Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 03/02/2023: Proton 7.0-6 Released, ScummVM 2.7 Testing



  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • DebugPoint ☛ How to Install elementary Tweaks Tool

        This quick tutorial demonstrates the steps to install elementary Tweaks tool/Pantheon Tweaks Tool. The elementary Tweaks tool is a handy utility specially designed for elementary OS. It gives you various options to change certain settings for elementary.

      • Citizix ☛ How to install and configure Redpanda on Ubuntu 22.04

        Redpanda is a Kafka€®-compatible streaming data platform that boasts of being€ 10x faster and 6x more cost efficient. It is also JVM-free, ZooKeeper-free, Jepsen-tested and source available. It is distributed as a single binary with everything thus allowing you to deploy in minutes. It works natively with Kafka tools.

    • Games

      • ScummVM ☛ ScummVM 2.7.0: Call for testing!

        A few months have passed since we released ScummVM 2.6.1. It's time to prepare for a new release!

        Our lovely developers added support, yet again, for a bunch of new ancient games that require testing:

        • Soldier Boyz
        • GLK Scott Adams Interactive Fiction games (C64 and ZX Spectrum)
        • GLK Scott Adams adventures 1-12 (TI99/4A format)
        • Obsidian
        • Pink Panther: Passport to Peril
        • Pink Panther: Hokus Pokus Pink
        • Driller/Space Station Oblivion
        • Halls of the Dead: Faery Tale Adventure II
      • 9to5Linux ☛ Proton 7.0-6 Released with Support for UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection

        Proton 7.0-6 is here with support for new games, including the critically acclaimed UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection, as well as Gotham Knights, Heroes of the Dark, King under the Mountain, NinNinDays2, Super Arcade Racing, 雀姬 (Mahjong ladies), and Crazy Machines 3.

        This new Proton release also brings improvements to video games that were already supported, such as Septerra Core, Persona 5 Royal, Vampire Survivors, Super House of Dead Ninjas, Enemy Mind, Out There Somewhere, Zeepkist, Overcooked! All You Can Eat, Quake III: Arena, Quake III: Team Arena, Marvel Snap, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Spyro Reignited Trilogy.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Make Use Of ☛ Carbonyl Lets You Use a Graphical Web Browser in Your Linux Terminal

        Browsing the internet in your terminal is cool, but limited. Image support can be sketchy, and JavaScript may as well not exist. If you plan on consuming media, you're out of luck.

        Carbonyl is a Chromium fork for your terminal. It's a full-fat browser that adheres to, and is compatible with modern standards, meaning that pages behave as they should, and you can even watch streaming video, within the Linux terminal!

  • Leftovers

    • World Economic Forum ☛ Tech Power and Cooperation
    • Black Hand: The Devil Himself

      How an elite London night club fell under the control of an intelligence-linked sex blackmail agent, self-described satanist and antique dealer named Horace Dibben.

    • Federal News Network ☛ Lauded rebel fashion designer Paco Rabanne dies at age 88

      Spanish-born fashion designer Paco Rabanne has died at age 88. The company that owns the Rabanne brand on Friday announced the death of the designer known for perfumes and metallic, space-age fashions. Fashion and beauty company Puig described Rabanne as a “visionary designer” and “among the most seminal fashion figures of the 20th century.” Rabanne’s fashion house shows its collections in Paris and is scheduled to unveil the brand’s latest ready-to-wear designs during the upcoming Feb. 27-March 3 fashion week. Coco Chanel reportedly called Rabanne “the metallurgist of fashion.” He used various kinds of metal in his designs, including the chain-like mail associated with Medieval knights.

    • Latvia ☛ Only 400 Russian citizens have registered for Latvian language test

      This year, thousands of citizens of the Russian Federation residing in Latvia€ will have to pass a language test to extend their residency permits in Latvia. The Citizenship and Migration Affairs Office (PMLP) has intended to send out reminders to all these people, which has caused some controversy in€ society, Latvian Television reported on February 2.

    • Jim Nielsen ☛ CORS, CORB, CORP, COOP, COEP, C…

      I recently watched“A Hipster History of CORS”, a talk from Strange Loop 2022 by Devdatta Akhawe, Head of Security at Figma. Devdatta does a great job of taking a complex, even boring, subject like CORS and weaves it into a funny, interesting narrative history. He connected many previously disparate dots in my head, making me go “Ah-ha! That’s why things are the way they are on the web.”

      For example, when working on myReadlistsproject, I ran into an issue where I couldn’t use JavaScript to read the contents of an image fetched from a third-party website. I couldn’t understand why there was a limitation there. “I fetch images all the time with<img src="...">but I guess JavaScript’s not gonna let me?”

    • Axios ☛ Office occupancy crosses 50%, a post-pandemic high [Ed: People are being herded back into cages in spite of health risks]

      Office occupancyhit a new post-pandemic record this week, at 50.4%, according to swipe data from Kastle Systems.

      Why it matters:Are the offices half-full or half-empty? Some executives might see crossing the 50% milestone as a sign of a comeback. But the figure has largely plateaued since September, hinting at a new reality where people work from home a lot more.

    • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Rise Of Cities In Eurasia

      The earliest large settlements didn't have monarchs.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Seoul city to crack down on teen use of ‘room cafes’

      These businesses provide private spaces and simple food, but some teenagers are reportedly using them for sex and booze.

    • The Straits Times ☛ China hotel, catering job openings surge on post-Covid demand recovery

      There’s also high demand now for drivers, plane and train crews, and tourism and factory workers.

    • The Straits Times ☛ China to fully resume travel with Hong Kong, Macau on Feb 6

      Group tours between China and Hong Kong and Macau will resume.

    • The Age AU ☛ The easy work option might not always be the best

      Inevitably, any career decision comes with a degree of uncertainty and risk. It is often our appetite for certainty that can derail us.

    • The Age AU ☛ The workplace rights of arts workers can no longer be ignored

      The Albanese government’s new Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces can strengthen the arts sector by improving the pay, safety and welfare of its workers.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Sitting in O'Hare

        The first part of my weekwas spent in Adams, Massachussets. I flew into Albany, New York on Sunday. Oddly, this location's scenery reminded me of Colorado around the Glennwood Springs/Aspen area. Not an exact match, but it reminded me of it strongly. It makes sense since this too is a ski area.

        I stayed in a high rise hotel. Odd since I was in the small town of Pittsfield. I never expect to see a high-storey building in a small town. This hotel was very hostile to its guests especially with the parking situation. The parking garage was closed "for renovations." I put that in quotes because there were no construction workers to be found the entire time I was there. The available parking was a block away at a bank. They "offered" valet service for the parking. I put that in quotes because the valet service started at 0730 and I had to be out and about before that every single day I was there.

      • Fountain Pens

        Recently I have gone fountain pen mad. It all started from seeing the Muji fountain pen. It is an aluminium affair which has a knurled pen grip area and feels very industrial chic. At a low low price of 18, it was a bit of a no brainer. Something clicked and I felt a need to find out more. Queue reading reviews and watching videos. Then I fell into the rabbit hole.

      • Album #165: Let's Stay Together

        Al Green pops up frequently enough on DJ Time Traveller's weekly radio show that I'm familiar-ish, but this was the first album I've listened to. It's starts strong and keeps going. His voice is versatile. The instrumentation never veers too far in to sappiness, nor does it ever really take centre stage. From start to finish, it’s a pleasure to listen to.

      • minimalism

        Perhaps one problem with minimalism isn't what it removes, but what it leaves: the computer, with all it's storage, and access to the internet. Don't get me wrong: I'm not one for rolling back the internet, but I am one for not being sucked into and controlled by the internet. How do we solve this?

      • Learn better

        Better learning is not reading a book in order it's going backwards in a course when you're not sure it's writing to the author when you think he's wrong It's summarising

    • Technical

      • Finally, I switched over to OpenBSD

        I have been wanting to move my daily driver over to one of the BSDs for some time now, I have written in the past about my experience's with FreeBSD [0]. At the time, the limiting factor was the hardware I was running and the issues that caused. However, now that I have the mini-pc new hardware I thought this would a good week to try it out. One evening I took the plunge, backed up $HOME on my current Alpine Linux setup and installed OpenBSD. It was super simple, and I was up and running in a shell within 15 minutes.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Getting rid of google: The *really* easy stuff and why I may have wrote my previous post a bit too fast

          So I haven't updated in a bit, but I still wanted to start things off by finishing my series of posts on getting rid of google and reduce internet surveillance.

          Here, I'll discuss hoping out of Youtube (well, more or less) and Gmail and explain where I really was too hasty last time, before giving some first thoughts on it all.

        • Zaibatsu downtime notice

          On Saturday the 11th of February, the Mare Tranquillitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu (zaibatsu.circumlunar.space) will be taken offline for an operating system upgrade. This phlog (and all the others hosted here!) will obviously be unavailable during this time. I will endeavour to keep the Gopher downtime as short as possible!

        • And into February

          I originally started this entry at 09:40 this morning, because I knew I'd be too tired this evening after work. Here I am finishing the entry at 21:27. It has been this way lately: finish work, have dinner, then tea, entertain two cats, and then it's time for bed. I must be getting old, because I'm usually awake quite early, therefore I go to bed early.


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



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