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Links 15/07/2022: Many More Laptops With GNU/Linux (OEMs and Flex)



  • GNU/Linux

    • HackadayA Linux Business Card You Can Build | Hackaday

      It is a sign of the times that one of [Dmitry’s] design criteria for his new Linux on a business card is to use parts you can actually find during the current component shortage. The resulting board uses a ATSAMD21 chip and emulates a MIPS machine in order to boot Linux.

      We like that in addition to the build details, [Dmitry] outlines a lot of the reasons for his decisions. There’s also a a fair amount of detail about how the whole system actually works. For example, by using a 0.8 mm PCB, the board can accept a USB-C cable with no additional connector. There is also a great explanation of the MIPS MMU and don’t forget that MIPS begat RISC-V, so many of the MIPS core details will apply to RISC-V as well (but not the MMU). You’ll also find some critiques of the ATSAMD21’s DMA system. It seems to save chip real estate, the DMA system stores configuration data in user memory which it has to load and unload every time you switch channels.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • 9to5LinuxTUXEDO Aquaris Announced as First Water Cooling System for Linux Laptops

        Earlier this year, when TUXEDO Computers unveiled the TUXEDO Stellaris 15 Gen4 Linux laptop, the hardware vendor also introduced the TUXEDO Aquaris external water cooling system, but at that time it was only supported on TUXEDO Computers’ laptops shipping with the Windows operating system pre-installed.

        Of course, TUXEDO Computers promised that they will offer Linux support, and today the hardware vendor announced in-house developed Linux drivers for the TUXEDO Aquaris external water cooling system.

      • GamingOnLinuxSlimbook recently refreshed a bunch of their Linux laptops

        Summer is getting hot and perhaps you want a new laptop to take somewhere cooler to do a little work and light gaming? Slimbook recently upgraded a bunch of their machines. This is all in addition to the recently announced KDE Slimbook 4 laptop.

      • The Register UKWeird Flex, but OK: Now you can officially turn these PCs, Macs into Chromebooks

        Google on Thursday officially released Chrome OS Flex, which aims to bring the web giant's mega-browser operating system to a wider range of systems.

        Flex was unveiled in February as a version of Chrome OS that could run on any modern-ish Intel or AMD (sorry, not Arm) processor. Since that debut, the number of devices certified to run Chrome OS Flex has almost doubled, from some 250 to more than 400, according to Google.

        Among certified models are several MacBook Air devices, Microsoft Surface, ASUS, Acer, and Lenovo machines along with a laundry list of Dell machines. Google plans to continually certify older devices for Flex.

        To get the Chrome OS experience – which, as the name suggests, involves doing pretty much everything on your desktop through the Chrome browser – you would need to buy a Chromebook with it installed, or go through a bit of a convoluted process to put the OS on a system. Chrome OS Flex is supposed to make that easy, and work on a range of non-Chromebooks.

      • Chromecast Connect

        It has been a while studying and working with the Chromecast Protocol. This protocol is proprietary, and officially only the Chrome browser, Android, and iOS platforms support casting to a Chromecast-enabled device. Now, Chromium is open source, and so is Android, but we would not want anything to do with Android for obvious reasons, not to mention this feature may be tucked away in Google Play Services. So we settle with Chromium which is written in C++. Thankfully almost all of the hard work was done by many other open source projects, notably Node CastV2. Not only this project provides a simple implementation for the Chromecast protocol but also a written explanation of the underlying stuff and how things actually work. All I need to figure out is how to implement that is C.

    • Kernel Space

      • LWNThe end of CONFIG_ANDROID [LWN.net]

        The kernel has thousands of configuration options, many of which can change the kernel's behavior in subtle or surprising ways. Among those options is CONFIG_ANDROID, which one might expect to be relatively straightforward; its description reads, in its entirety: "Enable support for various drivers needed on the Android platform". It turns out that this option does more than that, to the surprise of some users. That has led to a plan to remove this option, but that has brought a surprise or two of its own — and some disagreement — as well.

        The discussion started when Alex Xu reported a read-copy-update (RCU) error that was appearing on his system after resuming from suspend. Shortly thereafter, Xu realized that the problem was tied to the fact that his kernel had been built with CONFIG_ANDROID enabled; among other things, that option significantly reduces the time that can elapse before RCU starts putting out stall warnings.

      • LWNRemoving the scheduler's energy-margin heuristic [LWN.net]

        The CPU scheduler's job has never been easy; it must find a way to allocate CPU time to all tasks in the system that is fair, allows all tasks to progress, and maximizes the throughput of the system as a whole. More recently, it has been called upon to satisfy another constraint: minimizing the system's energy consumption. There is currently a patch set in circulation, posted by Vincent Donnefort with work from Dietmar Eggemann as well, that changes how this constraint is met. The actual change is small, but it illustrates how hard it can be to get the needed heuristics right.

        Reduction of energy use is, of course, a worthy goal; energy that is not wasted becomes available for the mining of more cryptocurrency, after all. There are some smaller considerations as well, such as environmental benefits, that justify the effort, but the proliferation of battery-powered devices has added more urgency to the task. If batteries can be made to last longer, doomscrolling interruptions will be fewer and users will be happier.

        These pressures have led to the addition of energy-aware scheduling to the kernel. When the scheduler considers the placement of tasks in the system, it will work to reduce the amount of energy consumed overall; this work includes running the CPUs at the power level that is the most efficient for the current load and powering down processors entirely when possible. For example, if a CPU that is currently running at a given power level can accept another task without having to move to a higher power level, it may make sense to move a task there from another CPU.

      • LWNA BPF-specific memory allocator [LWN.net]

        The kernel does not lack for memory allocators, so one might well question the need for yet another one. As this patch set from Alexei Starovoitov makes clear, though, the BPF subsystem feels such a need. The proposed new allocator is intended to increase the reliability of allocations made within BPF programs, which might be run in just about any execution context.

        Allocating memory in the kernel can be tricky in the best of situations. Depending on the execution context at the time, the memory-management subsystem may or may not have various options available to find memory if an allocation request cannot be immediately satisfied. For example, memory can be freed by pushing its contents out to persistent storage, but if memory is requested from within a filesystem, calling back into that filesystem to write out data could cause deadlocks and is thus not an option. In many kernel contexts, it is not possible to sleep to wait for memory to become free. If the kernel is currently handling a non-maskable interrupt (NMI) from the CPU, the options are even more limited.

        Most kernel code is written to run within a specific context and with an awareness of the available memory-allocation options; that information is passed to the memory-management subsystem via the GFP flags supplied with allocation requests. When a specific function can be invoked in multiple contexts, it generally must allocate memory as if it were always running in the most restrictive possible context; this can be inconvenient for developers.

        Over the years, mechanisms like memory pools ("mempools"), which pre-allocate a certain amount of memory to ensure that it will be available when it is needed, have been developed to make life easier. Naturally, mempools quickly created a new problem: kernel developers adopted mempools as a way of insulating themselves from memory-allocation failures. Before long, much of the kernel's memory was tied up in mempools and unavailable where it was actually needed. Over the years, a balance has mostly been found between overenthusiastic mempool use and being unable to allocate memory in critical situations.

      • LWNAn Ubuntu kernel bug causes container crashes [LWN.net]

        Some system administrators running Ubuntu 20.04 had a rough time on June 8, when Ubuntu published kernel packages containing a particularly nasty bug that was caused by an Ubuntu-specific patch to the kernel. The bug led to a kernel panic whenever a Docker container was started. Fixed packages were made available on June 10, but there are questions about what went wrong with handling the patch; in particular, it is surprising that kernel 5.13, which has been beyond its end-of-life for months, made it onto machines running Ubuntu 20.04, which is supposed to be a long-term support release.

      • LWNThe 2022 embedded Linux update [LWN.net]

        A regular feature of the Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) has been an update on the state of embedded Linux from conference organizer Tim Bird. It has been quite a few years since I had the opportunity to sit in on one, so I took one at the 2022 Open Source Summit North America (OSSNA) in Austin, Texas. OSSNA is an umbrella conference that contains ELC and a whole lot more these days. Bird gave a look at recent kernel features from an embedded perspective, talked a bit about some different technology areas and their impact on embedded Linux, and also tried to answer a question that Andrew Morton posed in a keynote at ELC in 2008.

        Among his many hats, Bird was the program committee chair for ELC and he is a principal software engineer at Sony Electronics. He started by saying that he was trying to squeeze a talk that he gives fairly regularly at other events down from its usual hour and a half—to 40 minutes. So he warned attendees that he would be moving fast. His goals with the talk were to introduce new technologies that have been added to the Linux kernel, so that attendees could perhaps incorporate them into their products, but also to start a conversation in the ecosystem about areas that need attention.

      • Justine TunneyJustine Tunney: Porting OpenBSD pledge() to Linux

        There's been a few devs in the past who've tried this. I'm not going to name names, because most of these projects were never completed. When it comes to SECCOMP, the online tutorials only explain how to whitelist the system calls themselves, so most people lose interest before figuring out how to filter arguments. The projects that got further along also had oversights like allowing the changing of setuid/setgid/sticky bits. So none of the current alternatives should be used. I believe this effort gets us much closer to having pledge() than ever before.

      • LWNTunney: Porting OpenBSD pledge() to Linux

        Justine Tunney has created an implementation of the OpenBSD pledge() system call for Linux.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • TecMintIPTraf-ng – A Console-Based Network Monitoring Tool
      • Linux HintHow to read a local text file using JavaScript?
      • HowTo GeekHow to Format a USB Drive on Linux That Works With Windows
      • Its FOSSThe Ultimate Guide to Epic Games Store on Linux
      • Trend Oceans[Solved] Termux Package Management Issue - TREND OCEANS

        Brief: Today you will learn the cause of the Termux package management issue, how to solve it, and other ways to solve it.

        If you have installed the Termux app from the Playstore, you might face the below error while upgrading or installing the package on an Android device.

      • H2S Media3 Ways to install Flowblade video editor on Ubuntu 22.04

        Get the steps to learn the ways to install Flowblade Video Editor on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish Linux using the command terminal.

        Flowblade Movie Editor is a free and open-source video editing software for Linux, available easily using the default system repository.

        With the video editor Flowblade, you can edit videos for free on Linux. The open-source software uses FFmpeg and can handle the video codecs supported by the library. It is a non-linear video editor that can handle multiple tracks, so you can use multiple tracks of video and audio to create a movie. Of course, you have to observe the copyright if the material is used by third parties, which was downloaded from YouTube with YouTube DL, for example.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install/Enable Remi RPM Repository on Rocky Linux 9
      • Linux CapableHow to Install Microsoft Teams on Rocky Linux 9 [Ed: Microsoft's proprietary spyware and vendor lock-in]
      • Linux CapableHow to Install GIMP on Rocky Linux 9
      • Linux CapableHow to Install GIT on Rocky Linux 9
      • Linux CapableHow to Increase DNF Download Speed on Rocky Linux 9
      • Linux CapableHow to Install/Enable EPEL/EPEL Next on Rocky Linux 9
      • OMG UbuntuA Faster Way to Edit Text Files as Root in Ubuntu - OMG! Ubuntu!

        Here’s a little time-saver if you (like me) often need to edit text files as root in a graphical app on Ubuntu.

      • Trend OceansWhat is Termux & How to use the Linux Command on Android with Termux? - TREND OCEANS

        Brief: Today you will learn what Termux is and its features and limitations. And how to install, uninstall and manage your packages in Termux. Then learn how to enable storage access on Termux and Enable Other Repositories on Termux.

      • Linux HintHow To Set Up Nginx Server Blocks on Ubuntu 22.04

        Nginx is an open-source, freely available HTTP server software. Additionally, it operates as a proxy server for email (SMTP, POP3, IMAP). Nginx also acts as a load balancer and reverse proxy for UDP, TCP, and HTTP servers. According to W3Tech, NGINX is currently the most widely used web server since it routinely outperforms Apache and other servers in benchmark tests assessing web server speed.

        This blog will demonstrate the method to set up Nginx server blocks on Ubuntu 22.04. Let’s get started!

      • Linux HintHow to Install Odoo 15 on Ubuntu 22.04

        Odoo 15 is a web-based business application package that can be operated from a single console. Warehouse Management, Open Source CRM, Billing & Accounting, eCommerce, Website Builder, Human Resources, Project Management, Manufacturing, Purchase Management, Point of Sale, and Marketing are just a few of the business apps offered on Odoo 15.

        This blog will demonstrate the procedure of installing Odoo 15 on Ubuntu 22.04. Let’s get started.

      • Linux HintHow to Setup a Raspberry Pi Samba Server

        Samba is an open-source secure network file sharing system that allows Raspberry Pi users to easily share files between the Raspberry Pi and other devices like laptops or PCs. It works on the Network Attached Storage (NAS) protocol principle and is one of the easiest and quickest solutions for sharing files between multiple devices through the Internet.

        This tutorial presents a detailed guideline for setting up a Raspberry Pi Samba server to allow file sharing between your Raspberry Pi and other devices.

      • Linux HintHow to run Linux games natively on Raspberry Pi

        Raspberry Pi is an amazing platform that allows users to play many games easily. The device processor has an excellent capability to handle games that require fewer memory resources so that you can smoothly run the game without reducing your device performance. You can run several games on your Raspberry Pi device, but those designed for a Linux environment are the ones you should try to play out on your device.

      • Linux HintHow to Run Xbox Cloud Games on Raspberry Pi
      • UbuntuRaspberry Pi HAT tutorials part 2 – Blinkenlights and micro-Pong! | Ubuntu

        Welcome to part 2 of our Raspberry Pi HAT tutorial series written by our resident Pi developers, Dave ‘waveform’ Jones and William ‘jawn-smith’ Wilson.

        In this post, they teach us how to build a handheld micro-Pong device with the Unicorn HAT Mini and follow it up with a system monitor on the Unicorn HAT HD.

        Check out part 1, where William got us started with the Unicorn pHAT and Dave shared his piwheels project dashboard!

        This is a guest post from William’s own blog, which he’s kindly allowed us to share here. Check out his site for more great Pi tutorials as well as some equally colorful 3D printing projects.

        That’s enough from me, over to William and Dave.

      • [From Arch]: wxgtk2 may require manual intervention

        if pacman gives an error message like:

        error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies) :: removing wxgtk-common breaks dependency 'wxgtk-common' required by wxgtk2
        you will need to uninstall 'wxgtk2' and it's dependents first (the only such parabola packages are 'freefilesync' and 'odamex')

      • LinuxOpSysHow to Check Ports in Use in Linux (Listening Ports)

        A listening port is a network port on which an application or process waiting for a connection or has established a connection. This helps the kernel to act when receiving packets with this specific port number.

        The listening port could be closed, listening, or in established states. Once service is started and listening to a port no other applications or services can use that port.

        In this guide, we learn how to check ports in use in Linux (Listening Ports). You can do this using ss, netstat, and lsof.

      • Linux Made SimpleHow to install Deltatraveler on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Deltatraveler 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.

      • Linux Shell TipsDifference Between a Terminal, Shell, TTY, and Console

        Terminal, Shell, TTY, and Console are terminologies that are often confusing and loosely used to mean the same thing. But it’s hardly the case. There are nuanced differences that exist between each of these components.

        In this guide, we flesh out the differences between these terminologies as they are used in UNIX/Linux systems.

      • Linux Shell TipsDifference Between SFTP, SCP, and FISH Protocols

        Data transfer is one of the most common operations carried out by users over the internet. When transmitting data, caution needs to be taken to ensure that data is transferred securely and not compromised.

        In this guide, we look at some of the secure data transfer protocols and explore the differences that exist between them.

      • UNIX CopHow to install Snap on CentOS 9 Stream

        Hello, dear friends. Today, you will learn how to install Snap on CentOS 9 Stream. With this, you will be able to install many useful applications using this technology from Canonical.

        Snap is the self-sufficient package technology developed by Canonical. As expected, it comes integrated on Ubuntu, but it is also possible to install it in other distributions like CentOS 9 Stream.

        Flatpak is Snap’s natural competitor. Both offer packages that can be run on any distribution that supports them thanks to their box technology. That is to say that in a single package are incorporated all dependencies and libraries needed to run without affecting the system.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install/Upgrade Nginx Mainline/Stable on Rocky Linux 9
      • AddictiveTipsHow to encrypt a file on Linux with File Lock PEA

        File Lock PEA is a java-based encryption tool. It works excellent on Linux, especially if you’re not a fan of tools like VeraCrypt, GnuPG, and others. This guide will show you how to encrypt files on Linux with File Lock PEA.

      • dwaves.deMySQL MariaDB cheat sheet
      • AddictiveTipsHow to play Hearts of Iron IV on Linux

        Hearts of Iron IV is a strategy game set during World War II. In the game, players take control of a nation during the war and fight to win. Here’s how to play Hearts of Iron IV on Linux.

      • AddictiveTipsHow to check your laptop battery from the Linux command-line

        Battery Top is an excellent application that Linux users can install to monitor their laptop’s battery status. In this guide, we’ll go over how to install Battery Top on Linux and how to use it too.

      • AddictiveTipsPlay your Epic and GOG games on Linux with Heroic

        The Heroic Game Launcher is an open-source tool for Linux, Mac, and Windows. It allows users to download, launch and play video games from the Epic Games Store and GOG.com.

        This guide will cover downloading and installing the Heroic Games Launcher on Linux. We’ll also show you how to use it to game on your Linux system.

    • Games

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Arch Family

      • wxWidgets 3.2 update may need manual intervention

        wxWidgets 3.2 provides a Qt frontend in addition to the GTK3 one, so packages have been renamed from wxgtk- to wxwidgets-. The GTK2 frontend is no longer provided. If you have wxgtk2 installed, the upgrade will fail with

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • Devices/Embedded

      • CNX SoftwareOrange Pi 5 could be the most affordable Rockchip RK3588S SBC

         Orange Pi 5 (LTS) is an upcoming single board computer powered by Rockchip RK3588S cost-down octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor that should offer one of the best cost/performance ratios on the market once it is launched.

        The SBC is said to come with up to 32GB RAM, 32GB eMMC flash, offers HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 8K video outputs, up to two MIPI DSI display interfaces, three camera interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet, and WiFi 6 connectivity, and a few USB ports plus a GPIO header.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Raspberry PiHow do I start my child coding?

        You may have heard a lot about coding and how important it is for children to start learning about coding as early as possible. Computers have become part of our lives, and we’re not just talking about the laptop or desktop computer you might have in your home or on your desk at work. Your phone, your microwave, and your car are all controlled by computers, and those computers need instructions to tell them what to do. Coding, or computer programming, involves writing those instructions.

      • Raspberry PiMeet Alex Glow: Lead Hardware Nerd

        As the Lead Hardware Nerd at Hackster.io, Alex Glow has an insider’s view of the technology that’s coming down the rails at us in the near future. Happily, she also makes it her business to share that knowledge, supporting a community of almost two million hardware tinkerers, inventors, and improvers. She’s also the brains behind a good few projects herself: she’s sent music into space, was an early adopter of the companion robot, makes projects with LEDs and PCBs, and… well, whatever she feels like really.

      • Linux GizmosKontron 3.5” SBC powered by Intel Atom X6000E Series

        Last month, Kontron unveiled their 3.5” Single Board Computer powered by a variety of Intel processors. The 3.5”- SBC-EKL can accommodate processors from the Atom X6000E series, the Celeron J6000/N6000 series and the Pentium J6000/N6000 series.

        The 3.5”- SBC-EKL is capable of supporting the following Intel processors...

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Linux LinksBest Free and Open Source Alternatives to Google Slides

       In this series we explore how you can migrate from Google without missing out on anything. We recommend open source solutions.

      Google Slides lets you create pitch decks, project presentations, training modules, and more. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives.

    • OpenSource.com3 open source GUI disk usage analyzers for Linux

       Several great options for checking disk usage on your Linux system have a graphical interface. Sometimes the visual representation of disk utilization is easier or newer users may not be as familiar with the various Linux commands that display storage information. I am a person who comprehends visual representations more easily than the printout on the command line.

      Here are several excellent GUI-based tools to help you understand how your storage capacity is used.

    • Programming/Development

      • Steve KempSo we come to Lisp



        Recently I've been working with simple/trivial scripting languages, and I guess I finally reached a point where I thought "Lisp? Why not". One of the reasons for recent experimentation was thinking about the kind of minimalism that makes implementing a language less work - being able to actually use the language to write itself.

        FORTH is my recurring example, because implementing it mostly means writing a virtual machine which consists of memory ("cells") along with a pair of stacks, and some primitives for operating upon them. Once you have that groundwork in place you can layer the higher-level constructs (such as "for", "if", etc).

        Lisp allows a similar approach, albeit with slightly fewer low-level details required, and far less tortuous thinking. Lisp always feels higher-level to me anyway, given the explicit data-types ("list", "string", "number", etc).

      • Java

        • Linux HintHow to print a 2d array in java

          In Java, arrays can be single-dimensional, 2-dimensional, or multi-dimensional. Java’s two-dimensional arrays are arrays within some other arrays. The 2D arrays are also known as matrices and they keep the data in the form of a table i.e. columns and rows. A 2D array can be created by specifying a data type followed by an array name and two sets of square brackets. In java, there are multiple ways to print a 2D array such as using for-each loop, for-loop, etc.

        • Linux HintHow to multiply in Java

          The multiplication operator * and the “multiplyExact()” method can be used to multiply two values in java. The multiplication operator performs multiplication on any numeric value such as int, float, or double. The multiplyExact() method deals with only integer and double type values. It takes two values, performs multiplication on them, and returns the resultant value. However, if the resultant value exceeds the limit/range, it throws an exception.

        • Linux HintHow to return an array in java

          As we know that arrays are very important for a programming language as they group the values of same data type in one variable so in Java array also play a vital role. When we create functions or methods we usually pass variables as arguments. But what if we want to return a large amount of data having same data type at once from a function or method?

          We can do that by returning an array where we want to use numerous values of the same data type without occupying the large memory space.

  • Leftovers

    • Next in Nonprofits 171 – Federated communication “Fediverse” with Aral Balkan

      Aral joins host Steve Boland to discuss decentralized social communication tools for nonprofit organizations (and everyone else!). Aral talks about federated communications tools (the Fediverse) like Mastodon (microblogging like Twitter but without corporate ownership), PixelFed (more image focused like Instagram) and many other ideas. Aral discusses the problematic relationship between charities seeking to have real engagement with audiences and how corporate platforms interfere at best, or undermine those efforts. Federate tools for communication and the small web in general puts more control in the hands of users and removes algorithms from the communications outreach loop for charities.

    • Hardware

      • Speculative calculations open a backdoor to information theft

        Sometimes a computer bleeds from its heart and reveals droplets of private information. That's the case with the "Retbleed" hardware vulnerability made public today: This vulnerability occurs in the microprocessors that execute the instructions of a computer program and perform the corresponding calculations. In some cases, the processors - namely the central processing units (CPU) - also perform special calculations that shorten the computing time and speed up the overall computing process. In the process, they leave traces in the memory that hackers could exploit to gain unauthorized access to any information in the system - for example, they could steal encryption keys or security-relevant passwords. This is especially risky in cloud environments where multiple companies share computer systems. The National Center for Cyber Security in Bern, Switzerland considers the vulnerability serious because the affected processors are in use worldwide. However, the manufacturers have already taken initial measures to close the vulnerability.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • duvaRTurkish imam dismissed after inciting violence against doctors

        During a Friday sermon on July 8, imam Ahmet Gür in the Central Anatolian province of Konya called for violence against doctors in the face of a healthcare strike earlier in the week.

        “They have turned the killing of doctor against the state, nation. Yesterday, none of the hospitals were on duty. For example, you went to the hospital for your son to get an injection; otherwise, he will die. But the doctor tells you to go away since they are on a strike. Would you not kill him, beat him, swear at him? Let's not give an opportunity to this. Let everyone be wise,” imam Gür said.

        Shortly afterwards, the imam's video appeared on social media, stirring a huge reaction.

      • Democracy Now“Reinfection Wave”: Ed Yong on BA.5 Omicron Variant Spread Amid Mask Mandate Rollbacks, Funding Cuts

        COVID-19 cases are rising as the BA.5 Omicron variant puts more people in the hospital amid high rates of reinfection, which is the focus of a new piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Yong in The Atlantic that is headlined “Is BA.5 the 'Reinfection Wave'?” Yong warns the premature rollback of protective policies, like mask mandates and public health funding, has left people more vulnerable to reinfection. Meanwhile, a concerning number of Americans continue to distrust the vaccine. Rather than focusing on community-based measures that will protect the most vulnerable first, “the Biden administration’s posture has been moving toward an era of individual responsibility,” says Yong.

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • New York TimesChina’s Surveillance State Hits Rare Resistance From Its Own Subjects

          Security researchers say the leaked database, apparently used by the police in Shanghai, had been left online and unsecured for months. It was exposed after an anonymous user posted in an online forum offering to sell the vast trove of data for 10 Bitcoin, or about $200,000. The New York Times confirmed parts of a sample of the database released by the anonymous user, who posted under the name ChinaDan.

          In addition to basic information like names, addresses and ID numbers, the sample also featured details that appeared to be drawn from external databases, like instructions for couriers on where to drop off deliveries, raising questions about how much information private companies share with the authorities. And, of particular concern for many, it also contained intensely personal information, such as police reports that included the names of people accused of rape and domestic violence, as well as private information about political dissidents.

        • PurismPrivacy in Depth

          In the security world there is a concept called “Defense in Depth” that refers to setting up layers of defense so that if an attacker bypasses one layer there are other layers they must contend with. In physical security this might take the form of a lock on the outside door of an office building, a security guard inside the foyer who identifies a visitor, access to different floors in the building protected by keycards in the elevator, additional locked rooms or safes on a particular floor for particularly sensitive property, and security guards patrolling the building and reviewing security camera footage. In the digital world this might take the form of firewalls, network segmentation, multi-factor authentication, event log monitoring, and malware scanners.

          A similar approach, which I’ll call “Privacy in Depth” applies the same principles to privacy. When you have an attacker who is attempting to violate your privacy, you can assume that at some point they may be able to bypass one layer of defense, and if they do, you want to have additional layers available to protect your personal data. Protecting our customers’ privacy is a core tenet in our Social Purpose and in this post I will describe the layers of privacy defenses we have built into the Librem 14, Librem Mini, Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA product lines.

        • TechdirtNSO Group Hacking Prompts Apple To Add A ‘Lockdown Mode’ To Its Devices

          Israeli malware maker NSO Group’s frequent targeting of iPhones has led to multiple rounds of patches, a federal lawsuit, and Apple instituting a notification program to inform customers their devices have been compromised.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • MedforthFBI busts Islamist bomb maker in Austria

        According to the “Salzburger Nachrichten”, the investigators got on the boy’s trail thanks to tips from the American FBI. The user from Austria probably came to the attention of the US federal police during a worldwide internet monitoring for radical Islamist content. The student was placed in custody by the regional court because of the risk of escaping and the risk of committing the crime. According to the court’s decision at the time, it could not be replaced by less severe means as long as the accused did not “reduce his extremist views”.

      • Democracy NowAs Biden Visits Israel, Palestinians Urge U.S. Not to Build Jerusalem Embassy on “Stolen Property”

        President Biden is in Israel as part of a four-day trip to the Middle East, where he reaffirmed his support for Israel despite growing disapproval among members of the Democratic Party over the state’s brutal treatment of Palestinians. The Biden administration faces criticism over plans to build a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem on land that was illegally confiscated by Israel from Palestinians in 1948, as well as the State Department’s whitewashed investigation of Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing, which multiple other independent investigations have determined was caused by an Israeli bullet. “By not engaging in dismantling the structures of discrimination and oppression … that Israel maintains, the United States is in fact supporting those structures,” says historian Rashid Khalidi, whose family is among the Palestinians whose seized lands are set to be used for the embassy.

      • Democracy NowFamily of Slain Palestinian American Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh to Biden: Hold Israel Accountable

        President Biden will be visiting the Palestinian territories and meeting President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday. Ahead of Biden’s trip, the family of Shireen Abu Akleh demanded Biden call out Israel over her killing while covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken invited Shireen Abu Akleh’s family to visit the United States. “We will continue to call for justice, and we will continue to call on the U.S to carry out a transparent investigation by an independent body,” says Shireen Abu Akleh’s niece, Lina Abu Akleh. “In addition, we continue to call on the U.N. and the ICC to carry out an investigation and hold Israel accountable and put an end to this grotesque impunity that Israel continues to enjoy.” We speak with Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian American professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University.

      • Democracy Now“Shameful”: Biden’s Trip to Saudi Arabia for More Oil Ignores Human Rights Abuses, Khashoggi Murder

        President Biden is set to meet with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday as part of a four-day visit to restore key relationships and build security cooperation in the Middle East. Human rights activists are outraged that the U.S. is willing to support a leader responsible for human rights violations including in the brutal war in Yemen, the state-sanctioned killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and more. One of Biden’s aims is to convince Saudi Arabia to increase oil production, an answer to pressures at home over skyrocketing gas prices from the Russian war in Ukraine. “If we’re willing to sacrifice for oil prices, there are much less heinous sacrifices to be making than to continue military support for the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” says Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • IT WireFormer CIA engineer convicted of espionage in Vault 7 case

        A former CIA engineer has been convicted of espionage for leaking documents to WikiLeaks that exposed the agency as engaging in mass surveillance.

        The conviction of Joshua Schulte on eight spying and obstruction charges was announced in a Manhattan court on 13 June.

        The Vault 7 exploits were released beginning in March 2017 and continued until September that year.

    • Environment

      • Energy

        • DeSmogAs Alarm Over Plastic Grows, Saudis Ramp Up Production in the US

          The flares started last December, an event Errol Summerlin, a former legal-aid lawyer, and his neighbors had been bracing for since 2017. After the flames, nipping at the night sky like lashes from a heavenly monster, came the odor, a gnarled concoction of steamed laundry and burned tires.

          Thus did the Saudi royal family mark the expansion of its far-flung petrochemical empire to San Patricio County, Texas, a once-rural stretch of flatlands across Nueces Bay from Corpus Christi. It arrived in the form of Gulf Coast Growth Ventures (GCGV), a plant that sprawls over 16 acres between the towns of Portland and Gregory. The complex contains a circuit board of pipes and steel tanks that cough out steam, flames and toxic substances as it creates the building blocks for plastic from natural gas liquids.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • ME ForumCAIR Polls Itself, Revealing Its Failure to Unite Muslims

        Carried out between May and June 2022 "during the 2022 primary season of local and state elections, and congressional midterm elections," CAIR's survey collected 525 responses from voters who claimed to be Muslim, answering questions about various "social and policy issues" as well as political party affiliations and opinions.

        But the methodology was shoddy. Respondents were found by CAIR entirely through its own email lists and social media pages, with the resulting survey then speciously presented as a proper exercise in data analysis. This was not a survey of American Muslims, but mostly of American Islamists; and only those who subscribe to CAIR.

      • Helsinki TimesTikTok’s global takeover: Coincidental or calculated?

        One of the main factors that keeps a large audience on the app is the ‘For You’ page, an endless cycle of content, catered to the user and their interests, based on a plethora of deciding components. Firstly, the liking, commenting, and sharing of the video, as well as the watch time, and the number of times it has been rewatched. Thus, the algorithm grapples with this information and builds an idea of the content the user would appreciate, using categories based on hashtags of posts, the song utilized, and the actual account itself. Broken down bluntly as the TikTok rabbit hole by some, the app has become the perfect place to search for and explore new interests regarding content, regardless of how contrasting they are to previous suggestions.

      • Misinformation/Disinformation

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • The DissenterAssange Fights Extradition To United States With Two Appeals

        Assange faces 18 charges, 17 of which are charges under the US Espionage Act. All of the allegations against him stem from the publication of documents that WikiLeaks obtained from US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning in 2010.He has been jailed at Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh since April 11, 2019, when the Ecuador government revoked his political asylum and allowed the British police to enter their London embassy and drag him to a police van.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • New York TimesFor Blind Internet Users, the Fix Can Be Worse Than the Flaws

        “I’ve not yet found a single one that makes my life better,” said Mr. Perdue, 38, who lives in Queens. He added, “I spend more time working around these overlays than I actually do navigating the website.”

        Last year, over 700 accessibility advocates and web developers signed an open letter calling on organizations to stop using these tools, writing that the practical value of the new features was “largely overstated” and that the “overlays themselves may have accessibility problems.” The letter also noted that, like Mr. Perdue, many blind users already had screen readers or other software to help them while online.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Incompatible with now
        I'm on holidays in my country of origin with family at the moment,
        after a long absence. It's wonderful. That said, a few nights ago
        though we all settled in to watch a popular game of local $sport on
        TV, and although I'm glad I was there, I found myself feeling
        completely alienated by almost everything I saw.
        
        

        Although I have a TV in my country of residence, I only use it for streaming and playing games - there's no over-the-air TV, and we prefer to read news online. This has been our situation for at least a decade. Thus, being subjected to the fire hose of prime-time mental malware (sorry, "advertising") was a genuine shock.
      • Moving North



        We're moving to the Pacific Northwest on Saturday. We've signed the lease and paid first month's rent on the new apartment already. I will not miss the Central California heat one bit. I'm honestly so excited to get out of here.

    • Technical

      • The Old Computer Challenge V2: day 5



        Some quick news for the Old Computer Challenge!

        As it's too tedious to monitor the time spent on the Internet, I'm now using a chronometer for the day... and stopped using Internet in small bursts. It's also currently super hot where I live right now, so I don't want to do much stuff with the computer...

        I can handle most of my computer needs offline. When I use Internet, it's now for a solid 15 minutes, except when I connect from my phone for checking something quickly without starting my computer, I rarely need to connect it more than a minute.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Torifying Lagrange

          A great thing about gemini is that gemtext documents tend to be very lightweight, and so it usually does not take very long to load them over Tor. So, assuming Tor does a reasonably good job at hiding your IP address, and throwing in all the built-in privacy benefits of Gemini, one can enjoy a comfortable feeling of privacy while browsing Gemini capsules. It is easy to torify Lagrange with torsocks, by simply running "torsocks lagrange".

          I ran into a serious problem, however, in using a torified lagrange: for some unknown reason, the background task which handles refreshing your feeds will (apparently) lockup, causing the feeds never to finish refreshing, and driving one of your CPU cores to switch to space-heater mode (100% usage forever). This only happens once every few times you refresh your feeds, but since lagrange (1.13.6) is hardcoded to refresh your feeds every 16 minutes, then inevitably you will switch back to Lagrange to find that the feed refresher has gotten stuck in this infinite-loop-like behavior.

        • Bob's New Not-So-Secret Online Journal: - Guess what happens when you accidentally do a shutdown instead of a reboot...?
        • Deplatforming sex

          i subscribe to the academic journal “Porn Studies”. Volume 8 Issue 4 was dedicated to the topic of “Deplatforming sex”.

        • Gemini Radio: Episode 42

* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Martina Ferrari & Debian, DebConf room list: who sleeps with who?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Europe Won't be Safe From Russia Until the Last Windows PC is Turned Off (or Switched to BSDs and GNU/Linux)
Lives are at stake
Links 23/04/2024: US Doubles Down on Patent Obviousness, North Korea Practices Nuclear Conflict
Links for the day
Stardust Nightclub Tragedy, Unlawful killing, Censorship & Debian Scapegoating
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
Microsoft is Shutting Down Offices and Studios (Microsoft Layoffs Every Month This Year, Media Barely Mentions These)
Microsoft shutting down more offices (there have been layoffs every month this year)
Balkan women & Debian sexism, WeBoob leaks
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Links 24/04/2024: Advances in TikTok Ban, Microsoft Lacks Security Incentives (It Profits From Breaches)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/04/2024: People Returning to Gemlogs, Stateless Workstations
Links for the day
Meike Reichle & Debian Dating
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 23, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 23, 2024
[Meme] EPO: Breaking the Law as a Business Model
Total disregard for the EPO to sell more monopolies in Europe (to companies that are seldom European and in need of monopoly)
The EPO's Central Staff Committee (CSC) on New Ways of Working (NWoW) and “Bringing Teams Together” (BTT)
The latest publication from the Central Staff Committee (CSC)
Volunteers wanted: Unknown Suspects team
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Debian trademark: where does the value come from?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Detecting suspicious transactions in the Wikimedia grants process
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gunnar Wolf & Debian Modern Slavery punishments
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
On DebConf and Debian 'Bedroom Nepotism' (Connected to Canonical, Red Hat, and Google)
Why the public must know suppressed facts (which women themselves are voicing concerns about; some men muzzle them to save face)
Several Years After Vista 11 Came Out Few People in Africa Use It, Its Relative Share Declines (People Delete It and Move to BSD/GNU/Linux?)
These trends are worth discussing
Canonical, Ubuntu & Debian DebConf19 Diversity Girls email
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Links 23/04/2024: Escalations Around Poland, Microsoft Shares Dumped
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/04/2024: Offline PSP Media Player and OpenBSD on ThinkPad
Links for the day
Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, Holger Levsen & Debian DebConf6 fight
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
DebConf8: who slept with who? Rooming list leaked
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Bruce Perens & Debian: swiping the Open Source trademark
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Ean Schuessler & Debian SPI OSI trademark disputes
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Windows in Sudan: From 99.15% to 2.12%
With conflict in Sudan, plus the occasional escalation/s, buying a laptop with Vista 11 isn't a high priority
Anatomy of a Cancel Mob Campaign
how they go about
[Meme] The 'Cancel Culture' and Its 'Hit List'
organisers are being contacted by the 'cancel mob'
Richard Stallman's Next Public Talk is on Friday, 17:30 in Córdoba (Spain), FSF Cannot Mention It
Any attempt to marginalise founders isn't unprecedented as a strategy
IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 22, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, April 22, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Don't trust me. Trust the voters.
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Chris Lamb & Debian demanded Ubuntu censor my blog
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Ean Schuessler, Branden Robinson & Debian SPI accounting crisis
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
William Lee Irwin III, Michael Schultheiss & Debian, Oracle, Russian kernel scandal
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Microsoft's Windows Down to 8% in Afghanistan According to statCounter Data
in Vietnam Windows is at 8%, in Iraq 4.9%, Syria 3.7%, and Yemen 2.2%
[Meme] Only Criminals Would Want to Use Printers?
The EPO's war on paper
EPO: We and Microsoft Will Spy on Everything (No Physical Copies)
The letter is dated last Thursday
Links 22/04/2024: Windows Getting Worse, Oligarch-Owned Media Attacking Assange Again
Links for the day
Links 21/04/2024: LINUX Unplugged and 'Screen Time' as the New Tobacco
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/04/2024: Health Issues and Online Documentation
Links for the day
What Fake News or Botspew From Microsoft Looks Like... (Also: Techrights to Invest 500 Billion in Datacentres by 2050!)
Sededin Dedovic (if that's a real name) does Microsoft stenography
Stefano Maffulli's (and Microsoft's) Openwashing Slant Initiative (OSI) Report Was Finalised a Few Months Ago, Revealing Only 3% of the Money Comes From Members/People
Microsoft's role remains prominent (for OSI to help the attack on the GPL and constantly engage in promotion of proprietary GitHub)
[Meme] Master Engineer, But Only They Can Say It
One can conclude that "inclusive language" is a community-hostile trolling campaign
[Meme] It Takes Three to Grant a Monopoly, Or... Injunction Against Staff Representatives
Quality control
[Video] EPO's "Heart of Staff Rep" Has a Heartless New Rant
The wordplay is just for fun
An Unfortunate Miscalculation Of Capital
Reprinted with permission from Andy Farnell
[Video] Online Brigade Demands That the Person Who Started GNU/Linux is Denied Public Speaking (and Why FSF Cannot Mention His Speeches)
So basically the attack on RMS did not stop; even when he's ill with cancer the cancel culture will try to cancel him, preventing him from talking (or be heard) about what he started in 1983
Online Brigade Demands That the Person Who Made Nix Leaves Nix for Not Censoring People 'Enough'
Trying to 'nix' the founder over alleged "safety" of so-called 'minorities'
[Video] Inauthentic Sites and Our Upcoming Publications
In the future, at least in the short term, we'll continue to highlight Debian issues
List of Debian Suicides & Accidents
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
Jens Schmalzing & Debian: rooftop fall, inaccurately described as accident
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
[Teaser] EPO Leaks About EPO Leaks
Yo dawg!
On Wednesday IBM Announces 'Results' (Partial; Bad Parts Offloaded Later) and Red Hat Has Layoffs Anniversary
There's still expectation that Red Hat will make more staff cuts
IBM: We Are No Longer Pro-Nazi (Not Anymore)
Historically, IBM has had a nazi problem
Bad faith: attacking a volunteer at a time of grief, disrespect for the sanctity of human life
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Bad faith: how many Debian Developers really committed suicide?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 21, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, April 21, 2024
A History of Frivolous Filings and Heavy Drug Use
So the militant was psychotic due to copious amounts of marijuana
Bad faith: suicide, stigma and tarnishing
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
UDRP Legitimate interests: EU whistleblower directive, workplace health & safety concerns
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock