only if the environment variable YAST_LUKS2_AVAILABLE is set. Check the description of this pull request for screenshots and more information.

          Support for LUKS2 in AutoYaST will have to wait a bit, until we have received some feedback from interactive installations and ironed out all the details. But AutoYaST users can meanwhile test and enjoy another new feature available also in Tumbleweed and 15.4 pre-releases - support for identifying EFI systems in dynamic profiles, which includes both rules and ERB templates. Learn more and see some examples in the description of the corresponding pull request.

          The last feature for Tumbleweed and the upcoming 15.4 that we want to highlight in this report is the brand new support for NTLM authentication in linuxrc.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • A year of collaboration: 2020-2021 IBM Developer partnership program

          In December 2020, the IBM Developer team decided to launch its first-ever Partner Developer Success Program. The idea for this program is simple: Collaborate with partners on co-hosted webinars to educate external developers about the values and benefits of IBM and partner technologies.

          The partners that we decided to collaborate with were either part of the Hybrid Cloud Build Team ecosystem, were global system integrators (GSIs), independent software vendors (ISVs), or part of Red Hat Marketplace. Overall, these are partners that are already deeply rooted in the IBM tech ecosystem, and the goal with this program is to highlight and share technology insights.

          Since the program’s conception, we have collaborated with more than 10 different partners on 30+ Crowdcast.io webinars, attracting an average of over 200 attendees worldwide. We have also started collaborating with partners in various geographic regions and languages, such as Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. We have begun live-streaming our sessions across our YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch channels.

        • Customizing provisioning templates in Red Hat Satellite using snippets

          Red Hat Satellite's provisioning templates are very powerful, but also hard to customize and maintain. A recently introduced feature makes extending and customizing default templates much easier to accomplish and maintain. In this post, we’ll provide an overview of the Kickstart default provisioning template and how to create a custom provisioning template using snippets that better address your environment.

        • Veeam Ransomware Protection with Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the Immutable Repository

          Veeam Backup and Replication is a backup, recovery and data management platform that modernizes data protection for cloud, physical and virtual environments. In this post we're going to look at using Veeam as part of a strategy to guard against ransomware attacks.

          Ransomware attacks continue to be damaging and costly events for all sizes of companies. Immutable backups are just one component in an overall business continuity strategy to protect against these types of revenue and reputation draining catastrophes.

          Linux is key to this strategy, and specifically Red Hat Enterprise Linux, can act as that immutable backup repository—whether on-premise, or in the cloud as part of your hybrid-cloud implementation.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Sipeed LicheeRV – A $16.90 Allwinner D1 Linux RISC-V board

        Finally! There’s now a much more affordable Allwinner D1 RISC-V Linux board thanks to Sipeed LicheeRV Nezha CM SBC sold for $16.90 and up on Aliexpress, that’s much cheaper than the $100 asked for Nezha SBC, although still not incredibly cheap as we’ll see from the specifications below.

        Sipeed LicheeRV is actually both a board and a system-on-on-module with an edge connector, and is equipped with 512MB DDR3, a USB-C OTG port, a MicroSD card socket, and an SPI display interface. The dual M.2 edge connector can be plugged into a carrier board, and they will be a “86 Box” (86x86mm) for HMI display that can be used for home automation.

      • $17 SBC runs Linux on Allwinner D1 RISC-V SoC

        Sipeed has launched a tiny, SoM-like “LicheeRV” SBC that runs Linux on an Allwinner D1 RISC-V SoC. The board supports standalone use, but is primarily intended to plug into upcoming “Lichee RV-86” panel PC and future carriers.

        In Nov. 2020, Allwinner and Alibaba’s T-head subsidiary announced an Allwinner D1 SoC based on T-head’s RISC-V-based XuanTie C906 core. At the time, Sipeed said it would produce a $12.50 SBC based on the SoC that would arrive in early 2021. The SBC was delayed due to supply issues, and Sipeed instead went to Indiegogo in May to launch a more feature rich Nezha SBC based on the Allwinner D1 starting at $99.

      • Open Hardware/Modding

        • Oscilloscope Probes Itself To Add Video | Hackaday

          Modern oscilloscopes are often loaded with features, but every now and then you run into a feature that seems easy to implement yet isn’t available. [kgsws] wanted to use his Rigol DS1074 to show live measurements in his YouTube videos, but found out that this scope doesn’t support video output. Not to be deterred, [kgsws] decided to add this feature himself. In the video embedded below, he describes in detail the process of adding a USB Video Capture (UVC) interface to his oscilloscope.

          The basic idea was to find the signals going into the scope’s display and read them out using a Cypress EZ-USB board. This is a development board that can be used to design USB devices, and supports the UVC mode. However, with no documentation of any of the Rigol’s internal circuitry [kgsws] had to probe the display connector to find out which pin carried which signal. And since he had no other scope available than this Rigol, he hooked up the various bits of the disassembled instrument so that it could (awkwardly) probe its own internal signals.

        • 7 Segment Display And Raspberry PI Pico: Wiring and Setup with MicroPython

          7 segment display can be controlled with a few Micropython lines from Raspberry PI Pico. It is one of simplest projects and a funny way to start coding and cabling

          In this tutorial, I’m going t show you how to connect and configure a 7 segment display with a Raspberry PI Pico. If you are interested in how to get it working with Raspberry PI computer boards (like RPI Zero, RPI 4 model B, RPI 3 model A/B, and so on), please refer to my Control a 7 Segment Display from Raspberry PI with Python.

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Leftovers

    • Dead on Archival

      Being a child of the 1980s is kind of strange nowadays. I don’t feel old but am often quick to make references that date me. Pop culture is obviously a rife minefield for this but I also run into this as a writer and journalist. In my younger days, I was a reporter at Forbes Magazine but was based in Austin, Texas. On occasion, I got to travel to New York and work out of the Forbes office on 5th Avenue. In the early aughts, it was a big time magazine and just felt cinematic. A bustling newsroom with reporters taking calls, editors demanding more info before deadline, and beleaguered copy editors wondering what happened to the American education system. When I got a tour on my first visit, I took a spiral staircase down to the Forbes archives. Though I expected a library like one Indiana Jones would have stumbled upon, instead it was rows of grey filing cabinets. Think of the ones that were behind the accounting department in the U.S. version of The Office. As the archivist explained a bit about how some 75 years of work was organized, I wondered what happens to all this when they digitize the files. Instead, I should have been wondering what happens when publications go bust. What happens to all this history? Today’s Tedium is looking at the archives of defunct publications and what, if any, second life they manage to get

    • Science

      • Why Deep Frying Turkey Can Go Very Wrong | Hackaday

        It all sounds fairly straight forward, but there are two ways that this often goes wrong, leading to leaping flames and calls to the fire department. The first of all is simple: overfilling. Lowering a turkey into oil will necessarily displace that oil. A pot filled to the brim will thus overflow the second the turkey enters the pot, with hot oil streaming down the sides of the cooking vessel directly towards the gas burner below. It’s a beginner’s mistake, but one that happens all too often. To avoid this, it’s important to account for the volume of the turkey before dropping it in the pot, to avoid starting a conflagration.

        The second major cause of turkey fires is from attempting to deep fry a frozen turkey. The ice on the frozen turkey quickly turns to steam when it comes into contact with the hot oil. The steam rapidly expands, creating bubbles and quickly throwing hot foaming oil all over the place. This can easily cause severe burns by itself, but the presence of a gas burner only increases the danger. The hot aerosolized oil typically catches fire, either from the burner itself or simply the hot surfaces in the vicinity, and quickly creates a huge fireball.

    • Hardware

      • A Flip Clock That Flips Up, Not Down | Hackaday

        The venerable flip clock has become an outsized part of timekeeping culture that belies the simplicity of its mechanism. People collect and restore the electromechanical timepieces with devotion, and even seek to build new kinds of clocks based on split-flap displays. Designs differ, but they all have something in common in their use of gravity to open the leaves and display their numbers.

      • Cracking Open The Prince Floppy After The Purple Reign | Hackaday

        Readers of a certain vintage will no doubt remember the time when Prince eschewed his royal position and became an unpronounceable symbol. People had no choice but to refer to him as TAFKAP, The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, and members of the music press were sent a 3.5″ floppy disk with a font file containing a single character — that gender-transcending shape that would soon become another one of Prince’s guitars. But it’s 2021, and now you can get it from the Internet Archive. Fun fact: the file wasn’t ever locked down. In fact, the symbol was available on Prince’s Compuserve and fan club CD-ROM.

        While some people trawl auction sites for overalls and weird keyboards, others look for ridiculous items from the zeitgeist, like a copy of this floppy. Take [Anil Dash] for instance. [Anil] finally pulled the trigger after 15 years of debating this particular purchase. [Anil]’s interest was reignited after reading this analysis of whether the symbol could ever be put into Unicode. (Between being trademarked, a logo, and a personal character, it’s ineligible for inclusion.)

      • You Can’t Upgrade Soldered-On Laptop RAM? Think Again | Hackaday

        The write-up is a fascinating primer on how DRAM identification works, which for removable DIMMs is handled by an onboard FLASH chip containing the details of the chips on board. A soldered-on laptop has none of these, so instead it employs a series of resistors whose combination tells the BIOS what memory to expect. Some research revealed their configuration, at which point the correct chips were sourced. Surprisingly it’s not as easy as one might expect to buy small quantities of some RAM chips, but he was eventually able to find some via AliExpress. An aside is how he checked the chips he received for fakes, including the useful tip of hiring a dentist to take an x-ray.

      • Mechanical Musical Sculpture Recalls The Four Muses | Hackaday

        Music was created by humans, but often we find ourselves creating performances with machines. [Alana Balagot] and [Federico Tobon] did just that, constructing the stunning 4 Muses musical sculpture with their combined talents.

        4 Muses is made up of four individual instruments, under the command of a single keyboard controller. The keyboard can be used to play the instruments live, or alternatively, can learn from the player or be used as a sequencer. It can also act as a simple device to play back music using the four instruments.

        The pipe instrument uses servo-controlled valves, which allow air from a blower fan to reach several wood pipes. The xylophone instead uses solenoids to play its 13 tines. Percussion is provided by a mechanized cajón drum, using motors to actuate mallets that strike the various sections of the box. Meanwhile, hackers will be familiar with the concept of the motor-noise instrument, which drives stepper motors at different frequencies to generate tones.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • CVE-2021-41816: Buffer Overrun in CGI.escape_html

            A buffer overrun vulnerability was discovered in CGI.escape_html. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-41816. We strongly recommend upgrading Ruby.

          • CVE-2021-41819: Cookie Prefix Spoofing in CGI::Cookie.parse

            A cookie prefix spoofing vulnerability was discovered in CGI::Cookie.parse. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-41819. We strongly recommend upgrading Ruby.

          • Ruby 2.6.9 Released

            This release includes security fixes. Please check the topics below for details.

          • Ruby 2.7.5 Released
          • Ruby 3.0.3 Released
          • Security updates for Wednesday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (openjdk-17), Fedora (libxls, roundcubemail, and vim), openSUSE (bind, java-1_8_0-openjdk, and redis), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, kpatch-patch, krb5, mailman:2.1, openssh, and rpm), Scientific Linux (kernel, krb5, openssh, and rpm), SUSE (bind, java-1_8_0-openjdk, redis, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (bluez).

          • VMware Releases Security Updates | CISA

            VMware has released security updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in vCenter Server and Cloud Foundation. A remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability to obtain access to sensitive information.

          • CISA Releases Capacity Enhancement Guides to Enhance Mobile Device Cybersecurity for Consumers and Organizations | CISA

            CISA has released actionable Capacity Enhancement Guides (CEGs) to help users and organizations improve mobile device cybersecurity.

          • Malware downloaded from PyPI 41,000 times was surprisingly stealthy
          • GoDaddy Breach Exposes SSL Keys of Managed WordPress Hosting Customers

            A data breach at GoDaddy exposed SSL keys issued to an undisclosed — but likely large — number of active customers using its Managed WordPress website hosting service. The incident has sparked concerns about attackers hijacking domains for ransomware or spoofing them for credential theft and other malicious purposes.

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Apple Sues NSO Group [Ed: Spying companies sue spying company; helps distract and deflect focus (off and away from themselves)]

              NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware is favored by totalitarian governments around the world, who use it to hack Apple phones and computers.

              [...]

              This follows in the footsteps of Facebook, which is also suing NSO Group and demanding a similar prohibition. And while the idea of the intermediary suing the attacker, and not the victim, is somewhat novel, I think it makes a lot of sense. I have a law journal article about to be published with Jon Penney on the Facebook case.

    • Environment

      • Energy

        • The Corbett Report - How Green Finance is Monopolizing the Planet

          Whitney Webb returns to the program to discuss her recent work on the “green” transformation of the global financial system. From NACs to GFANZ, Webb and Corbett break down the latest attempt to monopolize the world’s natural resources and how this financial scam represents the next step along the path to the Great Reset, Agenda 2030 and the 4th Industrial Revolution.

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • William Wells Brown, Wildcat Banker – The Public Domain Review

          A cottage industry, yes, but a barbershop bank? Ross Bullen plots how a story told by William Wells Brown — novelist, historian, playwright, physician, and escaped slave — circulated, first through his own works, and then abroad, as a parable of American banking gone bad.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
 
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day