Linux Weekly Roundup #171

Welcome to this week’s Linux Weekly Roundup.

We had a wonderful week in the world of Linux releases, with Ubuntu 20.04.4, LMDE 5 Beta, and Manjaro 21.2.4.

I am back at my workstation, so expect more Linux distro reviews in the future.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Is ChromeOS A Linux Distro Or Not? – Invidious

  Some people want to call ChromeOS a linux distro but to decide if it’s a distro we first need to decide on what the term linux distro means in the first place.

• Fragmentation is a GOOD thing for Linux – Invidious

• Enterprise Linux Security Episode 19 – The RBS Year-End Vulnerability Report – Invidious

  2021 is now in the past, but there’s some very interesting details in the year-end vulnerability report produced by RBS. These details give us a look at some of the trends that will impact 2022 and beyond. In this episode, Joao and Jay discuss the report and some of its findings.

Kernel Space

• lrzip version 0.650

  A number of accumulated bug reports had collected since the last lrzip release and since I regularly use lrzip I want to make sure it stays bug free as far as I am aware, even if I’m not planning any new features for it. As some of the changes are potentially security fixes, I urge any user to update.

Applications

• 14 Best Free and Open Source Network Analyzers – LinuxLinks

  A network analyzer (also known as a packet analyzer, packet sniffer, or protocol analyzer) is software that intercepts and logs traffic that passes over a computer network or part of a network. Packet capture is the process of intercepting and logging traffic. As data streams flow across the network, the analyzer captures each packet and, if needed, decodes the packet’s raw data, showing the values of various fields in the packet, and analyzes its content according to the appropriate RFC or other specifications.

  Maintaining a live network is one of a system administrator’s most essential tasks, and keeping a watchful eye over connected systems is essential to keeping a network functioning at its best.

  A good network analyzer helps a network developer with daily Linux plumbling. They can be used for network development, debugging, analysis, auditing or network reconnaissance.

  Here’s our verdict on the finest network analyzers, captured in a LinuxLinks ratings chart. We only feature free and open source software here.

• Gaphor: An Open Source & Simple Graphical Modeling Tool

  Architects and designers need to use top-notch modeling apps to make designs. There are tons of software available for that purpose. But not all of them support technical modeling languages like RAAML, SysML, C4, UML, etc. That would be a great problem when the architects and designers are in something technically complicated. However, if you face a similar situation, I would like to introduce Gaphor. And this content will lead you to a detailed discussion on Gaphor.

• TeXworks 0.6.7 Released! How to install it in Ubuntu via PPA | UbuntuHandbook

  TeXworks, the free open-source application for authoring TeX (LaTeX, ConTeXt, etc) documents, released 0.6.7 today. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.10, and Ubuntu 22.04.

  TeXworks 0.6.7 added some minor new features, improved dark mode support, and fixed various bugs.

• Top open source audio editors for Linux

  Almost everybody loves music. We can agree that music is a universal language. Some people say music is the food for the soul because it can evoke powerful emotions from within us. If you love a great tune, depending on your favorite genre, you are definitely into audio editing software.

  Audio editing software can help you edit audio into music by arranging sounds, melody, harmony, and rhythm elements. The article will review some of the top open-source audio editing software.

• The Kate Text Editor – UI Improvements

  In the last few weeks we had time to nicely improve the general UI of our editor.

  Naturally, the overall structure of the main window stays the same, with a central splitter area and some tool views around.

  But if you take a look at the two screenshots below that show the last release and the current master branch version, you will spot some differences that in my eyes improve on what we have in a nice way.

• recordMyDesktop CLI screen recorder

  While revising the EasyApps utility, I realised there is one kind of app missing from EasyOS — a video and audio screen recorder. There have been many of these used in the pups over the years, and I perused the old forum, looking to see what has come and gone.

  A couple of them, Drec (dpuprec) and EasyCast, are GUI apps that use the ‘rmd’ CLI utility. I searched and found that the binary utility is now named ‘recordmydesktop’, and uses libtheora, libogg and libvorbis to record video actions on the desktop, and audio using alsa-lib, and save as an ‘ogv’ video file.

Instructionals/Technical

• How To Install Gaucho on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Gaucho on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Gaucho is an open-source, customizable task launcher to run your apps, commands, or scripts. Gaucho is a great alternative when you need to create, modify and run tasks with a simple graphical interface.

  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 Gaucho Task Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

• How to Turn a Picture into Wallpaper on Android (And Make It Fit)

• How to install MyPaint on a Chromebook

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

• How to Change File Permissions on Linux Desktops

  One of the most confusing and often frustrating parts of Linux for new users is the concept of file system permissions. It used to be that if you wanted to change file permissions on a Linux system, you had to enter cryptic commands at the terminal. Now, however, desktop environments like GNOME and KDE Plasma make it easy to check and adjust these settings.

  In this article, we’re going to explain what each of the file permission settings is and show you how to adjust them on each of the four major Linux desktop environments: GNOME, Plasma, Cinnamon, and XFCE.

• How to Manage Your Linux Clipboard Effectively Using CopyQ

  Have you ever copied a text snippet, then copied another shortly after, only to realize that the initial text snippet is now gone?

  Well, it’s quite a common sight on most operating systems, including Linux. And it’s got to do with your system’s clipboard/pasteboard, which can hold only one instance of text at a time.

  Fortunately, you have clipboard managers, like CopyQ, that allow you to store multiple snippets in your clipboard and use them wherever required.

  Let’s check out CopyQ, its installation steps on Linux, and how to use it to manage your clipboard history.

• How to Microsoft Fonts on Manjaro 21 Linux – LinuxCapable

  Most Linux Distributions use open-source fonts to substitute Microsoft’s iconic typefaces like Arial, Courier New, and Times. Red Hat created the Liberation family to replace these similar-looking but different sizes — all you have to do is select your preferred font when editing documents so that they’ll be readable without any disruptions!

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Microsoft Core Fonts on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

• How to Zoom Client on Manjaro 21 Linux – LinuxCapable

  Zoom is a communications technology platform that provides videotelephony and real-time online chat services through the cloud. It’s used for everything from teleconferencing to distance education. Still, its most widespread application may be an effective way of communicating between employees geographically located far away from one another.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Zoom Video Conference Client on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

• Install Wine 7.3 On Ubuntu 21.10 / 20.04 & Linux Mint | Tips On UNIX

  Winehq Team released its new Development version 7.3

  This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install wine 7.3 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 21.10, and Linux Mint 20.3.

• Vectorization How To | Inkscape

  This is the 8th part of Inkscape for Students the Series. After we had learned about Cropping in the previous part, now we will learn about vectorization, also known as tracing or simply redrawing. We will practice through examples of the two of vectorization methods, automatic and manual. Now let’s start practicing.

Games

• Developers – let us know if you need help with Steam Deck testing | GamingOnLinux

  Valve’s new handled PC the Steam Deck is starting to ship out but there’s going to be a long wait for some, and others might not be able to get one at all for various reasons – I’m here to help.

  Now that any embargo is up and I can do whatever Steam Deck content I like, I had a thought. I know a lot about Linux, and since I have a Steam Deck why not help out those who need it? So that’s exactly what I’m announcing: a free Steam Deck testing service for developers.

• Linux Gaming in 2022 | Bryan Quigley

  I’d bet the Steam Deck (and other changes) will have the following impacts on Linux overall by the end of 2022.

  [...]

  I’m expecting at least 20% increase on the Steam Hardware Survey (so 1% to 1.20%) not including Steam Deck. Right now, the Steam Linux usage is less than half what you get from other sources.

  [...]

  Encourage Linux consumer focused pre-installs with similar AMD chips to what’s in the Steam Deck (I know many have asked for more AMD preinstalls for a long while)

• GabeN Confident About the Steam Deck’s Future – Boiling Steam

  So the Steam Deck has just launched, and IGN had the good idea to reconnect with GabeN to collect some of his thoughts about the device, as well as asking him what he thinks of the Ukraine conflict. Nah, that second part did not happen.

• Yes, ‘Elden Ring’ Is Perfectly Playable On Linux (Including Online Features)

  Based on the amount of misinformation being dished out on social media and the gaming press this weekend, you deserve to hear this: Elden Ring is perfectly playable on Linux, including online functionality. That doesn’t just apply to Valve’s Steam Deck; it applies to any modern desktop Linux distribution running Steam.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • ’Desktop Cube’ GNOME Extension Now Supports Click & Drag Deform

    On Ubuntu you do need to disable the DING extension for the drag feature to work, but once you have you can click, hold and then pull the desktop in any direction to ‘deform’ it in to the rotating 3D cube switcher:

    If you don’t fancy disabling DING you can also click and drag from any empty part of the top bar. You can also tap super to enter the switcher and drag from any non-interactive bit of the overview…

Distributions

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • EPEL Office Hours – Fedora Community Blog

    The EPEL Steering Committee is implementing monthly office hours for the EPEL project. These will be held on the first Wednesday of each month at 1700 UTC. The first session will be on 2022-03-02. The openSUSE Heroes team has agreed to let us host the meeting on their Jitsi Meet Instance.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Xubuntu 22.04 Wallpaper Contest is Open For Entries – OMG! Ubuntu!

    Artists, photographers, and digital designers have until March 12th to submit up to 5 pieces of original work for potential inclusion in the Xubuntu 22.04 LTS release in April.

    The Xubuntu team plan to pick 6 winners from those submitted (which means there’s more chance of being picked than in regular Ubuntu’s wallpaper contest which is only going to select 2 winners).

    The usual sort of rules apply: no brand names or trademarks; nothing saucy, salacious, or subversive; nothing political, religious, or nationalistic; and, perhaps most importantly of all, no artwork that isn’t entirely original (or derived from something that has a permissive license)!

Devices/Embedded

• MWC 2022 Day 0: Live updates from Barcelona – Android Authority

  Among the highlights out of the show: the new/old Astro Slide from Planet Computers.

  We had hands-on time with the prototype you see above, which is now running Ubuntu with a physical keyboard. There’s also an option to buy one with Android 11, or dual-boot with Linux as well. Price? $975. Sales start in a “few weeks.”

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Honor teases blockbuster Magic4 Series phone launch tomorrow | Express.co.uk

  • The Best Android Games of February 2022 – Inua, Encodya and More – Droid Gamers

  • Best cheap smartwatch for Android 2022 | Android Central

  • Galaxy S22, S22+ and S22 Ultra: 7 Hidden Android Features and Settings to Know – CNET

  • Google Chrome is removing its data saving mode on Android – lets celebrate | TechRadar

  • Budget Android Phones With Upscale Performance

  • Is The Truth Social App On Android? Here’s What We Know

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• KeePass: The Open-source Password Manager that sets the standards

  KeePass is considered the most popular open-source password manager, and not just among end-users, but also among developers who ported it to all known platforms.

  KeePass helps users to manage their passwords securely and privately, without having to worry about many technical details.

  It supports several encryption standards, AES and Twofish. It also encrypts the entire database.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Robert Kaiser: Connecting the Mozilla Community

      After some behind-the-scenes discussions with Michael Kohler on what I could contribute at this year’s FOSDEM, I ended up doing a presentation about my personal Suggestions for a Stronger Mozilla Community (video is available on the linked page). While figuring out the points I wanted to talk about and assembling my slides for that talk, I realized that one of the largest issues I’m seeing is that the Mozilla community nowadays feels very disconnected to me, like several islands, within each there is good stuff being done, but most people not knowing much about what’s happening elsewhere. That has been helped a lot by a lot of interesting projects being split off Mozilla into separate projects in recent years (see e.g. Coqui, WebThings, and others) – which is often taking them off the radar of many people even though I still consider them as being part of this wider community around the Mozilla Manifesto and the Open Web.

• FSFE

  • Free Software Fellowship: Snake Island Code of Conduct

    To honor the defiance of these Ukrainian victims, we created a new sticker in the Ukrainian national colours and we are publishing examples of fascism in the FSFE…

Hardware

• Need To Probe Circuits? Remember About Clothespins! | Hackaday

  After browsing Thingiverse for some printable PCB probe designs, [Henry York] looked around and found a wooden clothespin on his desk. After some collaboration between his 3D printer and his CNC, Henry graced us with a nifty helper tool design that many of us might want to make in a pinch – a small, cheap and easy to make PCB probe, for circuits where soldering and headers are out of the question. Small magnets are glued to the clothespin, holding it flush to a magnetizable work surface (aka a toaster tray), and the probing itself is done by an extruder cleaning needle end. 3D printer and Edge.Cuts files are shared with us – thanks to Henry’s helpfulness, it should be easy to repeat if ever needed!

• ESP32 Virtual Machine Lets You Change Programs On The Fly | Hackaday

  Often, reprogramming a microcontroller involves placing it in reset, flashing the code, and letting it fire back up. It usually involves shutting the chip down entirely. However, [bor0] has built a virtual machine that runs on the ESP32, allowing for dynamic program updates to happen.

  The code is inspired by the CHIP-8, a relatively ancient interpreter that had some gaming applications. [bor0] had already created a VM simulating the CHIP-8, and repurposed it here, taking out the gaming-related drawing instructions and replacing them with those that control IO pins. Registers have also been changed to 16 bits for added flexibility and headroom.

• Teaching You Everything You Might Have Missed About Addressable LEDs | Hackaday

  Often, financial motivation results in people writing great educational material for hackers. Such is absolutely the case with this extensive documentation blog post on addressable LEDs by [DeRun]. This article could very be named “Addressable LEDs 101”, and it’s a must-scroll-through for anyone, whether you’re a seasoned hacker, or an artist with hardly any technical background and a desire to put LEDs in your creations.

  This blog post is easy to read, painting a complete picture of what you can expect from different addressable LED types, and with apt illustrations to boot. Ever wonder which one of the addressable strips you should get from your retailer of choice, and what are the limitations of any specific type? Or, perhaps, you’d like to know – why is it that a strip with a certain LED controller is suspiciously cheap or expensive? You’re more than welcome to, at least, scroll through and fill into any of your addressable LED knowledge gaps, whether it’s voltage drops, color accuracy differences, data transfer protocol basics or dead LED failsafes.

• Retro And New Tech Combine In This Hybrid Ham Transmitter | Hackaday

  We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the best part about holding an amateur radio license is that it lets you build and use your own transmitting equipment. Hams have been doing this for more than a century — indeed, it was once the only way to get on the air — using whatever technology was available. But the mix of technologies in this low-power transmitter for the 80-meter band is something you don’t see every day.

  As ham [Helge Fykse (LA6NCA)] describes in the video below, the project began when he came into possession of a bonanza of vacuum tubes — 12A6 tetrodes, specifically. The new-old-stock tubes were perfect for an RF power amplifier, but that left the problem of what to use for an oscillator. [Helge] chose to meld the old with the new and used oscillator board that he designed. The board has an ATmega88 microcontroller and an Si5351 oscillator, along with a 3V3 regulator to let the module run on 12 volts. And for a nice retro touch, [Helge] put the board in a 3D printed case that looks like an old-fashioned quartz crystal.

• AllSpice Building A Hardware Development Ecosystem For Companies | Hackaday

  In our “hardware development gets serious” news, we’ve recently learned about AllSpice, a startup building hardware development collaboration infrastructure for companies. Hardware developers are great at building hardware tools for themselves, but perhaps not always so when it comes to software, and AllSpice aims to fill that gap at the “hardware company” level. Nowadays, what commonly happens is that software development tools and integrations are repurposed for hardware needs, and the results aren’t always as stellar as they get in the software world. In other words, AllSpice is learning from the positive outcomes of software industry and building a platform that takes the best parts from these tools, aiming to get to similarly positive outcomes in areas where currently hardware team experiences are lacking.

  What AllSpice is building seems to be an umbrella platform designed to augment, integrate and hook into a slew of different already-developed platforms like GitHub, GitLab, Jira (and some other ones), and add much-needed features that large-scale hardware developers can’t afford to maintain and develop themselves. “Design review by screenshot” isn’t unheard of in hardware circles, and likely a thing that everyone of us with hardware collaboration experience has partaken in. On a company scale, there’s a myriad of hardware-related problems like that to solve and polish over.

• Apple Extended Keyboard (m0115) Repair Teardown

  I recently repaired an Apple Extended Keyboard (M0115). I took some pictures. This post is an excuse to show them. Repairs were successful, and I’m typing this post on it.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Bionic Implants Can Go Obsolete And Unsupported, Too

  When a piece of hardware goes unsupported by a company, it can be frustrating. Bugs may no longer get fixed, or in the worst cases, perfectly good hardware can stop working entirely as software licences time out. Sadly, for a group reliant on retinal implants from company Second Sight, the company has since stopped producing and supporting the devices that give them a crude form of bionic sight.

  The devices themselves consist of electrodes implanted into the retina, which can send signals to the nervous system which appear as spots of light to the user. A camera feed is used to capture images which are then translated into signals sent to the retinal electrodes. The results are low-resolution to say the least, and the vision supplied is crude, but it gives users that are blind a rudimentary sense that they never had before. It’s very much a visual equivalent to the cochlear implant technology.

  [...]

  It’s a sobering tale of what can happen when a tech company goes out of business. It’s a story that bears thinking about for anyone taking on a medical device from a new, untested company. Video after the break.

Monopolies

• Patents

  • Updates To The EPO Guidelines For Examination [Ed: Guidelines that do not comply with the law]

    The EPO have announced their upcoming amendments of the Guidelines for Examination which will enter into force on 1 March 2022. A number of notable amendments to the Guidelines are scheduled; we will follow with more detailed discussions regarding the changes to Description Amendments and Electronic Signatures of Assignments, whereas here we will look at some of the other significant updates with regard to Priority, the Designation of Inventor, the Claims Fee, Extension of Periods under Rule 134(1), Double Patenting, Selection Inventions, Unity, and Oral Proceedings.

  • Software Patents

    • Another Blow to DABUS as Patent Offices Reject AI as Inventors | GJE [Ed: This patent lunacy is merely provocation of the system, discredited the system]

      Artificial intelligence (AI) stands as a powerful tool undergoing rapid progression and adoption at the forefront of research and development. The continued growth in the importance of AI raises several questions for patent systems across the world. In particular, the issue of inventorship continues to unfold controversy, as the ‘inventor’ status is tested by patent offices worldwide.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Why 30fps Is GREAT On Steam Deck – Invidious

  Valve’s Steam Deck has a wonderful 30fps frame limiter, and it proves that smooth frame pacing is always better than higher framerates. I tested Cyberpunk 2077 and Borderlands 3 to show you the difference.

• People That Say “Linux Is Hard” Make Me Laugh – Invidious

  I see it all over the Internet…people telling potential new Linux users to not bother trying Linux because “Linux is hard” or “Linux is not for beginners.” And I can’t help but laugh every time I see such nonsense.

Kernel Space

• Intel Purchases Linutronix To Revive It’s Real Time Linux Kernel

  Over the years the maintenance and development of PREEMPT_R has languished as people moved on to other projects, but will now have the backing of Intel. They also get another benefit, in the form of Linutronix’s CTO Thomas Gleixner who has been a major driver in developing security mitigations for the Linux kernel’s x86 codebase.

Instructionals/Technical

• Math is fun with this Linux graphing calculator | Opensource.com

  If you spent your high school years gazing at TI-80 series calculators but lost track of the device somewhere along the way, then you might sometimes yearn to relive those thrilling years of algebra and calculus. Somebody on the Linux KDE project must have felt that way, too, because one of the KDE Framework libraries, Analitza, provides syntax and widgets to enable you to perform advanced math functions with K apps like the graphing calculator KAlgebra.

• How to Install Brave Browser on Manjaro 21 Linux – LinuxCapable

  Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. Brave is a privacy-focused internet browser that sets itself apart from other browsers by automatically blocking online advertisements and website trackers in its default settings.

  Brave claims that its browser puts less strain on your computer’s performance than Google Chrome. Even with multiple tabs open at once, the new Brave Software uses 66% less memory and has 50 million more active users than before – a growth of 2X in 5 years!

  The tutorial will use the yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Brave Browser on Manjaro 21 Linux by installing the stable, beta, or nightly browser build.

• 2 ways to Install MyPaint on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04 LTS Linux – Linux Shout

  Create beautiful freehand pictures on your PC by installing MyPaint on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa using the command terminal.

• How To Install Tor Browser on AlmaLinux 8 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Tor Browser on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Tor browser is an open-source browser that anonymizes your browsing activity and gives you an unparalleled level of privacy over the internet. Tor will come in handy by hiding your public IP which typically identifies your geographical location over the internet. It redirects your traffic through multiple layers of encryption and nodes, thereby hiding your identity from prying eyes.

  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 Tor Browser on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• 10 reasons to use Pantheon as your desktop environment

  Pantheon is a great desktop environment for those who prefer a simple, fast, and light desktop experience. It boasts a desktop design similar to mac OS, naturally making it easy for mac users to get accustomed to it fairly quickly.

  Pantheon comes as the default desktop environment with elementary OS, a beautiful and intuitive Linux distro. Still, if you want to install it on your Ubuntu installation as an additional DE, you can also do that with only a few commands. Either way, you can check out some valuable things we listed hereafter installing it on your system.

Distributions

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Flatpak App of the Week: Foliate – Simple and Modern eBook Viewer

    Written in GTK, Foliate is a great ebook viewer/reader software with lots of cool features. While its interface may look simple, don’t be fooled because Foliate comes with numerous options and nifty tools that go beyond just reading ebooks.

    Foliate’s user interface has two main views, Library and Catalogs. While in the Catalogs section you’ll be able to browse and download free ebooks from some well-known sources, the Library view is the place you’ll find every ebook that you’ve downloaded through the app or manually opened with reading progress information.

  • Fedora 36 – Top New Features & Release Details

    This article summarises significant new features and releases information about Fedora 36 release (upcoming).

Devices/Embedded

• Beagle-Pi Emulator is a Raspberry Pi HAT adapter for BeagleBone Black (Crowdfunding) – CNX Software

  We recently reported the Raspberry Pi boards were getting really expensive due to a lack of supply, and the problem has gone on for while without a clear idea when the issue will be resolved. This does not help Raspberry Pi HAT manufacturers, and for instance, Sequent Microsystems has made Raspberry Pi HATs over the years most models with multiple relays, but also others for temperature sensors, and others automation applications.

  One solution would be to use compatible boards like ODROID-C4 or Rock64, but Sequent Microsystems found out the BeagleBone Black Industrial was well-stocked by various distributors, and instead, they designed the “Beagle-Pi Emulator” adapter to use Raspberry Pi HAT on the Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358 board.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • How Google Plans to Fix Android’s Targeted Advertising

  • Is Spam App Social Media On Android? Here’s What We Know

  • Update to Android 12 dialer is hidden in Google Phone app – PhoneArena

  • How to Schedule Text Messages on Android Using Google Messages – TechPP

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Google Chat

  Google has a firm grip on the desktop. Their products and services are ubiquitous. Don’t get us wrong, we’re long-standing admirers of many of Google’s products and services. They are often high quality, easy to use, and ‘free’, but there can be downsides of over-reliance on a specific company. For example, there are concerns about their privacy policies, business practices, and an almost insatiable desire to control all of our data, all of the time.

  What if you are looking to move away from Google and embark on a new world of online freedom, where you are not constantly tracked, monetised and attached to Google’s ecosystem.

• FSF

  • I’m developing a rather intense dislike of Richard Stallman. He went on Russian state television numerous times after knowing what their plans were for the region. [Ed: RMS has repeatedly spoken about abuses in Russia, inc. in Russian TV, so this is based on a false premise.]

    I’ll avoid linking to the podcasts where Stallman was featured, however many of them were published less than a year ago, and he’s made numerous appearances on RT in the past decade, completely ignoring Putin’s invasions of Georgia and Ukraine while doing so, and they were very happy to have him speaking out against the United States government. Which, admittedly, is far from perfect, but it’s no Russia either.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • I used Apple’s AirTag to track my wife and kids. Here’s what I learned

    Actively tracking you at freeways speeds is pointless but if the only thing someone wants to know is where you live, Apple’s AirTag is scary effective. But indeed, so is the Tile Pro. Again, my experience with my Tile Pros have been pretty much hit or miss for finding lost stuff in my home. So I was quite surprised to see the Tile Pro work reasonably well as a tracking device.

  • Ukraine: Can Apple solve this new supply chain challenge?

    But, it’s not just development (and also wheat) that comes from Ukraine; the nation is also rich in hard-to-find raw materials used in silicon chips and advanced sensors. This includes the neon gas used by chip-making lasers, palladium, and around 90% of US semiconductor-grade neon. Citing US-based advisory firm, Techcet, Reuters is warning that if the conflict escalates, some of the world’s biggest chipmakers may be impacted. Intel, for example, gets half its neon from Eastern Europe.

  • Cyber officials urge federal agencies to armor up for potential Russian attacks [iophk: Windows TCO]

    The specter of broad cyber warfare has increased following Russia’s invasion this week, with experts warning that Moscow could respond to retaliatory sanctions over the incursion with additional cyberattacks against the West.

  • Conti ransomware gang: You attack Russia, we’ll [crack] you back [iophk: Windows TCO]

    The Conti ransomware gang says that it supports the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine… and if anyone launches a retaliatory cyber attack against Russia, they will hit back hard.

  • ACSC calls on Australian organisations to urgently adopt an enhanced cyber security posture [iophk: Windows TCO]

    The ACSC also links to similar information from the US, UK, NZ and Canada, to prepare for and better defend against threat actors in any country, whether small, large or nation state, because the cyber cold war has already been happening for years, and all the chaos in the world is digitally accelerating cyber attacks, too.

  • Outlook bad for Starbucks’ anti-union lawyers

    The firm Littler Mendelson, who has been representing Starbucks’ anti-union efforts, failed to submit a dispute with the National Labor Relations Board on time due to an untimely crash in the firm’s Microsoft Outlook.

    The dispute, called a statement of position, was aimed at stalling the organizational voting of several upstate New York stores. The dispute stated that holding elections for individual stores would be inappropriate and should instead tally votes on a regional basis. In order to be considered valid, this paperwork needed to be submitted to the NLRB by noon on February 11th but didn’t find its way to the appropriate inbox until 12:08PM.

  • Microsoft Outlook Fail Screws Up Latest Starbucks Union-Busting Effort

    For much of the last several years, Starbucks Corporation has been engaged in a ham-fisted effort to crush fledging unionification efforts among store employees. But the company’s latest effort to undermine such efforts were thwarted by an unforeseen adversary: company lawyers’ inability to understand how Microsoft Outlook attachments work.

Defence/Aggression

• ‘We Will Not Lay Down Any Weapons’: Ukraine Resists as Kyiv Under Attack

  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy implored people in the capital of Kyiv to brace for an all-out Russian assault overnight, and as a result of intense resistance from the Ukrainian military and civilians alike, they were able to fend off the invading army, though fighting continues throughout the country on Saturday morning.

  “The invaders wanted to block the center of our state and put their puppets here… We broke their plan.”

• Hundreds of Anti-War Protesters Have Been Arrested Across Russia

• Stay hidden or get drafted How the breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine are forcing local men into the military

  On February 17, the breakaway governments in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions began spreading claims of a massive Ukrainian artillery attack on the territories they control. The leaders of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” used these claims not only to evacuate women and children into Russia but also to implement a universal conscription policy among men between 18 and 55 for “the protection of the Donbas and of all Russian people.” On February 23 and 24, the self-proclaimed republics reported a successful military recruitment campaign that allegedly brought in many new volunteer troops. However, local residents told Meduza that soldiers are conducting raids to sweep the streets for potential conscripts.

• The 150,000 Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war — in pictures

  The war in Ukraine — which Meduza will continue to call a war, despite demands from Russia’s state censor that we do otherwise — has already seen no fewer than 150,000 civilians forced to leave their homes. Poland, Moldova, and Hungary are all accepting Ukrainian refugees. Slovakia has declared a state of emergency due to the large wave of new arrivals. In addition, the United States has declared its readiness to help refugees, and Ireland has cancelled its visa requirements for Ukrainian arrivals. Here, Meduza rounds up photographs capturing the scale of the displacement crisis already in progress.

• Opinion | Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Marks a Deep Turning Point in the World Order

  David Harvey prepared this text, which he calls a provisional statement on recent events in Ukraine, for the 2022 meeting of the American Association of Geographers. It is republished here with his permission.

• Meduza’s brief guide to accessing online resources blocked by the Russian authorities

  Facebook has started to slow down in Russia. Judging by similar measures the authorities have taken against Twitter, we know this might make the site significantly harder to use — photos and videos will probably take especially long to load. And it’s highly likely that the authorities won’t stop there. In the near future, we anticipate them blocking independent (and other) media outlets. Here are the things you can do right now to prepare for life in the new Internet reality.

• Anti-War Coalition Holds Online Rally for Peace in Ukraine

  Update:

  At least 2,000 people from every corner of the globe attended an anti-war coalition’s emergency online discussion and rally on Saturday afternoon, during which organizers announced that they are planning an international day of action for peace in Ukraine and beyond to be held on Sunday, March 6.

• Opinion | Even Without Russia’s Military Might, Ukraine Can Defend Against Invasion

  As with so many around the world, including thousands of brave Russians protesting against their country’s brutal invasion of neighboring Ukraine, I’m aware of the inadequate resources for defending Ukraine’s independence and wish for democracy. Biden, NATO countries, and others are marshalling economic power, but it seems not to be enough.

• Unreliable at best:

• Opinion | How George W. Bush Laid the Groundwork for Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine

  George W. Bush issued a statement about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It went like this:

• Opinion | Holodomor Belies Putin’s Words and Actions on Ukraine

  Putin’s invasion of Ukrainian territory and his rejection of Ukraine legitimacy as an independent nation has made that country an unwilling pawn in the conflict between the U.S., its European partners and Russia. As expected, Putin responded to the sanctions imposed by Biden with threats of retaliation, which set the stage for conflicts of unpredictable but probably ominous consequences. Ukrainian civilians, mainly children, will carry the biggest burden.

• Russian Labor Confederation: Workers “on Both Sides” Will Suffer Most From War

• Opinion | Ukraine and the Myth of War

  Last September 21st, in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the International Day of Peace, as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan, our local peace organization emphasized that we would be relentless in saying no to the calls for war, that those calls for war would come again, and soon.

• Opinion | Conflict Between Nuclear-Powered Nations: Chernobyl Is Now a War Zone

  The invasion of Ukraine by Russia poses several nuclear threats, including the possibility of deliberate or inadvertent military strikes or cyber-strikes on nuclear facilities.

• Russian Labor Confederation Demands Peace in Ukraine

  With Ukraine under attack, a Russian labor confederation boasting an estimated two million members on Friday called for a “cessation of military action” and “renewal of peaceful dialogue” between officials in Moscow and Kyiv, arguing that workers in both countries are the victims of war.

  “Intensification of the conflict threatens a devastating shock to our nations’ economies and social support systems, and a fall in workers’ living standards.”

• Unreliable at best What we know about Ukrainian and Russian casualties on day three of the invasion

  Three days into the war against Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry has yet to report any losses, both in terms of military personnel and technical equipment. Russian state media outlets have also been silent on this front. Two anonymous sources — one at a major wire agency and one at a federal television channel — confirmed to Meduza that their newsrooms received a memo telling them to rely strictly on “official Russian state sources” in their reporting. These consist mostly of briefings held once per day by Russian Defense Ministry representative Igor Konashenkov. The journalists were also told not to cite any Ukrainian state sources, with an exception for announcements by the Ukrainian government about its own losses to Russian forces.

• Sean Penn on Invasion of Ukraine: ‘If We Allow It to Fight Alone, Our Soul as America Is Lost’

  Sean Penn, who is in Ukraine filming a documentary about Russia’s invasion, released a statement on Friday night after appearing at a press briefing in the capital of Kyiv on Thursday, where he listened to government officials talk about the crisis.

  “Already a brutal mistake of lives taken and hearts broken, and if he doesn’t relent, I believe Mr. Putin will have made a most horrible mistake for all of humankind,” Penn said. “President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have risen as historic symbols of courage and principle. Ukraine is the tip of the spear for the democratic embrace of dreams. If we allow it to fight alone, our soul as America is lost.”

Environment

• Energy

  • Top Climate Publisher Has Played Major Role in Supporting Fossil Fuel Industry

  • How Ukrainians are fundraising in cryptocurrency

    More than $15 million in cryptocurrency has been donated to Ukrainian groups since Russia attacked the country on February 24th, according to research firm Elliptic. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have formed to support Ukrainians. NFTs have been sold to raise money for the Ukrainian people and military. The country’s official Twitter account has said it accepts Bitcoin, Ether, and Tether.

  • ‘Mining’ Bitcoin takes more energy than mining gold

  • Illegal Crypto Mining Facilities Busted in Kazakhstan Amid Prevailing Power Crisis

    Crypto mining, the process of generating assets such as Bitcoin, is legally permitted in Kazakhstan, but only via authorised mining facilities. A total of 13 crypto mining facilities have been busted in Kazakhstan that were consuming huge chunks of electricity to generate Bitcoin, illegally. The Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan conducted raids after having identified illegal crypto mining farms in cities and regions like Karaganda, Turkistan, Pavlodar, Akmola, and Kostanay. Illegal crypto miners are also called grey miners.

    The development comes under the backdrop of Kazakhstan trying to manage its power supply. Since crypto mining is legal in the country, its grids have been bearing the loads the mining machines require.

  • Founder of cryptocurrency company BitConnect charged in $2.4-billion fraud

    The founder of a cryptocurrency company was charged by a San Diego federal grand jury Friday in a wide-ranging indictment alleging he defrauded global investors out of more than $2.4 billion in what prosecutors said is believed to be the largest swindle of its kind ever criminally charged.

    Satishkumar Kurjibhai Kumbhani, 36, a citizen and resident of Surat, India, is charged with numerous conspiracy counts relating to wire fraud, money laundering and commodities fraud, as well as one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. His whereabouts were unclear Friday night.

    Kumbhani, who used aliases to hide his identity, is accused of running BitConnect, the company he formed in 2016, as a “textbook Ponzi scheme,” according to the indictment.

Finance

• Inflation Talk Belies Deeper Question: Why Was Everything So Cheap Before?

• Support open source that you use by paying the maintainers to talk to your team

  I think I’ve come up with a novel hack for the challenge of getting your company to financially support the open source projects that it uses: reach out to the maintainers and offer them generous speaking fees for remote talks to your engineering team.

• Explosions, shelling rock Ukraine as allies double down on punishments against Russia

  As Ukraine’s forces battled troops on the ground, the U.S. along with the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada announced Saturday that select Russian banks would be removed from the SWIFT messaging system.

  The option had been on the table, but some allies in Europe with economies more closely tied to Russia’s had been reluctant to include SWIFT among sanctions because of the possible impact it could have.

• Russia-Ukraine live updates: US, other nations to disconnect some Russian banks from SWIFT

  The U.S., along with the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada, are disconnecting some Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) banking network and are “imposing restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions,” the White House said.

• Select Russian banks are being booted off the SWIFT bank messaging system

  The U.S., Canada and European allies are moving to cut off certain Russian banks from the SWIFT bank messaging system as part of a dramatic new round of sanctions meant to punish Russia for the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

  The White House issued a statement saying, in part, “we commit to ensuring that selected Russian banks are removed from the SWIFT messaging system. This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally.”

  SWIFT is a key mechanism in the global financial system that supports millions of secure messages daily to facilitate bank transactions worldwide.

• US and Europe will block some Russian banks from SWIFT

  A coalition of NATO-aligned countries has committed to new measures meant to sever Russia from the global financial system, countries announced in a joint letter today. The letter, signed by the United States, UK, Canada, and European allies, lays out new measures to isolate Russia’s central bank, and announces a new trans-Atlantic task force to freeze the foreign assets of sanctioned individuals.

  In a dramatic escalation, the order also blocks select Russian banks from using SWIFT — the international payment system employed by banks to send money around the world.

• Why SWIFT is the nuclear option of Russian financial sanctions

  Using the global financial network as a sanctions weapon could, however, have long-lasting repercussions outside Russia’s borders. For one, it could undermine confidence in the US dollar and SWIFT itself as an apolitical network. It might accelerate the creation of alternatives such as trading in local currencies, using cryptocurrency, and forming new bilateral free trade agreements, Prakash said. China, Iran, and India, for example, already trade in local currency.

• West to cut some Russian banks off from [SWIFT]

  The assets of Russia’s central bank will also be frozen, limiting Russia’s ability to access its overseas reserves.

  The intention is to “further isolate Russia from the international financial system”, a joint statement said.

  Russia is heavily reliant on the [SWIFT] system for its key oil and gas exports.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Truth Social Users Whine About Censorship After Being Banned From Trump’s New App

  Conservatives who make up Truth Social‘s target audience rushed to be among the first to sign up. But now even those who are among Donald Trump’s most loyal followers are accusing the app billed as a “free speech” alternative to other platforms of “rank hypocrisy” for censoring content and banning accounts.

  It’s just another problem to add to the list of setbacks Trump’s latest venture faced upon its launch. Aside from technical glitches which put users on a waiting list–complete with an unironic message that assured the user just assigned a number that they were loved and “not just a number” to Truth Social–the app’s questionable funding is still under a microscope. Now, users are getting banned just as they would on Twitter: a right-wing broadcaster who has pushed conspiracy theories about the coronavirus in recent months was censored for posting what the platform classified as ‘sensitive content.’

• YouTube bans ads on RT and other Russian channels

  YouTube spokesperson Farshad Shadloo told Reuters that YouTube will recommend Russian state-run media to users less often. Some of these channels — including RT — will also be restricted in Ukraine due to “a government request,” potentially in response to Ukraine digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s call for YouTube to block Russian propaganda on the platform. YouTube started labeling videos posted by state-run networks in 2018.

• Google blocks RT, other Russian channels from earning ad dollars

  Alphabet Inc’s Google barred on Saturday Russia’s state-owned media outlet RT and other channels from receiving money for ads on their websites, apps and YouTube videos, similar to a move by Facebook after the invasion of Ukraine.

  Citing “extraordinary circumstances,” Google’s YouTube unit said it was “pausing a number of channels’ ability to monetize on YouTube.” These included several Russian channels affiliated with recent sanctions, such as those by the European Union.

  Ad placement is largely controlled by YouTube.

• Russia blocks Twitter as Ukraine invasion escalates

  Journalists on the ground in Russia have confirmed the block. A BBC reporter described access as “severely restricted,” saying “this message got through, but took a while.”

• Twitter pauses ads in Ukraine and Russia amid growing conflict

  The social network also says it’s “proactively reviewing tweets to detect platform manipulation” and is taking “enforcement action” against them. Twitter is monitoring the accounts of journalists, government officials, activists, and other high-profile accounts to prevent “targeted takeover or manipulation” as well.

• Social media platforms prevent Russian-backed media from earning ad revenue

  Social media platforms are preventing Russian-backed media from earning ad revenue as Russia continues its assault on Ukraine.

  The head of security policy at Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced Friday night that Russian state media would not be able to earn money from ads on the company’s platforms.

• Russia restricts Facebook access claiming platform censors Russian media amid Ukraine conflict

  In a statement posted on Twitter, Nick Clegg, the vice president of global affairs for Facebook parent company Meta, said the company refused orders by Russian authorities to stop independent fact-checking and labeling of content posted to Facebook by the media organizations.

• Facebook bans Russian state media from running ads, monetizing platform

  “We are now prohibiting Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on our platform anywhere in the world. We also continue to apply labels to additional Russian state media. These changes have already begun rolling out and will continue into the weekend,” Gleicher said in a tweet.

• Russia Will Restrict Access to Facebook, Claiming Social Giant Violated ‘Human Rights’ in Restricting Kremlin-Backed Media

  UPDATED: The Russian government announced that it has taken steps to “partially restrict access” to Facebook in the country, asserting that the social network censored official news outlets amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  Facebook was “involved in the violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms, as well as the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens,” by restricting Kremlin-backed news sources, according to an announcement released Friday (Feb. 25) by Roskomnadzor, the Russian governmental agency responsible for monitoring and censoring Russian media.

Censorship/Free Speech

• 3 int’l news outlets in Turkey face ban as deadline set by media watchdog expires

  The move has been described by the media outlets as an attempt at censorship and at expansion of the Turkish government’s control over domestic media to foreign outlets, which are the only source of free and independent journalism for some people in Turkey, where the majority of the media is controlled by the government.

  Deutsche Welle and VOA announced earlier this week that they would appeal RTÜK’s decision and take legal action in court.

• Ukrainian cities are suffering [Internet] blackouts

  IODA, a research team at the Georgia Institute of Technology, an American university, is tracking these disruptions in two ways: by probing networks that automatically respond to the sender and by watching networks on the Border Gateway Protocol, a global routing system. They found that the responsiveness of Triolan, one of the main service providers in Kharkiv, plummeted in the early hours of the invasion.

  Finding the cause of such outages can be tricky. Kyivstar, the country’s largest mobile provider, reported that its networks were underperforming because of a high volume of calls and texts. Blackouts may also occur when shelling destroys physical infrastructure.

• Chinese censors delete academics’ post decrying Russian invasion

  A post on Chinese social media platform Weixin jointly signed by five prominent academics denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was almost immediately taken down by China’s censors on Saturday (Feb. 26).

  Among the five scholars were Sun Jiang (孫江) of Nanjing University, Wang Lixin (王立新) of Peking University, Xu Guoqi (徐國琦) of the University of Hong Kong, Zhong Weimin (仲偉民) of Tsinghua University, and Chen Yan (陳雁) of Fudan University, per CNA.

  The authors criticized Russia for, despite being a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a nuclear power, ruthlessly attacking a weaker “brotherly state.” “We feel the pain of the Ukrainian people,” the professors proclaimed.

• Her senior recital was on historically censored songs. Then her school censored her

  Caitlyn Fox put on a show – just not the one she proposed. Caitlyn Fox, a senior in the honors program at Friends University in Wichita, Kan. – a Christian university of Quaker heritage, as its website explains – mounted a senior recital called “The Shows They Don’t Want Us To Produce: A Study Of Censorship Through The History Of Musical Theatre” – for mature audiences, her playbill advised. Just two days before she was set to perform, the president of the university sent an email saying, people who have worked at and/or supported the university for a long time are considering withdrawing their support if we move forward with having the recital at Friends and suggested moving the show off campus. A show about censorship censored, more or less.

  Caitlyn Fox joins us now from Wichita. Thanks so much for being with us.

• Twitter restricted in Russia amid conflict with Ukraine

  Network data show that access to the Twitter platform and backend servers are restricted on leading networks including Rostelecom, MTS, Beeline and MegaFon as of 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning UTC.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Union Files “Precedent-Setting” Charges of Misconduct Against Amazon

• Retired SWAT commander who killed man after fight over phone in movie is acquitted

  But prosecutor Scott Rosenwasser countered that Reeves killed Oulson because he threw popcorn in his face, angering him because it violated his self-image as an “alpha male.”

• Florida jury finds former SWAT commander not guilty of second-degree murder

  A Florida jury on Friday acquitted a retired police captain who shot and killed a man at a movie theater in 2014.

  The six-member jury found Curtis Reeves not guilty on charges of second-degree murder for the killing of Chad Oulson and aggravated battery of Oulson’s wife, NBC affiliate WFLA reported.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Fearing for Gemini

  After posting about the utility of data URLs, particularly as they relate to images, a few people contacted me with their concerns about how this could impact Geminispace. Let’s reflect a bit.

  People on Gemini undoubtedly have a lot of affection for this circumlunar space. I feel it myself. This small and simple protocol is beautiful as it exists today, and trying to “advance” it could mean Geminispace changes in substantial and negative ways.

Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Audiobook Pirate Still Plagues Authors After Being Deported For Selling Honey

    A man who was deported from Norway for offenses including the illegal sale of honey and then threatened to “destroy the entire audiobook industry” in retaliation is said to be plaguing the industry once again from overseas. Nikita Volgin was previously ordered to remove pirated content from his websites but according to police, new ones keep appearing with slightly changed domains.

Desktop/Laptop

• The 4 Best ARM Linux Laptops You Can Buy Now

  With transistors already nearing their physical size limits, many would agree that ARM-based CPUs will supersede x86-based CPUs soon. For this reason, veteran laptop manufacturers and startup companies have begun the race to develop and produce quality ARM laptops for the new market.

  And with efficiency being an ARM-based laptop’s main advantage, pairing such an efficient CPU with an efficient operating system, such as Linux, is a dream come true for many tech enthusiasts.

  If you’re in the market for the best Linux laptop that utilizes a highly efficient SoC (System on Chip), keep reading below for a list of the best ARM Linux laptops you can buy today.

Server

• AlmaLinux OS 8.5 for PowerPC Now Available, Distribution Inches Closer to Parity with Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  The AlmaLinux OS Foundation, the nonprofit that stewards the only community owned and governed open source CentOS alternative, today announced a new stable release with support for the PowerPC architecture and IBM Power Systems, inching closer to parity with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS.

Audiocasts/Shows

• 187: Steam Deck Reviews, Ubuntu Snap Vulnerability, Intel Buys Linutronix and more Linux news – TuxDigital

  On this episode of This Week in Linux: Steam Deck Officially Launched, Intel Acquires Linutronix, Podman 4.0, MythTV 32, PeerTube 4.1, Planner 3.0, Vulnerability Found In Ubuntu’s Snaps, Mir 2.7, GIMP 2.99.10, Libinput 1.20, NetworkManager 1.36, Slax 11.2. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

• Onefetch: Useless Neofetch Like Stats For Git Repos – Invidious

  Every fetch application is the same or so I thought until I found this one shining light in the dark, Onefetch which is basically neofetch but for git repos instead of your system.

Applications

• 4 Best Free and Open Source Sound Systems

  
  A sound system is software that manages the use of and access to audio devices (usually a sound card). It commonly runs as a background process.

  To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 4 high quality free and open source sound systems.

  Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks chart. We only feature open source goodness.

• Strimio: A Collection of Best Radio Streaming Stations for Linux

  It is true that modern music streaming tools are quite flexible and let you enjoy just technically any song you like. But still, people like me are there who love the old fashion radio streaming functions. I called this radio streaming system an old-fashioned one because you don’t control what program is running on it. So, everything is just like a surprise here. However, if you love to enjoy a radio streaming tool on Linux, this is where you should be right now. We will here discuss one of the best radio streaming apps, Strimio.

  [...]

  Strimio is one of the most popular radio streaming apps for Linux. And it’s completely free. Furthermore, the installation process is easier too. So, why don’t you give it a try? This beautiful app requires nothing but a few minutes to spare to install. In exchange, it offers you hours of exciting radio streaming experience.

  Here, we take our leave and promise to come back with something new. So, if you are already impressed, just follow the installation process mentioned above to enjoy unlimited streaming fun with Strimio. Till then, stay tuned with Strimio. Thank you.

• NewPipe Is Your Alternative YouTube Client For Android

  The official YouTube client for android is full of ads and other tracking scripts. If you use it, then you will be forced to watch tens of intrusive ads from video to video, and your privacy will be under attack because of Google’s tracking activities.

  Luckily, you don’t have to go through all this. You can use an alternative YouTube client app for android in order to avoid this situation.

  NewPipe is an open source YouTube client for android, which also happens to be completely free of charge. It allows you to watch and browse any content on YouTube without having to use the official YouTube app from Google. In this way, you won’t see any ads and you will never be tracked by Google.

Instructionals/Technical

• How To Install Timeshift on Debian 11 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Timeshift on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Timeshift is a powerful open-source tool that can help you protect your data. Timeshift protects your system by taking incremental snapshots of the file system at regular intervals. These snapshots can be restored at a later date to undo all changes to the system.

  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 Timeshift open-source tool back up and restore file snapshots on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

• How to Show Line Numbers in Vim

  Vim is a remarkable editor that most Linux/UNIX sysadmins have come to love and use every day.

  You might think, “I would switch to Vim immediately if Vim could show me line numbers”. Well, consider that done.

• Install Google Cloud SQL Proxy on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04 – Linux Shout

  The Cloud SQL Auth proxy works by having a local client running in the local environment. Your application communicates with the Cloud SQL Auth proxy with the standard database protocol used by your database.

  It uses a secure tunnel to communicate with its companion process running on the server. Each connection established through the Cloud SQL Auth proxy creates one connection to the Cloud SQL instance.

• How To Install Nmap on AlmaLinux 8 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nmap on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Nmap is an open-source network scanner and security auditing utility. Nmap allows finding devices running on their network and discovering open ports and services that, if not secure or hardened, can lead to potential exploiting known vulnerabilities security risks. Nmap support is available for Linux, Windows, UNIX, FreeBSD, 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 through the step-by-step installation of the Nmap network scanner on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

• How To Install MyPaint on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MyPaint on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, MyPaint is an easy-to-use painting program that works well with Wacom graphics tablets and other similar devices. MyPaint takes quite a little memory and has a smaller footprint on the disk. It is super fast and does a marvelous job to get bitmap images done just like MS Paint. It’s a cross-platform application available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, and Unix-like operating systems.

  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 MyPaint simple painting tool on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

• How to Add a Directory to PATH in Linux [With Examples]

  This article discusses an important Linux shell environment variable called PATH and how you can add a directory to this variable.

  In general, most programs you’ll ever run on your Linux system will work flawlessly, and your shell will not present any errors at the time of their execution. However, there may be times when you might want to quickly run custom scripts or programs from non-standard directories on your Linux system.

  In such cases, you need to add their source directory to your shell’s PATH variable so that it knows where to find them.

• How to Install Google Chrome on Manjaro 21 Linux – LinuxCapable

  Most web users need no introduction to Google Chrome as it is the most used Internet Browser software globally, with a recent update in 2022 that Chrome is currently the primary browser of more than 2.65 billion internet users and is why most websites’ code now target it first before any other browser.

  Chrome is designed to be sleek and clean in its looks and features and especially at loading website pages as it used to claim to be the fastest of all the browsers, but that is now a considerable debate with Edge leading the charge and many others have caught up, the browser competition has increased recently.

  The tutorial will use the yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Google Chrome on Manjaro 21 Linux by installing either stable, beta, unstable (nightly build), or a combination of the browsers.

• How to install Python on Linux Mint 20

  If we discuss very popular programming languages, we have to discuss Python. This programming language is present in many technologies that are part of our days. And Python is also a fundamental component of many Linux distributions. So, in this post, you will learn how to install Python on Linux Mint.

• How To Make SLAX Bootable USB Stick

  SLAX is a portable desktop operating system designed to run on removable media like USB stick. We covered it yesterday in a short review. However, we didn’t make it clear how to make its bootable media. It’s different to Ubuntu and another standard GNU/Linux distros in the making of its bootable as we cannot use image writing utilities like Rufus or Unetbootin. For that purpose, now we share with you how to make it from start to finish.

Games

• Proton Experimental Beta gets Steam Deck performance fix for ELDEN RING | GamingOnLinux

  Are you finding that ELDEN RING has some mad stuttering when loading things in the background? Valve has released an update for Proton Experimental in the bleeding-edge Beta to help.

• Godot Engine – Godot XR Update Feb 2022

  At the end of last year we had rounded off most of the core changes in Godot 4 to support XR, had XR fully working through OpenVR/SteamVR and except for a pesky timing issue had OpenXR up and running.

  It initially seemed the timing issue was related to issues with the original Vulkan implementation on OpenXR, OpenXR had already moved to a new approach where OpenXR takes over managing the Vulkan instance. Switching to this new approach however required embedding OpenXR support into the core of Godot. With the Meta grant securing the funding to switch to the new approach the whole implementation was ported to the core.

  While we would later discover the cause of the timing issue was fixable in the plugin the new approach is far more future proof and will make it much easier to implement various XR features including the editor features we have on the roadmap.

  The initial version of this work was merged this week, for details check the Core OpenXR PR. Currently only desktop VR is supported as we are waiting on Meta to adopt the official Khronos OpenXR loader.

Distributions

• EasyOS

  • Take a Shot fixed and version bump

    EasyOS has three screen-shot apps: Take a Shot! (TAS), Screeny and the full-screen capture feature of mtPaint. These are to be found in the Graphic menu.

    Screeny is builtin to woofQ and is in all releases of EasyOS, it is not a PET. The author is 01micko.

  • EasyApps fixes and improvements

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • IBM Emeritus Irving Wladawsky-Berger: How Do Digital Infrastructures Increase a Firm’s Value?

    “In the information age, the value of a firm rests fundamentally on how it stores, shares and processes information,” wrote Seth Benzell, Jonathan Hersh, and Marshall Van Alstyne in a recent paper, How APIs Create Growth by Inverting the Firm. “Digital infrastructure is therefore central to a firm’s success.”

    But, how do digital infrastructures increase a firm’s value? One method is to make more efficient use of the firms internal capital by modularizing, reconfiguring and reusing the firms IT resources. A second method, used in platform businesses, is to leverage external capital by giving access to the firm’s resources to third parties, and capturing a share of the resulting surplus. Both methods require the implementation of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), whether for only for internal use by the firm’s developers or exposed externally to the firm’s platform partners. Both methods also feature a modular architecture of remixable resources. “Modularity combines the advantages of standardization typically associated with high volume processes together with the advantages of customization typically associated with bespoke processes.”

    “An API is a set of routines, protocols, and tools that standardizes building software applications compatible with an associated program or database. APIs fundamentally are code that control access to information. … They govern the type and format of calls or communications that any application can make of another associated program. The answering program is agnostic about the source of the call, yet can require access permission, and the calling program need not know anything about the internal workings of the answering program. … When designing an API, the architect decides how much of the computer system or data to expose to which users. Being accessible on the web, these API endpoints act as a constant conduit to business processes that the firm itself specifies.”

    The authors developed a novel method to quantify the changes in a firm’s valuation based on its adoption of APIs by analyzing four unique data sets. They then applied their methods to systematically evaluate several different hypotheses on the potential impact of APIs on firms. Let me summarize their evaluation of four of these hypotheses.

• Debian Family

  • Daniel Silverstone: Subplot and FOSDEM 2022 talk

    At the start of February we had FOSDEM which was once again online, and I decided to give a talk in the Safety and open source devroom to introduce the concepts of safety argumentation and to bring some attention to how I feel that Subplot could be used in that arena. You can view the talk on the FOSDEM website at some point in the future when they manage to finish transcoding all the amazing talks from the weekend, or if you are more impatient, on Youtube, whichever you prefer.

Devices/Embedded

• Add-on card lets you run Raspberry Pi HATs on a BeagleBone

  Sequent Microsystems has gone to Kickstarter to launch an $18 “Beagle-Pi” emulator board that enables HATs for the hard-to-find Raspberry Pi to run on the Cape expansion interface for the more widely available BeagleBone Black.

  When we checked prices for the Raspberry Pi back in late December for our annual catalog of Linux hacker boards, we found most Raspberry Pi’s available at the usual price, but only from selected vendors in selected configurations with limited quantities and wait times stretching to two months. Since then, the situation has grown worse, as chip shortages have pushed wait times up to a year or more. In Europe, prices have skyrocketed. Raspberry Pi HAT vendor Sequent Microsystems noticed that the venerable BeagleBone Black is still widely available and developed a Beagle-Pi emulator board in the BeagleBone Cape add-on form-factor that enables the BB Black to use Raspberry Pi HATs.

• Weekly Update (8/2022): Phosh 0.16.0, Nemo Mobile’s February Report and adding Kodi to Megi’s multi boot image

  Another boring week with just a few releases, I even had to reach for Steam Deck content to fill this one up.

• Solving Wordle By Adding Machine Vision To A 3D Printer | Hackaday

  Truth be told, we haven’t jumped on the Wordle bandwagon yet, mainly because we don’t need to be provided with yet another diversion — we’re more than capable of finding our own rabbit holes to fall down, thank you very much. But the word puzzle does look intriguing, and since the rules and the interface are pretty simple, it’s no wonder we’ve seen a few efforts like this automated Wordle solver crop up lately.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • $60 PC Oscilloscope Review | Hackaday

    Owning an oscilloscope is a real gamechanger and these days, scopes are more capable and less expensive than ever before. However, there is a big difference between scopes that cost several hundred dollars which are usually quite good and many of the very inexpensive — below $100 — instruments that are often — but not always — little more than toys. [Adrian] looks at a PC-based scope from Hantek that costs about $60. Is it a toy? Or a useful tool? He answers the question in the video below.

    The Hantek 6022BE sports two channels with a 20 MHz bandwidth and 48 million samples per second. The device included probes, too. Of course, you also need a PC, although there is apparently third-party software for Android if you don’t want to lug a laptop around.

  • 3D Printed Mechanical Contraption Shows Live Weather Forecast

    “What’s the weather going to be like today?” is a question that’s near-permanently on the mind of those living in places like Britain, where brilliant sunshine can follow thick clouds, only to turn into drizzle an hour later. Nowadays you simply need to glance at your phone to know whether you need to pack an umbrella, but where’s the fun in that? Why not have a huge mechanical display to show you a summary of today’s weather?

  • Codasip L31 and L11 RISC-V cores for AI/ML support TFLite Micro, customizations – CNX Software

    Codasip has announced the L31 and L11 low-power embedded RISC-V processor cores optimized for customization of AI/ML IoT edge applications with power and size constraints.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • The Best New Games for Android This Week – Night Skate, Unheard and More – Droid Gamers

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Plus review: A multitasking powerhouse | Android Central

  • The 7 Best Android Apps to Practice Calligraphy and Improve Your Handwriting

  • 5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week – Android Apps Weekly

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Intuit Quickbooks

  
  Intuit Inc. is an American corporation that specializes in financial software. Specfically, the company develops personal finance, accounting, and tax return software.

  The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California. It has more than 10,000 employees.

  While Intuit has a GitHub presence with over 100 repositories for numerous open source projects, none of these repositories offer any substantial desktop software. Instead, the repositories focus on tools and libraries for the developer community. None of these projects have attracted significant interest from the open source community.

• Announcing coreboot 4.16 – coreboot

  coreboot 4.16 release

  coreboot’s first quarterly release in a number of years, version 4.16 was tagged on February 25th, 2022.

  Since 4.15 there have been more than 1770 new commits by more than 170
  developers. Of these, more than 35 contributed to coreboot for the
  first time.

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • GNUnet 0.16.0 released

      We are pleased to announce the release of GNUnet 0.16.0.
      This is a new major release. It breaks protocol compatibility with the 0.15.x versions. Please be aware that Git master is thus henceforth (and has been for a while) INCOMPATIBLE with the 0.15.x GNUnet network, and interactions between old and new peers will result in issues. 0.15.x peers will be able to communicate with Git master or 0.16.x peers, but some services – in particular GNS – will not be compatible.
      In terms of usability, users should be aware that there are still a number of known open issues in particular with respect to ease of use, but also some critical privacy issues especially for mobile users. Also, the nascent network is tiny and thus unlikely to provide good anonymity or extensive amounts of interesting information. As a result, the 0.16.0 release is still only suitable for early adopters with some reasonable pain tolerance.

      [...]

      This release was the work of many people. The following people contributed code and were thus easily identified: Christian Grothoff, Tristan Schwieren, Alessio Vanni, Florian Dold, Thien-Thi Nguyen, t3sserakt, Lucien Heuzeveldt, Gian Demarmels, madmurphy, TheJackiMonster and Martin Schanzenbach.

• Programming/Development

  • 9 Top Free and Open Source C++ Web Frameworks

    One of the types of software that’s important for a web developer is the web framework. A framework “is a code library that makes a developer’s life easier when building reliable, scalable, and maintainable web applications” by providing reusable code or extensions for common operations. By saving development time, developers can concentrate on application logic rather than mundane elements.

    A web framework offers the developer a choice about how to solve a specific problem. By using a framework, a developer lets the framework control portions of their application. While it’s perfectly possible to code a web application without using a framework, it’s more practical to use one.

  • Russ Allbery: INN 2.6.5

    This is a bit of a sneak preview announcement since I’m waiting for the ISC mirror to update before sending the official announcement to the normal channels, but INN 2.6.5 has been released. (The release was finalized a few days ago, and I’m a bit behind in posting it.)

    This is a bug fix and minor feature release over INN 2.6.4, and the upgrade should be painless. You can download the new release from ftp.isc.org (once it updates) or my personal INN pages. The latter also has links to the full changelog and the other INN documentation.

  • Linux applications with Python and QML – dimitris.cc – Notes on technology and freedom

    Linux applications with QML and Python? Why not? Python is a popular programming language. QML offers an intuitive way to create user interfaces. Kirigami provides useful UI components and implements UI/UX patterns for mobile and desktop. Let’s fit these technologies together and create a simple application.

Science

• ML system proves adept at pinpointing power grid problems • The Register

  Machine learning could one day help energy providers better pinpoint failing or compromised components in power grids, or better identify traffic congestion for local authorities, according to a study.

  A research project led by MIT describes a technique capable of modelling complex interconnected systems made up of numerous variables that change value over time. By mapping connections in these so-called multiple time series, a Bayesian network can learn to identify anomalies in the data.

• 3D Printed CPU Bracket Reduces Temperatures | Hackaday

  What do you do when your motherboard bends your CPU? If you’re [Karta] or [Luumi], you 3D print a new retaining bracket to fix the problem. [Karta] originated the design, and [Luumi] also tried it and produced the video you can see below.

  We think we find flat surfaces all the time, but it is actually very difficult to create something truly flat. You usually learn this when you try to maximize heat transfer between two surfaces. Getting two supposedly flat surfaces to touch is quite hard. CPU brackets use a combination of pressure and some sort of thermal media or paste to fill in any gaps between the CPU case and the heat sink. Intel’s LGA1700 bracket is an example, but there’s been a problem. Apparently, with recent CPUs, the bracket is a little too tight, and it bends the CPU’s case. It doesn’t hurt the CPU, but it does inhibit thermal transfer.

  Others have “fixed” this problem by adding some washers to slightly raise the bracket. In both cases, there has been some very small improvement in CPU temperatures. [Luumi] says part of the problem is his water cooling block is not completely flat and needs to be lapped. [Karta], however, reported a 7 degree drop in temperatures, which is pretty significant.

Hardware

• 3D Printed Climbing Holds, Now With Texture | Hackaday

  Technology enables all kinds of possibilities to mold our environments in the way we best see fit. Plenty of ski resorts use snowmaking to extend their seasons, there are wave pools for surfing hundreds of miles away from oceans, and if you don’t live near any mountains you can build your own climbing wall as well. For the latter, many have turned to 3D printers to create more rock-like climbing grips but plastic doesn’t tend to behave the same as rock unless you do what [Giles Barton-Owen] did and incorporate salt into the prints.

• Here’s How Those Battery-Free Flashing Phone Stickers Worked | Hackaday

  The late 90s and early 2000s were a breakout time for mobile phones, with cheap GSM handsets ushering in the era in which pretty much everybody had a phone. Back then, a popular way to customize one’s phone was to install a sticker that would flash when the phone rang. These required no batteries or any other connection to the phone, and [Big Clive] has dived in to explain how they worked.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • CISA Releases Advisory on Destructive Malware Targeting Organizations in Ukraine

      CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have released an advisory on destructive malware targeting organizations in Ukraine. The advisory also provides recommendations and strategies to prepare for and respond to destructive malware.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • 12 Simple Tools to Protect Your Privacy

        
        Data is one of the most valuable assets available.

        For better or worse, data collection techniques aren’t going anywhere. To be practical, we need all sorts of data to analyze, study, and learn about things.

        Of course, it also brings in the risk of exploiting the data collected, such as malicious agencies getting hold of your browsing data (or internet activity).

      • You Break It, We Fix It

        Apple’s AirTags have caused a stir, but for all the wrong reasons. First, they turn all iPhones into Bluetooth LE beacon repeaters, without the owner’s permission. The phones listen for the AirTags, encrypt their location, and send the data on to the iCloud, where the tag’s owner can decrypt the location and track it down. Bad people have figured out that this lets them track their targets without their knowledge, turning all iPhone users into potential accomplices to stalkings, or worse.

        Naturally, Apple has tried to respond by implementing some privacy-protecting features. But they’re imperfect to the point of being almost useless. For instance, AirTags now beep once they’ve been out of range of their owner’s phone for a while, which would surely alert the target that they’re being tracked, right? Well, unless the evil-doer took the speaker out, or bought one with the speaker already removed — and there’s a surprising market for these online.

Defence/Aggression

• NATO Puts Response Force on Stand-by After Russia’s Aggressive Invasion of Ukraine

  As Russia moves aggressively on its objective to invade Ukraine, other countries, especially Sweden and Finland, are concerned. NATO’s reaction force has been launched for the first time in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  To protect its partners, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Tod Wolters ordered the response force. This activation of the response force means that any attack on a NATO member will be met with resistance from this multinational force. The mobilisation of this multinational force does not imply that NATO forces will enter Ukraine to defend it against invasion.

  The US president, Joe Biden, has made it clear that the US will not enter Ukraine to confront Russia.

Finance

• all money is fake

  “American money stopped being real when the gold standard was abandoned, but Bitcoin is definitely real money because we say so” is certainly a take.

  Gold was “real money” when we used it, because we all agreed that it was.

  If people agree that Bitcoin is “real money” then sure, it’s real money.

  And yet somehow paper money isn’t “real money” even though everyone agrees that it is? Money doesn’t have to be backed by anything but public opinion. That’s what money IS.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Russia Blocked Twitter

  Russia has blocked Twitter as it continues its invasion of Ukraine. In Russia, Twitter has the most users (31.1 million messages per month), followed by Odnoklassniki (88.5 million m/month), Instagram (135.1 million m/month), and Vkontakte (408.8 million m/month).

  Today, February 26, NetBlocks, a global internet monitoring service, verifies that Russia began restricting Twitter access on the morning of February 26th, 2022. “The bans apply to numerous providers and come as Russian authorities and social media sites dispute over platform rules related to the crisis with Ukraine,” NetBlocks stated in an article.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Corona Plandemic [Ed: I don't agree with the points about it being faked as a crisis]

  The internet in its current state is an instrument of control and suppression. This becomes especially obvious in the increase in censorship and the introduction of vaccine-passports which are planned to become universal passports for all aspects of our life.

• A flawed idea of InDEA!

  IFF submitted comments in the ongoing consultation for India Digital Ecosystem Architecture (InDEA) 2.0 released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in January 2022. Our core approach is towards ensuring that the rollout of the architecture happens in a manner that safeguards the rights of the user. In our response, we focus on four core data rights-centric issues that we feel are of extreme significance. Comments on this paper have been invited by the Ministry from the public and other stakeholders latest by February 27, 2022.