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Links 14/07/2023: Godot Engine Needs Help, AlmaLinux Diverging From RHEL, Rust 1.71.0 is Out



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • GamingOnLinux Star Labs announced the compact Byte Mk II PC
        Need a new mini-PC? Hardware vendor Star Labs have announced their refreshed Byte Mk II and it looks like quite a tidy little unit.

        Coming with an Intel N200 fanless processor, dual 1Gbps ethernet, coreboot and 8GB 3200MHz RAM (up to 16GB) and a 480GB PCIe SSD (up to 2TB) it has what you need to get going. As usual for Star Labs it has exceptional support for various Linux distributions with you being able to configure it with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, elementary OS, Linux Mint, Manjaro and more options.

    • Applications

      • Linux LinksMachine Learning in Linux: LibreTranslate is Self-hosted Machine Translation

        We recently explored Argos Translate, state of the art neural machine translation software. That software provides a Python library, command-line interface, and a GUI.

        LibreTranslate is a machine translation API which is entirely self-hosted. This software lets you use open source machine translation in your projects. It uses Argos Translate for its translation engine.

        We tested LibreTranslate with the Arch distro. As we recommended in our review of Argos Translate, use a virtual environment to install LibreTranslate. We’ll use conda, but you may prefer to run the software with Docker.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Data SwampEasily use your remote scanner on Linux (Qubes OS guide)

        Hi, this is a quick guide explaining how to use a network scanner on Qubes OS (or Linux/BSD in general).

        I'll be using a network printer / scanner Brother MFC-1910W in the example.

      • Ruben SchadeMy home IPv6 network plans

        Our ISP began offering IPv6 earlier this year. Rather than a single public IPv4 address, we’ve now been delegated a /48, from which our router can DHCPv6 addresses to every Internet-connected interface in our local domain.

      • APNICPrivacy and networking: Part 8 — IPv6 addresses and privacy

        One of the biggest advantages of IPv6, from a network administration perspective, is the ease of renumbering. While IPv4 networks can be renumbered using DHCP, the process of changing the address of every device on a network is always fraught with unexpected challenges. People (like me) have a habit of manually assigning printers and network-attached storage (NAS) devices a fixed address so they will be easy to find and use.

      • University of TorontoTwo views of security and vulnerability scanners

        In my entry on how web server should refuse requests for random URLs, I mentioned that we have an open source security and vulnerability scanner. Among the reactions I saw to that entry was people who felt that such scanners are basically a bad idea, and in thinking about the issue I've decided that I can see two views of such scanners.

    • Games

      • GamingOnLinuxFactorio upgraded with controller support - now in the stable release

        Factory building and automation sim Factorio has a fresh stable release out, continuing years of free upgrades and it now has gamepad controller support. Becoming available first in the 1.1.83 experimental build that I wrote about previously, the developers continuing refining various bits in the game for a few more testing releases before pushing it out to everyone today.

      • GamingOnLinuxGodot Engine has a new funding platform and they're calling for help

        With Godot Engine moving over to being supported by the Godot Foundation directly, they've begun pushing for people to support their efforts via their new funding platform inspired by Blender.

      • GamingOnLinuxNintendo Switch emulator yuzu makes some big progress in the latest report

        The incredible team building the Nintendo Switch emulator yuzu have a new progress report out for June 2023 and it's quite a doozy. Yes June, they're running over previous work. As usual, it's a lengthy read full of technical speak and exciting features and fixes so I'm here to summarise the important bits for you.

      • GamingOnLinuxTeam Fortress 2 - Summer 2023 Event is live as it smashes player records

        Finally it's here! Valve has updated Team Fortress 2 with a Summer Event for 2023 and it appears to have exploded the player counts. Going from around 100-125 thousand players at time to a record-breaking€ 253,997 peak as of 2 hours ago. Seems TF2 has plenty of life left in it, if only Valve gave it a bit more regular attention huh?

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • SDx CentralIstio Service Mesh hits milestone (years after the open source project should have)

      The open source Istio service mesh project is hitting a major milestone today as it officially graduates to be a full project at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

      Istio describes a service mesh as “a dedicated infrastructure layer that you can add to your applications. It allows you to transparently add capabilities like observability, traffic management, and security, without adding them to your own code.”

      Graduation at the CNCF is an indication of the maturity, usefulness, contribution and production-grade quality of a project, which are all check boxes that Istio arguably achieved years ago. Istio was originally started by Google in 2017, where it remained until April 2022 despite repeated calls from users and other vendors for the project to be contributed to a neutral third-party organization. That organization is the CNCF, which is also home to the open source Kubernetes container orchestration project that is routinely the primary way that Istio is deployed.

    • UndeadlyOpenBGPD 8.1 released

      Version 8.1 of OpenBGPD, the OpenBSD Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing daemon, has just been released.

    • GamingOnLinuxAMD opens up the FidelityFX SDK and it's now on GitHub

      Helping game developers integrate various AMD FidelityFX technologies into their games, AMD yesterday open sourced the FidelityFX SDK.

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Mozilla

        • Mozilla4 things we learned from Mozilla’s Responsible AI challenge

          From chat engines and generative apps to self-driving cars, technologies that use artificial intelligence continue to transform our lives in new ways. But how do we create AI that serves society without disempowering some of us? How can we make sure these innovations are fair and trustworthy?

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • YottaDBMaking lua-yottadb Fast

        TLDR: YottaDB is a fast and clean database and it deserves a Lua API that is as fast as possible. This article discusses how we improved lua-yottadb to go ~4× as fast when looping through database records, and a stunning 47× as fast when creating Lua objects for database nodes, plus other improvements (results here). Low-hanging fruit aside, the biggest (and trickiest) improvement was caching the node’s subscript array in the Lua object that references a specific database node. Finally, porting to other language wrappers is discussed, as well as a tentative thought on how YDB might support an even faster API. Along the way we learned numerous things that might help someone port these efficiencies to other languages.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • A complete guide to factory reset LibreOffice to its default state

        LibreOffice is a powerful and versatile open-source office suite that provides a free alternative to commercial software like Microsoft Office. While using LibreOffice, you may encounter issues or experience glitches that can disrupt your workflow. In such cases, a factory reset can often resolve these problems and restore LibreOffice to its default settings. In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through how to factory reset LibreOffice, step by step.

    • Education

      • RIPEConnected to Port 53 - A Report from the DNS Hackathon 2023

        DNS Hackathon took place during the weekend before RIPE 86 in Rotterdam. Co-hosted by DNS-OARC, Netnod and the RIPE NCC, it included 46 "hackers" who worked on 6 projects, had a lot of fun and many stroopwafels. Read about the results, and join us next time!

    • Programming/Development

      • Terence EdenA whimsical fuzzy clock

        And here we come to a central problem with any fuzzy system - repetitiveness. How to make it say something new every time it is called? I guess there are three main approaches: [...]

      • Evan HahnA picross game in 1024 bytes

        It was challenging to fit this all in just 1024 bytes! This post is a retrospective on the project.

      • Pierre EquoyAutomated blog builds with Sourcehut

        I am a happy Sourcehut user and I wanted to try its build service. Every time changes are pushed to a git repository hosted on Sourcehut, it is possible to trigger a series of actions described in a manifest that will be run in a virtual machine on builds.sr.ht. If you've ever used Github Actions or Gitlab Pipelines, you should be pretty familiar with this concept.

      • Rust

        • Rust BlogAnnouncing Rust 1.71.0 | Rust Blog

          The Rust team is happy to announce a new version of Rust, 1.71.0. Rust is a programming language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.



          [...]

          The behavior for unforced unwinding (the typical case) is specified in this table from the RFC which proposed this feature. To summarize:

          Each ABI is mostly equivalent to the same ABI without -unwind, except that with -unwind the behavior is defined to be safe when an unwinding operation (panic or C++ style exception) crosses the ABI boundary. For panic=unwind, this is a valid way to let exceptions from one language unwind the stack in another language without terminating the process (as long as the exception is caught in the same language from which it originated); for panic=abort, this will typically abort the process immediately.

          For this initial stabilization, no change is made to the existing ABIs (e.g. "C"), and unwinding across them remains undefined behavior. A future Rust release will amend these ABIs to match the behavior specified in the RFC as the final part in stabilizing this feature (usually aborting at the boundary). Users are encouraged to start using the new unwind ABI variants in their code to remain future proof if they need to unwind across the ABI boundary.
        • LWNRust 1.71.0 released [LWN.net]

          Version 1.71.0 of the Rust language has been released. Changes this time include the C-unwind ABI, an upgrade to musl 1.2, and more.



Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM May Well Be Laying Off Over 13,500 and Up to 27,000 Staff This Week When It Says "Single-Digit Percentage of Our Global Workforce"
It's not yet possible to know how many people IBM gets rid of
Early Unverified Figures About Scale of Latest IBM Layoffs
the real scale of the RAs will remain elusive
How Techrights Search Works
Hopefully bots won't use it
Techrights Became a Lot More Productive as a Result of Attacks on It
By default, it's safe to assume anything on the Web is garbage, especially in social control media
Unverified Rumours: IBM Cuts Will Continue Another ~10 Days, Managers Will Invite Those Impacted for 1-on-1 Meetings
Right now IBM likes diversity because with adoption of low-paid demographies it gets to pay workers less for the same work
analytics.usa.gov: Vista 11 Scarcely Used, GNU/Linux Increasingly Dominant (Microsoft Loses "Goodwill", Depletes Cash Equivalents, and Debt Soars)
"Total current assets" fell by more than 2 billion dollars in the past 3 months
Not Only Mass Layoffs at IBM But Complete Shutdowns "Amid A.I. Boom"
apparently about 10,000 layoffs, not counting those who got pushed out by PIPs and other means
 
Slopwatch: linuxbsdos.com, Linux Journal, LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and WebProNews
Either Google doesn't care about the integrity of Google News or it deems slop to be acceptable
Gemini Links 05/11/2025: Affirmation, GnuPG, and While Loops
Links for the day
Links 05/11/2025: Economic Trouble in France and US Bombing All Over the World Without Declaration of War or Congress Approving
Links for the day
Red Hat Staff Also Impacted by Latest IBM Layoffs With Focus on North America and Software, Infrastructure
After the bluewashing never expect to see news about "Red Hat layoffs", just as "Tivoli layoffs" aren't to be expected
Coming Soon: Part 4 About the EPO's Substance Abuse (Breaking Laws to Fake 'Production' and Profiting From Unlawful Monopolies)
Notice how quiet the EPO's management has been lately
For the Record: We Never Named Staff of the Law Firm That's Attacking Us, Except the One the Firm is Named After!
Just to affirm and be sure, I've used our new search facility
Links 05/11/2025: Medicare Privatisation and "Breaker Box Economy"
Links for the day
Techrights Search Will Come Early
Maybe tomorrow
It Seems Like GNOME/IBM Don't Like Women and When Budget is Limited Only Women Take the Fall
Seems like a very patriarchal, GAFAM-controlled Foundation
"Last Day" as in "IBM Sacked Me" (Cruel Euphemisms)
"The entire design and research technical leadership at IBM was laid off in the past year, including this round"
Shadow Crew and Ads Disguised as Articles
That The Register MS runs articles that are paid-for fluff isn't unprecedented
Vista 11 "Market Share" Has Fallen This Month, Based on statCounter
The US government's own data shows the same thing this month
This is How Mainstream Media, Boosted or Parroted by Slopfarms, Spins IBM's Commercial Failure and Mass Layoffs as "AI"
Some say "software focus", but most just resort to buzzwords and blame-shifting hype
Resisting Misogynists
Rianne has already added close to 100,000 pages to this site
Starting November on a Strong Note
All in all, this month started well for us as we have good, accurate publications with considerable impact
Fake Retirements Help IBM Keep the Layoff Figures Down
Yesterday we read that it was quite cruel how IBM (or Red Hat) compelled staff to pretend to be happily leaving or "retiring" when the reality was, they had been pushed out with some "package"
Cocaine at the European Patent Office Now a Subject in YouTube, Media Will Revisit the Topic
"The Cocaine Patent Office" is no joking matter
Gemini Links 05/11/2025: "Wuthering Heights" and "Winter is Coming"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 04, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 04, 2025
2 Days Until Site Anniversary Party, Search Likely to Launch Same Day
We're now just two days away from the nineteenth anniversary of the site
Richard Stallman's 2005 Article on Why Patents on Software Should be Denied
If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted, says Richard Stallman
"Last Day" at IBM and Red Hat as "Stealth Layoffs" (They Force People to Pretend It's Wilful)
So the real extent of the layoffs is being kept 'undercover'
Slopwatch: The WebProNews Slopfarm and the Serial Slopper
The Web is ill
Links 04/11/2025: Tensions Around Belarus Grow, Turkey’s Hype-inflation Continues
Links for the day
Corporate Media That Fails to Report Cocaine at EPO is Totally Failing to Report Mass Layoffs at IBM
How come nobody anywhere writes about this week's RAs?
Search @ Techrights: Almost There Now (Maybe an Anniversary Gift)
Just to be very clear, search would not be unprecedented at Techrights
At IBM, Layoffs Start at 1AM (at Night)
not a single English-speaking site covers the news about the layoffs
Links 04/11/2025: Google Cloud Account Engages in Censorship of the Innocent, arXiv Spammed by LLM Slop
Links for the day
EPO Cocaine Chronicles: Our Aim Will be to Ensure This Becomes a Mainstream Media Topic, Not a Suppressed Scandal (Which the German State Deems Embarrassing and Detrimental to Its Pan-European Patent Franchise)
At the EPO, and perhaps in German media as well, people "fall upwards" (they get rewarded for bad things)
Envy Makes People Do Self-Harming Things (and Harm to Others)
Online communities that can be deemed successful are built around trust, mutual respect, and collective accomplishment
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Made Techrights Better, Faster, Easier to Manage
Consider adopting SSGs if you still use a CMS such as WordPress
But he Was Born in Manchester! (Origin Stories)
Borussia Dortmund does not exist!
What Julian Darley Wrote About the Stallman Talk Regarding "AI" in Oxford (2025)
From LinkedIn (Microsoft)
GNU/Linux is American, Not Finnish
It started in Boston, not in Helsinki
'Hacker' 'News' Makes Dumb Assertions Against Smart People
A logical fallacy
We Turned Down Every Settlement Offer Because Truths Aren't Determined in Bank Accounts
Without free press, there won't be free society
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." -Galileo Galilei
This site is educational
Why I'm Always Proud of the Site I've Devoted My Life to
As a graffiti around the corner from our home says, "be a better person"
Standing Up or Standing for What's True But Inconvenient
Bad actors need to be called out
Many People Have Said That They "Leave" IBM in Recent Days (Ahead of Mass Layoffs)
So the real extent of layoffs is greater than what's publicly stated (there are silent layoffs) [...] Whatever IBM says about the scope, scale, or magnitude of the "RAs", it doesn't tell the full story
Media Coverage Regarding IBM is Vapourware and LLM Slop
With slop images, too
statCounter Says GNU/Linux Rose to 4% in the Russian Federation
Adoption of Vista 11 has been embarrassingly weak
Corruption is Not a Joke
we'll try to limit our use of humour to avoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations
The Slopfarm WebProNews is Overwhelming "linux" Results in Google News
Google News is slop
The Fall of IBM: What Happened?
Just like the EPO continues riding some old reputation acquired in the 1970s IBM relies on old myths like, "nobody gets fired for buying IBM."
IBM's CEO Already Has the Excuse for the Latest Wave of Mass Layoffs
Only days ago the CEO told a bunch of nonsense
Links 04/11/2025: Conflicts, Politics, and IPv6 at Home
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/11/2025: Entering WiFi Passwords and Programming Rambles
Links for the day
Arch Linux Seems Like the New Debian
Arch users (btw!) are growing in relative and absolute share
Analytics From US Government Affirm a Trend: Microsoft's "Market Share" in Search is Falling
the data set is large
Holding Institutions Such as the EPO Accountable Through Public Information
Speaking truth to power is never easy
Techrights Will Contact German Media About the EPO's Substance Abuse
This scandal won't "go to waste"
EPO Staff Losing Holidays, as Usual, as the Office Increases Profits by Illegally Granting Invalid Patents While Reducing Salaries
How much more can the staff endure and generally tolerate?
Free Software Does Not Always Speak for Itself, It Needs Advocates
Legal matters that relate to sharing of code will be discussed
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 03, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, November 03, 2025
The Register MS Continues Looking for Money in Promotion of the "AI" Ponzi Scheme
That The Register MS participates in this deceit rather than tackle/debunk it says a lot about The Register MS
IBM Layoffs in "Software", This Likely Impacts Red Hat as Well
Many people say "software" people are impacted
Escaping Proprietary Software, Not Just Escaping Microsoft
To take control of your life adopt GNU/Linux
A Lot of Fake News About Microsoft Headcount (Also: Microsoft's Debt Rose by About 24 Billion Dollars in Past 12 Months)
If you see some headline about Microsoft's CEO making claims about hirings, look away
Techrights Turns 19 in Three Days
It would be nice to meet for a chat
Akira Urushibata on How Grokipedia Fails to Work
The Grokipedia article gives the wrong character for the "Ko" on "Koan"
Links 03/11/2025: Data Breaches, Wars, and Digital Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2025: Poetry, Old Androids and Small Shells
Links for the day
The Rumour Was True, Mass Layoffs at IBM Today
How widespread the layoffs are (or how they're disguised, e.g. PIPs) is hard to assess
Links 03/11/2025: Internet Anniversary
Links for the day
Two Years of Uptime
Reboots are seldom involuntary
Richard Stallman is Giving Another Talk in Less Than a Fortnight
in two weeks' time (13 days from now)
Windows Falls Below 20% in the UK
Many people choose to leave Windows altogether
Microsoft's Search Business Falls to Lowest Point in 2 Years, Based on statCounter
what can Microsoft sell other than shares in Microsoft?
Evidence Regarding Layoffs at Red Hat
Seems like IBM layoffs
Microsoft: Our "Goodwill" Value Grew More Than Tenfold Since 2011
Hallmark of pseudo-economics
GNU/Linux as a Boarding Pass
being mostly analogue is still feasible
Links 03/11/2025: Lack of Trust in LLMs and Windows TCO at Jaguar
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2025: Books in October and Change
Links for the day
Mozilla Firefox Won't Survive and Many Sites Don't Work With It (Compatibility Abandoned)
The Web has become monocultural
Debian is Non-Free
Devuan might be worth looking into
Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli and LinuxSecurity
This is a real problem and most certainly a big problem because when people try to find real information about security and GNU/Linux they instead read "word salads" made by bots
Four Reasons to Party With Us in Four Days, Celebrating the Four Freedoms
Today we expect to be back to a more-or-less regular publication pace
Links 03/11/2025: The "Smartphone Panopticon" and Belarus' Hybrid Attacks on EU Intensify
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 02, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, November 02, 2025