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● 02.08.22

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● Links 9/2/2022: Almost 400 New Members in the Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Posted in News Roundup at 8:44 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Landing a new syscall, part 1: What is futex?

• Over the past 18 months, we have been on a roller-coaster ride developing futex2, a new set of system calls. As part of this prolonged effort, the futex_waitv() syscall has now successfully landed in Linux 5.16.

• A followup of the initial futex syscall, this new interface aims to overcome long term issues that have been limiting the way applications use the Linux kernel. But what exactly is futex? This series of posts will help answer that and other questions around this tricky function.

• If you’ve ever run strace in a multithread program, chances are that the trace was filled with futex() calls. If you are a Linux gamer trying to increase the performance of your setup, you have probably heard of futex as well.

• Read on as I take a deep dive into this important system call and how it is used to process synchronization functions.

Applications

=> ↺ Best PDF Readers for Linux

• The popularity of Portable Document Format (PDF) files has increased drastically in recent years. Being one of the most secure file formats to share on the internet, PDF files rapidly increase. Almost every Linux distribution is bundled with a basic PDF reader, but these have some limitations. So today, we will look at the best feature-rich PDF reader you can use on Linux. Thanks to famous developer communities like GNOME and KDE, many PDF readers are available for Linux. These PDF readers come with features to enable users to accomplish more tasks and just read documents, while some come with very basic features.

=> ↺ Kubernetes Blog: Spotlight on SIG Multicluster

• SIG Multicluster is the SIG focused on how Kubernetes concepts are expanded and used beyond the cluster boundary. Historically, Kubernetes resources only interacted within that boundary – KRU or Kubernetes Resource Universe (not an actual Kubernetes concept). Kubernetes clusters, even now, don’t really know anything about themselves or, about other clusters. Absence of cluster identifiers is a case in point. With the growing adoption of multicloud and multicluster deployments, the work SIG Multicluster doing is gaining a lot of attention. In this blog, Jeremy Olmsted-Thompson, Google and Chris Short, AWS discuss the interesting problems SIG Multicluster is solving and how you can get involved. Their initials JOT and CS will be used for brevity.

=> ↺ Multiple Perspective | Krita

• We’ve released a new video! Ramon talks about the new perspective assistant in Krita 5…

=> ↺ Rufus Alternatives For Linux In 2022 | Itsubuntu.com

• Rufus is a popular and free-to-use tool to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs. Rufus is mostly used to create a bootable USB drive so that you can boot your system from the USB-like Pendrive. Sadly, Rufus is not available for the Linux-based operating system.

• There are many best tools to create a bootable USB disk from ISO for Linux-based operating systems. In this post, we will discuss some of the best Rufus alternatives for Linux in 2022.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Steven Pritchard: Recovering a ZFS array

• My story is almost identical, except the array in question was much smaller, but to make matters worse it was mostly cobbled together with old hardware, including drives, so when the array died, there were a lot of bad drives.

• My array started life as 15 750GB drives in a RAID-Z2. As the 750GB drives failed, they were replaced with 1TB drives. Unfortunately, I continued to use a mix of previously-used drives and some Seagate drives that apparently weren’t Seagate’s best work. The end result was that drives were failing rather often, and due to like of time, attention, and a ready supply of spare drives, I wasn’t great at replacing them when they failed.

=> ↺ How to install Zoom on Zorin OS 16 – Invidious

=> ↺ How To Convert AWS Route53 to Cloudflare Let’s Encrypt DNS challenge with acme.sh

=> ↺ How to install LibreSprite on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install LibreSprite 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 Run Android On Your PC In 2022 : Best Android OS For PC In 2022 [64/32bit]

• If you are looking for the option to run android on your PC then you are in the very right place. This post is dedicated to the list of best android OS for 64 bit PC and 32 bit PC.

=> ↺ Understanding the OpenGitOps Principles for Better Software Workflows – CloudSavvy IT

• GitOps describes a way of operating and managing software using methodologies rooted in the Git version control system. Use of GitOps-based workflows makes it easier to develop, deploy, maintain, and collaborate on software by requiring the system’s characteristics to be defined as files in a Git repository.

• Git’s role as the single source of truth is implied by the terminology. However, the actual implementation of GitOps-driven processes has historically been open to interpretation. This ambiguity has now been resolved by the OpenGitOps standards, a CNCF-backed attempt to define the principles that lead to repeatable GitOps systems.

• In this article, we’ll look at what the principles are, why they matter, and how you can use them to build scalable and maintainable software. The standards have been developed using insights from over 90 leading companies and interested parties in the GitOps Working Group.

=> ↺ What is Grafana and When Should You Use It? – CloudSavvy IT

• Grafana is an open-source observability platform for visualizing metrics, logs, and traces collected from your applications. It’s a cloud-native solution for quickly assembling data dashboards that let you inspect and analyze your stack.

• Grafana connects to a variety of data sources such as Prometheus, InfluxDB, ElasticSearch, and traditional relational database engines. Complex dashboards are created by using these sources to select relevant fields from your data. Dashboards can incorporate a varied range of visualization components such as graphs, heat maps, and histograms.

• In this article, we’ll cover what Grafana does and when it should be used. It’s important to recognize there’s no universal use case though: Grafana’s used to analyze your data, so every installation will work differently and be tailored to the specific dataset it’s showing.

=> ↺ Linux Tail Command Examples – buildVirtual

• The Linux Tail Command is often a go to tool when troubleshooting a Linux system or many other devices such as VMware ESXi hosts or Linux/Unix based appliances.

• The tail command allows us to output the last lines written to a log file, which gives us a quick way to check what the last events written to the file were. This is very useful when troubleshooting an issue in real time, as it lets us see what has just happened or, as we will see, can let us watch the log in real time.

=> ↺ How To Install MySQL Workbench on AlmaLinux | Rocky Linux 8

• Learn the steps to install MySQL Workbench software on Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux 8 using the terminal to manage MySQL database via the graphical user interface. MySQL Workbench is a graphical modeling tool and development system for MySQL databases.

• Managing and modeling multiple databases is complicated using the command line interface of MySQL. Therefore, to make things easy Oracle also offers a GUI software platform called – MySQL Workbench. It offers a graphical user interface and a set of tools for working with MySQL databases. It provides extensive functions for daily work with the databases and can be used to design, create, edit, administrate and display databases. The software is able to extract structures from already existing databases and reproduce them clearly.

• MySQL Workbench is available in a free and a commercial edition. Developers can visually design databases offline and host them on a MySQL server. For advanced users who need additional functions, extensions with scripting languages ​​can be integrated into the tool.

• It is cross-platform software, hence can be used on computers with the operating systems Linux, macOS, or Microsoft Windows.

=> ↺ How To Install Nginx PageSpeed Module on Debian 11 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nginx PageSpeed Module on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, The Google PageSpeed module, also known as mod_PageSpeed, is an open-source Apache HTTP or Nginx server-level package with modules that helps optimize your site. The Pagespeed module improves the performance and speed of your website by optimizing static files on your websites. The Pagespeed module optimizes images on your websites, minify static files such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and many more.

• 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 through the step-by-step installation of the Matomo open-source analytics platform on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

=> ↺ How To Install and Configure Prometheus On a Linux Server

• Prometheus is a free open source software application used for event monitoring and alerting. It was originally built at SoundCloud. It is now a standalone open source project and maintained independently of any company. To emphasize this, and to clarify the project’s governance structure, Prometheus joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in 2016 as the second hosted project, after Kubernetes.

• Prometheus collects and stores its metrics as time series data, i.e. metrics information is stored with the timestamp at which it was recorded, alongside optional key-value pairs called labels. Metrics are numeric measurements, time series mean that changes are recorded over time. What users want to measure differs from application to application. For a web server it might be request times, for a database it might be number of active connections or number of active queries etc.

=> ↺ How To Install PHP Laravel on Almalinux | Rocky linux 8 – Linux Shout

• Tutorial to learn the steps for installing PHP Larvel framework on Rocky Linux or Almalinux 8 using the command terminal for developing web apps.

• PHP doesn’t need an introduction, it has been around for many years powering web applications that need a dynamic programming language to work but one thing it is definitely not (anymore): modern.

• Programming languages ​​such as Ruby and Python have become increasingly popular, especially in recent years. They are “cool” and appeal better to the next generation of coders. Whereas it is unfortunate PHP is getting a bit old and you can tell. This is exactly where Laravel comes into play. We can consider it as a new generation PHP framework and that’s what makes it so popular. Inspired by Ruby on Rails and .NET, Taylor Otwell created Laravel to get the most out of PHP and to prove that more is possible. Also, he wasn’t satisfied with the other PHP frameworks. They are no longer contemporary. He doesn’t only want to help developers be more productive but also to show that clean programming with PHP can also be fun again.

• In this informative article, let’s touch the initial phase to work with Laravel is to install it on RedHat based Linux systems.

=> ↺ Free Intro to Linux Course, Taken by Over 1 Million Individuals, Now Available in Spanish

Games

=> ↺ Sweeney Says Epic Won’t Bring Fortnite To Steam Deck Until Linux Beats Down Cheaters

• In the specific case of the Steam Deck, the Fortnite foul is the use of Linux. Sure, the Steam Deck can (in theory) run Windows, but it’s not optimized for it because it comes with the Linux-based SteamOS by default. Tim’s stated concern is that Linux makes it too easy for cheaters to cheat, so Fortnite simply won’t be showing up on the Steam Deck.

=> ↺ Crusader Kings III: Royal Court DLC and a big free update are out now | GamingOnLinux

• The absolutely magnificent strategy game that is Crusader Kings III has today grown much bigger, with the Crusader Kings III: Royal Court DLC out now plus a big free update.

• Bringing even more role-playing possibilities, Royal Court brings on the virtual fun of hearing pleas from subjects, and dealing with all the political fun that comes with having a court full of people who need to be kept happy. You need to climb the ladder a bit though to really show off, as the Throne Room is of course only available for those at the top, so time to get back-stabbing or marrying someone nice perhaps?

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Plasma 5.24 released

• Version 5.24 of the KDE-based Plasma desktop is out; this is a long-term-support release. Changes include various task-manager improvements, a new overview mode, fingerprint-reader support, improved Wayland support, and more.

=> ↺ KDE Plasma Desktop Update » PCLinuxOS

• The KDE Plasma Desktop packages have been updated to 5.24.0. This is a service release update.

Distributions

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ SmoogeSpace: How to Install CentOS Stream 9 Cloud Image

• You have probably started to install a CentOS Stream 9 cloud image, and completely forgot all the things you learned this time around. No worries, past-self is going to write these down for your usage.

• First off, download the image you want. On the day we are writing this, the latest image is http://cloud.centos.org/centos/9-stream/x86_64/images/CentOS-Stream-GenericCloud-9-20220207.0.x86_64.qcow2 but it will most likely be something much newer. They don’t put a ‘latest’ in the directory, so open a browser, search for qcow2, and then instead of searching through 4000 entries from 2021-08-30, press the up-arrow and jump to the last entry on the web-page.

=> ↺ Fixing Playback in Musecore on Fedora 35 | Adam Young’s Web Log

• Recently, the playback on Musescore became distorted. It was sped up, the notes were dissonant (no that is not my writing!) and they seemed to crackle and pop.

• When both systems I have exhibited the same problem, I knew it was an upgrade issue, and not my hardware.

• This phenomenon seems to have occurred a few times over the years, and I tried many of the recommended fixes. What finally worked was changing the output from PulseAudio to Jack.

=> ↺ Hybrid cloud strategy increasingly popular among digital transformation leaders

• This year’s Red Hat 2022 Global Tech Outlook report came with some interesting insights, including that AI/ML, edge and serverless computing are top priority emerging technologies for the year ahead.

=> ↺ IBM Eagle Has A Lot of Qubits

• How many qubits do you need in a quantum computer? Plenty, if you want to anything useful. However, today, we have to settle for a lot fewer than we would like. But IBM’s new Eagle has the most of its type of quantum computer: 127-qubits. Naturally, they plan to do even more work, and you can see a preview of “System Two” in the video below.

• The 127 qubit number is both impressively large and depressingly small. Each qubit increases the amount of work a conventional computer has to do to simulate the machine by a factor of two. The hope is to one day produce quantum computers that would be impractical to simulate using conventional computers. That’s known as quantum supremacy and while several teams have claimed it, actually achieving it is a subject of debate.

=> ↺ Speed up your Ansible playbooks, create quick containers, and more tips for sysadmins | Enable Sysadmin

• January 2022 was another excellent month for Enable Sysadmin. During the month, we published 23 new articles and received nearly 798,000 reads from more than 505,000 readers across the site.

• Today, we are looking back at our top 10 articles of January to give you a chance to catch up on any of the great content you might have missed. In this list, you will see various topics covered, and we are confident that some, if not all, will be of interest to you.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Planning phased Ubuntu 22.04 Enterprise Desktop upgrades with Landscape

• This amendment to Christopher Bullock’s iconic quote reflects today’s reality, for everybody. Ubuntu 22.04 will be available on April 21, 2022, and System Administrators working in organisations running Ubuntu 20.04 desktops need controls to comply with their release management and change management policies. Staggering upgrades is a common practice to ensure the best IT support experience.

• Fortunately, it is simple to prevent the new Ubuntu version upgrade notification through the graphical user interface and command line. This configuration can be applied to many machines easily, and stop users from updating to the next version of Ubuntu before their scheduled upgrade window.

=> ↺ Enabling Ubuntu FIPS 140 in air-gapped environments

• Many US military, government or critical national infrastructure organisation workloads that require FIPS compliance are also required to be deployed in air-gapped environments to provide an extra layer of protection.

• In order to reduce operational and security risks by automating hardening, patch management and compliance to security standards like CIS and DISA-STIG as well as the FIPS 140-2 certifications, we’ve developed Ubuntu Advantage for your private infrutracture and Ubuntu Pro for cloud.

• In this blog we will look at what having a FIPS compliant instance means and the different ways you have to enable that in your disconnected environment.

=> ↺ How Snapcraft helps developers map out their application dependencies and efficiently build snaps | Ubuntu

• One of the core concepts of snaps is cross-distro compatibility. Developers can build their snaps once, and they should run well on more than 40 different Linux distros. But how does one take care of all the required runtime dependencies? By providing them inside the snap, as part of the bundle.

• In the snap ecosystem, the functionality is satisfied through stage packages, a list of libraries and other runtime components declared for every application included inside the snap. What makes things rather interesting is how this list is created. In this blog post, we want to take you through the journey of dependency mapping, and how Snapcraft, the command-line tool used to build snaps, can assist you in the process.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi bootloader enables OS installs with no separate PC required | Ars Technica

• Setting up a Raspberry Pi board has always required a second computer, which is used to flash your operating system of choice to an SD card so your Pi can boot. But the Pi Foundation is working on a new version of its bootloader that could connect an OS-less Pi board directly to the Internet, allowing it to download and install the official Raspberry Pi OS to a blank SD card without requiring another computer.

• To test the networked booting feature, you’ll need to use the Pi Imager on a separate computer to copy an updater for the bootloader over to an SD card—Pi firmware updates are normally installed along with new OS updates rather than separately, but since this is still in testing, it requires extra steps.

• Once it’s installed, there are a number of conditions that have to be met for network booting to work. It only works on Pi 4 boards (and Pi 4-derived devices, like the Pi 400 computer) that have both a keyboard and an Ethernet cable connected. If you already have an SD card or USB drive with a bootable OS connected, the Pi will boot from those as it normally does so it doesn’t slow down the regular boot process. And you’ll be limited to the OS image selection in the official Pi imager, though this covers a wide range of popular distributions, including Ubuntu, LibreELEC, a couple of retro-gaming emulation OSes, and Homebridge. For other OSes, downloading the image on a separate PC and installing it to an SD card manually is still the best way to go.

=> ↺ Compute module offers Alder Lake H, P, or U-series CPU options

• Avnet’s Linux-friendly “MSC C6B-ALP” Basic Type 6 module runs on Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake H-, P-, and U-series processors with up to 64GB DDR5, optional NVMe, and support for quad displays, 4x USB 3.1 Gen2, 2x SATA, 2.5GbE, and PCIe Gen4 x3 and x8.

• Avnet Embedded, which has previously released Intel-based modules such as its 9th Gen, COM-HPC form-factor MSC HCC-CFLS, announced a COM Express Basic Type 6 module a few weeks ago that supports Intel’s 7nm 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs. The MSC C6B-ALP is the first product we have seen to support the lower-end Alder Lake-P and Alder Lake-U series of processors. The module also supports the mid-range Alder Lake-H, which we have seen on Congatec’s Conga-TC670 Type 6 and Conga-HPC/cALP COM-HPC modules and Adlink’s Express-ADP Type 6 and COM-HPC-cADP modules. Congatec’s modules also support the higher-end Alder Lake-S.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ ElectroVoxel robots reconfigure themselves using magnets | Arduino Blog

• The ability to control magnetism is very powerful and acts as the basis for huge swaths of modern technology. Without electromagnetism, we likely would never have progressed into the digital age — we wouldn’t even have electric motors. Now engineers from MIT CSAIL are using electromagnetism for something new: reconfigurable robots.

• ElectroVoxel robots are cube-shaped modules that can self-assemble into more complex shapes. Each robot has electromagnet coils lining its edges. An Arduino Nano with a wireless transceiver drives those electromagnets, allowing for untethered operation. Power comes from LiPo batteries and the frames are 3D-printed. By controlling the current and polarity of each electromagnet, the robots can cling to each other. They can also move by using an attractive edge connection for a pivot point and repulsion for actuation. They can use that movement for basic locomotion or to reconfigure into new shapes.

=> ↺ MutantW V1 – An open-source ESP32 smartwatch designed with Autodesk Fusion 360 and EAGLE – CNX Software

• Rahmanshaber is known for its DIY Raspberry Pi handheld PCs such as MutantC v4, but MutantW V1 is a completely different device as an ESP32-based DIY open-source smartwatch that he designed with Autodesk Fusion 360 and EAGLE.

• [...]

• Everything is open-source under an MIT license including the EAGLE design files, the 3D printed case made with Fusion 360, and the firmware programmed in the Arduino IDE. The smartwatch is equipped with a 1.7-inch IPS LCD display (non-touch), two hardware buttons, a NeoPixel RGB LED, a vibration motor, as being powered by an ESP32 SoC offers both 2.4GHz WiFi 4 Bluetooth LE connectivity.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ The Apache Weekly News Round-up: week ending 4 February 2022 : The Apache Software Foundation Blog

• Welcome, February –we’re opening the month with another great week. Here’s what the Apache community has been up to…

FSF

=> ↺ Free Software Foundation: 390 new members take their first step: Our gratitude to all who helped

• January 20, 2022 marked the end of our most recent fundraising campaign and associate member drive. All said and done, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) achieved a benchmark of 390 new members.

• January 20, 2022 marked the end of our most recent fundraising campaign and associate member drive. All said and done, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) achieved a benchmark of 390 new members. Of these new members, we had a dozen “gift memberships” — another great way to give friends, family, and colleagues the gift of freedom.

• Most importantly, new memberships mean new connections in the movement. We are grateful for all forms of participation in the free software movement — everything from contributing to the Free Software Directory, to contributing code, to taking action in activities such as last year’s International Day Against DRM (IDAD), which took aim at Disney+’s unethical streaming platform — we wholeheartedly appreciate everyone’s effort.

Programming/Development

=> 3D particles features available in Qt 6.3. ↺ Technical Artists – The New Kingmakers of User Experience?

• Technical Artists have become the bridge between art and code. Without Technical Artists, UI Designers and Software Developers cannot create immersive 3D experiences effectively. Does that make Technical Artists the new Kingmakers of User Experience?

=> ↺ New 3D particles features in Qt 6.3

• Yes, I know, Qt 6.3 isn’t out yet. But as the first beta was just released, it is a good time to start speaking about the new features. In this blog post, I will list my three favourite new features available in Qt Quick 3D particles module.

=> ↺ Vanessa Christopher: A Story About Python And C.

• So I was asked “what’s the difference between python and C?” and I was like what?? I actually do not know!!! Then i did a little research and… let’s find out what I learnt.

=> ↺ Neil Williams: Django Model Mommy moving to Model Bakery

• So this is a heads-up to all those using Debian for their Django unit tests. Model Mommy will no longer get updates upstream, so model mommy will not be able to support Django4. Updates will only be done, upstream, in the Model Bakery package which already supports Django4.

• Bakery is not a drop-in replacement. Model Bakery includes a helper script to migrate: https://salsa.debian.org/python-team/packages/python-model-bakery/-/blob/master/utils/from_mommy_to_bakery.py

• This is being packaged in /usr/share/ in the upcoming python3-model-bakery package.

• It is a tad confusing that model-mommy is at version 1.6.0 but model-bakery is at version 1.4.0 but that only reinforces that Django apps using Model Mommy will need editing to move to Model Bakery.

=> ↺ Three Ways To Improve Your Programming Skills | Linux Journal

• The ability to write code is a huge differentiator for every job role in an enterprise Linux environment. As an Operations and DevOps manager, I was constantly challenged to improve my team’s programming skills, and the team genuinely wanted to be more proficient.

• But how?

• Structured training is a standard answer: take a course! Our company, like many, invested enormously in learning resources. I’d sit with an engineer one-on-one and we’d ponder the online portal together, puzzling out the most appropriate Python learning path.

• There are two issues, however. Problem one: classroom material is almost immediately forgotten, if not directly applied. Problem two: I’d lose visibility of progress for days, weeks, or even months. I’d find out too late the material was inappropriate or too advanced.

=> ↺ Ryabitsev: Cross-fork object sharing in git (is not a bug)

• This is a few days old, but evidently there is still need for this message: Konstantin Ryabitsev explains how it is easy to cause a commit to appear falsely to be part of a GitHub repository…

=> ↺ Cross-fork object sharing in git (is not a bug) — Konstantin Ryabitsev

• Under the hood, git repositories are a bunch of objects — blobs, trees, and commits. Blobs are file contents, trees are directory listings that establish the relationship between file names and the blobs, and commits are like still frames in a movie reel that show where all the trees and blobs were at a specific point in time. Each next commit refers to the hash of the previous commit, which is how we know in what order these still frames should be put together to make a movie.

• Each of these objects has a hash value, which is how they are stored inside the git directory itself (look in .git/objects). When git was originally designed, over a decade ago, it didn’t really have a concept of “branches” — there was just a symlink HEAD pointing to the latest commit. If you wanted to work on several things at once, you simply cloned the repository and did it in a separate directory with its own HEAD. Cloning was a very efficient operation, as through the magic of hardlinking, hundreds of clones would take up about as much room on your disk as a single one.

Python

=> ↺ 4 keys to writing modern Python in 2022 | InfoWorld

• Although Python turned 30 years old last year (2021), only in the last few years has it enjoyed the great explosion of adoption, growth, and forward-thinking development that we’ve come to associate with the language. Many features of Python have remained unchanged since its inception, but with every passing year, and every new edition of Python, along come new ways of doing things and new libraries that take advantage of those advances.

• So Python has its old ways and its new ways. Naturally, it makes sense to learn how to work with Python using its most modern and convenient features. Here we’ll run down the key concepts you need to understand to write modern Python in 2022 — software that uses Python’s latest and greatest idioms, concepts, and capabilities.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Is Your Flashlight A Lumen Liar? Build A DIY Integrating Sphere | Hackaday

• A lamp used to be simple thing: just stick a filament in a glass bulb, pass a current through it and behold! Let there be light. A bigger lamp meant a larger filament, taking more power and a larger envelope. Now we’ve moved on a bit, and it’s all about LEDs. There really isn’t such a thing as ‘just an LED,’ these are semiconductor devices, made from relatively exotic materials (OK, not just plain old silicon anyway) and there is quite a lot of variety to choose from, and a bit of complexity in selecting them.

• For [Torque Test Channel] the efficiency of conversion from electrical power to radiant power (or flux) is the headline figure of interest, which prompted them to buy a bunch of lamps to compare. To do the job justice that requires what’s known in the business as an integrating sphere (aka an Ulbricht sphere), but being a specialist device, it’s a bit pricey for the home gamer. So naturally, they decided to build the thing themselves.

=> ↺ Industrial Sewing Machine: Acquired | Hackaday

• This is a compound walking foot machine. Let’s break that down. ‘Walking foot’ means that that the foot — the many-varied and interchangeable part that holds the fabric down to the bed — has a set of feed dogs that help push the fabric along the from top side at the same time that the regular feed dogs feed the fabric from underneath. The ‘compound’ part refers to the little middle bit, which moves up and down at the same time as the needle and also walks the fabric along.

• Here’s a great visual explanation of the differences between drop-feed, walking foot, and compound walking foot machines. Compound walking foot machines are great for my needs in that they give an even stitch through multiple thick layers of fabric, which is what I need to sew vinyl, canvas, and leather. Like I said in the first post, industrial machines are purpose-built. This one is for heavy duty use, and it spent many years doing upholstery work. It even made a motorcycle seat!

=> ↺ A Bugatti Without The Inconvenience Of Wealth

• There are many of us who might have toyed with the idea of building a car, indeed perhaps more than a few readers might even have taken to the road in a machine of their own creation. Perhaps it was a design of your own, or maybe a kit car. We think that very few of you will have gone as far as [Vũ Văn Nam] and his friends in Vietnam. In their latest video they compress a year’s work into 47 minutes as they craft a beautifully built replica of a Bugatti supercar. If you haven’t got a few million dollars but you’ve got the time, this is the video for you.

• The skill involved in making a scratch-built car is impressive enough, but where there guys take it to the next level is in their clay modeling to create the moulds for the fibreglass bodywork. Taking their local clay and a steel frame, they carefully hand-sculpt the car with the skill of an Italian master stylist, before clothing it in fibreglass and removing the clay. The resulting fibreglass shell can be used to make the finished bodywork, which they do with an exceptional attention to detail. It might be a steel-tube home-made spaceframe with a wheezy 4-cylinder Toyota engine behind the driver instead of a 1000 HP powerhouse, but it surely looks the part!

Hardware

=> ↺ 3D Printed Maglev Switches Are So Hot Right Now | Hackaday

• It doesn’t happen all the time, but over the years we’ve noticed that once we feature a project, a number of very similar builds often find themselves in our tip line before too long. Of course, these aren’t copycats; not enough time has passed for some competitive maker to spin up their own version. No, most of the time it’s somebody else who was working on a very similar project in isolation, and who now for the first time realizes they aren’t alone.

• Thanks to this phenomenon we’re happy to report that yet another 3D printable magnetic levitation switch has come to light. Developed by [famichu], this take on the concept is markedly different from what we’ve seen previously, which in a way makes the whole thing even more impressive. It’s one thing for multiple hackers to develop similar projects independently of each other, as the end goal often dictates the nature of the design itself. But here we’re seeing a project that took the same core concepts and ran in a different direction.

=> ↺ Palm Portable Keyboard Goes Wireless

• Long ago when digital portables where in their infancy, people were already loath to type on tiny keyboards, stylus or not. So Palm made a sweet little portable keyboard that would fold up and fit in your cargo pocket. And what do we have now for luxury typing on the go? Rubber roll-up jelly keebs? That’s a hard no from this scribe.

=> ↺ Hair Today Gone Tomorrow: Four Men Go To Fix A Wafer Prober | Hackaday

• I’ve had a fairly varied early part of my career in the semiconductors business: a series of events caused me to jump disciplines a little bit, and after one such event, I landed in the test engineering department at Philips Semiconductors. I was tasked with a variety of oddball projects, supporting engineering work, fixing broken ATE equipment, and given a absolute ton of training: Good times! Here’s a story that comes straight off the oddball pile.

• We needed to assemble a crack team of experts and high-tail it to deepest darkest Wales, and sort out an urgent production problem. The brief was that the wafer probe yield was disastrous and the correlation wafer was not giving the correct results. Getting to the punch line is going to require some IC fabrication background, but if you like stories about silicon, or red-bearded test engineers, it’s worth it.

=> ↺ Invisible 3D Printed Codes Make Objects Interactive | Hackaday

• An interesting research project out of MIT shows that it’s possible to embed machine-readable labels into 3D printed objects using nothing more than an FDM printer and filament that is transparent to IR. The method is being called InfraredTags; by embedding something like a QR code or ArUco markers into an object’s structure, that label can be detected by a camera and interactive possibilities open up.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ Critical Vulnerabilities Affecting SAP Applications Employing Internet Communication Manager (ICM)

=> ↺ Microsoft Releases February 2022 Security Updates

• Microsoft has released updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. A remote attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

=> ↺ Apple + Microsoft = character confusion

• A Mac-using client wanted to save a Microsoft Word .docx as a plain text document. The .docx was stored in an iCloud folder. Downloading and opening the file in Word for Mac, the client chose “Save without formatting (.txt)”. What could go wrong?

• Well, first of all, the .docx original had carriage return + linefeed (CRLF) line endings. The saved text file had only carriage returns. Remember CR-only line endings? From OS 9 and earlier?

• Second, the .docx original was in UTF-8 encoding, according to the “properties” .xml files in the .docx archive and my own character encoding check. The saved text, on the other hand…

=> ↺ Citrix Releases Security Updates for Hypervisor

• Citrix has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in Hypervisor. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to cause a denial-of-service condition.

=> ↺ Adobe Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products | CISA

• Adobe has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in multiple Adobe products. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

Security

=> ↺ The Plausibly Deniable DataBase (PDDB) « bunnie’s blog

• In practice, attackers need not go nearly as far as rubber-hose cryptanalysis to obtain passwords; a simple inspection checkpoint, verbal threat or subpoena is often sufficiently coercive.

• Most security schemes facilitate the coercive processes of an attacker because they disclose metadata about the secret data, such as the name and size of encrypted files. This allows specific and enforceable demands to be made: “Give us the passwords for these three encrypted files with names A, B and C, or else…”. In other words, security often focuses on protecting the confidentiality of data, but lacks deniability.

• A scheme with deniability would make even the existence of secret files difficult to prove. This makes it difficult for an attacker to formulate a coherent demand: “There’s no evidence of undisclosed data. Should we even bother to make threats?” A lack of evidence makes it more difficult to make specific and enforceable demands.

• Thus, assuming the ultimate goal of security is to protect the safety of users as human beings, and not just their files, enhanced security should come hand-in-hand with enhanced plausible deniability (PD). PD arms users with a set of tools they can use to navigate the social landscape of security, by making it difficult to enumerate all the secrets potentially contained within a device, even with deep forensic analysis.

=> ↺ Huang: The Plausibly Deniable DataBase [LWN.net]

• Andrew ‘bunnie’ Huang introduces PDDB, a database meant to allow users to (plausibly) deny the existence of specific data within it.

=> ↺ Foundation Statement at 8 February 2022 Senate Committee hearing on Homeland Security and Government Affairs

=> ↺ the distraction tactics

• Chairman Peters, Ranking Member Portman, and distinguished members of the Committee: thank you for the invitation to appear this morning.

• My name is David Nalley, and I am the President of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). The ASF is a non-profit public-benefit charity established in 1999 to facilitate the development of open source software. Thanks to the ingenuity and collaboration of our community of programmers, the ASF has grown into one of the largest open source organizations in the world. Today, more than 650,000 contributors around the world contribute to more than 350 ongoing projects, comprising more than 237 million lines of code.

• Open source is not simply a large component of the software industry — it is one of the foundations of the modern global economy. Whether they realize it or not, most businesses, individuals, non-profits, or government agencies depend on open source; it is an indispensable part of America’s digital infrastructure.

=> ↺ cvtsudoers: merging multiple sudoers files into one | Sudo

• We learned in my previous sudo blog that cvtsudoers is not just for LDAP. Version 1.9.9 of sudo extends the querying possibilities of cvtsudoers further and adds a brand new feature: merging multiple sudoers files into one. Both are especially useful when you have complex configurations. Querying lets you to better understand what the various rules allow in your sudoers file. Merging helps you to combine multiple configurations into one, so you do not have to maintain a separate sudoers file on each of your hosts.

=> ↺ SBOMs Necessary for Software Supply Chain Security

• The report, which was produced in partnership with OpenSSF, SPDX, and OpenChain, is the first in a series of research projects aimed at understanding “the challenges and opportunities” of securing open source software supply chains.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ U.S. Government Is an Astonishingly Eager Buyer of Cellebrite

• INVESTIGATORS WITH THE U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service frequently work to thwart a variety of environmental offenses, from illegal deforestation to hunting without a license. While these are real crimes, they’re not typically associated with invasive phone hacking tools. But Fish and Wildlife agents are among the increasingly broad set of government employees who can now break into encrypted phones and siphon off mounds of data with technology purchased from the surveillance company Cellebrite.

• [...]

• Cellebrite itself boasted about its penetration of the executive branch ahead of becoming a publicly traded company in August. In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said that it had over 2,800 government customers in North America. To secure that reach, The Intercept has found, the company has partnered with U.S. law enforcement associations and hired police officers, prosecutors, and Secret Service agents to train people in its technology. Cellebrite has also marketed its technology to law firms and multinational corporations for investigating employees. In the SEC filing, it claimed that its clients included six out of the world’s 10 largest pharmaceutical companies and six of the 10 largest oil refiners.

=> ↺ Meta’s threats are a huge opportunity. The EU must NOT waste them

• The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, just warned that if the current EU legal framework remains, and other law proposals now discussed by the EU are approved, the company would “probably have to walk away from the continent”.

• [...]

• Imagine having the most obnoxious in-laws one could have. You know, the kind of folks that show up to your door any moment, always uninvited, always try to eavesdrop, always stir up quarrels between you and everybody else for the fun of it, always spoil your kids, and in the best case always are a huge waste of your time.

• Yes, I know this can be real hard to imagine, but stay with me for a minute. Imagine relatives like this saying, by their own initiative, “unless you always eat all the cake we bring, every time WE bring, we won’t visit anymore”. What would you do?

Environment

Energy

=> ↺ Move Aside Solar, We’re Installing An Algae Panel | Hackaday

• [Cody] of Cody’sLab has been bit by what he describes as the algae growing bug. We at Hackaday didn’t know that was a disease floating around, but we’ll admit that we’re not surprised after the last few years. So not content to stick to the small-time algae farms, [Cody] decided to scale up and build a whole algae panel.

• Now, why would you want to grow algae? There are edible varieties of algae, you can extract oils from it, and most importantly, it can be pumped around in liquid form. To top it off, all it needs is just sunlight, carbon dioxide, and a few minerals to grow. Unlike those other complicated land-based organisms that use photosynthesis, algae don’t need to build any structure to hold themselves up or collect sunlight; it floats.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Myanmar’s Fight for Democracy Is Now a Scrap Over Phone Records | WIRED

• IN MYANMAR, THE phone records of pro-democracy activists connect them together like suspects on a cork board. When many of those activists fled the military crackdown and went into hiding after the coup in February 2021, they believed the trails of phone calls, mapping out their association with family members and colleagues, were safe on networks outside the military’s control. Now they claim that data is in peril.

• Like all telecoms companies, Myanmar’s four major operators keep a record of phone call metadata—information about who calls who, when, and for how long. Pro-democracy campaigner Kyaw (not his real name) did not worry much about his metadata even when the coup shocked the country. The activist, who asked for his real name not to be published because he is afraid of being arrested by the military, believed his personal data was safe because he was using a sim card made by Telenor, a multinational headquartered in Norway—a country he associated with democracy and human rights.

=> ↺ Resist Myanmar’s digital coup

• One year ago, as the Myanmar military sent tanks down the streets and rounded up government officials and activists, it shut down the internet, mobile phone networks, radio, and television channels. As it plunged the country into a communications blackhole, the junta launched concerted assaults at already threadbare protections online to throttle expression and information-sharing. Today, the military is ramping up efforts to cement authoritarian control of online space, alongside violent crackdowns, and serious human rights violations. This is a digital coup, and the world must resist.

• Internet shutdowns continue to be wielded to shroud serious human rights violations. Soon after the coup and lasting almost three months, the military imposed near-complete nationwide internet shutdowns — including nightly communications blackouts and online media and messaging platform bans. The people in Myanmar were not able to communicate with loved ones, share information, report on human rights violations, or seek help amidst an emergency. Contrary to the principles of net neutrality and the norm of a free internet, the junta lifted some disruptions to favor its own “white-list” of organisations and corporations that could access the internet, while the rest of the country suffered the consequences of these discriminatory and unequal shutdowns. The military continue to order regional shutdowns — particularly where active armed conflicts are ongoing, in attempts to conceal thousands of reports of assault, killings, arrests, detention, enforced disappearance, ill-treatment, torture, torching and gender-based violence committed by the junta.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Update your nixCraft RSS fee

• The lesson is evident here, not to trust 3rd party with your RSS feed or content. I will never forgive Google for erasing Google Reader RSS/Atom feed aggregator. I lost many readers because of that move.

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