● 10.18.21

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 19/10/2021: MyGNUHealth 1.0.5 and Ubuntu 22.04 Now Developed

Posted in News Roundup at 6:53 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ A Terror So Terrifying, You’ll Swear It’s Just A Myth – Invidious

• This Halloween comes a film so terrifying that you will swear it’s just an urban legend. You think nothing bad can ever happen to you. After all, you run Linux! But what did you install on that Linux machine? And what does it want from you?

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 147

• The pros and cons of tiling window managers, and how we nearly use them. Plus your feedback about Flatpak, Firefox as a Snap, a web-based image editor, starting a FOSS career, and why we have a Telegram group instead of IRC or Matrix.

=> ↺ FOSS Alternatives For The Windows Refugee – Invidious

• When you first switch to Linux it can be hard to out what alternatives you should look into for the apps that you want to run so today we’re going to look at exactly that

=> ↺ LHS Episode #436: Bowling for Ham Radio

• Hello and welcome to Episode 436 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short-topics episode, the hosts discuss an ARDC grant for high school STEM students, a pair of intrepid amateur radio hobbyists, state-sponsored ARCs in Africa, Ubuntu 21.10, Sysmon for Linux and much more. Thank you for listening and have a great week.

Applications

=> ↺ Get memory use statistics with this Linux command-line tool

• In my programming work, I often need to know the memory used by web applications. A rough estimate is usually enough before getting down to details and browser profiling tools.

• To interrogate memory use on Linux or macOS, people typically use top or htop. I’d love to see a single number: How much RAM did a process take. But statistics shown by these utilities can be hard to understand. With web browsers, it’s even more complicated because they often run many separate processes. They all show up in top output as a long list, each with its own individual metrics.

=> ↺ 4 Linux tools to erase your data

• One of the best ways to keep your data secure is by only writing data to an encrypted hard drive. On a standard drive, it’s possible to view data just by mounting the drive as if it were a thumb drive, and it’s even possible to display and recover even deleted data with tools like Scalpel and Testdisk. But on an encrypted drive, data is unreadable without a decryption key (usually a passphrase you enter when mounting the drive.)

• Encryption can be established when you install your OS, and some operating systems even make it possible to activate encryption any time after installation.

• What do you do when you’re selling a computer or replacing a drive that never got encrypted in the first place, though?

• The next best thing to encrypting your data from the start is by erasing the data when you’re finished with the drive.

=> ↺ Micro – simple and feature-filled command line text editor

• Many users prefer using command line-based applications for their day-to-day work, even if there are graphical alternatives. Of course, for some use cases, it might not be a choice, like logging into a system through SSH, but in many cases, we cannot resist the speed and elegance that the command line offers.

• Many command-line text editors are reasonably popular, like Vim, Emacs, or Nano. But we will take a look at a different editor today, which is called Micro. The specialty of this editor is that it is straightforward to use, with familiar keyboard shortcuts, while also containing several advanced features. As a result, it suits beginners and power users all the same. We will introduce and explore Micro in this article.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Query NTP Server in Terminal – CubicleNate’s Techpad

• I have this desire to do as much as possible to ensure that devices on my local network do not require the Internet to function. Obviously, it isn’t ideal to be cut off from the World Wide Web but I want to ensure minimal disruption. One such disruption I had recently are some Tasmota dimmer switches that became sluggish and unresponsive when they lost access to Network Time Protocal services on the Internet. Adding a local NTP server is another step in limiting my need for Internet services.

=> ↺ Regain your Privacy and Security in Digital Era

• With privacy and security being more important today than ever, it’s essential to know how best to protect yourself in this digital era.

• Apart from avoiding the internet completely, you can regain a lot of your privacy and security by simply using the correct services. For every major service that exists today, there is a similarly functioning application that respects your privacy. Usually, the privacy-respecting applications aren’t as well known as their popular counterparts.

• This article features a comprehensive guide about what digital services a person should use to maximize their privacy and security online. Read on to see our recommendations, and why we’ve chosen them.

=> ↺ How to Install and Play Doom on Linux

• Doom is a series of PvE first-person shooters that originated in the 90s. The first game, titled “Doom” was an instant hit. The series has received numerous awards for being the best action game and having one of the best soundtracks.

=> ↺ How to install Naruto Mugen on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Naruto Mugen on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

=> ↺ How to Format USB Drive on Linux

• A USB is a handy appendage that offers numerous options in terms of customization and allocation. However, to harness its capabilities, one needs to know how it works. We often need to change a file system for improved adaptability to a system or erasing data for any given purpose. In times like this, we need formatting. However, it is seen as a tedious task many don’t want to stumble upon. So in this article, we guide you step by step as to how you can format your USB drive. This can be done with the terminal or the “Disks” software. So, without further ado, let’s jump into it.

• USB formatting is seen as a strenuous task for many users. In the case of windows, there are several things one needs to look out for. However, it is comparatively easier in Linux. So, worry not, after going through this article, you will surely be capable of formatting your drive without any issues whatsoever.

=> ↺ How to play Elite Dangerous on Linux

• Elite Dangerous is a space flight simulator game developed and published by Frontier Developments. In the game, the player takes control of the “Commander” and goes on exploration missions. Here’s how to play the game on Linux.

=> ↺ How to play We Were Here Together on Linux

• We Were Here Together is a co-op first-person adventure puzzle game for Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation. It was released in 2019. Unfortunately, however, there’s never been a Linux release. Thankfully, you can play this game on your Linux PC with a few tweaks.

=> ↺ How to store files on the cloud for free with Ice Drive on Linux

• Ice Drive is a cloud storage solution that has excellent Linux user support. If you’re not a fan of big cloud providers like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or Dropbox, Ice Drive is a nice option. Here’s how to use Ice Drive on Linux.

=> ↺ Install Tesseract OCR on Linux

• This tutorial explains how to install Tesseract on Linux using both the Debian apt packages manager and the git repositories for other Linux distributions. Tesseract is the free and probably the best OCR solution in the market. Since 2006 it has been sponsored by Google; previously, it was developed by Hewlett Packard in C and C++ between 1985 and 1998. The system can identify even handwriting; it can learn, increasing its accuracy, and is among the most developed and complete in the market.

• If properly trained, it can beat commercial competitors like ABBY; if you are looking for a serious solution for OCR, Tesseract is the most accurate one, but don’t expect massive solutions: it uses a core per process, which means an 8 core processor (hyperthreading accepted) will be able to process 8 or 16 images simultaneously.

• Tesseract is a great solution, but before thinking about it, you must know that the last Tesseract’s versions brought big improvements, some of which mean hard work. While training could last for hours or days, recent Tesseract’s versions training may be of days, weeks, or even months, especially if you are looking for a multilingual OCR solution.

=> ↺ Jenkins Set Up and Install – Anto ./ Online

• Jenkins is an open-source automation server that enables developers to build, test, and deploy software. Additionally, you can install it on various operating systems such as Linux, Windows, macOS, etc. This guide will show you the various options to set up and install Jenkins.

=> ↺ Using the xargs command on Linux to simplify your work | Network World

• The xargs command on Linux can make it easier to build and execute commands. If you want to run the same command for a group of files or users, xargs can often make that process easier. Here’s a very simple example of xargs that creates or updates the update time on some files.

=> ↺ Install GUI on Ubuntu 20.04 Server & Desktop – Linux Nightly

• Although GNOME is the default GUI, there are many different desktop environments available for Ubuntu. If you want to try a different desktop environment, or need to install a GUI because you don’t have one yet, we’ll show you how in this guide.

• These instructions will also work for Ubuntu Server, which doesn’t have a GUI by default and only uses the command line.

=> ↺ How to Turn Raspberry Pi on and Off

• If you’ve just got your Raspberry Pi, you probably noticed it lacks a power button. This might leave you wondering how to turn the miniature computer on and off. Let’s walk through it all, step by step.

=> ↺ How To Install HTTrack on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install HTTrack on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, HTTrack is a web-based synchronization software for web pages. It takes any web page and fetches static content to store on the user’s local disk. HTTrack arranges the original site’s relative link structure. Simply open a page of the “mirrored” website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link as if you were viewing it online.

• 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 installation of HTTrack on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

=> ↺ What is Build Essential Package in Ubuntu? How to Install it? – It’s FOSS

• The build-essential package actually belongs to Debian. It is not a piece of software in itself. It contains a list of packages that are required to create a Debian package (deb). These packages are libc, gcc, g++, make, dpkg-dev etc. The build-essential package contains those required packages as dependencies, so when you install build-essential, you install all those packages in one single command.

• Please do NOT consider build-essential to be a super package that will magically install all kind of development tools from Ruby to Go for you in a single command. It has some development tool but not all.

=> ↺ DRBD with MySQL Centos 8 – Unixcop

• Drbd is a distributed replicated storage system for the Linux platform. It is implemented as a kernel driver, several userspace management applications, and some shell scripts. It is traditionally used in high availability (HA) computer clusters. Still, beginning with DRBD version 9, can also use it to create larger software-defined storage pools focusing on cloud integration.

• If you are using the virtual kernel as part of a virtual machine, you will need to compile the drbd module manually. It may be easier to install the Linux-server package inside the virtual machine. Check drbd user’s guide and MySQL.

=> ↺ Ansible: To use the ssh connection type with passwords, you must install the sshpass program – Anto ./ Online

• Unixcop – Linux and Unix Howtos, Tutorials, Guides, News, DevOps, DRBD creation steps on Centos 8 cluster nodes

=> ↺ Prevent Software Updater Installing Firefox Snap in Ubuntu MATE 21.10

• The “Software Updater” utility in Ubuntu MATE 21.10 tries to remove native Firefox package and install the SNAP version instead. If you’ve done that, here’s how to revert to Firefox DEB package and prevent the misbehavior.

• As you may know, Ubuntu is switching Firefox from native DEB to the universal SNAP package. Ubuntu 21.10 now has Firefox SNAP out-of-the-box, while its flavors are still having the classic deb package.

Games

=> ↺ Still early days, though, with experimental DXR 1.1 support

• Linux gamers wanting to play big-name Windows titles with ray tracing can start getting excited, as strides have been made with getting some games up and running via the VKD3D-Proton project, which is one facet of Steam Play (and its Proton compatibility layer for running Windows offerings).

• VKD3D-Proton translates Microsoft’s Direct3D 12 to Vulkan, and with the latest release which is version 2.5, there’s opt-in (early and experimental) support for DXR 1.1 ray tracing.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDE Announces Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition

• KDE Plasma 5.23 marks the 25th anniversary of the KDE desktop environment.

• This release brings a fresh new theme and custom color options along with enhancements to the app launcher, the software manager, and other Plasma tools and utilities.

=> ↺ Study of Editable Strokes for Inking

• So, with Krita 5.0 nearing completion. There’s been some discussion about what we’ll do next.

• On of the proposed topics has been to replace our calligraphy tool with something that can produce nice variable width editable lines.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ 5 Best GNOME Shell Extensions for Your Linux Desktop

• Not satisfied with the default GNOME functionality? Here are 5 of the best GNOME Shell extensions to make your Linux desktop shine.

• By default, GNOME Shell has a set of features that are determined by the developers. However, with the addition of GNOME Shell extensions, it’s possible to go beyond the default feature set.

• As the name suggests, GNOME Shell extensions extend the functionality of GNOME Shell desktop. They allow you to customize the default GNOME Shell interface and its parts, such as window management and application launching. You can think of extensions as browser add-ons that perform a specific task.

=> ↺ Dash to Dock is Finally Available for GNOME 40

• Dash to Dock is one of the most useful GNOME extensions for years now. With the introduction of GNOME 40, many failed to make the extension work with it.

• Of course, being a popular option, the support for GNOME 40 was expected to be added soon enough. And, finally, it is here!

• If you did not know, GNOME 40 includes a horizontal workspace view, which affected the workflow for some, but Ubuntu did not move the dock even with GNOME 40.

• So, you can still use Dash to Dock to get a horizontal dock from the overview area.

Distributions

Screenshots/Screencasts

=> ↺ KaOS 2021.10 Run Through – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at KaOS 2021.10. Enjoy!

=> ↺ Linux overview | Ubuntu Kylin 21.10 – Invidious

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of Ubuntu Kylin 21.10 and some of the applications pre-installed.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Protecting and storing data for a mobile bank app

• In the Secure a cloud-native application on IBM Cloud for Financial Services code pattern, I showcase how to integrate IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services in the Example Bank application to encrypt and secure data. To understand the process of integration, you must understand different terminologies such as bring your own key (BYOK), keep your own key (KYOK), key ceremony, database as a service (DBaaS) and envelope encryption. Although you can find information about these key concepts about the Hyper Protect Services scattered across the web, this blog post is my attempt to bring them together into one single point of reference.

• Sensitive data should be stored encrypted in the cloud. However, the key that is used to encrypt and decrypt the data should also be protected. Setting up on-premises hardware security modules (HSMs) can sometimes be hard to manage if you’re not already familiar with it. An inexpensive solution is to use cloud-based storage, but that has its own challenges. In this approach, you can’t be sure that the data is secured as the key that is used to encrypt the data, also known as the data encryption key (DEK), is spread in multiple computers.

• The solution that combines ease of use and cost effectiveness is to use a key management service (KMS) such as IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services (HPCS). HPCS provides access to a FIPS 140-2 Level 4 HSM that protects the customer master key and all other keys that are used to encrypt data at rest in IBM Cloud Object Storage, IBM Cloud Hyper Protect DBaaS, IBM Cloud Block Storage, and similar.

=> ↺ The NeuroFedora Blog: Next Open NeuroFedora meeting: 25 October 1300 UTC

• Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 25 October at 1300UTC in #fedora-neuro on IRC (Libera.chat). The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend.

=> ↺ Real-time Analytics News for Week Ending October 16 – RTInsights

• In this week’s real-time analytics news: Red Hat announced updates in its portfolio of tools and programs for building applications on Red Hat OpenShift, and more.

• Keeping pace with news and developments in the real-time analytics market can be a daunting task. We want to help by providing a summary of some of the items our staff came across each week. Here are some of the news items from this week:

• Red Hat announced a series of updates in its portfolio of developer tools and programs for developers building applications on Red Hat OpenShift. The updates were to Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines, Red Hat OpenShift GitOps, and the Red Hat build of Quarkus. Additionally, Red Hat expanded the roster of training resources available on Kube By Example.

=> ↺ What I learned about Kubernetes and Knative Serverless

• If you happened to miss this year’s Kubernetes Summer Camp, there’s some good news! The sessions were recorded and are available for on-demand viewing. Along with those, you’ll also get access to a variety of downloadable content, including a free O’Reilly e-book.

=> ↺ Awards roll call: August to October 2021

• From workplace accolades to product wins, we are proud to be able to highlight some aspects of our company and the recognition they’ve received in the past few months.

• We recently published our DEI Statement, which declares our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion—not just for our associates, but for our partners, customers and open source contributors.

• Our culture is rooted in transparency, collaboration, and inclusion—open source principles that continue to drive our company forward. We see the following awards as a recognition of our open source-driven innovation, where the best ideas can come from anywhere and anyone.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu 22.04 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish” Begins Development

• Canonical today formally opened the “Jammy” archive for development for what will be the next version of Ubuntu, 22.04 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish”.

• Ubuntu 22.04 as the “Jammy Jellyfish” is due out in April as the next Long Term Support release. The archive is now open for development to begin and auto-syncing from Debian is beginning.

• Python 3.10 changes will begin to land in Ubuntu 22.04. Also another big change this cycle is OpenSSL 3.0. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is also planning to ship with PHP 8.1, Ruby 3.0, GNOME 42.0, and an assortment of other package updates ahead over the next half-year. It’s great that they appear to jump from GNOME Shell 40 to 42 for this LTS cycle rather than aiming just for the recently released GNOME 41 components, thus returning them to the point of shipping the latest GNOME desktop components as of release time.

=> ↺ Jammy Jellyfish is now open for development

=> ↺ Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 705

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 705 for the week of October 10 – 16, 2021.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Ubuntu-ready Ryzen V2000 mini-PC starts at $639

• Simply NUC has launched a $639-and-up “Cypress” mini-PC with AMD’s Ryzen V2000 plus 2.5GbE, 2x HDMI, 2x DP-ready Type-C, 3x USB 3.2 Gen2, and a 128GB SSD for one of the 2x M.2 slots.

• Simply NUC (or SimplyNUC) has launched a Cypress Long Life Mini mini-PC, named for its 7-year supply guarantee. The system offers pre-installed Ubuntu or Win 10 running on AMD’s 7nm, octa- and hexa-core Ryzen Embedded V2000.

• Pricing starts at $639 for a Cypress LLM2v5Cy SKU with the hexa-core, 2.1GHz/3.95GHz V2516, $689 for the LLM2v6CY with the hexa-core, 3.0GHz/3.95GHz V2546, and $829 for the LLM2v8CY with the top-of-the-line, octa-core 2.9GHz/4.25GHz V2748. All these prices include 4GB RAM, a 128GB SSD, 1-year support, and either no OS or pre-installed Ubuntu.

=> ↺ Build A Dog Ball Launcher That Kinda Looks Like A Dog | Hackaday

• The design is straightforward. The 3D printed housing features a large funnel into which a ball can be dropped. A servo then holds the ball while a pair of rollers are spun up by brushed DC motors. After two seconds, the servo releases the ball towards the rollers which launch the ball out of the machine. A Raspberry Pi Pico runs the show, controlling the timing of the ball launch and varying the motor speed to change the distance the ball is launched on each firing.

=> ↺ Arm adds virtual testing platform for Corstone Cortex-A and -M ref designs

• Arm has launched an “Arm Total Solutions for IoT” initiative that combines its Cortex-A- and -M based Corstone SoC reference designs with a new “Arm Virtual Hardware Targets” platform for virtual, cloud-based testing.

• In 2018, Arm launched an Arm Corstone subsystem product line comprising prevalidated SoC reference designs that combine its core IP with security, debug, memory subsystems, and in some cases, NPUs. Now, Arm has expanded Arm Corstone with a cloud-based Arm Virtual Hardware Targets testing and development platform aimed at IoT. Together with a new Project Centauri ecosystem initiative for Cortex-M developers, the programs are wrapped up into an “Arm Total Solutions for IoT” umbrella platform.

=> ↺ 248: PinePhone Pro: Exclusive Interview with Pine64

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re being joined by Lukasz Ericenski of Pine64 for an Exclusive Interview about the new PinePhone Pro! Then we’re going to talk about NTFS improvements coming to the Linux kernel. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.

=> ↺ Amazon offered me half of what I paid for my Galaxy S20 FE 5G. The phone is so awful that I’m considering it. – BaronHK’s Rants

• I’m considering a Pine Phone Pro.

• My spouse laughed at me when I said it runs GNU/Linux and lets you do whatever you want. It sounds like the anti-iPhone to me. No crAPPs. No vendor lock-in. No freemium junk.

• But Samsung has been going downhill for years. Now, they don’t even want to talk to you unless you have thousands of dollars for a phone that will be obsolete or broken in a matter of 24-36 months (the Z series).

• The Pine Phone Pro is going to be $399 and Amazon is offering me a $200 gift card for this Galaxy phone.

• Which is half of what I paid for it last year, but I’m considering it.

• The stupid thing barely even works at all since T-Mobile bought Sprint and put the T-Mobile Network Experience SIM card in it. The stupid thing malfunctions the worst when I have 5G turned on, but it’s not great in LTE mode either.

• When it can get a network signal, the piece of trash is either beeping at me because it’s Samsung wanting me to agree to a new EULA or use Microsoft products that are also trash that I don’t want. (With NSA backdoors.)

• In the past 5 years, Samsung phones have gone from a couple of crapplets, just disable them, whatever, to an entire phone screaming at you that you MUST use Microsoft products.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Arduino Brings USB Mouse to Homebrew computer

• When building your own homebrew computer, everything is a challenge. Ultimately, that’s kind of the point. If you didn’t want to really get your hands dirty with the nuts and bolts of the thing, you wouldn’t have built it in the first place. For example, take the lengths to which [rehsd] was willing to go in order to support standard USB mice on their 6502 machine.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ The Apache News Round-up: week ending 15 October 2021

• Happy Friday, everyone. The Apache community has had another great week.

Events

=> ↺ The Intelligent Edge – Coming Soon to Arm DevSummit 2021

• For those of us not keeping score, we’re at the cusp of a technology shockwave that will fundamentally change the way we live, work, and interact with each other. Some call it the fourth industrial revolution (I4). While the third industrial revolution was all about process and product automation, the fourth industrial revolution (from an IT perspective) will center on the fusion of IT and OT.

=> ↺ Five of Monday’s ‘All Things Open’ Presentations We Wouldn’t Miss – FOSS Force

• If you couldn’t make it to Raleigh, North Carolina to attend this year’s All Things Open, you’re in luck. You can go to the conference’s web site and register for the free online version of the event, which will include live streaming of all presentations happening at the event (including all keynotes), as well as a large number of prerecorded presentations that were put together specifically for the online audience.

• That’s how we at FOSS Force are planning on attending this year, although downtown Raleigh is only a couple of hours away by car.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ This Week in Glean: Designing a telemetry collection with Glean

• (“This Week in Glean” is a series of blog posts that the Glean Team at Mozilla is using to try to communicate better about our work. They could be release notes, documentation, hopes, dreams, or whatever: so long as it is inspired by Glean.) All “This Week in Glean” blog posts are listed in the TWiG index).

• Whenever I get a chance to write about Glean, I am usually writing about some aspects of working on Glean. This time around I’m going to turn that on its head by sharing my experience working with Glean as a consumer with metrics to collect, specifically in regards to designing a Nimbus health metrics collection. This post is about sharing what I learned from the experience and what I found to be the most important considerations when designing a telemetry collection.

• I’ve been helping develop Nimbus, Mozilla’s new experimentation platform, for a while now. It is one of many cross-platform tools written in Rust and it exists as part of the Mozilla Application Services collection of components. With Nimbus being used in more and more products we have a need to monitor its “health”, or how well it is performing in the wild. I took on this task of determining what we would need to measure and designing the telemetry and visualizations because I was interested in experiencing Glean from a consumer’s perspective.

=> ↺ Firefox Add-on Reviews: How to choose the right password manager browser extension

• All good password managers should, of course, effectively secure passwords; and they all basically do the same thing—you create a single, easy-to-remember master password to access your labyrinth of complex logins. Password managers not only spare you the hassle of remembering a maze of logins; they can also offer suggestions to help make your passwords even stronger. Fortunately there’s no shortage of capable password protectors out there. But with so many options, how to choose the one that’ll work best for you?

• Here are some of our favorite password managers. They all offer excellent password protection, but with distinct areas of strength.

=> ↺ Mozilla Performance Blog: Performance Sheriff Newsletter (September 2021)

• In September there were 174 alerts generated, resulting in 23 regression bugs being filed on average 6.4 days after the regressing change landed.

• Welcome to the September 2021 edition of the performance sheriffing newsletter. Here you’ll find the usual summary of our sheriffing efficiency metrics. If you’re interested (and if you have access) you can view the full dashboard.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ Community Member Monday: Hlompho Mota

• I am a native of Lesotho, and a dreamer and a person who aspires to make changes. Currently I’m working in a business that serves other businesses in Lesotho to get recognition in the market, and generally grow to become more self-reliant. Other than my business, I do try and dabble in technology and try to understand how it works – and get a sense on how it can be relevant in the area of life that I live in at this moment.

• But besides that, I consider myself as lifelong learner and I hope that the learning will continue for the rest of my life. Currently, I’m a self-taught developer trying to participate in as many open-source projects as possible, with the hope of bringing much-needed development to my part of the world.

Funding

=> ↺ How Purism Funds Free Software

• Free software isn’t free. Free software geeks love to correct people by saying that the “free” in “free software” refers to freedom (libre), not cost (gratis). We even join in this word play at Purism by naming our laptops Librem–a combination of the words libre (freedom) and librum (book). Whether free software is written as a labor of love in someone’s free time or written as part of someone’s full-time job, even if the developer doesn’t charge for the software the cost to make it is still there. In this post I’ll talk about why Purism funds free software through hardware, and why we didn’t take some of the other popular approaches.

FSF

GNU Projects

=> ↺ MyGNUHealth release 1.0.5 is out!

• We are very happy to announce MyGNUHealth 1.0.5, the libre, privacy-oriented, Personal Health Record from GNU Health.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Use KPNG to Write Specialized kube-proxiers

• The post will show you how to create a specialized service kube-proxy style network proxier using Kubernetes Proxy NG kpng without interfering with the existing kube-proxy. The kpng project aims at renewing the the default Kubernetes Service implementation, the “kube-proxy”. An important feature of kpng is that it can be used as a library to create proxiers outside K8s. While this is useful for CNI-plugins that replaces the kube-proxy it also opens the possibility for anyone to create a proxier for a special purpose.

=> ↺ Dirk Eddelbuettel: dang 0.0.14: Several Updates

• A new release of the dang package arrived at CRAN a couple of hours ago, exactly eight months after the previous release. The dang package regroups a few functions of mine that had no other home as for example lsos() from a StackOverflow question from 2009 (!!), the overbought/oversold price band plotter from an older blog post, the market monitor from the last release as well the checkCRANStatus() function recently tweeted about by Tim Taylor.

• This release regroups a few small edits to several functions, adds a sample function for character encoding reading and conversion using a library already used by R (hence “look Ma, no new depends”), adds a weekday helper, and a sample usage (computing rolling min/max values) of a new simple vector class added to tidyCpp (and the function and class need to get another blog post or study …), and an experimental git sha1sum and date marker (as I am not the fan of autogenerated binaries from repos as opposed to marked released meaning: we may see different binary release with the same version number).

Perl/Raku

=> ↺ Rakudo Weekly News: 2021.42 Learning With

• Daniel Sockwell was inspired by a blog post a few weeks ago about a bouncing balls demo. The result is a new framework for learning Raku, but this time with some nice graphics: Learn Raku With: HTML Balls. Apart from the technical points, it’s also a great way (for people without much programming experience) to get involved with Raku while creating graphics and animations, rather than textual output. Check it out!

=> ↺ Russ Allbery: rra-c-util 10.0

• It’s been a while since I pushed out a release of my collection of utility libraries and test suite programs, so I’ve accumulated quite a lot of chanages. Here’s a summary; for more, see the NEWS file.

Rust

=> ↺ 1.56.0 pre-release testing | Inside Rust Blog

• The 1.56.0 pre-release is ready for testing. The release is scheduled for this Thursday, October 21th. Release notes can be found here.

Leftovers

Hardware

=> ↺ Apple Announces The M1 Pro / M1 Max, Asahi Linux Starts Eyeing Their Bring-Up

• Apple today announced the M1 Pro and M1 Max as their most powerful SoCs ever built by the company. The new chips feature up to a 10-core processor, 32-core GPU, and up to 64GB of unified memory.

• While the Apple M1 was already well regarded for its speed, the M1 Pro and M1 Max are said to deliver up to 70% faster CPU performance than last year’s M1. Meanwhile the GPU within the M1 Pro is up to 2x faster than the M1 while the M1 Max’s GPU is said to be 4x faster.

=> ↺ The HP3458A: King Of Multimeters For Three Decades | Hackaday

• [Marco] looks at a lot of meters. However, he considers the HP3458A the best even though they were introduced more than 30 years earlier in 1989. Someone donated one to [Marco] but it presented some error messages on startup and exhibited erratic behavior, so he had some repairs to do.

• The error codes hinted there were issues with the multislope analog to digital converter and that’s what sets the meter apart, according to [Marco]. The meter has 8.5 digits, so a normal conversion stage won’t cut it.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ Amid drama at .NET Foundation, Microsoft’s De Icaza reveals it was meant to be like GNOME Foundation

=> ↺ GNOME Foundation

Security

=> ↺ The Missouri Governor Doesn’t Understand Responsible Disclosure

• The Missouri governor wants to prosecute the reporter who discovered a security vulnerability in a state’s website, and then reported it to the state.

=> ↺ Missouri governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website • Missouri Independent

• The newspaper agreed to hold off publishing any story while the department fixed the problem and protected the private information of teachers around the state.

=> ↺ CISA, FBI, and NSA Release Joint Cybersecurity Advisory on Blackmatter Ransomware

• CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA) have released joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA): BlackMatter Ransomware.

• Since July 2021, malicious cyber actors have used BlackMatter ransomware to target multiple U.S. critical infrastructure entities, including a U.S. Food and Agriculture Sector organization. Using an analyzed sample of BlackMatter ransomware and information from trusted third parties, this CSA provides cyber actor tactics, techniques, and procedures and outlines mitigations to improve ransomware protection, detection, and response.

=> ↺ Microsoft called out as big malware hoster – thanks to OneDrive and Office 365 abuse

• Microsoft has been branded as “the world’s best malware hoster for about a decade,” thanks to abuse of the Office 365 and Live platform, as well as its slow response to reports by security researchers.

• Infosec expert Kevin Beaumont, who worked at Microsoft as a senior threat intelligence analyst between June 2020 and April 2021, made the comments in response to a report by “cybersec professional” TheAnalyst.

• TheAnalyst noted that a BazarLoader malware campaign was hosting its malware on Microsoft’s OneDrive service. “Does Microsoft have any responsibility in this when they KNOWINGLY are hosting hundreds of files leading to this, now for over three days?” they asked.

=> ↺ iPhone 13 Pro, Windows, Chrome, Linux and others pwned at Tianfu Cup

• Tianfu Cup is the Chinese version of the Pwn2own in which hackers from Kunlun Lab managed to secure first place by hacking iPhone 13 through a vulnerability in the Safari mobile browser.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ EU facilitates surveillance: Access Now, PI, demand an investigation – Access Now

• Today, Access Now joins Privacy International, Sea-Watch, BVMN, Homo Digitalis, and International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in calling on the European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, to open an inquiry into several EU institutions’ failure to promote and respect human rights when transferring surveillance tools to third non-EU countries.

• “The European Union has a responsibility to not only uphold the rights of people within its borders, but it must work to safeguard the rights of at-risk people in the non-EU countries it works with,” said Estelle Massé, Senior Policy Analyst and Global Data Protection Lead at Access Now.

• The complaint follows Privacy International’s investigation last year which revealed how the European Commission and EU institutions — including the European Border and Coastguard Agency (Frontex) and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL) — provided funding and trainings to non-EU intelligence and security authorities in surveillance techniques, wiretapping tech and biometric ID systems as a part of migration control and surveillance programs.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Rethinking Trade – Season 1 Episode 40: Apple & Google Seek U.S. Trade Attack on Anti-Monopoly Law

Patents

=> ↺ VGI Health Technology Limited Japanese Patent to be granted

=> ↺ VGI Health Technology Limited (NSX:VTL) Japanese Patent to be Granted

=> ↺ AVL and Maha dispute over after EPO destroys exhaust gas measuring patent

• EP 2 414 808 B1, which the EPO’s Technical Boards of Appeal has recently destroyed, protects a system for taking exhaust gas samples from internal combustion engines. The automotive industry relies heavily on the system, which is applied to test benches or rigs on which exhaust gas values are tested and determined. AVL owns the patent.

• On test benches and rigs, a dilution tunnel calms injected air in order to measure the particle density. Diesel generally produces large, heavy particles, whereas petrol combustion emits very small particles. To test diesel engines as well as gasoline engines, test benches originally needed two dilution tunnels. EP 808 concerns the use of only one dilution tunnel for both types of engines.

• Major car manufacturers such as BMW and Daimler, as well as testing organisations such as TÜV, regularly use these test benches and rigs.

• With over 11,000 employees globally e and subsidiaries in 30 countries, patent holder AVL is one of the largest suppliers in this field. The Austrian company develops systems for CO2 reduction and tests drive systems in the automotive and other industries.

Software Patents

=> ↺ Parus Files Second Patent Lawsuit Against Samsung for Infringement of its Proprietary Voice-Browsing and Device Control Technology

• Parus Holdings, Inc., a pioneer in voice-enabled technologies, announced today that it has filed a second patent infringement lawsuit in the U.S. Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas against Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd and Samsung Electronics America, Inc. The lawsuit alleges that Samsung infringes on Parus’ patents for voice-browsing and device control technology. The lawsuit is based on U.S. Patent No. 6,721,705, U.S. Patent No. 8,185,402, and U.S Patent No. 7,386,455. Parus is seeking all available remedies, including damages against Samsung for all of its infringing sales. The lawsuit asserts that the infringement has been “willful,” and requests that the defendant be ordered to pay treble damages and Parus’ attorneys’ fees, and be permanently enjoined from infringing the Parus Patents.

=> ↺ $3,000 Awarded for Safe Driving prior art

• Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Arpit Jain, who received a cash prize of $3,000 for his prior art submission for U.S. Patent 9,713,994. This patent is owned by Act-IP, an NPE. The ’994 patent generally relates to a system of sensors to allow a driver to safely drive their vehicle while being able to use smart applications. This patent is currently being asserted against Ford Motor Company in the Delaware District Court.

Copyrights

=> ↺ IFF writes to Google India regarding copyright strikes.

• There has been a rise in instances of takedown of content owned by independent news media companies, citizen journalists, current affairs bloggers and satirists on the grounds of copyright violations by YouTube. These takedowns are usually a result of copyright complaints received from big media houses. This is a misuse of intellectual property law by weaponising copyrights to stifle political dissent and fair critique. We write to Google India highlighting that action taken upon such complaints is based on an incorrect application of copyright law and YouTube’s policies and, therefore, threatens press freedom and is in violation of the constitutional rights of digital media reporters and its audience.

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