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● 09.03.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 03/09/2022: Encrypted Audio and Video Calls With Kaidan

Posted in News Roundup at 4:22 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Does GNOME Really Want To Destroy Theming? – Invidious

• Even today I still here people saying that GNOME wants to destroy theming or you can’t theme Libadwaita so let’s actually look at the facts and see what it’s like

=> ↺ Is it Time to Retire the OTB [OldTechBloke] Channel? – Invidious

• This is my first video upload for three months and during that time I’ve received many messages and comments asking about my health, what’s happening with the channel, and yes, implying that possibly I may be thinking the channel has reached the end of its natural life. Well in this video I will be answering those questions as well as giving an update on my biking experiences over the last few months and, of course, touching on Linux in the process.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Install and Use Homebrew on Linux

• Homebrew is a free and open-source package manager for Linux and macOS. Although different Linux distros ship with their own package managers, such as APT, DNF, Pacman, etc., to facilitate software installation, you’ll want Homebrew on your system if you wish to install programs that aren’t available in the default Linux distro repositories.

• Let’s check out Homebrew and the steps to install and use it on Linux.

=> ↺ How to Make Console Your Default Terminal App on Ubuntu – OMG! Ubuntu!

• Ubuntu developers have decided not to make GNOME’s Console the default terminal emulator in the upcoming Ubuntu 22.10 release, but that doesn’t meant you can’t.

• Console is billed as a “simple user-friendly terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop” and, by all accounts, that’s exactly what it is. Functionally speaking, it’s not as avanced as GNOME Terminal, which is the VTE Ubuntu and most Linux distros that ship the GNOME desktop environment use.

• But honestly? Speaking as a Linux user who uses the terminal daily for package management, system monitoring, and playing around with awesome command line tools like ncdu, mapscii, and musikcube, I’m yet to encounter anything Console can’t do.

=> ↺ Exclude ai1wm-backup folder from Softaculous backups | Linux Webhosting blog

• For WordPress websites that use both Softaculous backups and AllInOne Migration plugin backups, Softaculous backups include the .wpress files created by the ai1wm plugin and therefore this will significantly increase the size of Softaculous backup files. To exclude ai1wm-backup folder from Softaculous backups SSH into your server and navigate to the following path:

=> ↺ How to move email accounts from G-Suite to cPanel | Linux Webhosting blog CPanel / WHM

• In this guide I will be using IMAPSync tool to move emails from G-Suite to cPanel.

=> ↺ How to Create Secure Passwords from the Terminal | Linux Webhosting blog

• Studies on passwords show that people are still using the same passwords even through several years.The worst passwords are the same. This is a danger in our security, sooner or later we could be hacked. Take a look of the summary of the worst passwords from Wikipedia.

=> ↺ How to enable comodo WAF modsecurity in cpanel for free

• Login to WHM > ModSecurity™ Vendors and under “OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set V3.0” click on the “+ install” link and to add a third-party rule set click on “Add Vendor” button.

=> ↺ How to create bulk email accounts in cpanel server

• Here is how to bulk create email accounts in cPanel under a single domain name.

=> ↺ How to Hide the Top Bar and Side Panel in Ubuntu – Make Tech Easier

• You decided to try Ubuntu 22.04 and the Gnome desktop environment that comes with it. You feel, though, that Gnome’s top bar and side panel are always in the way and would prefer your apps to take up the whole screen. Learn how to hide the top bar and side panel in Ubuntu 22.04.

=> ↺ How to stop xmlrpc ddos attack on wordpress in cpanel and whm

• xmlrpc.com is a WordPress file that was intended to be used for API’s but lately it’s more and more used as a way for hackers to brute-force WordPress installations.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Encrypted Audio and Video Calls – Kaidan

• Kaidan will receive a grant by NLnet for adding encrypted audio and video calls.

• The calls will be end-to-end encrypted and authenticated via OMEMO. Furthermore, Kaidan will support small group calls. We strive for interoperability between Kaidan and other XMPP apps supporting calls. In order to achieve that, we will implement a large number of XEPs (XMPP Extension Protocols). They make it possible to have a modern call experience.

• Calls have become more widespread over the past few years in free XMPP chat apps. Especially, grants by NLnet made that possible. The development speed and interoperability between different apps have increased. Such an intense development often results in improved specifications. But sometimes the development overtakes the standardization. In that case, the standardization needs to catch up what has already been implemented.

• We have to handle that circumstance with group calls and invitations to calls at the moment. There are some adjustments that are not yet official. To make calls from Kaidan to other apps already supporting them, we have to base our work on those changes. If those unofficial adjustments are being modified later to become official, we will need to modify Kaidan as well. But we see the evolution of calls in XMPP as a huge progress and are ready for adaption!

=> ↺ GSOC Update 3

• These last few weeks have been a good learning experience with Krita as I try to implement a node visitor and save context classes. First we want to create a saveContext class for svg called KisScalableVectorGraphicsSaveContext that will be used to save to the file when visiting all nodes. This class is fairly cookie cutter and takes a KoStore to use to write to a specified file. The real work will happen in our node visitor class KisScalableVectorGraphicsSaveVisitor. Most of this right now includes some template visit functions like visit(KisPaintLayer *layer) that just calls saveLayer(KisLayer *layer) to save the specific type of layer. One small quirk here was when trying to find out where vector layers are processed. After experimenting with the ora plugin I found out this would be visited under the group layer function visit(KisGroupLayer *layer) so I similar for the svg plugin.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Chinese-made deepin 20.7 Linux distro is ready to replace Windows 11 on your PC

• Once of the most beautiful and user-friendly operating systems is a Linux distribution from China called deepin. If you are dissatisfied with Windows 11 or macOS, and you are intrigued by Linux, deepin can be a great choice if you highly value beauty and well-designed user interfaces.

• The newest version of that operating system, deepin 20.7, is now ready to be downloaded, and it is chock-full of bug fixes and new features such as improved Grand Search with Google integration and an enhanced Mail app with new calendar functionality. Yes, this looks to be the best version of deepin yet!

• “In deepin 20.7, we have developed and integrated a great number of practical functions based on the community users’ feedback, synchronized with the upstream kernel version, fixed underlying vulnerabilities, upgraded the Stable kernel to V5.15.45, added the HWE 5.18 kernel to be compatible with more devices, and further improved system compatibility and security,” explains the development team.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ What Happened with CentOS Will Not Happen with Rocky Linux’

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu Unity Is Likely to Become the Next Official Ubuntu Flavor

• Ubuntu Unity, the unofficial fork with a dash of nostalgia from the Unity days, has applied to become the official Ubuntu flavor.

• Many Linux enthusiasts had used Ubuntu at some point in their careers and will recall the not-so-distant days when Canonical made a difference with their Unity desktop.

• We shall specify for novice Linux users that Unity is a graphical shell for the GNOME desktop environment designed and maintained by Canonical for Ubuntu. It was beautiful and innovative, but another controversial Canonical decision threw it out in 2017.

=> ↺ DebugPoint Weekly Roundup #22.03: Ubuntu Unity Becomes Official + More

• Here’s the weekly roundup #22.03 for you across the GNU/Linux and tech world.

• Welcome to the DebugPoint Weekly roundup #22.03, where you can find all the happenings from this week, mainly from the Linux and open-source space. If you have missed some stories, no worries!

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ What is Sony doing with Android phones? The Android Police podcast is at IFA 2022 to find out

=> ↺ Why don’t the best premium Android phones have flat displays?

=> ↺ Key Pixel Tablet specs may have been revealed through hidden Android code | TechRadar

=> ↺ 5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week – Android Apps Weekly

=> ↺ 4 Ways to Get More From Google Password Manager on Android

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Programming/Development

=> ↺ 8 Top Free and Open Source Kotlin Web Frameworks – LinuxLinks

• One of the types of software that’s important for a web developer is the web framework. A framework “is a code library that makes a developer’s life easier when building reliable, scalable, and maintainable web applications” by providing reusable code or extensions for common operations. By saving development time, developers can concentrate on application logic rather than mundane elements.

• A web framework offers the developer a choice about how to solve a specific problem. By using a framework, a developer lets the framework control portions of their application. While it’s perfectly possible to code a web application without using a framework, it’s more practical to use one.

• Kotlin is a cross-platform, statically typed, general-purpose programming language with type inference. Kotlin is a more modern version of Java. It adopts functional ideas such as immutability and first-class functions, out of the box, and it is also object oriented.

=> ↺ BaCon 4.5.1pre and utilities now compile in OE

=> ↺ Setting up Emacs for OCaml Development – (think)

• I’ve promised you articles about OCaml and here they come! The first order of business when learning a new programming language is to setup Emacs for effective programming in it.

=> ↺ More recursive definitions

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ Death: A Terminal Experience | Saif [blogs.perl.org]

• A program being executed, self terminating on encountering an non-viable condition is a typical scenario in Perl programs. The death sentence can deliver information about the departed application to the user as justification and demand appropriate resolution for the subsequent reincarnation.

• Now I know my code fails more often than it succeeds, and it is for this reason I am planning an alternative wake for the programmed parting of my future terminal applications. As a once-in-a-run-time event, death might be more elaborately delivered, something to be celebrated. The last words of a dying application softens the developers ensuing grief, while encouraging resuscitation with an appropriately delivered injection of code.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Validating HTML – Jim Nielsen’s Blog

• To bluntly answer the question: I validate, but only when I encounter a perplexing cross-browser issue I can’t seem to solve.

• In those cases, I’ll copy the one-off HTML document I’m dealing with and paste it into the W3C’s browser-based markup validation service to check for any errors I can’t seem to spot.

• While that service is useful for manually validating individual documents, it’s not particularly practical for systematically validating HTML as part of an automated software development pipeline.

• That said, a while back I discovered the W3C Nu HTML Checker which also validates HTML. It has a HTTP API which you can leverage to automate the process of validating multiple HTML documents.

• I wrote a little script to interface with the API and check the HTML files output by my static site generator, but it kept returning 503 errors on many of the files.

Leftovers

Security

=> ↺ Rubenerd: Hyundai’s AES key was lifted from an example

• The Register’s Thomas Claburn reported on a blog post by greenluigi1 where they investigate the feasibility of modifying the car’s In-Vehicle Infotainment system. It’s well written with clear steps and screenshots; I love reading through someone’s thought process when it comes to this stuff.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Who gets the Google dollars at ABC, the soy latte sippers or the Bundy – Rum brigade?

• Murdoch would have us believe ABC is a hot-bed of leftist activists but the reach of ABC Rural, funded by Google, is conservative, broad and well funded. Brian Burkett, Emma Mesikämmen and Lisa Waller analysed the corporation’s Rural Reports to test claims of bias.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Comments on the consultation paper on the need for a new framework for governing telecommunications in India

• On July 23, 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) released a consultation paper on the need for a new framework for governing telecommunications in India. Read our response engaging with specific issues such as internet shutdowns, net neutrality, and an overhaul of the surveillance framework contained in the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.

• [...]

• The paper has been divided into 10 sections related to issues such as simplifying the regulatory framework, spectrum management, right of way, insolvency, and the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). The paper also indicates a need for a new law and a simplified regulatory framework. A bulleted summary of the paper highlighting its main suggestions may be accessed here. While the paper discusses certain essential issues which have to be addressed in this overhaul, it conspicuously misses certain important points.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Sirius Cybernetics

• Recently, I read about people who use the EV charging stations, but not for charging the batteries of their electric cars, just as a parking spot.

=> ↺ The dog and the typewriter.

• In the days after the cannery shut down, I had returned home. I found a typewriter. I made text together with it every day, and I felt as one with it.

• One day it stopped stamping letters when I pressed its keys. I had fear that it would never again be as it was before. I wondered what to do, and thought to ask someone for help. A dog of mine came by, and spoke to me.

=> ↺ ZEILRVC Wordo: TUNED

Politics

=> ↺ Nosegay

• Not a 1450s-ish English contraction of nose (meaning nose) and gay (meaning bringing joy), to make something which brings your nose joy which is clearly preposterous; not a word commonly used in bridal shops… but a sodding mountweazel if ever I saw one.

Technical

=> ↺ Late Night updates

• I work as the QA lead for the Vivaldi web browser. Being a small team I also have an additional role where I am responsible for much of the release process for our desktop browser, including version daily versions to a small external (volunteer) testing group, weekly public “snapshots” (sort of like beta releases for the upcoming version), and major and minor updates to our stable version.

=> ↺ How i alias git to manage my home directory (for dotfiles)

• I am writing this on the first Saturday of September 2022 but the solution described is in use since exactly two years ago already.

=> ↺ Roll and move

• Moving one marker along a track like Snakes and Ladders is basically a way to keep track of the sum of those moves. As a race game, that’s not fun, becomes just luck. But if that is combined with stuff you do outside of the track, like being far ahead (or far behind) or having passed/not passed certain thresholds, that might be interesting. Pondering about an idea where the movement track is central and looks like the main part of the game (to get the classic nostalgic roll-and-move feel) but there’s actually other things going on on the side (on cards or on smaller player boards) which is where the skill is actually hiding. Just green hat brainstorming but something like “winner has the most sets when anyone reaches the end” or “winner has the most sets when last person reaches the end”.

• There’s also variants in this category where there there is a random race but you don’t have your permanently own central markers, instead you bet on them or auction for them etc.

=> ↺ Managing a fleet of NixOS Part 2 – A KISS design

• Let’s continue my series trying to design a NixOS fleet management.

• [...]

• The mechanism is so simple, it could be adapted to many cases, like using GitHub or any data source instead of a central server. I will personally use this with my laptop as a central system to manage remote servers, which is funny as my goal is to use a server to manage workstations

=> ↺ Sneakernet in a Free, Developed Society

• Regardless, the coolness of the very idea of sneakernet is incredible. I just want to use one. For something! I don’t even know what, just something. When I talk about “sneakernet” in this post I don’t mean the occasional file moved on a USB thumb drive between friends once in a while (even though that technically counts). I’m thinking about organised sneakernets between several actors, be they individuals or organisations.

• But is there an actually useful purpose of sneakernets in democratic countries in the developed world?

• Suppose that you aren’t persecuted or part of a criminal network. Which actual use do you have for a sneakernet then? It’s super simple to set up a server with sftp or file upload and download through https. That’s also a lot faster and less costly than posting microSD cards to each other.

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ More Brainless Content Please

• A good chunk of people complaining about the world dumbing with YouTube click-bait no doubt saw the kind of nonsense I watch and thought ‘the BBC showed much more enlightening and informative content than this modern drivel’. This comparison doesn’t work.

• We shouldn’t compare these videos to television, but to radio. Lots of us have large sections of the day where we sit in our little box-houses, clicking through spreadsheets, doing the dishes, and broadly doing jobs which machines can almost but not-quite perform. It’d be nice to spend this time learning a language, or how to perform quadratic equations, but the tasks demand just enough mental attention to prohibit any serious thinking, so we don’t do serious thinking. I like Space Feather, Shaun, and anything related to Computerphile. Other people like Joe Rogan, or rants about what Jordan Peterson thinks about frogs, or why Jordan Peterson’s opinions on frogs don’t work.

=> ↺ Early Internet

• I mourn the escapism of early internet. True and fun eureka moments in a environment which had no motives to provide information, except enthusiasm for sharing. A community waiting to be found, an outlet for conversation more specific than could have ever been had in near geography. A place where we could all grow together.

=> ↺ New Year 2023: Making the game fun

• I discovered a tiny gemini game full of nice ideas I feel like stea… cough reimplementing in 2023cards (yes, that’s the short name of this project from now on). The game in question is Astrobotany [1].

Programming

=> ↺ The slacker’s guide to managing dotfiles

• In the past I was using Git for managing dotfiles, and it worked pretty well. Main advantages of this solution were a possibility of syncing settings between devices and an ability to easily experiment with different configurations in separate branches (let’s say switch your code editor to emacs and switch back by just changing a branch if emacs didn’t appeal to you).

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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