Sven Guckes RIP

Longtime FOSS contributor and advocate Sven Guckes has died at 55. A Twitter posting and news article (both in German) describe the Berlin-based Guckes as someone who was always ready to help users get the most out of their systems on Usenet and IRC. His home page and a Hacker News posting have more information as well. RIP. (Thanks to Martin Michlmayr.)

Desktop/Laptop

• Moving away from Windows – It begins

  A couple of days ago, I came across a forum post that pointed to a Web article that linked to the Windows 11 Insider preview Dev channel release notes, which mention a new requirement for Windows 11 Pro setup. Not Home edition, mind, but Pro. Internet access and Microsoft account will (or most likely will) be needed to finish the system setup. And I decided, that’s it, I had enough stupidity for one lifetime.

  This pointless cloudification of the classic PC desktop formula will never stop. It won’t stop until desktop as a service is a reality and all that nonsense. No. I’m not going to cooperate with that plan. And so I’ve now finally decided that I’m going to properly start moving my production workflows away from Windows. That won’t be an easy task. After all, I’ve been using Windows since 1992. But I have zero intention of using Windows 11, as it’s pointless in its own right, and I have even less intention of being a subscription monkey. Services yes, products never. This article is a start of a journey whereby I plan to wean myself off Windows. Let’s begin.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Nextcloud: Full Setup & Implementation Guide (Updated for 2022!) – Invidious

  The popular LearnLinuxTV guide to setting up your own cloud with Nextcloud has been freshly updated for 2022! In this video, Jay will walk you through setting up an Ubuntu server for use with Nextcloud. In this tutorial, you’ll be walked through the process of installing Nextcloud, setting up a TLS cert with Let’s Encrypt, implementing online document editing, and more!

• Full Circle Weekly News #249

• Bug Reports Are Vital: How To Write Good Issues – Invidious

  Any project that cares at all about putting out a good product whether it’s open source or not will take it’s bug reports seriously but not all are created equal and you can do your part in improving the quality the developers have to work with.

• Linux Mint 20.3 “Una” Quick overview #Shorts – Invidious

  A Quick overview of Linux Mint 20.3 “Una”.

• The BEST OFFICE SUITES for Linux – Invidious

• Late Night Linux – Episode 165 – Late Night Linux

  Loads of discoveries including window tiling, rich text for CLI Python apps, FOSS Wordle, 3D home design, and fractals. Plus your feedback about JSON, Matrix, audio, and an old Mac.

Applications

• SF Tube – A Stylish YouTube App with Downloading Support | UbuntuHandbook

  There are quite a few YouTube apps for Linux today. SF Tube is a new one that has an elegant user interface with easy to use download options.

  SF Tube, formerly FluTube, is a free libre and open-source app made using Google’s flutter. So far, it provides packages for Linux, Android, and Windows.

  The app provides a beautiful user interface with Home, Like, Downloads, and Settings tabs. A ‘search‘ button is available in top-right corner, allows to search in YouTube. And, the results are displayed along with download buttons.

  By clicking on download, it pop-up a dialog allows to choose download ‘Video + Audio‘, ‘Audio only‘, or ‘Video only‘ with quality options.

• The 9 Best Linux Network Troubleshooting Commands

  Learn about the most commonly used tools to monitor and troubleshoot networks in Linux.

  A network administrator’s routine responsibilities like management, monitoring, configuration, and troubleshooting don’t require you to learn complicated third-party tools. Instead, you can perform all these tasks with readily available tools that come pre-installed with most Linux distributions.

  This article focuses on the network troubleshooting part of a network administrator’s responsibilities and covers tools that resolve these issues under different categories. It further covers how these utilities help in practical scenarios.

• OBS Studio 27.2.1 Improves Camera Support and PipeWire Capture on Linux

  Coming just a week after the launch of OBS Studio 27.2, the OBS Studio 27.2.1 point release is here to address a few issues reported by users from the previous release, as well as to improve some of the existing functionality in an attempt to make the software more stable and reliable during recordings and streaming.

  Specific to Linux users, the OBS Studio 27.2.1 release improves camera support by addressing an issue where some cameras wouldn’t decode correctly on GNU/Linux systems and plugs a memory leak in the new PipeWire capture feature.

Instructionals/Technical

• 3 Ways to Install KDE Kate Text Editor on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04 LTS

  Learn the steps to install KDE (Kwrite) Kate Text Editor on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa using the command terminal.

  Kate is the default editor of KDE. The program’s name is an acronym and stands for KDE Advanced Text Editor. Kate is not only a simple text editor but is also suitable for programming. Syntax highlighting, code folding, configurable line indentation, and simple auto-completion are supported for numerous programming languages ​​such as Python, PHP, Java, Perl, C or C++, and for markup languages ​​such as HTML or CSS. In cooperation with Archive/Jovie, Kate can also output texts acoustically. Additional features can be integrated into Kate via extensions, such as a file system browser and source code translation.

  As an alternative to Kate, there is the slimmed-down version KWrite, which is particularly suitable for older systems and beginners. KWrite is based on Kate’s text editor component (KatePart), but cannot handle multiple files at the same time ( Tabbed Document Interface ), and does not support extensions either.

• How to install Utau on a Chromebook – Updated Tutorial

  Today we are looking at how to install Utau 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.

• Trick Out Your Terminal With Shell Color Scripts – Invidious

  I have spent the last week or so trying to clean up some of my GitLab projects, including my ‘shell-color-scripts’ program. If you’re not familiar with ‘shell-color-scripts’, it is the program that gives me a random color script every time I open a terminal.

• How to Install Kylin Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 20.04 – LinuxCapable

  Ubuntu Kylin is the official Chinese version of Ubuntu however supports English. It has been described as a “loose continuation” to its parent operating system with some differences in appearance and functionality. Still, most importantly, it’s explicitly designed for approval in mainland China, but international users are welcome to use it.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Kylin Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa.

• Using Safenet eToken 5110 With Fedora | Zamir’s Board

  Safenet eToken 5110 is a smart card based USB authenticator focuse on certificate based user cases. It supports RSA2048. In this article I’m taking a note on how I use the card with pkcs11-tool and openssl on Fedora. This is based on Using Tokens in Ubuntu with PGP with information slightly modified to fulfill my environment.

• How to manage Terraform state in AWS S3 Bucket

  In this article, we will see what a Terraform state is and how to manage it on an S3 Bucket. We will also see what “lock” is in Terraform and how to implement it. To implement this, we need to create an S3 Bucket and a DynamoDB Table on AWS.

• How To Install Steam on Manjaro 21 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Steam on Manjaro 21. For those of you who didn’t know, Steam is a popular video game digital distribution service developed by Valve. It allows users to purchase and play thousands of games. To use Steam, users have to create an account, and they can access the same games on various computers.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Steam video game digital distribution on a Manjaro 21 (Ornara).

• How to Install Sentry with Docker on Ubuntu 20.04 – VITUX

  Sentry is a popular error-tracking Python application that is free to install and use with the Python open-source development platform. Facing errors on the resurfacing can be alerted with the use of Sentry through SMS and email notifications. You can integrate sentry with a lot of applications such as Gitab, Bitbucket, Github,etc.

  In this tutorial, we are going to explain the installation process of Sentry on Ubuntu 20.04 with docker.

• How to install Wireshark on Debian 11 Bullseye Linux – Linux Shout

  Let’s learn the commands to install the Wireshark Sniffer tool on Debian 11 Bullseye Linux using the command terminal.

  Wireshark is a free and extremely popular network communication link analyzer and was formerly known as Ethereal. It is a so-called network sniffer or network stumbler software. The tool, also known as data logger software, offers the possibility of displaying the data traffic of an interface (usually Ethernet TCP/IP) as data packets after or during the recording. This involves a clear, simplified data analysis that can be understood by the user. In this way, there is the opportunity to view individual recorded data packets or to sort them according to specific content. Wireshark can also prepare and create clear data flow statistics. WinPcap enables the transparent recording of the respective data traffic under Microsoft Windows. But Wireshark works on almost every platform: Windows, Mac OS X, AIX, BSD, Linux, and Solaris.

• How to Install and Configure SSH Server on Ubuntu 20.04 – OSNote

  Connection security is the most important criteria when setting up a remote connection between a client and a server . SSH protocol is the best way for Ubuntu users to remotely access and manage servers.

  SSH encrypts all data sent between machines, ensuring that no sensitive data is leaked. SSH encryption protects against threats such as eavesdropping and hijacking while also providing various authentication and configuration options.

  Due to its excellent capabilities, SSH has become the standard for accessing a remote Linux server nowadays.
  In this tutorial, you will learn to install and configure SSH in Ubuntu. In addition, you will also learn how to connect to the SSH server and handle the SSH service in the Ubuntu system.

• lfs: List the Linux File System in a Convenient Way

  lfs is a small tool similar to the df command for producing a list of file systems on Linux in a clear and beautiful tabular form.

  On Linux, you sometimes need to work with disks and/or partitions directly from the command line. Often, you want to perform actions on the filesystems, but you do so by specifying the partitions where they are stored.

  There are many tools available to find the list of currently available filesystems in Linux, the most commonly used of which is df. Unfortunately, on systems with many disks, partitions, and USB drives, it can be hard to identify the device name assigned to each of them. And this is where lfs comes on the scene.

• How to Install WonderCMS with Nginx on Debian 11 – RoseHosting

  WonderCMS is a free, open-source, and flat-file content management system written in PHP and jQuery. It is a simple, lightweight, and fast CMS that does not require any database to create a website. It offers a rich set of features including, custom login URL, SEO friendly, WYSIWYG, flexible CSS framework, native markdown, and more.

  In this post, we will show you how to install WonderCMS with Nginx on Debian 11.

• How To Install Matomo on Debian 11

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Matomo on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Matomo (formerly Piwik) is an open-source analytics platform, an open alternative to Google Analytics.

• Linux CMP Command Explained

  The cmp command in Linux/UNIX compares two files byte by byte, allowing you to determine if they are identical or not. If a difference is detected, cmp displays the location of the first mismatch on the screen,if no difference is found, cmp displays the files are identical.

  cmp shows no message and basically returns the brief assuming the files analyzed are identical. A lot of options are available for the cmp command to be paired with to display different output , these options are explained below. Also, I am going to show you the practical uses of cmp command.

• How To Install OpenRGB on Ubuntu 20.04 – Unix / Linux the admins Tutorials

  In this guide, we will show you how to install OpenRGB on Ubuntu 20.04

  OpenRGB is free and open-source software used to control RGB lighting control that does not require manufacturer software.

  One of the biggest complaints about OpenRGB is the software ecosystem surrounding it. Every manufacturer has their own app, their own brand, their own style. If you want to mix and match devices, you end up with a ton of conflicting, functionally identical apps competing for your background resources. On top of that, these apps are proprietary and Windows-only. Some even require online accounts. What if there was a way to control all of your RGB devices from a single app, on both Windows and Linux, without any nonsense? That is what OpenRGB sets out to achieve. One app to rule them all.

• How to Install BoostNote on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – LinuxCapable

  Boostnote is a free and open-source is the perfect app for note-taking app for coders. It doesn’t have all of those fancy features you see in other note-taking apps like Markdown formatting and folder-based organization, but it does offer snippets! Snippets make programming easier than ever before because they give programmers access to code on-demand without having to write out each step again or search through endless google results looking at example codes.

  Another great benefit is that you can work with your Github account and collaborate with your team increasing productivity across the board.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Boost Note on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

• How To Monitor Your CPU and RAM in Linux | Tom’s Hardware

  Whether we’re using a Raspberry Pi or a data center server, we need to know how our CPU and RAM are performing and, in Linux, there are a plethora of commands and applications that we can use. At the basic low level “How much RAM have I used?” to inspecting the CPU for vulnerabilities such as Spectre, there are commands at our disposal.

  We are going to look at a number of different ways to get RAM and CPU data in the terminal, before we finally look at two applications which can provide a basic level of assurance, at a glance.

Games

• Left 4 Dead 2 gets Steam Deck Verified, Team Fortress 2 only Playable | GamingOnLinux

  What’s that? More Valve games will be able to run on the Steam Deck? You got that right. Both Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2 popped up recently. Earlier we saw that Half-Life 2 is now verified and we know this once again thanks to SteamDB, who track basically everything Steam.

  Left 4 Dead 2 appears fully Verified for Steam Deck, so out of the box it should be a great experience overall. However, in the case of Team Fortress 2 it’s only mentioned that it’s Playable. For TF2 the issues seem to be a mix of text being too small and it doesn’t have the best gamepad support. While on one hand it shows that Valve have work to do even for their owns games, on the other it shows they’re at least honest about Deck compatibility.

• Steam Link: Streaming to Your Smartphone with a Dual Shock 4 as Controller – Boiling Steam

  The Steam Deck is going to be out in a few days for the ones that were quick to order. What to do if you have to wait much longer, while eager for some serious handheld gaming?

  [...]

  And the other option is… well, if you don’t really go out, you can actually use pretty much any phone or tablet to play your Steam games using the Steam Link app. Since touch controls suck, and you are very likely to already have a controller (unless you are one of the 33%), you just need a controller attachment and you are good to go! It’s really cheap.

  I found that there’s a good enough solution if you have a Dual Shock 4: just buy this kind of adapter, which is basically a piece of plastic that clips itself on your DS4 and has a spring mechanism to keep your phone into place. There’s quite a few variants available on Amazon and other markets, but since they all pretty much look the same I assume they work equally well.

• Feral Interactive have no plans to update their Linux ports for Steam Deck | GamingOnLinux

  Since we were asked a lot about this, we reached out to porting studio Feral Interactive to see if they had any plans to update their Linux ports for the Steam Deck.

  Feral have ported a number of titles to Linux in the past including Alien Isolation, XCOM & XCOM 2, Total War: WARHAMMER I & II, Total War: THREE KINGDOMS, HITMAN, the Tomb Raider series, Life is Strange & Before the Storm & Life is Strange 2, Dirt Rally and the list goes on. They also have a port of Total War: WARHAMMER III upcoming in “Early Spring”.

• Classic base-building RTS TFC: The Fertile Crescent hits Steam on March 29 | GamingOnLinux

  Here’s a new strategy game I’m excited to play! TFC: The Fertile Crescent is a pixel-art take on the classic base-building RTS genre and it’s entering Early Access on March 29.

  Inspired of course by some of the greats, this title places quite the emphasis on its multiplayer and community tournaments. However, they’ve also mentioned over email in a press release there’s going to be a special “Horde Mode” that will “have its own rules with an opponent in the form of nomads”. During Early Access they also plan to add in more additional modes and there’s going to be a brand new refresh interface compared with the old free version on itch.io.

• Steam Next Fest is live once again with plenty of indie demos | GamingOnLinux

  Ready to have a busy week? Steam Next Fest: February 2022 Edition is officially live and there’s plenty of indie developers showing off their latest. Not only can you expect to see a ton of limited-time playable demos (some devs keep them up), there’s also a week full of livestreams and developer chats direct on store pages.

• Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer – Part 13: Looks Almost Unreal | GamingOnLinux

  It is rare for Linux to see support from both sides of an industry battle, but that is exactly where we were with the release of Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament. With both games aiming to package the full breadth of the online multiplayer shooter experience into a standalone title, the competition between the two was fierce. I myself have always favoured the solid craftsmanship of Quake III Arena, but the greater variety in Unreal Tournament has to be admired.

  Some versions ship with a Linux installer already on the disc, but with the Game of the Year Edition you need to download the ut-install-436-goty.run setup script which grants all of the official patches. This proved a smooth process even when swapping between CD-ROMs, but the installer can be too opaque, not telling you outside of the terminal output that it is busy decompressing maps. This can take some time, making it easy to assume that the setup has stalled.

  Unreal Tournament only came alive when I set the XFree86 server to 32 bit colour depth, not just improving the visuals and clearing up the numerous Z Buffer artifacts, but also helping to level out the game performance. From there I tweaked the UnrealTournament.ini file, setting “NoDynamicLighting” to “True” and “UseGammaExtension” to “1″, with “Coronas” and “VolumetricLighting” set to “False”. Like this the game was playable and still looked better than on first launch.

• Don’t expect GOG to support the Steam Deck | GamingOnLinux

  With the Steam Deck only a few days away from release, it seems people are wondering the support status of other stores. Seems GOG won’t be supporting it, which isn’t surprising.

  Currently, GOG does support Linux with direct downloads, although they only officially support a few versions of Ubuntu. They do not, however, support GOG Galaxy on Linux. This has been a bit of a problem, as some games multiplayer relies on Galaxy meaning a few Linux builds on GOG came without multiplayer.

• Why you shouldn’t Dual Boot on the Steam Deck. – Invidious

  I’ve seen a lot of comments saying that folks intend to dual boot or just straight up install Windows on their Steam Deck. While you *can* do that, here’s why I believe dual booting Windows on the Steam Deck is a grave mistake.

• X4: Tides of Avarice and the 5.00 update land March 14 | GamingOnLinux

  The next big free upgrade to X4: Foundations along with the X4: Tides of Avarice expansion are releasing March 14. X4 is easily one of the most in-depth space games around

  “Encountering and interacting with previously unknown, lawless pirate and scavenger factions, will challenge your perception of social order and justice in the X universe. In new sectors and dangerous regions, you will not only discover new ships and stations, but also encounter stellar phenomena that will significantly influence your plans and actions. What is it all about, and who are the mysterious manipulators that have learned to master a rare and vital resource? Your journey will lead you towards the answers. Set out and discover a new chapter of X4: Foundations.”

• Co-op survival horror Pacify gets Steam Deck upgrades | GamingOnLinux

  One we missed from earlier this month, Pacify is a very popular survival horror and the developer has been making improvements ready for the Steam Deck. It has a Very Positive rating from 23,297 user reviews, so it must be quite something.

  Released back in 2019, the developer released an update on February 7 to include various optimizations for the Steam Deck. They say at Medium quality you can expect a smooth 60FPS while playing which sounds ideal. They also included this nice shot of it running on Deck:

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Plasma might soon be the best Linux desktop on the market | TechRepublic

    The latest release of the KDE Plasma desktop has a pretty cool trick up its sleeve, one that might make you want to switch from your current Linux desktop of choice.

    Every time I ponder KDE Plasma, I can’t help but think about the tortoise and the hare. In my reality, GNOME is the hare and KDE is the tortoise. When GNOME Shell 3 was first released, it was as if it shot out of the gate, ready to go and make some noise. And noise it did make. And even though not all of the noise was positive, it was next to impossible to avoid. And so GNOME went. It evolved very quickly and became the default desktop for a lot of Linux distributions.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Top 10 Best Gedit Text Editor Plugins for Programmers and Coding

    The Gedit is the short form of Gnome Editor officially preinstalled with the Ubuntu and other most developed Debian-based Linux distributions. Many users and system admins might find other text editors like Nano or Vim most useful. Still, with a bit of tweaking and getting some plugins, you can turn your default Gedit text editor into a professional and powerful script editor. There are many plugins on the web for the Gedit editor that you might need to make the tool functional.

    The Gedit allows you to write programming code with indentation, bracket matching, and syntax highlighting. It also supports the UTF-8 codec package. If you’re thinking of trying a new text editor, you can get some plugins before getting a new fancy one.

Distributions

• 6 Reasons to Try Nitrux OS – It’s FOSS News

  Nitrux OS may not be one of the mainstream Linux distributions, but it is surely one of the unique offerings.

  We have also interviewed its creator Uri Herrera in 2019 to learn how they initially aimed to go beyond the traditional Linux distributions.

  And, since then, we’ve come a long way to its recent Nitrux 2.0 release.

  Not to forget, they also ditched Ubuntu as its base in favor of Debian, last year.

  So, considering a lot has happened, and it’s been around for a few years now. Should you give it a try?

  Here, I highlight some reasons to try Nitrux OS…

• AV Linux MX-21 Released for All Your Audio/Video Production Needs

  If you’re looking for a Linux distribution for audio/video production, AV Linux MX-21 might be your best option.

  Code-named, “Consciousness,” the latest release of AV Linux has become completely rebuilt, from the ground-up, which makes it the first iteration that wasn’t a respin of a previous release. Based on Debian 11, AV Linux MX-21 was built with the same tools used to build MX Linux and antiX.

  Because this new release is a complete rebuild, there is no way to upgrade from previous releases to MX-21. In other words, you’ll have to do a fresh install to gain the benefits of AV Linux MX-21.

  What are those benefits? First off, it ships with kernel 5.15 and a brand new Mesa graphics stack. The one caveat to those two changes, AV Linux no longer supports 32-bit architecture. As far as the kernel is concerned, the version in MX-21 is the Liquorix kernel, which is a high-performance kernel geared for streaming and ultra-low latency.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Upcoming changes to Puppet functionality in Red Hat Satellite

    Red Hat strives to make the best product decisions possible with input from the community and customers. Previously, Red Hat had announced that changes in the roadmap would deprecate Puppet functionality. Based on feedback, Red Hat has decided to accommodate the community and customers by reversing that decision.

    Red Hat Satellite 7 will ship Puppet ENC support as a plugin. That means that support for Puppet will be available only if it is explicitly enabled in new installation (upgrades to Satellite 7 will preserve existing functionality), whereas, in the past, Satellite provided Puppet support by default.

    There will be no functional change in Satellite and Puppet integration between Satellite 7 and Satellite 6.10.

    In the future, the plugin mentioned above is planned to remain an optional feature. However, Puppet Agent and Puppet Server will no longer ship with Red Hat Satellite.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 723

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 723 for the week of February 13 – 19, 2022.

  • Monitor Ubuntu Advantage FIPS configurations | Ubuntu

    In regulated environments, some machines must adhere to strict cryptography requirements designed to protect systems from being cracked, altered, or tampered with. Using cryptographic modules that are FIPS certified or compliant ensure a systems’ encryption solutions adequately protect its digital assets. FIPS validated operating systems are a prerequisite for government agencies, their partners, and those wanting to conduct business with the federal government.

  • Open source Machine Learning toolkit for financial services | Ubuntu

    The financial services sector is adopting Artificial Intelligence technologies at a growing rate. Areas such as asset management, algorithmic trading, credit underwriting, blockchain based finance solutions, fraud detection and claims processing have all seen increased adoption of Machine Learning to drive more robust data-driven decision processes and better understanding of customer needs . This shift is mainly driven by the emergence of more cost-effective computing capacity and the abundance of available data.

    [...]

    Open-source machine learning software has enabled the rapid growth and evolution of ML frameworks and libraries, and thus made it possible for financial institutions to solve increasingly complex challenges and foster a mindset of innovation, growth and community. Additionally, open-source ML platforms will help accelerate AI adoption within the financial services sector, which in turn makes AI better and smarter, benefiting everyone.

    Data scientists at financial institutions are always looking for ways to deploy, scale, distribute ML models across clusters of servers and optimise models using techniques like GPU offloading.

Devices/Embedded

• IoT dev kit powers up with MediaTek i350

  VIA announced a “VIA SOM-9X35 Starter Kit” that runs Linux or Android on an NPU-equipped, 2GHz, quad -A53 MediaTek i350 via a VIA SOM-9X35 module with 2GB LPDDR4 and 16GB eMMC. The kit includes a 7-inch touchscreen and 13MP camera.

  VIA Technologies has introduced a VIA SOM-9X35 compute module, which is available with a carrier board in a combo product called the VIA VAB-935 3.5 SBC. There is also a VIA SOM-9X35 Starter Kit that adds a touchscreen, camera, speakers, a microphone, and more.

  The VIA SOM-9X35 is built around MediaTek’s 14nm i350 SoC, a higher end version of the similarly quad-core, Cortex-A53 based MediaTek i300 that boosts the clock rate to up to 2.0GHz and adds a HiFi4 DSP and 500MHz MediaTek APU 1.0 AI Processor. MediaTek also swaps out the Imagination PowerVR Series8XE GE8300 GPU for an up to 800MHz Arm Mali-G52 MC1. As before, there is a 13MP-ready ISP and [email protected] video decoding.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Dummy The Robot Arm Is Not So Dumb | Hackaday

    [Zhihui Jun] is a name you’re going to want to remember because this Chinese maker has created quite probably one of the most complete open-source robot arms (video in Chinese with subtitles, embedded below) we’ve ever seen. This project has to be seen to be believed. Every aspect of the design from concept, mechanical CAD, electronics design and software covering embedded, 3D GUI, and so on, is the work of one maker, in just their spare time! Sound like we’re talking it up too much? Just watch the video and try to keep up!

    After an initial review of toy robots versus more industrial units, it was quickly decided that servos weren’t going to cut it – too little torque and lacking in precision. BLDC motors offer great precision and torque when paired with a good controller, but they are tricky to make small enough, so an off-the-shelf compact harmonic drive was selected and paired with a stepper motor to get the required performance. This was multiplied by six and dropped into some slick CNC machined aluminum parts to complete the mechanics. A custom closed-loop stepper controller mounts directly to the rear of each motor. That’s really nice too.

    [...]

    There is a brief mention that the controller runs the LiteOS kernel for Harmony OS, but no details we can find. The project GitHub has many of the gory details to pore over perhaps a bit light in places but the promise is made to expand that. For remote control, there’s a BLE-connected teaching device (called ‘Peak’) with a touch screen, again details pending.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • 4 Reasons Why Android TV is the Best Choice to Setup Digital Signage – Geeky Gadgets

  • Android 13′s Developer Preview isn’t really an iterative update, but it will be big | Android Central

  • Tasker 5.15 brings an Android 13 dynamic app icon, custom toasts, clipboard additions, and more

  • Nokia 5.4 passes by Geekbench with Android 12 – Gizchina.com

  • How to keep your Android phone unlocked at home | NextPit

  • Follow this Chrome for Android feature as it spreads to desktop

  • This Google update will help you free up much-needed space on your Android phone | TechRadar

  • Weekend poll: Do you use Android apps on Chrome OS?

  • AC Podcast 558: Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus and Ultra Reviews | Android Central

  • 4 Reasons Why Android TV is the Best Choice to Setup Digital Signage – Geeky Gadgets

  • MIUI 13 updates set to land on the Xiaomi 11T and Poco X3 GT with Android 12 in tow – NotebookCheck.net News

  • Noble ROM 2.0 brings One UI 4 with Android 12 to the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9

  • Google Play Store now displays minimum Android OS version required for an app

  • Hackers Exploiting Infected Android Devices to Register Disposable Accounts

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 vs Galaxy Tab S7 FE: Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 vs Galaxy Tab S7 FE: How the two Android tablets compare

  • Android Automotive: How Some Automakers Are Upping Their Infotainment Game

  • Top 5 Best Selfie Apps for Android: Finger Clicking Good

  • Is Huawei already testing HarmonyOS 3.0 for smartphones? – Huawei Central

    Huawei has started testing a number of new features for existing HarmonyOS 2.0 powered devices, so the company has already begun testing HarmonyOS 3.0 software ahead of the public rollout? Let’s find out.

    The answer is no, Huawei has not started testing HarmonyOS 3.0.

    As recently, Huawei began to recruit new smartphone users to test run the latest HarmonyOS 2.0 features. Still, the recruitment is on and selected models can participate in the entire test program including Huawei Mate 40 Pro, Mate X2, Mate 30 Pro, and more.

    There are slots distributed for these testing models and only a limited number of users can participate in the activity. Following approval, selected applicants will receive the HarmonyOS new features software beta update.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Internxt is an Open Source Encrypted Cloud Service With Native Linux Client

  There are a handful of cloud services available for Linux users that provide native applications.

  Dropbox is one of the oldest and most popular. Then there is Mega and pCloud. Google has shamelessly decided not to create a Google Drive client for Linux.

  You may also self-host Nextcloud or Seafile, but that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

  Recently, I was approached by another cloud storage provider called Internxt. I asked if they provide a desktop application for Linux users, and the answer was yes. I also found that they are open source on both the server and client-side.

• FreeDOS 1.3

  Only packages that were generated by the RBE or retrieved from the Official Git Repository are displayed in the following table.

  They are separated into groups based on their category (Base, Device Drivers, etc.).

  The first column (Retrieved from Repository) lists the package ID. It is immediately followed with some basic information on the package.
  This includes the approximate compressed size of the package and if it is part of either the BASE or FULL package set.

  The additional columns denote the presence of the package on that specific media. They are color coded for the type of install.

• The Apache Weekly News Round-up: week ending 18 February 2022 : The Apache Software Foundation Blog

  We’re wrapping up another great week with the following activities from the Apache community…

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • PostgreSQL: Pgpool-II 4.3.1, 4.2.8, 4.1.11, 4.0.18 and 3.7.23 released.

    Pgpool Global Development Group is pleased to announce the availability of following versions of Pgpool-II:

    4.3.1
    4.2.8
    4.1.11
    4.0.18
    3.7.23

• Content Management Systems (CMS)

  • WP Briefing: Episode 25: Five Cents on Five for the Future

    In this twenty-fifth episode of the WordPress Briefing, Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses future-proofing the WordPress project with the Five for the Future pledge.

• FSF

  • Licensing/Legal

    • What Is Truth Social? All You Need to Know About Donald Trump’s Social Network

      Why Did Mastodon Threaten to Sue Truth Social?

      Truth Social is based on Mastodon, and that’s perfectly acceptable. Mastodon’s open-source license allows developers to use, modify, and distribute their software as they see fit. However, those who use that license—GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0)—must disclose that their project is based on Mastodon. They must also make the code, and any modifications publicly available for anyone to download.

      The initial Truth Social website did not mention its connection to Mastodon or make any of the source code available. In fact, the platform claimed that its source code was proprietary and owned by the company. Viewing this as potential copyright infringement, Mastodon threatened to sue if Trump did not comply in 30 days.

      To avoid that lawsuit, Truth Social acknowledged it is based on Mastodon. Now, if you head to the Truth Social website, you can click Legal Docs at the bottom of the page and select Open Source to download a ZIP file containing Mastodon’s source code.

• Programming/Development

  • rust-analyzer joins the Rust organization! | Rust Blog

    We have an exciting announcement to make! The rust-analyzer project, a new implementation of the Language Server Protocol (LSP) for Rust, is now officially a part of the wider Rust organization! :tada:

    We want to start by thanking everyone who has gotten us this far, from contributors, to sponsors, to all the users of rust-analyzer in the Rust community. We could not have done this without you.

    The immediate impact of this organizational change is limited — nothing changes for rust-analyzer users or contributors. However, this change unblocks technical work to make rust-analyzer the officially recommended language server for Rust in the near future.

    If you were hesitant to try rust-analyzer before, today is a good opportunity to do so. Not only is it a very capable language server for Rust, but according to VS Code statistics, it is one of the best rated LSP implementations across programming languages. We highly recommend giving rust-analyzer a spin today, even if it will take some more time for us to complete the due process and switch from the existing officially recommended LSP implementation (RLS) properly.

  • Swift Core team to form language workgroup

    The core team is currently looking at restructuring the project’s leadership to provide more pathways for community members to become actively involved in the project’s stewardship. Swift has gradually introduced more workgroups to focus on technical and non-technical investments (an idea that has been successful in other language and OSS projects). We are looking to push that idea further. In the coming weeks, we hope to introduce a new language workgroup that will focus on the core of the language evolution itself, splitting off this responsibility from the core steering of the project. The intent is to free the core team to invest more in overall project stewardship and create a larger language workgroup that can incorporate more community members in language decisions. More details will be coming soon.

  • Request for Comments – Dynamic infrastructure – Octopus Deploy

    Cloud providers make it easy to provision new infrastructure. This means it’s simple to spin up environments to test a new feature or perform a demo for a customer. Keeping your Octopus targets in sync, though, can be challenging as this infrastructure comes and goes.

    Octopus currently provides a dynamic infrastructure feature that lets you register targets during the deployment process. We give you the necessary pieces, and you glue them together to meet your requirements. This involves custom scripting, juggling output variables, and toggling settings.

    This complexity has made it an expert use case, taking many attempts to put everything in the proper order. For many users, it’s easier to register these targets manually. Because the functionality isn’t clear, some won’t even know there is another way.

    We want to change all that. We want to leverage the way users already interact with their cloud providers and Octopus, to create a solution that feels unobtrusive and intuitive.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Rakudo Weekly News: 2022.08 Grammarly co-op

      Daniel Sockwell took Mike Clark‘s ideas a bit further and wrote an extensive blog post with further thoughts on cooperative grammars, in which they show the use of different grammars to parse the CSS parts of an HTML file (as a proof of concept). Which in turn caused quite a discussion on /r/rakulang.

  • Python

    • Python programming: PyPl is getting this ‘most requested’ feature | ZDNet

      The maintainers of popular Python programming language are on the hunt for developers to build a new feature for the Python Package Index (PyPI) in the form of organization accounts.

      Python’s importance to today’s tech can’t be overstated. It has become the go-to language for machine learning, in part because of its wealth of software libraries like NumPy.

Can movies help save the world’s dying languages? New wave of Indigenous films share untold stories

When Benjamin Young was asked to consult on a film to be made entirely in his ancestral Haida tongue, he thought the project sounded almost impossibly ambitious. As head teacher and director of Haida Immersion Preschool in Hydaburg, Alaska, he knew the number of fluent Haida speakers could be counted on just two sets of hands.

Hardware

• [Older] How do CPU, GPU and DPU differ from one another?

  In the world of computing, the term “processor” often refers to the central processing unit, or the CPU. The CPU is the most ubiquitous processor, but it is not the sole processing unit available to data centers. GPUs and DPUs can help manage increasingly complex processing loads and computing tasks.

  All three processing units support complex computing, but each is suited for different tasks or workloads. By using multiple types of processing units in your data center, these units can support each other and further accelerate large or complicated tasks.

• Rotary Valve Engine Gets A Second Chance, Smokes The Competition | Hackaday

  It’s a dedicated hacker who has the patience to build an engine from scratch. And it’s a borderline obsessed hacker who does it twice. [Meanwhile In the Garage] is of the second ilk, and in the video below the break, he takes a failed engine design and musters up the oomph to get it running.

  The whole build began with an idea for a different kind of intake and exhaust valve. [Meanwhile In the Garage] dreamed up a design that does away with the traditional poppet valve. Instead of valves that open by being pushed away from their seat by a camshaft, this design uses a cylinder that is scooped so that as it rotates, its ports are exposed to either the intake or the exhaust.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Integer overflow: How does it occur and how can it be prevented? | WeLiveSecurity

    Put simply, a bug subsequently dubbed Y2K22 (named in the style of the Y2K bug that spooked the world starting about a quarter century ago) caused the software to be unable to handle the date format for the year 2022. Microsoft’s fix? Set the date on malware detection updates back to the fictional December 33rd, 2021…

  • The Little Replacement PSU That Could: Kill A Microsoft Surface And Monitor

    Recently [Big Clive], everyone’s favorite purveyor of anything electronic that’s dodgy, cheap, cheerful, decidedly crispy or any combination thereof, got sent a very dead external power supply unit. Being clearly a third-party PSU with Engrish and many (likely not truthful) safety approval markings on its label, this PSU had the dubious honor of having destroyed a Microsoft Surface computer as well as the monitor that was connected at the time.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Monday [LWN.net]

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (php7.4, redis, snapd, twisted, webkit2gtk, and wpewebkit), Fedora (cyrus-imapd, nodejs, phpMyAdmin, polkit, snapd, webkit2gtk3, and xen), Gentoo (chromium), openSUSE (jaw, kubevirt, virt-api-container,, opera, polkit, and sphinx), Red Hat (ruby:2.6), Slackware (expat), and SUSE (kubevirt, virt-api-container, virt-controller-container, virt-handler-container, virt-launcher-container, virt-libguestfs-tools-container, virt-operator-container and polkit).

    • Stealing Bicycles by Swapping QR Codes

      Presumably they’re using camera, printers, and stickers to swap the codes on the bikes. And presumably the victim is charged for not returning the stolen bicycle.

    • [Older] Citi Bikes being swiped by joyriding scammers who have cracked the QR code

      Local scam artists are pedaling a new con.

      They’re stealing Citi Bikes by switching the QR scan codes on two bicycles near each other at a docking station, then waiting for an unsuspecting cyclist to try to unlock a bike with his or her smartphone app.

      The app doesn’t work for the rider but does free up the nearby Citi Bike with the switched code, where a thief is waiting, jumps on the bicycle and rides off.

      The ripped-off ride is worth only $3 by itself. But the victimized customer could be on the hook for the $1,200 bike if it ends up lost or stolen. They’re also left without a way to get around town.

      “It’s happening every day,” claims Hell’s Kitchen amateur sleuth Richard, who captured video of the con in action at the Citi Bike dock near the corner of West 43rd Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan.

    • Building and running FIPS containers on Ubuntu 18.04 | Ubuntu

      Whether running on the public cloud or a private cloud, the use of containers is ingrained in today’s devops oriented workflows. Having workloads set up to run under the mandated compliance requirements is thus necessary to fully exploit the potential of containers. This article focuses on how to build and run containers that comply with the US and Canada government FIPS140-2 data protection standard.

    • Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, January 2022

      Every month we review the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering. Please find the report for January below.

    • Nasty Linux Kernel Stack Overflow Flaw Found and Patched

      Here we go again. Another obnoxious security bug, CVE-2022-0435: A Remote Stack Overflow in The Linux Kernel was found by Appgate senior exploit developer Samuel Page while he was poking around at a Linux heap overflow security bug, CVE-2021-43267 from November 2021. Page’s discovery is a remotely and locally reachable stack overflow in the Linux kernel’s Transparent Inter-Process Communication (TIPC) protocol networking module.

      TIPC, as the name says, is used for intracluster communications. Cluster topology is managed using the concept of nodes and links between these nodes. Messages sent using TIPC can be sent over either UDP or Ethernet. So far, so good.

    • Project Zero finds that Linux developers fix security flaws faster than Apple, Google or Microsoft [Ed: By Microsoft booster Sofia Wyciślik-Wilson]

      Whether Linux distributions are more secure than Windows or macOS is the source of on-going debate, but Google’s Project Zero has some interesting findings relating to the patching of security holes.

      The security research program at Google has published information relating to security flaws found in software over the course of two years. Between January 2019 and December 2021 the Project Zero team found that Linux developers addresses problems far faster than Apple, Microsoft or Google itself.

    • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

      • Cyber Security Today, Feb. 21, 2022 – Data on Internet Society members exposed, an alert to Linux administrators, Microsoft Teams users get tricked and more [Ed: Still far too much hype]

        Attention Linux administrators: Security researchers at Qualys have discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the snap-confine function on Linux operating systems. One of them can be exploited to escalate privileges to gain root privileges. And once an attacker has root privileges they can do pretty much anything. Snap is a software packaging and deployment system allowing software developers to distribute their applications directly to Linux systems. Administrators are urged to apply security patches from their Linux distributions as soon as possible to plug this hole.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • AirTags Are Linked to Stalking, and Apple Can’t Solve This Problem Alone

        Apple’s AirTags are meant to be a high-tech solution to an age-old problem: finding misplaced keys, wallets and other personal items. But since Apple launched the diminutive Bluetooth trackers last April, they’ve also been used for nefarious acts – particularly stalking.

        “It was the scariest, scariest moment ever, and I just want everyone to be aware that this exists,” Sports Illustrated model Brooks Nader said in a January Instagram post. She was describing an iPhone alert she received one night while walking home from a bar saying that a device had been tracking her location. Nader’s husband discovered an AirTag hidden in her coat pocket after she arrived home, she said in an interview on the Tamron Hall Show.

Environment

• Wildlife/Nature

  • After Mounting a Comeback, Eagles Face a New Threat

    The bald eagle, whose resurgence is considered one of the great conservation success stories of the 21st century, is facing a serious threat: lead poisoning.

    Researchers who tested the feathers, bones, livers and blood of 1,200 bald eagles and golden eagles, another bird of prey in the Northern Hemisphere, found that nearly half of them had been exposed repeatedly to lead, which can lead to death and slow population growth.

    Scientists believe that the primary source of the lead is spent ammunition from hunters who shoot animals that eagles then scavenge, usually during the winter, according to the study, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

    Nearly a third of the birds tested also showed signs of acute poisoning, or short-term exposure to lead, according to the study, which was led by scientists from the United States Geological Survey, Conservation Science Global, Inc. and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
    The effects of lead poisoning are devastating, said Vincent A. Slabe, the lead author of the study and a research wildlife biologist for Conservation Science Global in Montana.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Charitable Offer by Melania Trump Is Rejected, a Move She Calls ‘Politics’ – The New York Times

  An Oklahoma school that specializes in teaching advanced computer science skills has rejected an offered donation by Melania Trump, who said on Friday that “politics got in the way of my mission to support children.”

  Mrs. Trump disclosed the clash with the school in a statement defending her charitable fund-raising efforts since she left the White House, which she has said are focused on supporting foster children.

  Mrs. Trump did not name the school that she said rejected her donation, noting only that it was “a computer science school founded in Silicon Valley with a campus in Oklahoma.”

Desktop/Laptop

• 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: February 20th, 2022

  This has been yet another slow week for Linux news as we only saw a few distro releases, including Kali Linux’s first release in 2022, KaOS Linux’s second release in 2022, as well as AV Linux’s first release in 2022, which is now based on MX Linux.

  Also this week, Linux phone and tablet users received a new Ubuntu Touch OTA update, KDE Plasma users got a new point release of their favorite desktop environment, and Linux gamers got a new Proton release to run the latest Windows games.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Kudu Cores and Cloud Wars | LINUX Unplugged 446

  We put the sports car of Linux laptops to the test. Is it the multi-tasking machine it claims to be?

Applications

• Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Microsoft SwiftKey – LinuxLinks

  Microsoft’s stance for decades was that community creation and sharing of communal code (later to be known as free and open source software) represented a direct attack on their business. Their battle with Linux stretches back many years. Back in 2001, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously tarnished Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches”. Microsoft also initiated its “Get the Facts” marketing campaign from mid-2003, which specifically criticized Linux server usage, total cost of ownership, security, indemnification and reliability. The campaign was widely criticized for spreading misinformation.

  However, in recent years, there has been a partial shift by Microsoft to embrace the open source software paradigm. For example, some of their code is open sourced. Examples include Visual Studio Code, .NET Framework, Atom, and PowerShell. They have also made investments in Linux development, server technology and organizations including the Linux Foundation and Open Source Initiative. They have made acquisitions such as Xamarin to help mobile app development, and GitHub a hugely popular code repository for open source developers. And they have partnered with Canonical, the developers of the popular Ubuntu distro. But many developers remain hugely sceptical about Microsoft and their apparent shift to embrace open source.

Instructionals/Technical

• How to install Linux on your PlayStation 4 – Geeky Gadgets

  If you are interested in learning more about how you can install Linux on your old PlayStation 4 console. You may be interested in a new demonstration video created by the team over at Linus Tech Tips. Linux master Anthony takes you through the process and explains what you can expect once you have loaded Linux onto your jailbroken PlayStation 4 system.

• 3 steps to start running containers today | Opensource.com

  Whether you’re interested in them as part of your job, for future job opportunities, or just out of interest in new technology, containers can seem pretty overwhelming to even an experienced systems administrator. So how do you actually get started with containers? And what’s the path from containers to Kubernetes? Also, why is there a path from one to the other at all? As you might expect, the best place to start is the beginning.

  [...]

  You’ve created two containers, and you’ve run them in a pod. You know enough now to run services in containers on your own server. If you want to move to the cloud, containers are, of course, well-suited for that. With tools like Kubernetes and OpenShift, you can automate the process of launching containers and pods on a cluster.

• How To Install Mesa Drivers on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Mesa Drivers on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Mesa Drivers is an open-source graphics driver of Radeon, Intel, and Nvidia. Over the 20+ years in the Linux and open-source industry, the mesa drivers project has expanded to implement more graphics APIs such as OpenGL ES, OpenCL, OpenMAX, VDPAU, VA API, XVMC, Vulcan, EGL, etc

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

• Make du’s output more useful with this neat trick | Enable Sysadmin

  Knowing how much space a file or folder consumes on a partition is essential for a system administrator or developer. This knowledge allows you to plan for storage upgrades, manage and rotate files, and do other necessary sysadmin tasks. My favorite command for this type of data gathering is the du command.

  The du command summarizes disk usage of each file and recursively for each directory. It offers many helpful options individually or in the correct combinations. For all of the options, refer to the du man page. Here is one of my favorite tricks with du.

• Linux: Add user to Group

  This tutorial shows you step-by-step how to add a user to a group on Linux, with several examples using the Linux command line. It also explains how to add users and groups on Linux. The commands should work on any Linux distribution and have been tested on CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu.

• Muon SSH Terminal: GUI SFTP client for Linux – TREND OCEANS

  There have been many tools to perform sftp operations in Linux in the past. What is different with this tool?

  Muon SSH Terminal, formerly known as a snowflake, is a GUI SFTP client for Linux, able to perform tasks related to uploading/downloading files from the remotes system, executing commands locally, monitoring system resources, and many more.

  You need to configure ssh on your remote server to use this application. Then install this application in your local system to connect with that remote server over sftp protocol.

• How To Control Access Based on Client IP Address in NGINX

  There are several ways of NGINX web server security hardening one of which is access control based on IP address. This guide explains how to secure web applications by controlling access based on a client’s IP address in NGINX.

• Deploy Kubernetes Cluster On AWS With Amazon EKS – OSTechNix

  In this article, we are going to learn about how to deploy a Kubernetes Cluster on AWS with Amazon EKS and how to install and configure AWS CLI and Kubectl to interact with the EKS cluster from commandline in Linux.

  Before deploying Kubernetes cluster on AWS cloud using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, make sure you have an AWS account. If you don’t have an AWS account, check our Introduction to Amazon Web Services (AWS) article to know how to create one.

• Going IPv6 only

  Since we’re slowly coming up to 25 years of having IPv6, but still not actually having IPv6, I tried making a seperate local network that only has v6 access. In theory quite a few of the popular internet services should have IPv6 connectivity working.

  From previous network configuration mistakes, I’ve learned that it takes quite a while before I notice the loss of IPv4 connectivity if IPv6 is still working. Usually, I notice that by having the search engine work perfectly fine, but none of the websites I click loading.

• How To Install DBeaver Universal Database Tool in Linux

  DBeaver is an open-source, fully-featured, and cross-platform universal database management tool and SQL client that runs on Linux operating systems, Windows, and macOS. It supports more than 80 database management systems including PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, SQLite, DB2, MS Access, and a lot more.

• How to deploy MongoDB on Heroku | FOSS Linux

  MongoDB Atlas is easy and free to set up and deploy MongoDB on Heroku. The MongoDB Atlas is commonly referred to as the multi-cloud data application platform. It is an integrated data and cloud DB service that simplifies and accelerates how users build with data.

  When you start building more complex cloud-native apps, selecting the proper tools and services tends to be quite overwhelming. However, that is not the case when choosing the best cloud DB service, as MongoDB Atlas is your best solution.

  On the other hand, Heroku is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that provides developers with the ability to run, build, manipulate and operate apps on the cloud. Heroku supports a multitude of programming languages.

  This article guide will illustrate how to deploy MongoDB on Heroku. We shall be using the MongoDB Atlas version since it easily integrates with most Heroku applications. This process might seem complex at first, but you will realize nothing is complicated when you dive deep into it. All needed is to set your MongoDB Atlas cluster connection string to a known Heroku config variable, and you are good to go.

  The Atlas edition is a fully-managed cloud MongoDB service that automates MongoDB cluster management in the cloud. It offers users auto-scaling, automated backups, complete suite management, analytic tools, and a multi-AZ tolerance fault. MongoDB Atlas is among the most sophisticated DBaaS.

  Follow the steps provided herein to learn how to get MongoDB up and to run quickly. You will also be able to see how to connect the MongoDB Atlas cluster to the Heroku apps by following the in-depth guide provided in this article.

• Jenkins Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

  This post is about Jenkins Role-Based Access Control

  RBAC is a Role-Based Access Control in which we can create the User and assign the customized permissions on the basis of Global roles, Item roles, and Node Roles.

• How to Install Kubernetes Cluster on Rocky Linux 8

  Hello techies, as we know Kubernetes (k8s) is a free and open-source container orchestration system. It is used for automating deployment and management of containerized applications. In this guide, we will cover how to install kubernetes cluster on Rocky Linux 8 with kubeadm step by step.

• How to Mount a Remote Linux Filesystem Using SSHFS

  We use the SSHFS command in Linux to mount a remote file system using SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol).

  SSHFS is a filesystem client used to mount and interact with files and directories on a remote server. SSH protocol is used to encrypt data exchange between the two hosts.

  FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a networking protocol used to transfer files between two computers over a network, SFTP on the other hand in addition to performing a similar function to FTP, it incorporates a security layer used to encrypt the data being sent and received between the two machines over the internet.

  Now, how do the two tools work together? Well, SSHFS is just a file system in the user space, for it to perform the function of mounting a remote file system, it utilizes SFTP.

• How To Remove Primary Account From Chromebook 2022

  Remove primary account from Chromebook

  In this tutorial, we will show you the trick to remove the primary account from the Chromebook. Chromebook is powered by Google Chrome OS so we need to tweak the setting on Google Chrome OS to remove the primary account from Chromebook.

• Grafana Loki installation

  Grafana Loki is a log aggregation tool, and it is the core of a fully-featured logging stack.

• How To Install Joplin on Ubuntu 20.04

  So in this guide, we will show you how to install Joplin on Ubuntu 20.04

  Joplin is a free and open-source desktop and mobile note-taking application written for Unix-like (including macOS and Linux) and Microsoft Windows operating systems, as well as iOS, Android, and Linux/Windows terminals, written in JavaScript using Electron.

  Its interface is intuitive that allows users to create notes and to-do lists with just a few clicks and organize them in different notebooks.

  Joplin’s workflow and featureset is most often compared to Evernote.

• Easy Multi-Factor Authentication login Centos/RHEL 8

  Multi-factor authentication (MFA; enclosing authentication, or 2FA, along with similar terms) is an electronic authentication process in which a user is given access to a website or application only after successfully introducing two or more pieces of evidence (or factors) to an authentication mechanism…

• How to install OpenFire on Debian 11 – Deploy you chat server based on XMMP! – Unix / Linux the admins Tutorials

  In this post, you will learn how to have your chat server based on the XMMP protocol by installing OpenFire on Debian 11.

• How to install Let’s Encrypt SSL in Debian? | LibreByte

  SSL / TLS (Secure Socket Layer / Transport Layer Security) are cryptographic protocols designed to provide communications security over a computer network: web, email, instant messengers.

  CA (Certificate Authoritative): worldwide recognized entity in charge of generating security certificates for third parties.

  CSR (Certificate Signing Request): signing request sended to a CA.

• Install/Enable FirewallD GUI on Rocky Linux 8 – LinuxCapable

  FirewallD is software that provides the system firewall feature to protect Rocky Linux from unwanted access by disabling and enabling ports, services, or protocols. However, for users that are used to an interface such as Graphical User Interface (GUI), then the command line may seem difficult at first glance because there’s no visual representation and who are not comfortable learning the command line terminal to the possibility of having an unsecured system.

  However, you can install the FirewallD GUI. This sleek and simple design program is a perfect match for those who want easy access to what’s going on in their system without having too many bells and whistles to distract them from maintaining security.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install and enable FirewallD and FirewallD GUI on Rocky Linux 8 Workstation.

• Install LibreOffice on Fedora Linux 35 – LinuxCapable

  LibreOffice is a free, open-source office productivity suite used by millions worldwide. The office suite software uses a native file format ODF or Open Document Format, an accepted and almost required structure in multiple organizations across the globe.

  LibreOffice includes Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).

  Fedora typically has the most up-to-date packages, but it can often lag a release behind what is current. Luckily, Fedora has Flatpak natively installed so that you can grab the latest version of the LibreOffice suite.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install the latest 7.3 LibreOffice on Fedora Linux 35 using Flatpak.

• Enable/Disable Firewall on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – LinuxCapable

  When it comes to firewall protection for your system, the default Ubuntu UFW program is a great option. It is short for “uncomplicated firewall.” It allows users with little knowledge on how Linux IPTABLES so you can secure your home network or server without the need to learn complicated long-tail commands that is more for the sysadmin side of things.

  The tutorial is aimed more at new Ubuntu desktop users, but servers can also use the same commands. You will learn how to check, enable and disable the UFW firewall and, for desktop users, install the firewall GUI to better control UFW for users that do not want to use the terminal in the future.

• How to Upgrade Fedora 35 to Fedora 36 with GNOME 42 – LinuxCapable

  Fedora 36 is coming soon, and it’s packed with new features! For Workstation users, GNOME 42 and Linux Kernel 5.17 are featured but more so introduce DNS-over-TLS supported, replacing FBDEV kernel drivers with SimpleDRM, DNF/RPM copy-on-write enablement for all variants when running on Btrfs, and more.

  The tutorial below will teach you how to successfully upgrade Fedora 35 to the newly released Fedora 36 Beta/Pre-Release Development branch that features the incoming GNOME 42 and Linux Kernel 5.17.

Games

• Ryujinx: Great Strides With Vulkan – Boiling Steam

  Nintendo Switch emulation, as great as it has already been, is getting even more spectacular. Today, the progress report for Ryujinx — one of the Nintendo Switch emulators available on Linux/PC — has been released for the month of January. But don’t let me do all the talking; just look at this clip for a few moments:

  This clip was posted as part of their blog post. This, right here, is a comparison between GLSL, the shader language for OpenGL, and SPIR-V, the shader language for Vulkan. The difference is night and day. Observe how much more quickly the game caches shaders on SPIR-V. And also notice that SPIR-V is only using a single thread, rather than GLSL’s multi-threaded processor usage.

• Half-Life 2 and the episodes get updated and HL2 now Steam Deck Verified | GamingOnLinux

  Not only are Valve continuing to go over third-party games, they also continue upgrading their own with a fresh update out for Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

  All three of them recently had an update that noted “UI and Input support for Steam Deck verification”, although only the original Half-Life 2 has been fully Steam Deck Verified so far. This is the finalization of work that went into a Beta recently, to give them a new gamepad friendly UI.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Why I love KDE for my Linux desktop

    One of the things that open source prides itself on is choice. You don’t have to settle for anything you don’t love. You can change your file manager, your text editor, and you even have over 24 desktops to choose from. As with many Linux users, I was pretty flexible about the desktop I used at first. I didn’t know what I liked at first, because I hadn’t tried everything available to me. On one auspicious day in January 2008, KDE 4.0 was released, and from the moment I laid eyes upon the Plasma Desktop, I knew that it was the Linux desktop I’d been waiting for (and having only been a Linux user for a year by that time, I guess I didn’t have to wait long). Even though I have and enjoy GNOME on my laptop, Fluxbox on my Pi, and probably a few other combinations, I consider myself a Plasma Desktop user, and a member of the KDE community.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • Review: Running guest distributions with Distrobox

    My trial with Distrobox got off to a rough start and it was mostly due to a lack of documentation. The project has a quick-start guide, some examples on installing fresh guests, and entering the guest containers. However, the documentation hasn’t been fleshed out. I couldn’t find anything on installing dependencies, dealing with permission issues, finding a list of supported guest distributions, or stopping containers. Hopefully these items will get added later.

    As it stands, I spent most of my trial trouble-shooting issues which involved getting Distrobox installed, getting its dependencies running, and trying to figure out which Linux distributions I could install through Distrobox.

    Once these issues were resolved I found using the software quite enjoyable. I liked being able to quickly install an Arch or Fedora container, experiment with it, mess it up, and then delete it – all within a few minutes. I like being able to start up a container and run a few programs without the overhead or headaches of a full virtual machine. I liked how easily guest programs, even desktop applications, integrated into the host environment.

    The whole experience was very similar to my trial with JuNest last year. The setup of JuNest was a little more straightforward, but it required more trouble-shooting for some guest applications once it was up and running. JuNest also focuses exclusively on running Arch environments while Distrobox should be able to run virtually any distribution as a guest.

    All in all, I think Distrobox is worth checking out, especially if you find yourself wanting to experiment with new versions of software or run packages not available on your host system.

• BSD

  • nsh

    NSH is a CLI intended for OpenBSD-based network appliances. It replaces ifconfig, sysctl and route with its own simple command language, and consolidates configuration for other daemons into one place, effectively replacing /etc/netstart and parts of /etc/rc for appliance-style usage.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • CRB drives digital excellence into the Swiss construction industry with SUSE Rancher | SUSE Communities

    “SUSE Rancher helps us accelerate the evolution of our digital offering. We can quickly and easily allocate more or fewer resources to our applications as needed and optimize infrastructure usage.” Tanja Knuser, Head of Development and Technology, Executive Board Member, CRB.

    [...]

    Kubernetes orchestration was the natural next step and so, in partnership with IT service provider VSHN, CRB chose SUSE Rancher as its management platform for its cost effectiveness and the ease with which it could run and automate Kubernetes infrastructure management.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Digital transformation: 4 ways to accelerate your progress in 2022

    Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, no topic has impacted enterprises more than digital transformation. While many marveled at the rapid rate of change in early 2020 – most frequently citing McKinsey’s report that organizations advanced their digitalization by four years in a span of just six months – the sustained emphasis on digital transformation continues to shape the ways in which enterprises approach today’s business challenges.

    While 2022 could see a broader return to normalcy than in 2020 or 2021, many organizations are preparing for a future that maintains and expands on the changes made to fully digitize their infrastructure and processes. In an always-online world, and with new technologies like web3 and the metaverse promising future changes to the way we work, enterprises must double down on their digital transformation initiatives to ensure they remain at the head of the pack.

  • IT jobs: 7 hot automation skills in 2022

    From “traditional” IT positions (such as software developer, system administrator, or security analyst) to more recent titles like DevOps engineer, cloud platform engineer, or site reliability engineer (SRE), automation skills are relevant – and often required – in a great many tech roles today.

    So if you’re looking to bolster your appeal on the IT job market, building automation skills is certainly a good way to do it. Automation chops have the added bonus of portability: If you don’t want to be pigeonholed into a particular title or function, automation practices and technologies may pave the way into other roles down the line, too.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Can I use NVIDIA GeForce Experience software on Ubuntu? – LinuxStoney

    One of the world’s leading graphics manufacturers is NVIDIA . It puts at our disposal a good number of hardware products to meet the needs of most users around the world. But not only do we have to thank its physical components, but at the software level we also have good solutions.

    As with most of the hardware elements that we install on our PC, they need some type of software support to function correctly. Generally, here we refer to the drivers that we install in the operating system and that help to communicate both elements. A sound card , mouse, printer or webcam will always work better with a correctly updated driver and if it is from its manufacturer, the better.

Devices/Embedded

• Compact 3D Printed Raspberry Pi Case Using The Kywoo3D Tycoon Slim – The DIY Life

  Today we’re going to be using the new Kywoo3D Tycoon Slim 3D printer to print two new cases for my Raspberry Pis. I’ll be printing one in regular PLA to get an idea of the print quality that the Tycoon Slim can achieve and one in TPU, which is a flexible filament that is perfect for creating bump and drop resistant cases – but is also notoriously difficult to print with. The TPU version will be especially useful for Pi’s that you’re going to use for travelling, like a portable media server or NAS.

  This 3D printer was sent to me to try out and share with you by Kywoo3D through the online 3D printing store Tinker Hive. Tinker Hive is an authorised re-seller of Kywoo3D products and they offer three payment options, with the option to pay your printer off in four interest-free instalments, making it more affordable for tinkerers to get into 3D printing.

  Kywoo3D is a relatively new company to the 3D printing game, having successfully launched their Tycoon 3D printer on Kickstarter in April last year. They’ve now brought out a more compact, and cheaper version called the Tycoon Slim, and that’s what we’re going to be taking a look at and using for today’s prints.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Nokia, Jolla and HERE are at MWC2022

    Jolla is going to be at MWC2022, and the creators of Sailfish OS, which is an evolved version of Nokia’s MeeGo, will be showing their unique AppSupport solution for Linux platforms. These platforms are used in the automotive industry on modern digital car displays, and I’m also interested to see Jolla’s solutions. In case you are at MWC, you can find Jolla in Hall 7, stand 7G23.

  • At Olympics, cybersecurity worries linger in background

    Now that the Games are ending, and some 16,000 athletes, organizers, journalists and other visitors are heading home, concerns turn to what malware and other problems those who failed to heed the warnings might be carrying with them.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Converse.js: An open-source XMPP client for building in-browser messaging apps

  Converse.js is an open-source, free library that aids developers in creating browser-based chat clients.

  Converse.js is a library for XMPP which means you can connect to any public XMPP/ Japper servers, or use your own XMPP server as a messaging backend.

  It can be easily integrated with any web-based projects, websites, web apps or even hybrid JavaScript mobile apps.

  With Converse.js developers can build a collaborative messaging solutions that runs completely within the browser.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Community Member Monday: Nnamani Ezinne Martina

    Today we’re talking to Nnamani Ezinne Martina, who helps out in LibreOffice’s Quality Assurance project and recently became a member of The Document Foundation:

    Nice to meet you, Nnamani! Tell us a bit about yourself…

    I was born in Awka Anambra state and I grew up there as well. But I am a native of Amagunze, a town in Nkanu-East Local Government in Enugu state. Both are in the eastern part of Nigeria.

    I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2017 from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra state Nigeria. After my National Service year, I went into the tech space. Years later, I had the opportunity of joining Collabora Productivity and then realized how amazing Open source technology is.

    I was intrigued by the strength of community contribution then I began my journey, contributing to open source technology.

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • GNU Guile-SDL 0.6.1 available

      release notes:
      
        Gearing up for a Trip Log series to port a small program from
        Guile-SDL to Guile-SDL2:
      
      https://dthompson.us/projects/guile-sdl2.html
      
        Volunteers familiar w/ Guile-SDL2 welcome!
      
      README excerpt:
      
        Guile-SDL is a set of modules that provide bindings for various
        Simple DirectMedia Layer (http://www.libsdl.org) libraries.
      
        Most of the SDL functions are wrapped, with the exception of a
        few functions that are too C-centric.  The SDL threads, audio
        and network functions are not included.  However, there are
        (optionally configured) bindings for SDL_mixer and SDL_ttf.
      
        Also included is SDL_gfx 2.0.26 (by Andreas Schiffler) source
        code (ZLIB license) and bindings for it.
      
        This is alpha code (pre 1.0 release), tested with various,
        but not all, versions of Guile and SDL.  It may have bugs,
        and the interfaces may change from version to version.
      
      NEWS for 0.6.1 (2022-02-20):
      
        - changes to ‘(sdl misc-utils)’
      
          - new proc: ‘create-rgba-surface’
      
            This returns a new 32bpp surface of the specified width and
            height w/ the ‘src-alpha’ flag set.
      
          - new proc: ‘create-rgba-square’
      
            This returns a new 32bpp square surface of the specified edge
            length w/ the ‘src-alpha’ flag set.
      
          - ‘rotate-square’ fixed / extended
      
            Previously, this proc made reference to ‘roto-zoom-surface’ in
            the wrong module.  This undefined reference was never detected,
            showing how middlig to poor the test coverage was (and remains).
            Now, ‘roto-zoom-surface’ is properly imported from ‘(sdl gfx)’.
      
            Another oddity is that previously, the specified ANGLE argument
            was subtracted by 90 prior to passing it to ‘roto-zoom-surface’.
            This bizarre practice is no more.
      
            Re extension, ‘rotate-square’ now takes optional 3rd arg
            MKSQUARE which specifies a procedure to make a new square
            surface.  If omitted, it defaults to ‘create-rgba-square’.
      
            Additionally, if the rotated surface has flag ‘src-alpha’ set,
            the resizing blit uses ‘(sdl gfx) blit-rgba’ to do the job
            (otherwise ‘(sdl sdl) blit-surface’, as before).
      
        - bootstrap/maintenance tools
      
          upgraded:
      
           (none)
      
          as before:
      
           Guile-BAUX 20211208.0839.a5245e7
           GNU gnulib 2022-01-27 07:00:41
           GNU Libtool 2.4.6
           GNU Autoconf 2.71
           GNU Automake 1.16.5
           GNU Texinfo 6.8
      
      tarballs and detached signatures:
      
      https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/guile-sdl/guile-sdl-0.6.1.tar.lz
      
      
      https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/guile-sdl/guile-sdl-0.6.1.tar.lz.sig
      
      source code:
      
      https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guile-sdl.git/?h=p
      
      homepage:
      
      https://www.gnu.org/software/guile-sdl/
      
      

• Programming/Development

  • How I Taught the D Programming Language at a Russian University

    This is the fourth year I’m teaching my D Programming Language course at a very real university in Russia. It’s a full-term course with lectures, practical lessons, and exams, although it’s all remote now. This is the story about how I got there, the challenges I encountered, and how students sometimes surpass their teachers.

Education

• Opinion | Teaching and Learning Through a Pandemic

  Last week the Los Angeles Times reported that half of California students did not meet standards in Math and reading and, no one should care. The state shouldn’t care, the county shouldn’t care, the districts shouldn’t care, the schools shouldn’t care, the teachers shouldn’t care, the parents shouldn’t care, and most of all the students shouldn’t care. What they all should do instead is understand. They should all have a critical consciousness and have an awareness about what is happening in homes, schools, and communities, nation and worldwide. Research shows that tests being cited are meaningless measures of anything other than social class and familiar economic wealth. Regardless of that direction we hold fiercely to the notion that tests matter. They do not.

Hardware

• Sonoff ZBBridge gateway can be used as a Zigbee router/repeater – CNX Software

  And that’s basically it. Zigbee2MQTT (Z2M) users will have to download silabs.js file, add it to their Z2M config folder, and add the custom converter to the configuration, but this will not be necessary for too long since the device will probably be added to Z2M builds. Check out Digiblur instructions for the full details.

• Intel Optane: A Restrictive Licensing Model and the Half Billion Dollar Operating Loss in 2020

  I have written about this technology before. It isn’t anything new. Now, a little over a week ago, it was revealed that in the year 2020, Intel had reported a half-billion dollar loss on its Optane 3D XPoint business. Yikes! Also, Intel’s Optane head left the company.

  [...]

  The future may not be looking good for the technology. At least, not in the near term.

  Anyway, circling back to the original comment regarding the large negative financial impact, I personally feel that the root of this problem comes from the fact that the technology is manufactured and distributed under a very restrictive licencing model.

• Top chipmakers ignore India’s semiconductor subsidies • The Register

  India has revealed the identities of companies that have applied to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities on its soil under a $10 billion subsidy scheme – and none are substantial chipmakers.

  As The Register reported last week, a consortium of Taiwan’s Foxconn and Indian firm Vedanta committed to build a plant under the scheme, despite neither company having any previous experience in the field. Now India’s government has announced another two bidders: Singapore’s IGSS Ventures and an outfit called ISMC.

  IGSS operates an eight-inch CMOS foundry through its CompoundTek brand, which focuses on silicon photonics. ISMC is backed by a company called Next Orbit Ventures, and already had plans to build a fab in India.

  The government says the three applications it has received will build product on processes ranging from 28nm to 65nm, and have collective output of 120,00 wafers each month.

• Immersive Stereo Sound Recording With This Binaural Microphone | Hackaday

  Sound recording has been a consumer technology for so long now that it is ubiquitous, reaching for a mobile device and firing up an app takes only an instant. Anyone who takes an interest in audio recording further will find that while it’s relatively straightforward to make simple recordings. But, as those among you who have fashioned a pair of Shure SM58s into an X configuration with gaffer tape will know, it can be challenging to create a stereo image when recording outside the studio. In the quest to perfect this, [Kevin Loughin] has created a binaural microphone, which simulates a human head with microphones placed as ears to produce ambient recordings with an almost-immersive stereo image.

  [...]

  The results as you can hear in the video below the break are impressive, certainly so for the cost. It’s not the first such microphone we’ve shown you, compare it with one using a foam-only head.

• The USB-C Connectors You Never Knew You Wanted To Avoid | Hackaday

  On Tech Twitter, some people are known for Their Thing – for example, [A13 (@sad_electronics)], (when they’re not busy designing electronics), searches the net to find outstanding parts to marvel at. A good portion of the parts that they find are outstanding for all the wrong reasons. Today, that’s a through-hole two-pin USB Type-C socket. Observing the cheap tech we get from China (or the UK!), you might conclude that two 5.1K pulldown resistors are very hard to add to a product – this socket makes it literally impossible.

  We’ve seen two-pin THT MicroUSB sockets before, sometimes used for hobbyist kits. This one, however, goes against the main requirement of Type-C connectors – sink (Type-C-powered) devices having pulldowns on CC pins, and source devices (PSUs and host ports) having pull up resistors to VBUS. As disassembly shows, this connector has neither of these nor the capability for you to add anything, as the CC pins are physically not present. If you use this port to make a USB-C-powered device, a Type-C-compliant PSU will not give it power. If you try to make a Type-C PSU with it, a compliant device shall (rightfully!) refuse to charge from it. The only thing this port is good for is when a device using it is bundled with a USB-A to USB-C cable – actively setting back whatever progress Type-C connectors managed to make.

• A Ball Lens For Optical Fiber Coupling On The Cheap | Hackaday

  It’s fair to say that for most of us, using a fiber optic cable for digital audio or maybe networking will involve the use of an off-the-shelf termination. We snap the cable into the receptacle, and off we go. We know that inside there will be an LED and some lenses, but that’s it. [TedYapo] though has gone a little further into the realm of fibers, by building his own termination. Faced with the relatively high cost of the ball lenses used to focus light from an LED into the end of the fiber he started looking outside the box. He discovered that spherical glass anti-bumping balls used when boiling fluids in laboratories make an acceptable and much cheaper alternative.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Windows 11 Pro will soon force you to have a Microsoft account for installation | PC Gamer

    Users of Windows 11 Pro are set to be required to connect to the internet and sign-in with a Microsoft Account during the installation. This is already the case when installing Windows 11 Home, but now the ‘feature’ is being tested with Windows 11 Pro.

    The change was revealed in the change log for the Windows 11 insider preview build 22557 (via Tom’s Guide). “Similar to Windows 11 Home edition, Windows 11 Pro edition now requires internet connectivity during the initial device setup (OOBE) only. If you choose to setup device for personal use, MSA will be required for setup as well. You can expect Microsoft Account to be required in subsequent WIP flights.”

  • Ukraine braces for cyber invasion [iophk: Windows TCO]

    Andrei Baranovich, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, an activist collective, reported that his group had found backdoors to critical parts of Ukraine’s IT and operations management within two weeks of searching in 2017. Some are even advertised for purchase on the black market: “Water canals, power stations, and even the atomic energy sector—you name it, we found a way in.” The “NotPetya” cyber-attack in 2017, considered to be the most damaging in Ukraine’s history and attributed to Russia by the White House, disabled a radiation-monitoring system at the defunct but still highly contaminated Chernobyl power plant.

  • Security

    • Josh Bressers: Episode 311 – Did you scan the QR code?

      Josh and Kurt talk about the Coinbase Super Bowl ad. It was a QR code, lots of security people were aghast at how many people scanned the QR code. The reality is scanning QR codes isn’t dangerous. What other security advice just won’t go away?

    • Linux developers faster at fixing security bugs than Microsoft and Apple

      Linux developers take less time to patch security vulnerabilities than the teams at large software companies — including Microsoft, Apple, and Google.

      That is according to Google’s Project Zero, a research initiative that reports security vulnerabilities to the largest software vendors and assesses their performance in addressing them based on a 90-day deadline.

      Vendors can also request a 14-day grace period if they confirm a plan to release the fix by the end of the 104-day window.

    • Linux Developers Fix Bugs Faster Than Apple & Google: Report

      A recent report from Google’s Project Zero suggests that Linux developers fixed bugs faster than anyone. For starters, Project Zero contains a team of Google’s security analysts and is used to find zero-day vulnerabilities in open-source projects.

    • OAuth consent phishing, in the wild | Pen Test Partners

      An interesting incident response investigation showed exploitation of a recent OAuth related consent-phishing issue. We had been asked to investigate as the organisation had noticed some odd behaviours in the mailbox of one of the exec team. The mailbox was being queried using GraphAPI and mailbox rules were being added.

      Correlating logs and reviewing the forensic image of the phone, it was clear that the user had interacted with a phishing email and given permissions to a rogue application that exploited application consent to steal an OAuth token

Defence/Aggression

• Opinion | Avoiding Crisis Between Russia and Ukraine

  The crisis over Ukraine is on the verge of boiling over. Russia has amassed troops on the Ukrainian border, demanding the U.S. promise not to bring Ukraine into NATO. The Biden administration rejects that demand and warns a Russian invasion will be met with harsh economic sanctions.

• Ukraine: Where to Find the Truth in Enormous Detail

  In the massive propaganda blitz over Ukraine, there is one place where you can find, in enormous detail, the truth about what is happening in the civil war conflict zone on a daily basis. That is in the daily reports of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Monitoring Mission.

• Border Militias Set Up Fake Humanitarian Stations in the Desert to Trap Migrants

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Student admits to racist graffiti at Sacramento school: ‘A prank that went sideways’

  Investigators have identified a Black student is responsible for racist graffiti found over a water fountain at C.K. McClatchy High School with a message that alluded to segregation, community leaders announced Thursday.

  Mark Harris, a community liaison with Sacramento City Unified School District, said the student confessed to writing “colored” on one side of the dual water fountain and “white” on the other side. He said he saw video that showed the student writing the graffiti that corroborates her confession.

Environment

• Overpopulation

  • Ethiopia starts generating power from River Nile dam

    Ethiopia has been diverting Nile water to fill a vast reservoir behind the dam.

    Egypt, which lies downstream and depends almost completely on the Nile for its irrigation and drinking water, is worried this will affect the levels of water flowing into the country.

    It therefore wants a guarantee of a certain of volume of water coming into Egypt.

  • Ethiopia’s Abiy inaugurates electricity production at Nile mega-dam

    The project has raised tensions with Egypt, an arid nation of nearly 100 million people, depends on the Nile for most of its water needs, including for agriculture.

    Cairo claims a historic right to the river dating from a 1929 treaty between Egypt and Sudan, represented by colonial power Britain, that gave Egypt veto power over construction projects along the river.

    A 1959 treaty boosted Egypt’s allocation to around 66 percent of the river’s flow, with 22 percent for Sudan.

    Ethiopia was not party to those treaties and does not see them as valid.

  • Ethiopia starts generating electricity at controversial Nile dam

    The 145-metre high dam lies on Blue Nile River in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of western Ethiopia, not far from the border with Sudan.

    Egypt, which depends on the Nile for about 97 percent of its irrigation and drinking water, sees the dam as an existential threat.

  • Ethiopia starts generating power at Nile mega-dam

    Kifle declined to reveal how much water was collected last year or what the target is for the coming rainy season.

  • Ethiopia Starts Partial Power Generation From Blue Nile Dam

    The dam, which will have a total power generating capacity of 6,500 megawatts, has been a source of tensions between Ethiopia and the other riparian states, Sudan and Egypt. Ethiopia has already conducted two fillings of the dam, but the speed at which it will be filled and the amount of water that will be released during drought seasons remains unsolved.

    Egypt fears a quick filling of the dam will reduce its share of Nile waters and seeks a binding legal agreement in case of a dispute.

  • Sudan stresses need for binding solution to Ethiopia’s Nile dam issue

    The meeting stressed the need to reach a legal and binding solution under the patronage of the African Union (AU) in a manner that preserves Sudan’s interests and its water rights, the statement noted.

Finance

• Massive Credit Suisse Data Leak Reveals Criminals, Corrupt Autocrats, Human Traffickers

  A whistleblower leak to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and other media led to reporting on Sunday revealing that Credit Suisse—one of the world’s biggest private banks—knowingly accepted “corrupt autocrats, suspected war criminals and human traffickers, drug dealers and other criminals” as customers.

  Data on more than 18,000 bank accounts, holding more than $100 billion was leaked. The accounts included personal, shared and corporate accounts with opened as far back as the 1940s.

• Biden Promised to Center Racial Justice. He Can Start by Canceling Student Debt.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Congressional Leaders Raise Millions Ahead of 2022 Midterm Elections

• Opinion | Vladimir Putin: the Authentic Leader of the Republican Party

  Despite losing the last election by seven million votes, it is conventional wisdom that Donald Trump remains the leader of the Republican Party. Partly this reflects the Republican base. The media also plays its role: they would rather cover him like an ESPN announcer extolling Tom Brady than filling airtime with colorless androids like Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy.

• Opinion | California Advocates Counterattack Corporate Crime and Control

  Want to unite conservatives and liberals in the Red and Blue states? Just mention those unreadable computer-generated bills we all get online or in the mail. Overflowing with abbreviations and codes, they are inscrutable, especially health care bills.

• Opinion | Why Don’t More Progressive Candidates Speak Out Against the War Machine?

  I haven’t had much truck with the Democratic Party since 1965 or ’66, when I was expelled from my college chapter of the Young Democrats because I said out loud that I was rooting for the Viet Cong to win the war the US government was waging against them. The only Democratic presidential candidate I’ve ever voted for was George McGovern, the antiwar senator who got the nomination in 1972. (Admittedly, I might have made some different choices if I’d ever lived in a state that wasn’t “safe” for the Democrat.) And I never donated money to Democratic candidates.

• The Ugly Marriage of Postmodernism and Neoliberalism

  One can oppose this, but doing so can easily being assimilated into the neoliberal equivalent of the borg on Star Trek—a phenomenon described in Wikipedia like this: “The Borg co-opt the technology and knowledge of other alien species to the Collective through the process of “assimilation”: forcibly transforming individual beings into “drones….” Whether one is cross-dressing a la David Bowie, Lou Reed and other so-called glam rockers in the 1970s, becoming an alien as Bowie did at least twice in his career (Ziggy Stardust and The Man Who Fell to Earth) or playing video games where one assumes a character intent on murder, the rejection of the powers that be is ultimately atomized and meaningless. In other words, resistance is futile.

• How Starbucks Workers Turned the Tables on Union Busters

• Campaign Seeks to Abolish the Subminimum Wage in 25 States by 2026

Civil Rights/Policing

• 3 Incarcerated Women Die of COVID After Requesting Compassionate Release

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Kazakhstan’s Internet Shutdowns Could Be a Warning for Ukraine – The New York Times

  As Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, spiraled into chaos last month over rising energy costs and anger at the government, the country’s leaders took a drastic step to quell protests: They blocked the internet.

  First, they tried to ban access to some news sites, social networks and messaging services. Then, as activists bypassed those curbs with software that masked their locations, the authorities shut down almost all connectivity in the country.

  The moves added uncertainty to an already dire situation. After payment apps and point-of-sale machines used to swipe debit cards went down, lengthy lines formed at A.T.M.s as Kazakhs rushed to get cash. Families could not communicate with loved ones. Taxi drivers who relied on ride-hailing apps said they stopped driving because they could not connect with passengers.

  “It was impossible to communicate,” said Darkhan Sharipov, 32, an accountant who was part of the protests. “The lack of information multiplied the chaos and disinformation.”
  The scenes in Kazakhstan offer a preview of what may unfold in Ukraine, where the internet could be one of the first targets of the Russian military in a potential conflict. Ukrainian and Western officials have warned that cyberassaults could be part of any Russian intrusion.

• India’s war on the internet

  In it, IFF highlighted that internet shutdowns are extremely common in India, citing reports by Top10VPN and Access Now, and data from the Software Freedom Law Center and Meta.

  According to the TopVPN report, the Indian government imposed major internet restrictions on citizens for 1,157 hours in 2021, the equivalent of more than 48 days. This included 317.5 hours of total internet blackout and 840 hours of bandwidth throttling.

  In all, internet restrictions cost the Indian economy $582.8 million (Rs 4,348 crore) in 2021. Only Myanmar ($2.8 billion) and Nigeria ($1.5 billion) did more economic damage with these self-inflicted wounds.

  This dismal performance was actually an improvement for India from 2020, when it lost an estimated $2.8 billion – more than any other country by far – after shutting down the internet for a combined 8,927 hours.

  Overall, government internet outages in 21 countries lasting over 30,000 hours cost the global economy $5.45 billion in 2021, a 36% increase from 2020, when $4.01 billion was lost, the report said.

• What’s next for the EU’s DSA? – Access Now

  The Parliament also resisted the push to include a so-called media exemption from these rules — a dangerous provision that would give content by media publishers privileged treatment and thereby foster the spread of disinformation online. As negotiations over the final shape of the DSA continue, it is essential that Parliament defends this solid position with potential to empower users, instead of allowing the private sector to continue escaping transparency and accountability.

  To those outside the “Brussels bubble” the Parliament vote on the DSA might look like the end of the lawmaking process. In reality, we still have a road ahead before we see the final text.

  Below, we explain where we are in the DSA negotiations and what is coming next. We also highlight how the positions of the three main negotiators — the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission — differ, providing hints as to what to expect.

Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Judge: Jehovah’s Witness Parodies Are Fair Use. Watch Tower: So What?

    In 2018, Watch Tower filed for a DMCA subpoena that would’ve required YouTube to hand over the identity of an animator who parodied the religious group in his videos. When that stalled, Watch Tower filed a copyright lawsuit. Citing fair use, a judge has now ruled that the subpoena will not be granted. Surprisingly, Watch Tower is pressing ahead with its copyright lawsuit regardless.