Bonum Certa Men Certa

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



  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • DebugPointHow 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.

      • CitizixHow 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

      • ScummVMScummVM 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
      • 9to5LinuxProton 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 OfCarbonyl 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 ForumTech 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 NetworkLauded 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.

    • LatviaOnly 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 NielsenCORS, 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?”

    • AxiosOffice 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 WheelerThe Rise Of Cities In Eurasia

      The earliest large settlements didn't have monarchs.

    • The Straits TimesSeoul 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 TimesChina 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 TimesChina to fully resume travel with Hong Kong, Macau on Feb 6

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

    • The Age AUThe 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 AUThe 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.



Recent Techrights' Posts

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
"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
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini"
Links for the day
 
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
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
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
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network
For those who have not followed our story
Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs"
They know what's coming, they just don't know when
Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs
many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs
Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop"
If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
Links 19/03/2026: Culling Deepfakes of Artists’ Music and "Age Verification Isn’t the Answer"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants"
Links for the day
"AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
gets paid to do this
People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical
As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News'
Links for the day
The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today
Lots more to come
What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News)
Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop
This is IBM policy
IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed
Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already)
In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated
For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 15 Out of 200: Background and Particulars of Truth Regarding Techrights and Tux Machines
the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
A Slopfarms Survey for Today (linuxteck.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com)
Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit"
Links for the day
IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers
Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media)
Look for news about IBM and most likely it'll boil down to some sound bites from an executive and nothing else
New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM
Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago
RMS rightly calls those things "bullshit generators"
Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026
coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering
Links for the day
Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out)
There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him
his reputation is poor in the United States
systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware
Cannot allow choice
What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access"
Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
IBM Thrashing Confluent Upon Arrival, Based on Rumours
We deem it a bigger issue that investigative journalism perished, not that one must rely on hearsay online or mere "rumours"
Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It
What is happening to Europe???
EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
Links for the day
A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
Not going to work all month long
EPO Staff Demonstration Today
The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
Links for the day
LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026