GNU/Linux

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Video ☛ The Steam Deck – Unexplored Potential – Invidious

    This is a DIFFERENT kind of Steam deck review. Desktops, Docking, and more stuff you have NOT seen!

• Instructionals/Technical

  • OSTechNix ☛ How To Automatically Update Running Docker Containers Using Watchtower

    Keeping the Docker containers up-to-date is one of the important job of a DevOps engineer. Manually updating Docker containers is a quite time consuming task. This guide explains what is Watchtower, how to install Watchtower, and how to automatically update running Docker containers using Watchtower in Linux.

  • TechRepublic ☛ How to sync time on Linux servers with Chrony

    Recently, I ran into an issue where I discovered a few Linux servers I work with were operating under an assumed time zone. Because of that time drift, certain services wouldn’t function properly. In particular, two servers both served as nodes on a Docker Swarm cluster and were unable to perform their duties and MariaDB database replication failed. After fixing that simple issue, I realized it was time to start paying closer attention to the time on my servers.

    With that, I was reminded of a tool that helps make this simple. Said tool is Chrony, which will constantly keep your time in sync on your servers and desktops.

• Games

  • Boiling Steam ☛ New Steam Games with Native Linux Clients – 2022-07-27 Edition – Boiling Steam

    Between 2022-07-20 and 2022-07-27 there were 31 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients. For reference, during the same time, there were 263 games released for Windows on Steam, so the Linux versions represent about 11.8 % of total released titles. Here’s a quick pick of the most interesting ones…

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Its FOSS ☛ Pop!_OS 22.04 Linux Distro is Finally Adding Raspberry Pi 4 Support

  Pop!_OS is one of the best beginner-friendly Linux distributions.

  It is based on Ubuntu, and obviously, Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

  However, unlike Ubuntu, Pop!_OS 22.04 did not officially support Raspberry Pi at the time of release.

• 9to5Linux ☛ Endless OS 5 Promises Refreshed Desktop Experience, All-New App Center, and More

  
  Endless OS 5 is coming later this year and promises a refreshed desktop experience based on the latest GNOME desktop environment. The new desktop experience includes a cleaner and more spacious look by separating apps from system status, a dock that shows favorite and running apps, and a transparent top panel with a calendar, date & time, system tray, and app menu.

  Endless OS’ signature look with the app grid and search on the wallpaper will remain, but it will only display installed apps in the next version of the GNU/Linux distribution.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

  • Linuxiac ☛ OpenMandriva Lx 5.0 ROME Technical Preview Released

    The next release of OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, ROME, is an excellent choice for long-time Linux fans and newbies. So that’s what is new!

    If you’re looking for another rolling-release Linux distribution to try, one with roots in the legendary Mandrake Linux, look no further.

    OpenMandriva Lx is a KDE-focused community-driven Linux distribution inspired by and forked from Mandriva Linux that includes plenty of open-source software. The distro was created by the OpenMandriva Association and aimed at both experienced and first-time Linux users.

    The latest stable release of the distribution, OpenMandriva Lx 4.3, was released earlier this year on February 7th.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ Red Hat: 5 lessons from ‘The Hero’s Journey’ to empower your IT team

    To survive and thrive in today’s fast-paced IT industry, you must stay on the cutting-edge of technology and techniques. This can put enormous pressure on individuals to take risks and try new things. As a leader, you must support your team members in taking on these challenges and help them grow their skills and confidence.

    Looking at the story of The Hero’s Journey from a personal perspective can help us relate. But more importantly, it can help us understand the importance of this journey to those we lead.

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ Red Hat: 3 ways artificial intelligence can help unite remote teams

    In the last decade, artificial intelligence has matured from a novel, fast-emerging technology to one embraced by every industry around the globe. And in the last few years, workplaces have increasingly become remote or hybrid, accelerating the amount of data being created, consumed, and scrutinized daily.

    But remote work has made quick in-person communication more challenging, causing many traditional organizational practices to fumble. Workers increasingly rely on a growing amount of data accessed, processed, and organized across networks.

    These trends have prompted companies to rely on technologies like AI to bring workers together and help managers lead them more effectively.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Customer success stories: How Red Hat products and services are enabling banking, automotive and urban planning innovation

    In this month’s customer success highlights, learn how Banfico, Porsche Informatik and Korea Land and Housing Corporation are making use of Red Hat products and services to expand partnerships, scale business growth, reduce application delivery times and more.

• Devices/Embedded

  • The DIY Life ☛ Pi Shortage – Are These Worthwhile Raspberry Pi Alternatives? – The DIY Life

    If you’ve tried to buy a Raspberry Pi in the past year or so then you’ve probably experienced some level of difficulty in getting one. They’re out of stock almost everywhere, there are generally purchasing limits on any that are in stock, and they’re often being sold at way over their recommended retail price.

    A big part of what makes Raspberry Pi boards so attractive is that they’ve got really good documentation and support and a large online community, so you’ll easily find projects, tutorials and answers to any issues you run into along the way.

    With that said, there are a large number of single-board computers available that offer similar features to Raspberry Pi’s, so I thought it would be interesting to get a few and try them out.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino ☛ This system detects leaks by listening to water flowing through pipes | Arduino Blog

    Damaged, leaking pipes are not only a nuisance to clean up after, but they can also create major inefficiencies within water delivery systems, leading to a loss in both the water itself and the electricity required to disinfect and pump it. Over the past decade, water pipeline detection systems have been upgraded to include state-of-the-art sensors, which can precisely locate where a leak is. Due to their high price, Manivannan Sivan designed his own leak detection system that can be produced for far less cost.

    Sivan’s project involves the placement of two microphones next to a pipe and reading the acoustic signatures they pick up. For this task, he chose a single Arduino Portenta H7 and an accompanying Vision Shield due to its pair of onboard mics and fast processor. He then collected samples for no water flow, water flow without leaks, and water flow with leaks. The resulting machine learning model achieved an accuracy of 99.1% and a mere 0.02 loss.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Tor ☛ New Release: Tor Browser 11.5.1 (Windows, macOS, Linux)

      Tor Browser 11.5.1 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

      Tor Browser 11.5.1 updates Firefox on Windows, macOS, and Linux to 91.12.0esr.

• Programming/Development [Valgrind's birthday and GitHub seen as enemy]

  • LinuxInsider ☛ Feuding Developers, Dueling Distros Make Linux Lineage Revival Legendary

    The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit focused on free and open source software (FOSS), has stopped using Microsoft-owned GitHub for project hosting and wants other software developers to stop using it as well.

    In a June 30 blog post SFC officials complained that GitHub over the past decade became a dominant role in FOSS development by building an interface and social features around Git, a widely used open source version control software. That growth involved convincing FOSS developers to contribute to the development of a proprietary service that exploits FOSS.

    SFC is pursuing a long-term plan to assist FOSS projects to migrate away from GitHub, according to Denver Gingerich, SFC FOSS license compliance engineer, and Bradley M. Kuhn, SFC policy fellow. They said the SFC will not accept new member projects without a long-term plan to migrate away from GitHub.

  • LLVM Discussion Forums: Release/15.x has branched

    The release/15.x branch has been created. If you would like to backport a patch to the branch, please use the instructions https://llvm.org/docs/GitHub.html#backporting-fixes-to-the-release-branches. The goal is to stablize the release branch over the next few days so we can release 15.0.0-rc1 on Friday.

  • LWN ☛ Vetter: Locking Engineering Principles [LWN.net]

    Daniel Vetter offers some advice for developers of locking schemes in the kernel.

  • Mark J. Wielaard » Blog Archive » Happy birthday, Valgrind!

    Make sure to read Nicholas Nethercote’s Twenty years of Valgrind to learn about the early days, Valgrind “skins”, the influence Valgrind had on raising the bar when it comes to correctness for C and C++ programs, and why a hacker on the Rust programming language still uses Valgrind.

  • LWN ☛ Nethercote: Twenty years of Valgrind [Ed: LWN should link to the original, not to Microsoft GitHub

  • Twenty years of Valgrind | Nicholas Nethercote

    I first met Julian Seward in late 2001. I had moved from Australia to Cambridge in the UK to pursue a PhD on the topic of “cache optimizations for functional languages”. The Cambridge Computer Laboratory is literally next door to a Microsoft Research office, and I was soon interacting with the people there working on the Glasgow Haskell Compiler. Julian was one of them.

    Shortly after that, Julian’s stint working on GHC came to a close. On his last day he dropped by my office in the Computer Laboratory to say goodbye. I asked what he would be doing now, and he said he was going to spend some time on a project of his called Valgrind. “What’s Valgrind?” I asked. It was one of those this-will-change-your-life moments.

  • Tapping the Breaks | Coder Radio 476

    We’re looking at the big picture and, surprisingly, seeing a lot of possibilities.

  • Perl / Raku

    • Perl ☛ Perl Weekly Challenge 175: Last Sunday and Perfect Totient Numbers

  • Rust

    • Rust Blog ☛ Announcing the Keyword Generics Initiative | Inside Rust Blog

      We (Oli, Niko, and Yosh) are excited to announce the start of the Keyword Generics Initiative, a new initiative 1 under the purview of the language team. We’re officially just a few weeks old now, and in this post we want to briefly share why we’ve started this initiative, and share some insight on what we’re about.

Leftovers

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ Biomimetic Surfaces: Copying Nature To Deter Bacteria And Keep Ship Hulls Smooth

    You might not think that keeping a boat hull smooth in the water has anything in common with keeping a scalpel clean for surgery, but there it does: in both cases you’re trying to prevent nature — barnacles or biofilm — from growing on a surface. Science has looked to nature, and found that the micro-patterning formed by the scales of certain sharks or the leaves of lotus plants demonstrate a highly elegant way to prevent biofouling that we can copy.

  • Hackaday ☛ Mini Falcon 9 Uses NASA Software

    [T-Zero Systems] has been working on his model Falcon 9 rocket for a while now. It’s an impressive model, complete with thrust vectoring, a microcontroller which follows a predetermined flight plan, a working launch pad, and even legs to attempt vertical landings. During his first tests of his model, though, there were some issues with the control system software that he wrote so he’s back with a new system that borrows software from the Space Shuttle.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Hackaday Prize 2022: Digital Dice Towers Built In Beautiful Retro Cases

    Retro hardware often looks fantastic, but we may find we no longer need it for its original function. [John Anderson] found that to be the case with some old Heathkit gear, and set about giving them a fun overhaul.

  • Hackaday ☛ A New Way To Produce PCBs With Your 3D Printer

    With the low-cost PCB fabrication services available to hackers and makers these days, we’ll admit that making your own boards at home doesn’t hold quite the appeal that it did in the past. But even if getting your boards professionally made is cheaper and easier than it ever has been before, at-home production still can’t be beat when you absolutely must have a usable board before the end of the day.

  • Hackaday ☛ Omnidirectional Walker With Wheeled Feet

    [James Bruton] is on a quest to explore all the weird and wonderful methods of robot locomotion, and in his latest project created an omnidirectional walker that can move in any direction instantaneously.

  • Hackaday ☛ Balloons Are The User Interface Of The Future

    We’ve seen all kinds of interfaces come and go over the years, from keyboards and mice to lightpens and touchscreens. Now, a group of researchers at the University of Tokyo have built a device that enables haptic interaction with a balloon.

  • Hackaday ☛ Large Format 3D Printer Is A Serious Engineering Challenge

    When you want to build a large format 3D printer, you can’t just scale up the design of a desktop machine. In an excellent four-part build series (videos after the break), [Dr. D-Flo] takes us through all the engineering challenges he had to contend with when building a 3D printer with a 4x4x4 ft (1.2 m cube) print volume.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Meduza ☛ ‘The agreement won’t last long’: What the Black Sea grain deal means for Ukraine, Russia, and the wider world — Meduza

    On July 22, Ukraine and Russia signed agreements with Turkey and the United Nations designed to restore the export of grain from Ukrainian ports. The deal stipulates that Kyiv can export grain from the Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Yuzhne ports on the Black Sea. However, Ukraine will not remove the mines protecting its ports: ships will travel through safe clearways instead. In addition, the Russian side will be involved in inspecting ships destined for Ukraine’s ports for any weapons. The day after the agreements were signed, however, Russian missiles struck the port of Odesa. For insight into what the Black Sea grain deal means for Ukraine, Russia, and the wider world, Meduza turned to Andrey Sizov, an expert on agricultural markets and the CEO of the research firm SovEcon.  

  • Common Dreams ☛ Study Ties ‘Forever Chemicals’ Exposure to Billions in US Health Costs

    Research published Tuesday warns that “forever chemicals” used in everyday products could lead to tens of billions of dollars in medical costs in the United States, globally infamous for its for-profit healthcare system.

    “Our findings add to the substantial and still-mounting body of evidence suggesting that exposure to PFAS is harming our health and undermining the economy.”

• Security [Some phony security approach and real bugs, which have patches]

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Securing Open-Source Software [Ed: Diversion away from the urgent need to get rid of back-doored proprietary software; in recent years, in the name of "critical infrastructure", the military tried to take more and more control over Free software, e.g. by letting Microsoft "manage" it in GitHub and subjecting it to more autocracy/bureaucracy, developer 'culls' etc.]

  • Lawfare ☛ Open-Source Security: How Digital Infrastructure Is Built on a House of Cards – Lawfare

    Open source is free software built collaboratively by a community of developers, often volunteers, for public use. Google, iPhones, the national power grid, surgical operating rooms, baby monitors, and military databases all run on this unique asset.

    However, open source has an urgent security problem. Open source is more ubiquitous and susceptible to persistent threats than ever before. Proprietary software has responded to threats by implementing thorough institutional security measures. The same care is not being given to open-source software—primarily due to misaligned incentives.

  • LWN ☛ Security updates for Wednesday [LWN.net]

    Security updates have been issued by Debian (kernel and openjdk-17), Fedora (ceph, lua, and moodle), Oracle (java-1.8.0-openjdk), Red Hat (grafana), SUSE (git, kernel, libxml2, nodejs16, and squid), and Ubuntu (imagemagick, protobuf-c, and vim).

  • Qt ☛ Security advisory: FreeType in Qt

    There have been three vulnerabilities found in FreeType recently and they have been assigned the CVE ids CVE-2022-27404, CVE-2022-27405, CVE-2022-27406. This has been fixed in the latest version of FreeType – v2.12.1

    These effects configurations of Qt that have been built against the bundled version of FreeType. If you are using a pre-built version of Qt then this will be using the bundled version of FreeType by default, otherwise you will be using the system version by default, in which case you should check if the system needs to be updated or not. If the system needs to be updated, then updating it is enough to solve the issue. There is no need to rebuild Qt in that case.

  • Attacking EFB updates | Pen Test Partners

    When considering the ‘installed’ EFB then the chances are software will originate from a combination of the aircraft manufacturer, the device manufacturer, and any specifically approved software. These will have gone through various stages of testing and will likely have been developed by a well-known company with an established and proven security methodology/framework for software development.

    This is primarily as an installed EFB is considered to be ‘part’ of the aircraft and subject to the same safety and security regime as the aircraft itself.

    But what about the ‘portable’ EFBs, many of which are allocated to specific crew members as personal devices? In this case, the variety of software installed is likely to be much greater than the installed EFBs and thus will have a much greater range of possibilities for the origin of installed software. Many airlines which assign their pilots with EFBs that are classed as portable allow their pilots to install 3rd party applications on their devices without approval from the airline (however they will generally be restricted to only installing applications from an approved application store).

    It is common for portable EFBs to contain other applications e.g. games and social media applications, as well as publicly available 3rd party tools for pilots e.g. weather apps and unit conversion apps.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | UN Nuclear Review: A Prime Time to Stop the New Arms Race

    In the run-up to August’s United Nation’s 10th Annual Review of the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a review undertaken every five years, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s State Department issued a surprising reaffirmation of the U.S. commitment to this treaty and the “ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons.”

  • Counter Punch ☛ Sergei Karaganov Reveals a Russian Elite’s World Vision

    This was not always the case. The previous Cold War (1.0) was not as cold as it is presented. There was some dialogue. Georgi Arbatov, adviser to five Communist Party general secretaries and founder of the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies in Moscow, once told me he had had constant contacts with American officials during the Cold War. “Averell Harriman [American politician, businessman, and diplomat] and I spoke frequently about what we could do to avert an out-and-out conflict,” he confided. “It was in no one’s interest to have a nuclear confrontation.”

    So, with no Arbatov or Harriman around in Cold War 2.0., Serge Schmemann’s interview with Sergei Karaganov in the NY Times warrants careful reading as an insight into what the Kremlin is thinking. Amid Western unilateral condemnations of the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have had little information from intellectual, cosmopolitan Russians who have had decades of contacts with Western elites. Professors at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations or Moscow’s Higher School of Economics or members of think tanks like the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, many of whom have also held government positions, have not been heard from in the mainstream Western press.

  • Counter Punch ☛ The Pope, the War Bonnet and the Real Meaning of the Doctrine of Discovery

    Willie along with other delegates from various Native Nations throughout time have been part of efforts seeking something from the Vatican … whether it be an apology, rescinding of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, returning of all of our ceremonial items … all are true and righteous asks.

    It is extremely hard to understand the ramifications and the extent of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Proper context, understanding details, and nuances are of upmost critical importance … and the importance of this is why I’ve chosen to write this.

  • Counter Punch ☛ AUKUS, Technology and Militarising Australia

    The author of the report, non-resident fellow of the US Centre’s Foreign Policy and Defence program Jennifer Jackett gushes about the “more consequential” nature of various “technological developments in quantum, cyber, artificial intelligence, undersea, hypersonics and electronic warfare” than nuclear-powered submarines. The latter are, after all, slated to appear much later on the horizon.  In the meantime, warring potential could be harnessed in other realms.

    Jackett stresses the urgency of appreciating these fields, given that Australia faces “a more hostile Indo-Pacific”.  No ironic reflection follows that such hostility has been aided, in no small part, by the AUKUS security pact that has put countries in the region, with China being the primary target, on military notice.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Russia-Ukraine Conflict: The Propaganda War

    During the early part of World War II, Bandera had been in charge of OUN’s more ruthless faction that collaborated with the Nazi occupation and actively participated in the slaughter of millions of Poles, Ukrainian Jews, and ethnically Russian communists in the region. A CIA clandestine operations chief in Berlin at the time, Peter Sichel, stated that “They [OUN] were Nazis, pure and simple,” and indeed, “Worse than that, because a lot of them did the Nazis’ dirty work for them.” More recently, under pressure from the extreme right-wing forces in the country, including the Azov Battalion, Bandera was proclaimed by the president, Viktor Yushchenko, as “Hero of Ukraine,” the country’s highest honor, a status that was later abrogated by his successor, Victor Yanukovych.

    The award was condemned by the European Parliament and by Polish, Jewish, and Russian organizations representing the hundreds of thousands of their ancestors who were directly murdered under Bandera’s leadership. But the pro-fascists in Ukraine’s power complex would not be deterred. Under the US selectee for president in the post-coup government, Petro (“Chocolate King”) Poroshenko, previously an active informant at the US embassy in Kiev, Bandera was again restored to the highest status and his birthday was made a national holiday. In Lviv, a startling Bandera monument and triumphal arch, stands next to a former Polish Catholic church, along with other monuments and renamed streets in western Ukraine in tribute to this wartime criminal.

  • The Nation ☛ Distorting the Holocaust to Boost the International Arms Trade

    One of the most grotesque distortions of Holocaust history is when those involved in the international arms trade use it to legitimize war and mass violence.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Corporate Interests Have Given $21.5 Million to GOP ‘Sedition Caucus’ Since Jan. 6 Attack

    In the month of June, as the House January 6 committee revealed alarming new details on former President Donald Trump’s coup attempt, corporate trade groups and Fortune 500 companies donated more than $819,000 to the Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election results.

    That’s according to a new analysis provided to Common Dreams by the watchdog organization Accountable.US, which has been tracking corporate contributions to the so-called “Sedition Caucus”—the group of 147 Republican lawmakers who, just hours after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, voted to overturn the 2020 election in an attempt to help Trump maintain his grip on power.

  • Techdirt ☛ Irrational Fear Of Undocumented Immigrants May Have Contributed To Botched Response To Uvalde School Shooting

    The bad news keeps pouring in. No doubt, the United States (and US law enforcement) will ultimately walk this debacle off, but it’s going to take just a bit longer this time.

  • The Nation ☛ Battle Lines

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Trump Is the GOP and the GOP Is Trump—Both Must Be Vanquished

    Last Thursday night’s hearing of the House January 6 Committee was a blockbuster.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘They define themselves through their experience of the war’ Katrin Nenasheva on trying to build a safe environment for forcibly deported Ukrainian children — Meduza

    Over the last seven years, Russian artist and activist Katrin Nenasheva has accomplished an impressive amount: in addition to her numerous public protest pieces, she founded PsychoActive, a support group for people living with mental illness, as well as Teens and Cats, a similar group for teenagers. Since Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine, Nenasheva has remained busy, putting her more high-concept work on hold to do all she can to help people affected by the war. She spoke to Meduza about two of the projects she’s helped launch in the last five months: a summer camp for Ukrainian refugee children and a support group for anti-war Russians who chose to remain in the country.

  • The Nation ☛ Mohammed bin Salman

    He ordered the murder, our own report said, But we remain true to the oil he commands: Joe Biden decided to fist bump the man, As if a clenched fist hides the blood on one’s hands.

• Environment

  • Common Dreams ☛ Rejecting ‘Business as Usual’ While Planet Burns, Students Vow to Occupy Schools Worldwide

    Students from around the world announced Tuesday their intention to “disrupt business as usual” at their universities and schools this fall, pressuring administrators and policymakers to ramp up efforts to combat the climate crisis by holding occupations and refusing to attend classes as normal.

    Dozens of students and student groups co-signed an op-ed published by The Guardian, promising that their new campaign, “End Fossil: Occupy!” will include young people from across the globe demanding “the end of the fossil economy.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | The Global Ruling Class Is Frog-Marching Us Towards Extinction

    The past week has seen record-breaking heat waves across Europe. Wildfires have ripped through Spain, Portugal and France. London’s fire brigade experienced its busiest day since World War II. The U.K. saw its hottest day on record of 104.54 Fahrenheit. In China, more than a dozen cities issued the “highest possible heat warning” this weekend with over 900 million people in China enduring a scorching heat wave along with severe flooding and landslides across large swathes of southern China. Dozens of people have died. Millions of Chinese have been displaced. Economic losses run into the billions of yuan. Droughts, which have destroyed crops, killed livestock and forced many to flee their homes, are creating a potential famine in the Horn of Africa. More than 100 million people in the United States are under heat alerts in more than two dozen states from temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90s and low 100s. Wildfires have destroyed thousands of acres in California. More than 73 percent of New Mexico is suffering from an “extreme” or “severe” drought. Thousands of people had to flee from a fast-moving brush fire near Yosemite National Park on Saturday and 2,000 homes and businesses lost power. 

  • Energy

    • Common Dreams ☛ Greenpeace Sues UK Government to Stop Massive Offshore Drilling Project

      Greenpeace filed suit against the United Kingdom government on Tuesday, contending that the recent approval of a new North Sea gas field was unlawful because officials refused to evaluate how greenhouse gas pollution from Shell’s so-called Jackdaw project will exacerbate the climate emergency.

      “Whenever we see the government acting unlawfully to greenlight new fossil fuels we stand ready to fight in the courts.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Counter Punch ☛ Backcountry Dealing-Making on Montana Wilderness

      The old trope about “backcountry” designation being basically the same as Wilderness is embraced by “collaborative” organizations who say it’s “wilderness lite.” But it means Multiple-Use, a euphemism for “multiple-abuse.”

      Inspired by the Gallatin Forest Partnership collaborative the revised Forest Plan for the Custer-Gallatin National Forest designated four backcountry areas in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (see map). Two cut chunks out of the Hyalite Porcupine Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area, another claims the adjacent proposed Wilderness in South Cottonwood and a fourth absorbs the Lionhead area, a crucial wildlife linkage habitat.

• Finance

  • Counter Punch ☛ Why U.S. Must “Join the Club” and Give Blank Checks to Microchip Companies While Ignoring Other Major Issues

    There is no doubt that there is a global shortage in microchips and semiconductors which is making it harder for manufacturers to produce the cars, cell phones, household appliances and electronic equipment that we need. This shortage is costing American workers good jobs and raising prices for families. That is why I fully support efforts to expand U.S. microchip production.

    But the question we should be asking is this: Should American taxpayers provide the micro-chip industry with a blank check of over $76 billion at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant compensation packages? I think the answer to that question should be a resounding NO.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | The Enduring Tyranny of Oil: War, Inflation, Geopolitical Rivalry, and Soaring World Temperatures

    It may seem hard to believe, but only 15 years ago many of us were talking confidently about “peak oil”—the moment of maximum global oil output after which, with world reserves dwindling, its use would begin an irreversible decline. Then along came hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the very notion of peak oil largely vanished. Instead, some analysts began speaking of “peak oil demand”—a moment, not so far away, when electric vehicle (EV) ownership would be so widespread that the need for petroleum would largely disappear, even if there was still plenty of it to frack or drill. However, in 2020, EVs made up less than 1% of the global light-vehicle fleet and are only expected to reach 20% of the total by 2040. So peak-oil demand remains a distant mirage, leaving us deeply beholden to the tyranny of petroleum, with all its perilous consequences.

  • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Really Inexcusable’: Progressives Lament Democrats’ Failure to Reverse Trump Tax Cuts

    Not a single Democrat in either the House or the Senate voted yes in 2017 when Republicans and then-President Donald Trump—hellbent on delivering big for their wealthy donors—rammed through legislation that slashed the corporate tax rate to 21% and lowered the top marginal rate for the richest people in the United States.

    But despite the law’s deep unpopularity with the American public, it remains largely intact five years later even as Democrats—many of whom campaigned on reversing some or all of the regressive GOP tax law—narrowly control Congress and the presidency.

  • The Nation ☛ Democrats Are Losing the Working Class, but You Shouldn’t Blame the Left

    It’s no surprise that Democrats are up against it this fall. The president’s party generally does worse in midterm elections. Inflation is at a 40-year high. Crime is up. And the centerpiece of President Biden’s domestic agenda has been torpedoed by united Republican obstruction—and a West Virginia Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III.

  • The Nation ☛ What’s At Stake for Young Voters

    The most pressing issue for young people in the upcoming midterm elections is student loan cancellation—not only because of the uncertainty that has surrounded the student loan debt crisis over the past two years but also because many young people will likely graduate into recessionary conditions. Student debt is an issue that impacts more than 45 million Americans, and one that carries far beyond one’s collegiate years. Expensive degrees have become more of a necessity, rather than a choice. Yet getting one holds so many people back from opportunities that their education was supposed to bring them. During Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, he made alleviating student debt a core part of his messaging, particularly as something that can be accomplished through executive power.

  • The Nation ☛ Progressives Unite Behind Mandela Barnes in the Wisconsin Senate Race

    Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, who has opened a narrow lead in polls of the crowded contest for the state’s Democratic US Senate nomination, got a significant boost last week when US Senator Bernie Sanders announced his endorsement. Barnes got another boost over the weekend when US Senator Elizabeth Warren flew into the state to campaign with the 35-year-old contender at rallies in Milwaukee and Madison. But what may turn out to be the biggest boost came Monday morning, when another contender who had drawn considerable progressive support quit the race and endorsed the lieutenant governor in the August 9 primary.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Warren, Padilla Demand Buttigieg Crack Down on Airline Industry’s ‘Rampant Unfair Practices’

    Calling on the Biden administration to use its authority to protect U.S. travelers from “rampant unfair practices” by commercial airliners, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Alex Padilla wrote to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday to condemn the exorbitant costs, frequent flight cancellations and delays, and lack of transparency in the industry.

    It is well within the Transportation Department’s power to rein in airline companies, the two Democrats emphasized.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Counter Punch ☛ White Lies: Liberal Panic in the South African Media

    From the outset, New Frame was strikingly different from much of the online media in South Africa. Uniquely, the foundations from which it received the bulk of its funding were primarily supported by a Black funder, a radical Black funder. The publication was largely and at times exclusively run by Black women, in terms of both its day-to-day editorial work and management. Moreover, New Frame explicitly aspired to be an editorially independent left publication that was African in terms of how it sought to make sense of the world as well as its geographic location. It did not assume that it was or should be part of the West, that the West has a right to rule the world, or that the West holds moral superiority.

    New Frame was far more intellectually serious than the most influential online publications in the country – News24 and the Daily Maverick – and far, far more committed to professionally and ethically rigorous forms of reporting. This commitment wasn’t just a matter of holding to high professional standards. The rigour that we tried to develop and sustain with regard to facts, argument and process – including having six sets of eyes on every story before publication – was central to our political project. One of the guiding principles of the project was that intellectual seriousness and rigour, and ethical forms of engagement, should be foundational values of the left.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | State Lawmakers Must Act to Save Democracy From GOP Attacks

    The January 6 commission hearings cement what even the most casual observer has known for years: The state of American democracy is in absolute crisis, and it’s only going to get worse without immediate intervention. While our institutions were strong enough to prevent Donald Trump from stealing the 2020 election, America’s remaining democratic safeguards continue to crumble, especially at the state level.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Performative Cruelty Is Republicans’ Only Remaining Policy

    Do you remember the incident during the 2016 campaign when Donald Trump mocked a reporter with a physical disability? The crowd of his supporters thought it was screamingly funny. Or the following year when he told an audience of police “please don’t be too nice” to suspects, suggesting they could bang the arrestee’s head against the patrol car when putting him in the seat?

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | It’s Time to Break up the Secret Service and Send Its People to Jail for Their Role in the Jan. 6 Cover-Up

    Sometimes the irony of America in the 2020s is just too much. Consider the case of James Murray, the current head of the U.S. Secret Service and a 27-year veteran of the force best known for protecting presidents and their families. Earlier this month, Murray abruptly announced that he’s leaving to become the security chief for the parent company of Snapchat, the social media platform that’s famous for messages that rapidly disappear.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Doctors Warn Christian Zealots’ ACA Lawsuit Threatens Preventive Care for Millions

    A lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that insurers and group health plans cover dozens of preventive services at no cost to consumers jeopardizes access to lifesaving healthcare for tens of millions of people, a coalition of U.S.-based medical organizations warned Monday.

    “The cruelty of MAGA extremists always breaks new barriers.”

  • Project Censored ☛ Protections of the Sixth Amendment and Third Party Ballot Issues – The Project Censored Show

    Notes: Mark Loudon-Brown is a senior attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, and previously was a public defender in New York City. He holds law degrees from New York University and Georgetown University.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Common Dreams ☛ After Meeting Blinken, Shireen Abu Akleh’s Family ‘Still Waiting’ for Justice

    Relatives of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist shot dead by Israeli forces in occupied Palestine in May, followed up a Tuesday meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken by imploring the Biden administration to pursue justice for the slain Al Jazeera reporter.

    “If we allow Shireen’s killing to be swept under the rug, we send a message that the lives of U.S. citizens abroad don’t matter.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Counter Punch ☛ Essential Workers — Who Gets a Place in the Pandemic Picket Line?

    The response to the pandemic and surrounding conversations are about much more than masks, vaccines, and school policies. Beyond the vote, petitions and protests have been an advocacy tool for either stronger protections or the removal of pandemic restrictions.

    The spectrum of protest and political engagement may have the appearance of representing a range of voices in the spirit of democracy. In a country where free speech is paramount, aren’t all voices heard if they simply speak loudly enough?

  • Counter Punch ☛ Rising Sea Level and Settler Hubris Ahead

    Recent news about climate change has not been good, but those grasping roots demanded I pay more attention. In February 2022 NOAA, NASA and five other agencies released a report projecting a foot of sea level rise by 2050 – and that’s regardless of any reduction in emissions. In mid-July we learned Senator Joe Manchin killed President Biden’s climate bill. That same week, an historic south swell tied to sea level rise swamped homes, businesses and roads on all the Hawaiian islands. Then the UK declared its first ever code-red extreme heat warning and President Biden said the U.S. is in a climate “emergency,” but didn’t officially declare it. Every year the students in my classes are increasingly mad at me and my peers for not doing enough, for saddling them with climate catastrophe. We can’t seem to think one generation in the future, much less seven.

    At COP26 last fall in Glasgow, former President Obama told young people to “stay angry.” He noted that he has two daughters in their early 20s, so he knows that it’s “not easy being young today.” One of those daughters carries a Hawaiian name, and all of the Obamas spent lots of time on Kailua beach during his presidency. Furthermore, Barack/Barry didn’t just frequent Sandy’s (the body surfing beach) when he was in high school, like me, he also came to Kailua beach to hang out.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Texas Abortion Ban Turned One Woman’s Pregnancy Into a ‘Dystopian Nightmare’

    Reproductive healthcare advocates on Tuesday recoiled at a harrowing report describing how one Texas woman’s wanted pregnancy became a “dystopian nightmare” after she suffered potentially deadly complications but was still initially denied lifesaving care under the state’s extreme abortion ban.

    “The horror this woman endured because of the abortion bans they’ve pushed for for decades is unimaginable.”

  • Techdirt ☛ More Horror Stories About Hertz’s False Theft Accusations Pile Up As Class Action Suit Moves Forward

    Hertz rents cars, like many of its competitors do. What separates Hertz from the rental car pack is its willingness to let law enforcement perform its collection work by filing criminal charges against people. Maybe some people prefer a tough-on-crime rental agency, but it’s unlikely any of Hertz’s falsely accused customers choose Hertz for its unique ability to have renters imprisoned.

  • The Nation ☛ Roe Is the Past, Human Rights Are the Future

    All of us in the abortion rights movement have long prepared for the day Roe v. Wade would be reversed. But nothing could fully brace us for the pain of reading Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion, which categorically declared that abortion is not a constitutional right. While we took to the streets to rage and mourn the destruction of our rights, we heard from feminist allies and partners around the world—some of whom had successfully fought deeply entrenched patriarchal forces to secure historic advances for abortion rights in their country and offered lessons for our struggle. There is an immense amount to learn from them, but there is one lesson in particular to embrace: We must place human rights at the center of our demands for unfettered access to abortion.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Orbán’s long-time advisor resigns, calling his speech on mixed-race Goebbels-like

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ The head of the government’s media holding: Telex is fake news

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ With All The Other Nonsense Going On, Senate Democrats’ Priority Is To Spy On Kids Online?

    I do not understand the Democratic Party in the US for a wide variety of reasons. But one of the most confusing thing about them is their priorities. With everything else going on in the world that needs serious attention from Congress right now, Senate Dems have decided to host a markup on one of the worst, most ridiculous bills they’ve come up with in a long, long time: the “Kids Online Safety Act.”

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Techdirt ☛ Hackers Already Prepared To Screw Up BMW’s Subscription Heated Seat Model

    Earlier this month BMW took ample heat for its plans to turn heated seats into a costly $18 per month subscription in numerous countries. As we noted at the time, BMW is already including the hardware in new cars and adjusting the sale price accordingly. So it’s effectively charging users a new, recurring fee to enable technology that already exists in the car and consumers already paid for.

• Monopolies

  • Patents

    • Common Dreams ☛ Biden Told Not to Give Publicly Owned Covid-19 Vaccine Tech Over to Corporations

      A coalition of advocacy groups on Tuesday implored U.S. President Joe Biden not to give control of emerging, publicly funded coronavirus vaccine technology to profit-seeking corporations, warning such a move would double down on a privatized approach that has failed to ensure equitable vaccine access worldwide.

      Released ahead of the White House’s Summit on the Future of Covid-19 Vaccines that kicked off Tuesday morning, a new open letter signed by 29 progressive organizations argues “there is no compelling reason to offer this technology on a monopoly basis to a corporation, and a profoundly compelling reason to make the technology as open and readily accessible as possible across the globe.”

    • Techdirt ☛ Texas Courts Fix Its Judge Alan Albright Problem By Automatically Reassigning Most Of His Patent Cases

      Remember Judge Alan Albright? He was the former patent litigator who became a federal judge (the only federal judge) in Waco, Texas, which is part of the Western District of Texas. You may remember, going further back, that the Eastern District of Texas became quite infamous for being the favored venue for of patent trolls, after a bunch of judges there made it clear that they were super friendly to them. That resulted in two courts in the district, Marshall and Tyler, being flooded with patent cases. The Supreme Court cut back on that a little bit, by saying that such cases should be filed in the proper venue. And, even though the West Texas judges tried their best to ignore the Supreme Court, things began to finally settle down a bit.

    • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Is It Better Than Nothing? I Suppose’: Sanders Disappointed by Dems’ Drug Pricing Plan

      Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders on Tuesday blasted Democrats’ watered-down drug pricing plan and suggested pharmaceutical industry lobbying weakened the proposal.

      “It goes nowhere near as far as it should.”

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • Unchoir

    I preach to the choir too much.

    This is for people who aren’t already onboard.

    Now, most humans when they find something like this, they’ll find one sentence that they see as flawed and then dismiss the whole thing.

    There are nuances to everything. This is just super broad strokes.

    [...]

    Capitalism’s two biggest problems are exploitation and externalities.

    Capitalist proponents argue that exploitation is a good thing. Aspirational. It’s a well-known political cleavage.

  • SpellBinding: EHNOSTY Wordo: PUSHY

GNU/Linux

• Desktop/Laptop

  • OpenSource.com ☛ My honest review of the HP Dev One

    A few weeks ago, HP joined the bandwagon of major laptop manufacturers releasing a Linux-based laptop, the HP Dev One. The brand joins others such as Lenovo and Dell, offering a laptop with a pre-installed distribution of Linux in the US market. HP joined forces with smaller Linux-based laptop brand System76 to pre-install Pop!_OS as their distribution of choice on the device. Pop!_OS is a Ubuntu-based distribution, which System76 started (and is currently the primary maintainer) to maximize the features of its own laptops sold on its website.

    This article is a quick look at the HP Dev One, including first impressions of the hardware itself and running the pre-installed Pop!_OS and then Fedora on it after a few days. It is not about comparing them, just a few notes on how well they did on the HP Dev One.

  • Review: Framework’s next-gen Laptop follows through on its upgradeable promises [Ed: It calls itself "modular", but by default it comes with Windows, which is both malicious and in defiance of this company's mission]

    Framework isn’t all-in on Linux to the same degree as System76, but it does specifically brag about the laptop’s Linux support and its use of Linux-friendly internal hardware. The DIY Edition doesn’t come with an OS, but Linux users are certainly one of its target audiences.

    Fedora 36 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS should both support all of the new laptop’s hardware out of the box, according to Framework, but for any distribution you use, you’ll want to check the age of the Linux kernel it uses. To properly assign work between the E-cores and P-cores and get the best possible performance, you should try to run kernel version 5.16 or higher; that version provided some performance boosts for Alder Lake chips, but kernel 5.18 also introduces some improvements for the hybrid processors.

    That means you might run into issues with other versions of Linux that are based on older upstream distributions. Linux Mint, my preferred distro, is still based on Ubuntu 20.04 and ships with Linux kernel version 5.4. Even the “Edge” edition, meant to solve exactly this problem by pairing the current Mint version with a newer kernel, only ships with 5.13.

    Installing the Edge edition of Mint and then installing all updates (including an auto-update to kernel version 5.15, though you’ll need to upgrade manually to get something newer) seemed to get most things working OK, including audio, networking, and graphics acceleration. But I had to install an additional package to get the fingerprint sensor working, and you’ll still be missing Alder Lake-related improvements in newer kernels. Ubuntu 22.04 did work more smoothly out of the box, albeit still with an older 5.15 kernel.

• Audiocasts/Shows [Video and games, some mintCast episode]

  • Video ☛ LinusTechTips built the ultimate Steam Deck. Or did they? – Invidious

  • mintCast Pocast ☛ 391- Putting our Money where our mouths are – mintCast

    First up in the news, Mint is coming, Lennart Poettering has left the building, Vim speaks a new language, WebApps come to GNOME 43, Fedora lets Flatpak out of jail and wants to talk, GTK5 is dropping the X, Linux gets Siri, er, Cortana, er, Carola.

• Kernel Space

  • uni Toronto ☛ Some pragmatic issues with Linux kernel mode setting on servers

    Modern Linux kernels want to do kernel mode setting (KMS). One of the consequences of KMS is that the ‘text’ console goes through modesetting during boot. On desktops, you don’t usually use a text console and KMS is necessary anyway for your graphical desktop; if modesetting is broken, you won’t get far. On servers the benefits are lower and the downsides larger; with KMS enabled, modesetting must work in order for you to have any text console. Lately, I’ve come to feel that there are some pragmatic issues that make KMS more problematic on servers than you might think.

• Applications

  • Linux Links ☛ G4Music – lightweight music player

    
    If you use a general purpose media player to access your music collection, you’re missing out on a wealth of features that can improve your listening experience. That’s why we recommend a dedicated music player. Linux offers a huge range to choose from which is why we put together this roundup to help save you time. But there are always new projects coming along.

    G4Music is billed as a beautiful, fast, fluent, lightweight music player.

    The software is written in Vala and uses GTK4, a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Before we put the software that its paces, let’s briefly run over installation.

  • Medevel ☛ Hurrican Aware App: Get Notified about the United States Tropical Storms

    The Hurrican Aware App is a free open-source web application that track, collect, visualize and share information about the potential impacts of tropical storms in the United States.

    The app uses ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, ArcGIS JavaScript API, D3.js for the map visualization and React.js.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • uni Toronto ☛ ZFS pool IO statistics (and vdev statistics) are based on physical disk IO

    Today I wound up re-learning something that I sort of already knew about the IO statistics about pools and vdevs that you can get through things such as zpool iostat. Namely, that at least for bytes read and written and the number of IO operations, these IO statistics are what I call physical IO statistics; they aggregate and sum up the underlying physical disk IO information.

  • Kev Quirk ☛ Revisiting the Web Analytics Rabbit Hole

    A little over a year ago, I removed all analytics from this site because it was sending me down a rabbit hole that I didn’t like. Here’s an update.

  • Björn Wärmedal ☛ Re: Revisiting the Web Analytics Rabbit Hole

    In retrospect I realise that this is one reason it took me so many years to eventually set up a website (and gemini capsule) and start journaling semi-regularly. That thought of “what should I write about or publish that people will want to read”. A fallacy, quite obvious to me now, unless you’re peddling a product or marketing a corporation.

  • Jan Piet Mens ☛ An Ansible reference sheet

    The idea for an Ansible reference (or cheat) sheet was reborn last week at the Linuxhotel; a few students who knew they would be receiving a tmux mug as a gift when leaving asked why we don’t give out Ansible mugs.

  • uni Toronto ☛ The state of getting per-pool IO statistics in ZFS on Linux as of version 2.1

    To get statistics today you have a number of options. First, you can pick through the zpool iostat manual page and run it by hand to generate copious output, although this doesn’t give you access to all IO statistics available (for example, there are size histograms that aren’t currently available). If you want things in a metrics system, the ZFS on Linux project provides zpool_influxdb as an official InfluxDB format metrics exporter, but when I looked at it I didn’t really like using it with Prometheus. There’s a native Prometheus zfs_exporter project, but it’s explicitly marked experimental and in my opinion needs a number of changes to make it truly useful (for example, in its current state it only provides per-vdev statistics, although it’s easy to hack the code a bit to report per-pool stats too).

  • Video ☛ How to install Regata OS 22.0.3 – Invidious

    In this video, I am going to show how to install Regata OS 22.0.3.

  • H2S Media ☛ Install Akaunting on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 LTS

    Learn the command and steps to install the free open source accounting software – Akaunting on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa.

    If you want to install Akaunting for a demo on a local server or for permanent purposes on a cloud/hosting VPS server then here is the tutorial to guide you on the steps for the installation of Akaunitng on Ubuntu, Debian and other similar Linux.

  • LinuxTechi ☛ How to Install VirtualBox on OpenSUSE Leap 15.4

    Hello Techies, In this guide, we will cover how to install VirtualBox on OpenSUSE Leap 15.4 step by step.

    VirtualBox is the virtualization software used at desktop level on both Linux and Windows operating system. It allows users to install and run multiple virtual machines (VMs) at the same time. Virtualbox is useful whenever users want to build their test environment on their laptop inside the virtual machines.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Valentina on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

    Valentina is a software package for creating clothing patterns distributed according to the open-source software model. The main idea of this concept is to combine modern technologies with traditional design methods. The main feature of Valentina, which qualitatively distinguishes it from other solutions for the fashion industry, is the work with parametric patterns. This allows you to create complex pattern shapes using a set of basic parameters.

    In addition, Valentina provides a wide range of tools for pattern creation, including automatic drawing tools, freehand drawing tools, and a library of ready-made templates. Thanks to these features, Valentina has become one of the most popular software packages for fashion designers and sewing professionals.

    The following tutorial will teach you how to install Valentina on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish using a LaunchPAD APT PPA with the command line terminal.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Linux tool alternatives: 6 replacements for traditional favorites | Enable Sysadmin

    You’ve mastered a Linux tool, but that hard-earned knowledge came at the cost of frequent usage, reading the manual pages, and using a search engine to avoid the bad examples out there.

  • OpenSource.com ☛ How I manage files from the Linux command line | Opensource.com

    Managing files in a graphical desktop like GNOME or KDE is an exercise in point-and-click. To move a file into a folder, you click and drag the icon to its new home. To remove a file, you drag it into the “Trash” icon. The graphical interface makes desktop computing easy to use.

    But we don’t always interact with Linux systems with a graphical interface. If you work on a server, you likely need to use the command line to get around. Even desktop users like me might prefer to interact with their system through a terminal and command line.

  • TecAdmin ☛ Check if a script is running as root user in Linux – TecAdmin

    Sometimes the shell scripts are required to run as the root user to perform some tasks with administrator privileges. Generally, that tasks can be achieved with the Sudo commands. If in some cases you still need to force the user to run the script as the root user, you can add code to your script to check if the script is running with the root user or not.

  • Citizix ☛ How to run Django and Postgres in docker-compose

    Django is a free and open-source, Python-based web framework that follows the model–template–views architectural pattern. Django advertises itself as “the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines” and “Django makes it easier to build better Web apps more quickly and with less code”. Django is known for the speed at which you can develop apps without compromising on robustness.

    Docker is an open platform that performs Operating System level virtualization also known as containerization. It makes it possible to build, ship, and run distributed applications in controlled environments with defined rules.

    Docker Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications. With Compose, you use a YAML file to configure your application’s services. Then, with a single command, you create and start all the services from your configuration.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Google Chrome on Linux Mint 21 LTS

    Google Chrome is the most used Internet Explorer software on the earth. It is an excellent option for Linux Mint because it is faster than Firefox, the default installed browser on your desktop. Additionally, Chrome has a ton of features that make browsing the web a better experience. For example, Chrome has a built-in PDF viewer, making it easy to open PDFs without downloading them first. Chrome also has an incognito mode, allowing you to browse the web privately without saving your history or cookies. Finally, Chrome is synced with your Google account, so your bookmarks and passwords will be available on all your devices. Overall, Google Chrome is the best browser for Linux Mint users.

    In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Google Chrome on Linux Mint 21 release series in three alternative ways: stable, beta, or unstable versions, along with some essential command tips for users.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install VeraCrypt on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VeraCrypt on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, VeraCrypt is a free, open-source disk encryption tool. VeraCrypt is equipped with various encryption algorithms such as AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), Camelia, Kuznyechik, Serpent, and Twofish. It is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

    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 VeraCrypt encryption tool on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Enable TCP BBR on Debian 11 Bullseye

    For years, the primary congestion control algorithms used on the internet were Reno and CUBIC. Both of these had their strengths and weaknesses, but they shared one major issue: they were not very effective at dealing with network bottlenecks. This led to a lot of wasted bandwidth and high latency, which was a major problem for Google and other companies that rely on the internet for their operations. However, Google has now found a way to overcome these issues with the new TCP Bottleneck Bandwidth and RRT (BBR) algorithm.

    This updated congestion control algorithm achieves significant bandwidth improvements, lowers latency, and is deployed by Google.com, Google Cloud Platform, Youtube, and others. Thanks to BBR, we can finally say goodbye to the old network bottleneck problems that have plagued us for so long.

    In the following tutorial, you will learn to enable TCP BBR on Debian 11 Bullseye using the command line terminal with some configurations and screenshots.

  • FOSSLinux ☛ How to install DIG on Debian 11 | FOSS Linux

    This short tutorial demonstrates how to install DIG on Debian 11 Bullseye. This tutorial also explains how to use this application to get DNS-related information.

  • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Cut, Copy and Paste Text in Nano Editor

    The cut, copy, and paste file editing operations are key in the mastery of Linux file management. On a graphical text editor like LibreOffice Writer, the implementation of these file editing operations are a no-brainer.

    However, the nano text editor offers some file editing flexibility not evident in graphical file editors like LibreOffice Writer. For instance, it is easier to navigate to various file paths and open them via the nano editor than it is to achieve the same objective using a graphical text editor.

    This tutorial will show us how easy it is to achieve cut, copy, and paste text operations while using the nano text editor in Linux.

  • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Undo and Redo in Nano Editor in Linux

    The nano text editor has a reputation for making life easier for most users on the journey of mastering the Linux operating system footprints. It is the perfect text editor to start with before adopting more advanced text editors like Vim.

    Since human is to error, we tend to make mistakes while editing our files on a Linux operating system environment. A native solution to errors that occur during file editing operations is to navigate to the position of the incorrect text using the keyboard arrow keys and subsequently apply the keyboard backspace key to fix the issue.

    However, when we master the implementation of undo and redo operations while working on a file opened with the nano text editor, it saves us a lot of valuable time that would be wasted trying to fix the edit issue via the keyboard navigation keys.

    This article will walk us through the implementation of the undo and redo file operation functions in a nano text editor in Linux.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How to change the SSH port

    In this post, you will learn a simple but very useful trick that can help you in Linux administration. Today, you will learn how to change the SSH port.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Tor Browser on Rocky Linux 9

    Tor, also referred to as The Onion Router, is open-source, free software that permits anonymous communication using online services like web surfing. The Tor network directs the web traffic through an accessible worldwide volunteer overlay network with over six thousand relays and continues to grow. Many users want to search out more ways to keep their information and activities anonymous or private online due to the increasing concerns over data and work snooping. However, users should be aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of using Tor before deciding whether or not it is the right tool for them.

    While Tor provides a high degree of anonymity, it is not perfect. Due to the way the network routes traffic, it can be slow, making it impractical for some uses. In addition, because traffic is encrypted, some sites that use anti-Tor measures can block all traffic from the network, preventing users from accessing them. Despite these drawbacks, Tor remains a popular tool for those seeking a higher degree of anonymity online.

    In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Tor Browser on Rocky Linux 9 workstation desktop using Flatpak third-party package manager or downloading the browser manually and how to install it manually with tips on registering the application icon.

• Games

  • Earthly ☛ Building Pong in Your Terminal: Part One

    Pong is simple. There are only three sprites on screen, the level is always the same, and the game logic is pretty easy to code. This also seemed like a great project to help me start to wrap my head around Go routines and Channels, concepts that were completely new to me coming from Ruby and Python.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Barry Kauler ☛ Limine BIOS chainloading enhancements

  A couple of days ago, was working on what was planned to become Limine Installer version 1.2, when hit a snag with BIOS chainloading.

• New Releases

  • Absolute64-20220724 released

    Some fixes… cleaned up Vivaldi installer a little, fixed a bunch of my image manipulation scripts to work properly with switch from imagemagick to graphicsmagick.

    Heavily edited idesktool to manipulate desktop/icons.

    Stripped down the installer for the ISO. Just auto-install. No more Slckware tweaks/prompts — Just takes over hard drive and goes… Will GPT the drive if bios is set to launch UHCI, (and you set USB stick to GPT. I used Rufus on a Windows box.)
    If you MBR the stick and computer bios is MBR, Absolute installer will partition drive MBR and use lilo.

    In either case, the drive is repartitioned and anything on it is wiped.

• BSD

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Resource use of FreeBSD desktop environments

    But it’s worth remembering that resource use is only one metric; a computer that’s turned off isn’t using anything! I imagine a chart with features plotted against memory: provided both scale linearly, it’s easy to pick something that hits the sweet spot for features you use, your available resources, and how much time and inclination you have to spend tinkering with a system.

    There’s also no shame in wanting something pretty, especially given how much some of us spend in front of these machines in our work and personal lives. Vermaden didn’t do this, but I see other people in the open source community poke fun at those who want something nice as well as functional. Technical specifications make something possible, but art makes life worth living. The fact we all have opinions about what that is, and what it should look like, is why we call it subjective.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Its FOSS ☛ 6 Tips and Tools to Enhance Your Flatpak Experience in Linux – It’s FOSS

    Slowly and steadily, Flatpak has a growing acceptance in the desktop Linux world.

    It is well integrated into Fedora and many other distributions like Linux Mint, elementary, Solus, etc. prefer it over Ubuntu’s Snap.

    If you love using Flatpak applications, let me share a few tips, tools, and tweaks to make your Flatpak experience better and smoother.

• Debian Family

  • 9to5Linux ☛ New Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” Kernel Security Update Fixes 9 Vulnerabilities

    
    The new Debian GNU/Linux 11 Linux kernel security update comes one and a half months after the previous kernel security update and it’s here to fix a total of nine security vulnerabilities in the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel, which is the default kernel for Debian Bullseye users.

    Patched in this new kernel update is CVE-2021-33655, a security issue that could allow a user with access to a framebuffer console driver to cause a memory out-of-bounds write through the FBIOPUT_VSCREENINFO ioctl, and CVE-2022-2318, a use-after-free vulnerability found in the Amateur Radio X.25 PLP (Rose) support that may result in a denial of service attack.

• Devices/Embedded

  • CNX Software ☛ mini PCIe module features Rockchip RK1808K SoC with 3.0 TOPS NPU

    
    Rockchip RK1808 SoC with a built-in 3.0 TOPS AI accelerator has been around since 2019, and we’ve seen it in USB compute sticks, SBCs, and even in Pine64 SoEdge-RK1808 SO-DIMM module, but somehow never in the more widely used M.2 or mPCIe form factors.

    Toybrick TB-RK1808M0 changes that and offers Rockchip RK1808K SoC coupled with 1GB RAM and an 8GB eMMC flash in a mini PCIe module that exposes USB 3.0, USB 2.0, UART, and GPIO signals.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Andrew Hutchings ☛ ROMulus demonstration on an Amiga 500

    I have created a demonstration video for ROMulus on the Amiga 500. For anyone interested in finding out more about this board more details are available here.

  • J Pieper ☛ Updated moteus test fixture

    Finally, the whole structure, including the top clamp is 3D printed now, which makes it potentially possible to do top probing and more easily adjust the dimensions.

    With this new fixture, my cycle time for a test is around 60s. At that point, the time spent in the test program is about the same as the time it takes to unpack and package up the boards, so it isn’t really the limiting factor any more.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • The Sun ☛ Android WARNING – Six ‘battery killer’ mistakes that are ruining your smartphone | The Sun

  • Android Central ☛ New Android 13 Beta 4.1 update rolls out for Pixel phones ahead of stable release | Android Central

  • Lifewire ☛ How to Change Your Phone Number on Android

  • Android Authority ☛ How to record internal and external audio on Android – Android Authority

  • India Today ☛ Tips to make your Android phone as private as possible – Information News

  • 4 Easy Methods to Open RAR Files on Android

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Obnam 0.8.0 – encrypting backup program

  I’ve just pushed out version 0.8.0 of Obnam, an encrypting backup program. Below are the release notes.

• CERT NZ helps open source community with upgrade of Samba

  A collaboration between CERT NZ, Catalyst and the open source community has created a major update for Samba, making it more secure.

  Samba is an open source software suite used as an active directory domain controller, like Microsoft Active Directory.

  Samba is Free Software licensed under the GNU General Public License, and the Samba project is a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy.

  Since 1992, Samba has provided secure, stable and fast file and print services for all clients using the SMB/CIFS protocol, such as all versions of DOS and Windows, OS/2, Linux and many others.

• Programming/Development

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Round a direction vector to an 8-way compass

    If you assume that the unit direction vector is in the first quadrant (both x and y are positive), then there is a direct way to compute the solution. Using 1/sqrt(2) or 0.7071 as the default solution, compare both x and y with cos(3*pi/8) and cos(pi/8), and only switch them to 1 or 0 if they are larger than cos(3*pi/8) or smaller than cos(pi/8). The full code looks as follows: [...]

  • Drew DeVault ☛ Code review at the speed of email

    I’m a big proponent of the email workflow for patch submission and code review. I have previously published some content (How to use git.sr.ht’s send-email feature, Forks & pull requests vs email, git-send-email.io) which demonstrates the contributor side of this workflow, but it’s nice to illustrate the advantages of the maintainer workflow as well. For this purpose, I’ve recorded a short video demonstrating how I manage code review as an email-oriented maintainer.

  • Matt Rickard ☛ Defensible Machine Learning Model Naming

    There’s a curious case of a neural network for object recognition called YOLO – You Only Look Once. While many object detection models were two-pass (one for identifying bounding boxes, the other for classifying), YOLO was single-pass. This makes YOLO fast and small.

  • Bozhidar Batsov ☛ Leiningen Adds Support for nREPL’s Unix Sockets

    The next release of Leiningen (likely 2.9.9) will include support for starting an nREPL server listening to an Unix domain socket. As a reminder – Unix domain sockets were one of the highlights of nREPL 0.9, which was released at the end of 2021.

  • Lawrence Tratt ☛ What’s the Most Portable Way to Include Binary Blobs in an Executable?

    I recently needed to include an arbitrary blob of data in an executable, in a manner that’s easily ported across platforms. I soon discovered that there are various solutions to including blobs, but finding out what the trade-offs are has been a case of trial and error [1]. In this post I’m going to try and document the portability (or lack thereof…) of the solutions I’ve tried, give a rough idea of performance, and then explain why I’ll probably use a combination of several solutions in the future.

  • ACM ☛ When Should a Black Box Be Transparent?

    We have been working with a third-party vendor that supplies a critical component of one of our systems. Because of supply-chain issues, they are trying to “upgrade” us to a newer version of this component, and they say it is a drop-in replacement for the old one. They keep saying this component should be seen as a black box, but in our testing, we found many differences between the original and the updated part. These are not just simple bugs but significant technology changes that underlie the system. It would be nice to treat this component as a drop-in replacement and not worry about this, but what I have seen thus far does not inspire confidence. I do see their point that the API is the same, but I somehow do not think this is sufficient. When is a component truly drop-in and when should I be more paranoid?

  • Git with Multiple E-Mail Addresses: And How I Make Sure to Commit with the Right One

    Only using each Git server on a computer dedicated for some line of work (company, private, school) is impractical for different reasons. I keep personal notes on discoveries I make when working for my job or for school, which I store in a private repository. Changing laptops just to write down that command line I already googled seven times is not practical, and just would make me to google it for the eighth time.

    Furthermore, I prefer to work on my stationary PC running Arch Linux (which I use as a daily driver, by the way) for school-related work, especially when it comes to making up programming examples; I’m just less efficient working on my Windows laptop.

  • Locking Engineering Principles

    For various reasons I spent the last two years way too much looking at code with terrible locking design and trying to rectify it, instead of a lot more actual building cool things. Symptomatic that the last post here on my neglected blog is also a rant on lockdep abuse.

    I tried to distill all the lessons learned into some training slides, and this two part is the writeup of the same. There are some GPU specific rules, but I think the key points should apply to at least apply to kernel drivers in general.

    The first part here lays out some principles, the second part builds a locking engineering design pattern hierarchy from the most easiest to understand and maintain to the most nightmare inducing approaches.

    Also with locking engineering I mean the general problem of protecting data structures against concurrent access by multiple threads and trying to ensure that each sufficiently consistent view of the data it reads and that the updates it commits won’t result in confusion. Of course it highly depends upon the precise requirements what exactly sufficiently consistent means, but figuring out these kind of questions is out of scope for this little series here.

  • Python

    • Medevel ☛ Picroscopy Turns your Raspberry Pi into a Digital Microscopy

      Picroscopy is a small Python web-application which is intended for usage with a Raspberry Pi as a microscopy solution.

      With the Raspberry Pi Camera mounted on a microscope, the Raspberry Pi provides a live video feed to its monitor via HDMI, while another machine can be used to control the setup via a web-based interface.

  • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

    • TecAdmin ☛ YYYY-MM-DD format date in a Shell Script

      The Linux date command is used to get the current date and time. You can easily customize the results by using the arguments. In this how-to tutorial, you will learn to format the date as YYYY-MM-DD in the bash shell.

    • Jack Franklin ☛ Running command line tasks in Neovim

      My daily workflow often involves repeatedly running tasks, whether that be build commands, unit tests, or some other scripts. My ideal workflow is to have a terminal split on the right hand side, and then be able to send tasks to it.

    • HowTo Geek ☛ How to Manipulate Strings in Bash on Linux

      The Linux ecosystem is packed with fantastic tools for working with text and strings. These include awk, grep, sed, and cut. For any heavyweight text wrangling, these should be your go-to choices.

      Sometimes though, it’s convenient to use the shell’s built-in capabilities, especially when you’re writing a short and simple script. If your script is going to be shared with other people and it is going to run on their computers, using the standard Bash functionality means you don’t have to wonder about the presence or version of any of the other utilities.

      If you need the power of the dedicated utilities, then by all means use them. That’s what they’re there for. But often your script and Bash can get the job done on their own.

      Because they’re Bash built-ins, you can use them in scripts or on the command line. Using them in a terminal window is a fast and convenient way to prototype your commands and perfect the syntax. It avoids the edit, save, run, and debug cycle.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Terence Eden ☛ The (Mostly) Complete Unicode Spiral

    I present to you, dear reader, a spiral containing every Unicode 14 character in the GNU Unifont. Starting at the centre with the control characters, spiralling clockwise through the remnants of ASCII, and out across the entirety of the Basic Multi Lingual Plane. Then beyond into the esoteric mysteries of the Higher Planes2.

Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ Tech you like that’s gone

  Lucas Holt asked what tech people liked that’s gone. I never miss an opportunity to engage in some tech nostalgia, so here’s a selection of mine: [...]

• Reuters ☛ Powerful 7.1 earthquake strikes Philippines; at least one dead

  A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck the Philippine island of Luzon on Wednesday killing at least one person and damaging buildings in the northern Abra province and sending strong tremors through the capital, Manila.

  A 25-year-old man was killed by falling debris, said Abra Vice Governor Joy Bernos, when the quake struck about 11 km (six miles) southeast of Dolores town at a shallow depth of 10 km (6 miles), according to U.S. Geological Survey data.

• Hardware

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ Remembering the (very) funky Holborn computers of the early 1980s

    While the company only lasted for a few years — and they only produced a handful of models — their distinctive designs (for both their cases and their hardware & software choices) are worthy of being remembered.

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ 1982′s Canon AS-100 Computer Workstation

    In 1982, Canon released the AS-100 computer. A fascinating — and awesome looking — computer workstation that was aimed squarely at the business market.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Pro Publica ☛ How Polio Crept Back Into the U.S.

    About a month ago, British health authorities announced they’d found evidence suggesting local spread of polio in London.

    It was a jolt, to be sure. The country was declared polio-free in 2003.

  • TruthOut ☛ New York Post Announces COVID Is Over. It’s Still Running Rampant.

• Proprietary

  • A Burger Without Heinz

    I can’t help but wonder if, in the minds of many reviewers, MacBooks were PCs so long as they used Intel, and therefore they stopped being PCs once Apple switched to using their own silicon.

  • The Verge ☛ NPM users can now connect a Twitter account as a recovery method

    Developers who use NPM, the popular JavaScript package manager, will now be able to connect their Twitter and GitHub accounts to the software as a recovery method.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Luis Villa: Book Notes: Summer 2022 (burnout and the good life) [Ed: Tidelift is connected to Microsoft]

      Those of you who have emailed my work address lately will have noticed I’m also on sabbatical this summer, because after five years of focus on Tidelift I’m feeling pretty burnt out. This is not a criticism of Tidelift: it’s a great team; I’m very proud of what we are doing; and I will be going back shortly. But a big theme of the summer has been to think about what I want to do, and how that intersects with Tidelift—so that when I come back I’ll be both a strong contributor, and a happy and healthy contributor.

      [....]

      Good: it helped me ask “what the hell am I doing” in much better ways. Two key tricks to this: asking it in a ten year timeframe, and using a bunch of neat futurist-y brainstorming techniques to help think genuinely outside of the box. For this reason I think it might end up being, in ten years, the most influential “self-help” book I ever read.

      Bad: it’s a classic “this book should have been an article”, and it is the first time I’ve thought “this book should have been an app”—the structured brainstorming exercises could have been much more impactful if guided with even minimal software. There actually is a companion(?) pay-to-enter community, which so far I’ve really enjoyed—if I stick with it, and find value, I suspect in the future I’ll recommend joining that community rather than reading the book.

      Other big failure(?): it focuses a lot on What Is Going On In The World and How You Can Change It, when one of my takeaways from Malesic’s burnout book was to focus less on The World and more on the concrete people and places around me. The book’s techniques are still helpful for this, which is why I think it’ll be impactful for me, but I think it’d be a better book if its examples and analysis also drilled down on the personal.

    • ZDNet ☛ Cloudify partners with ServiceNow for business cloud automation [Ed: The coin-operated SJVN is writing spammy ads now. How low he has sunk.]

      Clouds can really help your business. If, and it’s a big if, you can get it to work for you. That’s where companies such as Cloudify, with its open source business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platform, come in. Now, to make it more powerful, you can use the Cloudify infrastructure automation platform with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), part of the digital workflow of its Now Platform.

• Security

  • Eclypsium ☛ Firmware Security Realizations – Part 1 – Secure Boot and DBX – Eclypsium

    One of the first findings brought to my attention was that Secure Boot was not enabled. After shaming myself, I remembered that in the past, installation instructions for most Linux distributions recommended disabling Secure Boot prior to installation. Not wanting to complicate installations any further I went into the BIOS/UEFI settings and disabled Secure Boot, then installed my Linux distribution of choice (sometimes that was POP_OS! And more recently Ubuntu). Once the installation was completed, I had not gone back and researched how to achieve better security using Secure Boot.

    This brought forth one of my first questions: Why did most Linux distributions state that Secure Boot should be disabled? It turns out Linux distributions had not completed the process to get all of the required binaries signed that allow a computer to boot securely. With there being so many Linux distributions this proved to be quite the challenge. It was only in the past 2-3 years that many distributions have moved to enable Secure Boot by default. Understanding what needs to be done in order to support Secure Boot leads us pretty deep down a rabbit hole, which begins with first understanding how Secure Boot works.

    A good starting point is to read some of the previous research on vulnerabilities related to Secure Boot. Eclypsium researchers have presented on Secure Boot dating as far back as 2013 at Black Hat USA in a talk titled “A Tale of One Software Bypass of Windows 8 Secure Boot” and again in 2014 at Defcon “Summary of Attacks Against BIOS and Secure Boot“.

  • Newly found Lightning Framework offers a plethora of Linux hacking capabilities [Ed: Microsoft propagandists still try to conflate malware with "backdoors", which is something Windows has by design; this is misleading, borderline defamatory. Unlike Windows, Linux does not have back doors and zero-days ignored by the vendor (Microsoft) for months, so for this malware to get to the system something dumb needs to happen. With Windows, there are back doors. With Linux, however, you need to first get in somehow. The media fails to mention this.]

  • New Very Powerful All in One Linux Malware [Ed: Anything to darken the brand "Linux", just because it is capable of running malicious programs too]

  • Dev Discourse ☛ Should I Use Linux VPS Or Windows VPS | Technology

    For corporate and commercial projects, it is better to choose Linux, which confidently leads by the parameter “security”.

  • Red Hat ☛ SaaS security in Kubernetes environments: A layered approach | Red Hat Developer

    Security is especially critical for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environments, where the platform is used by many different people who need the confidence that their data is stored safely and kept private from unrelated users. This article focuses on security concerns for containers on your SaaS deployment running in Kubernetes environments such as Red Hat OpenShift. The article is the fifth in a series called the SaaS architecture checklist that covers the software and deployment considerations for SaaS applications.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Hill ☛ Daughter of imprisoned ‘Hotel Rwanda’ hero to testify on spyware at House hearing

      In February 2021, forensic analysis by Amnesty International and Citizen Lab revealed that Kanimba had been surveilled, allegedly by the Rwandan government, with her phone infected with the Israeli NSO Group’s spyware Pegasus as early as a month after her father’s kidnapping.

      Pegasus spyware has been connected with several instances of hacking and surveillance by governments targeting dissidents, journalists and political opponents, resulting in the NSO Group being blacklisted by the US.

      Kanimba says her phone was tracked during meetings and communications with foreign officials as she advocated for her father’s release.

    • NPR ☛ Amazon buying One Medical is only its most recent dive into the health care industry

      One Medical is a membership-based primary care practice with nearly 200 locations across the country that also offers virtual services. The company had roughly 767,000 member patients as of May.

    • [Old] NYOB ☛ Second € 20 Mio Fine for Clearview AI

      The Greek data protection authority has fined the company Clearview AI €20 million. The company that sells facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. is no longer allowed to process biometric data on individuals in Greece and must delete all existing data.

    • Ish Sookun ☛ How much space is required to store 2 mins of data captured from all [Internet] traffic in Mauritius?

      The question above is straight-forward and the answer lies in the bandwidth that we, Mauritians, consume. In order to learn about the bandwidth consumption, I checked the ICT report published by Statistics Mauritius.

    • Adriaan Zhang ☛ Detecting Users’ DNS Resolvers

      Let’s say someone has visited your website; is it possible to determine what DNS resolvers their computer is configured to use?

      Well, yes. Of course you can! This blogpost wouldn’t be very long if the answer was no. Let’s find out how. But before we begin…

      You’ll need JavaScript for this to work.

    • MakeTech Easier ☛ Congress Joins the Fight Against Foreign Spyware

      Part of what makes it hard to put an end to hacking is that there’s just so much of it. There’s a “ware” for everything: malware, ransomware, and even spyware. With this overabundance, the U.S. Congress is finally going to start looking into foreign spyware, specifically Pegasus.

    • TruthOut ☛ ICE Is Using Data From LexisNexis to Skirt Sanctuary Laws and Deport Immigrants

  • Confidentiality

    • Ish Sookun ☛ What is TLS encryption and how does it secure your [Internet] communication?

  • Krebs On Security ☛ A Retrospective on the 2015 Ashley Madison Breach

    It’s been seven years since the online cheating site AshleyMadison.com was hacked and highly sensitive data about its users posted online. The leak led to the public shaming and extortion of many Ashley Madison users, and to at least two suicides. To date, little is publicly known about the perpetrators or the true motivation for the attack. But a recent review of Ashley Madison mentions across Russian cybercrime forums and far-right websites in the months leading up to the hack revealed some previously unreported details that may deserve further scrutiny.

Defence/Aggression

• Broadband Breakfast ☛ U.S. Must Go on Offensive to Address Cybersecurity Issues

  The United States needs to adopt a more offensive cybersecurity posture to survive in an evolving digital world by enacting sanctions against malicious states, developing artificial intelligence capabilities to identify possible cyberthreats, and engaging in diplomacy to deter cyberattacks before they initiate, said experts at an Internet Governance Forum event on Thursday.

• VOA News ☛ Senate Report Alleges Chinese Effort to Infiltrate Federal Reserve

  The report by members of the Republican minority of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee alleges that China has used promises of lucrative teaching and research contracts to try to entice economists working at more than half of the system’s 12 Federal Reserve Banks to share nonpublic information about economic forecasts and monetary policy decisions with Chinese officials.

  China’s goal, according to the report, is to “supplant the U.S. as the global economic leader and end the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s primary reserve currency.”

• Foreign Policy ☛ Why You Shouldn’t Use Conditioner After a Nuclear Attack

  Earlier this month, the city of New York released a short video, seemingly out of the blue, informing residents what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. The 90-second video—which opens with the line, “So, there’s been a nuclear attack. Don’t ask me how or why, just know that the big one has hit. OK?”—left many New Yorkers scratching their heads.

  In defending the video as “a very proactive step,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams acknowledged that the public safety announcement had come in response to the changing nature of the global security environment with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• TruthOut ☛ Since Jan. 6 Attack, Corporations Have Given $21.5 Million to “Sedition Caucus”

• TruthOut ☛ Uvalde School District to Abbott: Call Special Session on Raising Gun-Buying Age

Environment

• Joinup ☛ Watching the earth system (our planet)

  In particular, the Digital Earth Viewer, which is open source and licensed under the EUPL, is a web application for spatiotemporal contextualization and visualization of heterogeneous data sources. It was developed with the goal of enabling real-time exploration of geoscientific data sets across spatial and temporal scales. To this end, it is capable of ingesting data from a large variety of types that are usually found in the geosciences, and it deploys a user interface, which allows for interactive visual analysis. At the same time, online and offline deployment, cross-platform implementation, and a comprehensive graphical user interface are all capabilities that make the Digital Earth Viewer particularly accessible to scientific users.

• Teen Vogue ☛ Youth-Led Climate Change Lawsuits Are a Tactic to Hold Governments Responsible

  The youth plaintiffs in the case, Held, v. State of Montana, are represented by the Oregon-based nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust, an organization that has brought multiple youth climate suits, most notably Juliana v. United States, a 2015 case in which 21 young people sued the federal government for knowingly and extensively contributing to climate change and with these actions violating their constitutional rights.

  But this is the first time that a case of this nature has been allowed to enter the trial phase, which will likely begin in early summer 2023. Advocates say the trial is a landmark opportunity to hold a governing body accountable for its role in perpetuating climate change and to establish a plan for remedy and relief. If successful, it also lays the groundwork for the courts to rule in favor of young people in future climate lawsuits.

• The Economist ☛ What to read to understand the burning of the American West

  It is hard to understand wildfires in the western states without first learning about the arid nature of the region. There remains no better book on water in the West than Marc Reisner’s “Cadillac Desert”, from 1986. It is a sprawling history of how the Bureau of Reclamation made the modern West possible by erecting a vast network of dams, reservoirs and pipelines to carry water from wet places to dry ones. But the bureau’s frenetic construction enabled the overuse of western rivers by cities and farms, and so further parched the landscape. Water policy can be impenetrable. Yet Reisner brings the complicated story to life by introducing readers to characters such as the “Renaissance man” who explored the length of the Colorado River, and the politicians who stole the water that allowed Los Angeles to blossom.

• Energy

  • Scheerpost ☛ The Enduring Tyranny of Oil

    At the moment, world oil production is hovering at around 100 million barrels daily and is projected to reach 109 million barrels by 2030, 117 million by 2040, and a jaw-dropping 126 million by 2050. So much, in other words, for “peak oil” and a swift transition to green energy.

  • TruthOut ☛ World Oil Production Is Rising, With No End in Sight

Finance

• IT Wire ☛ World-wide mobile data compared for the fourth year in a row

  This is the fourth annual survey by cable.co.uk and it shows that while there are interesting positional moves, little has changed over the life of the survey.

  We have previously reported on this and similar investigations with significant fluctuations in position.

  Taking a look at the data, one of the most striking observations is that mobile data is most expensive in countries where infrastructure is weak; and populations are small. Perhaps that’s obvious.

• TruthOut ☛ Sanders: If US Can Spend $76B on Computer Chips, It Can Pass Medicare for All

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The Verge ☛ Zuckerberg says Meta and Apple are in ‘very deep, philosophical competition’ to build the metaverse

  Mark Zuckerberg believes that Apple and his company are in a “very deep, philosophical competition” to build the metaverse, suggesting the two tech giants are ready to butt heads in selling hardware for augmented and virtual reality.

  The Meta CEO told employees earlier this month that they were competing with Apple to determine “what direction the internet should go in,” according to a recording of his comments during an internal all-hands meeting obtained by The Verge. He said that Meta would position itself as the more open, cheaper alternative to Apple, which is expected to announce its first AR headset as soon as later this year.

• The Hill ☛ Senate panel turns to kids’ online safety

  Two bills that would revamp how tech companies cater to and obtain data from young users will be in the spotlight Wednesday as a Senate panel debates how to update laws designed before the rise of social media.

  The markup has been long awaited by critics who say the existing regulations are no longer adequate for a generation raised on the internet. Support for the issue has snowballed since a Facebook whistleblower leaked bombshell internal documents last year.

• Scheerpost ☛ Patrick Lawrence: 21st Century Order

  As a piece of the new world order that is under construction, Putin’s trip to Tehran last week was of singular importance.

• Variety ☛ Twitter Spent $33 Million on Elon Musk Deal in Q2, Sets Date for Shareholder Vote on Transaction

  Twitter revealed the expenses in its 10-Q filing Tuesday with the SEC. Other than the $33.1 million in “transaction expenses” associated with Musk’s proposed takeover, “the terms of the Merger Agreement did not impact the Company’s consolidated financial statements,” the company said.

• Democracy Now ☛ Puerto Rico: House Dems Criticized over Handling of Bill to Let Residents Choose Status of Territory

  Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have introduced the Puerto Rico Status Act, which would allow residents of the longtime U.S. colony to begin the process of self-determination and decide on the island’s territorial status. The bill sets up three options for residents to choose from in a referendum — U.S. statehood, independence or sovereignty in free association with the United States — and commits Congress to abide by the results. We speak to San Juan’s former Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz about the shortcomings of the bill, which she says lacks clarity on what each status would mean for Puerto Ricans. Among the concerns are whether Spanish would be taught as a primary language in government-funded public schools. Many do not understand “the rush to do it and, in doing so, not allowing the Puerto Rican people to have all the information to exercise their freedom to choose,” says Cruz.

• Counter Punch ☛ A Tough Week for the Trumpers

  It’s easy to recall how Trump claimed global warming was a “Chinese hoax” that, according to his twisted view of the world, was intended to give China an economic advantage over the U.S. Apparently the idea that some of our political leaders — and certainly the majority of our citizens — desperately want to take action to address the climate crisis is antithetical to the “take it all while you can get it” self-acknowledged greed of the former president.

  But the “chickens have come home to roost” on that issue — and it’s so hot they’re laying hard-boiled eggs. The airports in Britain (which is an island in the middle of the ocean) had to be shut down because the runways were melting in the hottest temperatures ever recorded there. So were the roads — and the railways were closed because the tracks are warping in the extreme triple digit heat. And they’re wrapping the London Bridge in tin foil because the cast iron is cracking in the heat.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Central Bucks approves library policy some view as book ban

  The policy sets criteria for the selection, removal and replacement of books. School officials said it doesn’t seek to censor any particular community, pointing to safeguards like a protection for “classics” and replacing removed books with new ones that touch on similar subject matter but without age-inappropriate content.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• VOA News ☛ Exiled Journalists Take on Corruption, Disinformation

  Newsroom raids, a website ban and a team reporting from exile are no obstacle for the independent Belarusian Investigative Center.

  Founded in 2018, BIC specializes in news analysis, fighting disinformation and exposing wrongdoing.

  Its award-winning journalism has uncovered corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, sanction-breaking exports of petroleum, and shady real estate deals by oligarchs.

  In April, BIC became part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

Civil Rights/Policing

• Copenhagen Post ☛ Digitalisation not as great as it seems, claims new Justitia report

  The digitalisation of the public sector is proved a difficulty for one fourth of Danish citizens who do not feel comfortable using technology, and this may lead to a social inequality.

  This is according to a report done by Justitia that has recently been released, revealing how several Danes are against the continuous digitalisation of the public sector as it is creating obstacles for some.

• The Nation ☛ Easy Money: How Counties Are Funneling Covid Relief Funds Into New Jails

  Throughout the country, counties are dipping into funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to build and expand jails and prisons. At least 20 counties in 18 states are using, or want to use, Covid relief money this way. The problem is, their decision to do so violates the spirit, and likely the letter, of the rules governing how relief money can be used. These rules, finalized by the US Treasury earlier this year, ban jurisdictions from using Covid relief money to build or expand correctional facilities. Yet that hasn’t stopped local officials in a number of counties from pushing their projects through, spending their ARPA and CARES Act windfalls like winning lottery tickets for long-sought expansions.

• Scheerpost ☛ Facing Felony Trial, Joliet Police Whistleblower Who Exposed Black Man’s Death Retires

• Scheerpost ☛ The Chris Hedges Report: Breaking the Cycle of American Violence

  America’s deadliest epidemic is fueled by dangerous numbness and self-loathing, says Professor of Clinical Psychiatry Dr. James Gilligan, whose work analyzes the crisis of nihilistic violence through patient case studies, Greek myths, and Shakespeare.

• Scheerpost ☛ Chris Hedges: The Dawn of the Apocalypse

  We were warned for decades about the death march we are on because of global warming. And yet, the global ruling class continues to frog-march us towards extinction.

• Democracy Now ☛ Burma Executes Four Activists as Resistance to Military Government Grows Since 2021 Coup

  Human rights activists are sounding the alarm in Burma, where the military junta has executed four men imprisoned for their pro-democracy activism and opposing last year’s coup. It is the first series of reported executions in Burma in three decades. We speak to exiled Burmese dissident and human rights activist Maung Zarni, who says the international community should hold the Burmese regime accountable for its humanitarian crimes, especially in light of the overwhelming response to the Russian war in Ukraine. “This is a regime that has committed every single grave crime in international law that has ever been established and coded in the law books,” says Zarni.

• TruthOut ☛ Myanmar Executes Four Activists as Resistance to Military Government Grows

• Democracy Now ☛ 4,000+ Children Died: Pope Apologizes to Indigenous Groups in Canada over Residential School Abuse

  Pope Francis is on a historic trip to Canada this week to apologize for the mistreatment suffered by thousands of Indigenous children in residential schools run by the Catholic Church. Many survivors say the apology comes over half a century too late and the church should take further actions to prevent the psychological, physical and sexual abuse from recurring in Catholic-run institutions. We go to Toronto to speak to Mi’kmaq lawyer Pamela Palmater, who says the apology was little more than “pomp and circumstance” for the church, which ultimately “doesn’t take responsibility for their policies and practices.” Her Toronto Star op-ed is headlined “Another pope’s apology isn’t enough when Catholic Church’s cover-ups and hypocrisy continue to this day.”

• Techdirt ☛ Supreme Court Asked To Deny Qualified Immunity To County Engineer Who Decided Entrapment Was The Best Use Of Taxpayer Money

  We all know this country is capable of evils normally associated with authoritarian regimes — things like torture, illegal spying, the occasional exhortation to commit suicide, etc. But we expect the country we love to only violate our sense of justice for big things: War on Terror, War on Drugs, War on… Equal Rights, I guess.

• TruthOut ☛ DOJ Is “Finally Going for the Jugular” as Top Pence Aides Testify About Jan. 6

• Scheerpost ☛ CIA Vault 7 Leaker Found Guilty. What Did He Actually Reveal?

  CIA veteran John Kiriakou breaks down some of the most important elements of Vault 7—the biggest leak in CIA history—allegedly divulged to WikiLeaks by another former CIA officer.

• Site36 ☛ Secret border surveillance: Italy drastically restricts freedom of information

  Italian media no longer receive information about their country’s cooperation with the Libyan coast guard. Whether many millions of euros for equipment have been wasted there can now hardly be clarified. It also makes the EU border agency Frontex more opaque.

• TruthOut ☛ Outgoing Boris Johnson Government Passes Anti-Union Law Amid Looming Strike Wave

• TruthOut ☛ Roberts’s Attempt to Keep “Roe” Intact Fell Apart After Alito’s Draft Leaked

• Meduza ☛ ‘I can’t make peace with leaving’: Novosibirsk opposition politician Helga Pirogova on openly supporting Ukraine and being forced to flee Russia — Meduza

  In mid-June, Helga Pirogova, an opposition municipal councillor from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, wrote a critical tweet in response to a news article about Russian volunteer soldiers killed in Ukraine. Pirogova had been openly supporting Ukraine for months, but apparently this comment was the final straw. On direct instructions from agency head Alexander Bastrykin, the Russian Investigative Committee launched criminal proceedings against Pirogova for allegedly spreading “disinformation” about the Russian military. Facing up to three years in prison if tried and convicted, Pirogova made the difficult decision to flee Russia for Georgia. Speaking to Meduza, Helga Pirogova shares her story.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• The dangers of Microsoft Pluton

  In upcoming Intel, Qualcomm, and AMD processors, there is going to be a new chip, built-in to the CPU/SoC silicon die, co-developed by Microsoft and AMD called the Pluton. Originally developed for the Xbox One as well as the Azure Sphere, the Pluton is a new security (cynical reader: DRM) chip that will soon be included in all new Windows PCs, and is already shipping in mobile Ryzen 6000 chips.

  This new chip was announced by Microsoft in 2020, however details of what it was actually capable of, and what it actually means for the Windows ecosystem were kept frustratingly vague. Now with Pluton rolling out in some AMD chips, it is possible to put together a cohesive story of what Pluton can do from several disparate sources.

  Because Microsoft’s details are sparse, this article will attempt to summarize all that we now know regarding Pluton. It may contain inaccuracies or speculation, but any potential inaccuracy or speculation will be called out where possible.

• DeSmog ☛ Climate ‘Leader’ Netflix Donated to Pro-Pipeline, Koch-Supported Think Tank

  Netflix gives every impression of being one of the world’s most climate friendly corporations. 

  The streaming company responsible for the blockbuster climate movie “Don’t Look Up” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence plans to slash or offset all of its corporate greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2022, a goal known as net-zero.

Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Techdirt ☛ Why Meta’s Project To Translate Automatically Between 200 Languages Will Be Stymied By Copyright

    Meta’s AI division has announced two exciting new projects in the field of machine translation:

  • Torrent Freak ☛ HeHeStreams: Pirate IPTV Owner Admits Cybercrime, Forfeits $500K

    The former operator of pirate IPTV service HeHeStreams has reached a plea agreement with the US government. After being indicted on several counts carrying sentences of up to 20 years each, Joshua Streit has admitted to a single cybercrime offense. In addition to a potential prison sentence, Streit will now forfeit $500K.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ ‘Rojadirecta Ordered to Pay Over €500,000 in Sports Piracy Damages’

    Popular sports streaming site Rojadirecta has found itself on the losing end of a piracy battle in Italy. The Court of Rome has found the Spanish company liable for infringing the rights of local broadcaster Mediaset and reportedly ordered the streaming portal to pay 529,579 euros in damages. However, the court didn’t grant all Mediaset’s requests.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • Mediterranean without Borders

    Unconventional forms of representation like this, serve to make you pay attention to what is actually represented. In this case, it really made it clear to me how interconnected the mediterranean is (and was historically).

  • Ill after the trip

    Hoo boy am I feelign sick. I’ve had a fever of about 100℉ for 2 days give or take. I think it’s from the buza I drank in Białystok, or perhaps it was something I ate.

    I went to the doctor, and the prognosis was good, tho I still feel sick. I’ll get over this soon, hopefully. Gotta drink a bunch of Gatorade lol.

    Concerningly, a number of participants tested positive for coronavirus after the conference. I tested negatively, and I’m praying that the others recover swiftly.

• Technical

  • Vapad 0.1.0 prerelease

    So one of the Linux distros that I used a lot in my early days was Puppy Linux. Around the time I started with it, Puppy had two graphical text editors, Leafpad and Beaver. Leafpad was basically what you’d get if you were copying Notepad’s interface using Gtk+. It’s extremely simple and no frills. Even after moving away from Puppy, I continued to install Leafpad on whatever system I was on and made sure that it was the program used to open any text file when clicked on in a file manager. I did this for a rather long time, until I sat down and actually learned Vim.

    Xfce at some point adopted the Leafpad codebase and began improving upon it as their Mousepad editor. Mousepad initially only added tabs, and then syntax highlighting. And then, after a while, a funny thing happened

  • Building out a SOC

    I wrote this out for a HARO request, and figured it was worth posting the whole thing, because this stuff is getting done poorly everywhere!

  • PICO-8 and TIC-80

    Then I remembered the fantasy consoles PICO-8 and TIC-80.

    I bought PICO-8 a few years ago and played a few games. They’re really small, but many are fun. And the source always comes with the game, which is quite a nice culture really.

    When it comes to fantasy consoles I heard that there was an alternative: TIC-80. This was recommended to me on the basis that it’s open source, unlike PICO-8.

    I’m probably going to install both on my console. Since I’ve already bought PICO-8 it makes sense to use it, and TIC-80 is free anyway.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • beyond spartan

      I have working Gemini and Spartan server implementations under my belt now[1], and having spent some time seeking out Spartan-hosted content via clients that make it easy to traverse both geminispace and sparta it’s a pretty good experience.

      The only things I think I can feel missing in sparta which gemini makes a non-issue are user sessions of some sort, allowing specific interactivity, and protocol-level resiliance to bad actors on the network. In Gemini, both of these tasks are accomplished via TLS.

    • Running gemserv under proot

      I want to run gemserv in a simple container for process isolation from the main filesystem. The simplest container technique is ‘chroot’, which lets you run a process with a virtual root filesystem, or ‘proot’, which does similar but doesn’t require root any privileges. Since gemserv itself doesn’t require root privileges, and ‘proot’ does everything I need, that’s what I’ll use in this instance.

      The main benefit of all this is security, since it limits what can be seen by at attacker if the server is compromised in some way. It’s not particularly strong security, but it’s enough to mitigate the reach of many simple attacks, like those we saw in gemserv when dereferencing relative paths.

  • Programming

    • Call-tables and Medea

      Here’s a simple way to write JSON from call-tables. It’s very unoptimal for now since it uses an intermediate representation instead of writing directly…