10.01.22

Fedora 37 and SeaMonkey 2.53.14

Posted in GNU/Linux, Red Hat at 10:49 pm by Guest Editorial Team

Reprinted with permission from Ryan

I upgraded to Fedora 37 several days ago (pre-release).

Overall, that went well. (Post in process on that.)

SeaMonkey got bumped to 2.53.14 and it completely screwed something up to where almost any site I loaded in the browser crashed the browser.

Scrapping my old profile seems to have fixed it.

I’ve brought back my passwords, uBlock-Origin-Legacy, SeaTab-X-2, and Bookmarks, and got middle click paste off and autoscroll on in about:config.

I noticed when I went to install Palefills 1.21, it no longer works. I was looking forward to it because it says it fixes Google Drive.

Without Palefills working, Github and Gitlab broke again due to the shim not being applied, however I was able to fix those two sites by setting dom.webcomponents.customelements.enabled;true and dom.webcomponents.enabled;true in the about:config menu.

I had to get WebComponents on so I could reload the uBlock-Origin-Legacy site and click on the appropriate XPI package.

So far, I’m not seeing a hell of a lot of improvement in the Web platform department, although YouTube (Invidious already worked fine) is working better, and so are some other video sites.

The release notes suggested improvements to the Document Object Model, but if there are any, they must be minor because I haven’t seen a big difference on most sites.

Google refused to let me sign in on their Web site or through OAuth2, which is how they demand you sign in for IMAP now in a Mail client. Both said my browser was insecure, and demanded that I choose from a list of approved browsers.

So I set a fake user agent for Google.com to trick it into thinking I have Firefox 105 by creating a site-specific UA override called general.useragent.override.google.com as a new string in about:config and then setting the string value to Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:105.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/105.0 and then I went back and signed into SeaMonkey Mail using IMAP over OAuth2 and in the browser as well. I guess faking your user agent makes you “secure”.

I hate Google. I’ll probably need to go back and bump Google’s fake UA override for new Firefox versions at some point.

The only thing I saw that was “not secure” was that SeaMonkey still supports TLS 1.0 and 1.1, but you can uncheck them, and should.

For those who wonder, after setting up the fake user agent for Google.com, you can get SeaMonkey Mail to work using these settings.

Incoming Server: imap.gmail.com

Port: 993

User Name: your full gmail address

Connection Security: SSL/TLS

Authentication Method: OAuth2

Outgoing Server: smtp.gmail.com

Port: 465

User Name: your full gmail address

Connection Security: SSL/TLS

Authentication Method: OAuth2

Then you just save everything and go back to SeaMonkey Mail and click get messages, and then an authentication screen should pop up asking you to put in your google login and use your two step verification, then it’ll say Mozilla Thunderbird is trying to access your GMail Account. Tell it that’s fine.

That’s it. It should grab your email. Now you can send yourself a test email to make sure SMTP (outgoing mail) works too. It won’t ask you to authenticate again.

Now I just need to recover my other IMAP mail settings and ChatZilla, and wait for the next disaster update.

I don’t know why I keep this going along. Nostalgia, maybe.

Google (and Microsoft Outlook) switching to OAuth2 and blocking “insecure apps” has nothing to do with Security, of course. It’s about vendor lock-in and the end of normal email clients.

If Microsoft goes down the path of blocking SeaMonkey Mail, I’ll enter a fake UA for their sites too and then log in anyway.

For now, Microsoft’s Outlook IMAP settings are here. (username is always your complete email address).

Make sure to take note that you need to use TLS/SSL for the incoming server, but the outgoing server demands STARTTLS. *sigh*

Also, if your account uses two factor authentication you need to make an app password by going here and clicking on “Security Basics” and then ignoring everything else it says. The app passwords are under Advanced Security Options/Create a New App Password. Then you use that password in your non-2FA applications.

I tried setting up OAuth2 with Microsoft Outlook, however it said only work and school accounts can use that.

Also, remember to set your GMail to use the GMail SMTP server and Outlook Mail to use it’s own, otherwise all your outgoing email will go through SeaMonkey’s default, which is the first one you set up. 🙂

Now, off to set up ChatZilla again…. *sigh*

Get Facebook working again.

Facebook’s “modern” site is completely hosed in SeaMonkey, but you can fix it two ways.

Go to about:config and make a new site-specific user agent for Facebook. New String, and then use string value general.useragent.override.facebook.com from here, there are two choices.

Do you want some old no-JavaScript site that’s not really that easy to use, or do you want a more functional mobile site that it gives if it thinks you use Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 11 (more functional mobile site with JavaScript) – Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 11.0; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko

Opera 12 (no-JS mobile) – Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 11.0) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.17

I have no idea what sites will break but I can usually get something to work again by hacking around it.

Google Drive is messed up. I do back some things up there. Fortunately, I can get around this by mounting it as a file system in GNOME Files (Nautilus).

All this has left me wondering… How does bumping a minor browser update manage to eat its own profile?

Regardless, I did get around to spring cleaning my bookmarks file after several years of them accumulating dead links and stuff I don’t care about anymore, and organizing them into folders, then backing it all up again.

Also, GMail is set up in a way that they’re not going to lock me out of again. They’re doing nasty things to email clients and then apparently, graciously, allowing it to work again in Thunderbird. 😛

I think it’s completely stupid not having an email client in your browser. You open Thunderbird and it’s like opening an entire second copy of Firefox just to get at your mail, and ChatZilla is a rather nice IRC program.

Maybe that’s why I tolerate this. Plus, half the reason I write these posts is so _I_ can remember how I got things working later. █

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‘Linux’ Foundation, While Hoarding Over $200,000,000 Per Year, Calls Itself ‘Non-Profit’

Posted in Finance, Fraud, Kernel at 10:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Less than 1% of that money goes to the Linux trademark holder and almost nothing (less than a minuscule 5%) goes to the community which develops GNU/Linux (more money is spent on the fancy/vanity misguided office where almost nobody uses GNU/Linux)

Summary: This video (10:55-11:28 above), which was published a few weeks ago, gives insight into how much money the Linux Foundation and its proxies raise per year while paying Jim Zemlin probably about $1.4 million per year already (because it’s all so charitable)

Recent: Linux Foundation Revenue Plunges ($18,000,000 Decrease in One Year) and Jim Zemlin’s Wife Has Her Company Sued for Securities Fraud (Class Action)

It’s just a front group for monopolies, borrowing the brand “Linux” to sound like it’s community-centric (while crushing actual communities).

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GNU/Linux Rises to Record Highs in Africa This Past September

Posted in Africa, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 8:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Recent: In Africa, Android is More Than Three Times Bigger Than Microsoft Windows | In Africa, Windows Has Been Reduced to Minority Market Share Almost everywhere

Summary: According to this map and these latest plots (based on data from about 3,000,000 Web sites), Windows majority is long lost in Africa and (‘proper’) GNU/Linux usage keeps rising (not just Android, which uses Linux)

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Ongoing Efforts to Convince OSI to Drop the Microsoft Funding (Which Comes With Strings, Such as the OSI Attacking the GPL)

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, GPL, Law, Microsoft, OSI at 8:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A bundle of meaningless buzzwords should not be weaponised to ‘perfume’ illegal actions

Summary: It’s becoming increasingly clear that buzzwords and hype get misused to misframe and distract from abuses; we’re meanwhile trying to convince the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to drop Microsoft because it pays the OSI for a disinformation campaign (portraying large-scale GPL violations as “AI”)

Earlier this year we wrote about this European consultation regarding machine learning or “Hey Hi” (AI) as they prefer to dub it. I’ve meanwhile begun corresponding with the most senior people at OSI about how the OSI became a propaganda mill of Microsoft, helping to justify illegal behaviour — for Microsoft gains — by dubbing it “Hey Hi”. This conversation is still ongoing and I can only hope it’ll be fruitful. Deep inside they’re well aware that they sold out to Microsoft; they just play ‘bait and switch’ with excuses for it. I’ll keep pressing and report the outcome.

As an associate of ours explained (as he has seen this discussed some time yesterday in IRC), it’s about “either machine learning in general or machine learning and copyright violation GPL evasion aka plagiarism.”

“With the link above,” the associate noted (the European consultation), “it seems not possible to link directly to the Summary report: Ares(2022)2620305 nor to the comments; They are both blocked by gratuitous JavaScript” (MIT Technology Review wrote about this at the time).

“See also the EU link and the zip file there too,” the associate concluded. “Most of the comments in the zip file are crap but there are some good ones in there too.”

We’ll keep on communicating with OSI bigwigs and see if they can openly acknowledge that helping Microsoft attack the GPL is bad for everybody and needs to end (along with Microsoft funding that motivates such attacks). The OSI seems to think that any Microsoft money is good or benign; they’re becoming another Linux Foundation, i.e. Microsoft front group mislabelled after the stuff Microsoft actively attacks. I’ve not divulged any names or conversations for diplomatic purposes.

A lot of work we do is generally under-appreciated because it is invisible, or as it happens ‘behind the scenes’. Let’s hope we can report something positive soon. It’s worth trying to correct things, not only complain about them. █

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Richard Stallman on Libre Software

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FSF, GNU/Linux, Videos at 8:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Richard Stallman on Libre Software from LispNYC on Vimeo.

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IBM’s Lobbying for (and Stockpiling of) Software Patents is Ruining Fedora and GNU/Linux in General

Posted in Free/Libre Software, IBM, Patents, Red Hat at 7:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Fedora suffers from software patents, hence it removes features while IBM lobbies for such patents and gives software patents to patent trolls (in patent sales)

In our Daily Links, over the past 3-4 days in particular, we’ve included about half a dozen links about Fedora removing support for some very important functionality. Other distros as well follow suit, all for patent reasons. Meanwhile Microsoft is shoving those patent traps into WSL, having paid for or gotten a patent licence. This is already being brought up in Phoronix Forums (link intentionally omitted, but it’s certainly there and it’s quoted in our IRC channels).

“In other words, IBM is arguably an enemy of Fedora itself and its policies harm GNU/Linux on the desktop.”What does that have to do with patents? The removal of the feature, which many consider to be essential, is said to be due to “patent trolls”, but nobody wishes to name “software patents”. IBM (which controls Fedora) not only lobbying for software patents; it’s also arming such trolls with software patents.

In other words, IBM is arguably an enemy of Fedora itself and its policies harm GNU/Linux on the desktop. We’re one of the very few sites that dare mention this perfectly factual point. █

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Microsoft Doesn’t Like Open Source; It’s Badmouthing, Stereotyping, Attacking It (to Shift Blame)

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD, Microsoft at 7:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The issue here is Microsoft, but watch who is being attributed the blame

That’s like Microsoft’s media moles blaming "Go" for malware that is merely written using Go

Summary: This week I found out that a dear old friend lost all his money (about 150,000 pounds) due to a Microsoft LinkedIn scam; watch how Microsoft blames unpopular nation states, “open source”, the victims, and attackers (basically anyone but Microsoft), just as it does when defects in its software go unfixed for months

Related: Attempts to Legislate Against Free Software in Order to Elbow Such Software Aside (connected to lobbying by Microsoft)

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Techrights on Gemini (gemini://): About 3.3 Million Page Requests in First 9 Months of 2022

Posted in Site News at 6:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Looking back at January until September, in 2022 we received far more requests over gemini:// than in 2021 (not surprising given Gemini’s growth)

Due to some occasional technical issues these numbers are incomplete, but the numbers logged are follows (the underlying data gets permanently deleted):

January 317009
February 426341
March 474302
April 360762
May 487047
June 311320
July 369790
August 266711
September 220943

Give or take 50k-100k for technical issues, so the total is about 3.3 million.

Some people don’t fancy bloat and images.

And Geminispace continues to grow steadily:

Maybe 3,000 by year’s end. █

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