Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 21/10/2022: FSF on Privacy and digiKam Recipes 2022.10.21



  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • InfoQResiliency Superpowers with eBPF

        Liz Rice considers several facets where eBPF can help, from dynamic vulnerability patching through super-fast load balancing to multi-cluster networking.

      • Tom's HardwareIntel Releases First Arc Graphics Driver Package For Ubuntu

        Intel has officially released its first graphics driver package, designed for Linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. The new driver stack will allow any PC user to quickly set up an Arc GPU in their system as if it were a Windows-based system.

      • TechgageIntel Releases First Arc GPU Driver For Linux, Tinkering Prowess Required - Techgage

        Intel has just released the first Linux-bound graphics driver for its new Arc graphics cards, and as long as you’re running Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04, you should be able to get going fairly quickly. We emphasize “fairly” because you will be copying and pasting a fair number of commands to get your card fully operational. In our multiple rounds of testing the install of this driver, we ran into no issues.

        All of the commands required to get the Arc driver installed can be found on this respective dGPU support page. Before the copy and paste action begins, you should type in “sudo ls” and then your password to prevent hiccups with the first command block. Some of the provided command blocks have multiple commands paired together; all can be copy and pasted together and executed as one in the terminal.

    • Applications

      • Make Use OfThe 10 Best Color Picker and Color Management Apps for Linux

        If you're working in the design industry, these color picker and color management Linux apps are a must for you.

        For designers and graphic artists of all types, color is a key component of the job. How do you manage those colors? How do you determine the right one? How do you hone in on exactly the hue you want?

        Turns out, there are free and open-source apps available to handle each of these tasks on Linux. And the options available may be more diverse than you think.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • peppe8oPowering the Raspberry PI Pico from External Batteries

        Power your Raspberry PI Pico with batteries: tutorial to understand how to use a battery pack...

      • AddictiveTipsHow to Use Libre Office on a Chromebook

        Chromebooks are more powerful than you think. It’s no longer just a web browser anymore. It is also possible to run Linux programs, even Libre Office. This guide will show you how to use Libre Office on your Chromebook.

      • Make Tech EasierHow to Install Metasploit Framework on Ubuntu Linux - Make Tech Easier

        Penetration testing is a type of security testing used to test an organization’s defenses. Your goal as a pentester is to find and exploit vulnerabilities in the system to gain access to sensitive data or systems. One of the most popular tools for conducting penetration tests is Metasploit. In this tutorial we show you how to install Metasploit Framework on a Ubuntu Linux machine.

      • DebugPointHow to find GNOME Shell version from the Terminal

        Here’s a quick guide on finding the GNOME desktop (or Shell) version via the command line and GUI.

      • Video: How To Generate ed25519 key

        Here's a quick guide on how you can find GNOME Shell version in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions (GUI and CLI method).

      • Evaggelos Balaskas - System Engineer: Automatically delete files in object storage

        In the last few months of this year, a business question exists in all our minds:

        -Can we reduce Cost ? -Are there any legacy cloud resources that we can remove ?

        The answer is YES, it is always Yes. It is part of your Technical Debt (remember that?).

        In our case we had to check a few cloud resources, but the most impressive were our Object Storage Service that in the past we were using Buckets and Objects as backup volumes … for databases … database clusters!!

        So let’s find out what is our Techinical Debt in our OBS … ~ 1.8PB . One petabyte holds 1000 terabytes (TB), One terabyte holds 1000 gigabytes (GB).

        We have confirmed with our colleagues and scheduled the decomissions of these legacy buckets/objects. We’ve noticed that a few of them are in TB sizes with million of objects and in some cases with not a hierarchy structure (paths) so there is an issue with command line tools or web UI tools.

      • nixCraftHow to tell ssh client to ignore ssh config file

        have a tutorial that explains the basics of the SSH client configuration file and some of the most common configuration options for Linux and Unix developers or sysadmin. In this quick tip, I will explain how and why you sometimes need to ignore or exclude the ssh client config file under Linux, Unix, *BSD and macOS.

      • ID RootHow To Enable BBR on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to enable BBR on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, BBR a.k.a Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time is a new congestion control algorithm developed at Google. Its helps to improve the connection speed. The main goal of BBR is to initiate network utilization and reduce queuing. However, this feature should only be enabled on servers and not at the network or client level.

        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 enabling TCP BBR 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.

      • HowTo ForgeHow to Install Mastodon Social Network on Ubuntu 22.04

        Mastodon is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services.

      • The New StackLinux: Manage Multiple Versions of Node.js with the NVM Manager - The New Stack

        Node.js is a crucial development tool for cloud native development. Because Node.js is very resource-efficient and high performing, it’s perfectly suited for apps and services that need to function at a larger scale. With Node.js, you can develop SaaS applications, such as those used by Netflix, Uber, and Linkedin.

        You probably already know what Node.js is. For those of you who do not, it’s an open source server software that runs on almost every platform. An asynchronous, event-driven JavaScript runtime, Node.js is ideal for building scalable network apps and services. Node.js can be used to create very basic applications (such as the always fun “Hello, World” app) to very complex applications.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • digiKam Recipes 2022.10.21 released

          Time for another revision of the digiKam Recipes book. This update features a completely revised chapter covering the versioning functionality in digiKam. It now offers a clear explanation of how versioning works in digiKam, which can help you to get the most out of this versatile feature. The Add shell scripts to the Import module chapter has also been revised to include a better practical example of how to use shell scripts with the Import tool.

        • TSDgeos' blog: KDE Gear 22.12 release schedule finalized

          This is the release schedule the release team agreed on

          https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_22.12_Schedule

          Dependency freeze is in TWO weeks (November 3) and feature freeze one after that.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • BSD

      • The Register UKOpenBSD 7.2 is out –€ with Apple M2 support ● The Register

        OpenBSD 7.2 is here, spanning an impressive 14 different computer platforms, including FOSS fans who have the newest Apple Arm-based Mac models.

        The Reg FOSS desk took a look at OpenBSD 7.1 back in April, and for an overall assessment, what we said there stands. Version 7.1 was mainly noteworthy for including fairly preliminary support for Apple Silicon-based Macs, meaning the M1 processor. The new version 7.2 builds on that by adding three new Arm-based platforms: Apple M2-based Macs, Ampere's manycore Altra CPUs, and Lenovo's Snapdragon-based Thinkpad X13s.

        The release notes list this version's new features in detail, and there's even more in the changelog. This is a minor version, so the changes are relatively modest: various bugfixes, improved handling of power management and SMP, and better support for running in Oracle Cloud instances. There's better support for some newer Intel wireless and graphics chipsets, including the AX210 and AX211 Wi-Fi chips, and the built-in graphics of Intel Alder Lake and Raptor Lake processors.

      • FreeBSDKeeping FreeBSD Secure: Learn the Whys and Hows with the FreeBSD Sec Team | FreeBSD Foundation

        We all know the scene. The room is dark, with the only light provided by the laptop screen. The hooded figure is typing furiously at the keyboard. Suddenly, lines of symbols, letters, and numbers fly into the terminal window as the nefarious character smiles brightly. They. are. in.

        But not so fast! The dogged security team has been planning for this. Protocols are in place. The breach is secured; the sinister hacker is captured; and of course, the world is saved. Ah, MovieOS. Don’t you just love it?

        Now we all know in the real world, trying to keep any type of technology secure is nearly a herculean task. Strengthening security for the FreeBSD Operating System is no different. But we wanted to know more about exactly what the FreeBSD Security Team does and why they do it. So, we sat down with Gordon Tetlow, a volunteer FreeBSD Security Officer, and Ed Maste, Deputy Security Officer, and Mark Johnston, a FreeBSD security team member. The latter two are sponsored by FreeBSD Foundation and support the security team in both ongoing operational aspects of the team’s work, and proactive development.

      • FreeBSDNew How-to Guide: Binary Package Management on FreeBSD | FreeBSD Foundation

        If you haven’t used packages for software management in a while, it might be time to give them a try again! Since the introduction of the pkg management tool, binary package management has become incredibly simple and fast on FreeBSD. Binary packages are pre-compiled and require no in-depth understanding of compiling software on FreeBSD, making them the ideal method to install software for new users.

      • DragonFly BSD DigestSEMIBUG: NetBSD and Security, tonight - DragonFly BSD Digest

        SEMIBUG is hosting a presentation by David Maxwell on security and NetBSD, tonight. It’s hosted online so if you can read this, you can attend.

      • DragonFly BSD DigestIn Other BSDs for 2022/10/22
    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Fedora ProjectFedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2022-42

        Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

        I have weekly office hours on Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time) in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

      • Fedora ProjectFedora Community Blog: CPE Weekly Update – Week 42 2022

        This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering) Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat.

        We provide you both infographics and text version of the weekly report. If you just want to quickly look at what we did, just look at the infographic. If you are interested in more in depth details look below the infographic.

      • NeuroFedoraThe NeuroFedora Blog: Next Open NeuroFedora meeting: 24 October 1300 UTC

        Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 24 October at 1300 UTC. The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • The easier way to install Steam on Linux gets bleeding-edge graphics support

        Installing Steam on a Linux system just got a little easier, at least if you can install a Snap package. Ubuntu-maker Canonical announced today that its Steam Snap supports "bleeding edge" Mesa graphics APIs, with more improvements coming soon.

        Snaps are self-contained packages that are easier for users to install without command lines and also contain the other programs and libraries they rely on, preventing conflicts between the versions of installed software applications (i.e., dependency hell). They're theoretically easier to update through a store app and are sandboxed from the rest of the system. They're also not universally appreciated in the greater Linux community, as they're pushed primarily by Canonical through its Snap Store and can reduce the performance of some apps.

        Canonical worked with Steam-creator Valve to create the Steam Snap in "Early Access" in March. It bakes in the Mesa drivers and Proton and Wine wrappers needed for some Windows-via-Linux games, resolves the 32-bit/64-bit discrepancies for certain libraries, and handles the other necessary items that users would typically be pulling in via command-line and private repositories.

        The latest Steam Snaps add support for removable media, high-DPI displays, and localization. Canonical states that the app also benefits from a migration to Core 22 and LZO compression. (Snaps were originally developed for Ubuntu's mobile OS and embedded/Internet of Things platform. It's complicated.)

        At the moment, installing the Steam Snap pulls in the very latest Mesa drivers from Oibaf's PPA repository. In the near future, Canonical wants to let Snap installers customize their install if they wish, choosing "fresh" or "turtle" Mesa drivers for the latest point release or stable releases, respectively.

      • Silicon AngleCanonical debuts Ubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu release with improved support for IoT developers and devices

        Linux software company Canonical Ltd. today announced a major new release of its popular Ubuntu operating system. Ubuntu is one of the most widely used versions of Linux and is especially popular with large enterprises, which use the software to power all kinds of public cloud environments and business applications.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • MedevelBuild Your Cycling Computer with RaspberryPi Zero: Pi Zero Bikecomputer

        Pi Zero Bikecomputer offers you a complete open-source guide and tools to build your own GPS cycling computer with Raspberry Pi Zero (W, WH, 2W).

        The project is the brain child of Hishizuka, who is a cyclist and a developer as well from Japan.

        Pi Zero Bikecomputer is a GPS and ANT+ bike computer based on Raspberry Pi Zero(W, WH, 2 W). This is the first DIY project in the world integrated with necessary pieces of hardware and software packages for modern bike computer.

        It measures and records position(GPS), ANT+ sensor (speed/cadence/power) and I2C sensor (pressure/temperature/accelerometer, etc.). It also displays these values, even maps and courses in real-time. In addition, it writes out log into .fit format file.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Tom's HardwareRaspberry Pi Revives Tank Simulator from the 1970s | Tom's Hardware

        If there’s one thing the Raspberry Pi is good for, it’s breathing life into old hardware. Of all the projects we’ve covered involving vintage hardware, we’ve never seen something quite like this Raspberry Pi-powered tank simulator that YouTuber Tom Scott had the privilege of demonstrating in his recent video. This simulator was originally built in the 1970s but still works today thanks to a little help from our favorite SBC.

        According to Scott, this is the last 1970s tank-driving simulator left in the world. The unit features a box in which users can sit with realistic controls that would be found inside the cockpit of an actual tank. The screen shows them what’s in front of the tank while the box is rigged to tilt and move in real-time to simulate the effects of driving a tank in the real world.

      • Tom's HardwareBigTreeTech's CB1 Takes On Raspberry Pi CM4 | Tom's Hardware

        BigTreeTech known primarily for its 3D printing accessories, has released a Raspberry Pi CM4 (opens in new tab) alternative board. The device, as reported by CNX Software (opens in new tab), uses the exact same form factor as the Compute Module, but downgrades the specs. Still, if you’re after a low-power board for IoT or other product that needs the kind of IO a CM4 can provide, this looks like a reasonable replacement.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • Document FoundationNew Liaison role for the Native Language Communities - The Document Foundation Blog

        We are launching a new role in the Native Language Communities. This role aims to improve the communication between the global projects, The Document Foundation and the local communities.

        This communication should be directed in two ways: keep local communities informed on what is happening internationally, and keep the international community informed of what is achieved by the local communities.

        My hope is also that TDF will be able to bring more help, if it is informed of the achievements, difficulties, wishes and needs locally.

    • FSF

      • FSFPrivacy and freedom should be the legacy we leave, not the opposite

        October 21st marks Global Encryption Day, a time that calls to mind the many benefits of an unfairly (but increasingly) maligned technology. This has given us an occasion to reflect on recent attacks to encryption on the part of governments, specifically the European Union.

        [...]

        Chat control measures have been discussed in the EU for some time. Now, they seem dangerously close to adoption. They follow a temporary measure adopted by the European Parliament, which requested that communication providers voluntarily hand over information to law enforcement sourced from an individual's communications. A proposal currently under discussion within the Council of the European Union seeks to make this measure permanent, and moreover, to make it mandatory for email and chat hosts to spy on their users. In the case of end-to-end encryption, this means installing a permanent client-side backdoor into both free and nonfree messaging apps. And while there has been some resistance to legislators' actions from advocacy groups like European Digital Rights, and others in the EU, this has not created a change in direction. Chat control needs to be stopped in its tracks.



    • Programming/Development

      • Martin FowlerConways Law

        Pretty much all the practitioners I favor in Software Architecture are deeply suspicious of any kind of general law in the field. Good software architecture is very context-specific, analyzing trade-offs that resolve differently across a wide range of environments. But if there is one thing they all agree on, it's the importance and power of Conway's Law. Important enough to affect every system I've come across, and powerful enough that you're doomed to defeat if you try to fight it.

        [...]

        Conway's Law is essentially the observation that the architectures of software systems look remarkably similar to the organization of the development team that built it. It was originally described to me by saying that if a single team writes a compiler, it will be a one-pass compiler, but if the team is divided into two, then it will be a two-pass compiler. Although we usually discuss it with respect to software, the observation applies broadly to systems in general.

      • How Trying New Programming Languages Helped Me Grow as a Software Engineer

        When you use one programming language daily in your job as a Software Engineer, it's easy to fall into the trap of that language bubble. I want to show you how stepping outside your comfort zone and learning new languages and paradigms helped me grow as a Software Engineer.

        Over the years I've transitioned from frontend developer to full-stack developer and even tried professional game development! In that time, I managed and mentored developers at different stages of experience.

      • RAII: Compile-Time Memory Management in C++ and Rust :: The Coded Message

        I don’t want you to think of me as a hater of C++. In spite of the fact that I’ve been writing a Rust vs C++ blog series in Rust’s favor (in which this post is the latest installment), I am very aware that Rust as it exists would never have been possible without C++. Like all new technology and science, Rust stands on the shoulders of giants, and many of those giants contributed to C++.

        And this makes sense if you think about it. Rust and C++ have very similar goals. The C++ community has done a lot over all these years to pioneer new programming language features in line with those goals. C++ has then given these features years to mature in its humongous ecosystem. And because Rust also doesn’t have to be compatible with C++, it can then steal those features without some of the caveats they come with in C++.

      • A Real World React -> htmx Port

        It is all well and good talking about REST & HATEOAS in theory or describing the Hypermedia-Driven Application architecture, but, at the end of the day, what matters in software is practical: Does it work? Does it improve things?

        We can say for sure that htmx works, since we use it in our own software. But it is hard to say that it would be an improvement over other approaches, since we haven't had an apples-to-apples comparison of how htmx might compare with, say, react.

      • Python

        • Musings on Python Type Hints

          "Gradual Typing" has become incredibly popular over the last 8 years or so. The most notable examples of this phenomena exist in the JavaScript space. Since JavaScript is the lingua franca of the web there have been several efforts to leverage the benefits of static type systems to enable easier programming-in-the-large for JavaScript. Gradual type systems such as TypeScript and Flow have found the most success in this space.

  • Leftovers

    • TediumNew Ellijay TV: Making Local TV Awesome Again

      If you were given a golden ticket of sorts, what would you do with it? What would you build? Would you quit working for a while, or perhaps not work as hard? Or how would you leverage that opportunity that windfall to make your little slice of the world just a little bit better? Recently, I had a chance to talk to a longtime social media pal who is doing something really ambitious and awesome, the kind of thing that makes me wish that more people like him were out there taking big swings. And it comes down to putting a 2022 spin on an old idea: Making a TV station for the local community. Today’s Tedium dives into a creator who’s taking an ambitious idea on the air … along with the rest of his small town.

    • Science

      • Simon WillisonEthics: will you be an AI vegan?

        I’m finding the ethics of all of this extremely difficult.

        Stable Diffusion has been trained on millions of copyrighted images scraped from the web.

        The Stable Diffusion v1 Model Card has the full details, but the short version is that it uses LAION-5B (5.85 billion image-text pairs) and its laion-aesthetics v2 5+ subset (which I think is ~600M pairs filtered for aesthetics). These images were scraped from the web.

        I’m not qualified to speak to the legality of this. I’m personally more concerned with the morality.

        The final model is I believe around 4.2GB of data—a binary blob of floating point numbers. The fact that it can compress such an enormous quantity of visual information into such a small space is itself a fascinating detail.

    • Security

      • Security WeekCISA Tells Organizations to Patch Linux Kernel Vulnerability Exploited by Malware [Ed: This is just a privilege escalation issue]

        The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a Linux kernel flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog and instructed federal agencies to address it within three weeks.

      • HackadayThis Week In Security: Linux WiFi, Fortinet, Text4Shell, And Predictable GUIDs | Hackaday

        Up first this week is a quintet of vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel’s wireless code. It started with [Soenke Huster] from TU Darmstadt, who found a buffer overwrite in mac80211 code. The private disclosure to SUSE kernel engineers led to a security once-over of this wireless framework in the kernel, and some other nasty bugs were found. A couple result in Denial-of-Service (DOS), but CVE-2022-41674, CVE-2022-42719, and CVE-2022-42720 are Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities. The unfortunate bit is that these vulnerabilities are triggered on processing beacon frames — the wireless packets that announce the presence of a wireless network. A machine doesn’t have to be connected or trying to connect to a network, but simply scanning for networks can lead to compromise.

      • Computing UKLinux kernel receives patches for serious Wi-Fi vulnerabilities [Ed: Got fully patched immediately]
      • USCERT#StopRansomware: Daixin Team

        CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA), #StopRansomware: Daixin Team to provide information on the “Daixin Team,” a cybercrime group actively targeting U.S. businesses, predominantly in the Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) Sector, with ransomware and data extortion operations. This joint CSA provides Daixin actors’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) obtained from FBI threat response activities and third-party reporting.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • EasyList is in trouble and so are many ad blockers

          You may not be aware of it, but the work of every ad blocker is powered by “filter lists” — lists of rules that tell the ad blocker how exactly it should block ads. EasyList is a community-run project that maintains one of the world’s most popular ad blocking filter lists.

          There are many popular lists (AdGuard filters is one of them), but EasyList has always stood out as the most prominent and the most popular one. If you're using an ad blocker, there's a 99.99% chance you are using EasyList or one of its derivatives.

          [...]

          Unfortunately, CloudFlare does not allow non-enterprise users use that much traffic, and now all requests to the EasyList file are getting throttled.

    • Environment

      • Energy

        • Silicon AngleBitcoin community casts wary eye at government regulation and central banks

          The cryptocurrency community is on a collision course with government regulators and the centralized banking system, and the outcome could have big repercussions for a digital currency model based on decentralized finance and peer-to-peer transactions around the globe.

          The coming collision was very much on the minds of attendees at Bitcoin Amsterdam this week, billed by event host Bitcoin Magazine as the “biggest Bitcoin conference in Europe.” The Netherlands setting offered a bit of irony. The Bank of Amsterdam was established in 1609 as the world’s first true central bank, and the Sibos central banking conference was taking place at the same time in a different venue across town.

          “Are they talking about which nation state they want to cancel from the financial system?” BTC Inc. Chief Executive David Bailey asked in opening session remarks. “I can promise you that’s not what we’re talking about here. As we say in bitcoin: Fix the money and fix the world.”

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • uni YalePhantom Forests: Why Ambitious Tree Planting Projects Are Failing - Yale E360

          It was perhaps the most spectacular failed tree planting project ever. Certainly the fastest. On March 8, 2012, teams of village volunteers in Camarines Sur province on the Filipino island of Luzon sunk over a million mangrove seedlings into coastal mud in just an hour of frenzied activity. The governor declared it a resounding success for his continuing efforts to green the province. At a hasty ceremony on dry land, an official adjudicator from Guinness World Records declared that nobody had ever planted so many trees in such a short time and handed the governor a certificate proclaiming the world record. Plenty of headlines followed.

          But look today at the coastline where most of the trees were planted. There is no sign of the mangroves that, after a decade of growth, should be close to maturity. An on-the-ground study published in 2020 by British mangrove restoration researcher Dominic Wodehouse, then of Bangor University in Wales, found that fewer than 2 percent of them had survived. The other 98 percent had died or were washed away.

        • [Old] Barcelona-style “superblocks” could make a surprising number of cities greener and less car-centric

          More than 40% of the street network in some cities is suitable for transformation similar to Barcelona-style “superblocks,” according to a new study. The findings highlight the possibilities as well as the complexities of making neighborhoods in diverse cities greener and less car-centric.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Deutsche WelleJulian Assange faces 'uncertain future,' his wife tells DW – DW – 10/14/2022

        Stella Assange said her husband's fight for freedom was not a legal battle anymore, but lies in the hands of politicians. Assange has also been nominated for the European Union's top human rights prize.

      • JURISTWikileaks founder Julian Assange in poor health, lawyer says - JURIST - News

        Jen Robinson, human rights lawyer for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Australian reporters Wednesday Assange is in poor health for his coming legal proceedings. Assange faces extradition to the US where 18 counts of illegally obtaining, receiving and disclosing classified information await him.

        UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition in June. Assange is in the midst of appealing the order. If Assange’s appeal to stay fails, the 51-year-old could serve up to 175 years in US federal prison.

        The extradition order comes after years of protracted legal battles with Sweden and the US. The threat of possible deportation to Sweden caused Assange to take refuge in Ecuador’s London-based embassy. Ecuador granted Assange’s asylum request in 2012. The Swedish government eventually dropped all charges in November 2019 ending its extradition request.

      • The Age AU‘It’s horrible’: Lawyer Jen Robinson on the toughest part of working for Assange

        Her clients range from Julian Assange to Amber Heard, West Papuan freedom fighters to female soccer players – surfer, Bomaderry High grad and London-based human rights barrister Jennifer Robinson reveals the challenges of defending the world’s disenfranchised.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Technical

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Marginalia's Index Reaches 100,000,000 Documents

          A very brief note to announce reaching a long term goal and major milestone for marginalia search.

          The search engine now indexes 106,857,244 documents!

          The previous record was a bit south of seventy million. A hundred million has been a pie-in-the-sky goal for a very long time. It's seemed borderline impossible to index a that many documents on a PC. Turns out it's not. It's more than possible.

      • Programming

        • Forth double numbers are bass akwards

          My forth (octiforth maybe?) is a 32-bit, i386 implementation. Partly because I was messing around with a 32-bit OS, partly because I like the minimalism/challenge of not-enough-registers.

          Forth provides for double integers -- Forth was often 16 bits and double-ints were 32, but for a 32-bit forth 64-bit double-ints are sensible. Looking at some doc it appears that the two parts of a double are stored in a big-endian way: the high component is below the low.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Maintenance Reminder
We'll carry on publishing
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part VIII - Mobbing and Silencing of Dissenting Staff
that's the very cornerstone of functional democracies with real opposition parties
Reader Shares Recent Memes on Slop and 'Coding' by LLMs
"just some funny memes I thought were relevant to current coverage."
Invitation to General Assembly After 1,200 EPO Workers Participated in the Demonstration 3 Days Ago
"the strike of 19 March was also very well followed."
 
Gemini Links 22/03/2026: LLM Slop Attacks USENET, Announcing Pig (New Game in Gemini Protocol)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 21, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, March 21, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 18 Out of 200: Third Parties Funding Attacks on the Messengers, Lawsuits Against GAFAM-Critical Voices That Uphold Real National Security
Women are like kryptonite to them
Never Trust People Who Write Their Own Wikipedia Pages (Vanity Pages About Themselves) or Ask Friends to Do So. Also: Jono Bacon is Married to Microsoft.
We'd hardly be the first to point out Wikipedia isn't what it seems
No Tolerance for Attacks on Family Members
Being a Free software activist ought not lead to "collateral damage" like attacks on family members, including doxing
Sirius Open Source is Just a Zombie Firm With Shell Entities
Many companies fake their health and their size
Communities Can Only Survive When Trust Prevails
PCLinuxOS is still a vibrant and authentic community
Techrights Was Always a Community Site
The harder we're attacked, the more people participate in the site
Behind the PR Smokescreen and Microsoft-Sponsored Chaff, Microsoft Layoffs in "AI" Alleged This Month
In an age when ~1,000 simultaneous layoffs aren't enough to receive any media coverage, what can we expect remaining publishers to tell us about Microsoft layoffs in 2026?
Bluewashing at Confluent: Some Workers to Leave Within 3 Months (IBM Mass Layoffs)
Is the "era of AI" an era when none of the media will mention over 800 layoffs? [...] There's a lesson here about the state of the contemporary media, not just IBM and bluewashing
Microsoft OpenAI, Drowning in Debt and Forced to Make Significant Cuts (as Reports Reveal This Month), Does Hiring Disguised as "Takeovers" to Fake Value or Alleged Potential
Remember what happened to Skype last year
Slop Does Not Replace Art, It Contaminates Everything With Reckless Nonsense
many Computer Scientists do not want programs to get contaminated by slop
Coders Don't Just Reject 'Vibe Coding' Because They're "Luddites", They Just Know the True Cost of Slop
if some programmer says slop sucks, don't rush to assume selfishness or defence of one's occupation
When Nobody Else Covers the News
There's an obvious "media blackout" regarding the mass layoffs
Links 21/03/2026: David Botstein Dies, Slop as Censorship Apparatus
Links for the day
Links 21/03/2026: Metastablecoin Fragmentation and Crescent Moon
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/03/2026: Historic Ada Docs; The Lurking LLM on the SmolNet
Links for the day
HSBC the Latest Failed Bank Using Slop as Excuse for Its Financial Failure
"HSBC is planning on cutting as many as 20,000 jobs in the near future as the company allies with AI revolution."
A/Prof Susan G Kleinmann, Enkelena Haxhija & Debian-private risk to MIT
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 20, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, March 20, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 17 Out of 200: A Long Track Record of Online Abuse, Then Choosing a Low-Cost Law Firm to Muzzle People Who Have Illuminated This Abuse for Over a Decade
Censorship by targeting ISPs and webhosts isn't unprecedented
Plagiarism in "Linux" Clothing (LLM Slop in linuxiac.com, LinuxTeck.com, and linuxsecurity.com)
The net effect of those slopfarms is very negative
Links 20/03/2026: Facebook Weaponised Politically, Openwashing by LF and NVIDIA, Encyclopedia Britannica Sues Microsoft Proxy for Plagiarism
Links for the day
The EPO's Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) Explains to the Administrative Council (AC) How Bad Things Have Become at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, Biggest Patent Office, and Corruption/Cocaine Hub (Jobs Sold to Friends)
We'll say a bit more tomorrow
IBM's Red Hat Diversity: Only 3 Women (Out of 11 Leaders)
For comparison's sake, the FSF is about 50% female
Symptom of Publishers Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop. Symptom of Software Companies Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop ('Vibe').
It'll always fail. It's hype. It's a bubble.
Under IBM, Red Hat Replaces Code With LLM Slop, Fedora is Slopware
Not even hiding it, those things are in plain sight
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Depictions of Culture and The Social Smolnet
Links for the day
SimilarWeb Was Never a Reliable Yardstick for Traffic
5RB may need some "house-cleaning"
Strangulation, suffocation, Jonathan Carter & Debian toxic culture confirmed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Reports or Hearsay Suggest Ogilvy Broke Up With IBM and Insiders Report Mass Layoffs in "Infrastructure" (Might Impact Red Hat Entrants)
hearsay in Social Control Media
Scheduled Server Maintenance Tomorrow Night
Starting 9PM
None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/03/2026: Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award and BMG Sues Anthropic for Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
Even Uganda Understands That Journalists Never Belong in Prison
"Ugandan authorities must respect the spirit of this ruling and abandon any measures that seek to jail Ugandans for the free flow of ideas."
Inaction Helps Your Enemies
Without freedom, there's nothing else left
Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles)
Windows fell by a lot
"systemd is essentially a corporate IBM/Redhat project and corporations of course will comply"
Microsoft and IBM care about users' freedom like Cheeto Lump cares about the US Constitution
Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Over Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800
For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron)
Is IBM another Enron?
"IBM boss Arvind Krishna... financial package valued at $38 million in calendar 2025 - equivalent to the average collective pay of 765 Big Blue workers."
continues to ruin the company to enrich himself while pretending he has a strategy
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026